≪Between the needle and the thread, we intertwine stitch by stitch≫ Plots that reconstruct identities in victims of the Colombian armed conflict

Abstract

The victims of the armed conflict in Colombia have adopted life stories as a tool for testimony, denunciation, and the vindication of their rights. In periods of political transition, these narratives are officially legitimized as inputs for reconstructing the violent past through mechanisms such as truth commissions. This article proposes an interpretation of life stories from eighteen victims belonging to social organizations who participated in the Commission for the Clarification of Truth, guided by the theoretical categories of «plot» and «self-narratives». It begins with the question of how those who have directly suffered sociopolitical violence reconstruct their realities and autobiographies. The diachronic structure of each narrative was reconstructed through a narrative analysis that examined the event theories that made disruptive violent events intelligible and the narrative structure of the temporal sequence. Additionally, common metaphors across several narratives were analyzed, as well as the conflicts that drive the narrative fragments, which are based on the affirmation of social identity as a victim seeking to reclaim their rights. In conclusion, autobiographical narratives depict the configuration of victim identity as a political subject, appropriating the language of human rights to make sense of the violent past.