“Everything I Have Seen There, That I Know …”: Witnessing the Colombian armed conflict through refugees’ narratives of implication

Abstract

In this article, I engage with the predicament of witnessing as a condition for persecution and displacement. I argue that observing violence during war is a critical form of implication. In the context of the Colombian armed conflict, members of armed groups often threaten the lives of those who observe their acts of violence, producing a chain of terror that extends outward from the original moment of witnessing. This chain of violence collapses a supposed distinction between the witness‐as‐observer (testis) and the witness‐as‐survivor (superstes). In a global context of exclusionary asylum and immigration systems, this article provides an expansive understanding of why some people face persecution and are forced to flee their homes and cross international borders. Through an ethnography of refugees’ experiences witnessing and subsequently surviving persecution in Colombia, this article contributes to anthropological scholarship on displacement, refuge, asylum, and witnessing.