Abstract
In 2021, the Peace Court of Colombia revealed that the national army had systematically executed 6402 innocent civilians, falsely presenting them as members of illegal armed groups. This revelation catapulted the number ‘6402’ into a prominent position within the country’s public discourse. I reconstruct the first six months of the figure’s dissemination, encompassing its coverage in both traditional and social media. In this analysis, I put forth a novel cultural-sociological conceptualization of numbers as ‘fact-icons’, departing from conventional views that regard statistics as purely technical entities.
For wide segments of the Colombian public, ‘6402’ became a continuing political emblem not only because it reflected the magnitude of a real atrocity, but also due to factors of a more symbolic kind. First, the publication of the figure was constructed as a collective experience of ‘epiphany’ by journalists and media commentators. Second, it was infused with deep narratives of national identity by social movement activists. Lastly, it became a focal point of effervescent collective action through stylized aesthetic representations within the realm of popular art.
Introduction
In February 2021, Colombia’s Peace Court revealed that, between 2002 and 2008, the country’s national army had committed 6402 ‘false positives’, that is, the killing of innocent civilians and the later presentation of them as members of illegal armed groups who died in combat. Rapidly, ‘6402’ achieved an exceptional prominence in the local political imagination, becoming a common token of public debate. It spread in slogans, banners, walls, street performances, and artwork. Opposition parties voiced the number against a government they saw as complicit with the perpetrators, and victims introduced it into the vocabulary of their struggle for justice.
The trajectory of ‘6402’ points toward a broader sociological theme on the centrality of statistics in political conversation, and particularly in the construction of social traumas (Alexander, 2012). Contemporary societies produce an immense quantity of numbers, but only very rarely numbers achieve this type of salience. How did ‘6402’ evolve from a mere statistic into an influential emblem of the country?
From February to August 2021, I followed the public conversation about ‘6402’ in three traditional media outlets, as well as on Twitter. This observation allowed me to show that the technical attributes of the number, that is, its cognitive/informational content, falls short in explaining the canonization of the number. Other factors of a more symbolic kind were critical in this process: journalists transformed ‘6402’ into a public ‘fact’ with a vast revelatory potential; social movement activists infused it with deep moral meanings; and movement artists engaged in evocative representations of it, channeling its circulation into the domain of popular art.
I propose to conceptualize emblematic figures as ‘fact-icons.’ Fact-icons are cultural items that: (i) convey a strong imagery of ‘facticity’; (ii) carry epiphanic properties; (iii) encode deep narratives of national identity; and (iv) possess a distinctive aesthetic shape. These characteristics account for the remarkable power of fact-icons in contemporary societies: as ‘facts,’ they are immensely authoritative; as social epiphanies, they trigger mobilization; as morally and emotionally charged symbols, they endure in public imagination; and as aesthetic objects, they become focal points around which to produce effervescent collective emotions.
Literature Review
Sociologists have addressed the overwhelming presence of statistics in diverse realms of contemporary life (Berman and Hirschman, 2018; Diaz-Bone and Didier, 2016; Mennicken and Espeland, 2019). They pinpoint how systems of quantification are shaped by the interests, institutional milieu, and practices of their producers and how different normative orders lead to distinct types of statistical regimes (Desrosières, 2014).
At the root of these accounts lies the idea that contemporary societies are largely fascinated with statistical knowledge. Linking numbers with the perpetuation of old power structures or the establishment of new ones, observers tend to equate fascination with gullibility: In their view, contemporary audiences are cognitively unable to discern the technical complexities behind quantification, and therefore cannot avoid falling for its ‘tricks.’
For those who think that quantitative knowledge can offer a relatively accurate depiction of reality (Prewitt, 1987; Reinharz, 1992: 79), fascination with numbers is simply a blindfold acceptance of any figure for the sake of its ‘objective’ appearance. It is a naïve invitation to manipulate. Powerful actors will take advantage of such infatuation to present convenient figures that distort reality (Chambliss, 2001), and even well-intentioned actors might occasionally do the same (Cohen and Green, 2012; Moeller, 2019). The only way to prevent statistical deceit is to enhance the audiences’ numeracy skills (Evans et al., 2019).
Another set of scholars reject the notion that the primary function of numbers is to depict reality. For Foucault’s followers, numbers are viewed as a means to rule society (Miller, 2001; Rose, 1991). As a discipline, statistics introduces the categories and forms of subjectivity necessary to exercise modern forms of government (Hacking, 1982; Mennicken and Miller, 2012). The fascination with numbers would be just a form of self-discipline that facilitates social control.
Others see quantification as a generic problem-solver, for example, as an instrument of standardization that allows for social coordination (Thévenot, 1984), as a ‘technology of trust’ that enables impersonal processes of decision-making (Porter, 1995), or as a technique that reduces the complexity of the world through ‘commensuration’ (Espeland and Sauder, 2016). These authors interpret the fascination with numbers as a magnification of their technical capacities that often arises due to cultural factors. The symbolic value of quantifications ‘overwrites and sometimes supersedes its technical efficacy’ (Espeland and Sauder, 2016: 24). The resemblance of numbers to well-known archetypes of scientific discourse gives rise to a ‘myth of objectivity’ surrounding statistics, a widespread ‘cult’ that circumvents the technical limitations of statistical representation and the regimes of power behind it (Merry, 2016).
To comprehend what the fascination about numbers really consists of, we need a much subtler understanding of what their ‘facticity’ entails.
First, we need to admit the complexities of fact-construction processes. Not every number is elevated automatically into a symbol of objectivity by virtue of a ubiquitous faith. Trust in quantification is a much harder achievement. Even deeply innumerate audiences will always demand further demonstration of a number’s truthfulness, and for this task they will rely on a variety of signals available in public discourse, such as ‘fact entitlements’ bestowed by the media.
