The Agrarian Roots of the Conflict-Development Nexus in Colombia

Kelly Grant

Abstract: The traditional models of conflict and civil war often fall short in explaining
Colombian violence because they fail to recognize that Colombias conflict is the product of
agrarian struggles in the context of capitalist development. Throughout Colombias history and
continuing into the present, capitalist development has often served as the catalyst for conflict
and has generated poverty, inequality, and violence. The ruling elite in Colombia has failed to
resolve the issues of land tenure, land distribution, and inequality that first incited the violent
conflict and continues to perpetuate historic colonial inequalities. This paper examines the
agrarian roots of Colombias conflict and investigates the relationship between conflict and
development in Colombias labor-intensive agricultural sector. The Colombian conflict is both
rooted in and shaped by agrarian inequalities. If land reform is unattainable at this juncture in
Colombian history, the state should focus on achieving peace and security through basic
economic policies and a humanitarian approach.

KEY WORDS: Colombia, agrarian issue(s), agriculture, violence, conflict, civil war,
development, paramilitary, guerrilla, displacement, inequality, colonialism

Introduction
In Latin America, the only region in the world where lethal violence increased from 2000
to 2010, Colombia has repeatedly distinguished itself as the country to commit the most severe
breeches of human rights and international humanitarian law (Dugas, 2012). Possessing the
highest global rates of homicide and kidnapping throughout the 1990s, it is not surprising that
Colombia and its persisting violent conflict has been the object of much scholarly research and
debate (Pshisva & Suarez, 2010). The variety of actors involved in the violence coupled with
Colombias surprisingly varied economic performance, both regionally and over time, has only
added to the intrigue of Colombias complex conflict (Holmes & Curtin, 2008; Pshisva &
Suarez, 2010). As a result, Colombia is the object of considerable interest in the scholarly
discourse surrounding what has become known as the conflict-development nexus. However,
while most studies examining the conflict-development nexus investigate the negative impacts of
violence on the economy, this paper examines the role economic development plays in fueling
violent conflict.
Colombia does not fit the traditional models of conflict and civil war. It cannot be
explained by the resource curse model, as those who overemphasize the role of the cocaine
industry in Colombias conflict try to do. Nor can it be explained as a greed-based civil conflict,
despite the element of criminality implied by the insurgent involvement in the drug trade.
Violence perpetrated by armed groups existed long before the emergence of the coca industry,
and the diverse demographic composition of guerrilla and paramilitary groups active in the
Colombian conflict rule out economic interests as the sole driving factors for participation in
armed groups (Thomson, 2011). Additionally, explanations that highlight the role of global
commodity markets in the Colombian conflict to advance the explanatory model of the apolitical
new war are also inadequate to describe Colombias conflict. The States targeting of leftist
leaders, as well as the foreign intervention that has aimed to maintain regional hegemony, are
only a few examples of why the Colombian conflict is not apolitical (Thomson, 2011). These
theories are unable to capture the essence of the Colombian conflict because they fail to address
the root cause of the conflict.
Throughout Colombias history and continuing into the present, capitalist development
has often served as the catalyst for conflict and has generated poverty, inequality, and violence
(Richani, 1997; Thomson, 2011). Theories that fail to recognize that Colombias conflict is the
product of agrarian struggles in the context of capitalist development cannot hope to explain the
relationship between conflict and development in Colombias extremely violent agricultural
sector. In order to generate the solutions necessary to achieve peace and security, sustainable
development, and economic growth in Colombia, we must first understand the agrarian roots of
the Colombian conflict and answer the questions of why, how, and under what circumstances
economic development contributes to increases in conflict and violent crime.
Agrarian Roots of the Colombian Conflict
As Richani (1997) observed, If there is an epicenter, or flashpoint, that could have set
the process leading to the war system in train, it would be the conflicts that have surrounded the
distribution of land in Colombia ever since it became independent, in the 19
th
century.(Richani,
1997, p. 40) Issues of land tenure, land distribution, and inequality have shaped Colombias
political economy since colonial times. As occurred in most Latin American countries, colonial-
era institutions created the legal frameworks, regulations, and norms that benefited the landed
elite at the expense of the peasantry (Calado & Medrano, 2006; Thomson, 2011). These patterns
of land concentration and inequality were only reinforced as Colombia began to develop
economically and transition from subsistence farming to export driven commercial agriculture.
