International Journal of Cultural Studies 16(4) 351–366 © The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1367877912460613 ics.sagepub.com Colombia, from failing state to a second independence:The politics and the price Gregory J. Lobo Universidad de los Andes, Colombia Abstract Amid social and political conditions that could well lead to Colombia being described in the terms of a failed state, the country’s electorate chose Álvaro Uribe as its thirty-ninth president in 2002, and again in 2006, preferring to keep in office a man who seemed to be putting the country together again, rather than respecting the constitutional prohibition against consecutive presidential terms. Though his presidency was marked by scandals and irregularities – most notably, the falsos positivos (false positives: young, poor Colombian civilians, assassinated in cold blood by the zealous armed forces and listed as guerrilla kills) – Uribe enjoyed approval ratings previously unknown in Colombian history. He is in fact credited with giving Colombia its ‘second independence’, and his leaving office was, for many, tragic. Here, I present an explanation for this paradox, analysing an aspect of Uribe’s discourse for the way it contributed to producing a shared national sentiment by articulating a social imaginary with limited possibilities for making sense of Colombia. Drawing on Geertz, Durkheim and Brubaker and the concepts of hegemony and identification, I elucidate the effectiveness of Uribe’s discourse of the nation in a context of a long experience of frustration and decadence, and show why and how so many Colombians could, at least for a time, give their overwhelming support to a regime wherein murder was authorized, unacknowledged as anything more significant than the price to be paid for that second independence. Keywords Colombia, false positives, falsos positivos, hegemony, identification, nation, Uribe, uribismo Álvaro Uribe was president of Colombia for two consecutive terms, from 2002 to 2006 and from 2006 to 2010. Though Colombian law prohibits presidents from serving a sec- ond consecutive term, Uribe won an exception to that rule, due to his immense popularity. Corresponding author: Gregory J. Lobo, Universidad de los Andes, Departamento de Lenguajes y Estudios Socioculturales, Colombia. Email: globo@uniandes.edu.co 460613ICS 16 4 10.1177/1367877912460613International Journal of Cultural StudiesLobo 2012 Article