Prologue
| Autor | Jorge Humberto Peláez Piedrahita, S. J. |
| Cargo del Autor | Rector |
| Páginas | 429-431 |
PROLOGUE
At a time when a non-international armed conict in Colombia that has endured more than y years
seems to approach to an end, it is of the utmost importance the book that we present to the Colombian
society. Almost a year ago, the Ponticia Universidad Javeriana received from the Colombian Air Force
the invitation to participate in a project to build an academic approach able to account for the context of
the conict that has aected the country, with emphasis on ve Colombian regions in a period ranging
from the late twentieth century, more precisely 1998, to the year 2014.
To begin with, It is important to acknowledge that this invitation represented a vote of condence
of the Air Force to open a novel but fundamental path in building the context of an institutional memory
able to join to the process in which the Colombian society is immersed. In short, the purpose, captured
in this book, was to contribute to the wider and more complex process of construction of the memory of
our Public Force. is was an absolutely relevant and necessary issue in the collective construction of our
memory, multiple and diverse, about what has happened.
e task assumed by the University and headed by the Director of the Department of Political Sci-
ence, and a team mainly attached to the Faculty of Political Science and International Relations, entailed
several challenges of great magnitude that are worth to briey specify. e rst challenge was to dene the
scope of the work. In this, the guidance provided by the Air Force was accurate and useful: the purpose
was to build the context, i.e. to gather explanatory elements in the social, political, economic, institution-
al, cultural and geographic dimensions to understand the evolution of the conict and to interpret with
evidence based and empirical referents the key role played by the Public Force and, in particular, by the
Air Force to regain a signicant recovery of the territorial control and the weakening of the armed capa-
bility of the illegal organized armed groups, especially the FARC.
And although this challenge had to be assumed for the ve regions chosen, it was necessary to
examine the national and international context within which the whole process has evolved. is was a
second challenge that, thanks to the creation of an interdisciplinary team with a good mix of experience
and youth, could be developed simultaneously with the work on the regional.
e third challenge was more of an operational and logistical nature. e fundamental work of
gathering of information, analysis and writing was done in a timespan of ve months. e text that you
have in your hands was written very quickly, but with a conceptual, methodological and empirical treat-
ment of relevant information of great rigor and systematicity. Hence both the readers that the Air Force
appointed and the independent evaluators gave a verdict of satisfaction, even though that did not com-
pleted the task. Given its professionalism, the team took an extra time to make corrections and enhance-
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