VIOLENT SYSTEMS OF CAPITAL ACCUMULATION:

PARAMILITARISM AND THE COLOMBIAN ARMED CONFLICT

JASMIN HRISTOV

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN SOCIOLOGY

YORK UNIVERSITY
TORONTO, ONTARIO

MAY 2013

© JASMIN HRISTOV 2013

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 ABSTRACT

This dissertation is about the role of violence in processes of capital accumulation in

Colombia. While multiple forms and motives of violence are present in Colombian

society, it is possible to discern one pervasive and persistent kind of violence capable

of reproducing itself that is of central importance to the armed conflict and any future

prospects for peace. It rests upon the fusion of economic and political power, is

spearheaded and organized by considerable part of the Colombian capitalist classes,

and is facilitated through the support of various state institutions. The phenomenon of

paramilitarism is the very embodiment of this kind of violence. Hence, the central

focus of my dissertation is the nexus between the paramilitary, capital (local and

foreign), and the state in Colombia.

By tracing major patterns of class formation and conflict throughout Colombia’s

history from colonial time until present, this work analyzes both the economic

underpinnings of violence and the integral part that violence has played in the

capitalist development of the country. In the last 50 years the development of

paramilitarism has been crucial to contemporary processes of capital and class

formation, and particularly in land-grabbing, extractive industries operations, and the

repression of struggles against privatization and austerity reforms. Their multi-faceted

nature, destructive capacity, relationship to the state and elite, and the fact that for half

a century they have been one of the principal actors in the Colombian conflict,

altogether make paramilitary forces an intriguing object of study. Yet, for now the

latter remain largely under-investigated.

ii
 The first objective of this study is to capture comprehensively the mechanisms,

strategies and logic of paramilitarism, and explain its reproduction and evolution over

time by drawing on a broad range of empirical material. The second objective is to

propose a new analytical framework for understanding the dynamics and evolution of

the paramilitary-state relationship and for situating paramilitary bodies within the

wider politico-economic context. While this framework is grounded in the Colombian

case, it can also be helpful for discerning key elements in the foundation and

structures of twenty-first century paramilitarism in Latin America.

iii
 DEDICATIONS

I dedicate this work to my parents.

 ACKNOW LEDGEM ENTS

I would like to express my deep appreciation for the support, patience, prompt

responses, and constructive feedback provided to me by the members of my

supervisory committee - Mark Thomas, Lesley Wood, and David McNally. I am

deeply indebted to my former supervisor Peter Landstreet for the kindness, wise

advices, positive energy, and encouragement that he has always offered me during the

past nine years. The first person who made me consider graduate studies was Hira

Singh and I am grateful to him for his generosity and persistent confidence in me. I

warmly thank all the professors who have helped me grow intellectually and freely

pursue what is most important to me as well as all the individuals in the Sociology

Department who have assisted me in numerous ways during my studies and work

there, especially Kathy Bischoping whose warmth has given me so much strength at

times of self-doubt and Audrey Tokiwa whose laughter is contagious and therapeutic.

I also thank my friends Jeff Webber, Todd Gordon, Andrew Lee, Benjamin Cornejo,

Marshall Beck, Rangel Ramos, Kate Pendakis, Janine Muller, and Anita Gombos for

their respect for my work, continuous encouragement, and support offered in different

ways throughout all these years.

This dissertation came into being about the same time as my precious sons

Nicolas and Santino. The news that I was expecting twins was certainly an enormous

joy and impetus that empowered me to work more efficiently towards completing this

important phase of my life. The completion of my dissertation would not have been
possible however without the tireless work and sacrifice of my husband and my

parents who have always patiently helped me in every way they could and to whom I

owe everything.

vi
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT.......................................................................................................................ii

DEDICATION................................................................................................................. iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.............................................................................................v

LIST OF TA BLES.......................................................................................................... xi

LIST OF FIG URES....................................................................................................... xii

Chapter 1: Introduction: Why Study Paramilitary and State Violence in

C olom bia........................................................................................................ 1
1.1. Paramilitary and State Violence: Significance Beyond Colombia .....................9
1.2. Theorizing Paramilitarism and the Colombian Armed C onflict....................... 16
1.3. Relevance o f the Colombian Armed Conflict to North A m erica...................... 19
1.4. Intended Contributions......................................................................................... 22
1.4.1. Overcoming the Political - Economic D ivide......................................... 22
1.4.2. Primitive Accumulation'. The Interaction o f the Local and Global 23
1.4.3. Paramilitarism: Addressing the Conceptual Frontiers and Barriers ...25
1.4.4. Global Sociology: The Emerging Transnational Dimensions o f
Paramilitarism ..............................................................................................27
1.5. Methodology ........................................................................................................27
1.6. Outline of the Dissertation .................................................................................31

Chapter 2: Class, Violence, and the State under Capitalism:

Theoretical Review...................................................................................... 35
2.1. Theoretical Views on Capitalism .........................................................................36
2.1.1. Capitalism ..................................................................................................36
2.1.2. Class Relations under Capitalism.............................................................40
2.1.3. Class Relations in the Past 30 Years o f Capitalist Globalization.......... 48
2.2. Capital, Violence, and the State ...........................................................................53
2.2.1. Marx: The Role o f the State in Capitalist Domination ...........................54
2.2.2. The Role o f the State in the Past 30 Years o f Capitalist Globalization 59
2.2.3. Capitalism and Violence: M arx’s Primitive Accumulation................... 61
2.2.4. The Theoretical Debate over Primitive Accumulation............................66
2.2.5. Weber: The State and Its Monopoly over the Means o f Violence.........70
2.2.6. Weber: Capitalism as a Peaceful Economic System ...............................71
2.2.7. Marx versus Weber on Capitalism and Violence: Concluding
Rem arks......................................................................................................... 74
2.3. Capitalism and Ideology..................................................................................... 77

vii
 2.4. Capital, Violence, and the State in Latin America.......................................... 80
2.4.1. State Violence.............................................................................................84
2.4.2. The "New” Urban Criminal Violence.....................................................86
2.4.3. Parainstitutional Violence and the State Connection.............................88
2.4.4. Violence, Illegal Armed Groups, and the State: Concluding Remarks . 93

Chapter 3: Theoretical Approaches to Paramilitarism and Other Forms of

Parainstitutional Violence.........................................................................95
3.1. Forms of Parainstitutional Violence.........................................................................97
3.1.1. Death Squads .............................................................................................97
3.1.2. Vigilantism .................................................................................................99
3.1.3. Warlordism............................................................................................... 102
3.1.4. Paramilitarism ......................................................................................... 106
3.2. Characterizations of the Colombian Armed Conflict............................................115
3.3. Conceptualizations of the Phenomenon of Paramilitarism in C olom bia 119
3.4. Similarities and Differences between the Paramilitary and Other
Parainstitutional Armed A cto rs....................................................................127
3.4.1. Death Squads ........................................................................................... 128
3.4.2. V ig ila n te s .................................................................................................. 130
3.4.3. Warlords................................................................................................... 130
3.4.4. Concluding Rem arks................................................................................132
3.5. Assessment of the Literature on Colombian Paramilitarism................................ 133
3.5.1. The “W eakState”Approach...................................................................133
3.5.2. The Paramilitary as a Criminal A c to r ................................................... 139
3.5.3. The Paramilitary as a Subcontractor o f State Terror...........................142
3.6. Conclusion................................................................................................................ 145

Chapter 4: From Colonialism to Neoliberalism: Class Formation, Class

Struggles, and the State throughout Colombia’s H istory................. 149
4.1. Planting the Seeds of Poverty and Inequality: Conquest and Colonialism
(1500-1810)........................................................................................................ 150
4.1.1. Economy and Relations o f Production....................................................150
4.1.2. Class Conflict, Violence, and the State ...................................................153
4.2. Wars of Independence and the New Republic (1811-1902)................................ 155
4.2.1. Economy and Relations o f Production...................................................155
4.2.2. Class Conflict, Violence, and the State...................................................157
4.3. Integration into the Global Capitalist Economy and the Challenge From Below
(1903-1989).................................................................................................. 162
4.3.1. Economy and Relations o f Production...................................................162
4.3.2. Class Conflict, Violence, and the S tate...................................................167
4.3.2.1. La Violencia.................................................................................... 174
4.3.2.2. The Birth o f the F A R C .................................................................... 177
4.3.2.3. “Weak” or Capitalist? The Evolution o f the Colombian State ..178
4.4. Neoliberalism, Militarization, and Human Rights (1990-2011) ..........................182
4.4.1. Economy and Relations o f Production...................................................182
4.4.2. Class Conflict, Violence, and the State...................................................187
4.4.2.1. Social Movements: From Wealth Redistribution to
Human Rights.....................................................................................189
4.5. Conclusion................................................................................................................190

Chapter 5: Security versus Human Rights: Structure and Functions of the

Colombian State’s Coercive Apparatus................................................196
5.1. Institutions in the State’s Coercive Apparatus .................................................197
5.2. Legal Mechanisms..............................................................................................200
5.3. Violence-based Mechanisms ............................................................................ 206
5.3.1. State-sanctioned Violence....................................................................... 206
5.3.2. Militarization and the Role o f the U S ..................................................... 210
5.4. Ideological M echanisms.................................................................................... 218
5.4.1. The Counter-insurgency War and the National Security Doctrine 219
5.4.2. The War on Narco-terrorism and the Recycling o f the National
Security D octrine..............................................................................221
5.4.3. The "Internal Enemy" ............................................................................ 222
5.4.4. A Step-by-step Analysis o f the State’s Present-day Ideological
Production.........................................................................................223
5.5. Conclusion.........................................................................................................230

Chapter 6: Dynamics and Evolution of Paramilitarism in Colombia

(1960-2006).................................................................................................233
6.1. Origins and Evolution of Paramilitary Groups (1960-1997).......................... 233
6.1.1. The Role o f the Colombian State in the Creation o f Paramilitary
Forces in the 1960s...........................................................................234
6.1.2. The Role o f the Colombian Capitalist Class in the Creation o f
Paramilitary Groups (1980-1997).................................................. 237
6.2. Paramilitary Organizations (1997-2006).......................................................... 244
6.2.1. The Birth o f the A U C ................................................................................244
6.2.2. Activities and Sources o f Funding o f the A U C ....................................... 246
6.3. The Paramilitary and the Colombian State: Condemnation or
Cooperation?.......................................................................................... 258
6.3.1. The State’s Coercive Apparatus and the Paramilitary: Strategic
Sym biosis................................................................................................258
6.3.2. Paramilitarism in the Justice System .....................................................266
6.3.3. Paramilitary Power in Politics ..............................................................268
6.3.4. INCODER and the Legalization o f Paramilitary-led Dispossession .. 271
6.3.5. Paramilitary Penetration o f Other State Institutions........................... 273
6.4. Illustrations of Human Rights Violations by Paramilitary F orces.................273
6.4.1. Violence against Low-income Rural Workers and Small-scale

ix
 Farm ers..................................................................................................275
6.4.2. Violence against Leaders and Members o f Social Movements and
Organizations ........................................................................................ 277
6.4.3. Violence against Educators, Academics, Students, Journalists, and
Politicians...............................................................................................279
6.5. Conclusion........................................................................................................ 280

Chapter 7: Five Years after the Demobilization of the AUC: Paramilitarism and
Capital Accumulation (2006-2011)........................................................281
7.1. The Demobilization o f the AUC ........................................................................... 282
7.2. Behind the Scenes of the Demobilization Process............................................... 284
7.3. Paramilitary Groups in a “Post-paramilitary” Era (2006-2011)..........................289
7.3.1. The Continuation o f Paramilitary Activities..........................................291
7.3.2. The Myth ofBACRIM and the Invisibilization o f Paramilitarism .......294
7.4. Behind the Veil of BACRIM: Dispossession and Repression ........................... 298
7.4.1. Leaders and Members o f Illegal Armed Groups....................................298
7.4.2. Relationship between the State’s Coercive Apparatus and Illegal
Armed G roups.........................................................................................300
7.4.3. A ctivities o f Illegal A r m e d G r o u p s ......................................................... 310
7.5. Prospects for Justice and Reparations for the Victims of Paramilitary
Violence ......................................................................................................... 319
7.6. Conclusion............................................................................................................... 324

Chapter 8: Towards a New Analytical Framework for Understanding

Paramilitarism ......................................................................................... 327
8.1. First Principle: Paramilitarism as a Political, Economic, and Military
Phenom enon.................................................................................................. 327
8.2. Second Principle: Paramilitarism as a Structural Phenomenon...........................333
8.3. Third Principle: Dialectical Relationship between the State and the
Paramilitary ................................................................................................... 336
8.4. Transnational Aspects o f Paramilitarism.............................................................. 342
8.5. Conclusion................................................................................................................343

Chapter 9: Conclusion: The Future of Paramilitarism........................................ 345

9.1. Final Conclusions.................................................................................................... 350
9.2. Emerging Themes for Future Studies ....................................................................352

BIBLIOGRAPHY...................................................................................................... 354

ACRONYMS 375
 LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1: Depictions of the Colombian Armed C onflict............................................118

Table 3.2: Conceptualizations of the Paramilitary in Colom bia................................. 127

Table 6.1: Sources of Funding for the Paramilitary.....................................................246

Table 6.2: Percentage of Civilian Deaths and Forced Disappearances for which the
Paramilitary was Responsible......................................................................274

Table 6.3: Number of Unionists Assassinated 2001-2006 .......................................... 277

Table 7.1: Cases of Forced Displacement in Medellin in 2009 ..................................312

Table 7.2: Assassinations of Leaders and Supporters of Victims of Forced

Displacement 2007- 2011 ............................................................................ 314

Table 7.3: Number of Unionists Killed 2007-2011 .....................................................318

 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Map of Colombia............................................................................................ xiii

Figure 2: Dimensions of Paramilitarism.......................................................................329

Figure 3: Dialectical Relationship between the State andthe Paramilitary................340

Figure 4: Interrelatedness among the State, Paramilitary Groups,and Criminal

Organizations .................................................................................................. 341

xii
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 Chapter 1: Introduction: Why Study Paramilitary and State Violence in

Colombia?

The goal of my dissertation is to advance existing explanations of the dynamics and

complexities of Colombia’s contemporary armed conflict. As part of such an

endeavor, it is crucial to build a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the

conditions and forces that generate and sustain practices leading to human rights

violations and violent deaths among civilians. In order to accomplish this, I use a

Marxist political economy perspective to explore the role of violence in processes of

capital accumulation, dispossession, and the exacerbation of social inequalities. It is

my belief that, while multiple forms and motives of violence are present in Colombian

society, it is possible to discern one pervasive and persistent kind of violence capable

of reproducing itself that is of central importance to the armed conflict and any future

prospects for peace. It rests upon the fusion of economic and political power, is

spearheaded and organized by considerable parts of the Colombian capitalist classes,

and is facilitated through the support of various state institutions. The phenomenon of

paramilitarism is the very embodiment of this kind of violence. Hence, the central

focus of my dissertation is the nexus between the paramilitary, capital (local and

foreign), and the state in Colombia.

On the surface Colombia appears to present a paradox. O f all Latin America, it is

the country that has had the fewest military coups and least years under military

dictatorship in the 20th century (Zuleta 2005). It has been repeatedly regarded as Latin
America’s oldest and most stable democracies (Palacio 1991) and even as one of the

longest-surviving democracies of the Western hemisphere (Holmes, Gutierrez and

Curtin 2008). Yet, in merely seven years (1988-1995) under democratic governments,

this country witnessed 28,332 political killings, greatly exceeding the number in each

of the other South American nations during their periods of military dictatorship in the

1970s and 1980s1 (Giraldo 1996). Throughout Colombia’s history, violence has been

a decisive structuring process (Oquist 1980) and has manifested itself in some of the

most extreme and inhumane ways, as Wolfgang and Ferracuti (1967) have eloquently

described it:

Almost all o f the brutal and senseless paraphernalia of slaying known to

history have been exhibited in Colombia. The ever-present feeling of menace,
fear, and death, the actual visual presentation of mangled bodies and other
sadistic manifestations, together with a desire for revenge in those children
whose parents or relatives have been victims of violence, all tend to perpetuate
a situation which possibly has no equal in contemporary Western Civilization
... But nowhere in the Western world in recent times since the Second World
War has senseless brutality, a genocidal pattern, and a non-war pattern of
violence been nearly so total as in the Colombian tragedy (cited in Oquist
1980,276-279).

Zuleta (2005) describes Colombia as an “...explosive mixture of democracy and dirty

war” (133). In 50 years (1960-2010) there were at least 61,604 cases of forced

disappearances2 (Mechoulan 2011). In the period 1985-2000, four presidential

candidates, over 1,200 police officers, half of the Supreme Court justices and 200

journalists and judges were murdered. Between 1996 and 2002, a homicide was

1Brazil had 125 political killings during 15 years of military dictatorship, Bolivia had 243 in 17 years,
Chile had 2,666 in 17 years, and Argentina had 9000 in 8 years (Giraldo 1996).
2 Forced disappearance refers to a case where a person has been taken against his/her will by agents of
the government or members of illegal armed groups and his/her whereabouts remain unknown.

2
committed every twenty minutes and a kidnapping every three hours. In 2002,

Colombia’s homicide rate exceeded 40 per 100,000 inhabitants, giving it one of the

highest homicide rate in the West (Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga 2002). In 2002 alone,

144 politicians and public officials were assassinated, 124 were kidnapped, and more

than 600 mayors were threatened with death (Pardo 2000 cited in Holmes, Gutierrez,

and Curtin 2008). It is not surprising that Colombia has earned an informal reputation

of being the most violent country in the Western hemisphere.

Statistically, this country ranks as the world’s most dangerous place to be a

member of a labour union. On average, over the last 24 years, every 3 days one

unionist has been murdered (USLEAP 2011). Colombia is also among the nations

with the largest number of internal refugees (Moloney, 2005). According to the

Consultancy on Human Rights and Displacement (Consultoria para los Derechos

Humanos y el Desplazamiento, or CODHES), five and a half million people have been

forcibly displaced3 as a result of violence in the last 26 years (CODHES 2012). Over

two million have fled the country since 1985 (Holmes, Gutierrez and Curtin 2008).

Parainstitutional violence4 (encompassing violence carried out by paramilitaries,

death squads, vigilantes and warlords) has been a longstanding tradition in Colombia.

The latter is regarded as one of the few countries in the world where such violence has

been so prevalent in recent decades and where paramilitary organizations have

amassed such a substantial share of territorial control and political power (Jones

3 Forced displacement refers to cases where people have been driven by means of violence or threats to
abandon their place of residence out of fear for their own safety or that of their family.
4 A more comprehensive definition of parainstitutional violence is offered in Chapter Two.

3
2008). Paramilitary5 groups, with the complicity or direct participation of state forces,

have been responsible for the majority of the murders, torture, forced disappearances,

forced displacement, and threats against the civilian population. Even state sources

confirm the magnitude of civilian deaths at the hands of paramilitaries - 14,476

between 1988 and 2003. During President Alvaro Uribe’s first term in office (2002-

2006), 8,582 civilians were murdered or disappeared by the paramilitary and/or state

forces (Boletin Virtual 2009). The political party Patriotic Union (Union Patriotica, or

UP) had over 3,500 of its members murdered or disappeared by paramilitary groups

between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s (Holmes, Gutierrez and Curtin 2008).

Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba stated during her speech addressed to the

European Union in September 2010, “Colombia is a mass grave, it is the largest

cemetery of Latin America” (cited in El Tiempo, 2010). Her statement alluded to the

number of mass graves6 that had been discovered throughout the country in 2010

where state and paramilitary forces had buried the corpses of their victims.

Colombian paramilitary organizations are armed groups, created and funded by

wealthy sectors of society, with military and logistical support provided unofficially

by the state. Their principal aim is to eliminate or neutralize individuals or groups that

constitute a threat or obstacle to the interests of those with economic and political

5 The existing scholarly definitions of the term “paramilitary” are explored in depth in Chapter Three.
6 The largest mass grave in Colombia was discovered in 2010 in the rural area La Macarena,
Department of Meta, south of Bogotd. Approximately 2,000 bodies were buried there between 2002
and 2009 by the Colombian army. Military officials claimed those were the corpses of guerrilla fighters
killed in combat, however the bodies were buried secretly without the requisite process of having the
Colombian government certify that the deceased were indeed armed combatants as the Army claimed
(Kovalik 2010).

4
power. Murder, torture, and threats are typically used by paramilitaries to silence

social activists, eradicate support for the guerrillas,7 and displace people from areas of

strategic economic or military importance. Criminal activities such as trafficking,

theft, extortion, kidnappings, and assassination services are often part of their sources

of funding. Paramilitary groups were first created in the 1960s as part of US-

Colombian counter-insurgency projects (with the support of sectors of the local elite)

and began to expand in the 1980s, as large portions of the local capitalist classes

(including large-scale landowners, agribusinesses, mining enterprises, and drug-

traffickers), as well as some foreign companies present in Colombia, took on a leading

role in the creation of paramilitary organizations in various parts of the country. The

1980s and 1990s witnessed a considerable growth in their financial and military

power as well as rapid territorial expansion. Paramilitary bodies, with cooperation

from sectors of the armed forces, police, and justice system institutions, actively

sought to exterminate or at least intimidate any person or group that was considered to

be potential collaborator or sympathizer of existing guerrilla movements.

Since the 1960s, the state’s perception of the principal security threat has

coincided with the paramilitary’s official enemy - the guerrillas. Thus, throughout

major military initiatives sponsored by US administrations, such as counter­

insurgency campaigns against the threat of communism (1960-1980s), followed by the

War on Drugs (1980s-1990s), and finally the War on Terror (2001-onwards), there

7 These are socialist-oriented revolutionary armed groups that seek to take over state power. The largest
guerrilla organization in Colombia today is the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas
Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC).

5
has been a systematic cooperation between state forces and paramilitary organizations.

Regardless o f their ideological covers, all of these “wars” have essentially consisted of
o
military operations and legal measures targeting an “internal enemy” . Jointly, state

and paramilitary violence has facilitated processes of capital accumulation by

repressing social movements, eliminating political opponents, displacing populations,

intimidating journalists and human rights activists, and engaging in social cleansing.9

Although, officially, paramilitary groups demobilized by February 2006 after peace

negotiations with the government, in reality since then there has been an upsurge in

paramilitary violence.

The growth in paramilitary activities and the territorial expansion of such

organizations between 1990 and 2005 has been parallel to the onset of neoliberalism

in Colombia. Starting in 2002, neoliberal restructuring was especially accelerated

under former President Uribe and comprised the privatization of public services and

resources, deregulation of the labour market, increasing the presence of foreign

enterprises (especially extractive industries), and drastic reduction of spending on

social services. The detrimental impacts of these market-oriented policies on human

development are clearly evident as the precarious existence of millions of people

deteriorates and social inequalities widen further. According to United Nations

8 The so-called “internal enemy” (a term used in US and Colombian counter-insurgency discourses), in
reality has never included only the guerrilla, but has typically encompassed leaders (and frequently
members) of non-armed social movements such as indigenous, peasants, women, students, labour
unions, human rights activists, progressive educators, and Leftist political parties.
9 In this dissertation, the term “social cleansing” refers to acts of violence directed against visibly poor
members of society occupying public spaces, such as the homeless, panhandlers, street prostitutes,
some informal vendors, and mentally ill individuals.

6
Development Programme (UNDP) Report from 2011, Colombia’s Human

Development Index10 and life expectancy are among the lowest in South America

(only higher than Bolivia and Paraguay). With poverty, at 45.5 percent, Colombia

ranks as the country with the second highest percentage of the population living below

the national poverty line in all of South America, after Bolivia (UNDP 2011). Thirteen

percent of the population lives in extreme poverty11 (Prensa Latina 2012). Close to 20

percent of the population are homeless (DANE 2009). Around 45 percent of

Colombians work in the informal economy unprotected by labour laws and almost

half of the employed people earn an income less than the legal minimum wage

(Prensa Latina 2012). Around 2.5 million children between the ages of six and

seventeen are forced to work (DANE 2009). The average illiteracy rate is 8 percent

but it is as high as 22 percent among indigenous women (Boletin Virtual 2009).

Approximately 15 percent of Colombian children are malnourished (Holmes,

Gutierrez and Curtin 2008). The growing number of people forcibly displaced from

their land has contributed to an increased concentration in land ownership,

homelessness, and deterioration in nutrition and health.

This bleak picture of human development is accompanied by considerable

wealth inequalities. Based on the UNDP 2011 Report, Colombia has the highest

10The HDI is a composite index measuring average achievement in three basic dimensions of human
development: a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living (UNDP 2011).
11 Extreme poverty here is defined as cases where an individual lives on less than $47 a month (Prensa
Latina 2012).

7
income Gini coefficient12 in the Americas standing at 58.5. Moreover, it is the third

most unequal country in the world after the Comoros Islands and Haiti.

Landownership inequality is particularly acute. Sixty-eight percent of landowners

(mostly small-scale farmers) own only 5.2 percent of Colombia’s fertile land (Richani

2007).

The way poverty and social inequalities have been a steady characteristic of

Colombian society, violence enacted by the dominant classes and the state has been a

permanent feature of its political landscape. Any social movements that have sought

to establish a more egalitarian distribution and control of productive resources have

been met with repression through legal, ideological and especially military means.

Presently this continues to be the case.

While Colombia has been named the most violent country in the West, it has had

the most sustained economic growth of all Latin American nations (Holmes, Gutierrez

and Curtin 2008). It is worth noting that since 1985, while 5,445,406 people have

been forcibly uprooted from their land (CODHES 2012) and more than 2,800 labour

unionists have been assassinated (El Espectador 2012), gross capital formation in

Colombia doubled. Net inflows of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) also reached a

record level in 2005 making Colombia the country with the highest FDI in South

American and also surpassing Mexico. Interestingly enough and parallel to these

12 Measure of the deviation of the distribution of income (or consumption) among individuals or
households within a country from a perfectly equal distribution. A value of 0 represents absolute
equality, a value of 100 absolute inequality. For instance, the Gini coefficient for Canada is 32 (UNDP
2011).

8
developments, the military expanded from a force of 167,000 at the beginning of the

1990s to 441,000 in 2008. The defense budget steadily increased from 2.2 percent in

1990 to almost 6 percent in 2008, representing the largest share of government

expenditure (Richani 2010). Human rights violations by state and paramilitary forces

have continued to take place in substantial proportions even after the so-called

demobilization o f the paramilitary in 2006. During the last five-year period (January

1, 2007 to December 31, 2011), referred to by the Colombian government as a “post-

conflict” era, 1,512,405 people were forcibly displaced (CODHES 2012) and 218

unionists were murdered (USLEAP 2011; El Comercio 2012).

1.1. Paramilitary and State Violence: Significance Beyond Colombia

Holmes, Gutierrez, and Curtin (2008) write:

The Colombian conflict can be understood as containing elements of terrorism,

vigilantism, state repression, revolution, insurgency, guerrilla violence, and
civil war among others. However, instead of being a deviant case, in many
ways the Colombian example is representative of the study of political
violence, which tends to be disjointed, conceptually muddled, handicapped by
a lack of data, and troubled by political connotations in the definitions given
for different types of violence and the relationships among them (6).

The importance of understanding the relationship among processes of violence, capital

accumulation and a deepening of wealth inequalities extends beyond Colombia. As

Sluka (2000) rightfully argues, “There appears to be a direct correlation between the

increasing power and wealth of the elite [within and between countries], the steadily

increasing gap between rich and poor, and the growth of state terror, perhaps the three

most obvious global characteristics of the last quarter of the twentieth century” (cited

9
in Jones 2008, 32). Although the experience of each country is contingent upon its

particular demographic, political, economic, environmental, and cultural

characteristics, the insights we derive from Colombian social processes have

considerable relevance for other parts of Latin America. Neoliberal restructuring of

the economy, along with an impoverishment of the working majority, the presence of

North American enterprises, high levels of violence, human rights abuses of civilians

by state forces, and the formation of paramilitary-like forces, are features that

countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and Brazil have in common to

varying degrees with Colombia (Koonings and Krujit 1999, 2004; Pansters and

Castillo 2007; Rozema 2007; Mazzei 2009).

When it comes to international war, Latin America has been one of the most

pacifistic regions in the world in the past two centuries (Pereira and Davis 2000).

However, the use of violence in the acquisition of land and resources as well as in the

confrontation of peasant and worker mobilizations has historically been a typical

characteristic of most of Latin America. Koonings and Krujit (2004) observe that

social and political violence in the region has appeared to be enduring, despite the

consolidation of formal (political, electoral) democratic systems. The findings of the

UNDP Report of 2011 confirm violence and inequality as the two defining features of

the region currently. According to Heraldo Munoz, UNDP Regional Director for Latin

America and the Caribbean, Latin America has the highest income inequality and the

most violence in the world - the region represents nine percent of the world’s

population but concentrates 27 percent of the world’s homicides (Domingo 2011).

10
Homicide rates13 have been increasing steadily in Latin America since 1984 (Pearce

2010). By 1998, violence was the leading cause of death in Latin America among

people in the 15-44 year age group (Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga 2002). In Colombia,

in particular, there was an increase of 159 percent between 1984 and 94 (from 36.7

per 100,000 to 95) (Pearce 2010). In fact, today Latin America is second only to South

Africa in levels of homicide in the world (Pearce 2010).

While Latin Americans and many people in other parts of the world are aware of

the high prevalence of violence in this region, it is mostly the sensationalist simplistic

accounts presented by mainstream media that the public is exposed to. The systematic

violence employed by the dominant classes and the state’s coercive apparatus remains

largely neglected in favor o f isolated criminal acts in large cities. Numerous scholars

have pointed out that today most Latin American societies are primarily urban. It is

believed that people move to the cities because there are more opportunities, which is

in turn presumed to be sufficient ground for disregarding the question of rural class

structure and land ownership altogether. Consequently, the focus on the “urban” and

the “criminal” obscures the fact that a considerable part of the rural-to-urban

migration is actually an intentional product of displacement (whether direct / forced or

indirect). This often entails an element of violent dispossession carried out by

irregular armed groups and/or state armed forces on behalf of local capitalist sectors

and foreign enterprises. The focus on criminal activities in urban centres also misses

13 It should be kept in mind that, as Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga (2002) point out, the homicide rate is a
limited measure, as it does not take into account of the violence which does not result in death.

11
on the violence targeted at popular movements and social actors such as labour

unions, women’s organizations, and human rights activists, even when these in fact

occur in an urban environment. When reported on, such cases are presented as isolated

incidents rather than a strategy of repression and intimidation against those who in

some way challenge or represent an obstacle to the interests of the dominant classes.

Examples of violence associated with land appropriation, displacement and ownership

as well as the repression of rural and urban workers’ struggles are abundant across

Latin America. Yet, their coverage is largely limited to journalistic accounts. The

latter have been exposing the growing importance of land in recent years.

According to a 2011 report by the UN organization for Food and Agriculture

(FAO), the skyrocketing of food prices has been accompanied by increasing

acquisition of fertile land by MNCs, a process which has been referred to as land-

grabbing14 (Albinana 2011). Millions of hectares of farmland in Latin America have

been acquired by corporations15 investing in the production of food crops and agro­

fuels for export (GRAIN 2010). Land-grabbing involves forced-evictions,

dispossession, migration and the criminalization of those who resist giving up their

land (GRAIN 2011).

It is not only foreign investors who are behind the dispossession currently taking

place in Latin America. Historically and to the present, the political and economic

14 Land-grabbing leads to the privatization of water and the loss of food security and sustainable
livelihoods for small-scale farmers, indigenous people, and independent fishermen. It also leads to the
destruction of ecosystems, depletion of natural resources and enhances unsustainable commodified
models of agriculture.
15 Foreign investors are no longer only American or European but include companies from China,
India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Qatar (Albinana 2012).

12
power of local elites has been derived from landownership, evident in the very

unequal patterns of land distribution. For example, in Brazil, three-and-a-half percent

of landowners have nearly 60 percent of the best farmland, while the poorest 40

percent of farmers have access to merely one percent of the land. Landowners and

logging companies continue to force more people off their land, while their private

armed forces silence land-reform, human rights, trade union and environmental

activists. In a period of 16 years (1985-2001) 1,237 murders linked to land disputes

have been reported in Brazil according to official sources (Frayssinet 2007). This

number does not include all the other human rights violations that do not necessarily

result in death.

In Mexico, the militarization of some regions as part of the War on Drugs16 has

facilitated the operations of extractive industries, as rural activists who organize

resistance against mining companies are targeted by state as well as private security

forces. For instance, Dante Valdez, who engaged in activism against Minefinders17

was attacked and murdered by an armed group of 30 men in Madera. Similarly, in

Peru mining companies hire private security firms made up of former police and

military personnel to target communities who protest the negative environmental and

social impacts of large-scale mining (Ford 2009).

In Venezuela, President Chavez introduced a new law in November 2001 aimed

at land redistribution for the benefit of poor farmers. The refusal of large landowners

16 According to Mexican activists, the War on Drugs has cost approximately 40,000 lives between 2006
and 2011, a period during which the murder rate rose 260 percent (Bird 2011).
17 Minefinders is a Vancouver-based company that operates an open-pit gold mine (Paley 2011).

13
to obey the law was symbolized by their act of publically burning copies of the law

and broadcasting this on television. Since the introduction of the law until 2011,

peasants have faced a campaign of intimidation and violence enacted by the private

armed forces of the landed elite, resulting in the death of 255 peasants (Fuentes 2011).

Paramilitary-like formations are not limited to agrarian conflicts throughout

Latin America. Such forces have also been employed to conduct social cleansing and

confront urban criminal gangs in Central America and Brazil. For instance, across

various cities of Brazil, what Pearce (2010) refers to as “para-state death squads”,

engage in extrajudicial executions of youth gang members as well as other residents in

poor communities. 18

Another reason why the Colombian case bears relevance to other parts of Latin

America has to do with the current militarization as well as decentralization and

privatization of violence underway in Central America, promoted and organized by

the US, the Inter-American Development Bank (IBD), and former Colombian

President Alvaro Uribe. In 2010 the US created the Central American Regional

Security Initiative (CARSI) with a budget of $165 million, which involves the

participation o f private security contractors, the CIA, as well as the US and

Colombian military forces. The main part of CARSI so far has been played by Uribe,

18 In Rio de Janeiro, para-state death squads are composed of off-duty, retired or suspended police
officers, prison guards, and firemen. In the state of Pernambuco, 70 percent of all homicides in 2008
were attributed to death squads or so called extermination groups composed of agents of the state,
particularly police (Pearce 2010).

14
who has been promoting, through a series of conferences19 across Central America,

the Colombian model of decentralized policing through “public-private partnerships”

(i.e. the cooperation between state military forces and private security contractors),

and the expansion of electronic surveillance. Colombian paramilitarism serves as the

blueprint for the design of these police and militarization reforms, which are already

underway in Honduras20, Guatemala and El Salvador (Bird 2011). Such programs are
* 21
couched in state security discourses revolving around narco-trafficking and

organized crime, nonetheless they create conditions conducive to the emergence of

paramilitary structures which would in turn serve to repress social protests and more

specifically, as Bird (2011) observes, communities who contest the concessions given

to companies in palm oil production, petroleum extraction and hydroelectric dams. In

fact, even before CARSI was bom, Colombian paramilitarism was already being

exported abroad. A prime example is Honduras where Colombian paramilitary

'J')
fighters have been employed by various sectors of the Honduran elite (El Tiempo

2009).

19 These conferences are sponsored by the Northern Virginia-based contractor Continental Security and
Interactive Solutions and are attended by presidents and mayors (Bird 2011).
20Colombian armed forces are present in Honduras as part of the security cooperation agreement that
Honduran President Porfirio Lobo signed with Colombia (Bird 2011).
21 The term “narco-trafficking” is used throughout this dissertation in accordance with Palacio’s (1991)
definition of it as the juridical and police transnationalization of the discourse around the trafficking of
illegal drugs. The significance of his definition is that it highlights the function of the term as a political
devise used by governments, particularly the US, to justify repressive, disciplinary social control
operations. I differentiate between “narco-trafficking” and “drug-trafficking”. I use the latter when I am
referring to this activity as an illegal, internationalized business, which, as Palacio (1991) remarks,
supports and contributes to capitalist accumulation.
22 In the August of 2009, two months after the military coup in Honduras, around 40 former United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC) fighters in
Colombia were recruited, with the help of security men working for the paramilitary Eduardo

15
 The decentralization and privatization of violence and intelligence gathering that

is part of the restructuring of the state’s coercive apparatus, combined with an

increased militarization, provides a ripe ground for paramilitary formations.

