The High Commissioner for Peace of the Colombian government, Sergio Jaramillo, stressed that territorial peace implies that “the constitutional rights of all Colombians equally throughout the territory” are guaranteed. He said that this requires “a logic of inclusion and territorial integration” to be imposed based on “a new alliance between the State and local communities to jointly build institutionality in the territory”. But he also emphasised that “this does not mean that communities organize themselves” (Jaramillo, 2014:5). He specified that building “strong institutions” includes both “the presence of some state entities” and the existence of “practices and norms that regulate public life and produce welfare” (Jaramillo, 2014:5). It also includes “rural development” in order to “transform the conditions of the countryside” and “close the enormous gap between the city and the countryside” (Jaramillo, 2014:5). The High Commissioner underlined that, for the Colombian government, territorial peace thus does not only mean “demobilising armed groups”, but “to fill the space, we [the state] have to institutionalise the territory, and we have to do this together with the communities” (Jaramillo, 2014:4, 6; my translation of the quotations).

The High Commissioner's formulation suggests that the Colombian government understands the territorial-peace approach as an instrument to give continuity to the rationale of various rural programmes in Colombia's history that aimed to consolidate the state by institutionalising the territory (Jaramillo, 2014:5). Programmes such as the National Territorial Consolidation and Reconstruction Programme, implemented in 2011 and managed by the Special Administrative Unit for Territorial Consolidation, has sought to “bring the state” to so-called “lawless peripheral rural spaces”.

This policy has focused on small projects to be implemented “quickly and easily”, e.g. anti-drug initiatives such as eradication of illegal crops; income generation projects; and a programme called “Colombia Responde”, which seeks to strengthen the ties between the state and communities and prevent recruitment to armed groups through cultural activities and youth programmes (Derks-Normandin, 2014:21).

The vision of territorial peace presented by the Colombian government stands in sharp contrast to that of the FARC-EP. From their point of view, to build territorial peace the territorial practices of indigenous and Afro-descendant communities as well as (non-ethnically defined) peasant populations need to be taken into consideration. Over the last 3 decades, these social groups have challenged the sole sovereignty of the nation state by constructing territorial sovereignties within the national territory (see Gruner, 2017; Silva Prada, 2016; Ulloa, 2012; Agnew and Oslender, 2010; García Lozano, 2016; Wahren, 2011; and Vacaflores Rivero, 2009).

In his statement on the FARC-EP's vision of territorial peace, Jesús Santrich, a key delegate of the FARC-EP at the peace talks with the Colombian government between 2012 and 2016, alluded to the cosmovisions of indigenous and Afro-descendant peasant communities. In an interview in 2017, he stated that the vision of the FARC-EP “is based on the exchange with Mother Earth; it is from that point that we introduced the concept of `good living' which is a derivation of the Aymara and Quechuan concept sumak kawsay” (quoted in Cairo and Ríos, 2018:4–5).

For a critique of equating “good living” (in Spanish: Buen Vivir) with the Quechuan expression Sumak Kawsay in “indigenous-culturalist”, “post-developmentalist”, or “socialist-statist” and “constitutionalist” scholarly debates, see e.g. Cuestas-Caza (2018).

In this statement, the territorial-peace approach is represented as a response to the demands of peasant movements and ethno-territorial communities to recognise what has been described as the country's highly diverse geographies with their multiple social, economic, and political histories (Rodríguez Muñoz, 2018; Oslender, 2018). Hence, the territorial-peace approach is presented as a “method” to expand the collective recognition of (ethnically and non-ethnically defined) rural communities, to ensure their social rights, and to produce changes in the structure of land tenure and wealth distribution (Salcedo Gracía, 2015; see also Sánchez Medina, 2016; and Zapata, 2015). This representation of territorial peace refers to the fact that by law peasant and ethno-territorial communities must be included in land use decisions and that the (respectful) coexistence of diverse territorialised production systems, cosmovisions and forms of life must be guaranteed (Romero, 2015, quoted in Zapata, 2015:4; Gruner, 2017:175).

This legal dimension is derived from Colombia's 1991 constitutional reform and the country's above-mentioned Development Planning Act of 1994 and Territorial Development Act of 1997. The constitutional reform facilitated the introduction of three territorial figures for which Colombia's peasant and ethno-territorial movements had fought hard since the 1980s: indigenous territories

Law 21 of Colombia's Political Constitution of 1991 approves the ILO Convention 169 of 1989; it is the main legal basis for the recognition of and access to a territory by indigenous communities. Decree 2333 of 19 November 2014 establishes administrative measures to protect ancestral and/or traditional indigenous rights to expand, reorganise, and restructure indigenous reservations (see Mora Vera, 2015).

