Since its independence in the nineteenth century, the South American state of Colombia has been shaped by decades of bloody political violence. In <I>The Para-State,</I> Aldo Civico draws on interviews with paramilitary death squads and drug lords to provide a cultural interpretation of the country’s history of violence and state control. Between 2003 and 2008, Civico gained unprecedented access to some of Colombia’s most notorious leaders of the death...