Paramilitarism, then, continues to be fundamentally important to the economic and

political dynamics of Latin America. It is a phenomenon that is not likely to disappear

any time soon but on the contrary, is expanding throughout the region as a result of

transnational, state-led as well as locally-based private initiatives.

1.2. Theorizing Paramilitarism and the Colombian Armed Conflict

My work addresses certain gaps in the academic literature on: i) violence in Latin

America; ii) the Colombian armed conflict; and iii) the phenomenon of

paramilitarism. It also advances theoretically significant propositions regarding the

role of violence in processes of capital accumulation and primitive accumulation as

embodied by paramilitary forces in the era of neoliberal globalization, thus adding to

existing works such as those by Harvey (2003), Dalla Costa (2004), Bond (2005) and

Richani (2007).

For a while, the predominant focus of the literature on violence in Latin America

had been either on counter-insurgency operations carried out by state military forces

Cifuentes, alias El Aguila, to work for Honduran businessmen and landowners. The monthly salary
offered in Honduras was the equivalent of one-and-a-half million Colombian pesos, plus food and
accommodation (El Tiempo, 2009). Sectors of the Honduran elite have imported and contracted
Colombian paramilitaries to provide security on large estates, sugar-cane and African oil palm
plantations, to combat urban criminal gangs known as the maras, and to back the military coup that
removed President Zelaya from office by attacking Zelaya’s supporters (El Heraldo, 2009).

16
or on revolutionary violence aimed at overthrowing the state. In the past 15 years a

considerable number o f scholars have claimed that violence in Latin America is no

longer political but rather criminal and delinquent (Pearce 2010). So, criminal gangs

such as the maras of Central America and the favela (slum) gangs in Brazil, typically

comprised of poor urban male youth, have become the object of interest. Political

violence is typically conceptualized as either organized by the state or by anti-state

movements. Any violence carried out by actors external to the state, who are not

guerrillas, is perceived as unrelated to the state and void of any political motives.

Thus, non-state and non-guerrilla violence tends to be all lumped into one category

and labelled as criminal, showing little awareness for the need to conceptually

distinguish paramilitary violence from criminal violence.

With regards to the characterization of the Colombian conflict, a considerable

part of the Colombian and some of the North American academic literature have

greatly misrepresented and de-historicized it, leaving the question of violence

detached from the totality of social relations in which it is embedded. Typically, the

conflict has been portrayed either as one between the Colombian state and a narco­

terrorist predatory guerrilla (e.g. Collier 1998; 2000; Randall 1992; Spencer 2001) or

as the confrontation between illegal narco-terrorist groups - guerrillas and

paramilitary - with the state as the middle neutral actor struggling to contain the

violence and the illegal drug trade (e.g. Rangel 2005; Romero 2000; 2003). Neither of

these representations identifies the true historical roots and current driving forces of

this internal low-intensity prolonged war. Since the year 2000, various politically

17
progressive works have been published in North America, challenging both of these

depictions and offering many valuable insights. Their focus, however has been

overwhelmingly on the role of the US government in fueling the conflict (e.g.

Crandall 2002; Livingstone 2004; Murillo and Avirama 2003; Stokes 2005; Toledo,

Gutierrez, Flounders and Mclnemey 2004) and on the various abuses committed by

armed groups and the state against innocent civilians. While such scholarship is

undoubtedly of great importance, it needs to be complemented by analyses of the

significance of local class structures and social inequalities, and how these are

maintained and exacerbated through the use of violence.

The role o f parainstitutional formations, such as “self-defense” forces, in recent

Latin American politics and social conflicts is both notable and notorious (Jones

2008). The development of paramilitarism in Colombia has been crucial to

contemporary processes of capital and class formation, and particularly in land-

grabbing, extractive industries operations, and the repression of struggles again

privatization and austerity reforms. Most accounts of paramilitary groups are

produced by human rights organizations and investigative journalism. Scholarship that

deals specifically with paramilitary forces in Colombia or any other country in the

world is primarily in the form of case studies limited to a particular time period or

geographic area. There are neither works that capture comprehensively the

mechanisms, strategies and logic of paramilitarism, and explain its reproduction and

evolution over time, nor a well formulated and coherent theoretical analysis of this

phenomenon.

18
1.3. Relevance of the Colombian Armed Conflict to North America

The need for a deeper inquiry into the Colombian case becomes even more

pronounced once we consider the multiple links that exist between this South

American country and North America, including migration, solidarity initiatives, the

Colombian imports consumed here in the North (such as bananas, coffee and flowers

- often produced in conditions that violate fundamental labour rights), free-trade

agreements, and the US and Canadian-based corporations operating in Colombia.

Especially over the last decade, both Canada and the US have been deepening the

economic and military (in the case of the US) ties with Colombia.

According to Gordon (2010) Colombia has been a focal point of Canadian

economic and political foreign policy. Canadian companies now hold the dominant

share of the exploration carried out by large enterprises in Colombia. He explains that

Canada’s strengthening of relations with Colombia in the last few years has been due

to Colombia’s abundance of natural resources, aggressive promotion of and support

for foreign investment, market-friendly policies and a strong repressive apparatus

committed to silencing social movements and other challenges to capitalist ventures.

Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper views Colombia as an ally of North America

in the face of anti-neoliberal governments and movements in the region as those in

Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia (Gordon 2010).

19
 Many Canadian corporations in the fields of mining and hydroelectric power,

such as Cosigo Resources Ltd.,23 Embridge,24 and Conquistador Goldmines,25

operating in Colombia have impacted negatively the living conditions of rural

communities - particularly due to the displacement and human rights violations

carried out by state forces and paramilitary groups cooperating with the foreign

companies (Gordon 2008). Canada’s free trade agreement with Colombia26 is a further

step towards consolidating Canada’s access to Colombia’s markets as well as natural

resources. O f course, in the case of the US, in addition to all the kinds of connections

mentioned above, including a free-trade agreement27, there has been a continuous

military intervention, assistance, and presence in Colombia that has played a critical

role in the aggravation of the human rights situation.

Notwithstanding the magnitude of human rights violations in Colombia and the

well-documented relationship between paramilitary forces and the state, various

important North American political figures had expressed their full support for former

23 Cosigo Resources Ltd., a Vancouver-based gold exploration company, was granted an exploration
title in 2009 for the Yaigoje Apaporis, a one-million hectares national park which thanks to the
initiative of the local indigenous population had been created for the purpose of conservation (Castro
2011).
24 Embridge, a Calgary-Based energy corporation is the biggest foreign investor in Colombia’s largest
pipeline, the Oleoducto Central S.A. (OCENSA) pipeline consortium. Thousands of peasants living
along the route of the pipeline have been displaced as part of the security provisions (Gordon 2010).
25 While Conquistador Goldmines, a Canadian / Colombian subsidiary of the US-owned Corona
Goldfields, was acquiring mining concessions in the Department of Bolivar in 1997, the AUC wrecked
terror in the mining areas where artisan miners were operating, by burning villages, assassinating
labour leaders and displacing 20,000 people (O’Connor and Bohorquez 2010).
26 Prime Minister Steven Harper announced the Canadian government’s intention to sign a free-trade
agreement with Colombia during his visit there in July 2007. The agreement was signed on November
21,2008. The legislation was passed in the Canadian House of Commons on June 14,2010 and the
agreement came into effect on August 15,2011.
The US-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement was signed on November 22,2006. The US
Congress passed the agreement on October 12,2011.

20
President Uribe’s administration. In January 2009, outgoing U.S. president George W.

Bush awarded Uribe the Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian award (HRW

2009a). On June 10, 2009, after a meeting with the Colombian president in Ottawa,

Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper stated: “President Uribe and his government

have made very important progress toward sustained peace, security and protection of

human rights in their country” (Canada 2009) - all this while 503 unionists had been

assassinated from the time Uribe became president (August 2002) up to the point

Harper made this statement (ENS 2010). The friendly relationship and support for the

Colombian government has continued under President Santos.

The following is a testimony of a person forcibly displaced by paramilitary

terror who was interviewed by Amnesty International in 2003.

A stick was pushed into the private parts of an 18 year-old pregnant girl and it
appeared through [the abdomen]. She was tom apart ... They [army-backed
paramilitaries] stripped the women and made them dance in front of their
husbands. Several were raped. You could hear the screams coming from a
ranch near El Salado [Department of Bolivar]... (A I2004).

Human rights violations carried out by the paramilitary are explained by a defense

analyst from the US Strategic Studies Institute in the following way: “The atrocities of

the paramilitaries are not acts of abnormal men, but rather the acts of normal men

subjected to and victimized by unremitted violence, who see the disappearance of the

guerrillas as the only sure solution to their plight” (Spencer 2001, 2). Clearly, there is

a serious need for academics, politicians, and policy-makers to have a balanced and

comprehensive knowledge of the current forces that fuel the armed conflict in this

South American country in order to avoid contributing to the further victimization of

21
its civilian population and popular movements seeking social justice and

democratization.

1.4. Intended Contributions

1.4.1. Overcoming the Political - Economic Divide

Holmes, Gutierrez, and Curtin (2008) and Pearce (2010) critique the bifurcation into

political and economic which often divides the literature and inhibits a proper

understanding of the nexus between violence and the economy. As a sociological

work, my dissertation challenges and transcends the disciplinary boundary between

the economic and political fields of academic inquiry by tracing the simultaneous

occurrence and interrelatedness of certain economic and political developments

relevant to violence. Thus, I analyze both the economic underpinnings of violence and

the integral part that violence has played in the capitalist development of the country.

The integration o f findings from these two spheres allows us to grasp better the

intersection o f conflict and development and more specifically, in the case of

Colombia, paramilitarism and neoliberalism.

My work not only acknowledges the relationship between capital and violence

but also reconsiders the way it has been conceived. Despite the widespread belief that

land is an issue of the past, violence today continues to be largely linked to patterns of

land ownership, control and use. While the relationship between violence and capital

accumulation has been historical, today there is a novelty in its expression - coercive

power is strengthened through paramilitary groups and economic power is

22
strengthened through some particularly lucrative activities such as mining,

agribusiness, and drug-trafficking. For instance, the process of enclosure of territorial

mineral endowments and the state’s enforcement of private mineral extraction rights is

a highly politicized and extremely violent process whose goal is to further the interests

o f capitalists, as O’Connor and Bohorquez (2010) point out. The relational approach I

take allows us to move beyond simply denouncing human rights violations, towards a

critical analysis that does not treat the various forms of violence as isolated, temporary

or accidental occurrences, but rather as expressions of trends that must be considered

in relation to larger systems of accumulation.

1.4.2. Primitive Accumulation: The Interaction between the Local and Global

While there have been some works (mostly by North American scholars) that have

critically analyzed the Colombian politico-economic model and have considered the

relationship between capital and violence, their focus has been on the imperialist-led

militarization of Colombia, the central goal of which is to guarantee security for the

operations of foreign enterprises and the implementation of neoliberal reforms that

benefit the latter. However, it must be remembered that Colombia has a strong local

capitalist class whose wealth is based on land ownership, cattle-ranching, agribusiness

(such as African palm), mining, and drug-trafficking. Frequently, the latter or the

“narco-bourgeoisie” as Richani (2007) calls it, invests in all of the previously

mentioned economic activities. Their collective annual income is estimated to be

around four billion dollars (Richani 2007). As O’Connor and Bohorquez (2010)
comment, although neoliberal transformation of Colombia’s mining sector is a classic

case of capitalist expansion of the North through accumulation by dispossession in the

South, it is no less true that the Colombian ruling class instigated the

internationalization of mining over and against popular resistance form artisanal

producers, rural social movements, labour and revolutionary groups. As we can see,

locally-led and foreign-led capital accumulation, facilitated by neoliberal restructuring

occur side by side and are mutually beneficial most of the time. For instance, the

Colombian elite liberalized the economy, thus expanding the opportunities for

foreign-led capital accumulation in return for financial and military assistance for its

state’s coercive apparatus (often channelled into paramilitary groups) which has

helped to solidify their power in the face of resistance and revolutionary movements.

My work explores the way in which the local elite28 employs violence to protect

and advance their interests while aggravating social inequalities and giving rise to

complex and elaborate armed organizations (i.e. paramilitary groups). Based on this

focus I hope to contribute to the academic debate on primitive accumulation by

highlighting how present-day locally-led forms of primitive accumulation operate

within a developing country that prides itself as a long-standing democracy. At the

same time, I take into account the manner in which local power dynamics interact

with the global advance of neoliberalism.

28 The local elite has played a central role in the development of capitalism in Colombia but has been
understudied.

24
 1.4.3. Paramilitarism: Addressing the Conceptual Frontiers and Barriers

Paramilitarism has come to play an increasingly important role in contemporary

armed conflicts as well as violent social environments in different parts of the world,

but has nevertheless remained largely under-studied. Their multi-faceted nature,

destructive capacity, relationship to the state and elite, and the fact that for half a

century they have been one of the principal actors in the Colombian conflict,

altogether make paramilitary forces an intriguing object of study. Should these groups

be characterized as self-defense patrols, private security associations, criminal

organizations, entrepreneurs of violence, warlords, private armies, state-sponsored

death squads, terrorist groups or an armed political movement? The way

paramilitarism is defined is not solely a matter of academic debate. It can have some

very real implications with regards to: i) extending or eliminating the conditions

conducive to further human rights violations; and ii) bringing violators to justice. The

existence of paramilitarism is one of the most important mechanisms that make it

possible for a country to maintain a reputation of a long-standing democracy even

though repression, terror, and armed force are regularly employed against civilians.

My research demonstrates not only the factors that led to the emergence of

paramilitary groups but also the functions they serve and the social sectors that benefit

by their existence.

Another aspect of paramilitarism I examine is the ambiguous space it inhabits

between civil society and the state, not clearly acknowledged by much of the

scholarship, and the way it challenges the boundaries between what we would

25
normally regard as military versus civilian. While there has been a proliferation of a

wide variety of non-state violent actors such as private vigilantism, private police,

privately paid street guardians in the middle class metropolitan districts, private

citizen’s night-watch committees and private protection squads, (Koonings and Krujit

2007), paramilitary forces in Colombia cannot be reduced to any one of these

formations. I reflect on the explanatory capacities and limitations of the notions of

markets of violence, warlordism, and commodification / privatization /

decentralization of violence, for understanding paramilitary activity. In this context, I

problematize the presumed relationship between the strength of the state and the

state’s secured monopoly over the means of violence.

Finally, in response to the absence of a comprehensive conceptualization of

paramilitary organizations in the academic literature and in the face of considerable

distortion in the Colombian and North American mainstream media, I propose a new

analytical framework for: i) understanding paramilitarism in Colombia and the

dynamics and evolution of its relationship with the state; ii) situating paramilitary

bodies within the wider politico-economic context. This framework is grounded in the

Colombian case and can serve as a starting point for discerning key elements in the

foundations and structures of twenty-first century paramilitarism in Latin America.

26
 1.4.4. Global Sociology: The Emerging Transnational Dimensions of

Paramilitarism

Crucial to understanding the social aspects of human experience in our contemporary

world is recognizing the global dimensions of economic, political and cultural

processes, all o f which are embedded in social relations. Thinking globally requires an

ability to grasp the ways in which transnational forces interact with local conditions

and actors, as they are being facilitated, sustained, or contested by the latter.

Paramilitary forces in Colombia have a number of transnational dimensions. As it is

demonstrated in Chapter Five, Six, and Eight transnational linkages exist between

such organizations and actors that sponsor them. Furthermore, local paramilitary

groups have played an important role in the transnationalization of the state and the

penetration o f the national economy by global capital, as it is explained in Chapter

Eight.

1.5. Methodology

I believe that as a researcher and educator my role is to participate in the construction

of a society where human life, well-being, rights and dignity are prioritized and

respected. Such a vision calls for a critical, active, humanizing, and accountable social

research grounded in principles of social justice and aimed at contributing to social

transformation. Hence, the methodological foundation of my work is influenced by

Paulo Freire’s (1970) pedagogy of liberation and Marx and Engel’s ([1859] 1998) anti-

ideological approach. One of the pillars of Freire’s methodology, which is of great

27
relevance to academics, is the idea that in order to contribute to social transformation,

the topics we study must emerge from people’s concrete realities and experiences.

Similarly, the method developed by Marx and Engels, historical dialectical

materialism, is based on the premise that a point of departure for historians and social

scientists must be the material production of life itself - people and the processes that

affect their daily survival. It is only after studying actual conditions that it is possible

to abstract a general pattern or a concept filled with content emerging from lived lives.

Accordingly, the major research questions of this work are tied to concrete social

realities - the hospital worker who participates in a protest against privatization and

later becomes “disappeared”, the families who have to camp in school yards or sports

fields because they have been displaced from their land, the indigenous communities

which resist the exploitation of their land by multinational corporations and

subsequently face police brutality, and other such experiences that speak of the

connection between economic and political processes.

There were three main phases in the research and analysis for my dissertation.

The first phase consisted of reviewing two categories of academic literature: i)

classical writings on state, capital, class, and violence; ii) contemporary scholarship

on violence in Latin America, irregular armed groups, paramilitarism, and the

Colombian armed conflict. Within the second category I examined: a) the types of

violence in Latin America that have been studied the most and the definitions offered

for each; b) the way paramilitary groups and other similar forms of organized private

violence in Latin America and some other parts of the world are conceptualized and

28
defined; c) the explanations given for the persistency of the Colombian armed conflict

- i.e. its causes, current mechanisms that sustain it, major actors and interests; d) the

way the paramilitary in Colombia is conceptualized and described with regards to its

objectives and relationship with state institutions, social movements and various

sectors of society. My emphasis (in terms of quantity and in-depth examination of the

scholarship) was on points c) and d). With regards to these points, I identified the

main recurring themes, the debates and disagreements, as well as the areas that have

not been adequately explored. The review of various forms of organized private

violence (for instance, warlords, private armies, self-defense associations) provides a

better understanding of the different elements that jointly make up the phenomenon of

paramilitarism. The overview of the writings on cases of paramilitarism around the

world serves to situate the Colombian experience within a larger context.

The second stage of the research process involved a comprehensive review of a

wide range of empirically-oriented material drawn from a variety of primary and

secondary sources. I analyzed documents retrieved from the databases of Colombian

and international human rights bodies, research centres, and NGOs, such as the Center

for Popular Research and Education in Colombia (Centro de Investigation y

Education Popular, or CINEP), Open Truth ( Verdad Abierta), the Inter-church

Commission of Justice and Peace (Comision Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz), the

National Trade Union School (Escuela National Sindical, or ENS), the Association of

Family Members of the Detained and Disappeared (Asociacion de Familiares de

Detenidos y Desaparecidos, or ASFADDES), the Consultancy on Human Rights and

29
Displacement (Consultoria para los Derechos Humanos y el Desplazamiento, or

CODHES), the International Centre for Trade Union Rights (ICTUR), the

International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), Amnesty International

(AI), and Human Rights Watch (HRW). I reviewed numerous newsletters, bulletins,

and urgent action calls issued between 2001 and 2011 by various local social

movements and organizations such as the Confederation of Colombian Workers

(Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de Colombia, or CUT) and the Association of

Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (Asociacion de Cabildos Indigenas del Norte

del Cauca, or ACIN). I examined Colombian and international press coverage from

Semana, El Tiempo, El Espectador, BBC and CNN news as well as material from

Colombian and international independent media outlets, such as Noche y Niebla,

Agenda Prensa Rural, and Z-Net, published between 2001 and 2011. I also

considered Colombian, US, and Canadian official state sources. My fluency in

Spanish enabled me to conduct analysis of the broad selection of primary and

secondary material from Latin American academics as well as reports, news alerts,

and articles produced by human rights organizations and media in Latin America.29

I analyzed this large body of material with the purpose of documenting: i) types

of human rights violations carried out by state agents as well as historical and

contemporary paramilitary activity; ii) evidence of the relationship between

paramilitary groups and state institutions (such as the armed forces, the police,

intelligence agencies, and justice system) as well as certain societal groups (such as

29 All translations of texts in Spanish are mine, unless otherwise noted.

30
wealthy landowners, drug-traffickers, merchants); and iii) the political, economic, and

military objectives and consequences of paramilitary activities.

The third stage involved an assessment of the explanatory capacity and

limitations of the literature examined in phase one in light of the data collected in

phase two with regards to: i) the explanations given for the persistency of the

Colombian armed conflict - i.e. its causes, current mechanisms that sustain it, major

actors and interests; and ii) the understanding of the paramilitary - its objectives and

relationship with state institutions, social movements, and various sectors of society.

This provided the foundation for my central argument and the analytical framework,

which I propose for understanding paramilitarism in contemporary Colombia.

1.6. Outline of the Dissertation

Chapter Two reviews major works from Marx, Weber and some contemporary

Marxist scholars, including Miliband (1973), Wood (1981), Jessop (1990), Harvey

(2003), Robinson (2004) and others, with the aim of defining and explaining capital-

labour relations, the state, and violence in capitalist society as well as in the context of

capitalist globalization over the last 30-40 years. The latter part of the chapter

provides an overview of the literature on Latin America with regards to types, causes,

and agents of violence, and particularly works that deal more specifically with some

aspect of the relationship between capital, violence and the state.

Chapter Three begins by examining various types of parainstitutional violence

(death squads, vigilantes, warlords, and paramilitaries). I explore the existing

31
definitions of the term “paramilitary” and some of the case studies that have been

done on illegal armed groups of this nature in Latin America and some other parts of

the world. The second part of the chapter rigorously interrogates the ways in which

the Colombian armed conflict has been portrayed. The last section focuses specifically

on Colombian paramilitarism, by critically analyzing three main approaches to

explaining this phenomenon in the academic literature.

After having reviewed classical and contemporary theories on capitalism, the

state, and violence as well as the main theoretical approaches to conceptualizing the

paramilitary as an armed actor in relation to the state and society, the dissertation then

turns to an empirical examination of the economic and political aspects of the

Colombian conflict, focusing specifically on the causes and consequences of

paramilitarism. Chapter Four traces crucial patterns of class formation, conflict and

struggles throughout Colombia’s history from the time of the Spanish Conquest until

present. Particular attention is given to the role of the state and armed actors in

bringing about or impeding social change. The analysis of key political and economic

processes that have historically structured power relations illuminates the conditions

that have laid the groundwork for the birth of paramilitary organizations.

Chapter Five endeavours to examine the Colombian state’s coercive apparatus in

terms of three types of mechanisms it employs against dissent and popular movements

(law, armed force, and ideology). The chapter discusses how the country’s National

Security Doctrine and the notion of “internal enemy” continue to guide the state’s

counter-insurgency projects, serve to legitimize increased measures of social control,

32
and criminalize social protest and activism. Empirical data revealing the systematic

nature of human rights violations perpetrated by state agents is offered.

Chapter Six analyzes the emergence, dynamics and evolution of paramilitary

organizations in Colombia from the 1960s until 2005. The first part discusses their

sources of funding, objectives, activities, strategies, and targets. The second part

documents the types of violent activities paramilitaries engage in and the different

categories o f people they victimize. The rest of the chapter reveals the penetration,

influence and control over the state’s coercive apparatus as well as other major state

institutions by paramilitary power.

Chapter Seven demonstrates the continuation and in some cases aggravation of

human rights violations that have been carried out by present paramilitary forces,

during the five years following the demobilization of the United Self-defense of

Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC) during 2006-2011 - a period

that has been regarded by government officials as “post-paramilitary”. Political and

media discourses claiming that paramilitarism has been eradicated are contrasted with

data illustrating that the military and economic structures of paramilitary

organizations remain intact. The chapter elucidates why illegal non-guerrilla armed

groups today are of paramilitary nature and are not merely criminal gangs as the

Colombian state characterizes them.

Chapter Eight engages the theoretical literature from Chapter Two and Three in

a dialogue with the empirical material on the historical and present day expressions of

paramilitary and state violence in Colombia from Chapter Four, Five, Six and Seven.

33
In this context, the chapter lays out and explains the guiding principles of the

analytical framework I propose for conceptualizing the phenomenon of paramilitarism

in Colombia.

Chapter Nine summarizes my principal argument and discusses the broader

implications of this study.

34
 Chapter Two: Class, Violence, and the State under Capitalism:

Theoretical Review

The central focus of my dissertation is on the role of violence, exercised on behalf of

the dominant classes by the state or private armed groups, in processes of capital

accumulation30. In this chapter, I review Karl Marx and Max Weber’s theories on

capitalism and the state as well as the work of contemporary Marxist and Latin

Americanist scholars relevant to this subject. The chapter has two main parts. First, I

look at major works from Marx, Weber and some contemporary writers, with the aim

of defining and explaining capital-labour relations, the state, and violence in capitalist

society, as well as in the context of capitalist globalization over the last 30-40 years.

The latter part of the chapter provides an overview of the literature on Latin America

with regards to types, causes, and agents of violence, and particularly works that deal

more specifically with some aspect of the relationship between capital, violence and

the state. I argue that a Marxist analysis of this relationship has the most potential to

explain the dynamics of the Colombian armed conflict today.

My own interpretation of Marx’s work is closest to the theoretical standpoint of

political Marxism, proposed by Ellen Wood. In her article “The Separation of the

Economic and the Political” (Wood 1981), she proposes an alternative to existing

Marxist theory in an attempt to overcome the false dichotomy between the economic

30 Throughout my work I rely on the definition of capital accumulation as the central dynamic of
capitalist development and a process whereby capital is expanded through the production,
appropriation, and realization of surplus value (Marshall 1998).

35
and political fields which causes . .some Marxists to accuse others of abandoning the

‘field of economic realities’ when they concern themselves with the political and

social factors that constitute relations of production and exploitation” (12). In my

view, coercion and violence have typically been perceived as emanating from the

state. The state, in turn, has been conceptualized as belonging to a sphere of its own,

separate from society and the economy. Consequently, coercion and violence have

been treated commonly as unrelated to economic processes. I, on the other hand, am

interested in exploring the state and state-sanctioned violence with regards to the

function they serve within the terrain of capitalist class domination. As the rest of the

chapters in my dissertation illustrate, in Colombia, violence for the purpose of capital

accumulation (through dispossession and repression) is not exclusively exercised by

the state but also by paramilitary groups. Even so, the state continues to be the

primary agent that makes this possible. This is why the approach of political Marxism

is particularly helpful for understanding the relationship between the class, violence

and the state under capitalism.

2.1. Theoretical Views on Capitalism

2.1.1. Capitalism

Marx provides us with a theory of capitalism that is grounded in people’s real lived

experiences and oriented towards social action. His work rejects the way classical

political economy takes the categories that characterize the capitalist mode of

production and presents them as abstract, eternal, universal and natural, thus,

36
emptying them of their social content. He detaches us from the normality that has

come to surround the various elements of the capitalist structure such as commodities,

exchange, and labour, and reveals the social relations they conceal. In The Grundrisse

(1941/1978), and Capital (1867/1990) and Marx exposes the social bases o f the

capitalist mode of production by placing social relations at the centre of analysis. “The

object before us, to begin with, material production. Individuals producing in society -

hence socially determined individual production - is, of course, the point of

departure” (Marx 1941/1978, 222). The subjection of labour to capital, where the

worker has no other way to survive but to sell his/her labour-power, constitutes the

essence of capitalist production and the key characteristic of social relations under

capitalism. As he explains in Capital (1867/1990), capitalism could have never

emerged on the basis o f merchant capital (buying from one market and selling in

another) and interest-bearing capital alone. It requires

...the confrontation of, and the contact between two very different kinds of
commodity owners; on the one hand the owners of money, means of
production, means o f subsistence, who are eager to valorize the sum of values
they have appropriated by buying the labour-power of others; on the other
hand, free workers, the sellers of their own labour-power, and therefore the
sellers of labour. Free workers, in the double sense that they neither form part
of the means of production themselves, as would be the case with slaves, serfs,
etc., nor do they own the means of production, as would be the case with self-
employed peasant proprietors. The free workers are therefore free from,
unencumbered by, any means of production of their own (Marx 1867/1990,
874).

Commodity production and exchange become a compulsion under capitalism, as those

who labour no longer have control over the means of production. The most important

37
commodity that sustains capitalism is labour-power31, since it has the property of

creating value and reproducing itself (Marx 1867/1990).

A very different account of capitalism is presented by Max Weber, a historian

and sociologist, described by some scholars as “imperishable for the world”

(Dreijmanis 1989). According to Weber, a capitalist economy exists where property is

an object of trade and is utilized by individuals for profit-making enterprise (Kaster

1979). Profit-making is an activity that seeks new powers of control over goods on a

single occasion repeatedly or continuously (Weber 1947). For Weber, modem

capitalism is distinguished by its emphasis on rationality criteria, such as calculability,

planning, budgeting, use of free-labour, and a legal-rational framework (Whimster

2004). In fact, the central characteristic feature of capitalism is rationalism: exact

calculation or reckoning in general. One of Weber’s primary objectives in his study of

capitalism was to explain the unique factors present in the West that made the

development of capitalism possible. (Dreijmanis 1989).

Many scholars have treated the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit o f Capitalism as

Weber’s distinctive contribution on the origins of capitalism (Collins 1986). In it

Weber argues that religious ideas contributed considerably to the development of

capitalism in the West. “Capitalism existed in China, India, Babylon, in the classic

world and in the Middle Ages. But in all these cases this particular ethos was

lacking”; the ethos he refers to includes the virtues of frugality, industry and

31 Labour power is the potentiality of a person to labour which is purchased by the capitalist. Labour is
the use of labour-power itself (Marx 1867/1990,283).

38
punctuality (Weber, 1930, 52). He explains that in addition to suitable economic

institutions, the spirit of modem capitalism, which broke with economic

traditionalism, was a key to a vigorous capitalist development. This spirit can be

described as an attitude that energizes the individual in economic matters, making him

or her more alert to profit opportunities and also making work more central to his or

her life. This change in mentality arose from ascetic Protestantism, particularly the

doctrine of a “calling”, where one’s work becomes the fulfillment of a God-given task

(Swedberg 2002). According to Weber (1930), these religious ideas promoted hard

work, thriftiness, savings, the accumulation wealth, and investment in new enterprises.

Profit-making and hard work were seen as signs that one is chosen to be saved by

God. In other words, the religious ideas produced a kind of mentality favourable to the

development o f capitalist economic activity. Eventually, economically productive

work came to be accepted and valued as a way of life.

Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate

purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as a
means for the satisfaction of his material needs. This reversal of what we
should call the natural relationship, so irrational from a naive point of view, is
evidently as definitely a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all
peoples not under capitalistic influence (Weber 1950, 53).

Weber’s later work, General Economic History, explains that other factors, in addition

to the rational spirit and economic ethic that created modem capitalism included:

economic institutions (the rational enterprise, rational accounting, the modem state,

the free market, free labour, rational technology and the commercialization of

economic life), and political forces (citizenship, the rational state) (Swedberg 2002).

39
Interestingly, in this latter work, Weber (1923/1961) argues that the doctrine of the

calling gave “a fabulously clean conscience” to the entrepreneur and also supplied

him with “industrious workers” who were willing to accept “ruthless exploitation”

(367). As Wood (1981) concludes, Max Weber, insists on a purely “economic”

definition of capitalism without reference to extraneous social factors thus, evacuating

the social meaning o f capitalism in deliberate opposition to Marx.

2.1.2. Class Relations under Capitalism

Even though the concept of class has been subjected to numerous criticisms, the

reality o f class remains today. As Miliband (1973) argues, “Working class across

countries remains a distinct and specific social formation by virtue of a combination

of characteristics which affect its members in comparison with the members of other

classes; the most obvious characteristic is that they get least of what there is to get and

who have worked the hardest for it” (16). Marx’s concept of class is an invaluable tool

for understanding social relations under capitalism. To discuss class, we need to first

comprehend the connection between the production process and social relations. In

other words, it is necessary to grasp social bases of the production process and thus,

the relations o f production . Marx clearly lays out this connection in his lecture

“Wage Labour and Capital.”33 To begin, people must modify nature in order to make

32 The relations of production are the relations of ownership, control, and access that revolve around the
means of production.
33 This work was published in 1849 in Neue Rheinische Zeitung and was later refined by Marx and
appeared in 1859 as part of A Contribution to the Critique o f Political Economy.

40
it useful for their survival. They do so by entering into relations with each other.

Production therefore is social and the relations that arise from it are interwoven into

the very fabric of society. “The relations of production in their totality constitute what

are called the social relations, ...” (Marx 1847/1978, 207). Throughout history, the

relations of production are transformed with the change and development of the

material means of production.34 “Capital, also, is a social relation of production. It is a

bourgeois production relation, a production relation of bourgeois society” (Marx

1847/1978,207).

The existence of a class which possesses nothing but its capacity to labour is

crucial to the existence of capitalism (Marx 1847/1978). Marx shows us that the

existence of the labouring class and the capitalist class35 is not eternal, as portrayed by

classical political economy, but is rather dependent on the establishment of capitalist

relations of production. The labouring class (propertyless) produces but has no

ownership over the means of production and lacks control over the production process

and the products o f its labour.36 The capitalist class (property owners)37 does not

labour but owns the means of production, controls the labour process, and

34 The means of production can include tools, machines, land, raw materials, buildings and
infrastructure.
35 In Capital and The Communist Manifesto, Marx comments on other classes, apart from workers and
capitalists.
36 Classical political economy conceals the estrangement inherent in the production process by ignoring
the relationship between the worker and production. On the worker’s estrangement (alienation) from his
own labour process, the products of his labour, and nature, see Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts
o f 1844.
3 Marx identifies the three main classes under capitalism as wage-labourers, capitalists, and
landowners. The latter’s source of income is ground-rent (Marx 1894/1978). In my work, the term
“capitalist classes” includes both urban capitalists as well as rural capitalists (including landowners,
plantation producers, cattle-ranchers and owners of mining enterprises).

41
appropriates the products of labour. According to Marx, the antithesis of

propertylessness and property must be understood as an antithesis of labour and

capital (Marx 1847/1978). Class38 inevitably rests upon exploitation since in order for

a capitalist class (the owners of capital) to exist, surplus-value must be produced by

workers and appropriated by the capitalist.

“The formation of surplus-value, and therefore the transformation of money into

capital, can consequently be explained neither by assuming that commodities are sold

above their value, nor by assuming that they are both at less than their value” (Marx

1867/1990, 263). Marx critiques the idea that “...surplus value has its origins in a

nominal rise of prices or in the privilege that the seller has of selling too dear” by

referring to it as a “mistaken theory” (264). He shows us that the transformation of

money into capital only happens when the owner of the means of production finds

free workers selling their own labour power available on the commodity market. In

other words, it is the labour-power of the worker that generates capital by entering

into contact with the means of production - wage labour “... creates capital, i.e., the

kind of property which exploits wage labour, and which cannot increase except on

condition of begetting a new supply of wage labour for fresh exploitation” (Marx and

Engels 1848/1987, 33). The way in which capital is produced, or the “secret of profit-

making” consists in the production of surplus-value which is the difference in the

38 As I use the term “class” throughout this chapter, I am referring to class under capitalism.

42
value of necessary labour versus surplus labour.39 Profits, then, are created in the

process of production. As Wood (1981) observes, the category of capital has no

meaning apart from its social determinations. Therefore, to understand capital we

must first and foremost acknowledge that it is a social relation based on exploitation.

“The mechanism of surplus-value is a particular social relation between appropriator

and producer. It operates through a particular organization of production, distribution,

and exchange” (Wood 1981, 13). As it will be illustrated in the subsequent chapters,

paramilitarism is an important component of a social structure that rests upon

exploitation since it is a strategy that facilitates or enables an increase in the extraction

of surplus value in two ways: i) first and foremost by supplying the principal

prerequisite for the extraction of surplus value - the availability of workers who have

no other way to survive but to sell their labour - accomplished through the

dispossession of people from their means of subsistence; and ii) by repressing

workers’ discontent over the terms of labour, thus enabling capitalists to increase the

rate of exploitation.