The legal figure for the constitution of Peasant Reserve Zones, by contrast, is different. By Colombian law, peasants are not primarily defined in ethnic terms, and thus they are not considered a “collective subject of law” such as indigenous and Afro-descendent communities. Peasant Reserve Zones were constituted as a legal figure of land management as well as to ensure mechanisms of participation and consultation of peasant organisations (Rodríguez Muñoz, 2018; Silva Prada, 2016; Ordoñez Gómez, 2012). Hence, Peasant Reserve Zones have a different legal status than the collective territories of indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, which are considered self-governed subnational territorial entities which receive transfer funding from the government.

Some peasant communities have used the legal figure of Peasant Reserve Zones to organise and develop collective leadership and land ownership based on principles of sustainability to preserve resources such as water and wasteland as “goods of the commons that are not negotiable” (Silva Prada, 2016:645; see also Ordoñez Gómez, 2012). The final document of the peace agreement acknowledges that Peasant Reserve Zones need to be prioritised by the territorial-peace approach and highlights their “potential to transform Colombia's territorial, economic, and environmental order” (Rodríguez Muñoz, 2018:15; see also Courtheyn, 2018:1439).

These three legal figures have influenced the 2016 peace agreement. Colombia's so-called ethno-territorial movements – indigenous and Afro-descendant Colombians together with grassroots movements – managed to introduce a “differential approach” to the final document of the peace agreement. This approach takes into consideration that the systematic violence against groups defined by race and ethnicity (as well as by age, gender, and sexual orientation) has diverse territorial dimensions (Koopman, 2018; Gruner, 2017). The “ethnic chapter” of the final document of the peace accord, for instance, emphasises the self-determination, autonomy, and self-governance of the territories of ethnically defined communities in Colombia and stresses that the rights of these groups to their territories and resources need to be respected and protected. This implies “the recognition of ancestral territorial practices, the right to the restitution of collective property rights, and the implementation of legal mechanisms to protect and secure ancestrally and/or traditionally occupied or owned lands and territories” (Gobierno de Colombia and FARC-EP, 2016:206–207; my translation). In addition, the final document also underlines that the accorded comprehensive rural reform (one of the key issues in the peace agreement) will include “programmes agreed as part of this reform [that] will have a territorial and gender approach which involves recognising and taking into account the needs and characteristics as well as particular economic, cultural, and social features of the country's diverse territories” (Gobierno de Colombia and FARC-EP, 2016:11; my translation).

It is important to highlight that these points in the final peace agreement are inspired by a document elaborated by Afro-descendant and indigenous people. This document exposes territorialised alternatives to capitalism (see Gruner, 2017). These alternatives are considered counter-hegemonic territorial regimes that have not only fragmented the territory of the Colombian nation state but have also challenged “the violent logic of capitalist accumulation” (Silva Prada, 2016:643; see also Solís et al., 2018; Rodríguez Muñoz, 2018; Bautista Bautista, 2017; Duarte and Castaño, 2017; Gruner, 2017; Duarte and Bolaños Trochez, 2017; García Lozano, 2016; Salcedo Gracía, 2015; and Ulloa, 2012). This notion of territory refers on the one hand to the construction of a “dignified” and “good life” that confronts the commodification of land and territorial homogenisation through dispossession imposed by multinational capital (mining companies, agro-industry, etc.). On the other hand, this notion is linked to alternative conceptions of “citizen rights” which go beyond the liberal principles of individual rights and include collective rights of social groups and ethnically defined communities (see Bautista Bautista, 2017; Silva Prada, 2016; Vacaflores Rivero, 2009; Ballvé, 2012; Agnew and Oslender, 2010).

The territorial-peace approach agreed between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP is a disputed field in that it follows conflicting notions of territory which refer to antagonistic societal projects. There is thus an inherent tension in this approach between two understandings of what is referred to as “state space” (see Brenner and Elden, 2009). State space is either understood in terms of what Lefebvre calls “abstract space”, i.e. a space to serve the abstract purpose of “capitalist accumulation” (Lefebvre, 1991:53, 387; Brenner and Elden, 2009:368–369), or it is conceived in terms of “multi-territoriality” (Haesbaert, 2013), i.e. as a multiplicity of spaces which are appropriated to serve human needs in Lefebvre's sense (Lefebvre, 1991:52, 393–394).