Secondly, the ‘facticity’ of numbers goes beyond feelings of certainty. It encompasses significant social experiences of revelation. Statistics wield an immense public authority not solely because they are ‘undeniable,’ but also because they elicit a sense of existential shock and epiphany.
Third, the ‘facticity’ of numbers does not always lead to consensus, as the idea about an omnipresent ‘aura of objectivity’ suggests. On the contrary, it can ignite political conflict and exacerbate social divisions. It can help the powerful to further legitimize their dominion, but it also can be appropriated by social movements to express radical social critique (Bruno et al., 2014).
Lastly, one crucial oversight by previous analysts is the recognition that numbers can, at times, transform into objects of massive aesthetic representation, even finding their way into popular art. As they venture into the aesthetic realm, statistics can assume a vital role in collective expressions of mourning, celebration, and outrage.
Theoretical Approach
I conceptualize emblematic statistics as ‘fact-icons.’ A fact-icon is a cultural item that meets four conditions: (1) it is a public fact; (2) its inception is narrated as an unprecedented ‘revelation’; (3) it is connected to deep narratives of collective identity; and (4) it has a well-defined aesthetic surface.
Fact
Facts are representations of reality that have a clear-cut empirical referent. ‘Visible social facts – the actions we see, the events we record, the data we compile – aren’t things but signs’ (Alexander, 2011: 88). Because they pertain to the social world, facts inherently involve some interpretation of subjective human intention. At the very least, facts imply a normative assertion about what is important for society (Gorski, 2013). Reed describes them as ‘minimal interpretations,’ distinct from ‘maximal interpretations’ which provide explanations and bases for judgment. Although the possibility of contestation around facts may never disappear, ‘minimal interpretations’ have a strong potential to foster agreement among observers (Reed, 2011).
A ‘public fact’ is primarily a media product. Within democratic contexts, mass media play a pivotal role in determining which facts are relevant for society. It is part of their routine function to code specific events as ‘public problems’ (Jacobs, 1996: 382). Journalists not only select facts based on their newsworthiness but also shape them using ingrained symbolic frameworks and formal assumptions about ‘narrative, storytelling, human interest, and the conventions of photographic and linguistic presentations’ (Schudson, 1989: 279).
‘Facts’ can refer to a wide spectrum of empirical realities that goes from single event to large social processes. While the former can be created by journalists, the latter are usually constructed by expert communities (economists, sociologists etc.). When the media report the latter, they transform ‘partial, qualified, and fragile knowledge into certain and consistent fact’ (Gusfield, 1984: 76).
‘Facts’ are endowed with an immense authoritative power. They are seen as objective information free from subjective judgment. A widely held belief in the ‘facticity of facts,’ sustained by the media, serves as an anchor for broad public discussion (Luengo and García-Marín, 2020). In everyday democratic processes, conflicts often arise over the moral evaluation of facts and not about the ‘facticity of facts,’ resulting in facts becoming the focal point around which political polarization unfolds (Alexander, 2006: 80–85).
Revelation
A fact-icon is not only a fact, but one that is presented to the public in a ‘revelatory’ manner. I propose the term ‘epifact,’ derived from the combination of ‘epiphany’ and ‘fact,’ to encapsulate this idea.
Epifacts share similarities with ‘media events’ in their ability to captivate public attention and evoke a sense of extraordinariness. Rather than a dry recitation of occurrences, both aim at providing society with shared rituals and symbols (Jacobs, 1996: 387). However, unlike ‘media events,’ the extraordinary aspect of epifacts lies not in the content being reported, but in the process of reporting itself. Implicitly or explicitly, epifacts tell a heroic tale about themselves, in other words, a tale about how they become known, often overcoming the resistance of powerful actors. Social realms like investigative journalism are precisely grounded in the expectation that exposing information concealed by institutional powers contributes to the betterment of society (Ettema and Glasser, 1998: 190).
In epifacts, ‘facticity’ carries an eye-opener promise: it has the power to rectify a flawed perception of reality. A classic example of epifact is the Watergate audiotape transcript, whose publication led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon in 1974. Notably, the media not only reported on the existence of the tape and its incriminating content but also popularized a vivid metaphor to describe it: the ‘smoking gun.’ Through this metaphor, the media conveyed that the audiotape represented a distinct type of fact – a piece of evidence so shocking and ‘revelatory’ that it would fundamentally transform the national collective consciousness.
Most frequently epifacts are negative symbols, in the sense that they reveal a ‘dark’ truth about the social community. This is why numeric epifacts are often important inputs in the memorialization of social tragedies and the construction of collective traumas. Less often epifacts are positive symbols of pride when they come to reveal the – formerly unrecognized – greatness of an oppressed minority. One example is Kensey’s 1954 report, which ‘revealed’ that 10% of adult population was homosexual and was appropriated by the American gay rights movement (Espeland, 2018).
Deep Narratives
In their narration of routine political events, mass media adopt a moral language that connects with ‘sacred’ sentiments entrenched in the collective imagination (Sherwood, 1994). Sometimes, though, facts are tied to a much thicker mythical backdrop. De Santos created the concept of ‘fact-totems’ in reference to ‘statistics with high media and public visibility that become articulated with central identity narratives of a collectivity’ (de Santos, 2009: 467). He demonstrated how a wearisome indicator of economic risk in Argentina transformed into a powerful collective representation of the nation, yielding strong emotional identification among regular citizens (see also Tognato, 2014).
‘Fact-totems’ transcend everyday political struggles and come a step closer to achieving the status of a national symbol. Perhaps the most eloquent example of this is the emblematic figure ‘6 million’, referring to the Jewish victims of the Nazis. To illuminate the difference between a ‘totemic’ and a regular fact we can contrast the ‘6 million’ to the ‘smoking gun.’ While both were born in the context of routine political activity (the Nuremberg trials and the Watergate scandal), the lifespan of the ‘smoking gun’ ended after Nixon’s resignation, while ‘6 million’ became a lasting symbol in the post-Holocaust culture (Stier, 2015).
