Introduction

In a 2010 article, ‘Colombia's Violence: The Mythical Curse of Geography’, Pablo Rojas Mejía contested the widespread view of geography as one of the principal causes of unrest in Colombia:

Rojas Mejía's dismissal of the connection between violence and geography as a ‘wildly exaggerated myth’ fails to recognize that such myths are an important organizing principle through which people, local and foreign, inhabitants and visitors, have come to understand regions such as the Putumayo over hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Serje for one has shown the power exercised by the ‘process of mystification’ over the public perception of Colombia's border regions and conflict zones, many of which continue to be styled in the media as uncivil no–man's lands. The view of geography as playing a central role in the country's armed conflict or posing an obstacle for progress and peace is an entrenched one. Juanita León's recent characterization of the government's struggle to maintain order in Colombia as ‘a complex war, a perpetual battle against geography that is not unlike the conquest of the Far West’ echoes commentators on the Putumayo from at least the mid–nineteenth century on:…