Insurgent movements have commonly re-located to isolated rural areas with weak state presence where their security was guaranteed by a hostile environment to launch insurgencies. The more recent field of rebel governance also draws on predominantly rural cases. Yet, some groups have chosen to predominantly base their armed mobilisations in cities with much higher security risks where they are obliged to mobilise clandestinely. Clandestinity is often seen as an impediment to insurgent consolidation. This article explores the forms of rebel governance adopted by the M-19 in Colombia to construct networks of social ties needed to embed itself in urban environments. It highlights a case of urban rebel governance without territorial control, thus extending the scope of the rebel governance literature. It addresses the spatial variation of the M-19’s insurgency by analysing its diverging experiences of its clandestine mobilisation in Bogota and Cali, as well as a brief window where it conducted more public urban mobilisation. Based on qualitative interviews conducted with former militants and an extensive qualitative, coding of M-19 primary archival sources, the findings show that M-19 could maintain its urban campaigns because of its parallel rural infrastructures. When the conditions for urban mobilisation deteriorated, its militants could flee to the relative safety of the rural fronts. The article’s findings hint at potential avenues for further research, notably more detailed assessment of the ties between urban and rural units and support networks, and a more explicit comparison between patterns of social tie creation in urban and rural environments.

“Clandestinity and insurgent consolidation: The M-19’s rebel governance in urban Colombia” is a new publication by Francis O’Connor, a Marie Curie Skłodowska Post-Doctoral Fellow in Rural Sociology at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Read the full article here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.102930