The conversion of large expanses of land for use in ranching and commercial agriculture lead to
exclusionary growth patterns characterized by land concentration and declining employment
opportunity, while simultaneously creating what Thomson (2010) dubbed a massive reserve
army of migratory labor through the violent displacement of the peasantry (Holmes & Curtin,
2008). The result was a violent conflict between social groups that pitted the landed-elite against
the peasants who fought against complete dispossession.
While a strong state might have been able to intervene in the initial stages of this conflict
and prevent the catastrophic violence and its tragic consequences, the Colombian state was not
such a state. From the outset, Colombia faced many challenges in state building, beginning with
its geography. The countrys extreme rugged topography prevented the construction of an
effective transportation network, limited communication between regions, and complicated
political organization, thus inhibiting national integration and preventing effective state building
(Holmes & Curtin, 2008). Lacking the capacity and the political will to provide the social
services that might have alleviated the class based tensions before they erupting into violent
confrontation, the Colombian state waited until the violence had already begun before attempting
to act (Holmes & Curtin, 2008).
The first phase of the violent conflict between social groups coincided with the
emergence of the coffee export sector in the early twentieth century. The new and lucrative
sector offered an opportunity for the peasants and smallholder farmers to gain a certain degree of
autonomy through independent participation in the economy, and the landed-elite, threatened by
a potential shift in the status quo, responded with violence (Thomson, 2011). It was this
aggressive response that finally brought agrarian issues to the national agenda. Unfortunately,
despite the rhetoric of several successive regimes, no political party would deliver on its promise
to address these issues and restore stability.
As the violence continued to worsen and the conflict remained unsolved, opposition
parties such as the Socialist Revolution Party, the Communist Party, and the Leftist
Revolutionary Union formed, while agrarian unions and peasant leagues gained strength and
multiplied. Finally, after 50 years of control, the Conservative Party ceded power to the Liberals
and, in 1936, President Lopez Pumarejo attempted to implement the first real agrarian reform
since colonial times (Thomson, 2011). However, as the Conservatives had before them, the
Liberal party failed to enact any sort of significant agrarian reform policy, and the inequality and
maldistribution of the colonial agrarian order remained largely unchanged. Consequently, the
unresolved conflict erupted in 1946 with La Violencia, the 10-year Colombian civil war between
the Conservative and Liberals.
It was not long before it become clear that politics was merely the pretext for La
Violencia, and that the war was one between social groups over the right to land. As the civil war
progressed, what had begun as a war between political parties regressed to its roots of agrarian
conflict and became increasingly class-based (Thomson, 2011). Focused in the Andean coffee
region, La Violencia displaced approximately 2 million people, many of who were peasants that
fled to create or join newly formed armed resistance groups. Once again, the relationship
between conflict in Colombia and unsolved agrarian issues was evident, and it became clear that
the violence was inseparable from the land contention of Colombias colonial past.
Half a century later, with many of the most significant actors in the current phase of the
Colombian conflict able to trace their origin back to those years of violence, we must view
ongoing conflict in the context of the land contention that first gave rise to La Violencia.
Although La Violencia technically ended with the formation of the power sharing National Front
in 1956, it gave birth to the guerrilla movements and paramilitary forces that now profoundly
affect Colombias conflict development nexus. Leftist armed resistance communities had
formed during the civil war, and the state legitimized paramilitary groups to aid it in its
counterinsurgency efforts against these groups (Thomson, 2011). Some of those that survived
the state and paramilitary onslaught joined with the Communist Party and formed the Armed
Revolutionary Forces of Colombia, a guerrilla group that continues to be one of the most
important players in the Colombian conflict. At the same time, the other major armed group
involved in the conflict, the National Liberation Army, was formed.
