This paper examines the dynamics and types of kidnapping – and counter-kidnapping responses– in Colombia. Adopting a sociological perspective, it analyses how kidnapped victims (and their relatives) have developed processes of resilience, civil resistance and cultural memory to claim human rights through collective actions in the face of this threat. It presents a chronology of the kidnapping phenomenon in Colombia since the 1970s. It focuses on how diverse victims have created memory communities in order to distance themselves from official narratives regarding causation and motives.

The main argument of this paper is that by helping the Special Jurisdiction for Peace and Colombia's Truth Commission (mechanisms that are part of the Transitional Justice System in Colombia), these victims’ groups – and their socio-communicative strategies, in particular– are part of a power struggle which challenges collective constructions and (re)constructions of the horrors of kidnapping in Colombia.

Addressing specific case-studies of victims’ socio-communicative actions, the paper further demonstrates how initiatives included the Adopt a Kidnap Victim´ Project, the Cartography of Mass Graves Project (a method to systematise victims’ and perpetrators’ narratives to create maps to find the bodies of kidnapped persons), and the radio show ‘Voices of Kidnapping´ have affected the construction of social frameworks of resistance and memory against kidnapping in Colombia, as well as the practices by which these communities have been building their shared past.

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