Margarita Rosa Navarro De Arcos

Between 2019 and 2021, Colombia experienced one of the most significant cycles of protest in its recent history, marked by unprecedented levels of state repression and police brutality. In response to national and inter­national criticism, President Iván Duque’s administration justified these repressive actions by criminalizing protest move­ments and framing them as threats to public security.

Historically, in Latin America, protest move­ments have often been associated with insur­gent groups, such as guerrillas or leftist political forces. Although this “internal enemy” narrative had weak­ened following the 2016 Peace Agreements, Duque reintroduced and reframed it by incorporating new discursive elements such as “vandals” and “chaos agents.” This rhetorical shift marked the beginning of an urban securitization frame­work in which protests were constructed as organized threats that required militarized responses.

This doctoral project focuses on two key actors: the student move­ment and La Primera Línea in Bogotá and Cali. It seeks to under­stand the emergence and the dynamics between state security forces and the demon­strators such as self-defense and radicali­zation of some of these actors in response to state repression. By applying the theoretical lens of securitization and radicali­zation, the research explores how continuous state violence escalated political conflict and gave rise to new confrontational dynamics within the protest cycle.