The idea of ‘fact-totem’ represents a key contribution to understanding the cultural dimension of statistics, and even ‘facts’ more generally. My claim is, however, that we need to transcend this idea through the novel notion of ‘fact-icons’. As a concept, ‘fact-icon’ has two distinctive advantages: first, it incorporates the epiphanic experience carried by ‘facts’; and second, it stresses the importance of aesthetics in the public propagation of ‘facts’, as I discuss next.
Aesthetic Surface
A fact-icon is a distinctive cultural item because it possesses a clearly defined material surface. As we saw earlier, Alexander defines ‘facts’ as ‘signs’: ‘the fact-sign is composed of invisible theoretical signifier and visible empirical signified’ (Alexander, 2011: 88). He is referring to sociological concepts such as ‘class,’ ‘gender,’ ‘race,’ which are abstract and therefore ‘invisible.’ Yet, facts can also adopt a more concrete representation: an image, a sound, an object. In these cases, they transcend mere signs and become ‘iconic.’
Icons are material objects that embody collective meanings. They are composed of two parts: aesthetic surface and moral depth. The former refers to the sensuous experience delivered by the icon. The latter to the cultural discourses contained by it. However, the two dimensions are closely intertwined, to the point that social actors relate to them as if they were inseparable (Alexander, 2010). Aesthetic form eloquently expresses moral qualities, but it is also confounded with them. Icons condense the moral fiber of society into tangible things, making collective representations immediately accessible through aesthetic contact.
Symbols, when anchored to concrete materiality, tend to spread more widely. This is because ‘iconic compression allows meanings ‘portability,’ assuring their citational quality’ (Bartmański and Alexander, 2012: 2). However, the importance of iconicity extends beyond facilitating transmission; it also plays a vital role in enabling the symbols’ evocative power. According to Boehm, the aesthetic representation of an icon overrides mere reference; it involves ‘intensification’ (Boehm, 2012: 17). When societies represent icons, rather than communication, they aim at stirring emotions through body movements, monumental images, and suggestive sounds, in a manner reminiscent of religious experience. They come closer to a ritual enactment.
The aesthetic surface of ‘facts’ varies depending on whether they refer to single events or broader social processes.
In the first case, ‘facts’ involve direct recordings (visual, audio, audiovisual) of specific events, adhering to realistic aesthetic conventions. Realism strives to portray the object without editing or framing, presenting it in a ‘bare’ form. Superfluous details are included, fostering a ‘referential illusion’ marked by the interstitial, accidental, and erratic (Barthes, 1969). The aesthetic precariousness of realism (careless lighting, distracting noises, etc.) makes patent the non-ideal conditions of representation. Realist style might look ‘dirty,’ but ‘dirtiness’ serves the purpose of hiding the mediation of human subjectivity in the construction of the arti-fact, and thus of lending a sense of authenticity.
When a ‘fact’ refers not to single events but to a broad social process, then its material surface is not a direct recording but a scientific construct: an indicator, a figure, a graph, a correlation. Rather than ‘realist,’ its iconography follows ‘minimalist’ aesthetic conventions. Here the ‘fact’ has the appearance of ‘cleanliness’ and ‘exactness,’ not ‘dirtiness.’ We intuitively say that ‘facts’ of this sort are ‘hard.’ Such ‘hardness’ is achieved by stripping the arti-fact from its technical ambiguities, uncertainties, and complexities, by removing every sign of its fragility or instability. For example, pieces of statistical knowledge that become public ‘facts’ are reduced to their essential aesthetic elements: a ‘sober’ number, a ‘simple’ graph, a ‘blunt’ ratio, rather than a full database, an intricate concept, or a nuanced explanation (think of the 2011 Occupy Wall Street slogan: ‘we are the 99%’ (Hirschman, 2016)).
Methodology
Authors in the sociology of quantification tend to choose broad statistical systems as their units of analysis: censuses, rankings, indicators. Missing in this literature, though, is a reflection on why certain figures grow acutely influential in the public sphere, becoming objects of sustained attention, emotional identification, and fierce contestation. Little is said about the trajectory of specific numbers; we miss the fine-grained processes whereby statistics achieve their allure. Basic questions like why two values that pertain to the same indicator sometimes receive different amounts of attention are not accounted for.
This investigation implemented a more micro-analytical scope. I reconstructed the discussion around one single figure, ‘6402’, in the Colombian public sphere. My aim was to identify the key steps in the process of numeric canonization. I developed a content analysis methodology, using a ‘structural-hermeneutics’ (Alexander and Smith, 2003) approach, which attempts to isolate the ‘thick’ cultural structures (codes, narratives) underlying messages and interactions in public speech. I first found broad patterns in the empirical material after successive cycles of intensive reading, and then extracted a set of quotations that illustrated such trends to include in my exposition.
To facilitate the tracking of data, I limited my observations to digital versions of traditional press media outlets, as well as social media. I focused on the two most widely read newspapers (El Espectador and El Tiempo) and the most traditional political magazine (Semana) in Colombia. This choice covers, to a reasonable degree, the ideological spectrum in the Colombian media landscape: El Espectador oscillates between ‘left-center’ and ‘right-center,’ El Tiempo between ‘center’ and ‘right,’ and Semana between ‘right’ and ‘far-right.’ I retrieved both ‘factual’ (news) and ‘non-factual’ (editorials, opinion columns, caricatures) pieces that explicitly referred to the ‘false positives’ case from 18 February 2021, when the media published their first articles about `6402’, to 31 August 2021. I used Google’s search engine to retrieve the material by entering three keywords: ‘falsos positivos’ (false positives), ‘ejecuciones extrajudiciales’ (extrajudicial executions) and ‘6402’. In total, I collected 377 media items (158 from El Espectador, 120 from El Tiempo, and 99 from Semana).
