ABSTRACT
In 1958, the Colombian government of President Alberto Lleras Camargo (1958–1962) created the Community Action Councils (JAC in Spanish), state-sponsored neighbors’ associations set out to create new channels of communication and interaction between the citizens and the state institutions. Their main goal was to empower the former to take a leading role in the development of their communities. They also sought to defuse political violence by taming social discontent and preventing the expansion of subversive ideologies. This chapter examines how dwellers of two shantytowns in Cartagena, i.e., Fredonia and San Francisco, maneuvered within the conditions created by the JAC program to transform their informal settlements into functional neighborhoods. Despite its apparent success, the program proved limited. Miscommunication with state institutions, lack of funding, corruption, and partisan politics compromised its results and forced neighbors to rely on radical direct actions, such as protests and land seizures, as well as brokerage politics, and extra-legal means to achieve their purposes. This chapter thus demonstrates that community development programs could not keep citizens away from subversive ideologies, and, on the contrary, the JAC program became a fertile ground for experiments on radical politics.
