Violent work
This article explores the life stories of 12 ex-combatants in the Heroes of Montes de Maria paramilitary group in Colombia, focusing on the expression of emotions. It shows that centering stories on the emotions experienced allowed the interviewees to articulate the effects of armed violence on peasant communities as well as on their own life trajectories and careers, encouraging moral understanding of their actions that mitigated their feelings of responsibility for having participated in an organization implicated in serious human rights violations. In a context in which peasant careers have been transformed by the violence associated with armed conflict while working class men face the precariousness of employment created by the informal economy in urban areas, the ex-combatants described their participation in the group as “dirty work,” undertaken in the service of the state to maintain order and security, while also allowing them, as men, to support their families.