The Programa Integral de Mejoramiento de Barrios Subnormales de Medellín (PRIMED; Programme for the Holistic Improvement of Substandard Settlements in Medellín) was implemented between 1993 and 1999 in 15 settlements of three urban districts at the very edge of Medellín. The explicit objective of this programme was territorial peacebuilding to address Medellín's extreme urban violence in the 1990s (Alcaldía, 1998; Municipio de Medellín, 1996; PRIMED, 1996; Consejería, 1993). I followed the implementation of PRIMED during the late 1990s and moved to one of the three renewal areas of the programme, the upper part of the district Comuna 6, after comprehensive archive work, informal conversations, and tape-recorded interviews with programme officers. In the selected renewal area, I conducted fieldwork as a participant observer during a period of 2 months.

During the late 1990s, I conducted fieldwork in Medellín in the framework of my PhD project in social anthropology on globalising urban space. Fieldwork included a longer period of 15 months in 1996/97 and several shorter periods between 1997 and 2000. The PRIMED renewal area in the upper part of Comuna 6 was one research site of my “multi-sited ethnography” (Marcus, 1995) in Medellín back then (Stienen, 1998, 2005, 2009, 2016; Betancur et al., 2001). Since then, I continued visiting some of my research participants in Comuna 6 while involved in subsequent research projects with Colombian partners.

The settlements of the PRIMED renewal areas had expanded irregularly outside the urban perimeter at the city's steep hillsides during the late 1970s and '80s mainly as a consequence of interurban forced displacement in the wake of the city's increasing violence and economic crisis. Until the start of PRIMED in 1993, these self-constructed settlements, built on squatted land or on land sold illegally by “pirate urbanisers” (Coupé, 1993), were not officially recognised by the municipal planning office. However, Empresas Públicas de Medellín, the city's efficient public utility company, had partly equipped the settlements with water, power, and sewerage in response to the insistent demands of local grassroots organisations. Residents had organised to fight eviction by the police, and they put pressure on the municipality to provide basic services in the settlements. In 1993, the three districts of the PRIMED renewal areas totaled a population of approximately 51 100 residents (around 3 % of Medellín's total population of 1.6 million at that time and 20 % of the urban population living in irregularly built settlements). The municipal planning office categorised these settlements as “high-risk areas” and “ungoverned spaces”. They had continuously been facing the threat of deadly mudslides due to the geological instability of the city's steep hillsides. Moreover, they had been governed by illegal armed youth groups, both milicias influenced by Colombia's guerrilla groups and criminal gangs established by organised crime (Alcaldía, 1998; Municipio, 1996; Consejería, 1993). Homicide rates in Medellín culminated in 1993, with an average of 311 per 100 000 inhabitants. Although these rates dropped after Pablo Escobar, the iconic head of the Medellín drug cartel, was killed in December 1993, the average of 203 in 1996 and of 167 in 1999 was still high (Gil Ramírez, 2009:64, Jaramillo et al., 1998:110ff). Most victims were boys and young men, engaged in violent turf wars fought between rival milicias and criminal gangs, who controlled most of Medellín's deprived neighbourhoods.

There is a large body of literature on Medellín's urban conflict since the 1990s (see Bedoya, 2006, 2010, 2017; Hylton, 2007, 2010, 2014; Civico, 2012; Lamb, 2010; Gil Ramírez, 2009; Franco, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2009; Rozema, 2008; Alonso Espinal et al., 2007; Gutiérrez and Jaramillo, 2004; Angarita Cañas, 2003, 2008; Roldán, 2003; Ceballos Melguizo and Cronshawn, 2001; Jaramillo et al., 1998; and Arias et al., 1994).

In Medellín youth milicia groups emerged in the late 1980s as either independent neighbourhood vigilante groups or insurgent milicia units backed by Colombia's guerrilla groups. They sought to eradicate criminal gangs from disadvantaged neighbourhoods by force of arms and to institute their own model of self-government often under an insurrectionary perspective. At that time, they were mostly composed of the children of the families living in these neighbourhoods. The groups provided their communities with security and community services which were not provided by the state and extorted protection money from the residents. Their activities included night patrols, the resolution of domestic and neighbourhood disputes, recreation and sports, and activities to embellish the neighbourhoods. At that time, the milicias enjoyed broad popular support and during the 1990s, they rapidly expanded in Medellín and eventually controlled a quarter of the city's deprived neighbourhoods (Bedoya, 2010:109f, Medina, 2006; Jaramillo et al., 1998). In 1994 some milicia groups reached a peace agreement with the Colombian government and demobilised as their private protection services were given official credence through the constitution of a cooperative set up for “vigilance and community services”, known as Coosercom. Milicia groups linked to Colombia's main guerrilla groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), however, rejected this agreement and united to occupy the territories of the demobilised groups. In armed confrontations with Coosercom members, accused of abuses against civilians and involvement in criminal activities, the insurgent milicia groups killed several hundred members of Coosercom, and in 1996 the municipality dissolved the cooperative (see Hylton, 2007, 2014; Rozema, 2008; Medina, 2006; Gutiérrez and Jaramillo, 2004; and Jaramillo et al., 1998).