A crucial point to take away here is that just as capital is a social relation, so too

is class. Class analysis as an explanatory method is still powerful today. The concept

of class is useful to understanding the global neoliberal economy today as long as we

39 Necessary labour is the labour performed to produce the value necessary to ensure the reproduction
of the labour-power (i.e. the sustenance of the worker so he/she can be alive). Surplus labour, is the
labour carried out after the necessary labour has been performed. “The fact that half a day’s labour is
necessary to keep the worker alive during 24 hours does not in any way prevent him from working a
whole day. Therefore, the value of labour power and the value which that labour-power valorizes in the
labour process are two entirely different magnitudes; and this difference is what the capitalist had in
mind when he was purchasing the labour-power” (Marx 1867/1990,300).

43
think of class as a fluid relation of inequality between those who own and control

resources and means of production and those who do not. The essence of this relation

of inequality, is in Marx’s words characterized by “...the poverty of the great majority

who despite all their labour, have up to now nothing to sell but themselves, and the

wealth of the few that increases constantly although they have long ceased to work”

(Marx 1867/1990, 873). In the Colombian case, as it is demonstrated in the following

chapters, such a relation of class inequality can be discerned in different contexts

(urban, rural, legal, illegal) and therefore can have different expressions (e.g.

landowners versus rural wage-labourers; mining enterprises versus miners; cocaine

laboratory owners versus workers; brothel owners versus the sex workers). We should

not conceptualize class only as fixed category with a specific content (e.g. factory

owners versus factory workers) since this would mean that we render useless the

concept by neglecting the form in favor of its content.

To reiterate, the very concept of class implies inequality. Class inequality, in

turn, commonly leads to class conflict - “ ...the most rapid possible growth of capital,

however much it may improve the material existence of the worker, does not remove

the antagonism between his interests and the interests of the bourgeoisie, the interests

of the capitalists.”40 Marx’s notion of class interests is based on the historical

developments he observed where masses of people from the country side were

transformed into wage-labourers. Their common situation created common interests.

40 On the question of how the growth of capital affects wages Marx (1847/1978) states: “the more
productive capital grows, the more the division of labour and the application of machinery expands ...
the more competition among the workers expands and the more their wages contract” (216).

44
As the mass o f working people became united and constituted itself as a class in a

struggle against capital, the interests it defended were class interests (Marx

1847/1978). The presence of class struggle in most societies characterized by classes

is captured by Marx’s famous quote in The Communist Manifesto “The history of all

hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Marx and Engels

1848/1987, 21). Once again, the notion of class conflict and class struggle is highly

relevant today. As it is shown in Chapter Four, throughout Colombia’s history up to

the present moment, different sectors of the working class, such as rural plantation and

agricultural workers, water transportation, mining, garment industry, and factory

workers have formed movements that confront rural and urban capitalists. Several

armed class-based revolutionary movements have also emerged.41

Weber’s work, particularly General Economic History and The Theory o f Social

and Economic Organization, demonstrates an awareness of the existence of class

inequality under capitalism, but approaches the subject in a very different way. To

begin with, although he locates the basic institutional unit of modem capitalism in

production (Gerth and Mills 1946), does not focus on the social relations of

production. Weber (1923/1961) recognizes that the components of modem rational

capitalism include “ ... private appropriation of all the means of production and their

concentration under the control of entrepreneurs” (178) and the “... economic

41 In this dissertation I will not analyze how revolutionary or anti-systemic in character have any of
these movements been based on their objectives and strategies. However, the important point is that all
of these armed and unarmed social movements have challenged in some way the status quo, have
represented an obstacle to the capitalist relations of production by challenging its exploitative character,
and have consequently become a target for repression and violence carried out by state and private
armed forces.

45
compulsion of workers to sell their labour on the market” (208-209). He admits that

capitalism would be impossible without the propertyless who sell their services “under

the compulsion of the whip of hunger” (209). Moreover, he realizes that the

motivation of economic activity under the conditions of a market economy for those

without substantial property is the fact that they run the risk, “of going without any

provision”, but also adds that they work because they value economically productive

work as a mode of life (Weber 1947 p.214).

Weber repeatedly states that where pure market conditions prevail (i.e.

capitalism), property and the lack of property are the basic categories of all class

situations. A class situation is "... the typical probability of procuring goods, gaining

a position in life and finding inner satisfactions derived from the relative control over

goods and skills and from their income-producing uses within a given economic

order” (Weber 1922/1978, 178). Class is defined as all persons in the same class

situation.

In our terminology, ‘classes’ are not communities; they merely represent

possible, and frequent, base for communal action. We may speak of a ‘class’
when (I) a number of people have in common a specific causal component of
their life chances, in so far as (2) this component is represented exclusively by
economic interests in the possession of goods and opportunities for income,
and (3) is represented under the conditions of the commodity of labour
markets ... It is the most elemental economic fact that the way in which the
disposition over material property is distributed among a plurality of people
meeting competitively in the market for the purpose of exchange, itself creates
specific life chances. Other things being equal, this mode of distributions
monopolizes the opportunities for profitable deals for all those who provided
with goods, do not necessarily have to exchange them. It increases, at least
generally, their power in price wars with those who, being propertyless, have
nothing to offer but their services in native form or goods in a form constituted
through their own labour, and who above all are compelled to get rid of these

46
 products in order barely to subsist. This mode of distribution gives to the
propertied a monopoly on the possibility of transferring property from the
sphere o f use as a ‘fortune’ to the sphere of ‘capital goods’ (Weber
1922/1946a, 181-182).

Examples of positively privileged property classes are rentiers, merchants, industrial

and agricultural entrepreneurs, bankers and financiers. Negatively privileged property

classes are the labourers (Weber 1922/1978). As we can see, although Weber

acknowledges the existence of class differences as well as their material base and

consequences for people, he explains these differences through people’s “life

chances” under the conditions of the market. “It means that only those who own

property have the possibility of shifting what they own from the sphere of benefit as

‘wealth’ to the sphere o f employment as ‘capital’: hence they alone can become

entrepreneurs and have the chance of directly or indirectly participating in capital

profit” (Weber 1922/1946a, 187). He mentions that capitalism needs workers who

have no other way to survive but to sell their labour. Yet, he offers no conceptual tools

that can explain how the propertyless class makes possible the existence of the

capitalist class by generating capital. He also does not conceptualize capital as a social

relation between two classes.

Capital is the sum of money in terms of which the means of profit-making

which are available to the enterprise are valued ... Profit and correspondingly
loss, is the difference between the valuations as revealed by the initial balance
and that drawn at the conclusion of the period ... A profit-making enterprise is
a system of action capable of autonomous orientation to capitalist accounting
(Weber 1947,192).

While Weber does not deny class struggles (Gerth and Mills 1946), he does not

see them as inevitable or as an important mechanism for social change. Interestingly,

47
he does not use the term “struggle” but rather “action”. He argues that a common class

situation does not necessarily give rise to societal action. Moreover, he warns against

“... that kind o f pseudo-scientific operation with the concepts of ‘class’ and ‘class

interests’ so frequently found these days, and which has found its most classic

expression in the statement of a talented author [referring to Lukas], that the

individual may be in error concerning his interests but that the ‘class’ is ‘infallible’

about its interests” (Weber 1922/1946a, 183). He explains that class-conscious

organization succeeds most easily when it has immediate economic opponents,

comprises large numbers of people, is able to easily organize them, and leads people

toward readily understood goals, which are imposed and interpreted for them by the

intelligentsia (Weber 1922/1978).

A key argument from Weber’s writings on class that is highly relevant to the

subject of this dissertation is that capitalism would not be possible without a

propertyless class. Indeed, we can see that the struggle over land and the efforts on

behalf of sectors of the capitalist classes to create and reproduce landlessness continue

to be a central dynamic in Colombia’s present political economy.

2.1.3. Class Relations in the Past 30 Years o f Capitalist Globalization

Since its inception capitalism has had a globalizing tendency which has been well

captured throughout Marx’s work, including his famous lines in The Communist

Manifesto: “The need for a constantly expanding market for its products chases the

bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe” and “The bourgeoisie ... draws all,

48
even the most barbarian, nations into civilization ... It compels all nations, on pain of

extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production.” (Marx, K. and Engels, F.

(1848/1987, 24-25). Yet many scholars agree, that the last 30-40 years have witnessed

a qualitatively new stage o f world capitalism. One of the scholars within the Marxist

tradition who has produced some impressive accounts of the features and mechanisms

of capitalist globalization is William Robinson.42 He sees globalization as the

underlying structural dynamic that drives social, political, economic and cultural

processes around the world. For the past 500 years, according to Robinson (2004),

capitalism has been an expansionary system with two dimensions: intensive

(commodifying public and community spheres that formerly lay outside the logic of

capital accumulation; i.e. the commodification of social relations) and extensive

(expanding outward to new geographic areas that were previously outside the system

of commodity production). Today we experience the core of globalization, which

Robinson (2004) describes as the near culmination of the five-hundred-year process of

the spread o f capitalism around the world in its extensive and intensive dimensions.

This last epoch of global capitalism dates back to the world economic crisis of the

1970s and began to take shape in the 1980s when the prospects for capital to make

profits were restored. This author lists four key developments that characterize this

new epoch: i) new capital-labour relation based on the deregulation and flexibilization

42 There are many other distinguished writers on the subject of capitalist globalization, such as
Wallerstein (2000), Petras and Veltmeyer (2001), Amin (2003), and Harvey (2003), to mention few.
Robinson’s (2004) work on capital-labour relations has been chosen here due to his eloquent account
that simultaneously captures how the working and the capitalist classes have been affected by global
forces during the last 30 years, and more specifically, his concept of the Transnational Capitalist Class
(TCC).

49
o f the labour-force; 2) new rounds of extensive and intensive expansion, including the

vast acceleration o f primitive accumulation worldwide as “ ...millions have been

wrenched from the means of production, proletarianized, and thrown into a global

labour market shaped by transnational capital” (24); iii) creation of a global legal and

regulatory structure to facilitate globalized circuits of accumulation (e.g. World Trade

Organization); and iv) the imposition of the neoliberal model43 on countries

throughout the world making it a single unified field for global capitalism (Robinson

2004, 16).

The first one of these developments is of a particular interest. The new capital-

labour relations were established gradually through one of the components of

neoliberalism - deregulation of the labour-market. This has been characterized by a

cheapening, disciplining, informalization44 (casualization) and flexibilization of

labour. The flexibilization of the workforce facilitates practices such as subcontracting

and contract labour, outsourcing, part-time work, temporary work, informal work,

home-work, sweatshops and other oppressive production relations. It also leads to

43 Neoliberalism is a system of policies that promotes the interests of private enterprises by eliminating
any remaining barriers to capital’s search for resources, labour, and markets. The essential components
of neoliberalism are trade liberalization, privatization, deregulation, and austerity. Trade liberalization
refers to the removal of any trade barriers, such as tariffs and quotas. Privatization requires the sale of
public enterprises and assets to private owners. Deregulation constitutes the removal of government
restrictions and interventions on capital to allow market forces to act as a self-regulating mechanism.
This process can take on the form of labour or financial deregulation for example. Austerity entails the
drastic reduction or elimination of budget expenditures for social programs and services (Weaver
2000). Neoliberalism can also be described as an ideology, a culture and a philosophical worldview that
takes classical liberalism and individualism to an extreme (Robinson 2004).
44 The informal sector includes self-employed and casual workers whose income is unregulated,
irregular and may include nonmonetary forms of compensation. The working conditions are
unregulated in terms of labour legislation, taxes, social security, benefits, health and safety (Robinson
2004).

50
deunionization, lengthening of the working day, increases in absolute surplus value

extraction, increase in super-exploited immigrant communities, and new gendered and

racialized hierarchies among labour. In sum, we see more intensive more intensive

and extensive forms of exploitation and alienation than in previous capital-labour

relations.

Another feature of the new class relations, has been the rise of a “...new global

underclass of supernumeraries or ‘redundants’ who are alienated and not absorbed

into the global capitalist economy and who are structurally under- and unemployed”

(Robinson 2004, 23). These hundreds of millions of human beings, the author

explains, are in the ranks of a global army of reserve labour and at the same time hold

down the wages and leverage ability among those absorbed into the global economy.45

A third characteristic of class relations worldwide in this age of “savage

capitalism”, as Robinson (2004) calls it, has been the gradual disappearance of the

peasantry (small-scale subsistence-oriented farming) and their conversion into wage-

labour on agribusiness farms, factories or simply informal workers.

The changes in class relations in this most recent epoch of capitalist

globalization are linked to each country’s incorporation into the global economy

which, according to Robinson (2004), constitutes a transnational process that includes

the transnationalization of states and classes. In addition to the new features of class

45 Similarly, but in much greater depth, Standing’s (2011) Precariat brings up the question of
the growing number of people around the world who work in short-term jobs or the informal sector,
live in precarious conditions, and lack social protection.

51
relations mentioned in the previous pages, a particularly interesting dimension is the

rise of new dominant groups and capitalist fractions tied to the global economy, or as

the author calls them, the Transnational Capitalist Class (TCC). The latter is

comprised of the owners and managers of transnational corporations (TNCs) and the

private transnational financial institutions that drive the global economy. The TCC has

developed a transnational class consciousness. “In this sense it is a class-for-itself;

whereas the global working class is a class-in-itself but not yet for-itself ’ (Robinson

2004, 31). As far as the potential for class struggle is concerned, Robinson (2004) is

quite a realist by recognizing that globalization

... acts in a dual manner ... as a centripetal force for capitalists, who must
integrate their holdings and operations into global production chains ... [it] acts as
a centrifugal force for working and popular classes who face new cleavages as
they are drawn into self-defeating webs of competition with their homologues
around the world. The fragmentary nature of economic and social processes
associated with global capitalism militates against inter-subjective solidarities
(29).

The concept of the TCC is particularly useful since it helps to highlight the fact

that capitalist power does not originate only in core capitalist countries. Consequently,

the notions of “First” and “Third” world no longer need to be based only on a

geographic dimension, but can rather come to signify social dimensions (classes) that

can be found within the same geographic space. Since one of the aims of this

dissertation is to bring forth the importance of the local capitalist class in Colombia

(some of which forms part of the TCC) and its links to global capital, Robinson’s

(2004) work is highly relevant.

52
2.2. Capital, Violence, and the State

In this section, I explore the essential functions of the state under capitalism as well as

the relationship between: i) the state and the capitalist class; ii) the state and the means

of violence / coercion; and iii) capital and violence. To begin with, I would like to lay

out some key propositions by political Marxism as an approach which allows us to

grasp better the relationship between the state and the capitalist class by viewing the

state as connected to the totality of social relations (including the economic sphere)

and thus, overcoming the division between the political and the economic. As Wood

(1981) explains, what distinguishes Marx’s analysis so radically from classical

political economy is that it creates no sharp discontinuities between economic and

political spheres since he treats both the sphere of the economy and the sphere of

politics, as a set of social relations. She points out that the political dimension is not

extraneous to capitalist relations of production even though on the surface it appears

to be so:

The political sphere in capitalism has a special character to the extent that the
coercive power supporting capitalist exploitation is not wielded directly by the
appropriator and is not based on the producer’s political or juridical
subordination to an appropriating master. Nevertheless, a coercive power and a
structure of domination remain essential aspects of this exploitive relation,
even if the ostensible freedom and equality of the exchange between capital
and labour mean that the ‘moment’ of coercion is separate from the ‘moment’
of appropriation ... In a sense, then, the differentiation of the economic and the
political in capitalism is, more precisely, a differentiation of political functions
themselves and their separate allocation to the private economic sphere and the
public sphere of the state. This allocation reflects the separation of political
functions immediately concerned with the extraction and appropriation of
surplus labour from those with a more general, communal purpose (Wood
1981,17-19).

53
Overcoming the political-economic divide is a crucial element in the analytical

framework I propose in Chapter Eight for conceptualizing paramilitarism, particularly

for understanding how this phenomenon can have simultaneously an economic,

political and military dimension. At the same time, the Colombian case represents a

slight variation from one of the points Wood (1981) makes above. She theorizes

capitalism as involving two formally separate but interconnected processes of

coercion: i) economic coercion accomplished by dispossession / primitive

accumulation; and ii) extra-economic (political) coercion exercised by the state that

sustains the conditions for the former. According to her, the moment of coercion

appears as separate from the moment of appropriation. In Colombia, with the

existence o f paramilitary groups, the state and the appropriator are approximated

further, since these organizations embody the fusion of the state and capitalists’

initiatives to protect and advance processes of accumulation. Consequently, the two

processes of economic and extra-economic coercion merge as capital engages in

violence directly.

2.2.1. Marx: The Role o f the State in Capitalist Domination

Throughout his work, Marx is uncompromising about the essential role of the state in

the development of capitalism, securing the conditions for capital accumulation and

maintaining the dominance of the bourgeoisie. “The executive of the modem state is

but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” (Marx

and Engels 1848/1987, 23). The growing power of the capitalist class has been at all

54
times accompanied by their political advance. It is for this reason that Marx believes

that class struggle is ultimately a political struggle and expresses this in The

Communist Manifesto and The Poverty o f Philosophy. “Every class struggle is a

political struggle” (Marx 1848/1987, 29) and the struggle of class against class is

a political struggle” (Marx 1847/1978,218).

Now I will look at the how several Marxist scholars have theorized the

relationship between class domination and the state under capitalism. To begin with, a

rather neutral definition o f the state in capitalist society has been provided by Jessop

(1990) who argues that the state is a social relation which can be analyzed as the site,

the g enerator and the p roduct o f strategies:

First the state system is the site of strategy - system of strategic selectivity -
whose structure and modus operandi are more open to some types of political
strategy than others. Thus a given type of state, a given state form, a given
form o f regime, will be more accessible to some forces than others according
to the strategies they adopt to gain state power; and it will be more suited to
the pursuit of some types of economic or political strategy than others because
of the modes of intervention and resources which characterize that system
(260).

According to Jessop (1990), the state apparatus comprises an ensemble of institutions

whose function is to define and enforce collectively binding decisions on the members

of a society in the name o f their common interest or general will.46 He poses the

question o f whether the state can be capitalist47 and answers it by explaining that state

46 Jessop (1990) proposes an analysis of the state on three levels: the forms of its basic institutional
separation from the rest of the society whose general interests it is supposed to represent; the nature of
its internal organization, modes of political calculation and operating procedures; and the political
practices and discourses in and through which the common interests are articulated and promoted.
7 Jessop (1990) explains states can be differentiated according to the type of social formation they are
associated with. For example, if social formations are identified in terms of their dominant mode of

55
power can be capitalist to the extent that it creates, maintains or restores the conditions

required for capital accumulation in a given situation. Alternatively, it is non-capitalist

to the extent that these conditions are not realized. He examines and critiques different

Marxist theories of the state such as the “capital logic school” and the “class logic

school”.48 His strongest critique is towards the Marxist-Leninist approach which sees

the state as an instrument of the capitalist class. Jessop’s reasoning is that there may

be situations where the economically dominant class does not fill the key positions in

the state apparatus or where the state acquires a considerable measure of

independence from the dominant class. Still, he admits that the state has the political

and ideological capacities to disturb, as well as to promote capital accumulation and

that in a class-divided society the state has the responsibility for securing the

conditions for capital accumulation. Yet, he allows for the possibility that this may not

always be the case by pointing out that there is no direct translation of capitalist

imperatives into the goals of the state49

Miliband (1973) and Wood (1981) offer a more radical view of the state in

capitalist society claiming that the class which owns and controls the means of

production, we can speak in terms of feudal, absolutist, capitalist and state socialist types of state.
“These would be formally adequate to the relevant mode of production in the sense that their basic
institutional forms are consistent with the dominant economic form and the resulting economic
dynamic” (344).
4 For more on Jessop’s review of “capital-logic” and “class-logic” as well as other Marxist approaches
to state theory see Jessop’s (1990) State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in its Place.
49 According to Jessop (1990), the most important structural features of a typical capitalist nation-state
which are potentially supportive of the capitalist economic order are: the state’s institutional separation
from the core of capitalist production and its concomitant “constitutionalized” monopoly over die
means of coercion, its form as a tax-state and the role of money as the economic matrix of its activities,
and the role of law and rational-legal bureaucracy as the administrative matrix of these activities.

56
production uses the state as its instrument for the domination of society. Like Jessop

(1991), Miliband (1973) defines the state as an institutional ensemble; however, he

argues that it is precisely through state institutions that the capitalist class exercises

power even though it does not actually govern. Moreover, the state elite, or those

occupying positions o f power with regards to policy-making are drawn from the upper

and middle-classes (the classes to which entrepreneurs belong) and it is logical that, as

government officials, they would defend the interests of business. Miliband has no

reservations about whether the state facilitates capital accumulation - “ ... the fact that

governments accept as beyond question the capitalist context in which they operate is

of absolutely fundamental importance in shaping their attitudes, policies, and actions

in regard to the specific issues and problems with which they are confronted” (70). He

rejects the “democratic-pluralist” view which assumes that power is competitive,

fragmented and diffused and that the state has to respond to the demands of competing

interests, as a result o f which “... everybody, including those at the end of the queue,

get served” (4).

Wood (1981) explains that for Marx, “ ...the ultimate secret of capitalist

production is a political one” (13) because the powers of the state make possible the

expropriation of the direct producer, the maintenance of absolute private property for

the capitalist, and his control over production and appropriation. Her analysis is quite

useful in that it goes on to explain the reason why the connection between the state

and the capitalist class is diluted and may not appear so obvious at a first glance. The

two moments of capitalist exploitation - appropriation and coercion, according to

57
Wood (1981) are allocated separately to a “private” appropriating class and a

specialized “public” coercive institution, the state. Nonetheless, it is the coercive force

of the state that sustains a private “economic” power which “... invests capitalist

property with an authority to organize production itself, an authority probably

unprecedented in its degree of control over productive activity and the human beings

who engage in it” (19). Miliband (1973) points to why governments in capitalist

countries inevitably work for the capitalist class.

Because of their fundamental commitment to the system of which

businessmen are an intrinsic and major p a r t... and because of their belief that
the national interest is inextricably bound up with the health and strength of
capitalist enterprise, governments naturally seek to help business and
businessmen ... Even when government appears to interfere with capitalist
interests, it is for the purpose of maintaining the rights of property in general
(70-72).

Even under a welfare state, “there are no more persistent and successful applicants for

public assistance than the proud giants of the private enterprise system” (72).

Miliband (1973) and Wood (1981) provide an invaluable contribution to the

advancement of Marx’s view on the state, by applying it to contemporary capitalist

society. Although their arguments are based on the experience of Western capitalist

societies, I find them extremely relevant to understanding the contemporary relations

between the state and the capitalist classes in most of Latin America, particularly in

Colombia. Miliband (1973) exposes the role of governments in defending capitalist

interests through laws and policies as well as the function of other institutions such as

the justice system, military, mass media and educational system in securing

favourable conditions for capitalist domination. Wood (1981) revives the political

58
character of Marx’s theoretical project and elucidates with exceptional clarity on how

capitalist expropriation and exploitation divide the arena of political and economic

action and this structural separation (which scholars have replicated into a conceptual

separation) has served as the most effective defense mechanism available to capital.

As I demonstrate in the subsequent chapters, the very separation between the

economic and the political obscures where power really lies and inhibits a proper

understanding of the interrelatedness among paramilitary forces, the state, and the

capitalist classes in Colombia. Marx, Miliband, and Wood’s works offer a very

effective and practical theoretical framework which can be applied to understand

paramilitarism as the embodiment of the relationship between capital, violence, and

the state. I also find very valuable insights in Jessop’s (1990) writings, particularly in

his insistence on precision and specificity when it comes to any propositions about the

relationship between state and class - “... when we assess the capitalist character of

the state, it is essential to specify which particular conditions deemed contingently

necessary either for a specific accumulation strategy and/or a particular regime of

accumulation are being secured, in what respects, over which time period and to what

extent” (354). This is precisely what Chapter Five, Six, and Seven of this dissertation

aim to illustrate.

2.2.2. The Role o f the State in the Past 30 Years o f Capitalist Globalization

In line with Marx’s view on the role of the state in capitalism, Robinson (2004),

argues that “ ...The state is itself a class relation that institutionalizes historical

59
constellations o f class forces embedded in social relations of production ... A state is

a moment of these class power relations congealed in a set of political institutions”

(189). Thus, the state as a class relation also becomes transnationalized under

globalization. The emergent transnational state50 (TNS) is a concept that can help us

understand how national and supranational state institutions around the world are

transforming through globalization, as the practices and ideologies of those who

operate them have become tied in a variety of ways to the promotion of global capital

accumulation. (Sprague 2011). According to Robinson (2004), the function of the

TNS is to serve global capital accumulation. The main ways in which this is done is

by adopting fiscal and monetary policies that ensure macroeconomic stability,

providing the basic infrastructure necessary for global economic activity, and

providing the instruments of social control (coercive and ideological apparatuses).

“Transnational capital and its agents acquire their newfound power vis-a-vis (as

expressed within) national states, which may act as transmission belts and filtering

devices but are also transformed into proactive instruments for advancing the agenda

o f global capitalism” (Robinson 2004, 35). Contrary to the argument that state power

has shrunk as a result of globalization, the transnationalization of the state has entailed

a reorientation of certain state services and resources away from the working classes

and towards private (especially transnational) capital. A prime example of this has

been the massive privatization across many regions of the world, where public assets

50 The TNS comprises national states, supranational political forums, and supranational economic
forums (such as IMF, WTO, and WB) (Sprague 2011).

60
have been transferred to private capital. In sum, the dynamics of the relationship

between the state and the capitalist class may have taken on a new expression, but in

essence remain the same. The nascent global network of state institutions has become

interpenetrated by the TCC. “The state, rather than disappearing or returning, is

continuing to transform but in ways peculiar to the epoch of global capitalism”

(Sprague 2011,6).

2.2.3. Capitalism and Violence: M arx’s Primitive Accumulation

Now that I have discussed Marxist definitions of the state as well as the relationship

between the state and the capitalist class, I turn to the question of the use of violence

by the state and capital. Marx’s most extensive account of the relationship between

capitalism and violence is found in the section on primitive accumulation in Capital

Vol. I. As mentioned earlier, the onset of capitalism was made possible by the

interaction between the owners of the means of production and those who had to sell

their labour-power in order to survive. Marx critiqued classical political economists,

such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo, for not offering an adequate explanation of

how these two social classes came about or in other words, for discouraging inquiries

into the concrete social processes through which capital was formed. They normalized

capitalist relations of production by presenting them as economic facts completely

disembedded from any power relations. Marx ridicules the notion that capitalists are

wealthy because they are diligent and frugal and workers are poor because they are

“lazy rascals” - “Such insipid childness is everyday preached to us in the defense of

61
property” (Marx 1867/1990, 873-874). He argues that the departure point of

capitalism is the forcible separation of people from their means of subsistence (i.e.,

land). The process which divorces the worker from the ownership of the conditions of

his own labour “ ... is a process which operates two transformations, whereby the

social means of subsistence and production are turned into capital, and the immediate

producers are turned into wage-labourers” (Marx 1867/1990, 874). Once the direct

producers have been expropriated (robbed of all other ways of survival), they have

only one option: to enter the exploitative relationship offered by those who have now

come to monopolize the means of production. “So-called primitive accumulation,

therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the

means of production” (Marx 1867/1990, 874-875). He highlights the role of violence

by demonstrating how the history of this expropriation “... is written in the annals of

mankind in letters of blood and fire” (875) and that “In actual history, it is a notorious

fact that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, in short, force, play the greatest

part” (874). His powerful and detailed historical account of the transition from

feudalism to capitalism in England between the 1400s and 1700s illustrates the

expropriation of small-scale landholders (including serfs and independent peasants),

the appropriation of common lands, and the sell-off of state and Church estates.

The process of primitive accumulation in that historical period consisted of a

number o f mechanisms: legislation, armed force, the public debt, the international

credit system, and colonialism. The first two are of particular interest here. After the

Civil War of 1642, most of the landed ruling class in England was no longer feudal in

62
nature and there was a drive towards a transformation of what used to be feudal

property51 into commercial farms (capitalist property). Peasants became either

employed as agricultural wage-labourers, became tenants on such farms, or migrated

to towns. Legislation and armed force were two very important instruments that were

employed to expropriate peasants and to subsequently convert them into proletariat. In

the 15th and 16th centuries, small peasant properties and common lands were usurped

through individual acts of violence. Marx rightfully describes capitalism as “ ...

th
dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt” (926). By the 18

century, the law itself became “ ... the instrument by which the people’s land is

stolen...”52 (Marx 1867/1990, 885). Legislation53 was a key instrument for the

conversion of “...land into a merely commercial commodity, extending the area of

large-scale agricultural production, and increasing the supply of free and rightless

proletarians...” (885).

Legislation and armed force were not only applied during the process of

separating the rural population from the land, but also in the transformation of

expropriated people into wage-eamers. We should note here Marx’s recognition of the

crucial role played by the state in enforcing mechanisms of primitive accumulation

51 Under feudalism, land was not an absolute private property. The landlord had rights to it in return for
military service. Peasants had use rights to it in exchange for services and agricultural produce.
52 "The Parliamentary form of the robbery is that of ‘Bills for Inclosure of Commons’, in other words
decrees by which the landowners grant themselves the people’s land as private property” (Marx
1867/1990, 885); “...3,511,770 acres of common land which between 1801 and 1831 were stolen from
them and presented to the landlords by the landlords, through the agency of parliament...” (Marx
1867/1990, 890).
53 Examples of such laws include the abolishment of the feudal tenure of land and the Bill for Enclosure
of Commons.

63
and protecting the interests of the bourgeois class in general. In order to address the

issue o f social order as the number of expropriated increased, legislation was used to

criminalize those who did not participate in the capitalist system of production (such

as beggars and delinquents) and ordered the use of most horrifying forms of physical

punishment. Marx provides a long list of examples54 of this “bloody legislation” from

the late 15th to 17th centuries, such as “... whipping and imprisonment for sturdy

vagabonds. They are to be tied to the cart-tail and whipped until the blood streams

from their bodies ...” (899) and “ ... the ear-clipping and branding of those whom no

one was willing to take into service” (901). The use of violence by the state on behalf

of the capitalist classes was manifested in the combination of laws and violence-based

mechanisms to enforce those. Marx (1867/1990) eloquently summarizes it in the

following way: “Thus were the agricultural folk first forcibly expropriated from the

soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded and

tortured by grotesquely terroristic laws into accepting the discipline necessary for the

system of wage-labour” (899).

Marx’s account illustrates that the process of primitive accumulation is vital to

the creation and survival of the capitalist mode of production since it generates the

principal elements necessary for its functioning - the availability of wage labour,

natural resources, and markets for commodities. The creation of a dependent labour

force which had no other means of survival was an indispensable factor for the

54 For more such examples see Chapter 28 “Bloody Legislation against the Expropriated” in Capital
Vol.I.

64
development of capitalism. Another substantial accomplishment that served as an

impetus was the opening of access to natural resources through the change in property

rights, particularly land, as the latter now became an absolute property. Furthermore,

as modes of self-provisioning disappeared as a result of the eviction of the agrarian

population from the land, there was a creation of demand for capitalism’s products.

Once capitalist relations of production are established, primitive accumulation

mechanisms continue to be at work: “The rising bourgeoisie needs the power of the

state, and uses it to ‘regulate’ wages, i.e. to force them into the limits suitable for

making a profit, to lengthen the working day, and to keep the worker himself at his

normal level o f dependence. This is an essential aspect of so-called primitive

accumulation” (Marx 1867/1990, 899-900).

According to Marx there were other moments of primitive accumulation that

relied on violence - conquest and colonialism in the Americas and India, the

enslavement of the indigenous in the Americas, and the slave trade of African people.

“The treasures captured outside Europe by undisguised looting, enslavement and

murder flowed back to the mother-country and were turned into capital there” (Marx

1867/1990,917).

65
 2.2.4. The Theoretical Debate over Primitive Accumulation

The debate within Marxism over the meaning and relevance of Marx’s concept of

primitive accumulation has been a long-standing one.55 On one side we find scholars,

such as Zarembka (2002), who maintain that primitive accumulation was tied to a

particular historical epoch preceding capitalism. In that sense, the essence that

characterizes it is a time-specific dimension - a transition between two modes of

production. On the other side of the debate, primitive accumulation is seen as defined

by its systematic character - the separation of the conditions of production from the

labourer - which is constitutive in the form of capital and has to be reconstituted

continuously as capital constantly returns to its beginning (Bonefeld 2001). My use of

the concept to examine the role of violence within Colombia’s political economy is

based on this second interpretation. Capitalist production depends upon the

reproduction of the capitalist-wage labour relation. For this relation to exist, in turn, it

is necessary to prevent workers’ access to the means of subsistence. As Marx clearly

states, “As soon as capitalist production stands on its own feet, it not only maintains

this separation, but reproduces it on a constantly extending scale” (Marx 1867/1990,

874). Given that working class struggles, which represent a refusal to accept capital’s

requirements as natural laws, are a continuous element of the capitalist relations of

production, capital must continuously engage in strategies of primitive accumulation

to recreate the basis o f accumulation. In other words, the inherent continuity of social

55 This is not meant to be an exhaustive review of this debate. For more on the latter, one of the best
sources is The Commoner (www.thecommoner.org).

66
conflict within capitalist production therefore implies capital’s inherent need for

processes of primitive accumulation. Even within established capitalist relations,

methods of primitive accumulation are put into use every time the producers set

themselves as an obstacle to the reproduction of their separation from the means of

production (De Angelis 2001). An example of this is the removal of agricultural

producers from the countryside and the consolidation of more privatized control over

resources, which is prevalent in today’s era of globalization (Glassman 2006). As

Harvey (2003) has put it, “A general re-evaluation of the continuous role and

persistence of the predatory practices of ‘primitive’ or ‘original’ accumulation within

the long historical geography of capital accumulation is ... very much in order ...”

(144).

Among the Marxist literature that views primitive accumulation as the

foundation of the capitalist social relations and the social constitution through which

the exploitation of labour subsists (Bonefeld 2001), several trends can be identified.

The first consists of literature describing the ways in which non-capitalist societies are

brought into an exploitative relationship with capitalist countries, in the process giving

birth to the peripheralization of the former.56 The second type of scholarship examines

present-day forms of wealth transfer from the developing to the developed world

through the imposition o f neoliberal policies, such as debt servicing, trade agreements,

56 The works of Samir Amin, Andre Gunder Frank, and Immanuel Wallerstein are an example of this
kind of literature.

67
foreign investment and privatization.57 The third kind of application of the concept of

primitive accumulation has been in explaining the commodification of previously

public goods and services and the loss of social protections in Western nations,

leaving the working class even more vulnerable and facilitating surplus extraction by

capital.58

Not much has been written on forms of primitive accumulation at work on a local

level that contribute to the emergence and consolidation of class inequalities within

developing capitalist countries. Examples of authors who have addressed this question

are Shivji (2005) and Bond (2005) on Africa, even though not directly referring to this

concept.

Another limitation around the current-day usage of the concept of primitive

accumulation is that when used in the context of developing countries, it has

overwhelmingly been deployed to analyze the extraction of surplus by the North from

the South. However, local capital in the so-called Third World, with the support of the

state, plays far too crucial a role in the dispossession and denigration of millions of

human beings to be overlooked in the manner that it has been.

An equally important issue lacking sufficient attention is the fact that armed

force continues to be a key mechanism in the process of dispossession and capital

accumulation. While there is much in Marx’s work to suggest that primitive

57 An example of this approach are Harvey’s (2003) work on imperialist practices of exploiting uneven
geographical conditions and Bond’s (2005) research on the dispossession of sub-Saharan Africa. Others
who have demonstrated processes of this nature without explicitly using the term “primitive
accumulation” include Veltmeyer (1997), Robinson (1996), Petras (2003), and Chomsky (2003).
58 See Harvey (2003) and De Angelis (2001).

68
accumulation is an inherent and essential part of capitalism and is therefore recurring,

there is not much explicit discussion on coercion remaining as one of the principal

elements in the separation of workers from the means of production and the

maintenance of this separation. Perhaps for this reason, a considerable part of Marxist

literature assumes that once capitalist social relations are established and normalized,

the silent economic compulsion is what primarily disciplines the working class. Only

few authors59 have openly recognized the presence of violence and repression as

mechanisms of primitive accumulation today:

Just as at the end of the 1400s, when bloody legislation against the
expropriated led to the mass hanging, torture, branding and chaining of the
poor, so today the surplus or inadequately disciplined population of the planet
is exterminated through death by cold and hunger, epidemic, formally declared
war, genocide, military and police repression (Dalla Costa 2004,2).