The rise of these armed groups exacerbated the existing class based tensions in Colombia.
Both groups claimed to represent the interests of the rural peasants, advocating for land reform
and redistribution (Dube & Vargas, 2009). However, the guerrillas utilization of extortion and
kidnapping caused landowners to employ self-defense militias, and the guerrillas continuing
brutal tactics of killing anyone who opposed their authority, including peasant leaders, brokered
support for these militias. Among these militias supporters, was the weak Colombian State.
Turning to the militias in order to extend its capacity, the state sanctioned and legitimized the
militias under Colombian law as part of its counterinsurgency efforts against the growing
number of leftist guerrilla groups (Holmes & Curtin, 2008). In the late 1990s, strengthened by
the states support, many of these militias turned paramilitary groups joined to form the United
Self Defense Groups of Columbia (AUC). The result was a dramatic increase in paramilitary
mobilization against guerrilla forces (Dube & Vargas, 2009). Often operating in collusion with
the military and with support from various high-ranking political officials, paramilitaries
perpetuated extreme violence by targeting anyone, including citizens, with alleged ties to
guerrilla forces (Dube & Vargas, 2009; Grajales, 2011).
In this new phase of violence, guerrillas who had originally claimed to represent the
plight of the peasant fought paramilitary forces initially formed to protect the assets of elite; and
once again the average Colombian peasant and smallholder farmer suffered. The coca industry
had began to flourish, and both paramilitary and guerrilla forces sought to reap profits from the
illegal sector, either allying with narcotraffickers, extorting them, or defeating them entirely to
take over their operations. Seeking a means to survive, peasants displaced by agricultural
development or fleeing the rampant violence also sought employment in the coca sector or were
recruited into armed groups, resulting in what has been deemed the criminalization of the
peasant (Dube & Vargas, 2009).
It was not until the early 2000s that the government publically ended its collusion with
paramilitaries in response to the armed groups violent targeting of civilians and their
involvement in the drug trade. The AUC declared a partial ceasefire and certain paramilitary
factions demobilized. However, the conflict between state, paramilitary, and guerrilla forces
continues. Just as issues of land distribution, land contention, and agrarian development were
central to the conception of the Colombian conflict and mobilization of the conflicts actors, so
they continue to be central to the current conflict in Colombia.
Agricultural Development and Associated Violence
As previously mentioned, it was the growth of the coffee export sector that first elicited
the class-based tensions leading to the conflict that, left unaddressed, gave way to La Violencia
of the 1940s. However, the palm industry is perhaps one of the best current examples of the
manner in which export driven agricultural development with the explicit support of the state has
and continues to result in devastating displacement, inequality, and violence in Colombia. Since
the 1990s, palm cultivation has been both financially and legally supported by public institutions
as a top agro-industrial development priority (Grajales, 2011). However, the cultivation of
plantation-based agricultural products such as palm require large quantities of land and labor. It
is this basic preliminary need that has served as the catalyst for violence in the palm cultivation
sector. When local populations prove unwilling to relinquish their land or offer their labor, palm
entrepreneurs must employ other means to obtain this land and labor. In the Colombian palm
sector, these other means have traditionally been the mobilization of paramilitaries to forcefully
displace populations through violent threats, targeted murders, and even massacres of entire
communities (Oslender, 2007). With the state supporting agro-industrial development and
actively aligning with paramilitary forces to extend their capacity both in fighting guerrillas and
protecting their new economic interests, the desperate local populations had no one to whom
they could turn.
Oslender (2007) describes the palm sector as having four basic elements: (1) armed
incursion, with its associated crimes and human-rights violations; (2) illegal and violent
expropriation of land; (3) forced displacement of owners and population occupying the lands
prior to their expropriation; and (4) the planting of palm on the conquered land(Oslender,
2007, p. 759). Despite these horrific abuses inherent in the implementation of palm plantations,
the government has continued to execute policy favoring palm cultivation and has taken a step
beyond ignoring criminal activity to actually legitimizing it. This can be seen especially clearly
when taking the example of the highly publicized controversy regarding palm production in
Choc, Urab.
