The Persistence of ViolenceColombias headline story, about the peace process with guerrilla and its attendant controversies, does not consider the fundamental contradiction of a nation that spans generosity and violence, warmth and hatredproducts of its particular pattern of invasion, dispossession, and enslavement. The Persistence of Violence fills that gap in understanding. Colombia is a place that is two countries in onethe ideal and the realsummed up in the idiomatic