My work uses Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation to examine the

Colombian internal armed conflict as a product of intersecting historical relationships

- mainly the impoverishment of the greater part of the population and the acts of

violence that dispossess and keep people inside exploitative social relations. Chapter

Four traces how methods of separating workers from the means of production have

manifested themselves in Colombia throughout major historical periods and have

continued today particularly in the proletarianization of small-scale producers (i.e. the

creation of landless peasants) and the repression against social movements that oppose

the dominant politico-economic model currently in place. Chapter Six and Seven

59 Such authors include Harvey 2003, Dalla Costa 2004, and Bond 2005.

69
illustrate how the phenomenon of paramilitarism enables dispossession and

repression.

Quite a different way of conceptualizing the relationship between the state,

capital, and violence is offered by Weber. The next two sections review key insights

from his theory o f the state. Section 2.2.8 concludes by reflecting on the relevance and

applicability of Marx’s and Weber’s theories of the state and capitalism to

understanding present-day connections between processes of capital accumulation and

violence.

2.2.5. Weber: The State and Its Monopoly over the Means o f Violence

In his famous lecture “Politics as a Vocation” Weber begins his definition of the state

by saying that sociologically the state cannot be defined in terms of its ends, but

should rather be defined in terms of the specific means that are peculiar to it.

The state is that human community which within a defined territory

successfully claims for itself the monopoly of legitimate physical force ...
Today the relation between the state and violence is an especially intimate one
... If no social institutions existed which knew the use of violence, then the
concept o f ‘state’ would be eliminated, and a condition would emerge that
could be designated as ‘anarchy’ in the specific sense of the word ... The state
is a relation of men dominating men, a relation supported by means of
legitimate (i.e. considered to be legitimate) violence (Weber 1919,1-2).

As we can see, inscribed in his definition of the state, is the notion of violence - the

state has a monopoly over the legitimate exercise of violence as a means of

domination within a territory. While violence is not the normal or sole means of the

state, Weber highlights that it is what is specific to the state. He explains that the

70
development of the modem state involves the expropriation of the autonomous

and ‘private’ bearers of executive power who stand beside him [the prince], of those

who in their own right possess the means of administration, warfare, and financial

organization” (Weber 1919, 6) and compares this process to the expropriation of the

private producers throughout the development of capitalism. It is an essential

characteristic of the modem state that the administrative staff be separated from the

material means of administrative organization. Now let’s turn to Weber’s view of the

role of violence under capitalism.

2.2.6. Weber: Capitalism as a Peaceful Economic System

Gerth and Mills (1946) point out that Weber sees the military, religious, political and

juridical institutional systems as functionally related to the economic order in a variety

of ways. Nonetheless, according to these authors, he keeps the spheres of economic

and political power clearly distinct, unlike Marx who is, in their words, “less careful”

about distinguishing among the two. This separation is precisely what Wood (1981)

critiques, as discussed earlier, since it occludes the link between coercion and

capitalist domination. In his discussion of capitalist economic activity, Weber

repeatedly detaches any activity he defines as economic from the use of violence.

Economic action is a peaceful use of the actor’s control over resources, which
is primarily economically oriented ... The use of force is unquestionably very
strongly opposed to the spirit of economic acquisition in the usual sense.
Hence the term ‘economic action’ will not be applied to the direct
appropriation o f goods by force and the direct coercion of the other party by
threats of force (Weber 1947, 160).

71
He labels all non-peaceful economic actions influenced by economic considerations as

“economically-oriented” but not “economic”. “Profit-making is economic if it is

oriented to acquisition by peaceful methods” (Weber 1947, 191). While Weber (1947)

recognizes that the appropriation of the means of production by the capitalists is

dependent on protection by force, he distances capitalism from violence:

... certainly the modem economic order under modem conditions could not
continue if its control of resources were not upheld by the legal compulsion of
the state; that is, if its formally ‘legal’ rights were not upheld by the threat of
force. But the fact that an economic system is thus dependent on protection by
force, does not mean that it is itself an example of the use of force (Weber
1947, 161).

While he sees the monopoly over the use of violence as one of the central features of

the state, he does not see violence as an essential element of capitalism. One of the

reasons for this is that he does not theorize the state as an entity operating on behalf of

the capitalist class. Weber seems preoccupied with emphasizing quite frequently that

non-peaceful activities, even if underlain by economic motives, should not be

considered “economic” or in other words capitalist. Furthermore, any case where

violence is used for a profit-making activity is categorized by him as exceptional or

non-typical capitalism. He gives an example of factors that must be treated in special

terms - “... criminal acquisition; that is acquisition by force or fraud in violation of

the rules of an order” and states that this is “...o f relatively little interest” (Weber

1947, 254).

72
 In addition to criminal profit-making activity, the other context in which Weber

gives attention to violence is in the case of colonial and imperialist capitalism.60 “In

general and at all times, imperialist capitalism, especially colonial booty capitalism

based on direct force and compulsory labor, has offered by far the greatest

opportunities for profit” (Weber 1922/1946b, 168).61 Apart from criminal activity and

colonial and imperial forms of capitalism, Weber does not see violence as a central

element in the development of capitalism the way Marx does. Weber (1947) claims

that

from a historical point of view, the expropriation of labour has developed since the
sixteenth century in an economy characterized by a progressive development of
the market system, both extensively and intensively, by the sheer technical
superiority and actual indispensability of a type of autocratic management oriented
to the particular market situations, and by the structure of power relationships in
the society (247).

While Weber, like Marx, recognizes that capitalism requires a pool of propertyless

wage-labourers, he is not interested in how propertylessness was created to begin

with. The entire process of primitive accumulation is non-existent in his accounts of

the origin and development of capitalism.

60 By imperialist capitalism, Weber refers to a situation in which profit interests are the motives of
political expansion. Similarly, colonial capitalism, takes place where profit are derived from the
commercial exploitation of conquered territories thanks to political prerogatives such as politically
guaranteed trading monopolies, shipping privileges, the politically determined acquisition and
exploitation of land as well as compulsory labour (Gerth and Mills 1946).
61 Moreover, he explains that “Increasing opportunities for profit abroad emerge again today especially
in territories that are ‘opened up’ politically and economically, that is, brought into the specifically
modem forms of public and private ‘enterprise’ ... The safest way of guaranteeing these monopolized
profit opportunities to the members of one’s own polity is to occupy it or at least to subject the foreign
political power in the form of a ‘protectorate’ or some such arrangement.” (Weber 1922/1946b).

73
 2.2.7. Marx versus Weber on Capitalism and Violence: Concluding Remarks

Marx’s writings on the state, capital, class, and violence, as well as those of the

Marxist scholars discussed earlier, have a better explanatory capacity and relevance to

today’s politico-economic reality in most of Latin America and specifically Colombia

that does Weber. This is not to say that a Weberian perspective does not have much to

offer. On the contrary, in Weber’s theories we find numerous propositions that truly

reflect the reality of capitalism and the state. For instance, he argues that “The state ...

is an instrument of legitimate violence (or rather, is seen as legitimate) supporting the

relationship of domination of human being over human being” (Weber 1919, 132).

Another statement which is directly applicable to the reality of paramilitarism in

Colombia is “... the right to physical force is ascribed to all other group bodies and

individual persons only to the extent that the state itself permits it” (Weber 1919, 2).

This has a great significance to understanding the Colombian state’s tolerance of

paramilitary groups, as I demonstrate in the subsequent chapters. Furthermore, I find

one statement as particularly important to the current reality of forced dispossession in

Colombia today: “ ...scarce land is one of the original and foremost objects of forceful

acquisition. For conquering peasant communities, the natural way is to take the land

directly and to wipe out its settled population” (Weber 1947, 165).

Weber does not deny class inequalities and the existence of coercion as an

instrument to guarantee the rights of the propertied classes. However, these subjects

are not central but rather peripheral to his analysis. This has resulted in several

conceptual/structural faults in Weber’s work. First, he treats the state as autonomous

74
from class relations. While defining the state, he explicitly states that he is not

concerned with the purpose of the state. Thus, he does not bring to the forefront the

importance of the state’s role with regards to securing the conditions necessary for

capital accumulation (i.e. the interests of the capitalist class). Secondly, he overlooks

the crucial function of violence and forced dispossession throughout the establishment

of capitalist relations of production. As Marx shows us in his work on primitive

accumulation, capital was not the result of frugality and thriftiness but of theft,

dispossession, robbery war, and enslavement. What Weber sees as exceptions to

normal capitalism in fact constitutes the essence of capitalism. Thirdly, Weber’s

theory of the state would not be able to account for cases where the latter does not

have a complete monopoly over the means of violence; yet it remains strong (i.e.

where a state with a strong coercive apparatus co-exists with other armed groups that

even though are outside the parameters of the state are not counter-state), as is the

case with paramilitary groups in Colombia. The existence of the latter contradict

Weber’s theory of the state, which says that the process of state formation requires the

elimination o f all other armed groups and that failure to do so may result in the

collapse of the state and subsequently anarchy. It is not surprising that Weberian-

oriented scholars who have attempted to explain paramilitary groups through the

“weak state” / “failed state” argument62 have offered insights which are a gross

distortion o f the current reality in that country.

62 Scholarly literature on paramilitarism in Colombia as well as the concept of state capacity are
examined in Chapter Three.

75
 Two important points must be made here with regards to the limitation of

Weber’s theory o f the state to understanding the current reality of violence under

neoliberalism in most of Latin America. Even if the state does not have a complete

monopoly over the means of violence, it does not mean that: a) the capitalist class

does not have a control over the means of violence, since non-state armed groups can

work on behalf of the capitalist classes; and b) the state is weak or in danger of

collapsing, since illegal armed groups affiliated with the capitalist class do not

challenge the power of the state as long as the state has as its first priority defending

capitalist interests. In other words, whether the state has a complete monopoly over

the means of violence is no longer the most important question. Since the focus of my

dissertation is the role of violence in processes of capital accumulation, what is of

concern here is whether agents of violence outside the state are there to defend the

interests of the capitalist classes and whether and to what degree the state tolerates

them.63

A Marxist approach gives us the possibility to place violence at the centre of

analysis on capital accumulation, since both the political and the economic are part of

social relations. Given that Marx makes visible the connection between state and

capital, as well as between violence and capital, there is no conceptual barrier to

explaining the existence of violence enacted by groups outside the state which are

63 In Colombia there are violent actors who do not represent the capitalist classes and fight against the
state (i.e. guerrilla groups), however they are not the focus of this dissertation. I am interested in the
violence enacted by the economically and politically dominant sectors of society because this is the
type of violence that is tolerated and facilitated by the state, yet, is under-investigated.

76
tolerated by it. Marx provides us with the conceptual framework through which we

can grasp and make sense of the state-paramilitary symbiosis because both the state

and these armed groups function in favor of the capitalist classes as it is illustrated in

the following chapters. I believe that a Marxist analysis is better suited to

understanding capitalism and violence in Colombia and capitalism’s tendency to

violate human rights.

2.3. Capitalism and Ideology

Marx and Engels’ work on ideology is particularly important for analyzing the

ideological mechanisms that accompany state and paramilitary violence and sustain

the structures of power in Colombia. It is also useful as a method of critical inquiry for

analyzing existing representations of the Colombian armed conflict and the

phenomenon of paramilitarism. According to Marx and Engels (1846/1968), the

economic relations existing at a given historical stage of development are reflected in

the political and ideological structures. Therefore, the state, laws, social

consciousness, and knowledge apparatuses of various disciplines are an expression of

the social relations corresponding to a particular mode of production. The relationship

between power and knowledge is best captured by one of Marx and Engels’

(1846/1968) well-known phrases:

The ideas o f the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas ... The class
which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the
same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally
speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are

77
 subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than...the relationships which
make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance (61).

The ruling class tries to present its interest as the common interest and to give its ideas

the form of universality and present them as the only rational universally valid ones.

The primary element in the production of ideology is divorcing the ruling ideas from

the class that produced them by representing them as natural and in the common

interest and consequently, creating the impression that ideas rather than material

conditions are the primary movers of history. This process has three steps to it, which

Marx and Engels (1968) call the “three tricks”. First, the ideas of those ruling are

separated from their origin (i.e. the actual rulers). Once presented as entities on their

own, a “mystical” connection or an order among these ideas is established (i.e. there is

some kind of a relation between the ideas). However, we are prevented from

attributing the connection among them to their common origin and are made to

perceive it as a sight of credibility of the false explanation that has just been created.

Lastly, the ideas are then attributed to persons considered to have credibility, such as

scholars and politicians. “Thus the whole body of materialistic elements has been

removed from history and now full rein can be given to the speculative steed” (p.64).

As a result, theory or common knowledge established by the media can become the

filter through which social reality is read and social reality serves to be an evidence of

that theory or ideology. The particular economic and political interests which the ideas

promote are obscured and thus the aim to secure hegemonic domination (which is at

the heart of the process of ideology production) remains invisible.

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 According to Bannerji (2001), an anti-ideological analysis entails an inquiry into

“how visibilities and invisibilities, silences and occlusions, inclusions and exclusions

that are intrinsic to certain modes of knowing and how these modes / conceptual

practices are encoded in substantive representational forms” (24). Thus, an anti-

ideological critique has two constitutive aspects: the first is the content, made up of a

body of particular concepts / representations, and the other is the conceptual practice

or the epistemological method that has generated this content. This requires not only

replacing “false” content with “true” one, but looking at the social relations shaping

knowledge production (Banneiji 2001). In sum, unless we treat ideology as a problem

of epistemological method (where we explore what produces these false ideas, whose

interest they defend, and what social relations they serve to reproduce), we would not

be able to transcend the cycle of competing truth claims. In this dissertation, I have

applied this anti-ideological, critical, reflexive, and practical method in two ways: i) to

examine the role that many Colombianists and some scholars of paramilitarism have

played in maintaining and re-enforcing its dominance (Chapter Three) and ii) to

analyze the ideological production of the Colombian state’s coercive apparatus

(Chapter Five).

79
2.4. Capital, Violence, and the State in Latin America

Violence64 has been a constant feature of the Latin American political landscape from

colonial to contemporary times. As Pearce (2010) has put it, “... the history of Latin

American nations from their foundational myths to their historical birth is dripping

with blood. But violence is not confined to the distant past. From the twentieth to the

twenty-first century Latin American nations have experienced every conceivable form

of violence” (287). There are numerous typologies of violence,65 some specific to

Latin America, while others more general. For instance, the WHO has put forward

one that includes self-directed, interpersonal, community and collective violence

(Pearce 2010). One concept that has been repeatedly referred to in the context of Latin

America has been “structural violence”, which:

is inflicted by the conditions prevailing in the structures of society which

prevent access to basic public services and to housing, education, health care,
or employment; constraining life chances of people; this interpretation of
violence makes it possible to understand some violent responses by individuals
or political groups to bring about revolutionary social change; it is argued that
political violence is a response to structural violence (Briceno-Leon and
Zubillaga 2002,41).

Structural violence has been regarded often as both as a type of violence as well as a

cause of other types o f violence. Similar to Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga (2002), the

Brazilian archbishop Camara, in his work Spiral o f Violence sees structural violence

as the cause of the “revolt of the young” (revolutionary) and the “government’s

64 The World Health Organization defines violence in the following manner: “The intentional use of
physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or
community that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological
harm, maldevelopment or deprivation” (Pearce 2010).
65 See Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga 2002, Rozema 2007.

80
repression of this revolt” (cited Pearce 2010). In the same vein, Robinson (2004)

argues that the unequal distribution of wealth and power is a form of structural

violence against the poor majority and it generates collective protest which in turn

provokes state repression. Another common way in which violence in Latin America

has been categorized is: i) political (enacted by the state and guerrilla groups; ii)

economic (enacted by drug-traffickers and street criminals); and (iii) social (domestic

violence) (Rozema 2007).

The division of violence into political and economic categories creates several

difficulties for a comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted and multilayered

nature of violence in Latin America today. One of them is the neglect (by typically the

non-Marxist literature) of the economic motivations behind political violence.

Another is that violence is most easily recognized as political only when it is state-

sanctioned. However, when it is enacted by armed groups working on behalf o f the

capitalist classes, such as landowners, mining companies, drug-traffickers, and so on,

for the purpose o f advancing their economic interests, it is not labelled as political.

The danger here is that by dissociating this kind of violence from the political sphere,

the state’s support or tolerance for this kind of violence (arising from the relationship

between the state and the capitalist classes) is obscured.

A related consequence is that scholars who adhere to the political-economic

distinction have a hard time determining in which category (political or economic)

paramilitary forces should be placed. The confusion arises from the fact that on some

occasions these actors are described as political in nature (since they combat the

81
guerrilla and share the right-wing ideology of the state). Alternatively, they are

associated with drug-traffickers and are principally viewed in terms o f their criminal

activities. Hence, this conceptual fragmentation between the economic and political

has impeded a proper understanding of paramilitarism66 in its totality as a

phenomenon that inhabits simultaneously both spheres. Furthermore, this logic has

been utilized to reinforce the Colombian state’s present claims about the eradication

of paramilitary groups.67

Another characteristic of existing typologies that needs to be problematized is

their tendency to place the issue of violence against women into the realm of private /

domestic / social violence, when in fact women have been victimized by violence of a

politico-economic nature in countries such as Guatemala, Mexico and Colombia, for

being political leaders, members of social movements, or simply for being associated

with “the enemy”.

While the subject o f collective violence in Latin America has generated a vast

array of studies, it is possible to identify three dominant fields of scholarship

according to the violent actors upon which the focus is placed. The first area

comprises works on counter-state violence (that enacted by armed organizations

seeking to take over state power with the purpose of bringing about a structural

transformation o f society by constructing new models of economic and political

66 See Chapter Three for a discussion of the literature on paramilitarism specifically and Chapter Eight
for a new analytical framework for understanding this phenomenon.
67 See Chapter Seven.

82
organization, production, and distribution of wealth - also known as revolutionary68

violence). These works were mostly published in the 1960s-1990s, reflecting the

emergence o f various revolutionary or rebel movements in countries such as

Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Colombia. The second field of literature

focuses on state-sanctioned violence or state terror (carried out by state agents against

subversives or those considered to be their sympathizers along with political

opponents and any other individuals and organizations perceived to be Left-leaning. It

covers the military dictatorships and authoritarian regimes 1960s-1990s. The third

area of scholarship (1990s onwards) deals with criminal or delinquent69 violence

aimed at material gain (e.g. robbing, kidnapping, and trafficking illegal commodities).

A very recent and small, but growing body of literature has taken up the question of

current forms of parainstitutional violence and their links to the state.

The following pages provide a succinct overview of important contributions

from diverse theoretical backgrounds on the topics of: i) state violence, ii) urban

criminal violence during the last two decades, and iii) parainstitutional violence. (An

in-depth examination of the latter is presented in Chapter Three). These insights

constitute the context that shapes existing understandings of present-day paramilitary

formations in Latin America.

68 Since 2001 this kind of violence has also been denominated as “terrorism” by US national security
discourses and those of its Latin American allies.
69 Criminal violence can, of course, also be interpersonal for either material gain or domestic (e.g.
spouse and child abuse).

83
 2.4.1. State Violence

I begin by highlighting insights from a Marxist approach to the study of the

relationship between state violence and the capitalist classes in Latin America. State

violence has been predominantly carried out by the state military since the formation

of the independent nation state in the 19th century and has most of the time been

exercised to preserve an internal order rather than respond to external aggression.

Lowy, Sader and Gorman (1985) argue that the exercise of power by the dominant

classes in Latin America requires the constant utilization of coercion as the principal

form of domination. The state military, as the leading unit of the state’s coercive

apparatus, has been “...always in the last instance the guardian of the order

established by these classes” (Lowy, Sader and Gorman 1985, 11). Nonetheless,

coercion has not been the exclusive form of domination, since the state and even the

military directly have engaged in the production of ideology around the notions of

defense against subversion and national unity. Still, these authors argue that

ideological production by itself does not suffice to guarantee the domination of the

ruling classes. The latter always require the presence of an ultimate guarantee of the

social order which is the repressive apparatus. The state, therefore, has been an

instrument o f the dominant classes for consolidating or modifying the mode of

accumulation and guaranteeing the repression by working class resistance - “...in its

capacity as an institution, the military represents the ultimate base of operations for

the reconstruction of the conditions for political domination and economic

exploitation” (Sader 1977, quoted in Lowy, Sader and Gorman 1985, 23). Throughout

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a large part of its history, most of the Latin American states have been militarized. A

militarization o f the state takes place when military power expands as the military

hierarchy occupies important positions in the political realm. It is a “colonization” of

state structures by the military and the partial or total fusion of the repressive

apparatuses with other apparatuses of the system of political domination (Lowy, Sader

and Gorman 1985).

Although many scholars from various theoretical backgrounds wrote about the

military dictatorships and human rights violations in Latin America between the 1960s

and 1990s, only some established a link between class struggles, the activities of the

state’s coercive apparatus and the interests of the capitalist classes.70 With the

transition from military dictatorships to electoral democracy, it was widely believed

that there was a definite break with the past and many scholars have since argued that

the military no longer has an important role to play in Latin America. Moreover,

market liberalization was seen as a factor necessary for the consolidation of

democracy and the disappearance of the military threat. Wise (2003) argues that

despite the gray areas between authoritarian and democratic regimes, the important

fact is that in September 2001 the Organization of American States (OAS) approved a

new charter that declared every Latin American country, except Cuba, as democratic.

Waisman (1999) echoes this by stating that “Liberal democracy is now the only game

in town” (p. 122). Payne et al. (2002), Wise (2003), Waisman (1999), Remmer (2003),

Lamounier (1999), and Diamond, Hartlyn, and Linz (1999) all believe that Latin

70 Examples of such works are Smith (1989), May (2001), and Gareau (2004).

85
America’s experience with democracy since the late 1980s has been the broadest and

most lasting in its history. Diamond, Hartlyn, and Linz (1999) point to the growing

democratic awareness of social movements and civil society actors working on reform

issues, as an indication that democratization is underway. According to Diamond,

Hartlyn, and Linz (1999) and Remmer (2003), the prospect of a reversion to

authoritarianism / military dictatorships is lower than ever for two reasons. Firstly,

according to these authors, since markets have imposed a new discipline on policy

choice, the incentives for the formation of coalitions between military officers and

business elites have disappeared. Secondly, “Increasingly, as they become integrated

into regional and global markets, and as the prospect of a hemispheric free trade zone

draws nearer, Latin American democracies find themselves lodged in an external

setting that discourages overt authoritarian regressions” (Remmer, 2003, p.64).

2.4.2. The "New” Urban Criminal Violence

Despite the transitions to democracy, violent deaths in Latin America were on the rise

in the late 1990s. By 2002, 65 percent of the poor population in Latin America lived

in cities. According to Koonings and Krujit (2007) these people have a “second-class”

citizenship that is characterized by patterns of segregation, restrictions, and poverty.

Consequently, there was a shift from the state-induced violence (1960s-early 1990s)

to the violence stemming from non-state actors operating in urban enclaves. A number

of academics such as Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga (2002), Koonings and Krujit

(2007), and Rozema (2007), have regarded this violence as “new” in the sense that it

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was no longer political or rural, but rather urban and social and it is gang and drug-

related. It is described as carried out typically by young men from poor

neighbourhoods who join in gangs to defend their territories and for whom violent

action is a way to obtain an acknowledged identity and to profit monetarily by

controlling drug-trafficking activities (Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga, 2002). An

example of this are the maras, criminal youth gangs from the slums of Central

America.

One of the reasons given for this rise in violent and organized crime throughout

Latin America is poverty and inequality. For instance, the minimum wage earned by

workers in 1998 was lower than that of 1980 in 13 of the region’s 18 countries. Seven

out of every ten jobs created in Latin America between 1990 and 1997 were in the

informal sector (Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga 2002). By 2005, 50-70 percent of urban

citizens lived in poverty. Another interesting point made by Briceno-Leon and

Zubillaga (2002) is that the poor youth tend to engage in violence as a way of

attaining certain levels of consumption. “Globalization is democratic and egalitarian

in spreading expectations but it is inequitable in providing the means to satisfy them”

(28). Through the media, cultural patterns of consumption spread massively,

individuals’ expectations increase but their real chances of satisfying those aspirations

diminish. Consequently, poor young men in Caracas, Medellin, or Mexico City have

similar aspirations and “... they are capable of killing someone to steal a pair of

trainers” (Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga 2002, 27). These authors provide a more

nuanced perspective to the argument that the poor engage in violence because their

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basic needs are not satisfied. A third major reason given for the rise in violent crimes

has been the massive proliferation of firearms globally and the growth of the illegal

drug-trade (Leeds 2007; Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga 2002). Finally, the weakness of

the judicial system in many of these countries (Pearce 2010), as well as the links

between organized crime and police (Pansters and Castillo 2007) and the lack of

resources (Pereira and Davis 2000), have all been cited as reasons for the proliferation

of violence in the last two decades.

2.4.3. Parainstitutional Violence and the State Connection

The increase of violence alongside democratic transitions should not simply be

regarded as a growth in criminality (particularly youth gangs and drug-related

violence) and dismissed as politically irrelevant. A small number of scholars71 have

begun to research the present-day Latin American murky violent landscapes and have

exposed a variety of other illegal armed actors, such as private justice groups, self-

defense forces, death squads, and paramilitary groups, all of whom do not aim to take

over state power (i.e. are not guerrilla but are not criminal gangs either). It is not

uncommon for many of these organizations to sustain mutually beneficial

relationships with members of state institutions or to comprise active state security

personnel. Some scholars (e.g. Romero 2000; Spencer 2001; Bejarano and Pizarro

2002; McLean 2002;) view the existence of these armed actors as a sign of state

71 Pereira and Davis (2000), Koonings and Krujit (2007) and Pearce (2010) are leading in this field of
research.

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failure or state weakness due to the state’s loss of monopoly over the means of

violence. However, it is important to note that parallel to the rise of such groups, the

state’s coercive apparatus continues to play an important role in maintaining security

and dealing with the “internal enemy” (i.e. individuals and/or organizations who

represent a challenge or an obstacle to the economic and political interests of the

dominant classes and the state or express incomformism with the current politico-

economic model)72. It is true that state terror from the dictatorship era no longer

occurs in the same magnitude, nonetheless repression, extra-judicial executions, other

types o f human rights abuses, as well as increase in the use of force by the military

and the police in general, continue. Robinson (2003) attributes the continued active

role o f the state’s coercive apparatus against the “internal enemy” in the post­

dictatorship era to the crisis of hegemony73. In this context, in addition to relying on

the ideological apparatus, in order to ensure social order and security the state engages

in direct coercion accompanied by the expansion of law and order policies that

increase militarization and criminalize dissent. In the same vein, Huggins (1991)

points out that Latin American justice systems still contain many structural supports

for authoritarianism. Furthermore, as resistance against global capitalism grows, new

72 Chapter Five provides an elaborated discussion of the “internal enemy” in the context of the National
Security Doctrine.
73 A crisis of hegemony occurs when political control can no longer be maintained through ideological
manipulation, and therefore the dominant classes must resort to direct physical coercion by police and
the armed forces (Burke 1999).

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waves of militarization74 are underway in the region, including mounting surveillance,

policing, and militarized social control (Robinson 2004).

The question that Pearce (2010) poses becomes very important in this context:

“Are we witnessing, in fact, not state failure in Latin America, but a new perverse

form of the state?” (298). She claims that it is a state dedicated to the preservation of

elite rule. Latin American elites (both locally oriented as well as the transnational

fractions75), today, as they did hundreds of years ago, rely on violence that ultimately

protects their interests and acquiesce and consent to state security acts which

aggressively target those who challenge these interests. The “perverse state”, transmits

and reproduces violence, by engaging in violent acts, by being complicit to the violent

acts o f other actors whom it tolerates, and by neglecting to address private expressions

of violence.

Why is the state’s lack of monopoly over the means of violence not a case of

state failure or state weakness? Firstly, because state failure “...does not convey the

systematic way in which the Latin American state enables multiple forms of violence

to spread across diverse social spaces and the political capital it accumulates as a

result” (Pearce 2010, 295). As Pearce (2010) eloquently argues, the Latin American

state claims its legitimacy not from a monopoly over the means of violence, but from

74 An in depth discussion on the militarization of Colombia is offered in Chapter Five.

75 The transnational fractions of the capitalist classes in Latin America (found in agro-industries,
finances, telecommunications, petrochemicals, banks and airlines) are the local contingents of a TTC
whose economic interests reside in the global capitalist economy. The Latin American contingent of the
TCC has developed conglomerates and private sector associations which have served as a key vehicle
for organizing and exerting influence over state policies. Transnational elites seek to ensure the
presence of cheap labour and access to natural resources and fertile land (Robinson 2004).

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its lack of such a monopoly. The sources of disorder, such as criminals and youth

gangs, provide the justification to violently impose order and re-establish its authority

every time. Secondly, with the exception of the guerrilla, many illegal armed groups

are not “counter-state”, but rather operate with more or less the same general goal - to

preserve the status quo, supress dissent, and protect and advance the interests of the

wealthy classes. Thus, as Pearce (2010) points out, the state does not regard this as an

absence or loss o f the monopoly of violence since it has never aspired to exercise such

a monopoly. On the contrary, it welcomes these alliances. This is precisely the case

with the paramilitary and the state in Colombia as Chapter Six, Seven, and Eight

illustrate.

The current juncture of state and non-state violence challenges the boundary

existing between notions of “civilian” and “military”. As Pereira & Davis (2000)

explain, the literature which assumes that civilian control of militaries is automatically

restored under democracy and that subsequently civil and human rights would be

guaranteed, plays down the contemporary changes “...in military role definition that

preserve or expand the armed forces’ autonomy in such areas as drug interdiction,

counter-insurgency, and crime fighting... it ignores the hybridity and complexity of

much state coercion and violence” (7). For all these reasons, it is very important to

recognize the peculiarities of this co-existence between the state’s coercive apparatus

and illegal armed groups and to understand the restructuring of the former in relation

to the latter.

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 The concept o f parainstitutional violence is quite useful for this purpose. First,

let’s look at the term “parainstitutionality”, coined by Colombian scholar German

Alfonso Palacio in 1991 and grounded in the Colombian political context. Palacio

(1991) defines parainstitutionality as “...a series of mechanisms of social regulation

and conflict resolution that do not rely on formal constitutional or legal means, but are

governed by informal arrangements and ad hoc mechanisms” (106). These

mechanisms are manifestations of and at the same time a solution to the need to

respond to both social conflict and secure the conditions for capital accumulation. For

Palacio (1991) paramilitary groups, guerrillas, sicarios (hired gunmen) and urban

protests are all different expressions of parainstitutionality. Notwithstanding, he

recognizes that most of the parainstitutionality is linked to drug-traffickers. A couple

of other Latin American scholars have taken the concept and applied it only to the

context of violence by right-wing armed groups. Medina and Tellez (1994) define

parainstitutional violence as that which does not have as an objective the

transformation of society, but rather seeks to guarantee, complement, and supplement

its adequate functioning when the state is not capable of doing it due to limitations. It

is parainstitutional due to the fact that it is accepting of the objectives of the existing

order / regime. Its ideological base is grounded in the counter-insurgency strategies of

the National Security Doctrine.76 According to these authors, parainstitutional

violence is a feature peculiar to the coexistence of formal constitutionalism and

electoral democracy on one hand, and the use of force to pursue economic and

76 A more elaborate discussion of the National Security Doctrine is offered in Chapter Five.

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political interests on the other. It is extra-legal in the sense that it is pursued by state

agents outside the boundaries of legality or by non-state agents. It is also “uncivil” in

the sense that it undermines the constitution of citizenship as a principle based on non­

violence and the rule of law (Medina and Tellez 1994).

2.4.4. Violence, Illegal Armed Groups, and the State: Concluding Remarks

The state in most of Latin America, even under democratic regimes, continues to be

an important agent of violence albeit not having monopoly over the means of

violence. The Marxist view of the state’s coercive apparatus as serving to maintain the

domination of the capitalist classes continues to be highly relevant to the present Latin

American reality. At the same time, it is necessary to recognize the diversity of actors

outside the state who engage in collective violence today. While the proliferation of

urban criminal and youth gang violence is undeniable, this phenomenon alone does

not explain the essence of the violent forces that accompany the geographic and

qualitative advancement of global neoliberalism. If we want to comprehend the forces

that facilitate processes of capital accumulation through repression and dispossession,

then we need to look beyond gangs and towards the state, as well as armed groups

operating outside the state, yet in cooperation with or tolerated by it. To understand

the violent side o f global capitalism with its local expressions, it is necessary to

capture how the state’s coercive apparatus coexists and shares the control over the

means o f violence with these groups and why this is functional to both sides. The next

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chapter explores this subject in depth with regards to four types of parainstitutional

actors.

The concept of parainstitutionality comes in quite handy in that it helps us

identify armed actors outside the state who have a political dimension to them.

However, the way the concept has been used so far has been inconsistent since

Palacios (1991) intended it to cover both paramilitary and guerrilla groups, while

Medina and Tellez (1994) have modified its definition to refer to right-wing armed

groups only. Having a concept which equates the guerrilla and the paramilitary is of

little value from a politico-economic point of view, since placing these two armed

actors in the same category is only possible if they are totally emptied of their social

bases, history, and objectives. In this sense, I support Medina and Tellez’ (1994) use

o f the term. Finally, I believe that any analysis of violence in Latin America today

must not be detached from the social context in which it is embedded - this includes

the class relations and system of domination it serves to sustain.

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 Chapter 3: Theoretical Approaches to Paramilitarism and

Other Forms of Parainstitutional Violence

This dissertation aims to offer a comprehensive analytical framework that enables us

to account for the new phase of paramilitarism in Colombia as part of the evolution of

a historical and structural systematic reliance on violence by the state and dominant

classes to secure capital accumulation. Before laying out the new analytical

framework I propose in Chapter Eight, it is helpful to first provide in this chapter

some background on different parainstitutional forms of violence that have been

studied by scholars so far, in order to situate the paramilitary in relation to the state as

well as the myriad of illegal armed actors that exist today. Ron’s (2000) argument

about the increasing tendency of states to privatize violence in response to human

rights concerns, points the growing importance of paramilitarism as a subject for

academic inquiry.

Although human rights monitors seek to limit state violence to create a better
world, they may sometimes simply drive the violence underground. Faced
with restrictions on who and how they can kill, state actors may hand the
violence over to semiprivate gunmen, hoping these fighters can accomplish
what the state was prevented from doing by courts and human rights activists
(Ron 2000, 308).

This chapter brings together and synthesizes three categories of literature (each

discussed in a separate section) that can help us grasp all this. Section 3.1 discusses

four types of parainstitutional violence: death squads, vigilantism, warlordism and

paramilitarism. For each of these I review the most prominent literature on the subject

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that defines and explains the phenomenon, followed by short examples of such types

of armed actors from different parts of the world, especially Latin America. Particular

attention is given here to the ways in which the term “paramilitary” has been defined.

Section 3.2 focuses specifically on the Colombian scene by providing an overview of

five ways in which the Colombian armed conflict has been characterized. Section 3.3

examines three main approaches and the various arguments within each one, for

conceptualizing the Colombian paramilitary in relation to the state and society.

Section 3.4 discusses the similarities and differences between the paramilitary and the

other types of parainstitutional actors. Here I also discuss any useful features of the

approaches used by scholars of parainstitutional violence in general. Section 3.5

assesses the explanatory capacities and limitations of each of the three approaches to

conceptualizing paramilitarism in Colombia, which were presented in Section 3.3.

Since scholars have commonly associated three of the forms of parainstitutional

violence (death squads, vigilantism and paramilitarism) with strategies of state terror,

it is most appropriate to begin by defining the latter. Medina and Tellez (1994)

describe state terror77 as the state’s official or unofficial strategy of subordinating the

law to the exercise of force and irregular practices used to combat subversion and

77 Political science distinguishes between anti-state violence (terrorism) and state violence (state terror)
(Sluka 2000). Campbell (2000) explains the difference between the two in terms of the targets.
“Terrorism is the commission of acts of murder and extreme, exceptional brutality and destruction in
order to influence groups of people to act or refrain from acting in certain ways. The people terrorism
seeks to influence are generally different from its targets. The violence is rarely committed for its own
sake, at least when it begins, but serves rather to send a message” (3). In the case of state terror,
(frequently carried out by death-squads or other irregular groups created by the state), “murder is the
main point” and unlike acts of terrorism, the targets are not merely symbolic or instrumental (Campbell
2000 , 4 ).

