Exploring the Discourse on Security:: Colombia's Democratic Security

Security is a contentious concept, which reaches itslimits when applied in a non-Western context. With astrong war-like rhetoric and a strategy called?Democratic Security,? Alvaro Uribe Vélez (2002-2006) promised to defeat the insurgency and to strengthenthe Colombian state. Uribe?s strategies and rhetoricmoves were challenged at every step by differentsectors of the public opinion, the civil society andhis political adversaries. In spite of thecontradictory results of his policies, Uribe took theoath of office for a second time. I argue here thatsecurity is a strategy used by all political andmilitary actors in Colombia to delegitimize, as wellas to foreclose their adversaries? political space. Through the use of critical and discourse theory, Ianalyze the discursive strategies used by Uribe andhis counterparts to reach political hegemony and theresponses it has elicited in Colombia. This work willintroduce its readers to a nuanced and rarelyapproached angle on the politics of security andshould be of special use to those interested in theColombian conflict, Latin American politics, stateand insurgent violence, and discourse analysis.