I also explored social media to access how different audiences (including the ‘regular’ citizen) talked about the number. Social media are more open to the circulation of non-dominant/non-professional worldviews. Even if not representative of the population at large, I focused on Twitter because it is regarded as the most political social media in Colombia. I collected all tweets mentioning the keywords ‘false positives’ or ‘6402’ from 18 May to 31 August 2021, using the R package rTweet. After deleting duplicates and limiting the search to messages in Spanish, I obtained a total of 113,269 tweets.
From that data, I only considered the most ‘influential’ messages, using >50 retweets as a proxy for ‘influence’. This criterion is useful but suboptimal, because Twitter’s algorithm displays certain tweets to certain users based on their activity on the platform. The exposure to messages is biased and some users are ‘primed’ to interact with the messages they see via likes, comments, or retweets. Additionally, Twitter users might agree with a message and decide not to interact with it. In these cases, we have unaccounted influence.
The subset of influential tweets consisted of 1430 messages. For the period 18 February to 16 May, I only gathered the 50 most ‘influential’ tweets of each day containing the two keywords. I conducted this process manually, using Twitter’s own search engine. The discrepancy in methods of data gathering occurred because my research started in May 2021, and Twitter imposes a restriction for systematically retrieving tweets up to the last few days.
Context
For six decades, Colombia experienced an armed conflict between the state and various revolutionary Marxist guerrillas, most notably the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia FARC. Between 1958 and 2012, the conflict produced 220,000 casualties – 81.5% civilian – 25,000 disappeared and 5 million were forcibly displaced (CNMH, 2016). The conflict formally ended in 2016, after a peace negotiation between the state, under the administration of Juan Manuel Santos (2010–2018), and the FARC, which led to the demobilization of the guerrilla and its transformation into a legal party.
Although peace negotiations counted with unanimous support from national mainstream media, they met pervading political contestation. The opposition to the process was diverse but tended to converge around the figure of far-right leader and former president Álvaro Uribe. Polarization reached its peak in October 2016, when Colombians rejected the peace accord by popular vote in a plebiscite, with 50.2% of the votes against the accord, and 49.8% in favor. Notwithstanding the plebiscite results, the peace accord remained in place, but the post-Accord period endemically faced an environment of polarization.
The peace accord led to the creation of the Justicia Especial para la Paz JEP (Special Jurisdiction for Peace), a Peace Court with the mandate of processing war-related crimes committed both by FARC and the military within a transitional justice framework. The JEP divided its judicial investigation into various ‘macro-cases,’ one of which refers to the ‘false positives.’ As part of the preliminary inquiry of the case, the JEP published a 38-page long legal proceeding on 12 February 2021 (‘Auto #33’), that aimed at defining a methodology of investigation. ‘6402’ first appeared in this document.
Under Uribe’s presidency (2002–2010), the Colombian government significantly bolstered the military to combat the FARC. Uribe’s communication strategy involved publicizing the army’s reported guerrilla casualties, elevating his image as an anti-subversive strongman (Bonilla et al., 2014). Such approach, however, created perverse incentives within the military, leading to a surge in ‘false positives’ (Acemoglu et al., 2020). These cases archetypically consisted of the extrajudicial execution of poor and vulnerable young men, mostly from rural areas, who were dressed up in fatigues and presented as guerrilla members to figure amongst army kill-lists. While no explicit orders for these executions exist, institutional complicity, at least in the form of negligence, enabled them (Rojas, 2020). There have been reports about ‘false positives’ since the 1980s, yet its prevalence intensified during Uribe’s administration. Of the total cases committed from 1978 to 2016, 78% occurred in the period 2002–2008 (JEP, 2021, 12 February).
Media reported the first false positives cases in 2008, prompting an escalation of the issue into a national (and international) scandal. Due to the attention brought to the case, the cases drastically plummeted (Rojas, 2020). Until 2021, perpetrators of these crimes remained mostly unpunished, at least in 76% of instances (Semana, 21 February 2021a).
Findings
The JEP published the ‘6402’ figure as part of a legal proceeding on 12 February 2021. The number was reached after conducting a ‘deduplication’ method upon three independent databases (JEP, 12 February 2021). Interestingly, the figure was not a prominent element in the document. It was only mentioned twice, on pages 6 and 9. Six days later, however, this passing element became a formidable focus of attention across the nation. On 18 February the JEP published a press release on its official Twitter account that brought the figure to the forefront. The press release opened thus: ‘The JEP establishes that at least 6,402 people were illegitimately killed to be presented as combat casualties in all national territory between 2002 and 2008’ (JEP, 18 February 2021). Almost immediately, every media outlet, national and regional, repeated this claim, labeling the news with a ‘breaking’ alert.
I identify four critical stages in the process whereby the number transformed from a mere technical statistic into an influential political emblem: (1) bestowment of fact entitlements; (2) epiphanic presentation; (3) meaning making; and (4) aesthetic circulation. These stages correspond to the four defining features of a fact-icon.
The Number as Public Fact
If the JEP performed the technical production of the number, mass media performed its construction as ‘public fact.’ I do not analyze why journalists coded the number as newsworthy, but how ‘6402’ was introduced into the Colombian public sphere. Overall, journalists performed two crucial operations: they made the figure into the main protagonist of their media plot and granted it ‘factual’ entitlements by framing its source, the JEP, as a trustworthy ‘official’ source.
News headlines did not simply present ‘6402’ as appearing out of nowhere; they inserted it into a statistical plot. The media portrayed ‘6402’ as being in a confrontational dispute with a prior false positives figure, produced in 2018 by the Prosecutor’s Office and divulgated by the media in 2019, which estimated a total of 2248 victims between 1988 and 2014 (El Espectador, 25 May 2019). El Tiempo proclaimed: ‘False positives would be triple the reported by the Prosecutor’s Office: JEP’ (El Tiempo, 18 February 2021a).