The PRIMED renewal areas were affected by the armed turf wars between these rival milicia groups and between milicia groups and criminal gangs from neighbouring districts. The settlements were criss-crossed by invisible frontiers between micro-territorialities over which the armed youth groups disputed control with each other. Residents were literally confined in these micro-territorialities as transgressing the invisible frontiers involved the risk of getting caught in crossfire. This territorial order determined residents' daily routines. In the renewal area of Comuna 6, for instance, parents took their children from school because of frequent armed clashes right in front of the school. Residents took long detours to get to work, or they no longer dared to leave their dwellings anymore. Hardly anyone from outside found it possible to safely enter the settlements, including the police. In 1993, the PRIMED officers negotiated access to the settlements with the illegal armed youth groups. A young programme officer who worked in the local PRIMED office in Comuna 6 explained that until 1995 heavy shooting often started in front of the office after she had just entered the office. But she said that the armed youth groups respected PRIMED, generally informing her in advance if it was too dangerous to go to the office.

These affirmations are quoted from the transcript of my tape-recorded interview with the officer conducted on 16 September 1997 in the PRIMED office located in the renewal area of Comuna 6.

In 1995, the municipality's Oficina de Paz y Convivencia (Office for Peace and Coexistence) backed negotiations around “pacts of non-aggression” between armed youth gangs all over Medellín and provided some financial support. These informal agreements turned the city's invisible frontiers into Fronteras de convivencia (frontiers of peaceful co-existence). But the armed youth groups continued exercising territorial control and extorting protection money in these neighbourhoods. This was also the case in the settlements of the three PRIMED renewal areas. Residents and the programme officers still had to deal with the armed youth groups' claims for territorial control. However, the pacts facilitated both the implementation of PRIMED and residents' engagement with the programme. Residents could now cross the invisible frontiers between the established micro-territorialities without risking being caught in crossfire. The pacts also reduced the risk for outsiders to enter the settlements. Hence, it was possible for me to move to the PRIMED renewal area of Comuna 6 in September 1997 to conduct fieldwork there during a period of 2 months.

The outlined processes of territorialisation at the very edge of Medellín can best be understood in terms of Silva Prada's above-quoted notion of “territoriality” (2016: 638f): These were socially constructed, self-governed “fields of action and possibilities” established through the appropriation of land over which the settlers disputed control with the (local) state. These spaces were signified symbolically by “communities of destiny”, forged through the collective resistance to being expelled from the city by the police. However, these spaces were fragmented by “invisible frontiers” violently constructed by illegal armed youth groups to confine the residents into micro-territorialities over which these groups exercised control. The PRIMED renewal areas were thus a dense space in Porto-Gonçalves' sense, over-signified by a multiplicity of conflicting uses and symbolic meanings (2002:230; see also Fernandes, 2005:276).

What follows intends to show how state control over the urban periphery had been negotiated in the context of PRIMED. I highlight the way the “crisis of (state) authority” (Gramsci, 1971:210, quoted in Ballvé, 2012:606) has been confronted by PRIMED. In his analysis of “everyday state formation” in Colombia's strongly disputed Urabá region, Ballvé (2012) proposes to conceive territorialisation in Colombia in terms of Gramsci's conception of the “integral state”, which includes both government and civil society. Inspired by this argument, I explain how PRIMED produced state territory in this integral Gramscian sense.

Gramsci refers to the “integral state” as “the fluid and dialectical conglomerate of political and civil society” (Ballvé, 2012:605). Gramsci argues that “state does [thus] not mean only the apparatus of government but also the `private' apparatus of hegemony or civil society” (Gramsci, 1971, quoted in Ballvé, 2012:605f).

In this order of ideas, it is necessary to discuss the de- and re-territorialisation practices of PRIMED also in relation to counter-insurgency. Following Elden's conception of “territory as political technology” (Elden, 2010:810f), I ask whether the re-territorialisation of Medellín's urban periphery by PRIMED can be interpreted as counter-insurgency that aimed to undermine both the ability of insurgent armed groups to control spaces and populations at the city's edge and residents' defiant everyday practices of territorialisation. I show that PRIMED was more complex. The programme not only established what Ballvé (2012:613) calls “the everyday territorial `workings' of the state”, reaching from formal law enforcement and expanding public services to imposing normative standards and routinised bureaucratic procedures. It also contributed to the empowerment of the formerly stigmatised residents in the settlements, “abandoned” by the state, by addressing and recognising them as subjects of law and acknowledging their everyday practices of territorialisation.

