The Law and Politics del retorno de los desplazados internos : las trayectorias del derecho al retorno entre la institucionalización internacional y la implementación en Colombia y Turbo : 1990-2011

Abstract

The legal gap between international law on the return of internally displaced persons and Colombian law, and the political and social gaps between them and their implementation in Colombia between 1997 and 2010, were determined by relations between politics and law that ranged from subordination to the relative autonomy of the second versus the first. International law on return registers tensions that resulted from the greater influence of global hegemonic policies regarding global legal principles and subaltern policies. The linking of these tensions with political disputes in Colombia explains the legal, social and political gaps. The legal gap was greater in the implementation of the mechanisms for the return due to the hegemonic supremacy in the legislative and executive powers, and to the minor judicial counterweights. This gap was offset in the content of the right to return as a result of the judicial counterweight mobilized by subaltern sectors in the legislative and operational implementation, but the social and political gaps were profound due to the hegemonic predominance in an antagonistic political field characterized by the juxtaposition of states of exception and normality. The judicial review of Law 975 of 2005 opened political and legal opportunities for the mobilization of the displaced in Turbo for return, motivated by the memory of peasant life, the rejection of life in reception and the expectations of restorative justice awakened by this law, which came into contradiction with claims of distributive justice.