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organized crime, such as persecution, arbitrary detention, torture, assassination,

disappearance. Many o f these activities, such as the latter three, are often carried out

not directly by state forces but rather by parainstitutional formations such as

parapolice, death squads, and paramilitary groups. A necessary precondition for the

use of state terror is the existence of a class, group, or party that the ruling elite sees as

a threat to its continued rule (Campbell 2000).

3.1. Forms of Parainstitutional Violence

3.1.1. Death Squads

Death squads are found all over the world today and in the last 30 years have been

responsible for millions o f deaths (Campbell 2000). The scholarly literature places

death squads in the larger category of state violence / state terror. The most recent

comparative studies on this subject are offered by Campbell and Brenner (2000) and

Sluka (2000). Death squads are clandestine and usually irregular organizations, which

carry out extrajudicial executions and other violent acts (torture, rape, arson, etc.)

against clearly defined individuals or groups of people. They have a relatively

permanent organization and are set up to conduct ongoing operations on a fairly large-

scale. Death squads exist to act outside of the law - their primary purpose is to

commit extrajudicial murder. Their success requires that their members be granted the

widest possible exemption from prosecution and interference. They almost always

involve the support and participation of social groups and the state. They represent a

unique tool of state repression due to the way they represent both state and private

97
interests. Unlike uniformed police and military forces, they do not exercise legitimate

use of force and make no acknowledgement of whose orders they follow (Campbell

2000). While death squads operate outside the law, they are generally (and secretly)

fully integrated into the state’s regular coercive apparatus. Nonetheless, they are

distinct enough to allow a “plausible denial” of the state’s involvement with them (i.e.

murder is carried out while the state can deny any knowledge and responsibility for it)

(Amson 2000; Sluka 2000). In fact, as Huggins (1991) remarks, death squads are part

of a decentering o f authority that in all market societies grows out of the privatization

and commodification of social control. The key feature of death squads then is

precisely their existence outside the formal apparatus of the state and yet at the same

time being sanctioned by it. Campbell (2000) rightfully rejects the thesis that death

squads exist because the state is too weak to prevent powerful social interests from

engaging in murder. As he explains, “...the state, rather than being a ‘victim’, actually

either initiates the formation of death squads or cooperates with them” (18).

Grossman’s (2000) work provides an illustration of death squads in India. For

most of the 1980s, the state of Punjab in northern India suffered a violent conflict that

was caused by a power struggle between political leaders who represented the state’s

majority Sikh population and central government politicians eager to maintain control

over the resources of one of the country’s most prosperous states. Sikh leaders formed

a movement for greater autonomy which gradually turned violent when some militant

Sikhs embarked on a campaign of terror. As a result of this threat to internal security

and the inability to accommodate the demands of sub-nationalist movements and other

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opposition groups within the political system, the Indian government resorted to the

use of death squads as an instrument of counterinsurgency. In Punjab, death squads

consisted of out-of-uniform police officers and frequently included informers who

were often former members of extremist groups. These clandestine units were also

used to infiltrate extremist militant organizations and target prominent leaders and

activists. Finally, death squads operations (combined with other methods of state

terror) were successful in crushing the militant organizations (Grossman 2000).

Death squads must be distinguished from three other distinct but closely related

phenomena: assassination, vigilantism, and terrorism. According to Campbell (2000),

the difference between death squads and assassinations lies in the fact that an

assassination targets a single or a small group of individuals, while death squads target

groups of people on a large-scale and their victims number in the thousands. The

difference between death squads and terrorism was explained in footnote 77 of this

chapter. The distinction between death squads and vigilantism will become evident

once we discuss the latter phenomenon below.

3.1.2. Vigilantism

Rosenbaum (1974) defines vigilantism as “...acts or threats of coercion in violation of

the formal boundaries of an established sociopolitical order which, however, are

intended by the violators to defend that order from some form of subversion” (542).

According to Campbell (2000), vigilantism constitutes the temporary usurpation of the

state’s powers of law and monopoly of violence by groups of ordinary citizens,

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usually to control crime or enforce social norms. Vigilantes most often claim to be the

enforcers of a kind of popular justice. Holmes, Gutierrez and Curtin (2008) argue that

vigilante groups typically emerge in response to an insurgency and/or a weak state as

in the case of Colombia.

Establishing the distinction between vigilantism and death squads can be a

challenge since, as Campbell (2000) points out, both involve state or elite influence

and participation and both are generally covert in nature and murderous in outcome.

Still, one difference is that death squads directly involve the state in addition to other

actors, while vigilantism comes primarily at the initiative of private civil interests,

which gives it a greater degree of spontaneity. Death squads tend to punish political

acts and to be concerned with wider issues. They operate on a larger geographic scale

and with more coordination and planning, while vigilantism tends to be more locally

based and grassroots in origin (Campbell 2000). Huggins’ work (1991) shows how the

distinction between these two forms of parainstitutional violence may be quite

difficult to discern in certain cases and she proposes an approach that views the two

on a continuum rather than as distinct categories.

According to Huggins (1991), Latin American vigilantism includes lynching

(citizens’ violence against other citizens), “justice-making” violence78 (a blend of

citizens’ violence against other citizens, with some state involvement), death-squads

(covert state violence against citizens), and on-duty official police violence against

78 The term “justice-making” violence or justiceiros, is used by Huggins (1991) in the Brazilian
context. The justiceiros' primary job is to assassinate presumed criminals and trouble-makers (usually
poor individuals). The justiceiros can be off-duty police and military officers or civilians.

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criminals or subversives. She divides vigilantism into several types according to its

purpose. One of them is crime-control vigilantism, directed against people who are

believed to be committing illegal / criminal activities. The second kind is for the

control o f social groups. It is directed at those groups who advocate wealth

redistribution. The last type is vigilantism for the control of a regime which is

intended to “ .. .alter the regime in order to make the superstructure into a more

effective guardian of the base” (7). Huggins’ (2000) study o f organized crime in

Brazil illustrates well the fusion between private and state violence and the need to

view the different expressions of vigilantism on a continuum where variations depend

on the degree of spontaneity, organization, and state involvement. She explains that at

the continuum’s most non-spontaneous, formal, organized, bureaucratic, state-

controlled pole are state-appointed and state-paid highly organized elite units who

carry out extralegal killings. Next on the continuum we find death squads and

paramilitary groups. In Brazil death squads are teams of entirely or mostly off-duty

police, usually paid as a group by local businesses or politicians for their services (i.e.

they secretly serve commercial or political interests). At the informal pole of the

continuum, Huggins (1991) places anonymous crowd lynching which is very

spontaneous and has only indirect state involvement. Thus, vigilante violence can

range from relatively spontaneous, less formalized, less state-linked actions, such as

mob lynching, to systematic murders by individual “justice-seeking” assassins, to the

relatively organized state-linked violence by informal death squads, including off-duty

police, to aggressive extralegal violence by units of on-duty police. “By placing

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lynching, murders, death squads, and on-duty police violence on a continuum we can

see how each of these types is related to the others and to state action and inaction;

most of them are not as totally spontaneous and ‘disorganized’ as popularly assumed”

(Huggins 1991,207). Huggins’ argument coincides with Campbell (2000) and Sluka’s

(2000) view with regards to parainstitutional violence as a mechanism for distancing

the state from human rights violations - “Such initially state-engendered privatization

helps Brazil’s fragile democratizing state retain legitimacy by making it appear as if

violent repression is occurring only from forces outside the state” (223).

3.1.3. Warlordism

Warlordism is a term that refers to armed groupings operating for the most part

outside the framework of law and in situations where the authority of legitimate

government has mostly broken down. “Warlordism is a rather poorly understood

product of globalizing forces in international politics that are undermining the

legitimacy of the Westphalian nation state”79 (Rich 1999, 11). According to Rich

(1999), the term “warlord” does not yet possess much analytical precision. “The word

has been particularly popularized by the international media as a general term [to]

explain the Assuring of nation-states and the emergence of militarized subnational

groupings...” (xi). According to Robinson (2001), to be defined as a warlord, an actor

must fulfill the following criteria: i) operate in a collapsed or significantly collapsing

79 Rich (1999) actually clarifies that warlordism can be viewed either as a temporary phenomenon that
can be dealt with by reconstructing the nation state or as a deep longer-term trend within the
international system.

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state; ii) pursue narrow, commercial self-interest; iii) have access to armed force; iv)

resort to violence to protect self-interest, regardless of the needs of the society in

which he operates and contrary to the fundamentals of international human rights law;

and v) operate outside any democratic mandate or accountability. Unlike the gangster

or criminal, who routinely employs small arms, the warlord has access to and employs

large quantity of weapons and has some sort of land and air mobility. And, unlike the

insurgent, the warlord operates without popular support and threatens the population

indiscriminately if it suits his aims (Robinson 2001). Chan’s (1999) definition of

warlords describes them as

...those prepared and able by force or its threat to deny ideological and
operational space to a state and who put forward to the populations under their
control an articulated alternative to citizenship and who secure allegiance
through a combination of that force and articulation, allied sometimes with
charisma or claims to certain ancestries more compelling to their adherents
than affiliation to a state. They are not necessarily pre-m odem ;.. .they may see
themselves as an alternative, an antidote to, or merely a tribune of the people
in the face of modernity (164).

Rich (1999) argues that warlordism is a product of the fracturing of sovereign

state structures and reflects the uneven integration of (mostly) developing nations into

the modem global economy. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the Balkans, Central and

Southeast Asia warlordism is mainly related to a partial failure of the nation state.

According to him, warlord-type formations also exist in the context of the illegal

drug-trade in South America. Similar to Rich (1999), Robinson (2001) claims that

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warlords emerge where state disintegration80 occurs - i.e. where the structure,

authority (legitimate power), law and political order have fallen apart. “In such a case,

the state is not necessarily dead, but it is ‘up for grabs’ by power entities emerging

from the disintegration” (Robinson 2001, 124). Similarly, in Chan’s (1999) definition

above, we also see the recurring notion of a weak or a failing state.

Chan (1999) offers a typology of warlords. The first kind is the “local warlord”

who resembles a gangster at the outset and gradually creates an organization that

claims to defend the integrity of a community. Examples of this can be found in the

South African shanties or among the Druze of Lebanon. The next kind in Chan’s

typology is the “warlord of an enlarged locality at the frontiers”, such as the Karen of

Burma, whose purpose is to defend the integrity of a community and also has some

informal dealings with neighbouring states. The third kind is the “warlord of

international crime”. Interestingly, Chan (1999) explicitly states that Colombian drug

barons do not fall in this category because they do not seek to compose or represent

alternative forms of political organization. On the contrary, barons need the state

because it either facilitates or disguises or unofficially allows room for their own

international trade. The remaining types of warlords in Chan’s (1999) typology

include “client warlords” (defined as those who act as instruments of other states),

“resistance leaders”, and “liberation leaders” (those whose leadership is validated by

80 Both Rich (1999) and Robinson (2001) recognize that the existence of warlordism does not
necessarily presuppose a disintegration of the state. The latter author classifies the relationship between
warlords and the state in three categories: i) commensal relationship (state and warlord exist in
harmony with mutual benefit); ii) saprophytic relationship (the warlord is surviving on a dead or
decaying state); and iii) parasitic relationship (the warlord exists and thrives at the expense of a
struggling state).

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the construction of an alternative vision of the world as to how people should live.
at #
Warlords are mentioned in the Latin American context in relation to the caudillos in

the 19th and early 20th century.

A useful concept for understanding the context in which warlords operate and

the motivations behind their activities is Elwert’s (1999) notion of “markets of

violence” - a self-reproducing profit-oriented economic system which combines

violence and trade as a means of access to commodities and thus implies the violent

appropriation and exchange of goods.

Markets of violence are understood as economic fields dominated by civil

wars, warlords or robbery, in which a self-perpetuating system emerges which
links non-violent commodity markets with the violent acquisition of goods. It
is the profit implied in the entwined violent and non-violent forms of
appropriation and exchange which is the guiding principle of action (Elwert
1999, 86).

In this context, warlords are entrepreneurs who use deliberate violence as an efficient

tool for achieving economic aims. Markets of violence require violence-open areas

which can emerge where there is a breakdown of the state’s monopoly of violence

(i.e. state disintegration). Thus, according to Elwert (1999), a precondition for a

market of violence is the breakdown of the state. Once there exist violence-open areas,

the longer the violence lasts, the stronger the compulsion to rely on economic

imperatives and consequently the further consolidation of the market of violence.

81 Caudillo is a term that referred to a male politico-military leader in the post-colonial period in Latin
America who displayed charisma, capacity to dominate women, readiness to use violence, and who
organized armed band(s) to gain wealth through pillage. He often granted wealth in return for loyalty
and support (Wolf and Hansen 1967).

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 When areas open to violence and market economy coincide there may be
positive interaction between them, i.e. the market interests expand the fields of
violence and markets interests are increasingly realized in areas open to
violence. Thus, the self-stabilizing system of the market of violence is
generated (Elwert 1999, 97).

The countries that Elwert (1999) mentions as exhibiting such features during the

1980s and 1990s included Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Northern

Mali, Chad, Mozambique, Zaire, Angola, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Northern

Burma, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Colombia. The concept of markets of violence is

partially useful for the analytical framework I hope to advance in this dissertation

mainly in terms o f its emphasis on the entwinement of violent and non-violent forms

of appropriation. This is discussed in more depth in Section 3.4.3.

3.1.4. Paramilitarism

I begin by reviewing how the term “paramilitary” has been defined in the English

language. The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as, “Of, relating to, or being a

group of civilians organized in a military fashion, especially to operate in place of or

assist regular army troops”. The term can also be used to refer to a member(s) of a

paramilitary force (American Heritage Dictionary 2009). According to the Collins

English Dictionary, the term “paramilitary” means “denoting or relating to a group of

personnel with military structure functioning either as a civil force or in support of

military forces” (Collins English Dictionary 2003). The Cambridge Dictionary defines

it as “a group which is organized like an army but is not official and often not legal;

connected with and helping the official armed forces” (Cambridge 2012). The

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Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s definition states: “of, relating to, being, or

characteristic of a force formed on a military pattern especially as a potential auxiliary

military force” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2012).

As we can see, the common elements across all these definitions include: i) a

civil force (group of civilians); ii) organized and functioning as a military force; iii)

not part of the state’s formal armed forces; and iv) operating or having the potential to

operate in a way that assists the state’s armed forces. According to Eseverri (1979),

the author o f the Dictionary o f Etymology o f Spanish Helenisms (cited in Giraldo

1996), in Spanish, there are three meanings of the preposition “para”: i)

approximation; ii) transposition; and iii) deviation or irregularity. In effect, this

preposition is utilized to make reference to something which is next to, adjoining,

which is similar to, but which at the same time is beyond, outside of, leaving from the

entity denoted by the principal body of the word. The concepts of proximity and

deformation are integrated in the meaning of this preposition. Thus, “paramilitarism”

denotes activities close to the military, but which at the same time deviate from or are

irregular from the militia (Giraldo 1996). The Colombian Commission for the Study

of Violence defines paramilitaries as “those private and/or state-affiliated

organizations that use violence and intimidation to target and/or eliminate groups and

individuals seen as subversive of the social, political, and economic order” (Jones

2008).

According to Jones (2008), paramilitary organizations are varied and highly

mutable institutions across Latin America and worldwide. Kaldor (2007), whose work

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has been recognized as a core text in security studies, defines paramilitary groups as

autonomous groups o f armed men generally centered around an individual leader. She

positions paramilitary forces in the context of what she calls “new wars”, referring to

the fusion of elements of organized crime, war, and large-scale human rights

violations. Her research places heavy emphasis on identity politics with regards to the

armed conflicts in which paramilitary groups emerge. She draws particularly on cases

from the post-Cold War era in Eastern Europe and Africa.

Most other works that offer conceptual definitions of paramilitary forces

emphasize the cooperation / support aspect in their relationship with the state.

Huggins (1991) equates paramilitary groups with death squads (in the context of Latin

America) and describes them as “assassination squads” that exhibit a right-wing

ideology and engage in human rights violations in which the state is complicit or

involved. Torres-Rivas (1999) places emphasis on the function that paramilitary

groups serve and defines them as unofficial security forces that serve a military or

quasi-military function. Warren (2000) describes the paramilitary as death squads

composed o f former members of the army and police which operate with impunity

and benefit from direct or indirect logistical institutional support. Mazzei (2009)

defines paramilitarism as a strategy that enables states to avoid the appearance as

direct sponsors of violence while countering struggles that seek reform or social

change.

The following are examples of paramilitarism from several parts of the world.

The purpose is to give a sense of the variations in the meaning of the term

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“paramilitary” according to the geographic location and the political, ethnic, and

economic context in which it has been used.82 Ron’s (2000) study of paramilitary

forces in the context of the Bosnian civil war argues that Serbian paramilitaries

resembled Latin American death squads in that they were clandestine semi-

autonomous state agents using illegal violence (extrajudicial executions, torture, and

rape) to achieve political goals against a clearly defined target population. However,

their operations targeted not citizens of their own country but rather Bosnian Muslims

and Croats in Bosnia, particularly in contested territories claimed by Serbian

nationalists. The reason for this was that local and international norms prohibited

military action beyond Serbia’s official borders and prompted Serbian officials to

subcontract semi-private groups. The other difference from Latin American death

squads was that they targeted their victims for their ethnic identity rather than political

affiliation. In sum, these forces started out as extra-territorial agents capable of

clandestinely projecting Serbian state power abroad. They were devised by the

Serbian state as a way of circumventing territorial restrictions on Serbian state action,

and their mission was defined as the defense of the Serbian nation (Ron 2000).

In Northern Ireland, Protestant Loyalist paramilitary groups have been described

as pro-state terrorist organizations in support of the Loyalists who want Northern

Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom. The two main ones are the Ulster

Volunteer Force (UVF) founded in 1966 and the Ulster Defense Association (UDA)

founded in the 1971. Hard-line offshoots of these emerged in the 1990s. These

82 This is not meant to be an exhaustive review of paramilitarism worldwide.

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 1

organizations, as well as those who emerged more recently, engage in intimidation,

killings, and bombings, and their targets are mostly Catholic civilians (Council on

Foreign Relations 2005). Another example comes from Hungary, where the Better

Future Militia in the town of Gyonguospata has been described by the media as a

right-wing paramilitary group that works in cooperation with the right-wing Jobbik

Nationalist Party and targets Gypsies (Guardian 2012).

As we can see, the term “paramilitary” has been used in different political and

geographic contexts to refer to a wide spectrum of armed bodies, ranging from large,

well-known, heavily-armed, long-term organizations that span across considerable

geographic area to small spontaneously formed armed groups confined to a specific

location. Nonetheless, one of the steady features across different cases from around

the world is the paramilitary groups’ pro-state stance - in other words their favourable

attitude towards the state or the political party in power as well as the state’s

tolerance, support, or promotion of these groups. In the examples from Serbia,

Northern Ireland, and Hungary the victims are identified mainly on the basis of their

ethnic and/or religious affiliation83 and the violence occurs in the context of a conflict

between different ethnic groups (often involving different religion). While the conflict

may or may not have complex implications with regards to territories, political rule

and so on, the “enemy” of paramilitary groups is perceived as someone culturally

different from them and those whose interests they represent.

83 In the case of Northern Ireland, this includes the political stand (in favour or against British rule).

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 Quite different manifestations of paramilitarism are found across Latin America,

where ethnic identity or religion is irrelevant with regards to the conflict within which

these groups emerge as well as the criteria they use for labelling their “enemy”. In

Peru, for instance, paramilitary groups were first bom in the 1980s, through the

institution o f autonomous peasant patrols (rondas campesinas). These groups have

been described as organic parainstitutional formations that resisted and confronted the

imposition of guerrilla power84 on peasant communities. In the early 1990s, after

Alberto Fujimori became president, the state military recognized their potential for

support in the war against the insurgency. Consequently, the rondas campesinas were

armed professionally and integrated into the state’s counterinsurgency strategy.

After the Sendero Luminoso was defeated, the rondas reverted back to being a

neighbourhood watch (i.e. protection mainly against theft) (Jones 2008).

In Guatemala, paramilitary organizations have played an important role since the

beginning of the counterinsurgency war in the 1950s. The Guatemalan state created

extra-legal armed groups to combat the guerrillas and track down subversives. Two of

the most feared ones were coordinated by the right-wing political party Movement of

National Liberation (Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional or MLN) and received

financial and logistical support from large-scale landowners and commercial farmers.

Throughout the 1960s, more groups were formed jointly by the state military and the

rural elite. Their members were given the right to carry unlicensed weapons since they

84 The main guerrilla group at that time was the Sendero Luminoso.
85 For more on this subject, see Degregori, Ponciano del Pino, and Stam (1996).

I ll
had the job to serve as the “eyes and ears of the army” in the fight against the

guerrilla. In the 1970s and first half of the 1980s, the Guatemalan state centralized the

repressive apparatus and paramilitary groups came to be more directly ruled by the

state military (Bastos 2004, cited in Granovsky-Larsen forthcoming). The Civil

Defense Patrols (Patrullas de Autodefens a Civil) were instituted by the Guatemalan

state in the 1980s for the purpose of consolidating military domination over rural

communities and isolating Leftist rebels (Jones 2008). The 1996 Peace Accords ended

more than four decades of armed conflict; however, according to Granovsky-Larsen

(forthcoming), during the contemporary era of post-war democracy, the historical

reliance on privatized violence has continued and paramilitary forces have become

vital to the present power of the political and economic elite. He explains that during

the last 15 years or so, three categories of armed actors have operated as paramilitary

forces.86 These include: death squads, which have a direct link to the military

apparatus and are hired to protect Guatemala’s most powerful interests; vigilante

groups (many of them legalized since 1999 as Local Citizen Security Groups, or

Juntas Locales de Seguridad Ciudadana); and private security guards especially in

situations where they act against organized peasant communities.

In El Salvador, the National Democratic Organization (Organizacion

Democratica Nacionalista, or ORDEN) was the primary paramilitary body founded

by the military dictatorship in the 1960s. By the mid-1970s, ORDEN had reached

86 Granovsky-Larsen (forthcoming) explains that these forces do not always or consistently operate
strictly as paramilitary groups, since they perform other non-paramilitary roles as well.

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close to 100,000 forces some of whom engaged in intelligence gathering and others in

counterinsurgency operations against guerrilla groups. Although it was officially

disbanded in 1979, subsequent paramilitary groups87 were created in the 1970s and

1980s by hard-line factions of the elite and the military to protect the dominant classes

from reforms that might redistribute wealth (Mazzei 2009).

In Mexico, paramilitary groups have been known to be mostly concentrated in

the state of Chiapas.88 These groups were formed by the joint efforts of the

Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institutional, or PRI),

wealthy business owners or ranchers, and the military and police, following the birth

of the indigenous rebel movement Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejercito

Zapatista de Liberation National, or EZLN) in 1994. Mazzei’s (2009) study of

paramilitary organizations in Chiapas makes a point to distinguish them from private

armed groups created by landowners only, known as guardias blancas. The latter,

according to Mazzei (2009) target peasant organizers, land reform advocates and

critics of the established order for the direct purpose of protecting their boss (the

rancher) and his/her property. The paramilitary groups, on the other hand, target the

same type of individuals and/or organizations except that it is not only those who

threaten a specific landowner, but rather all such individuals and organizations in

general because of the threat they pose to the politico-economic system as a whole.

87 Examples of such groups, regarded by some as death squads, included the Anti-communist
Liberation Armed Forces of Wars of Elimination (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberation Anti-comunista de
Guerras de Elimination, or FALANGE) and the White Warriors Union (Union de Guerreros Blancos,
or UGB) (Global Security 2012).
88 Current research on paramilitary groups in other parts of Mexico is being carried out by Julie Mazzei.

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The fact that politicians and the military participate in the creation of paramilitary

units enables the latter to be trained, armed, and organized with a high degree of

professionalism. While the guardias blancas are property-oriented security forces, the

paramilitary has a broader political purpose.

Thus, while White Guards [Guardias Blancas] defended property,

paramilitaries defend the PRI party dominance that protects the large property
holders from land redistribution and assigns a status and power via land ...
paramilitaries are not reactive or defensive in nature; they are proactive and
organized for the purpose of offensive attacks (Mazzei 2009 36).

As we can see, in a number of Latin American countries between the 1960s and

the present, paramilitary bodies have been formed through various combinations of

initiatives led by the state military and capitalist classes for the purpose of protecting

their interests and power. This has been done by supplementing the state in its

counterinsurgency offensives and repressing sectors of the civilian population

considered current or potential allies of the guerrilla as well as those who seek social

transformation through non-violent means. Therefore, the criteria which determines

whether a person / organization constitutes an “enemy” (i.e. is victimized by

paramilitary forces) is not their ethnic or religious identity but rather their objective

social position vis-a-vis capital and/or their subjective position (stance with regards to

the status quo). Hence, in the Latin American context, paramilitary organizations must

be comprehended in relation to the development of capitalism.

Paramilitarism has continued into the present and is taking on new forms and

functions, such as dispossession and securing territories for agribusinesses and

extractive industries, while at the same time performing some of its traditional

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functions (e.g. attacking human rights activists and social movements’ leaders). The

civil-state military partnership in the administration of repression outside regulatory

codes continues to be present and disguised under new security projects and missions

(examples of which were provided in Chapter One). The Colombian case represents

the most developed and highly evolved expression of paramilitarism today. It is to this

subject that I turn next.

3.2. Characterizations of the Colombian Armed Conflict

In order to analyze the ways in which the phenomenon of paramilitarism in Colombia

has been conceptualized, first it is necessary to grasp how the context in which it

exists (i.e. the political model in Colombia and the power dynamics of the armed

conflict) has been characterized. Only then we will be better able to grasp and assess

the different ways in which scholars have positioned the paramilitary vis-a-vis the

state and society. One of the most conservative ways in which the Colombian conflict

has been portrayed is as one between the state and a narco-terrorist predatory guerrilla

(e.g. Randall 1992). At the same end of the political spectrum is the view that

positions the state as a neutral actor caught in the middle between left-wing armed

groups (guerrilla) and right-wing armed groups (paramilitary). Examples of this view

are found in the works of Crandall (1999), Spencer (2001) and Romero (2002; 2003)

and it is clearly exemplified by Spencer’s (2001) words: “The Colombian government

is caught between the proverbial rock and the hard place” (Spencer 2001, 17). On the

opposite side of the debate around the Colombian conflict are depictions by mostly

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North American scholars, focused on denouncing human rights violations by all

armed actors (especially state and paramilitary) and exposing the role of US military

assistance and interventions in fueling the conflict (e.g. Crandall 2002; Livingstone

2004; Murillo and Avirama 2003; Stokes 2005; Toledo, Gutierrez, Flounders and

Mclnemey 2004).

A more in-depth perspective on Colombia’s political model and armed conflict

is offered by several Latin American authors whose arguments, although formulated

in different ways, all recognize the repressive reality hidden under the veil of formal

democracy. The first one of these is Aviles’ (2006) argument that Colombia’s political

system is characterized by a low-intensity democracy. He defines the latter as a

largely procedural democracy sustained by a civilianized conservative regime that

allows political opposition, a reduced institutional role for the armed forces and a

permeable environment for foreign investment. Such a regime “... can pursue painful

and even repressive social and economic policies with more impunity and with less

popular resistance than can an openly authoritarian regime” (384). The low-intensity

democracy model is headed by a modernizing transnational political elite seeking its

country’s further integration into the global economy, the implementation of

neoliberal reforms and co-optation of political opposition. The goal of “modernizing”

the state politically implies limiting the state’s direct participation in repression in

exchange for a more subdued and indirect role. Thus, in the presence of a guerrilla

movement, repression becomes privatized (i.e. the persecution of individuals /

organizations suspected of being guerrilla sympathizers becomes the responsibility of

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private groups of armed civilians). Consequently, the consolidation of the neoliberal

model, transnational elite and political freedoms (in theory) are accompanied by the

same elite’s tolerance for or even facilitation of paramilitary repression (Aviles 2006).

Medina and Tellez’ (1994) work on parainstitutional violence parallels the “low-

intensity democracy” thesis. These researchers explain that in Colombia, one could

not speak o f state terror even though the state seeks to annihilate its potential enemies

with extra-judicial means, precisely because it relies on the private use of violence to

do so. Thus, although state terror is a reality since it has “its institutions, its doctrine,

its victims and its perpetrators” (236), it takes place through paramilitary violence.

The end result is that the state’s monopoly over the use of violence which is essential

to a state of law, is lost.

Palacio’s (1991) notion of the “para-state” supports the perspective of the

Colombian model as a mixture of repression with a formal representative democracy,

but advances this proposition by recognizing the power of paramilitary groups over

the state rather than viewing the latter merely as an instrument of the state. Palacio

(1991) states:

What is peculiar to Colombia’s political system, and also represents its

strength, is the combination into one frame of ‘formal democratic’ and
‘repressive authoritarian’ mechanisms ... Repressive mechanisms function to
the extent that they exist simultaneously with democratic-formal ones and vice
versa. In fact, the centerpiece of democratic functioning in Colombia is a set of
highly repressive social control mechanisms (111-112).

According to him, it is in this context that a parainstitutional state has emerged,

characterized by a repressive military apparatus and the penetration of politics by the

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powerful capitalist fractions which formed paramilitary groups. The significance of

this notion of the parainstitutional state is twofold: first it highlights the fact that

parainstitutional violence is not a phenomenon external to and detached from the

state; second it captures the influence and power of actors outside the parameters of

the state on state institutions as well as recognizing that the “para-state is not an anti-

state” (Palacio 1991, 112).

Table 3.1: Depictions of the Colombian Armed Conflict

View_______________ Description_______________________________________________________
The Colombian State The state wages a war on the predatory terrorist narco-guerrilla,
versus the Guerrilla

Left-wing Guerrilla The conflict is between left-wing and right-wing illegal armed groups that
versus Right-wing engage in drug-trafficking; the state condemns and persecutes equally both
Paramilitary in order to put an end to the violence and to protect the civilian population.

The Colombian State The state and the paramilitary are complicit in human rights violations. Both
as a Human Rights use the existence o f the guerrilla as a pretext to repress social movements,
Violator activists, advocates of social change and human rights, and all who oppose
the current politico-economic model.

Low-intensity The state is officially democratic but co-exists with forms of

Democracy parainstitutional violence; it is led by a modernizing transnational elite
which promotes the state’s indirect role in repression by tolerating
paramilitary forces.

The Para-institutional The state is characterized by a repressive military apparatus and a political
State system that is penetrated by powerful capitalist factions and their
paramilitary groups.

The first two depictions (Table 3.1) attribute the armed conflict to the existence of a

guerrilla force, without properly investigating the deeper structural features of

Colombian society which the guerrilla is a symptom of (i.e. poverty and sharp social

inequalities). They ignore the state’s relationship to the paramilitary and its

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involvement in human rights violations. Such perspectives on the conflict are clearly

not useful for understanding paramilitarism. The third depiction recognizes the state’s

human rights abuses and links to paramilitary forces however it does not rest on a

solid historical analysis of the political and economic processes that have paved the

way for the emergence o f paramilitarism. Thus, while such a presentation reveals

ongoing violations o f armed actors against civilians, it does not invite us to view the

conflict in relation to the development of capitalism in Colombia. The last two

portrayals of the conflict are useful in the sense that they hint at the duality of the

Colombian political model - formal democracy underlain by parainstitutional forms

of violence. This is in turn very helpful for understanding the relationship between the

paramilitary and the state, particularly the penetration of the state by paramilitary

power as well as the use of state power to facilitate and at times give legitimacy to

parainstitutional violent activities (as shown in Chapter Six and Seven).

3.3. Conceptualizations of the Phenomenon of Paramilitarism in Colombia

This section will review existing conceptualizations of Colombian paramilitarism that

include explanations of how and why paramilitary forces emerged. Several types of

characterizations of the paramilitary can be found in the theoretically-oriented

literature: i) the paramilitary as a logical outcome of a weak state; ii) the paramilitary

as a criminal actor that is a product of a weak state; and iii) the paramilitary as the

unofficial instrument of an allegedly democratic state which nonetheless relies on

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violence to deal with dissent. Some variations can be found within each of these

approaches.

One of the most common factors to which the emergence of paramilitarism in

Colombia has been attributed by Colombian, Latin American and few Western

scholars has been the weakness of the state - described as the state’s lack o f monopoly

over legitimate force for the sake of collective security and its inability to consolidate

democracy by establishing the rule of law. Some authors such as Bejarano and Pizarro

(2002) have gone as far as to argue that in the 1990s the Colombian state suffered a

partial collapse where the political system could be described as a “besieged

democracy”. Within the “weak state” thesis, two models have been put forward with

regards to how and why paramilitary forces emerged under the conditions of a weak

state. The first explanation argues that the state itself outsources and partially

privatizes access to the means of violence. Kalyvas and Arjona (2005) claim that the

formation of paramilitary bodies is directly related to the construction of the state.

Strong states do not need to privatize or outsource violence since they can control or

repress threats in an effective way using their police apparatus. Weak states on the

other hand, cannot do the same. In Kalyvas and Arjona’s (2005) view, states today

must dissolve the monopoly on violence in order to preserve it. These authors offer a

typology to classify the formation of paramilitary organizations based on an

intersection of state resources (high / low) and the kind of threat (big / small). Under

circumstances o f high threat and high resources, paramilitary armies are formed

outside the formal structures of the state’s apparatus because the latter is incapable of

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facing the irregular nature of the threat from the guerrilla and thus has to resort to

outsourcing.

The other version of the “weak state” perspective attributes the emergence of

paramilitary forces to the initiatives of private individuals who feel that the state was

unable to guarantee their safety and security. Richani (2007) exemplifies well this
♦h th
point of view. He argues that private armies, present throughout the 19 and 20

century in Colombia, are a key symptom of the chronic hegemonic crisis that was

inherent in the process of state formation. “Their [large landowners and cattle-

ranchers] resistance to the growth of the central government was compounded by their

distrust of its ability or its willingness to protect their class interests” (405). According

to Tobon (2005), the existence of paramilitary groups is a clear indication of serious

faults in the relationship between state and society. He perceives the paramilitary as

self-defense associations which were created by a particular social sector as the only

way to ensure its survival and eventually, acquired a political and territorial

dimension. Romero’s (2000; 2003) extensive writings on paramilitarism rest on a

similar logic. His work is an example of a study that focuses on a particular time

period (1980s-1990s) and a specific geographic region (Department of Cdrdoba), yet

claims to offer an explanation of the phenomenon of paramilitarism as a whole.

Romero (2000; 2003) highlights specific state policies and events which he contends

were perceived by sectors of the elite as a political opening that favoured the guerrilla

as well as its allies and sympathizers. These were; the peace talks with the guerrilla

initiated in 1982 by President Betancur; the first popular election of mayors in 1988;

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the new Constitution of 1991; and the peace talks with the FARC initiated in 1998 by

President Pastrana. Romero (2000) explains that in organizing to defend and protect

themselves from the guerrillas and common criminals and to oppose the reformist

policies of the central state, these elites developed strong social ties and a shared

vision of a corporatist social order and their place within it. “This network of

camaraderie and solidarity shaped a political identity that resisted state penetration,

collective mobilization, and autonomous peoples organizations - promoting masculine

values of courage and honour, and relying on retaliation to resolve conflict” (Romero

2000, 52). Romero argues that the consolidation of paramilitary forces debilitated the

authority of the central government in areas where they exercised dominance and

consequently exacerbated the decline of the Colombian state. Cubides (2001) also

insists the existence of the paramilitary can be explained as a response to the threat

from the guerrilla. In the same vein, Rangel (2005) sees the predatory practices of the

guerrilla in the mid-1990s, combined with state impotence, as the impulse for the

formation of paramilitary bodies. A more simplistic proposition, yet one which

essentially echoes the same argument that the paramilitary emerged due to the state’s

inability to protect its citizens from the guerrilla, is offered by Spencer (2001).