PRIMED was encouraged by the Consejería Presidencial para Medellín y su Area Metorpolitana (the Presidential Office for Medellín and the Metropolitan Area). The national government created this entity in 1990 to direct resources to local initiatives that addressed the city's social crises and alarming violence. PRIMED was co-funded by the Colombian government, the German-government-owned development bank “Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau” (KFW), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the municipality of Medellín. PRIMED represented a historical shift in the way irregularly constructed settlements on Medellín's steep hillsides had usually been addressed by the state. Instead of violently evicting the settlers and destroying their illegally built settlements, PRIMED sought to formalise and consolidate these settlements with measures that mitigated geological risks and with social investments (Alcaldía, 1998; Municipio 1996; Consejería, 1993). Hence, the programme recognised the efforts and achievements of the residents and secured these collectively built territories by legalising and incorporating them into the city. Designed in the wake of the 1991 constitutional reform, PRIMED sought to put into practice the idea that after the constitutional reform “Colombia has fully entered the era of citizen participation” (PRIMED, 1994:4; my translation). The professionals who designed the programme believed that “the new constitution enacted a new social contract based on participation, justice, and the recognition of civil rights” (PRIMED 1994:4; my translation). The following statements made by some of these professionals in a group interview reveal how the overarching goal of PRIMED in relation to peacebuilding connects to basic ideas of the 2016 territorial-peace approach:

“[In PRIMED] two goals came together. One was improving the life of the inhabitants of the 15 settlements with a comprehensive urban programme. But at the same time there was another commitment. We wanted to change the internal structure of the municipality; we wanted to democratise the municipality, to adjust it to the new rules of the game imposed by the Constitution. […] We belong to a generation of professionals with a lot of illusions; we believed in the utopias of the 1960s, '70s, '80s, but during the last 10 years we got frustrated as this city touched the bottom of the crisis […]. We realised that it is no longer the guerrilla that will bring change. Change needs to be done from the institutionality too; a civil society without a strong state does not work, and a strong state without a civil society does not work either. […] We wanted to move forward, starting from the Constitution. One of its main principles is to strengthen the municipality. The construction of conditions for living together peacefully and of the country we dream of starts from the municipality. In other words, PRIMED was not only designed for the subnormal neighbourhoods, this programme was designed for the city and for the whole country”.

These statements are quoted from the transcript of my tape-recorded group interview with three professionals who participated in the design and start of PRIMED. The group interview was conducted in Medellín on 11 July 1996 (my translation).

Integrated into the former Social Housing Corporation of the Municipality of Medellín (CORVIDE), PRIMED followed a holistic inter-institutional approach in urban upgrading, at that time considered unique in Latin America. The programme coordinated in the renewal areas territorially focused activities of different entities in the nation state and the municipality of Medellín. These activities included measures of mitigating geological risks, expanding the basic infrastructure (paths, roads, parks), completing basic services (water piping, power, sewerage), improving housing, and granting formal property titles to the residents. The programme also encouraged universities, local NGOs, small private firms, cooperatives, grassroots organisations, residents, and international donors to coordinate territorially focused activities in the renewal areas with each other and with the state. Following the legal framework enhanced by the 1991 Political Constitution, PRIMED also tried to build leadership among the residents. Residents and their grassroots organisations were trained by progressive local NGOs in participatory local planning, budgeting, project management, and in how to get a legal status to submit collectively elaborated small development projects to the municipality or to private and non-profit entities for funding.

The Colombian legislation introduced after the 1991 constitutional reform prohibits grassroots organisations without a personería jurídica, i.e. a legal status, to receive public funding or funding from private and non-profit entities to implement development projects.

In short, PRIMED sought to build (state) institutionality in the settlements at Medellín's urban periphery. This included ensuring both the municipality's responsibility to provide the settlers with basic public services and the settlers' right and obligations to the city. Streets and addresses were formalised; the settlers were registered by location and prepared by the programme to pay fees and taxes. This was conditioned on their individual property rights and on the provision with basic public services and facilities by the municipality and the legalisation of the settlements (Stienen, 2005; Alcaldía, 1998; Municipio, 1996; Consejería, 1993). As PRIMED established offices physically in each of the three renewal areas, the programme thus constituted what Ballvé calls in his analysis of Colombia's Urabá region “a material and a symbolic `marker' of territorialized meaningful state presence” (2012:613). These decentralised PRIMED offices allowed the residents to have direct contact with representatives of the state in their everyday space.