In 1996, joint military and paramilitaries forces caused mass displacement after they
invaded Choc in an offensive against guerrilla forces (Oslender, 2007). When the violence
abated, the displaced peasants returned to find that their land was in the process of being
transformed into palm plantations and was being patrolled by military and paramilitary forces
(Oslender, 2007). Over a decade later, an official investigation launched into the illegitimate
seizure of Choc implicated 23 palm oil entrepreneurs along with a number of government
officials (Oslender, 2007). The investigation found that not only had paramilitaries directly
negotiated with palm oil companies, but also the army had explicitly pressured landowners to
sell to the companies. To make matters worse, the government had overlooked the fact that the
companies did not possess environmental licenses, and had granted permits allowing these same
companies to protect their assets by hiring security firms (Oslender, 2007). The government
even went so far as to institutionalize land grabbing of this kind when, in the early 2000s, it
passed several measures that facilitated land usurpations legalization. One such measure
basically ensured that those responsible for the violent displacement of local populations would
eventually receive the legal title to that land by giving the government body, INCORA, the right
to recover and reallocate abandoned land for agricultural use (Grajales, 2011).
While Choc is an extreme example of the interconnection between violence and
development and the use of displacement as a development tool, it is by no means a unique
example. Human rights groups have found that such methods of displacement are prevalent in
all palm complexes throughout Colombia (Oslender, 2007). Similarly, while not every
agricultural sector depends on forced displacement for its immediate development, most
agricultural sectors in Colombia eventually involve some type of forced displacement. This
holds true in the coffee sector, where forced displacement most often occurs as a result of the
aforementioned guerrilla and paramilitary conflict it engenders. Displacement can also occur
when development of agricultural sectors for export cause these sectors to become susceptible to
global economic volatility and therefore vulnerable to price shocks.
Dube and Vargas (2009) illustrated the effect of price shocks on violence in their study
about the relationship between commodity price shocks and civil conflict in Colombia. In an 18-
year study that drew upon conflict data from 978 Colombian municipalities, they found that a
fall in the price of coffee increases violence differentially in regions that cultivate coffee more
intensively, and [found] similar patterns with other labor intensive agricultural crops including
sugar, banana, tobacco, and palm (Dube & Vargas, 2009). They determined that this inverse
relationship between price shocks and violence was due to the fact that such price decreases in
labor-intensive agricultural commodities have a disproportionate effect on wages and labor hours
for those working in the sector. According to Dube & Vargas (2009), this is illustrative of the
opportunity cost mechanism whereby the decrease in wages and work hours lower the
opportunity cost of joining armed groups which, in turn, results in increased levels of violence.
The opportunity cost mechanism, in addition to accounting for increased recruitment of
displaced and unemployed peasantry into armed groups, can also explain peasants willingness
to engage in illegal coca cultivation. If wages in the legal agricultural sector are high, peasants
will likely remain employed in this sector. Alternatively, if wages fall or there is an increase in
crime and violence that lowers the opportunity cost of employment in the criminal sector, it
stands to reason that peasants will seek employment in the criminal sector rather than in the
productive sector (Dube & Vargas, 2009). Therefore, we see that development in Colombias
coca sector also effects violence in more insidious ways than those usually discussed. Widely
blamed for fueling the Colombian conflict due to the violence it incites between the state and the
guerrilla forces, paramilitary forces, and narcotraffickers vying for control, the coca industry also
contributes to violence through the criminalization of the peasant simply seeking a means to
survive.
Conclusion
The above analysis of the Colombian conflicts colonial-era agrarian roots and the effect
of agricultural development on violent conflict illustrate the complexity of the conflict-
development nexus. The issues of land tenure, land distribution, and inequality that first incited
the violent conflict in Colombia have remained largely unresolved. Additionally, the ruling elite
has maintained the status quo by continuing to perpetuate historic colonial inequalities.