The contradistinction between JEP’s and Prosecutor’s Office’s calculations was a media creation. JEP’s original report presented the ‘2248’ estimate as a generative statistical input, not as a counterpart. Furthermore, ‘2248’ was not a publicly relevant figure until the publication of its ‘successor’. When first published in 2019, ‘2248’ enjoyed a minor media coverage. Yet, from February 2021 henceforth, media started to refer to this figure as a crucial ‘antecessor,’ and what is more remarkable, several pro-governmental spokespeople publicly embraced ‘2248’ as the only admissible false positives figure (something they never did before). The minister of Defense declared his respect for ‘the figure around 2.400, obtained by judicious analysis of the Prosecutor’s Office’ and attacked the JEP stating that ‘figures are being inflated without any legal process’ (El Tiempo, 28 March 2021).
News media also granted ‘factual entitlements’ to the number. They did so by acknowledging the status of the JEP as a trustworthy ‘official’ source, as an independent institution designed to ‘say the last word’ on the matter. Such acknowledgement stemmed from the unanimous support that mainstream media had professed towards the peace negotiations between the state and the FARC.
Treating the JEP as a legitimate authority meant that it was conferred a legitimate status as a ‘fact’ producer. According to El Tiempo’s editorial, the JEP was not voicing a statement, but the ‘truth’: ‘In the face of JEP’s revelations, we only have to wait for truth to come’ (El Tiempo, 21 February 2021). Previous quantifications of the ‘false positives’ were publicly circulated in Colombia. Before JEP’s report, NGOs and political activists typically used 10,000, and in some instances 5763 (‘10,000’ came from a 2017 academic book, while ‘5763’ from a 2014 NGO report). However, media outlets rarely referenced such numbers, and in any case did not regard them as ‘factual’, likely because they had not been produced by ‘official’ sources.
The pushback against the figure precisely aimed at refuting the Court’s ‘official’ credentials. Government spokespeople asserted that the construction of the number lacked rigor. As expressed by president Iván Duque, himself an ardent follower of Uribe: ‘justice always is grandiose when it comes with objective truth, uncontroversial, in rulings and providences, not in microphones’ (El Espectador, 24 February 2021). Former president Uribe said that the purpose behind ‘6402’ was to discredit him (Uribe, 18 February) and that the JEP’s report was based on ‘biased’ sources: ‘NGO’s that are declared ideological enemies of my government’ (El Tiempo, 19 February 2021b). When José Vivanco, Human Rights Watch’s director for the Americas division, criticized this remark, Uribe accused Vivanco of being a FARC sympathizer (Semana, 21 February 2021b).
Fact-building work fixated ‘6402’ into the country’s baseline commonsense. One false positives victims’ organization referred to the integer as ‘forceful evidence’ (El Espectador, 19 February 2021). Transformed into an authoritative public fact, the number did not bring unilateral consensus, but offered ample room to frame its detractors as ‘irrational’ deniers of reality. A commentator deemed all criticisms of ‘6402’ as indications of the ‘post-truth era’: ‘There was always dirty propaganda, fraud and fanatism in Colombia and everywhere, but now they don’t even care about facts’ (Silva, 25 February 2021).
Epiphanic Presentation
All media outlets I analyzed reported the release of the figure in the same fashion: ‘The Peace Court revealed that from 2002 to 2008 6,402 people were victims of this phenomenon’ (El Espectador, 18 February 2021, my emphasis). This ‘revelation’ metaphor is telling. It was meant to convey a deep sense of existential shock. The publication of ‘6402’ was both experienced and staged as a social ‘epiphany’. Journalists narrated the birth of the figure as if the false positives phenomenon itself had just been discovered, or as if it would have been rediscovered in some fundamental way. El Tiempo remarked: ‘the country is painfully surprised’ (El Tiempo, 18 February 2021b). The ‘bloodcurdling’ figure (El Tiempo, 18 February 2021a) ‘resuscitated the horror of the false positives’ (El Tiempo, 19 February 2021a).
The presentation of ‘6402’ held a character of moral urgency. This was not a ‘normal’ time, but one of moral shock. Several opinion leaders underscored the gravity of the occasion and made explicit their expectation that politicians and other public personalities should pay due respect. One commentator, for example, seized the moment to reproach General Zapateiro, commander of the Army, for not expressing condolences to the victims (Gutiérrez, 25 February 2021).
The ‘revelation’ metaphor also indicated a sense of overcoming a previous state of concealment. It was not a matter of merely ‘discovering’ the truth, but of uncovering it. El Espectador’s editorial claimed that ‘the systematization and contrast effort advanced by the JEP has a devastating symbolic force. [The number is a] bucket of icy water for all those who wish to adopt denialism as a strategy of historical memory’ (El Espectador, 22 February 2021). The nation’s wrong self-perception was the result of ‘dark forces’ that were actively hiding reality. Hence, the figure’s production was presented as a heroic endeavor, a moral triumph against those forces.
Meaning Making
At this point, ‘6402’ was a media fact, but not yet an icon because its influence had not reached beyond its initial context of publication. Its protracted visibility depended on how much it was rooted in broader cultural structures shared by the community. For this, the involvement of professional journalists alone as fact-producers was insufficient; it needed the participation of other key actors, including victims, politicians, opinion leaders, grassroots activists, and non-governmental organizations.