But PRIMED had a “hidden agenda” too. I found out about this through an interview with a former PRIMED officer who had also participated in the design of the programme. He had a higher position in the local administration at the time of the interview. He told me that PRIMED was designed as a “military strategy” and that the programme sought to exert state control over the urban periphery to prevent leftist guerrilla groups from entering the city from its borders. He showed me on a street map, which he labelled “strictly confidential”, the location of the settlements of the three renewal areas, the movements of the guerrilla groups in the city, and how the new urban architecture would contribute to the improvement of military and police control in the upgraded settlements.

We knew that the urban peripheries were taken over by the guerrillas. […] Three districts were taken over by the guerrillas […]. We wanted to implement the programme precisely in these three districts. […]. In other words, it was a military strategy that we were considering at that time […]. The residents [of these districts] live in a borderline situation between delinquency and honesty, and this situation always has a territorial outcome. These are interstitial spaces in the city which do not belong to anybody and can easily be appropriated by the guerrilla groups. Hence, we needed a strategy for the periphery of the city […]; it is hard to govern the periphery; people who live there are unpredictable because they don't have an urban identity. They easily join the other side [the guerrillas]; thus, we needed a strategy that would give the periphery an urban identity […]. We noticed that war strategies are always being created on the edges, so what we are doing now is creating new centres on the urban periphery.

These affirmations are quoted from the transcript of my tape-recorded interview with the former officer conducted in the office of the interviewee in Medellín on 12 December 1996 (my translation).

Intrigued by the interview with the former PRIMED officer, I paid full attention to territorial markers during participant observation in the PRIMED renewal area of Comuna 6. Probably the most evident territorial expressions of the programme's (presumed) military strategy were the then newly built path galleries of reinforced concrete that followed the contours of the hillsides on which the settlements of the three renewal areas had expanded. Residents had helped to build these path galleries. They showed me how these galleries connected the settlements of their districts and how they facilitated their transit through the settlements. The former PRIMED officer traced these galleries on his “strictly confidential” map and explained that the galleries would allow the police and military forces to move quickly from one settlement to another as they connected the settlements in each upgraded district. It seemed to me that the programme's (presumed) military strategy was inscribed onto the upgraded space of the settlements and could bee literally “read” in the territory by the observer.

Graffiti in the PRIMED area of Comuna 6 also attracted my attention. It read, for instance, Fuera milicianos les desea la ley del desprecio (“Get off, militias, that is what those who despise you want you to do”) and Pero fuera milicianos. Bienvenidos militares al Picachito (“But get off, militias. Military, welcome to Picachito”). Residents in the settlements of Comuna 6 suspected that paramilitary groups, known as Convivir, entered the settlements, taking advantage of the lack of resistance resulting from the pacts of non-aggression. Created in 1994 by Colombia's Ministry of National Defense as “special vigilance and private security services”, these groups engaged civilians mainly in rural areas in fighting back against the influence of guerrilla groups. In the mid-1990s, seven Convivir were also registered in Medellín (Hylton, 2014:25; Téllez Ardilla, 1995:107). However, in the PRIMED settlements at that time, graffiti was the only territorial marker indicating the possible presence of these groups. Residents, however, felt exposed to fuerzas oscuras, “sinister forces”, which kept watch over the settlements without being visible (see Stienen, 2016:247).

It is tempting to interpret the re-territorialisation of Medellín's urban edge in the framework of PRIMED during the 1990s as counter-insurgency. In what follows, I show, however, that this interpretation is too narrow.

The 1990s can be considered an experimental period in relation to what Uribe de Hincapié (1998:17) distinguished as disputes over “just order, sovereign representation, territorial domination, institutional control of public goods, and the subjection of citizens” in Colombia. This experimental period, however, ended at the turn of the millennium. In 2012, more than a decade after the termination of PRIMED, the confessions of a paramilitary and drug trafficker, Henry de Jesús López Londoño, alias “Carlos Mario” or “Mi Sangre” (My Blood), seemed to retrospectively confirm rumours in the 1990s that PRIMED was a counter-insurgency programme. The confessions revealed that the 1995 pacts of non-aggression in Medellín, which eventually facilitated the implementation of PRIMED (and also my fieldwork in the renewal area of Comuna 6), were supported by paramilitary groups together with organised crime to prepare the ground for the paramilitary incursion in the city after the turn of the millennium with which the confessed was charged.

