The political becoming local and, in effect, personal, is what I think we saw playing out all across Columbia last week. If Ocosingo War Diary teaches us anything, it’s that what might seem like an obvious choice—ending a war of 52 years—from the global perspective actually might be quite a bit more complicated when the social fabric of a place is taken into consideration, especially the intergenerational baggage that’s asked to be unpacked when particular regions—some more resentful of the FARC than others—are asked to simply move on from the violence they and their families have experienced for generations.
At the Ploughshares blog, Daniel Peña reads the recent vote on the referendum to end the war in Columbia through the pages of Efraín Bartolomé’s Ocosingo War Diary: Voices from Chiapas.
