The violence : my family's Colombian War / Adriana E. Ramírez.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ramírez, Adriana E., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ramírez, Adriana E--Family.

Ramírez, Adriana E.

Ramirez family.

Gaitán, Jorge Eliécer, 1898?-1948.

Gaitán, Jorge Eliécer.

Colombia--Politics and government--1946-1974.

Colombia.

Colombia--History--1946-1974.

Political violence--Colombia--History.

Political violence.

Civil war--Colombia.

Civil war.

Political violence--Colombia.

Colombia--Politics and government.

Genre:

Family histories.

Physical Description:

xxi, 312 pages : illustration, map, genealogical tables ; 22 cm.

Edition:

First Scribner hardcover edition.

Other Title:

My family's Colombian War

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC, 2026.

Summary:

"A powerful chronicle of Colombia's descent into decades of civil war through the lens of an intimate, multi-generational tale of upheaval and betrayal."--Amazon.

When presumed president-elect Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, champion of the working class and harbinger of a new era of progressive social change, is assassinated on the eve of Colombia's 1948 presidential election, the capital is plunged into bloodshed. So begins a singularly brutal period of Colombia's history known simply as la violencia --a bloody civil war that spawned decades of turmoil and splintered the country into ever-shifting factions. The Violence is an intimate history of this conflict--told not from the political center of the war but from the mountainous finca that Adriana E. Ramírez's family tended to for generations, and through the eyes of her formidable grandmother, Esther. With startling lyricism, Ramírez illuminates the specter of violence--from guerilla warfare to the brutalities found so often in romantic relationships to the spontaneous and senseless violence steeped into everyday Colombian life during this period--and the threat that it poses to a country, and a family, that is trying to stay whole. Gracefully braiding together macrohistory, family history, and personal narrative, Adriana E. Ramírez traces these parallel stories of upheaval in a sweeping portrait of a country and family in flux.

Contents:

Colombian history 1525-2025 : a brief timeline

Family trees

Una nota sobre mi abuela (a prologue of cards)

part I: How it all began, again (a rhapsody in gunpowder) ; Thicker than water (a recipe for fingers) ; All the little wars (a story about cows) ; The single woman (a study in gossip) ; The condor (a flight of principle) ; Election day (a deconstruction of guns) ; The girl (a consideration of muscle)

part II. An eye for a song (a quarrel of drunkards) ; A love story (an inquiry into attraction) ; The revolutionary (a movement in hiding) ; The ghost (a fit of severance) ; The cut (a sonata in rose red) ; A Wednesday in April (a celebration in a blue dress) ; The bird in repose (a gathering of assassins) ; Moon of honey (a sunrise in vermilion) ; The river ran through it (a sediment of fish)

part III: Sureshot (a fable of names) ; The mother of the groom (a soup of accusations) ; The National Front (a gathering of old gossips) ; The fracture (a migration of bones) ; The hidden republic (a utopia in apocalypse) ; The land of salt (a whisper of marsh) ; The guerilla priest (a murder of revolutions) ; The frozen melt (a bolero in absentia) ; Pablito (a baptism of fire)

part IV: The Marlboro Kid (an adolescence in dollars) ; The impossible (a requiem in betrayal) ; El encanto (a conference on forestry) ; The widow (an experiment in matter) ; The hacienda (a swim in burlap) ; Our Lady of the Minefield (a confidence of gunshot) ; El rey (a rooftop in staccato) ; Looking for El Dorado (a return to the motherland) ; Those dead old men (a mall of nostalgia) ; La dama (an epilogue with the sergeant).

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 309-312).

ISBN:

9781501145209

1501145207

OCLC:

1460916747