The core of their [paramilitary] intense violence is the pent-up anger and
frustration of important sectors of the rural population at guerrillas who have
terrorized the countryside for 30 plus years. This has been exacerbated by a
state that has been unable to provide more than fleeting relief from insurgent
violence. The continual inability of the government to bring peace or provide
adequate protection to the population in the rural areas has provoked people to
take matters into their own hands and protect themselves against the insurgents
(3).

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Moreover, Spencer (2001) states that, while the guerrilla is an economic predator who

tears down public authority, the paramilitaries restore law and order as well as

economic stability.

Another way in which paramilitary groups have been characterized has been as

criminal organizations. This approach is not in disagreement with the notion of the

“weak state” and in fact, some of the authors believe that the state’s weakness and

subsequent need to outsource, has enabled the formation of criminal networks.

Duncan (2005) sees the paramilitary or auto-defensas as warlords or criminals who

seek to impose a mafia regime over the state. In McLean’s (2002) words, “Simply put,

the guerrillas and their enemies, the paramilitaries, are all outlaws (130).

The Colombian state is not providing the security its citizens have a right to
expect, which is a fundamental failure. The rate of kidnappings remains
intolerably high. Guerrillas regularly bomb an oil pipeline responsible for a
significant portion of the country’s export revenues; seem more intent than
ever on destroying highways, bridges, and electrical grids; and are now
threatening reservoirs and other crucial infrastructure. Paramilitary groups
have grown ... to fill the vacuum left by the absence of government.
Following the guerrillas’ example, they also began making money from
criminal enterprises (McLean 2002, 132).

Holmes, Gutierrez, and Curtin (2008) also point to this criminal dimension of the

paramilitary.

While the next view of paramilitarism sees it primarily in terms of its criminal

dimension, it nevertheless recognizes its potential political implication. Zuleta (2005)

argues that paramilitary groups are private armies of assassins that constitute the drug-

trafficking’s clandestine apparatus of repression. The gradual growth of this private

apparatus of repression and its eventual incorporation into the fabric of society

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through the recruitment of poor youth (who cannot achieve access to goods and

services within conditions of legality), into its networks, has led to the de-valorization

of life and “ ...the conversion of death into a regular source of income for some”

(Zuleta 2005, 126).

The work o f Medina (1990) and Medina and Tellez (1994) offer a perspective

that incorporates elements o f the argument that characterizes the paramilitary as a

criminal formation that is a symptom of a weak state. However, these scholars attempt

to use greater precision when characterizing the paramilitary by avoiding the tendency

to lump such armed groups in the category of organized crime. Instead, their work

stresses what they believe to be the usurpation of the paramilitary phenomenon

(founded upon a national security and anti-communism discourses) by drug-

trafficking. In turn, this has “...generated a phenomenon with great destabilizing

capacity socially and politically - narco-paramilitarism” (49). Medina and Tellez

(1994) explain that this “detouring” of the initial objectives of paramilitarism in the

1980s is part of a historical development of parainstitutional practices since the 1950s

prompted by the incapacity of the state to resolve old and new problems and to accept

the challenges of social transformation which in turn have led it to the confront

conflicts with force (i.e. the institutionalization of violence). The authors conclude

that

The cause that generated parainstitutional practices in the 1950s are the same
as those that reactivated these practices in the 1980s: the incapacity of the state
to maintain the public order as a consequence of a profound crisis of
govemability. The difference is that bi-party violence was displaced by

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 multiple violences which today together form a much more complex
phenomenon” (Medina and Tellez 1994, 79).

Palacio (1991)89 has been the scholar who most accurately has touched upon the

various emerging dimensions and tendencies of paramilitarism even at the time he

was writing 20 years ago. He explains that while the existence of narco-paramilitary

groups signify a breakdown of the state’s monopoly over legitimate physical force, the

“...state is forced to recognize the reality of parainstitutionality and to enter into

negotiations with parainstitutional actors ... Such negotiations take the state beyond

the legal limits of state actions. In other words, the state itself engages in

parainstitutionality” (106-107).

The next category of academic literature, where we can find characterizations of

the Colombian paramilitary, consists of a number of progressive works mostly

published in the English-speaking world such as Giraldo (1996), Dudley (2004),

Stokes (2005), Toledo, Gutierrez, Flounder, and Mclnemey (2004), Murillo and

Avirama (2003), Livingstone (2004) and Mazzei (2009). What all these works have in

common besides revealing quite well the seriousness of human rights violations by

right-wing armed groups, is that they portray the latter as the privatized right-hand of

the state created to do its “dirty work” (subcontractors of state terror) in the face of

international concerns over human rights. Giraldo (1996) expresses well this idea by

stating that linking “ ...the civilian population to armed actions...hides the identity of

state agents and / or allows them to carry out covered up operations”. Consequently,

89 This author was cited in Chapter Two in relation to his concept of parainstitutionality and in Section
3.2 of this chapter in relation to his notion of the “parainstitutional state”.

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human rights violations “ ...cannot be attributed to persons on behalf of the state

because they have been delegated, passed along or projected upon confused bodies of

armed civilians” (Giraldo 1996, 81). Similarly, Stokes (2005) states that the

deployment of paramilitary forces has allowed for a distancing between official state

policy and the unofficial use of terrorism directed against the civilian population.

Mazzei (2009) advances a theory of paramilitary emergence based on her studies

of El Salvador, Mexico and Colombia. Within this third approach, her work offers by

far the most elaborate way to conceptualize paramilitary groups. Mazzei (2009)

recognizes that in the countries which she studied there is a mutually beneficial

relationship between the political elite, the economic elite, and the military. The latter

is financially sustained by the economic and political elite and serves to protect their

interests by dealing with uprisings and dissent. However eventually, overt repression

(commonly relied upon in the past) becomes less a less viable option due to the global

pressures around human rights issues. In the context of growing social mobilizations

demanding social change, on one hand, and the need for international support on the

other hand, a split among political, economic, and military circles takes place, where

hard-liners find themselves “...in search of extra-institutional means of achieving

their preferred ends” (Mazzei 2009, 17-18). Mazzei’s (2009) “triad” model illustrates

the confluence and conditions under which paramilitary organizing is facilitated. It is

composed o f factions of the economic elite, who provide finances, training sites, and

other organizational necessities; factions of the political elite, who provide political

and legal “cover”, ideology, purpose, and leadership; and factions of the military or

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security forces, who provide arms, training, and leadership. A crucial point here that

Mazzei (2009) makes is

The potential organization and success of paramilitaries is in part determined

by the repressive history and capacity of the state; the historical willingness of
the state to use repression is likely to provide paramilitaries with a sense of
legitimacy in continuing tactics that have been successfully used in the past.
This underlies the sense of the right to use repression (18).

Table 3.2: Conceptualizations o f the Paramilitary in Colombia

Approach Views
The Paramilitary as i) The state outsources / partially privatizes violence in order to
the Outcome of a face the threat of the guerrilla;
Weak State ii) Certain social groups within the elite create self-defense
associations (private armies) to protect their security and
interests.

The Paramilitary as a i) Paramilitary groups constitute an illegal apparatus of

Criminal Actor repression that is part of the illegal business of drug-
trafficking;
ii) Paramilitarism in Colombia today is “Narco-paramilitarism”
which is the result of traditional paramilitarism (based on a
counter-insurgency ideology) being usurped by drug-
trafficking;
iii) The Parainstitutional State - narco-paramilitary forces exercise
power over the state and consequently the state itself engages
in parainstitutionality by having relationships with these
groups.

The Paramilitary as i) Paramilitary groups enable the state to remain democratic in

Sub-contractors of theory while being complicit in gross human rights violations;
State-terror the economically powerful sectors support and participate in
these groups;
ii) The “Triad” Model - factions of the economic elite, political
elite, and the military make possible the formation of
paramilitary forces.

3.4. Similarities and Differences between the Paramilitary and Other Parainstitutional

Armed Actors

Since the paramilitary as an armed actor has often been equated to or conflated with

each of the other categories of parainstitutional actors (death squads, vigilantes, and

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warlords), this section reflects on how the paramilitary is similar to and different from

each of the other three types.

3.4.1. Death Squads

Those who see the paramilitary as the unofficial right-hand of the state that does its

“dirty job” have often equated this armed actor with death squads. It is true that both

death squads and paramilitary groups in Latin America are founded upon

counterinsurgency ideology which dictates that the guerrilla as well as any individual,

organization, or movement which seeks social change, challenges the current politico-

economic model, or advocates human rights, should be viewed as an enemy and

targeted by violent means such as murder, torture, or disappearance. When we

consider the agents responsible for the creation of death squads and paramilitary

groups, we see in each one the direct participation of both the state as well as

civilians, which in turn problematizes the boundary between state and civil society.

Similarly to death squads, paramilitary groups carry out executions of individuals

deemed by the state as enemies, to enable the state to maintain a democratic image

through “plausible deniability”. Many of the tactics used by death squads are also

used by the paramilitary - for instance carrying out massacres, selective

assassinations, or leaving mutilated corpses in public places.

There are, however, some substantial differences between these two types of

parainstitutional armed actors. One central feature of the definition of death squads,

which all of the works reviewed earlier mention, is their clandestine nature.

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Paramilitary organizations on the other hand are not clandestine, since they have

names, often wear uniforms, and openly let citizens know about their existence, their

demands, and the consequences of not complying with their rules. Paramilitary units

commonly establish dominance in a certain area and remain there for a long time,

controlling many aspects o f the social life, maintaining relationships with informants

and “cleaning” the area of subversives. A second key distinction is that in the

Colombian case, the initial creation of paramilitary groups in the 1960s by the state

and the support of elite sectors of society, was followed by the formation of numerous

other paramilitary groups where sectors of the capitalist class became the principal

leaders, while the state assisted them in various ways. Thus, it was civilians who took

on the primary role in the creation of these organizations from the 1980s onwards,

unlike death squads where members of the state usually have a leading role in their

formation and operations. Thirdly, the main job of death squads is eliminating people

through extra-judicial executions and disappearances. Paramilitary groups, on the

other hand, engage in a very wide range of activities such as forced displacement,

extortion, intelligence gathering, social cleansing, and security provision. The other

fundamental difference is that while death squads have links to the state military,

paramilitary groups have links not only to the state military but have penetrated

profoundly many other major state institutions such as the justice system90 (where by

destroying evidence and manipulating witnesses state authorities ensure impunity for

paramilitary crimes), or the Colombian Institute for Rural Development (Institute

90 Discussed in Chapter Six, Section 6.3.2.

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Colombiano de Desarollo Rural or INCODER)91 where officials provide

paramilitaries with legal titles for land which has been illegally and forcibly

appropriated.

3.4.2. Vigilantes

One of the activities of paramilitary groups is social cleansing and it is in this aspect

that they resemble vigilantes. As part of dominating a certain area, it is common for

paramilitaries to distribute flyers with warnings to anyone perceived as a disturbance

to the social order including thieves, beggars, street prostitutes, the poor, mentally-ill,

and drug-addicts. Most of the time such activities are in accordance with and for the

benefit of business owners, such as those o f hotels and restaurants. The big difference

however is that while vigilantes are more spontaneous local short-term groupings,

paramilitary organizations are of relatively permanent nature, span over a large area or

even the entire country, are highly coordinated, and their activities include much more

than simply private “justice-making”, crime control, or social cleansing.

3.4.3. Warlords

Paramilitaries resemble warlords in the centrality of economic motivations behind

their acts of violence (e.g. violent dispossession). However, one of the principal

factors associated with the existence of warlordism, emphasized by the scholarship, is

state decomposition. Most authors highlight that warlords exist where the state is

91 Discussed in Chapter Six, Section 6.3.4.

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extremely weak or disintegrating. Yet, the paramilitary is a violent entrepreneur who

exists alongside a strong state’s coercive apparatus, thus perhaps illustrating the

“commensal relationship” (i.e. one where the state and warlord exist in harmony with

mutual benefit), recognized by Rich (1999) and Robinson (2001). The other difference

between paramilitarism and warlordism is that the latter implies a context of war and

illegality. However, paramilitary groups today are increasingly present in legal

economic activities in various ways by investing in legal businesses or being hired by

capitalist enterprises (local and foreign) to deal with labour unionists, populations

occupying strategic territories, and other impediments to the expansions of their

operations.

Warlordism is associated with the commodification of violence. Paramilitaries

cannot be equated with warlords because the context within which they operate is not

characterized by an absent state where the means of violence are equally available to

everyone. In the Colombian context we can speak of the partial privatization of

violence but not of a complete commodification because there are military equipment

that are not equally available for purchase to any armed actor (e.g. the guerrilla), but

can only be accessed by the state and the groups it is complicit with (i.e. the

paramilitary).92

92 The Colombian state possesses military equipment (e.g. various types of aircraft, aerial bombs, tanks,
intelligence and radar electronic equipment) that is supplied by US and is not available for purchase to
any armed actor, such as the guerrilla.

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 3.4.4. Concluding Remarks

In sum, what all of these armed actors have in common with the paramilitary is that

they protect private interests (local and/or foreign), involve the outsourcing or partial

privatization of violence and blur the line between state and non-state. However,

while the paramilitary possesses elements from each of them, it cannot be reduced or

equated to any one of these actors alone. The special feature that distinguishes it from

all of them is its pervasive penetration of the state - in other words the presence of

paramilitary power inside major state institutions which in turn shapes the latter’s

decision-making, policies, and practices.

With regards to the approaches used to study death squads, vigilantes, and

warlords, one interesting idea, presented by Huggins (1991), is to look at armed actors

on a continuum in terms of how organized or spontaneous and how closely linked

they are to the state. This is based on the recognition that armed groups do not always

fit neatly defined categories. As Huggins (1991) shows, there are different forms of

vigilantism based on their degree of organization and connections to the state, and

groups that rank high on these two variables overlap with the category of death

squads. I agree with the basic premise that a given type of violence may itself have

different manifestations. While Huggins’ (1991) approach focuses on the

organizational dynamics of death squads and vigilantes, it does not pay sufficient

attention to their objectives, targets, and motivations as well as the forces that sustain

them. For this reason such works do not illuminate on the place of armed

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organizations in the wider politico-economic context and their role in perpetuating the

existing social structure.

3.5. Assessment of the Literature on Colombian Paramilitarism

Each of the characterizations that I discuss below contains some interesting insights,

but on its own is incomplete. Some insights need to be integrated into a broader

framework in order to illuminate the entirety of this complex multi-dimensional

phenomenon.

3.5.1. The “W eakState” Approach

The first approach discussed in Section 3.3 was based on the notion of the “weak

state” (expressed by Romero 2000; Spencer 2001; Cubides 2001; Romero 2003;

Tobon 2005, Rangel 2005; and Richani 2007), where the paramilitary is seen as an

outcome of either the outsourcing of violence by the state or the initiative of sectors of

civil society who felt that the state was unable to guarantee their safety and security

and consequently formed private armed groups. The weakness of the Colombian state

has been generally described as its inability since the 19th century to have command

over the totality of its national territory. It is believed that this factor, combined with

the development and extension of guerrilla forces in the 20th century, led to the

subordination of the state and its armed forces towards private armed groups. There

are several important problems with this approach.

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 To begin with, the term “weak” has not been defined in a rigorous manner by

many of the scholars o f paramilitarism who rely on it. On the other hand, state

capacity (which is what the “weak / strong” categorization of the state has to do with)

is something that has been theorized at length and in a variety of ways.93 Tilly (2003)

uses the term “government capacity” to refer to the extent to which government agents

control resources, activities and populations within the government’s territory.

Combinations of different degrees of government capacity and democracy produce

different types of regimes, which in turn affects the character and intensity of

collective violence within them.94 Tilly (2005) argues that in general, levels of

collective violence run higher in low-capacity regimes, whether democratic or non-

democratic, the reason being that high-capacity governments generally limit

independent access to coercive force and can prevent the acquisition of lethal arms by

any group.95 According to him, Colombia can be classified as a high-capacity regime

containing significant zones that escape the control of the central government.

Scholars o f Colombian paramilitarism, who rely on the “weak state” notion have

not explicitly drawn on any specific dimensions of state capacity outlined by the

93 Hanson and Sigman (2011) summarize three main ways in which state capacity can be measured,
according to theories of: Economic Development; Stability and Change; and International Security.
According to the first type of theories, state capacity refers to the state’s ability to perform functions
such as providing goods and services, protecting property rights, enforcing contracts, and maintaining
order. Stability and Change theories define state capacity as the ability to maintain order through the
repression of opposition, the accommodation of oppositional demands, and the legitimization of state
power. According to International Security theories, state capacity has to do with intelligence and
monitoring, control of borders and authority over territories and social groups.
94 According to Tilly (2003), there are four possible combinations of levels of government capacity and
levels of democracy and thus, four types of regimes: high-capacity undemocratic; low-capacity
undemocratic; high-capacity democratic; and low-capacity democratic.
95 For more on the relationship between forms of collective violence and regime types see Tilly (2003;
2005).

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different theories on this subject (see footnote 93). Most seem to hint at the weakness

of the state in performing its coercive functions, by pointing to military spending or

the lack of armed presence in all parts of the country. Campbell (2000) also finds the

idea of a “weak state” problematic. He argues that

...all too often it amounts to the expression of an ideological bias: ‘weak’

states are those that are simply not as ‘democratic’ as ‘we’ are. It also implies
a strict dichotomy between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ states that usually does not
reflect reality. Modem states, even ‘weak’ ones, are complex and given the
multitude of functions even relatively feeble states have to fulfill today, it is
quite possible for a state to be strong in some areas and weak in others (12).

Apart from the lack of conceptual clarity around the notion of a “weak state” when

used by Colombianist scholars, if we accept the term “weak” in reference to the state’s

coercive capacity,96 then we find a second and more substantial problem in the

formulation that paramilitary groups emerge in response to the weakness of the state.

As Chapter Four demonstrates, throughout the 20th century the state’s coercive

apparatus in Colombia began to expand and enhance its functioning, especially since

it became the second largest recipient of US military aid and has been receiving

consistent support for training, new military technology, and bases. It would no

longer be accurate to label it as weak, at as far as at least the last 20 years are

concerned. In 1985, the military numbered 185,000. By 1996, it was 266,000 with a

pension that amounted 15 billion. By 2010, the military had become the largest

employer in the country with 450,000 members, representing 50 percent of all

96 Examples of indicators of the state’s coercive capacity, according to Hanson and Sigman (2011),
include the ability to protect borders, authority presence over the entire territory, intelligence and
monitoring, and presence of a professional military.

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government employees (Richani 2010). The Defense and Democratic Security

program (discussed in Chapter Five) is another illustration of how the state’s coercive

apparatus has been extending its reach beyond its institutions and incorporating

members of civil society into its networks. Furthermore, between 2005 and 2006 there

was a 54 percent increase on government-initiated battles against the FARC and the

former has been successful in establishing some form of security presence in areas

where it previously had none (Holmes, Gutierrez and Curtin 2008). Thanks to new

monitoring and radar interception technology provided by the US, the Colombian

state was able to detect the precise location of the FARC camp in Ecuador, and to

subsequently launch an aerial attack on March 1, 2008 with bombs and rockets

followed by an assault by ground troops in which FARC deputy commander Luis

Edgar Devia Silva (alias Raul Reyes) was killed along with other guerrilla members

and four Mexican students. A similar example is the operation known as Sodoma

where 20 planes and 37 helicopters were employed to discharge 50 bombs on a FARC

camp near La Macarena, Department of Meta on September 23,2010, killing the

FARC commander Jorge Briceflo Suarez, alias Mono Jojoy (Mena, 2010).

Another point of critique which I would like to direct at the “weak state”

approach is the characterization of the paramilitary as self-defense forces which were

the outcome of the response of certain sectors of civil society in the 1980s to the

failure of the state to ensure security and protection for its citizens (a position

common to Rangel 2005, Romero 2003, Pizzaro 2004, and Tobon 2005). Romero

(2003) goes as far as to argue that the consolidation of paramilitary forces has led to

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the decline of the Colombian state by debilitating its authority. These accounts appear

to be completely oblivious to the creation of paramilitary units by the state itself in the

1960s, which played the crucial role of laying down the legal and military foundation

for the existence of paramilitarism. Moreover, they render invisible the subsequent

long-lasting mutually beneficial relationship between the Colombian state’s coercive

apparatus and the paramilitary as well as the presence of paramilitary power inside the

state.

The above explanation also does not question the appropriation by capitalist

classes of the term “self-defense” which was originally used by poor peasants in the

1950s and 1960 as they organized to protect their lands against the incursions of

hacienda owners. Authors who unquestioningly accept the paramilitary’s use of the

label “self-defense” explain the creation of paramilitary units in the 1980s as solely an

instrument for protection. However, far from offering mere protection, the objective

of these groups has been to actively seek out and exterminate any potential guerrilla

sympathizers (whether real or imagined), including labour unionists, peasant leaders,

progressive students, educators and politicians, as well as to destroy their

organizations. Terror has been used “ .. .not only to debilitate the enemy but also to

break, prevent and impede the links between the population and the enemy (repressive

or dissuasive terror)....” (Lair 2003,96). Pearce (2010) also eloquently challenges the

“weak state” perspective, pointing to the positive relationship between the state and

illegal armed groups:

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 While violence in Latin America is often treated as ‘state failure’, we may in
fact be seeing something more dangerous, the emergence of particular forms
o f the state, dedicated to the preservation of elite rule, at times combating and
at times conceding space to aggressive new elites emerging from illegal
accumulation, in which permanent violent engagement with violent ‘others’
plays into the broad project (288).

In sum, the decentralization of violence and the state’s lack of monopoly over the

means o f violence cannot be equated with state weakness. In the case of Colombia,

the state outsourced violence by arming civilians for the interest of certain sectors of

society and later on allowed this sector (i.e. the economically dominant classes) to

create their own armed groups. This is not illogical, since the state is allied with the

wealthy classes and the latter in turn have access to political power. After all, as

Miliband (1973) powerfully argues, state institutions function to protect and serve

capitalist interests. The state’s role is to sustain the current economic order. In one

characterized by class inequality, the state can never be neutral since it prioritizes the

interests of one class over another. Therefore, the existence of right-wing armed

groups is not because the state is willing but incapable to eliminate them. The state

allows their existence because this arrangement works towards fulfilling the

preservation of the capitalist system. Hence, paramilitarism is a strategy of the state-

capital alliance, rather than the unintended outcome of a state which is incapable of

limiting the access of private groups to armed force.

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 3.5.2. The Paramilitary as a Criminal Actor

This conceptualization o f the paramilitary relies partially on the “weak state” notion

when it argues that such groups constitute a criminal network or a mafia that has

emerged in the context of a failed state (e.g. Medina and Tellez 1994; McLean 2002;

Duncan 2005; Zuleta 2005). The difference from the previous approach is that

paramilitary organizations are not seen as legitimate self-defense bodies but rather as

criminal actors. More specifically, they are viewed as an illegal agent of violence that

constitutes an inherent element of the drug-trafficking business. While Medina and

Tellez (1994) recognize the existence of “traditional paramilitarism” (prior to the

1980s), they argue that since the 1980s the former was subverted through a shift from

its original objectives (i.e. defeating the guerrilla) towards ensuring successful drug-

trafficking operations by solving problems (such as settling accounts) that formal

regulated institutions would not solve.

The fundamental flaw of this argument is twofold. Firstly, with its emphasis on

the paramilitary’s involvement in drug-trafficking, it ignores the attacks of

paramilitary groups in the 1980s and 1990s on social movements and popular

organizations’ leaders and members. During that time, paramilitarism was not external

to the functioning of the state but rather an integral element (albeit unofficial) of its

national security strategy. The counter-insurgency ideology that has been guiding the

paramilitary’s decision of who becomes a target of its violence has not disappeared

just because o f the fact that drug-trafficking, as an illegal economic activity, has

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grown in importance. Paramilitary groups and the state’s coercive apparatus have

continued to operate in mutually supporting ways as Chapter Six and Seven reveal.

Secondly, and even more importantly, Medina and Tellez’ (1994) claim fails to

recognize that drug-traffickers are capitalists who, in addition to this illegal activity,

also invest in properties and enterprises. Unionists, human rights activists, peasant

leaders and anyone who seeks social justice, interfere with their interests and are

considered potential enemies. Thus, drug-traffickers do not differ from other capitalist

classes with regards to their economic interests and their need to neutralize those who

represent obstacles or challenges to processes of capital accumulation (for instance

peasant movements for land recovery or unionists struggling to reduce the rate of

exploitation). The fact that drug-traffickers resort to violence to punish traitors or

competitors does not negate their ability to also resort to violence to advance their

class interests against those who constitute a threat. As any other capitalist group,

drug-traffickers have political interests that need to be defended.

The characterization of the paramilitary as a criminal actor without any political

undertones approximates it almost completely to the category of a warlord. As

discussed in Section 3.1.3, warlords operate within markets of violence (i.e. economic

fields that entwine violent and non-violent forms of appropriation and exchange). The

notion of markets of violence is very useful in that it draws attention to the economic

motives behind the activities of the paramilitary. However, it also presumes a

disintegration of the state, which is not the case in Colombia. Perhaps the Colombian

experience teaches us that markets of violence can co-exist with a strong state’s

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coercive apparatus. The other limitation of the concepts of warlords and markets of

violence is that they create an impression that violence for the generation of revenue

takes place within the realm of illegal economic activities only. This is also along the

lines of Medina and Tellez’ (1994) argument that paramilitarism is confined to drug-

trafficking. Yet, paramilitary violence has been unofficially employed by many legal

enterprises including foreign-based companies operating in Colombia such as Coca-

Cola, Drummond, and Chiquita. In sum, with this approach (the paramilitary as a

criminal actor), drug-traffickers are not only treated as apolitical but are also

presumed to operate outside the capitalist economy, which is of course not true.

The other argument within this approach is put forward by Palacio (1991), who

views the paramilitary as a criminal actor and also recognizes its positive relationship

to the state. Because the state engages with this parainstitutional actor, the author calls

it a “parainstitutional state”. This perspective offers a valuable insight by hinting at

the back-and-forth mutually beneficial exchanges that take place between paramilitary

groups and members of state institutions. However, one of the limitations of Palacio’s

(1991) work (which is due to the time period in which he was writing) is that it only

focuses on cocaine entrepreneurs as the basis of this “parainstitutional state”, while

within the last 15 years, agribusinesses and extractive industries have become an

increasingly important economic base for the elite that employs paramilitary forces.

The other shortcoming of Palacio’s (1991) concept of parainstitutional violence

is that it makes it possible to lump together paramilitaries and guerrillas in the same

category of parainstitutional actors. The implications of equating the guerrilla and the

141
paramilitary, in addition to erasing some fundamental structural and historical features

of Colombian society, also serves to conveniently situate the state as a neutral third

actor combating equally both paramilitary and guerrilla forces. In fact, S&nchez (2001)

explicitly expresses this belief that “Here we have in a nutshell the nature of the

Colombian crisis: two opposing rivals, against an absent enemy, the State” (p.25).

What seems to be completely disregarded here are: i) the control of the paramilitary

elite over the best land in Colombia, drug-trafficking, many criminal organizations

and numerous legal businesses; and ii) the continuous historical relationship between

the paramilitary and the state. Both of these indicators are nowhere near the guerrilla’s

relationship to the state and economic resources. For instance, there has not been a

single unit in the police or military formally and specifically dedicated to persecuting

the paramilitary. While both of these armed actors are outside the state, the guerrilla

fights against the state while the paramilitary targets those who are against the state.

3.5.3. The Paramilitary as a Subcontractor o f State Terror

The last approach to conceptualizing the paramilitary, reviewed in Chapter Seven,

emphasizes its repressive role as an instrument of the state. The majority o f authors

such as Murillo and Avirama (2003), Dudley (2004), Toledo, Gutierrez, Flounder, and

Mclnemey (2004), Livingstone (2004), Stokes (2005), and Aviles (2006) do an

excellent job of revealing the seriousness of human rights violations carried out by the

paramilitary and the state. Some of them recognize the use of violence by such groups

to advance private economic interests. Others, such as Aviles (2006), highlight the

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privatization of repression as the state’s tactic to look good in the eyes of the

international community, but do not discuss the role of the paramilitary in capitalist

activity through dispossession and the repression of social movements. In general,

works in this third category do not offer a sufficient analysis of paramilitarism as a

phenomenon on its own, but rather mention the paramilitary as merely one of the

actors in the armed conflict. O f course, this is not a weakness of those works since

their goal is to throw light on the armed conflict as a whole and especially the US’

role in it, but not on the paramilitary specifically or in any depth.

The other issue here is that while these accounts are eye-opening with regards to

the human rights abuses by the paramilitary, what remains under-investigated is the

extent to which currently the paramilitary exercises domination over state institutions

by offering state employees lucrative opportunities in exchange for their collaboration.

Portraying the paramilitary mainly as an instrument at the disposal of the state and

dismissing the fact that today right-wing armed groups provide extra jobs for state

employees can obscure the paramilitarization of the Colombian state and make it

difficult to grasp fully the ways in which the state’s coercive apparatus and the

paramilitary complement each other.

Writings such as those by Sanchez (2001) and Guerrero Baron (2001) reveal

human rights violations carried out by the paramilitary and/or state forces, but lack

any class-based analysis and are unable to capture the centrality of paramilitary

violence to processes of capital accumulation. The term “class” has been only used

sometimes when referring to the objectives of the guerrilla. The notions of capital

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accumulation and class struggle are regarded as remnants of old-fashioned Marxism

that have no place in today’s world. Relying solely on a human rights framework does

not provide us with the means of identifying the ways in which the profoundly uneven

class structure fuels violence. Thus, although such works condemn the abuses against

civilians, they do nothing to expose the systemic and structural causes of paramilitary

and/or state-sanctioned violence which is in essence aimed at reproducing the

capitalist social relations. Consequently, paramilitarism, has been detached from the

capitalist social relations that it serves to sustain. However, even though the

composition and dynamics of the different social classes in Colombia have changed

throughout time, the reality of class inequality and class struggle remain and hence the

need to examine paramilitary and state violence in this context. Those scholars who

rely solely on a human rights framework without a class analysis tend to focus

primarily on the violations of the rights to life, liberty, physical integrity, security of

person, and freedom of thought and conscience. I believe that it is important to take

into consideration all spheres of human rights, not only the political and civil ones, but

also the economic and social ones, mentioned in Article 25 of the UN Universal
07
Declaration of Human Rights :

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well­
being of himself and of his family including food, clothing, housing and
medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the
event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack
of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control (UN 2012).

97 This dissertation relies on the UN definition of human rights found in the UN Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, https://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

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This is why I argue that a Marxist political economy framework, with its attention to

the material foundations of social relations, can empower us to understand the causes

of human rights violations in a more comprehensive way.

Within the category of literature on the paramilitary as a sub-contractor of state

terror, Mazzei’s (2009) “triad” model provides the most consideration of the

importance o f the local elite in the formation of paramilitary groups. Nonetheless, she

portrays the relationship between the state and the paramilitary as unidirectional and

does not account for how these groups penetrate, influence, and control the state. She

also does not mention the transnational dimensions of the paramilitary’s involvement

with the elite (for instance the paramilitary’s involvement with foreign companies).

Mazzei (2009) uses the term “factions” when referring to the involvement of the

political elite, economic elite, and military. It serves the purpose of providing a

balanced perspective that recognizes that not everyone in a given social sector

engages in paramilitarism. Yet, the Colombian experience shows that these factions

are not steady, but growing. Once paramilitary services exist, larger and larger parts of

the wealthy sectors end up implicated with them either by hiring them or by being

forced to pay protection fees.

7.4. Conclusion

The first part of this chapter provided conceptual definitions of four types of

parainstitutional actors (death squads, vigilantes, warlords and paramilitaries) and

offered examples of studies of such actors in different parts of the world. It is possible

145
to observe that the term “paramilitary” has not been applied consistently or with

precision. One of the reasons is that it has been frequently conflated by academics and

media alike with the term “death squads” and the two have been used interchangeably

or in conjunction with each other (as in “paramilitary death squads”). This is

especially the case across studies on Latin America98 during the 1960s-1990s. More

recent works such as those of Mazzei (2009) and Granovsky-Larsen (forthcoming)

seek to establish a better conceptual clarity and distinguish the paramilitary from other

armed actors. Nevertheless, in the Latin American context, there is an agreement

among all scholars that paramilitary groups of all periods have been associated with

the state military and / or the economically and politically powerful sectors of society

while their victims have been members of the impoverished classes and those who

seek social transformation.

The way the term “paramilitary” has been employed in other parts of the world

resembles the Latin American cases in the sense that paramilitary groups are always

associated with favourable attitude towards the state or the political party in power

and in turn, can count on the state’s tolerance and support towards them. The

difference between Latin America and the examples from Bosnia, Ireland and

Hungary, is that in Latin America there has been a clear link between class conflict

and paramilitary activities (i.e. interests of capitalist class being threatened by the

presence of guerrilla or unarmed social movements and the paramilitary’s attack on

98 Grossman’s (2000) work on India also uses the two terms interchangeably.

146
the latter two). In the other parts of the world mentioned above, ethnic or religious

identity is the more salient factor around which paramilitary violence is mobilized.

Across Latin America, the phenomenon of paramilitarism has been evolving

since its inception as part of counter-insurgency offensives in the 1960s. While there

are many continuities, there are also important novelties which can still be understood

in the context of the historical relationship between violence and capital accumulation

(explained in Chapter Eight). Since paramilitarism is most highly developed in

Colombia, analyzing the Colombian case can be highly useful for the rest of the

region, given the state-led and private initiatives underway aimed at replicating the

Colombian model of forming private armed groups under the pretext of security (as

discussed in Chapter One). Section 3.5 assessed the explanatory capacities and

limitations of the three categories of literature presented in Section 3.3 with regards to

conceptualizing the paramilitary in Colombia today. I showed that existing

conceptualizations of paramilitarism in the academic literature de-historicize and

disconnect in different ways paramilitary violence from the social relations in which it

is embedded. Problems with existing definitions tend to stem from any or combination

of the following: treating the political and economic dimensions of paramilitarism as

separate; lacking class analysis; failing to grasp the relationship between the

paramilitary and the Colombian capitalist classes or that between the paramilitary and

the state; and generalizing a temporally and geographically specific case of

paramilitarism to the phenomenon as a whole. In the following four chapters I explore

the history, dynamics, and present characteristics of paramilitary forces in Colombia.

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After presenting the empirical reality of paramilitarism in the subsequent chapters, in

Chapter Eight I return to the question of how to conceptualize the paramilitary by

laying out the three principles of the new analytical framework I propose for

understanding this social phenomenon.

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 Chapter Four: From Colonialism to Neoliberalism: Class Formation, Class

Struggles, and the State throughout Colombia’s History

Two uninterrupted intertwining themes run throughout Colombia’s history: i) social

relations marked by inequality, exploitation, and exclusion and ii) violence employed

by those with economic and political power against the working majority and the poor

for the purpose of maintaining control over resources and labor, and eliminating or

suppressing dissent. As Oquist (1980) remarks, violence has been an important and

often decisive social process in the structuring of Colombian society. This chapter

traces major patterns of class formation, conflict, and the evolution of the state

between the 1500s and present time. The chapter is divided into four sections that

correspond to four historical periods: Planting the Seeds of Poverty and Inequality:

Conquest and Colonialism (1500-1810); Wars of Independence and the New Republic

(1811-1902); Integration into the Global Capitalist Economy and the Challenge from

Below (1903-1989); Neoliberalism, Militarization, and Human Rights (1990-2011).

Each period represents the emergence of new social forces and an increase in the

importance of violence and repression. In each section, I discuss the economy,

relations of production, class conflict, violence, and the state. As in many other Latin

American countries, we can find that the seeds of present day social inequality and

strife lie in the concentration of Colombia’s land and resources under the control of a

tiny minority, matched by the progressive dispossession of the majority of people,

which originated with colonialism in the 16th century.

