Winifred Tate

Winifred Tate is a political anthropologist examining struggles for democracy, citizenship and political change in Latin America, particularly in the context of entrenched paramilitary violence, human rights abuses and illicit economies. My scholarly commitments originate with my experiences as an activist and advocate focused on Colombia; I worked for three years as the Colombia policy expert at the Washington Office on Latin America before completing my doctorate at New York University. I am the author of two books, the award-winning Counting the Dead: The Culture and Politics of Human Rights Activism in Colombia (University of California Press 2007) and Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats: U.S. Policymaking in Colombia (Stanford University Press, 2015), which was published in Spanish as Drogas, Bandidos y Diplomáticos (University of Rosario Press, 2015). My current book project, Paramilitary Politics, draws on research I have been conducting over the past decade on paramilitarism, globalization and community resistance, examining the forms, legacies, and deep histories of Colombian violence. I am particularly concerned with how this violence shapes the daily lives, practices and possibilities of residents in rural communities, the production of history about this violence, and its legacies in contemporary Colombian politics. I share photos and stories from my fieldwork in an ongoing instagram ethnography project, Imagining War & Peace in Colombia, https://www.instagram.com/war.peace.colombia/