Critical for this process was the fervent political agitation that arose simultaneously (although unrelated) with the release of ‘6402’. Since the end of 2019, Colombia had experienced fluctuating unrest against Duque’s government. In April 2021, this unrest reached its peak with an immense social mobilization called the ‘national strike,’ primarily concentrated in urban areas. The movement comprised a diverse amalgamation of participants, including students, trade unions, teachers, youth from marginalized areas, leftist activists, and local organizations. Equally diverse were their demands, spanning opposition against the government’s economic policies, concerns abouts its commitment to the implementation of the peace accord, denunciations of police abuse, and discontent stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic. (Camacho et al., 2021) To gain support for their cause, social movement activists deployed a wide repertoire of images, stories and symbols that framed those in power as a self-serving elite that despised ordinary citizens. Because the ‘false positives’ was a pre-existent negative symbol associated with Uribe, and Uribe was the political chief of Duque’s government, it was natural that activists boosted the circulation of ‘6402’ and erected it as one of their ‘symbols of injustice’ (Olesen, 2015) (Figure 1).
‘6402 reasons to mobilize’. Banner displayed at Colombia’s national strike, in April 2021. Source: Chalecos Amarillos, 28 April 2021.
The movement infused meanings to ‘6402’ by linking it with encompassing sentiments of national identity. This is illustrated by the following fact. From 17 May to 31 August, in three days the number of tweets mentioning ‘6402’ surpassed a 700 threshold: on 12 June (when former president Santos appeared before the Truth Commission), on 4 July (Uribe’s birthday) and on 20 July, Colombia’s National Independence Day. On that day, a Twitter user traced a parallel between the red in Colombia’s flag and the ‘blood of 6402 false positives’ (Gómez, 20 July 2021). Figure 2 displays further graphic illustration of the nexus between ‘6402’ and national symbology.
The number in the Colombian map. Poster made by one of the victims’ movement leaders. Source: Author’s personal archive, 2022.
Most ‘framing’ scholarship (Snow et al., 1986) would suggest that the social movement transformed the number into a mobilizing tool to serve its strategical purposes. Such a view would presuppose that the movement leaders selected which meanings to associate with ‘6402’ following a purely practical consideration: the need of spreading the most effective anti-governmental messages (see Alexander, 2006: 224). However, it is important to remember that social movements’ sense of ‘right’ and ‘effective’ is always embedded in cultural worlds (Polletta, 2006), and therefore their symbols should not be only seen as instrumental resources, but as ‘crystalliz[ations] of existing strands of public belief’ (Sachs and Alexander, 2023: 25). Colombian activists turned ‘6402’ into a symbol as part of their public efforts at representing meanings already entrenched in their political imagination.
In particular, the movement espoused two deep narratives about moral decline and existential hazard that outlined the contours of ‘evil,’ and how to face that ‘evil’ as a national community. Once these narratives, namely ‘useless democracy’ and ‘violence as fatalism,’ were connected to ‘6402’, they became the figure’s thick mythical backdrop.
The ‘useless democracy’ trope sees Colombia’s political history as a long succession of authoritarian-disguised-as-democratic governments, administered by elites that rule on their behalf and do not hesitate in deploying brute violence every time they feel threatened. Uribe’s administration, and particularly the false positives scandal, embody one crucial milestone of this long succession, but are not considered to be an extraordinary deviation from the canon:
I cannot say that [. . .] the inability to align with the victims and against the perpetrators, even with respect to the worst crimes [i.e. false positives], is a monopoly of a single political clan. It is profoundly enthroned in our public life. The exceptionality of Uribismo consists of expressing with clarity [. . .] something that was already there. (Gutiérrez, 25 February 2021)
The ‘useless democracy’ trope works as a counter-narrative. It frequently defines itself in opposition to an ordinary understanding among conservative intellectual and political elites, according to which Colombia stands out among its Latin American neighbors as the ‘oldest democracy’ in the region. Such a version praises the country for its centuries long, uninterrupted democratic tradition – with bullet-proof institutional stability, periodic elections and power alternation, free press, and independent Courts – in contrast to its neighbors, rendered as much more prone to the rise of military coups d’état.
Colombia prides of being the oldest and most stable democracy in the continent, and in strict terms, that is the case [. . .] [However], in what kind of democracy there are 6,402 homicides of citizens to make them appear as legal casualties of the public force? (Bustamante, 13 May 2021)
Within this narrative, Uribe is represented as the head of a tyrannic power and typically teamed up with dictators. One common trope was to compare 6402 with the number of victims of several despotic regimes, prominently the military dictatorship in Chile: the false positives figure doubled the number of victims under Pinochet (Figure 3). ‘In Argentina, the dictators alleged “mistakes and excesses” for the 30 thousand disappeared [. . .] Colombia’s democracy too much resembled the dictatorships in the region’ (Pachón, 21 February 2121). ‘Between a dictatorship that kills 10,000 Haitians and a democracy that executes 6,402 false positives a family bond is created, one that is difficult to hide’ (de la Torre, 15 March 2021). Although false positives victims were not political cases stricto sensu, this narrative tended to equate them with murdered political opponents. For example, after it was reported in May that 31 demonstrators had died during the 2021 national strike against Duque’s government, a victim’s organization sentenced through Twitter: ‘31 + 6402’ (Mafapo, 6 May 2021).
Uribe and Pinochet. Image circulated on Twitter. Source: Hermes, 1 March 2021.
The ‘violence as fatalism’ narrative sees Colombia’s history as immemorially traversed by violence, as trapped in an endless loop of lethal aggressions and brutality (from a variety of sources: civil war, urban crime, drug trafficking). In the background of public conscience lurks the idea that violence is part of Colombians’ ‘nature.’ In a 2021 interview, a renowned journalist asked a psychiatrist without irony: ‘is it true that in the Colombian DNA you find the violence gene?’ (Orozco, 7 August 2021).