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4.1. Planting the Seeds of Poverty and Inequality: Conquest and Colonialism (1500-

1810)

4.1.1. Economy and Relations o f Production

The Spanish conquest of the territories that form contemporary Colombia began in the

early 1500s." During the first century of the Spanish colony of Nueva Granada

(today’s Colombia), the colonizers’ primary objective was to accumulate wealth by

exploiting the land. This took the expression of two main activities that formed the

basis of the colonial economy - the operation of gold mines and the establishment of

haciendas'00 through land concessions that were given by the Spanish Crown to

individual landholders (Pearce 1990). By the 1700s, large landholdings were used for

agricultural produce, raising cattle and sugar plantations. Other economic actors,

besides landowners and mine owners, included the owners of river-boats (the

economy depended on water transportation at that time) and merchants (Oquist 1980).

The productive relations in Nueva Granada from the 1500-1700s were

determined by three factors: i) abundance of minerals, gold and land; ii) heavy

reliance on human labour; and iii) a critically short supply of labour. At first the

99 The town of Santa Fe de Bogota, today’s capital city, was found in 1538.
100 The hacienda was a large landed estate (over 500 hectares), also known as latifundio, which first
appeared during colonialism and continued for some time after the formation of the independent nation­
state. It resembled a bit European feudal estates with regards to the following: i) production consisted
of many different agricultural crops and livestock and was oriented primarily towards ensuring self-
sufficiency and secondarily, towards sale at a local market; and ii) landlords leased a plot of land to
peasants (peones, later on also called terrajeros) in exchange for compulsory labour-service for a
certain number of days every week. By the mid-1800s many haciendas became capitalist farms as they
became oriented towards commercial agriculture primarily for export and tenants became wage
labourers employed on a contractual basis. Although the term “hacienda” is still used today in
Colombia, it no longer carries the original meaning in terms of productive relations, but is rather used
simply to accentuate the large size of the property and the colonial style architecture of the buildings
within it.

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institution of the encomienda101 was used to force indigenous people to work in the

mines. Between 1503 and 1660, 185,000 kg of gold was extracted by forced

indigenous labour (O’Connor and Bohorquez 2010). This, however, was a temporary

solution to the labour shortage and eventually contributed to the demographic disaster

among indigenous people caused by wars, European diseases, and the reduced birth­

rate due to the disintegration of indigenous communities. Among the indigenous most

quickly decimated were those employed on the mines, riverboats, and those carrying

cargos from ports inland (Safford and Palacios 2002). The shortage of labour was

addressed in two ways. The Spanish Crown abolished indigenous slavery and

established the resguardo102 in 1592. However, the Spanish in Nueva Granada felt

that the resguardos allowed the indigenous to subsist independently and reduced the

availability of labour for colonial agriculture and mines. Thus, the Spanish-Americans

began to administer resguardos independently from the Spanish Crown by lumping

the population from several resguardos onto one so that there would not be enough

land for all indigenous residents to engage in subsistence agriculture. This forced

101 The encomienda was a legal system that entailed forced labour through which the Spanish Crown
granted a Spanish colonizer (encomendero) the right to forcibly extract a tribute in the form of labour,
gold, or other products from a certain number of indigenous people from within a given geographic
area. In exchange the colonizer was responsible for converting them to Catholicism and teaching them
Spanish. The encomendero had property rights over the labour of the indigenous individuals but
differed from slavery in the restrictions on inheritance, trading and relocation. The system was
formally abolished in 1720, but had lost effectiveness much earlier (Safford and Palacios 2002).
102 The resguardos were lands between 200 and 20,000 hectares in size awarded by the Spanish crown
to indigenous communities to be administered by an indigenous council. The most common form of
land tenure in resguardos was collective, while there were some resguardos where the land was
divided among individual families. After the end of colonial rule, most resguardos were expropriated
and transformed into large rural estates privately owned by the non-indigenous elite (McGreevey,
1971).

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some to become terrajeros103 on haciendas. The other solution to the labour shortage

was the introduction of African slaves into the colony (Oquist 1980).

The productive relations in Nueva Granada during the 16th to 18th century were

characterized by the emergence and consolidation of patterns of highly uneven land

distribution (visible in the latifundio - minifundio104 structure that has continued until

today) as well as patterns of interrelated class and racial inequalities. The most

privileged class was the criollos (individuals of Spanish descent bom in Nueva

Granada who were landowners, merchant capitalists, and high clergy). The artisans

and peasants on minifundios were usually poor individuals of Spanish descent,

mulattoes (those of mixed African and European ancestry), and mestizos (those of

mixed indigenous and European ancestry). Hacienda labourers (including peones and

sharecroppers) were commonly mestizos and domestic servants were mostly

indigenous women. The workforce on the mines, river boats, ports, and plantations,

after the late 1600s, consisted mostly of African slaves (Oquist 1980). Some of the

indigenous population became peones, while others remained on resguardos. Those

resguardos located in more remote areas such as the Tierradentro region in what is

today the Department of Cauca, were able to retain their land and culture until the

mid-20th century (Ortiz 1973).

103 Terrajeros, also referred to as tenant fanners, were indigenous individuals who worked on
haciendas in exchange for the right to have a home and a plot of land for subsistence on the territory of
the hacienda.
104 The minifundios are mainly subsistence-oriented small farms less than five hectares in size (Safford
and Palacios 2002).

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 4.1.2. Class Conflict, Violence, and the State

From its inception, the colony of Nueva Granada was ridden with violent conflicts.

Initially, the conquest of indigenous territories, the domination of indigenous people,

and the imposition of Spanish authority through political and economic institutions,

were achieved by violence. Wars of conquest were carried out against the more highly

organized indigenous nations such as the Chibchas, while wars of dislocation and

extermination were waged against the less organized and less economically developed

groups due to the fact that the latter were more difficult to defeat militarily and to

control politically, and consequently were considered less attractive from the point of

view of the colonizers (Oquist 1980). Subsequently, most of the conflicts that led to

violence were interclass in nature - between the colonizers on one hand and the

indigenous, African, and poor Whites on the other hand. One of the most persistent

kinds of violence during the colonial period, employed by the Spanish miners,

landowners and merchants was for the purpose of maintaining the institution of

slavery. There were many collective slave rebellions. A movement of escaped slaves

was formed in Cartagena in 1600. They raided ranches, destroyed commerce

throughout the Caribbean coastal region and formed a permanent fortified settlement

known as Palenque de San Basilio. In 1619, there was a second slave revolt. Many

other palenques105 were formed throughout the colony and by the second half of the

105 The palenque was a settlement of escaped slaves and there is evidence that a high degree of
communication, coordination and organization existed between among palenques (Oquist 1980).

153
1800s the conflict between slave-owners and the anti-slavery movement of slaves

resembled a civil-war.

The other very important kind of violence was employed by the colonizers for

the purpose of primitive accumulation106 and was manifested in two processes which

from the 1600s onwards occurred simultaneously. One was the displacement of the

indigenous population from territories with favourable characteristics - mineral

deposits, fertile land, access to water, transportation routes and so on. The separation

of the indigenous from their means of subsistence allowed for the transformation of

what used to be the native inhabitants’ communal lands into haciendas and created a

supply of labour. The other process of primitive accumulation was the expropriation

of resguardo land through individual and collective attacks. It was common for

indigenous families to be left with a less than a hectare of land which was insufficient

to subsist on and thus they were economically coerced to work for the landlords.

A different kind of conflict had emerged between the criollos and the Spanish

Crown due to numerous disagreements over the Spanish fiscal policy, indigenous

resguardos, exclusion of criollos from governmental posts, and Spain’s role as a

price-increasing yet unproductive middleman in selling to the colonies manufactured

goods from more industrially advanced nations. All this discontent eventually took the

expression of Wars of Independence led by the criollo oligarchy against the

peninsular Spanish (Oquist 2008).

106 According to Marx’s definition of primitive accumulation, the surplus extraction of gold and
minerals by Spain also constituted a form of primitive accumulation by the metropolis.

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4.2. Wars o f Independence and the New Republic (1811-1902)

4.2.1. Economy and Relations o f Production

The Wars of Independence took place between 1810 and 1816 (Pearce 1990). In 1819,

the leader of the anti-colonial liberation movement Simon Bolivar made his triumphal

entry into Bogota. The Congress of Angostura proclaimed the formation of the

Republic of Gran Colombia consisting of contemporary Colombia, Venezuela,

Ecuador, and Panama, with Bolivar as president and Francisco de Paula Santander as

Vice-President (Holmes, Gutierrez and Curtin 2008). Eventually there was a separatist

move by Venezuela and later Ecuador. In 1830, the Confederation of Gran Colombia

dissolved (Pearce 1990). Santander succeeded Bolivar and became the President of

Nueva Granada. In 1863, the current boundaries of Colombia were formed, as Nueva

Granada became the Estados Unidos de Colombia107 (Holmes, Gutierrez and Curtin

2008).

The economically dominant groups that emerged during colonialism remained in

control of the wealth and political power after Independence. Their vision of progress

was to be achieved through modernizing their country, which implied adopting the

neoclassical economic model. The latter rested on the premises that capitalist markets

are smoothly functioning and self-regulatory and there is no need for the state to

restrict in any way the pursuit of private bourgeois interests (Brockett 1990). By the

mid-1800s, the elite strongly advocated an expansion of the export of goods

107 After 1885, the “Estados” became “Departamentos” (Holmes, Gutierrez and Curtin 2008).
Throughout the dissertation, the term “Department” (as in “Department of Antioquia”) is used as the
equivalent of “Departamento”, when referring to geographic units.

155
associated with the primary sector - precious metals (silver and gold), tobacco, indigo,

quinine, and agricultural commodities (coffee and sugar). The export of tobacco and

quinine created short-term booms that declined by the end of the 19th century (Pearce

1990). In addition to cattle-ranchers, mine owners, river-boat owners and merchants, a

new propertied class emerged - the coffee bourgeoisie which included landowners,
th
distributors, and traders who made huge profits in processing and export. The 19

century marked the consolidation of Colombia as an exporter of goods intensive in

unqualified labour and primary materials, something that continues to characterize the

country’s foreign trade even at the present. Few variations to this trend could be found

in certain parts of the country, such as the Department of Antioquia and Santander,

where a large number of small-scale independent farmers (mostly poor Spanish

immigrants) existed and a manufacturing industry had emerged (Pearce 1990).

The gradual shift to export agriculture initiated several changes in the productive

relations through new waves of primitive accumulation. As more and more haciendas

began to export coffee, sugar cane, and tobacco, which entailed a change in

agricultural techniques, many tenants with usufruct rights to land were evicted and

replaced with day labourers paid only a cash wage (Appelbaum 2003). Consequently,

the expansion of landlords’ estates served not only to increase the production of cash

crops but also to ensure the availability of labour by depriving peasants from their

lands. Since capitalist farms could not employ all the expropriated, the problem of

landlessness began to grow in significance.

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 4.2.2. Class Conflict, Violence, and the State

Another process o f primitive accumulation that unfolded during this period o f time

was the privatization of the resguardo - legalized by the state in 1873 through

legislation that ordered each province the task of regulating the partitioning of its own

resguardos, thus making possible the private capitalist ownership over these through

purchase.108 This development bears a striking resemblance to Marx’s (1867/1990)

description of how in 18th century England, legislation was a key instrument for the

conversion of land into a merely commercial commodity, extending the area of

large-scale agricultural production, and increasing the supply of free and rightless

proletarians ...” (885). The resguardo law was accompanied by an ideology that

claimed that indigenous possession of the land was incompatible with capitalist

development and hence, was an obstacle to the realization of a transition into a

modem market economy (Reinhardt 1988). Once again this is highly comparable to

Marx’s account of primitive accumulation in England, where he exposes the way the

destruction o f human life acquires legitimacy in the name of capital. “The most

shameless violation of the ‘sacred rights of property’ and the grossest acts of violence

against persons ... become fully justified ... as soon as they are necessary in order to

lay the foundations of the capitalist mode of production ...” (Marx 1867/1990, 889).

108 All resguardos were subject to partition, and private ownership over these lands could be obtained
through inheritance claims or purchase. Although theoretically all adults had equal rights to resguardo
lands, in reality the apportioning of titles was subject to manipulation. There were cases when
indigenous officers or leaders benefited from the division of their communal lands through establishing
mutually beneficial alliances with neighbours in a position of power. Nevertheless, most of the gains
were made not by indigenous inhabitants but by outsiders who were able to amass large land-holdings
or multiple individual plots that totalled hundreds of hectares (Reinhardt 1988).

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 The expansion o f the large estates against the efforts of the rural poor to

establish their rights to the land has been a constant theme in Colombia’s history

(Pearce 1990). Some historians, such as Oquist (1980), argue that the relative

availability of land in the 19th century served to diminish economic contradictions

within society. According to this scholar, peasants displaced through evictions or

indigenous who lost their resguardos could migrate and settle on unexploited land

which was state land / public domain land or land to which private individuals held

title. In the latter case, such peasants had the option of becoming sharecroppers in

exchange for clearing the virgin forests on the landowner’s land and thus enhancing

its value. Nonetheless, as Pearce (1990) points out, while there was an immense

reserve of public lands in the new republic, during the course of the 19th century, a

great deal of that was granted in concessions of more than 1000 hectares to mostly

already existing landowners and few European immigrants, but not to local

minifundistas and landless peasants.

Many landless peasants or those who did not want to be peones or terrajeros,

tried to settle public lands (often remote or frontier territories) through slash and bum

methods and engage in subsistence farming. Frequently, such squatters or colonos (as

they were called) were expelled as part of an ongoing primitive accumulation backed

up by law and coercion. Landowners who wanted to usurp a given territory illegally

on which a colono had settled could always find a judge who confirmed the former’s

ownership. Accompanied by the police, the landlord would order the colono to either

leave or rent the land from him in exchange for labour services. When colonos

158
invoked certain laws that were passed after 1875 to offer them some protection,

landowners ignored those laws and instead destroyed crops and bridges, formed

armed groups to intimidate and terrorize peasants, and imprisoned peasant leaders on

false charges. Even though the bloody struggle over Colombia’s agricultural frontier

had begun (Pearce 1990), the conflict over land had not reached an acute stage yet

because there were no any major popular uprisings or serious challenges to the

dominant classes.

During the 1811-1902 period, following the 14 years of the Wars of

Independence, there were eight general civil wars109, 14 local civil wars, many small

uprisings, two international wars with Ecuador, and three coups (Pearce 1990). These

wars have been characterized as intra-class conflicts that revolved around: i) the

formation of the republican state; ii) disagreements over the mid-century anti-colonial

reforms aimed at eliminating and replacing colonial institutions by social forms of a

more capitalist nature; iii) the defense of the diverging interests of different factions of

the dominant class - the traditional latifundistas and the Catholic Church versus the

commercial and agricultural export interests. These civil wars prompted by conflicts

of intra-class nature, where different factions of the dominant class strived for the

complete control of the state, concerned more than anything questions around state

organization. They did not alter the existing class relations. Even when there were

109 The civil wars took place 1827-1832, 1839-1841, 1851-1854, 1858-1863, 1876-1877, 1885, 1895,
and 1899-1902 (Oquist 1980). The 1885 civil war made possible a radical change in the constitution
and in 1886 Colombia moved from a federal to a centralized republic. The constitution of 1886 lasted
until 1991 (Safford and Palacios 2002).

159
partial collapses in state authority, the power of the dominant class was never

threatened by the lower classes (Oquist 1980). The significant civil wars tended to

break out or to be prolonged in regions that were affected greatly by a loss of demand

for their products in foreign markets and thus the falling commodity prices of mainly

coffee, quinine, and tobacco (Safford and Palacios 2002).

As the 19th century progressed, the civil wars increasingly took on party

connotations and in turn reinforced party identification - Conservative versus Liberal.

The official establishment of the parties dates back to the 1840s.110 One of the main

sources of inter-party hostility was the issue of the Church and its control over

education. Conservatives were committed to the preservation of the status quo and

viewed the Church as the guarantor of social order and authority. The Liberals aimed

to modernize the state and critiqued the Church for being a “bastion of privilege”

(Pearce 1990, 17) which controlled education, influenced the masses and thus helped

the Conservatives gain electoral majorities. It is worth mentioning that each party also

contained warring factions within itself around issues such as free-trade versus

protectionism and federalism versus centralism (Safford and Palacios 2002).

The penetration by the two parties into the popular consciousness, where by the

1850s the rural and urban poor were drawn into supporting one or the other, enabled

the mobilization of the population into armies of thousands of fighters for the last war

of the 19th century - the famous War of the Thousand Days (1899-1902). The Liberals

had accused the ruling Conservatives of maintaining power through fraudulent

110 The liberal Party drew its first program in 1849 and the Conservative Party in 1849 (Pearce 1990).

160
elections. The Conservatives controlled the state at that time and had a strong army.

The Liberals had created numerous guerrilla armies that consisted of landless

peasants, indigenous, and some urban poor. As Pearce (1990) explains, “Initially, for

most people participation in the local landowner’s army offered promise of some

favour or reward. But as they engaged in battle and saw family and friends killed or

wounded by the ‘enemy’, so loyalties and hatreds were bom with deep personal roots”

(20).This was the longest and most destructive of Colombia’s civil wars. It resulted in

the death of 100,000 (or two percent of country’s population at the time) as well as

great material destruction and economic chaos. It was won by the Conservative

government.

According to Oquist (1980), the state organization under the newly formed

independent republic in the 19th century was much weaker compared to its colonial

predecessor. This is largely attributed to divisions within the dominant class. The

early period of nation building between 1858-1885 has been described as an unstable

federalism in which rival city-states controlled their hinterlands and clashed with one

another. The state was weak and local elites relied upon the strength of local caudillos

in case of conflict. Some strengthening of the state occurred as governmental

employees increased from 4,500 in late 19th century to 42,700 in 1916 accompanied

by professionalization of the military and subsequent increase in the repressive

capacity of the state (Holmes, Gutierrez and Curtin 2008).

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4.3. Integration into the Global Capitalist Economy and the Challenge from Below

(1903-1989)

4.3.1. Economy and Relations o f Production

During the first decades of the 1900s, the Conservative government consolidated the

export economy and encouraged foreign investment. US private investment in oil

grew from $30 million in 1920 to $280 million in 1929.111 The New York bank

provided credit to improve Colombia’s import-export infrastructure, including the

construction of roads, highways, railways, oleo-ducts, and communication facilities.

Starting in 1949, Colombia developed a close relationship with the World Bank (WB).

The latter financed the construction of the Atlantic railway (1952-61) which

connected Bogota to coastal cities, provided access to new fertile agricultural regions

such as Magdalena Medio, and stimulated commercial agriculture. During the first

half of the 1900s, the country also experienced a coffee boom, a growth in the number

of banana plantations and cattle ranches, and the development of new extractive

industries such as rubber production (Pearce 1990). In the late 1950s, the state

promoted the Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) model consisting of

protectionist measures to encourage the manufacturing of goods that would otherwise

be imported. Although the state did not promote industrialization as much as its

Brazilian or Mexican counterparts, it provided conditions under which entrepreneurs

could take initiatives. In the 1960s and 1970s, industrial production grew and

111 This flow of foreign capital into private investment and public works during the 1920s was known
as the “Dance of the Millions” (Pearce 1990).

162
diversified in areas such as textiles, wood, paper, rubber and chemicals. The cities of

Bogota, Medellin and Cali were responsible for over 60 percent of industrial

employment (Pearce 1990).

The intensive integration of the country into the world capitalist economy

through primary sector-based exports such as coffee, sugar, bananas, meat, gold, and

fossil fuels (Perez-Rincon 2006) accelerated the capitalist transformation of

Colombian agriculture that had begun in the 19th century. By the 1960s, most of the

remaining traditional haciendas were transformed into highly mechanized capitalist

agribusinesses for the cultivation of cash-crops and stockbreeding for export. Not only

had many tenant farmers been evicted and replaced with wage-labourers, but also due

to the technological advances in agribusiness operations, the demand for rural wage

labourers became lower and of a more temporary nature. As a result, an increasing

number of such labourers became colonos, who sought to supplement their wages by

engaging in subsistence agriculture. The existence of subsistence activities alongside

agribusiness allowed capitalists to force occasional wage workers to bear the cost of

their own subsistence and social reproduction (O’Connor and Bohorquez 2010). Many

colonos began to settle in the Amazon region of the country in the late 1950s and

eventually began to grow coca once it became a profitable crop (Chomsky 2000).

Between the late 1960s and 1980, a process which Richani (2010) calls “de-

agriculturalization”, was unfolding, evident in the decrease of agricultural production

as a share of the GDP, the decrease in the land suitable for agricultural production,

and increase in the land dedicated to pasture (from 20.5 million hectares in 1978 to

163
40.1 million in 1987). By the 1980s, the agrarian political economy rested mainly on

cattle-ranching and agribusinesses. From the land used for agricultural production

increasingly more was cultivated with cash-crops for export (such as coffee, plantain,

banana, African oil palm, flowers, and sugar cane) while less and less was used to

grow crops for local food consumption such as potatoes, beans, and maize (Richani

2010 ).

As time passed by, the gap between small and large producers widened and it

became increasingly difficult for the former to survive. Peasant farmers lacked credit

and the means to improve productivity but still produced half of the country’s basic

foodstuffs such as cassava, maize, plantain and potatoes. Decree 444 of 1967 gave

credit and other incentives, such as machinery at subsidized prices, to large-scale

producers of sugar, cotton, rice, and coffee in the Department of Tolima, Cesar, and

Valle del Cauca and parts of the Atlantic coast. For instance, the Agricultural

Financial Fund dispensed to large farmers in one year double the amount of what the

state’s Integrated Rural Development Program dispensed to small farmers in nine

years. Although between 1910 and 1950 there was a growth in small and medium

coffee producers in the Department of Antioquia, these were always vulnerable to

intermediaries, low prices and high interest on advances. From the 1960s onwards the

coffee industry was dominated by the large-scale entrepreneurs. New legislation in

1973 gave additional important concessions to landowners and financial incentives to

large-scale mechanized agriculture (Pearce 1990). Parallel to these developments, the

penetration of considerable portion of the agricultural and primary resources sectors

164
by foreign enterprises, such as the American United Fruit Company and Chiquita

Bananas, took place. By 1978, 54 percent of banana exports were controlled by two

MNCs. In the 1980s mining became the main area of foreign investment (Safford and

Palacios 2002).

A new lucrative economic activity appeared in the 1970s - the production of

illegal drugs. Marijuana was gradually replaced by the even more lucrative product

cocaine. The volume exported to the US grew from 15 tons in 1978 to 270 tons in

1988 (Pearce 1990).

From the early 1900s to 1990, both the capitalist class and the working class

became more diversified internally. The capitalist class encompassed: large coffee,

sugar, rice and cotton producers and exporters; cattle-ranchers; industrialists; and

bankers. The rural elites funded the electoral campaigns for politicians and the latter

in turn defended their economic interests. Along the same lines, fundamental to the

consolidation of the power of the capitalist class was the formation of gremios or

economic consortiums (still in existence).112 These were associations of landowners

and entrepreneurs that guaranteed the private sector’s ability to exercise influence

over state policy-making by restricting the autonomy of the state and ensuring its

commitment to economic liberalism. They monitored and directed state intervention

112 Some of the most powerful gremios that still exist today include National Federation of Coffee
Growers (Asociacion Nacional de Cafeteros, or FEDERACAFE), National Association of Industrialists
(Asociacion Nacional de Empresarios de Colombia, or ANDI), and National Federation of Traders
(Federacion Nacional de Comerciantes, or FENALCO).

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in ways that favoured them and “...collaborated irrespective of party in a government

dedicated to free enterprise and economic progress” (Pearce 1990,44).

A new sector of the capitalist class emerged in the 1980s as a consequence of the

illegal drug-trade. Drug-traffickers invested their revenues in large parcels of arable

land113 used to raise cattle and horses in the Department of Antioquia, Meta, Cdrdoba,

Cauca, and along the Caribbean coast (Holmes, Gutierrez, and Curtin 2008).

Eventually narco-capital was also invested in industry, commerce, and finance,

converting drug-traffickers in an economically powerful and politically influential

actor (Medina 1990). Two o f the leading Colombian drug-lords - Jorge Luis Ochoa

and Pablo Escobar - were among the 20 richest men in the world (Pearce 1990).

Another sector of the dominant class in Colombia came to be known in the late 1980s

as the “technopols” or the New Right. They were considered to be part of Colombia’s

TCC (to borrow Robinson’s term) and were appointed to key decision-making

positions within the state during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Many of them, such

as Cesar Gaviria and Rafael Pardo had worked for international financial institutions

or banks, defended the capitalist economy, and shared the philosophy that the

capitalist free market and international competition were the keys to development

(Aviles 2006).

The sectors of the rural working class included the agricultural wage-labourers,

terrajeros, colonos, and minifundistas. The urban proletariat was found on the coastal

113 It has been estimated that by 2007 Colombian drug-traffickers owned 42 percent of the best land in
the country (Holmes, Gutierrez and Curtin 2008).

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and fluvial ports, riverboats, construction and operation of railroads, manufacturing,

as well as artisanal production (such as tailors, masons, and shoemakers).

4.3.2. Class Conflict, Violence, and the State

The wealth and landownership inequalities that had begun to develop under

colonialism were now rapidly growing. Law la of 1968 resulted in a massive

expulsion of tenant farmers and sharecroppers. By 1970, farms under 10 hectares had

diminished substantially in number and size. In the Department of Narino, Cauca,

Antioquia, Caldas, Cundinamarca, Boyaca, Santander and Norte de Santander,

peasants tried to survive on diminishing plots of land alongside modem mechanized

agriculture and traditional latifundia. In 1984 there were 1,504,215 minifundistas with

an average o f two hectares of land. O f these, 636,255 properties had less than one

hectare. At the same time, 10 million hectares of land were in estates o f more than 500

hectares each owned by an estimated 12,000 landowners most of whom were cattle

barons (Pearce 1990).

One kind of agrarian tension was between large-scale landowners expanding

their properties and intermediaries / traders on one hand versus colonos and

minifundistas on the other. Colonos depended on traders to sell their produce because

transportation costs were too high. An agreement existed amongst the traders to buy at

a certain fixed price which allowed high rates of profit for the latter. In addition, the

colono depended on the trader for goods but had to pay on account for future harvest.

Due to the high interest that traders charged, colonos accumulated debt rapidly. When

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they became bankrupt, they had to give up their land which ended in the hands of the

latifiindistas (Molano 1988). Another kind of tension was arising on behalf of

indigenous terrajeros who gradually began to rebel against the payment of labour-rent

to landowners since under the arrangement of terraje (rent) they could hardly find

time to work on their own plots of land. A third kind of conflict was unfolding

between indigenous groups that resisted the dismantling of their resguardos and

landowners. Intense struggles also took place on large estates (especially coffee

estates) where terrajeros or peones wanted to grow cash-crops on their own plots to

take advantage of the opportunities (Pearce 1990).

In addition to land ownership, the concentration of wealth was visible in other

areas as well. In 1985, the richest 10 percent of urban families received a little less

than 40 percent of the total income, while 50 percent of families received less than 20

percent. The poorest 20 percent gained less than 5 percent of the total. In 1987, 0.01

percent of shareholders from the ten biggest companies on the Bogota stock exchange

controlled 36.5 percent of all shares. In textile, two companies from Antioquia

represented 44 percent of the total capital invested in this sector. In the tobacco

industry, one company (Coltabaco) controlled 77 percent of the capital in that entire

sector (Pearce 1990).

The social inequalities that began to form in the 1500s had by now matured into

sharp contradictions that permeated all aspects of Colombian society and led to

serious violent class conflicts in rural and urban areas. The outcome was the

emergence of social movements unprecedented in size, organization, and mobilization

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capacity. Some of these movements have continued into the 21st century. Beginning in

1910, questions revolving around access to land, authenticity of land titles, and the

types and terms o f rural productive relations led to the birth of organized and active

peasant militancy. At first it began in parts of the Department of Cundinamarca and

Tolima where land was concentrated in few powerful families who owned vast

expanses of land since colonial time. The Communist Party of Colombia (Partido

Comunista de Colombia, or PCC),114 became involved in peasant struggles and helped

to better organize the movement which initially was about refusing to pay terraje to

landowners and seeking an improvement in working conditions. Eventually the

movement under leadership of the party developed a radical platform that called for

revolutionary changes such as the expropriation of landlords without compensation.

Peasants took up arms and formed their own self-defense groups in response to state

repression and landlord violence in order to defend settlements of self-sufficient

communities formed by landless peasants, colonos, and terrajeros in parts of the

Department of Tolima and Cauca (Pearce 1990). Another rural movement, known as

the Quintin Lame (the name of its leader), consisted of indigenous poorly armed

peasants. Its main objective was to eliminate the terraje and to protect resguardo

lands. The movement reached its height between 1914 and 1916. It faced a strong

violent response from the state and many of its leaders were jailed. Indigenous

organizing (although no longer armed) continued and in 1971 was bom Colombia’s

114 The PCC was found in 1930 and called for the improvement of both rural and urban workers’ rights
and labour conditions. It supported rural militancy and by the 1950s it had created a mass base with a
significant peasant following (Brittain 2010).

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most politically advanced organization to defend the collective and territorial rights of

indigenous people - the Indigenous Regional Council of Cauca {Cornejo Regional

Indigena del Cauca, or CRIC).

A serious and effective land reform was never initiated in Colombia. There were

short-term, isolated and inefficient attempts at land redistribution on a case by case

basis with the objective of preserving the public order. In 1936 was passed the first

agrarian reform legislation with Law 200 by President Alfonso Lopez Pumarejo. The

law allowed for distribution of land that was not exploited productively. It gave 10

years for this process to begin and this allowed many landowners to divide up their

property among family and relatives to avoid expropriation. Liberal and Conservative

landowners set up a violent opposition to the law, such as attacks on peasants who

demanded their rights to land, and the law was never implemented in most areas

(Pearce 1990). Later on, Law 100 of 1944 provided protection for landowners from

the claims of terrajeros and colonos and facilitated violent attacks on peasant

organizers in parts of Tolima and Cundinamarca by landlords’ private armed forces.

In 1961, the Liberal government of President Alberto Lleras Camargo approved the

Law of Agrarian Reform (Law 135) with the objective of improving the productivity

of the agrarian sector and integrating it into the capitalist development of the country

while at the same time pacifying existing militant peasant and guerrilla groups

(Rudqvist 1983). The same law also created the Colombian Institute for Agrarian

Reform (Instituto Colombiano para la Reforma Agraria, or INCORA). Mostly in the

early 1970s, INCORA bought up farms totaling 472,470 hectares and distributed land

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to 30,000 families (Pearce 1990). Due to the sluggish and inefficient implementation

of the agrarian reform, the National Association of Peasants (Asociacion Nacional de

Usuarios Campesinos, or ANUC115) was founded through the initiative of President

Lleras in 1967 (Rudqvist 1983).

Under the administration of Conservative President Misael Pastrana (1970-

1974), laws pertaining to agrarian reform were repealed or reversed, members of the

peasant movement were persecuted and imprisoned, and the dispossession of

minifundistas and colonos resumed (Martinez 2011). In response to the government’s

harsh stand, ANUC, which had reached one million members by that time, carried out

land occupations on approximately 2000 haciendas between 1971 and 1975. Peasant

protests and land occupations were criminalized and physically attacked by state and

private armed forces. One such case took place in 1973, when 40 landless starving

families in the Department of Sucre invaded an idle terrain of 800 hectares. During a

period of 11 years they were threatened, attacked, arrested, accused of subversion and

taken to court. Even though at the end they were awarded some land, INCORA and

the Agrarian Fund did not provide them credit or other state assistance of the kind

given to private landowners and intermediaries. During the height of peasant

mobilizations in the 1970s, an agrarian counter-reform led by the Conservative

government was underway and was also accelerated by the investment of drug capital

in landed estates. For instance, between 1983 and 1988 INCORA bought under the

115 The creation of ANUC was an attempt by the government to control the peasant movement in a non-
repressive manner. For more on this subject see Rudqvist (1983).

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National Rehabilitation Plan 101,564 hectares in the country as a whole while only in

the region of Magdalena Medio the drug capital bought an estimated 180,000 hectares

of fertile land (Pearce 1990).

Parallel to the formation of peasant movements for land, the development of

Colombia’s industrial infrastructure led to a growth in the proletariat and the

subsequent emergence of labour organizations and unrest. In 1918, strikes were first

used as a means of labour struggle by port and railway workers in the cities of

Barranquilla, Cartagena and Santa Marta, resulting in substantial wage increases. In

1919, massive artisan protests took place in Bogota over the importation of military

uniforms, leading to bloody clashes with the police. Between 1919 and 1920, there

were numerous strikes116 by railway workers in the Department of Cundinamarca and

the Caribbean coast, as well as gold miners and female textile workers in the

Department of Antioquia. These activities were successful in obtaining wage increases

of up to 40 percent and many other labour organizations across the country followed

their example (Holmes, Gutierrez and Curtin 2008). By the end of 1920s, the public

works boom ended and many were left unemployed, which led to an increased

militancy. In 1925, the National Workers Confederation (Confederation Obrera

Nacional) was founded, followed by the Revolutionary Socialist Party (Partido

Socialista Revolucionario) in 1926. In 1924 and 1927, there were important strikes by

workers in the oil sector. In 1928, a peaceful march by banana plantation labourers in

116 In 1919 the government recognized the right to strike but also guaranteed the right of employers to
hire workers to replace strikers (Pearce 1990).

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Cienaga, Department of Magdalena became known in the history as the Massacre of

the Banana Zone (Masacre de las Bananeras). The state military violently attacked

the workers and killed around 1,000 (Safford and Palacios 2002).

With the onset of the Depression in 1929, the labour movement became

disempowered and weaker in its capacity to mobilize (Pearce 1990). The Liberals

(seen as the progressive national bourgeoisie), under the leadership of President

Alfonso Lopez Pumarejo (1934-1938 and 1942-1945), gradually took over the

political leadership of the workers movement, as Lopez introduced many reforms in

favor o f urban and rural workers. His first mandate was known as “Revolution on the

March” because of the favourable legislation towards the working class. It produced

strong reactions among industrialists, landowners, the Catholic Church, and the

Conservative Party. With the exception of President Lopez’ administration, the

growing anti-labour sentiment is evident in Alberto Lleras Camargo’s speech in 1945

in front of ANDI:

I am going to take advantage of this occasion to address from this platform the
workers of Colombia to formulate a most zealous call to change, while it is
still possible, the conduct that leads to the circumstance that when the worker,
urban or rural, obtains better salaries, achieves the right to overtime pay, and
receives protection against work hazards, illness, and unemployment:
Production begins to diminish its rate, without any other cause than
deficiencies in the realization of tasks ... This has to end ... what is guaranteed
by the constitution is the right to work and not the right not to work...”
(Republica de Colombia 1946, cited in Oquist 1980,235).

In the 20th century, there was also a conflict of intra-class nature which was

along party lines (Conservative versus Liberal) and not along elite divisions (such as

landowners, industrialists and merchants). In the period 1930-1940, Liberals and

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Conservatives engaged in a major power confrontation as each party attempted to

construct political hegemony. In 1947, the tensions acquired a new intensity, which

eventually led to the retirement of the Liberals from the first National Unity

government (Oquist 1980). Increasing levels of violence between the parties led to the

death of estimated 14,000 in that year alone. Also, during the same year, there was a

general strike that led to waves of state repression (Pearce 1990).

4.3,2.1. La Violencia

Between 1946 and 1966, Colombia was the scene of one of the most intense and

protracted instances of widespread violence in the 20th century. La Violencia117, as

this civil war has been remembered in history, was of great intensity, widespread,

lasted about 20 years and had differential geographical distribution within

Colombia118 (Oquist 1980). It took 200,000 lives during the worst years 1948-1943.

“Decapitations, mutilations, sex crimes, and with them, robbery and destruction of

homes and land characterized La Violencia” (Pearce 1990, 54). Most historians date

the eruption o f La Violencia to the Bogotazo (the popular spontaneous uprising that

took place in Bogota in response to the assassination of the charismatic populist

Liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan on April 9, 1948 during his presidential

campaign). The initial death toll in the capital city was 2,585 people. This was

117 For detailed accounts of La Violencia see Guillen (1963), Fals (1975), Torres (1970), Garcia (1971),
Mesa (1972), Oquist (1980), Pearce (1990), and Safford and Palacios (2002).
118 La Violencia affected most intensely the coffee-production regions (particularly the Department of
Cundinamarca, Tolima and Valle del Cauca) as well as the minifundia areas in the Department of
Boyacd, Santander, and Norte de Santander (Pearce 1990).

