This paper develops an analytical exploration about fear as structuring aff ection of everyday life in a community at war. We examine how fear structures the everyday life in Tumaco (Nariño, Colombian South-Western). To do so, we describe how fear defi nes relational and subordination logics that afterwards tend to be normalized becoming what sustains relations of domination. In this exploration of fear as guiding source of action, daily stories about atrocities emerge as decisive for the coordination of social action. The paper concludes that fear has a performative capacity, originated in its symbolic power to constitute social realities in which routines and extraordinary events merge. © 2019 Programa de Pos-Graduacao em Antropologia Social - IFCH-UFRGS.