The problem of Colombia here is not reduced to the behavior of anti-democratic elites but it is a matter of societal bankruptcy. False positives constitute, again, an outstanding milestone of such a plot. Because of the false positives, ‘we represent one of the most aberrant cases worldwide of War degradation’ (de Zubiría, 13 April 2021). This was a transcendental horror not only for the nation, but for universal humankind: ‘Almost 7,000 youngsters massacred is a holocaust that will never be erased from human memory’ (Arbeláez, 15 June 2021).
Some commentators connected the ‘6402’ figure with a ‘circularity of violence’ theme. ‘The possibility of repetition is latent’ (Vanegas, 26 April 2021). ‘This isn’t [. . .] the first time we are before the possibility of reactivation of violence. Precisely that, the ‘eternal retour,’ is the most concerning’ (García, 5 March 2021). Others highlighted how the country was so submerged in violence that it had already accepted it as an inexorable part of its landscape. ‘6,402 is a number that would be a monumental scandal in a country that would not be ill of violence’ (Morales, 25 February 2021). ‘The youngsters found a society anesthetized by the death’ (Guzmán, 20 May 2021). And 6402 is a ‘figure that does not surprise but terrorizes’ (Pombo, 22 March 2021).
If in the ‘useless democracy’ narrative Uribe was portrayed as the paramount Colombian dictator, in the ‘violence as fatalism’ saga he is depicted as a bloodthirsty thug (Figure 4). A Twitter user talked about ‘Uganda’s slaughterer, Bosnia’s slaughterer, the Balkans’ slaughterer, and now Colombia’s slaughterer’ (Ortiz, 23 February 2021).
Tutanmatón. Cartoon. Taken from Matador, 15 March 2021. The image depicts Uribe dressed as a murderous Egyptian pharaoh who lived in 6,402 b.f. His crown features a skull. The name “Tutanmatón” has a similar sounding as Tutankhamun, but it translates “you so thug”.
The Aesthetic Circulation of the Number
The image ‘6402’ was widely spread in cartoons, graffiti, murals, monuments, songs, videos, and performances that took place in different cities around the country. Both caricaturists from mainstream media and social movement artists recognized that the meanings associated with the figure could be intensified through compelling works upon its visual shape.
The material surface of ‘6402’ is characterized by its extreme minimalism: the bounded sequence of digits 6-4-0-2. This minimal surface amplified its reproducibility in quantitative terms: more actors, and more often, were able to reference the number because it required barely any technical skill. At the same time, such minimal surface enhanced the plasticity of the figure, and allowed for the proliferation of more sophisticated forms of aesthetic representation.
I identified three styles of representation of the figure, each corresponding to a distinct approach towards its original minimalism: preservation, reformatting, and staging. The analysis of these representational styles is essential to understand the public life of ‘6402’ because each of them galvanized the icon’s evocative power in a unique manner.
Preservation
Preservation is about keeping intact the original aesthetic minimalism of the number. Social movement activists limit to the mere iteration of the number, using a thin style, mimicking both the sobriety and ‘hardness’ of ‘6402’. This mode of representation focuses on bringing attention to the false positives atrocities by mobilizing the fact-icon’s authoritative power.
Due to its minimalism, the weight of representation rested on where ‘6402’ was portrayed rather than how. The number was strategically displayed in places that maximized its visibility, such as monuments (Figure 5) or the everyday urban landscape (Figure 6). Additionally, it circulated through portable protest items that served as extensions of one’s self-presentation, such as mandatory facemasks (Figure 7). However, the figure’s visibility was not solely achieved through its representation in ‘highly visible’ locations. It could also be accomplished by inscribing it on a ‘highly meaningful’ surface, such as old archives covered with coal (Figure 8), or a ‘highly stylized’ surface, such as a background a-la-Mondrian (Figure 9).
‘Los héroes’ monument in Bogotá, erected to honor the military heroes during the Independence battles. Source: Mafapo, 20 May 2021.
Intervention at a bus stop in Bogotá. Source: Mafapo, 10 June 2021.
Opposition congressperson wearing a ‘6402’ facemask. Source: Bolívar, 5 March 2021.
‘Tinieblas’, by Bairo Martínez. Source: Hacemos Memoria, 12 March 2021.
‘6402’ by Andrés Burgos (2021). Source: Author’s personal archive.
Reformatting
Reformatting starts from the rejection of the number’s minimalism. In this mode of representation there is such a drastic change of format with respect to the original style of the icon that it sometimes goes in the opposite direction: aesthetic saturation and excess. Here, ‘6402’ is clustered in a plastic object with other icons that are part of the same ‘symbolic family’ (Olesen, 2015). For example, the cartoon in Figure 10 draws the figure on a corpse’s boot’s sole. ‘6402’ is thus represented contiguous to another icon of the ‘false positives’ scandal, namely, the ‘boots of the wrong foot’. The history of such an icon goes back to 2008: the first juries investigating the case famously found that many victims wore boots on the wrong foot. The detail suggested that the victims had been staged to look as if they had died in combat (Semana, 2010, July 16).
‘6402’, caricature by Mheo. Source: Mheo, 21 February 2021.
The number is still gestured towards, remaining fully recognizable, but is not the focal point of attention. In reformatting, the icon is portrayed in a way that deliberately distances from clarity and straightforwardness. The representation’s purpose is not to display the figure but rather an invitation to search for it. In a monument built by protestors during the ‘national strike’, the number is hidden amidst a forest of other icons (Figure 11). Something similar occurs in the digital illustration ‘Gente de bien’ (Figure 12). ‘6402’ is artistically displayed next to multiple other icons already associated with Uribe (e.g. his political party’s logo).
Demonstrator’s monument in Cali. Source: Aerami, 13 June 2021.
‘Gente de bien’, by Fausto Baena. Source: Baena, 7 May 2021.
