Campaneando: Surveilling With the Dead in Bogotá’s Drug Markets

Abstract

This article offers a literary ethnography of one of Bogotá’s ollas or drug markets where centuries of violence ripple across the ambiance. It tells the story of the work undertaken by the campaneros, the lookouts who work for criminal governance to protect the olla, and how they cultivate collective attunements for surveilling the place. To perceive, intuit, or forebode threats, the campaneros create a sentineled structure that communicates across corners, while also drawing on drug-induced states of paranoia, clairvoyance, or necromancy. Drawing on extended ethnographic fieldwork (2012–2018) and methods of fabulation, I propose a necromantic ethnography that, by constellating multiple sources, perspectives, forces, and voices, aims to conjure the resonating and palpable force of history and the dead across the olla.