The objective of this paper is to analyze, from Guillermo Cano’s Notebook in the period 1980-1986, how fear influenced the crisis of Colombian institutionality in the 1980s in the face of the phenomenon of violence by drug cartels. . This purpose will be reached through four moments: in the first, the concepts of institutionality, legitimacy and drug trafficking will be analyzed; in the second one, it will be defined how fear affected the institutionality of the Colombian State; In the third one, the importance of the cultivation of emotions in a scenario where the political emotion of fear prevailed will be described, and four, Guillermo Cano columns will be interpreted as an exercise of narrative imagination against fear. Finally, this work will conclude that the writings of Guillermo Cano constituted an exercise of narrative imagination insofar as they could summon a feeling of national rejection for the deinstitutionalization that the State was living, managing to decentralize Colombians from their particular interests to participate in a citizen construction in which the interests of the nation cross the whole society. &nbsp