This process of ‘hiding’ the icon must not necessarily present the number amidst an extensive landscape of other icons. Sometimes the number was hidden behind another icon through a technique of superposition. The ‘4’ in ‘6402’ was reshaped as a deadly military salute (Figure 13). The figure emerges from parts of Uribe’s face (Figure 14), or alternatively it became itself a ‘false positive’ victim by covering the digits with the white blankets that are typically used by prosecutors to cover dead bodies (Figure 15).
‘6402’, drawing by Leonardo Parra. Source: Parra, 26 April 2021.
‘6.402 en la impunidad’, by Gova. Source: Gova, 14 March 2021.
Graphic piece by Larry Morales. Source: Morales, 22 April 2021.
Why were social movement artists and cartoonists so interested in a form of representation that hid the number rather than exposing it? Because reformatting did not aim at drawing attention to the ‘false positives’ scandal, but to awake intense emotions through the sensuous experience of the number’s shape. The reformatted icon does not merely iterate the original icon but evokes it. It transmits the icon’s deep moral meanings while creating a sense of awe around them.
Only sacred objects are susceptible of indirect evocation because only they relate to transcendence. Only they possess an ‘aura’ that is widely believed to be inherently incommunicable.
Staging
In a way, staging is a combination of the two previous representational modes. It includes both a reference to the figure’s original sobriety and simplicity, and a dramatic stylistic shift. Staging seeks to display the process of representation, the transit from a minimal figure into a refined choreography of it. An auratic experience for the icon is achieved through this movement from minimalism to maximalism. In Figure 16, a group of 37 activists portray the figure with their bodies. The sheer visual shape of ‘6402’ is staged, while making evident the collective effort involved in it. The endpoint of the performance is as important as the process.
Performance in Bogotá’s central square. Source: Botarte, 30 August 2021.
In this mode of representation, the focus falls not on the aesthetic shape of the number but on its reference to mathematics. It is quantity that is staged. The artistic process reveals an obsession with absolute accuracy. Consider the painting by Antonio Zapata shown in Figure 17: the 2 × 2 m canvas is nearly filled with human silhouettes, but not through a depiction of abstract massiveness. It meticulously contains exactly, ceremonially, 6402 bodies.
‘6402’ by painter Antonio Zapata (2021). Source: Personal archive.
In reformatting, the evocative power of the icon was effectuated through ‘hiding’ it. In staging, by contrast, the same evocative power is accomplished through sensuous shock. Representations seek to heighten the figure’s presence because they perform not so much a commemoration of ‘false positives,’ but their social ‘discovery.’ In June 2021, a group of young artists painted 6402 human silhouettes on the streets of Bogotá, each one numbered from 1 to 6402. The intervention extended for several kilometers and passed next to various symbolic places, such as the city’s central square, the Central Cemetery, JEP’s building, among others (Figure 18). Why bother staging so many figures with such careful precision? Because artists were not enacting the atrocious events of ‘false positives’ as much as its revelation. They were displaying the uncovering of a concealed reality. The awe they aspired to conjure up was an epiphanic awe.
Performance in the making. Source: Mafapo, 4 June 2021.
Unlike preservation and reformatting, the staging of the icon possesses many ritual-like qualities. It is not by chance that some of its iconography might include religious themes (Figure 19). Staging aims to forge a sense of extraordinariness, but also to perform collectiveness. It is ‘us, society’ who is representing the number. The boundaries between actors and audience become blurred: protagonists are ‘experiencing’ the performance as much as observers. Observers, in turn, are openly invited to participate. Furthermore, engagement in the performance is more intensely subjective, which can be observed in the frequent use of the body in this sort of representation.
Flower offering during the performance of the 6402 street silhouettes. Source: Mafapo, 13 July 2021.
Conclusions
Sociology has the urgent need to understand the intersection of statistics with burning moral issues of our time. This article advances in that direction by offering a new approach to the role of numbers, and even ‘facts’ more generally, in social life. The power of ‘facts’ is not only grounded in their ability to mobilize feelings of certainty or condense ontological truthfulness (Hirschman, 2016). The power of facts lies in their ‘epiphanic’ effect and in the aesthetic creativity and ritual interactions organized around them by broad segments of the public.
Through the analysis of ‘6402,’ I introduced the concept of fact-icon – a potent cultural artifact with the capacity to shape political discourse on a national level, and sometimes even at a global scale (Olesen, 2018). Fact-icons can take diverse forms, including statistical signs but also photographs (e.g. drowned Alan Kurdi, Napalm girl, the Extreme Ice Survey program) and videos (e.g. George Floyd’s murder footage, Max Stahl’s Santa Cruz massacre documentary). This study, centering on statistical fact-icons, contributes to a deeper understanding of contemporary societies’ fascination with numbers.
Numbers do tell truths about the world, but not in the quantitative way we are trained to believe. Conventional approaches would analyze ‘6402’ as an informational input, or as a tool for judicial and administrative action. This would leave unexplained key features of the figure’s biography, like its insertion in popular culture (street graffiti, cartoons, protest iconography) and the fact that ‘6402’ was consecrated among a universe of alternative quantifications of the same phenomenon that were just-as-useful but fell by the wayside.
Against the view of contemporary societies as consensually spellbound by statistics, I insist that numeric fact-icons thrive in contexts of intense polarization (think of the ‘30,000’ disappeared from the Argentinian dictatorship, or the ‘1.5 million’ victims from the Armenian genocide). Their influence becomes especially salient amid processes of trauma construction, by igniting intense and protracted social mobilization. Of course, they do not ineludibly arise every time there is a collective trauma; the covid-19 pandemic, the transatlantic slave trade, or the native Americans’ genocide, for example, never developed an emblematic quantification. Fact-icons are not an easy accomplishment but the result of a multilayered and contingent process of symbolic production.
Footnotes
Funding
No funding was received to assist with the preparation of this manuscript.
Ethics approval
This research was conducted with an IRB exemption following the ethical guidelines at Yale University.
