Evil Hour in Colombia

In the English-speaking world, Colombia is the least understood of Latin American countries. Its human tragedy is generally ignored or exploited for political ends. In this work, Forrest Hylton, who lives and works in Colombia, explores its history of 150 years of political conflict, characterized by radical-popular mobilization and reactionary repression.

Evil Hour in Colombia shows how patterns of political conflict, from the mid-nineteenth century to today’s guerilla narco-traffickers and paramilitaries, explain the wear currently destroying Colombian lives, property, communities and territory. In doing so, it traces how Colombia’s “coffee capitalism” gave way to the cattle and cocaine republic of the 1980s, and how land, wealth, and political power have been steadily accumulated by the light-skinned top of the social pyramid through a brutal combination of terror, expropriation, and exploitation.