Government policy has continued to support commercial agriculture over smallholder
production, and there are allegations that government and military officials retain ties to
paramilitary groups. The conflict continues between government forces, paramilitaries, and
guerrilla forces, and the intervention of foreign actors such as the US in an attempt to suppress
the growing coca industry have only increased violence and further complicated the conflict.
Still, the above analysis does illuminate several ways forward in dealing with the violence in
Colombia.
First, it is clear that there are many factors involved in the Colombian conflict-
development nexus including state presence, rule of law, and the protection of property rights.
While it is unlikely that land reform through negotiation is a viable option due to opposition by
the landed elite as well as the industrial elite who fear the derailing of neoliberal programs, there
may be other avenues towards amelioration. One such avenue is the humanitarian approach,
advocated by both Caldano (2006) and Holmes and Curtin (2008). This approach, though second
best to a solution involving land reform, would address the political unrest and violent conflict
by investing in human and social capital. Under this approach, the state would develop programs
and policies addressing health, education, income generation, social infrastructure and housing in
order to protect the internally displaced. By ensuring that there are systems in place to protect
the citizenry, that they have access to economic opportunity, and that their standard of living is
improved, the Colombian state can hope to avoid another bout of land-based conflict.
Additionally, the above analysis suggests that some simple economic policies such as price
stabilization schemes that place floors on the price of labor in the sectors that have proved
susceptible to price shocks, could mitigate the risk of opportunity cost motivated violence.
The Colombian conflict is both rooted in and shaped by agrarian inequalities. The
manner in which the state and business elites have pursued development has only served to
reinforce this inequality. If land reform is unattainable at this juncture in Colombian history, the
state should focus on achieving peace and security through basic economic policies and a
humanitarian approach.
Work Cited

Calauo, Feinanuo, & Neuiano, Biana. (2uu6). Piolongeu inteinal uisplacement: Buiable
solutions amiust violence in Colombia. !"#$%&'%$())*%" ,(-$%#(." %"/ #0* '."12('#
"*3456 789.
Bube, 0einuiila, & vaigas, }uan. (2uu9). Commouity Piice Shocks anu Civil Conflict:
Eviuence fiom Colombia.: Woiking Papei. New Yoik 0niveisity anu 0niveisiuau uel
Rosaiio.
Bugas, }ohn C. (2u12). Paiamilitaiies anu the Economic 0iigins of Aimeu Conflict in
Colombia. :%#(" ;,*$('%" <*5*%$'0 <*=(*>6 ?@(1), 2uS-21S.
uiajales, }acobo. (2u11). The iifle anu the title: paiamilitaiy violence, lanu giab anu lanu
contiol in Colombia. A.4$"%2 .1 B*%5%"# C#4/(*56 8D(4), 771-792.
Bolmes, }ennifei, Pineies, Sheila Amin uutiiiez, & Cuitin, Kevin N. (2uu8). E4"56 F$4-56
%"/ F*=*2.G,*"# (" H.2.,)(%. Austin: 0niveisity of Texas Piess.
0slenuei, 0liich. (2uu7). violence in uevelopment: the logic of foiceu uisplacement on
Colombia's Pacific coast. F*=*2.G,*"# (" B$%'#('*6 I@(6), 7S2-764.
Pshisva, Rony, & Suaiez, uustavo A. (2u1u). Capital Ciimes: Kiunappings anu Coipoiate
Investment in Colombia J0* K'.".,('5 .1 H$(,*L :*55."5 1.$ %"/ 1$., :%#(" ;,*$('%
(pp. 6S-97): 0niveisity of Chicago Piess.
Richani, Nazih. (1997). The Political Economy of violence: The Wai-System In Colombia.
A.4$"%2 .1 !"#*$%,*$('%" C#4/(*5 %"/ M.$2/ ;11%($56 8N(2), S7-81.
Thomson, Fiances. (2u11). The agiaiian question anu violence in Colombia: conflict anu
uevelopment. A.4$"%2 .1 ;-$%$(%" H0%"-*6 II(S), S21-SS6.