This article proposes to investigate the emergence of risk management and disaster prevention in Colombian national and municipal policy, focusing on the city of Bogota and using a methodology that combines historical and anthropological approaches. We establish its temporal framework as beginning in 1985, since the conjuncture that occurred in November of that year with the tragedy of Armero and the siege of the Palacio de Justicia just one week before generated, in the domain of political culture, a new emphasis on the issue of risk.