Disability and ableism in the falsos positivos in Colombia. A biopolitics circuitry approach.

Abstract

In this paper I argue that the erasure of disabled people from official discourse during and after the Colombian Army’s Falsos positivos scandal results from intersecting ableist and biopolitical powers. In the early 2000s, the Colombian Army presented thousands of civilian victims as positive results in staged military operations. This scandal stands as a horrific chapter in Colombia’s contemporary history. While the scale of these crimes has been documented, disability and the intersecting identities of the victims have often been overlooked as a secondary characteristic, concealing how the Colombian state’s power targeted particular bodies. Employing a qualitative methodology that integrates elements of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA and Narrative analysis (NA). I apply this approach to the testimonial stories of two victims, Camilo and Roger, whose cases exemplify the intersections between the Falsos Positivos and disabilities in Colombia. I also triangulate these testimonies with press and official discourses from the conflict period and the subsequent Transitional Justice process. The analysis reveals a systematic erasure of disabled people from official discourses, both during the time the scandal emerged and throughout the post-conflict (post 2016) period and its transitional justice mechanisms. I argue that this erasure is produced by the interlocking operation of the three theoretical concepts that comprise the biopolitics circuitry. The stories of Camilo and Roger demonstrate that their legibility as targets of Falsos Positivos by the military was based on a hierarchy of worth, founded in ableist values of productivity, capacity, and conformity to an idealised normative body (Goodley, 2014; Mitchell & Snyder, 2018). This thesis thus contributes to the growing field of Disability Studies in the Global South while simultaneously offering a critical approach to understanding state violence against disabled bodies and Transitional Justice systems.