A powerful chronicle of Colombiaâs descent into decades of civil war through the lens of an intimate, multi-generational tale of upheaval and betrayal.
When presumed president-elect Jorge EliĂŠcer GaitĂĄn, champion of the working class and harbinger of a new era of progressive social change, is assassinated on the eve of Colombiaâs 1948 presidential election, the capital is plunged into bloodshed. So begins a singularly brutal period of Colombiaâs history known simply as la violenciaâa bloody civil war that spawned decades of turmoil and splintered the country into ever-shifting factions.
The Violence is an intimate history of this conflictâtold not from the political center of the war but from the mountainous finca that Adriana E. RamĂrezâs family tended to for generations, and through the eyes of her formidable grandmother, Esther. With startling lyricism, RamĂrez illuminates the specter of violenceâfrom guerilla warfare to the brutalities found so often in romantic relationships to the spontaneous and senseless violence steeped into everyday Colombian life during this periodâand the threat that it poses to a country, and a family, that is trying to stay whole. Gracefully braiding together macrohistory, family history, and personal narrative, Adriana E. RamĂrez traces these parallel stories of upheaval in a sweeping portrait of a country and family in flux.