These confessions were made by López Londoño in an Argentinian prison on 30 October 2012 (see Gil Ramírez, 2013:10, and https://verdadabierta.com/policia-nacional-armo-el-frente-capital-alias-mi-sangre/, last access: 31 August 2020).

Scholars have analysed the paramilitary “territorial takeover” (Franco, 2003:103) of Medellín comprehensively. It culminated in 2003 with the military offensive in Comuna 13, known as Operación Orión, ordered by far-right president Alvaro Uribe (2002–2010) in the framework of his “democratic security policy” that aimed to strengthen the activities and presence of the security bodies throughout the national territory (Giraldo Ramírez and Preciado Restrepo, 2015; GMH, 2011; Rozema, 2008; Franco, 2004; Angarita Cañas, 2003, 2008). Comuna 13 is a huge underprivileged district at the city's edge which included, among other neighbourhoods, the settlements of one of the three areas upgraded by PRIMED. The district was considered Medellín's stronghold of insurgent milicias influenced by Colombia's guerrilla groups and was turned into a showcase for urban counter-insurgency after the turn of the millennium. Commanded by Colombia's army and national police in coordination with paramilitary forces, the 2003 military offensive in Comuna 13 eventually eradicated the insurgent milicia groups in the city. After this military offensive, paramilitary groups which converged into the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC; United Self-Defence Groups of Colombia) in 1997 eventually controlled 70 % of the urban territory in alliance with organised crime. In 2003, the government negotiated a ceasefire with the paramilitary groups and subsequently their demobilisation.

Demarest (2011:7) considers the fact that drug dealers became major landowners of mountain ranches and villas just uphill from the city an expression of the gradual takeover of Medellín's peripheral urban areas by the paramilitary AUC. This author argues that this was the paramilitary response to the evident influence of Colombia's major guerrilla groups in the city.

Many assume that the paramilitary “territorial takeover” (Franco, 2003:103) of Medellín made possible the city's far-reaching urban transformations and decrease in homicide after the turn of the millennium, recently coined as the “Medellín Miracle”.

For the perception of “Medellín Miracle”, see e.g. The Economist, 7 June 2014: “Medellín's comeback: the trouble with miracles” (https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2014/06/07/the-trouble-with-miracles, last access: 3 September 2020). For an analysis of paramilitarism and Medellín's recent transformations, see Franz (2017), Humphrey and Valverde (2017), MacLean (2015), Hylton (2007, 2010), Franco (2009), and Colak-Abello and Pierce (2015).

Demarest (2011:10) and Ballvé (2012:612) claimed counter-insurgency operations typically entail three steps: (1) clearing a territory of insurgent groups and taking this territory back from insurgent control, (2) holding the territory by securing it with measures that include repression, and (3) building durable institutionality both in terms of physical infrastructure and territorial governance (see also Franco, 2003:105f)

Ballvé (2012:612) argues that presently counter-insurgency is reduced to the formula “clear, hold, and build”, described by former US Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in reference to Iraq. “Our political–military strategy has to be to clear, hold, and build: to clear areas from insurgent control, to hold them securely, and to build durable, national Iraqi institutions” (Rice, 2005 quoted in Ballvé, 2012:612). Ballvé's study of Colombia's Urabá region shows that this strategy was also successfully implemented by the paramilitaries in Colombia (Balvé, 2012).

PRIMED negotiated “fields of social experimentation” (de Sousa Santos, 2003:38, 285) with the residents in the renewal areas. For instance, the programme officers not only arranged their access to the settlements with the illegal armed youth groups but also debated with them the implementation of the programme. During the first years, organised residents attended programme meetings with basic PRIMED documents in hand. Due to the territorial control exercised by the armed youth milicias in the settlements, any deviation from the original objectives of PRIMED during its implementation was debated with the residents. An officer said, “If you are facing a guy armed with a gun and you are only armed with your professional knowledge, if you are not able to prove that you are right, what happens then with that gun? You pay with your life”.

These affirmations are quoted from the transcript of my tape-recorded group interview with PRIMED officers conducted in Medellín on 11 July 1996 (my translation).

The PRIMED officers also negotiated land use with the residents. Individual land appropriation had provoked many violent conflicts in the settlements of the renewal areas before the start of PRIMED. Residents had fought hard to cut metre by metre of land off the steep hillsides to build their individual dwellings. During the upgrading process, they often resisted ceding individually appropriated land to PRIMED for the construction of public spaces in the settlements. With the construction of public space, the programme not only sought to stabilise the steep hillsides where the settlements expanded. It also aimed to implement Colombia's 1989 Urban Reform Law, which defined public space as area for “the satisfaction of collective urban needs”. This law is probably one of the most enlightened laws for public space conservation in Latin America.

