Kidnapping and representation: Images of a sovereign-in-the-making

This chapter puts forward different sets of arguments about kidnapping. Rather than depicting it as merely criminal, I inquire into what kidnapping reveals about the vulnerability, sovereignty, and the space of war of the Colombia state. This so-called third world country has been striving to establish full sovereignty against the forces that effect its waning. These forces include insurgency groups within Colombia, flows of legal and illegal capital, global media, and new forms of global and transnational governance in the areas of security, human rights, and civil law. I suggest that kidnapping is another such force. On the one hand, it consists of illegal capture through strategies of penetration, seizure, and transfer, in which the victim is relocated outside the reach of family and the state. But by challenging the ideas of Colombian citizenship, national identity, and territory, kidnapping also threatens the already contested space of authority of the Colombian state.