ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a preliminary exploration into the social legacies of war. It builds on the intuition that the potential for communities to build peace is likely to be shaped by the choices they make during war. I explore the links between one of these choices – civilian noncooperation – and the post-conflict reconstruction work that residents advanced when violence subsided in the Colombian municipality of San Carlos. I show that civilian noncooperation forged a new generation of community leaders to which fellow residents, most of them participants in the campaign, granted the legitimacy and support to undertake grassroots peacebuilding.