Ley 9 of Urban Reform, Diario Oficial, Año CXXV, No. 38650, 11 January 1989; https://www.ani.gov.co/sites/default/files/ley_0009_de_1989_reforma_urbana.pdf (last access: 3 September 2020)

The negotiation of gender relations was also part of PRIMED's re-territorialisation. Residents had to contribute unpaid work to the construction of public space. Both men and women were trained in construction work at the National Training Service (Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje, SENA), a public institution that offered vocational training programmes. In Comuna 6, men used to complain about being obliged to do unpaid work and often did not appear on the construction sites. Women, by contrast, were largely committed to free work and often assumed the responsibility for the construction sites. Due to the gender-specific impact of the armed conflict in the settlements before the start of PRIMED, women often expressed that they perceived their commitment to the programme as liberating. With the start of PRIMED their freedom of movement increased as well as the territorial radius accessible to them in the city.

Due to the “invisible frontiers” between micro-territorialities in the city, forcibly protected by armed groups, the range of movement of the residents was very limited at that time (see also Stienen, 2016). The PRIMED officers organised regular exchange meetings between the residents of all three renewal areas who were directly engaged in the implementation of the programme as well as mutual visits.

In conclusion, the re-territorialisation of Medellín's disputed urban periphery during the implementation of PRIMED had an insurgent dimension in the sense discussed by Holston (2009) and Wahren (2011). These scholars developed both a non-normative conception of “insurgence” that has no “inherent moral or political value” (Holston, 2009:35) and the idea of a “disruptive institutionality” (Wahren, 2011). My argument is that during the implementation of PRIMED, a “disruptive institutionality” emerged from the disputes between the residents and the governmental and non-governmental actors involved in the programme and coordinated by PRIMED. These disputes unsettled normative binaries such as legal/illegal, legitimate/illegitimate, public/private, and formal/informal and produced new social subject positions and political identities among the residents. Residents gained visibility in the city as subjects of law during the implementation of PRIMED. They also experienced how the PRIMED officers in the settlements prioritised technical and legal criteria in the negotiations of land use instead of arbitrarily relying on political clientele relations. This might have been why, during the 1997 mayoral elections, some residents campaigned for government programmes rather than for individual candidates who promised potential voters that they would get personal benefits for their vote, as had usually been the case.

This analysis is based on participant observation and the discussion of this issue by residents of all three PRIMED renewal areas during a 1 d exchange meeting organised by PRIMED on 15 August 1997 (My transcript and translation of the tape-recorded discussion).

Nevertheless, PRIMED did not prevent the paramilitary incursion in the settlements despite empowering the residents. PRIMED's perceived strength eventually turned out to be the programme's weakness, namely the neutrality of its legalistic-technocratic approach to conflicting and antagonistic interests and territorial projects in the settlements. PRIMED did not consider that the pacts of non-aggression would “open” the settlements to other armed groups by transforming the settlements' “invisible frontiers” into “frontiers of peaceful co-existence”. The paramilitary and criminal networks, established to carry out the paramilitary incursion in Medellín, managed to penetrate these frontiers of peaceful co-existence and co-opt residents and armed youth groups in the settlements. This was all the easier given the lack of economic alternatives, particularly for youth, an issue not addressed by PRIMED. Armed youth groups and residents who resisted being co-opted were denounced and expelled, or they “disappeared” and were assassinated by the paramilitaries. During the military offensive in Comuna 13, the new infrastructure of this district's former PRIMED renewal area eventually facilitated the movements of the police and army but was also damaged during the offensive together with upgraded houses.

The consolidation of state space in Lefebvre's sense (see Brenner and Elden, 2009:364f), initiated by PRIMED at Medellín's disputed urban periphery, was eventually achieved under different auspices by the paramilitaries once they controlled the city after the turn of the millennium. Demarest (2011:9f) argues that the 2003 military offensive in Comuna 13 “permanently changed the scale and nature of the security challenge” in Medellín. PRIMED's experimental potential, identified in this article, was not sustained in the city after the end of the programme.

PRIMED was officially suspended in 1999. The former Social Housing Corporation of the Municipality of Medellín (CORVIDE), in which PRIMED was integrated, completed the remaining works until being dissolved in 2001 by the newly elected mayor of Medellín, whose administration was committed to other priorities (see Betancur, 2007:11).