The following research has as object of study the forms of organized violence of Colombia in the context of the internal conflict mutations and the parastatal actors that have played a leading role, after the partial demobilization of the United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia (AUC) in 2006 and until the year 2016. The vital question is to systematize differences in the organizations that burst after the AUC, were they a paramilitary continuity? Or did they have different elements? The work historically conceptualizes criminal entities as part of the evolution of the privatization of Colombian violence, whose modalities for institutions have been present in the past since the late 1950s. The main debates about paramilitarism in Colombia are exposed, as necessary, due to the complexity of the subject. As a working hypothesis it is established that in extended internal conflicts like the Colombian case, the institutional weaknesses and fragilities added to the increase of illegal economies produce the transformation of parastatal and paramilitary organizations which are parts of the conflict, with counterinsurgent political elements in predominantly criminal formations.