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followed by confrontations between Liberals and Conservatives throughout the

country as the Conservative government and landowners’ private armed groups,

known as pajaros, unleashed violence against the Liberals in the countryside. The first

Liberal guerrillas were created in 1949 by members of the Liberal Party and consisted

mostly of peasants (Pearce 1990). In order to bring an end to La Violencia, the

Conservatives and Liberals made a political pact in 1958, known as the National Front

(Frente Nacional), which established that the presidency would alternate between the

two parties for a period of 16 years and all positions in the three branches of

government throughout the country would be distributed evenly between them

(Safford and Palacios 2002). Nonetheless, La Violencia continued until 1966 mostly

manifested in interclass conflicts. The National Front barred the PCC from the

conventional political process (Brittain 2010).

Despite its appearance as a battle between opposing political fronts, La

Violencia was underlain by a strong interclass conflict. According to Garcia (1971), it

constituted the dismemberment of the popular movement in three stages: i) an

offensive against the most powerful unions and popular organizations by the

provisional government of Alberto Lleras; ii) an annihilation of popular leadership,

including the assassination of Gaitan; and iii) the establishment and consolidation of

oligarchical support structures with the application of a formula of economic

liberalism and political absolutism. Another important point brought up by Oquist

(1980) is that La Violencia corresponded to the ascendancy of finance capital and was

marked by the highest rate of return on investments that Colombia had ever

175
experienced. “Rampant inflation redistributed income regressively while the economic

advances that the working classes had achieved since the 1930s were reversed as the

fascist policies of the government crushed the militant labour unions and their strikes”

(134). Furthermore, it was also during La Violencia that the expansion of

agribusinesses and cattle-ranching latifundios through the dispossession of peasants

took place (Zuleta 2005). Liberal and Conservative landowners, frequently with the

support of state armed forces, violently subdued peasant resistance whenever it

challenged the existing power structures.

The same elite that had been in charge before La Violencia, emerged in full
control after it. The challenge from below had been defeated before it took
hold ... The peasants meanwhile, rather than concentrate on their own class
interests which might have turned them against the ruling elite, instead killed
each other on its behalf’ (Pearce 1990, 65).

Even though at one point Liberal guerrilla leaders came to fight alongside the armed

peasant groups associated with the PCC, as Pearce (1990) points out, by 1953 most

Liberal chiefs (who belonged to the capitalist class as opposed to the guerrilla body

consisting of peasants) were against the Communists.

Liberal peasant guerrillas began to break from the Liberal ranchers who had
initially helped to create them. The landowners resented the guerrillas’
demands for money and supplies, although they had happily used them to
defend their property and interests. When the army began to move against the
guerrillas, they put their property before their partisan loyalties and formed a
special paramilitary group, the ‘guerrillas of peace’ to hunt down the peasant
guerrillas (Pearce 1990, 57).

Even if we consider the intra-class dimensions of La Violencia, it is important to

see that the it was not the political colours in themselves that generated the conflict

but the political power struggle was rather, as Guillen (1963) argued, over who would

176
win the right to enrich themselves by managing the public treasury. “Between 1946

and 1953 Colombia’s Liberals and Conservatives killed each other by the thousands

each year in a more than active scramble for economic rewards and appointments to

governmental positions...desire for economic rewards stemming from governmental

control” (Guillen 1963, cited in Oquist 1980, 144).

43.2.2. The Birth o f the FARC

As mentioned earlier, by the 1940s the Communist Party had supported the formation

of organic peasant defensive structures against violence by the state and the private

armed groups of landowners. These self-defense bodies had been joined by former

Liberal peasant guerrillas who had broken away from their Liberal Party founders and

had allied with the Communists, partially motivated by the exclusionary nature of the

Colombia political system during the National Front (Holmes, Gutierrez and Curtin

2008). In 1955, the PCC was declared illegal (Zuleta 2005).

In their areas o f influence they [the guerrilla/PCC leadership] encouraged the

peasant communities to share the land among the residents and created
mechanisms for collective work and assistance to the individual exploitation of
parcels of land and applied the movement’s justice by collective decision of
assemblies of the populace. These became areas with a new mentality and
social and political proposals different from those offered by the regime. The
decisive factor was the presence in power of the people themselves (FARC-EP
1999, cited in Brittain 2010).

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 These self-defense Communist enclaves119 were denounced by the Conservative

Party Senator Alvaro Gomez Hurtado as “independent republics” and accused of

adhering to politics from Moscow (USSR) instead of the Colombian constitution.

Consequently, the Conservative President Guillermo Leon Valencia vowed to

exterminate at any cost these communist enclaves. On May 27th, 1964 a series of

heavy US-supported military operations were carried out by the Colombian state

consisting of aerial bombardments and a 16,000 ground troop offensive against the

settlements in the Marquetalia region in the southern part of the Department of

Tolima, Huila, and Cauca. Those who managed to escape into the mountains formed

the nucleus of what became the largest and longest-lasting armed insurgent movement

in Latin America - the FARC120 (Brittain 2010). In 1966, the FARC was officially

founded.

4.3.23. “Weak” or Capitalist? The Evolution o f the Colombian State

Comparing the 20th century Colombian state to its predecessors in the previous

centuries, Oquist 1980 discerns a pattern of evolution. During colonial time the state

was strong and operated within a strong structure of social domination. In the 19th

119 The names of these communities were Tequendama, Viota, Genova, Sumapaz, El Davis, Suroeste
del Tolima, 26 de Septiembre, Guayabero, Marquetalia, Rio Chiquito, El Pato, and Agriari. They were
spread across the Department of Tolima and parts of the Department of Meta, Caldas, Cundinamarca,
Cauca, Quindio, Risaralda, and Huila (Brittain 2010).
120 The FARC was bom with a revolutionary program for equality of opportunities with equitable
distribution of wealth, peace with social equality and sovereignty (Holmes, Gutierrez and Curtin 2008).
This dissertation does not deal with the many present-day complexities of the movement such as their
internal structure, sources of funding, and controversial practices since it is not the main subject matter.
Therefore this historical overview of the FARC’s emergence is not meant to provide a nuanced
understanding of the movement’s current dynamics and relationship to the rest of society.

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century republic the state was weak but still based upon a strong class structure to

which there were no serious sustained long-term challenges. The 20th century, on the

other hand, was characterized by a weakened structure of social domination and a

process of a strengthening of the state.

The contemporary Colombian state was constructed during the 1920s and 1930s.

There were two important forces that shaped and reinforced the roles that the state

assumed. The first was the sharp interclass contradictions that had developed by that

time, manifested in strikes, marches, land occupations, land disputes, and the

formation of large militant rural and urban social movements. The other was the

control of the state by the ruling classes especially through the gremios which ensured

that state intervention would only take place to secure the interests of the capitalist

class but not to address the needs of the working majority. Thus, the state emerged as

“...interventionist, non-pluralist entity that either absorbs or represses the social forces

and organizations that are political actors” (Oquist 1980, 151). The Conservative and
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Liberal parties excluded any third party from the political order. Hence, the

principal functions of the state became to ensure the continuation of the existing class

structure and to facilitate the capitalist development of the country. The Colombian

state is a clear illustration of Wood’s (1981) argument, grounded in Marxist theory,

that the ultimate secret of production is a political one because the powers of the state

121 The political party Patriotic Union (Union Patriotica, or UP,), the political arm of the FARC created
as part of the peace negotiations held between the FARC and the government of President Belisario
Betancur, had over 3,500 of its members murdered or disappeared by paramilitary groups between the
mid-1980s and the early 1990s (Holmes, Gutierrez and Curtin 2008).

179
make possible the expropriation of the direct producer, the maintenance of absolute

private property for the capitalist, and his control over production and appropriation.

What some describe as the “partial collapse of the state” (at the early stages of

La Violencia) was followed by a rapid and sustained strengthening of the state, the

central element o f which was the increased importance of its coercive apparatus. The

professionalization and modernization of the state military began in 1907 with the

establishment of the National Military Academy (Oquist 1980). In 1945, the

Colombian army numbered 8,000 men; by 1949 it had reached 20,000 men. Colombia

was the only Latin American country to send troops in the Korean War in 1951. Also,

it was one of the first five Latin American countries to sign a mutual-defense

assistance agreement with the US in 1952. In 1953, the military government of

General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla created the Colombian Intelligence Service agency

which in 1960 became the Administrative Department of Security (Departamento

Administrative de Seguridad, or DAS) - the country’s central and most powerful

intelligence institution. Between 1961 and 1967, Colombia received $60 million from

the US in military assistance for counter-insurgency and economic development - all

administered by the army and a further $100 million in military equipment (Pearce

1990).

During 1902-1989, the use of violence by state forces as well as private armed

forces associated with the various sectors of the capitalist class (especially against the

peasant, indigenous and urban labour movement) became the predominant method of

confronting challenges to the status quo. The expansion of the state’s coercive

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apparatus took place simultaneously with two other developments. One was an

increased reliance on state repression by the various sectors of the capitalist class. A

legal mechanism that facilitated this was the notion of a “state of siege” permitted by

Article 121 of the Constitution, under the following circumstances: “In the case of

external war or internal disorder... By such declaration, the government will have

beyond normal legal authority, that which the Constitution authorizes for times of war

and public disorder and that which, according to the accepted rules of international

law, is applicable during war between nations” (Reyes 1991, 148). Once a “state of

siege” is decreed, civilians are investigated and prosecuted by military tribunals and

the government has the power to take any measures to counteract disturbances of

public order. Between 1948 and 1984, a “state of siege” had been decreed in

Colombia 15 times, for a total of 25 years and nine months. In other words, during 36

years, Colombia had only ten years and three months of lull juridical-institutional

normality (Reyes 1991).

The second development in the strengthening of the state’s coercive apparatus

was a new strategy for enabling the state to more effectively defend the interests of the

capitalist classes and confronting the insurgency challenge. It involved the creation of

armed bodies outside the military institution which nonetheless worked with the state.

Decree 2298, which was passed in 1965 and became Law 48 in 1968, laid the legal

foundation for the establishment of paramilitarism by authorizing the executive

branch to create civil patrols by decree and ordering the Ministry of Defense to supply

them with weapons normally restricted to the exclusive use of the armed forces.

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Subsequently, paramilitary bodies called “civil defense forces” were designed by and

incorporated within the Colombian military system (Stokes 2005). In the 1980s,

sectors of the capitalist class continued the paramilitary strategy by directly involving

themselves in the creation of more paramilitary groups and expanding the existing

ones. While the Colombian dominant classes had commonly relied on private armed

groups since the 19th century (i.e. the Conservative’s pajaros), it was only in the

second half o f the 1900s that an intense, long-term, and well-coordinated relationship

between these private armed groups and the Colombian state became an established

practice. This was made possible through a legal framework that had set the ground

for the design, training, equipment, and administration by the state military of armed

bodies outside its institution. It had such long-lasting effects that even when

paramilitarism was outlawed in 1989, paramilitary groups continued to grow and

multiply with the unofficial support (and often direct involvement) of the state. A

detailed account of the origins and evolution of paramilitarism in Colombia is offered

in Chapter Six and Seven.

4.4. Neoliberalism, Militarization, and Human Rights (1990-2011)

4.4.1. Economy and Relations o f Production

During this time period Colombia’s economy became increasingly integrated into the

international division of labour and globalized production chains (O’Connor and

Bohorquez 2010) through a continuation of agricultural exports such as coffee,

bananas, cotton, and beef (including an increase in some new ones such as palm oil,

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flowers, and seafood), as well as an increase in natural resource extraction

(particularly in emeralds, oil, coal, and ferronickel). The illegal drug trade also

continued and witnessed the formation of new elaborate networks following the

Medellin Cartel of the 1980s, such as the Cali Cartel and the Norte del Valle Cartel.

The behaviour of the Colombian state in the 1990s is consistent with the

description that Robinson (2004) offers with regards to the responsibilities of the TNS

in serving global capital accumulation mainly through fiscal and monetary policies,

basic infrastructure necessary for global economic activity, and coercive and

ideological apparatuses for social control. Beginning in 1990, influenced by the

1 'JO
Washington Consensus , the government of President Cesar Gaviria Trujillo (1990-

1994) began a comprehensive neoliberal restructuring known as the “Economic

Opening” (Apertura Economica). It included several components. One was financial

liberalization, which allowed the free flow of foreign exchange and international

capital and the abolition of exchange rate controls over foreign investment. Another

was trade liberalization that eliminated most non-tariff barriers and dramatically

122
The term “Washington Consensus” has come to symbolize the neoliberal agenda. The core of the
neoliberal program implemented in Latin American nations—austerity, trade liberalization,
privatization, and deregulation—was directly advocated by the U.S. Institute for International
Economics (HE) in its publication Toward Renewed Economic Growth in Latin America (1986). In
1989 the Institute convened a conference to explore the extent to which these measures were indeed
undertaken in the region. The participants, including representatives from international financial
institutions, economic agencies of the U.S. government, and the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, concluded
the conference by recommending policies that were still needed in Latin America. John Williamson, a
senior official at the IIE, made a list of ten such reforms under the name “Washington Consensus”
consisting of: fiscal restraint, public expenditures in fields with high economic returns, tax reform,
financial liberalization, competitive exchange rate, trade liberalization, removal of barriers to foreign
investment, privatization of state-owned enterprises, deregulation, and security for property rights
(Williamson and Kuczynski, 2003).

183
reduced tariffs. The Apertura also included labour deregulation consisting of modified

labour laws that increased the flexibility in hiring and dismissing workers, as well as

waves of privatization in banking and telecommunication. The administration of

President Ernesto Samper (1994-1998) continued the neoliberal agenda. After one

decade of neoliberal policies, unemployment had reached 20 percent in 2000 (Holmes,

Gutierrez, & Curtin 2008). Between 1995 and 2000, Colombia’s ranking on the

UNHD Index declined and overall poverty increased from 55 percent to 60 percent

(Yepes 2002, cited in Aviles 2006). Starting in 2000, in addition to agribusiness, the

other predominant sector of Colombia’s rural political economy became mineral

resource extraction. In 2001, the Colombian Congress approved Mining Code Law

685, which erased restrictions on foreign ownership of concessions, liberalized the

cadastral system and removed restrictions on licensed corporate mining activity on

public lands. The law also required authorization for artisanal mining123 on state

properties, which led to the expropriation of independent artisanal miners by the state

or paramilitary forces from territories which are claimed by licensed companies

(including MNCs) (O’Connor and Bohorquez 2010).

Between 2002 and 2010 under President Uribe, Colombia experienced a wide

range of neoliberal reforms that furthered the developments initiated by previous

administrations. A thorough privatization of public resources and service providers,

along with a significant downsizing of national enterprises, took place under pressure

123 Before 2001, Colombian citizens could legally mine on public lands (O’Connor and Bohorquez
2010 ).

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from IMF in exchange for a $2.1 billion loan. Uribe’s government privatized Bancafe

(one of the largest banks124), Telecom (the public telecommunications company) and

Minercol (the state-entity responsible for administrating the extraction of coal and

mineral resources including gold, silver, platinum, nickel and emeralds) (Leech 2003;

O’Connor and Bohorquez 2010). ECOPETROL (Colombian

Petroleum Company, the state owned oil company) was liquidated (Leech 2003).

Some of the country’s largest public hospitals were closed down. Tens of thousands of

full-time unionized workers lost their jobs. Public-sector workers were laid off,

pension programs were reformed and the royalties that foreign oil corporations were

required to pay Colombia were lowered.

President Uribe’s government also signed a free trade agreement with the US in

2006 and Canada in 2008. These agreements consolidated the position of Colombia in

a division of labour dating back to colonial time, as a seller of primary resources

(agriculture and minerals) and a buyer of manufactured goods and high technology

commodities. In addition to dependency on stable access to Northern markets

(Grinspun 2003), the further expansion in agricultural exports (encouraged by the

agreements) meant that less and less land is available for growing staples for local

consumption and thus threatens the nation’s food autonomy. Clearly, the poor are

most likely to be affected in this case. Furthermore, many of the natural resource

exports from Colombia are done through US or European-based MNCs. For instance,

124 The privatization of banks leaves small-scale farmers without access to credit and other critical
resources which is detrimental to their survival (Lefeber, 2003).

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all o f the exports of ferronickel are done through the English company BHP Billiton.

The latter only pays Colombia 10 percent of the total revenue from selling Colombia’s

nickel abroad (Corriente Marxista 2009). Net inflows of FDI reached a record level in

2005, making Colombia the country with the highest FDI in South American and also

surpassing Mexico (Richani 2010).

As many other Latin American countries, Colombia’s experience in 1990-2011

is an illustration of how neoliberalism intensifies the processes through which

economic and political power becomes concentrated in a few hands and resources are

transferred from the public to the private sphere. Neoliberal restructuring guarantees

huge profit opportunities to the already economically powerful groups, such local

elites, MNCs and financial operators, while excluding the participation of the low-

income population (Lefeber, 2003). Mechanisms external to the country, such as trade

laws and the external debt reinforce Colombia’s subordinate position within the global

hierarchy of power, while internal mechanisms in the form of macroeconomic policies

contribute to the marginalization of the low-income population. By 2010, 45.5 percent

of Colombians lived in poverty, (UNDP 2011) and 13 percent lived in extreme

poverty (Prensa Latina 2012). Close to 20 percent of the population were homeless

(DANE 2009). Approximately 15 percent of Colombian children were malnourished

(Holmes, Gutierrez and Curtin 2008).

One of the significant characteristics of the social structure in Colombia during

1990-2010 is what Richani (2010) calls a “reactionary class configuration”. The latter

comprises the capitalist class associated with the export economy (both legal and

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illegal) and the old landed elite, both united by a common enemy - the insurgency.

Another important feature of the class structure in the last 20 years has been the

growth of a specific sector of the working class “ ...underclass of supernumeraries or

‘redundants’ who are alienated and not absorbed into the global capitalist economy

and who are structurally under- and unemployed” (Robinson 2004, 23). In Colombia,

these are informal labourers such as street vendors, recyclers, street sex workers, shoe

shiners, and some domestic workers to mention a few. Many of these are rural

migrants who have been directly or indirectly forced to leave their land and find

themselves living in squatter settlements. Around 45 percent of Colombians work in

the informal economy unprotected by labour laws (Prensa Latina 2012). The

aggravation of the existing patterns of inequality present in the previous epochs has

led to a sharpening of the prevailing class contradictions.

4.4.2. Class Conflict, Violence, and the State

The relationship between the concentration of wealth and the use of violence has

become more important than ever during the epoch of neoliberal restructuring. The

growth in agribusinesses and mineral resource extraction activities by local and

foreign companies, as well as the investment of drug capital in high quality land, have

greatly accelerated the counter-agrarian reform across the entire country and have

produced a human rights disaster of emergency proportions. Close to six million

people have been forcibly displaced (CODHES 2012), overwhelmingly through

terror-based strategies, and land titles for millions of hectares of land have been

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transferred into the hands of the elite. Parallel to these agrarian conflicts, a strategy of

annihilation targeting labour unions has been underway aimed at de-unionizing the

Colombian labour force and ensuring a pool of precarious workers willing to work at

any price in order to survive. The result has been a drop in the percentage of unionized

workers from 12 percent in 1988 to a mere four percent in 2009 and over 3,500125

unionists dead between 1990 and 2005 (ICFTU 2005). These assaults against rural

and urban labour have been enacted through a combination of violence-based methods

(threats, assassinations, forced disappearances, torture and sexual violence carried out

by paramilitary and state forces) as well as legal mechanisms. The War on Drugs and

the War on Terror served as an impetus for the strengthening of the state’s coercive

apparatus both quantitatively and qualitatively. The state military expanded from a

force of 167,000 at the beginning of the 1990s to 441,000 in 2008. The defense budget

steadily increased from 2.2 percent in 1990 to almost 6 percent in 2008, representing

the largest share of government expenditure (Richani 2010). Many large well-funded

security missions and projects have been undertaken. In 1997, the largest paramilitary

organization - the AUC - was formed. Chapter Four of this dissertation examines in

depth the features and functions of the state’s coercive apparatus, especially in the last

20 years. Chapter Six and Seven analyze the role of paramilitary forces and their

125 Statistics on assassinated unionists from the late 1980s until present vary according to the
organization which provides the data. This is mainly due to the fact that in the late 1980s and early
1990s records of attacks against unionists were not always compiled. It is only in the second half of the
1990s that the ENS as well as international organizations such as ICTUR and ICFTU began producing
yearly accounts of the murder of unionists in Colombia. At the low end of the estimate, according to
US Labour Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP 2011), between 1986 and 2010 over 2,800
unionists were killed.

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relationship to the state in these processes of capital accumulation that are based on

dispossession and repression, or what Richani (2010) calls the “labour repressive”

mode of capital accumulation.

4.4.2.1. Social Movements: From Wealth Redistribution to Human Rights

The social movements landscape in Colombia today is very diverse and vibrant - it

includes peasant, indigenous, women, students, and labour union organizations, as

well as many human rights advocacy groups and victims’ support groups. Without

dismissing or underestimating the mobilizing capacity, convictions, and commitments

of these movements to social change, as well as the improvement in strategic

organizing among certain movements, such as the CRIC, it is possible to observe a

lack of progress with regards to the objectives and accomplishments of movements.

These setbacks, in my opinion, have been caused by the increased strength of the

state’s coercive apparatus and paramilitary offensives. During the previous period

(1903-1989), Colombia witnessed the height of rural and urban workers struggles.

These mobilizations were aimed at politico-economic transformations, such as land

reform, the right to strike, the right to unionize, improved working conditions, and

better pay. However, gradually the movements’ demands shifted from wealth

redistribution to respect for human rights (narrowly defined as the right to live,

freedom from harm, etc.). This became particularly pronounced in the 1990s and

accompanied by the emergence of many NGOs dedicated to the protection of human

rights. The vision o f politico-economic transformations or at least reforms became lost

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or obscured by the more immediate need to protect life. Movements that were

previously formed to accomplish improvements in human well-being, such as the

labour or women’s movement,126 were now being so frequently attacked and partially

exterminated that their activism became overwhelmingly focused on denouncing the

deaths and abuses against their members instead of advancing any other cause. Pleas

to protect human rights became the end goal. The struggles for land that we see today

are led by people who have been forcibly displaced and hope to recover what was

stolen from them. A present-day example is the loose associations of families of those

victimized by state and paramilitary violence. No longer do we see the demand of past

peasant struggles for an “end to the latifundio” among non-armed social movements

today.

4.5. Conclusion

The pervasiveness of violence throughout the history of Colombia’s capitalist

development has enabled the establishment of practices and institutions that further

perpetuate the reproduction of violence. From colonialism to neoliberalism, we can

see permanent class conflict between those who own and control the means of

production (landowners, mine owners, industrialists, and drug-lords) and those who

produce but are propertyless and have no control over their labour.

Even in instances of intra-class conflict along party lines, such as during La

Violencia, there were never fundamental disagreements between the two dominant

126 Particularly the Popular Feminist Organization (Organization Femenina Popular, or OFP).

190
parties that could have put the entire politico-economic system in question. There

were no doubts among the Liberals or Conservatives about the need to maintain the

existing class hierarchy and to protect the interests of capital. The clashes between the

two rather exemplify Miliband’s (1973) argument that disagreements among

capitalist-oriented politicians have to do with the nature and degree of state

intervention, the end goal of which is “...not of eroding let alone supplanting the

capitalist system, but of ensuring its greater strength and stability” (66). This was

precisely the case in Colombia in the mid-1900s as Liberals sought to subdue the

forces seeking social change through reforms and cooptation, while the Conservatives

saw even such limited reforms as creating dangerous precedents that would

empowerment too much the working class.

During the 1920s, the political issue among the ruling party elites was the

social question - a relative novelty. The solutions proposed to confront the new social

ferment were either to emphasize repressive measures or to adopt a more reformist

tactic. In either event, the political strategies debated within the ruling class implied a

common denominator, the strengthening of the state (Oquist 1980, 15). Some of the

specific issues at stake were: credit and technical assistance from the Ministry of

Agriculture for cattle-ranchers and agribusinesses; support from judges over land

disputes; the backing of the police to remove colonos and prevent future land

invasions; and credit, tax breaks and government support in labour disputes for

industrialists. The intra-class conflicts were not between sectors of the capitalist class

(i.e. landlords versus industrialists) since in each sector there were Liberal and

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Conservative supporters. The gremios were also bi-partisan in leadership. Both parties

represented the interests of the capitalist classes and both welcomed the entrance of

foreign capital. When interclass contradictions became sharply pronounced towards

the latter part of La Violencia, Liberals and Conservatives worked out an agreement

(Frente National'), which allowed them to concentrate their efforts on confronting

their common enemy - the Communists and guerrillas.

Many scholars have pointed to the weakness of the Colombian state throughout

history, manifested in the lack of presence in a large part of the national territory and

its weakness in the face of pressure from powerful economic sectors (Zuleta 2005). It

is true that during the opening years of the Wars for Independence (1810-1815)

regionalist sentiments erupted into violence and the new republic failed to centralize

power and create a coherent nation (Oquist 1980). However, as far as capitalist

development is concerned, we must be very cautious of the “weak state” notion,

which is often applied to the present, for three reasons. First, while the state may have

been absent in parts of the national territory during the 19th and even part of the 20th

century, the dominant class in any part of the country always had in place local

mechanisms of domination, especially the means of violence, to defend its interests.

Its economic and political power was never compromised. “The loss of state power

did not present a given group with an absolutely critical situation because frequently

their economic, social, political and even military repressive powers were locally

based and not subject to national government revocation” (Oquist 1980, 152).

Secondly, the pressure from powerful economic actors is not a sign of weakness. The
state’s fusion with the elite or the presence of the elite inside the state is a logical and

inevitable feature of the state in capitalist society as Miliband (1973) argues

(discussed in Chapter Two). Another relevant insight here comes from Jessop (1990),

who suggests that the state is capitalist to the extent that it creates, maintains or

restores the conditions required for capital accumulation in a given situation. Given

the continuities throughout the entire history of Colombia, we can confidently say that

the Colombian state today is capitalist. Thirdly, in the last 60 years, the state has

undergone a massive strengthening and some restructuring with regards to its capacity

to deal with internal challenges coming from below. This is evident in the expansion

of its coercive apparatus, the presence of a legal framework that secures a high degree

of power to state agents, and the emergence of paramilitarism. More discussion on this

subject is presented in the subsequent chapters.

The history of Colombia is a history of continuous dispossession through

numerous waves of primitive accumulation (often overlapping or simultaneous): the

initial clearing of the indigenous population from their land in the 16th and 17th

century; the commodification of resguardos and their subsequent absorption by large-

scale landowners in the 18th and 19th century; the eviction of peones and terrajeros
iL

from haciendas and their replacement with wage-labourers in the 19 century; the

expropriation of colonos and independent small-scale farmers from public lands in the

19th and first half of 20th century; and the expropriation of artisanal miners and forced

displacement of small-scale farmers in the last 20 years. The profound class divisions

that have developed historically in this country have been maintained through a strong

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reliance on and regular use of violence by those with economic and political power

against the working majority and the poor in order to secure control over resources

and labour while eliminating or suppressing dissent. Legal and ideological tools have

been invented to legitimate these practices.

The onset of neoliberalism in the 1990s has been accompanied by a further

enhancement in the capacity of the state’s security apparatus and paramilitary groups,

the growth in violence and human rights violations, and the subjection of social

movements to various extermination tactics. Violence and legislation as mechanisms

of primitive accumulation continue to be widespread in Colombia at the very present.

Despite temporal and geographic location differences, significant parallels can be

drawn between, not necessarily the expressions, but definitely the underlying

motivations and strategies of dispossession in the development of agrarian capitalism

in the Colombian context and that on which Marx was writing. While primitive

accumulation was present in England in the 1500 and 1600s, it was also ongoing in

Nueva Granada as the indigenous population was forcibly removed from the land with

the aim of converting them into labourers on haciendas and mines. Some similarities

also exist between the way serfs were evicted from feudal estates and peones were

evicted from haciendas as the latter were converting into capitalist farms. Along the

same lines, the enclosure of the commons has also been a recurring motif throughout

the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries as colonos farming on state lands are expropriated by

landowners with official titles to the land and artisanal miners are expulsed from

mining sites by private companies with official licenses. While in 15th and 16th

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century England the pretext for the savage acts against the expropriated was not being

engaged in productive work, in Colombia the term “guerrilla collaborator” has

become the essence of the ideological production that can justify any monstrosity

committed against civilians (as Chapter Five and Six illustrate). What is absolutely

clear is that during all waves of primitive accumulation the ultimate goal has been to

force the working population to be available for and participate in capitalist

production on terms that favour the dominant class, while reproducing its own

marginalized condition.

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 Chapter Five: Security versus Human Rights:

Structure and Functions of the Colombian State’s Coercive Apparatus

The Colombian state defends the capitalist relations of production by securing the

conditions necessary for capital accumulation and eliminating or neutralizing

individuals and organizations that challenge the power of the dominant classes.

Although at first glance the human rights violations that result from the state’s

repressive and violent measures do not appear to be directly linked to capitalist

enterprises, as Wood (1981:31) reminds us:

...when there are violent confrontations, they are usually not directly between
capital and labour. It is not capital itself but the state that conducts class
conflict when it intermittently breaks outside the walls and takes more violent
form. The armed power of capital thus usually remains in the background; and
when class domination makes itself felt as direct and personal coercive force,
it appears in the guise of an ‘autonomous’ and ‘neutral’ state.

This chapter examines the structure and functions of the Colombian state’s coercive

apparatus. Section 5.1 describes the different institutions that jointly make up this

entity. Section 5.2 illustrates how legal instruments enable state agents to use invasive

forms of social control and repressive practices, while criminalizing the activities of

those who seek social change and defend human rights. Section 5.3 discusses the

purposes of state-sanctioned violence and militarization programs, considering the

role of the US in the latter. Section 5.4 examines the state’s ideological production in

the context o f the National Security Doctrine and the notion of “internal enemy”,

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particularly with regards to the demonization of the “enemy” and the glorification of

the state military.

5.1. Institutions in the State’s Coercive Apparatus

Colombia is a constitutional, multiparty democracy under the constitution of July

1991. As a unitary republic with a presidential regime, the national government has

executive, legislative, and judicial branches established with separation of powers

(Library of Congress 2005). In principle, the divisions between the branches guarantee

the independent functioning of each one. However, the Executive has assumed

prerogatives that weaken the independent functioning of the other branches (Palacio

1991).

The various security institutions embodied by the Colombian state are overseen

by the Ministry of Defense. Since they have begun to operate in an increasingly

coordinating and collaborating fashion with each other in their administration of

repression and violence against the civilian population, it makes senses to

conceptualize them as a whole. It is this institutional ensemble that I refer to as the

111
state’s coercive apparatus. The first component of this entity is the armed forces ,

belonging to the executive branch of the state, which include the army (Ejercito

National), navy (Armada National), air force (Fuerza Aerea Colombiana) and police

{Policia National). The commanders of the first three services are responsible to the

127 Throughout the dissertation, the terms “armed forces” or “state army” are used to refer particularly
to the army (Ejercito National).

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Commander General of the armed forces, who reports directly to the Ministry of

Defense (Library o f Congress 2005). The army is organized into seven divisions, each

responsible for specific geographic areas. The divisions contain within them a number

of units referred to as “brigades”, for a total of 18. Each brigade in turn is made up of

troops or battalions. Some brigades are allocated specific duties such as anti-narcotics

operations. Also part of the armed forces is the B2 Intelligence Battalion (B2 Batallon

de Inteligencia del Ejercito) whose function is to protect the safety and integrity of

members of the military. Its duty entails gathering information on individuals and

groups deemed to pose a security threat.

The next component of the state’s coercive apparatus is the National Police,

which contains various squads, such as the Anti-Disturbances Mobile Squadron

(Escuadron Movil Antidisturbios, or ESMAD), the anti-kidnapping unit called the

Joint Action Units for Personal Liberty (Grupos de Accion Unificada por la Libertad

Personal, or GAULA), the Anti-Terrorism Unit (Unidad Anti-Terorista), the Judicial

Police (Direccion de Policla Judicial, or DIJIN) and its local level counterpart, the

Department of Judicial Investigations and Intelligence (Seccion de Investigaciones

Judiciales e Inteligencia, de la Policia, or SIJIN). ESMAD is commonly deployed to

confront public protests or other forms of mobilizations, while the function of SIJIN is

investigative in nature. The Colombian constitution clearly separates the police from

the armed forces. The former’s function is to defend national sovereignty, while the

latter is responsible for the conservation of internal order (Reyes 1991). However, it is

important to acknowledge the institutionalized linkages between the police, military,

198
and military rule (Pereira and Davis 2000). This becomes especially pronounced when

a state of siege is declared by the government, which enables the latter to decide if

additional measures are necessary to counteract disturbances in public order. In

Colombia, a “state of siege” is permitted by Article 121 of the Constitution (as

mentioned in Chapter Four). The state of siege has allowed the Colombian armed

forces to absorb the National Police structurally and functionally and to penetrate

areas once reserved for ordinary criminal enforcement. The National Police director is

subordinate to the Minister of Defense and, therefore, under the latter’s control.

Military personnel simultaneously act as judicial police (and therefore make arrests,

and conduct searches and interrogations), criminal investigators, judges, defense

attorneys, and juries. Among the measures included in most states of siege is the

investigation and prosecution of civilian common or political crimes by military

tribunals (Reyes 1991).

Another institution, which can be considered part of the state’s coercive

apparatus, is the Technical Investigative Unit (Cuerpo Tecnico de Investigation, or

CTI) of the Public Prosecutor’s Office128 {Fiscalia General de la Nation) which

belongs to the state’s judicial branch. Its purpose is to identify crime perpetrators.

Often, its actions serve to criminalize individuals considered a threat to the

establishment. For instance, it is not uncommon for officers to work in collaboration

with the military and to conduct secret investigative operations by infiltrating

organizations such as trade unions.

128 Throughout this dissertation, the term Fiscalia is used to refer to the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

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 Another body, DAS (introduced in Chapter Four), used to be in charge of the

safety and security of government officials, such as politicians, mayors, and judges,

questions of immigration and customs, and had an investigative capacity. For 58 years

DAS was considered the state’s central and most powerful intelligence institution.

Among its functionaries were bodyguards, criminal investigators, and customs

officers. On October 31, 2011, President Santos signed Decree 4057 which put an end

to this institution after numerous scandals around human and civil rights violations in

which it had been involved. The new intelligence agency that is solely in charge of

state security is the National Colombian Agency of Intelligence (Agenda National de

Inteligencia Colombiana or ANIC), which is regulated by the Ministry of Defense.

Former employees of DAS were transferred to ANIC, the Ministry of Interior, the

Ministry of Foreign Relations, the National Police and the Fiscalia {El Tiempo 2011).

ANIC began operating in 2012 and its director is Alvaro Echandia, former

commander o f the navy.

The state’s coercive apparatus operates through a system of mutually reinforcing

mechanisms. These can be grouped into three broad categories: legal, violence-based,

and ideological.

5.2. Legal Mechanisms

Legislation has an important role in empowering state agents to perform their job in

ways that not only breach civil liberties and privacy, which are commonly thought of

as key ingredients in the fabric of democracy, but also violate basic human rights. In

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this context, legal mechanism operate in three interrelated ways: i) authorizing

invasive forms of social control through the increase and diversification of

surveillance practices; ii) allowing the police and military to use excessive force, thus

curtailing civil rights and liberties; and iii) providing schemes through which dissent

can be criminalized.

One of the best illustrations of the first method above is the Defense and

Democratic Security Program, which President Uribe put in effect immediately after

becoming president in August 2002. “The general objective of the Defense and

Democratic Security Program is to reinforce and guarantee the state of law throughout

the entire country by means of strengthening democratic authority” (Ministerio 2003).

The Defense and Democratic Security is described in official discourses as primarily a

measure to protect the civilian population, founded on three pillars: i) protecting the

rights of all citizens; ii) protecting pluralism and democratic institutions; and iii)

solidarity and cooperation among all citizens in the defense of democratic values. The

accomplishment of these goals has been the pretext to provide more funding for the:

strengthening o f the military through more and improved training programs; boosting

the mobile capacity of troops on the ground by creating more battalions; augmenting

the number o f troops; improving the systems of collection, analysis, and diffusion of

intelligence information; and supplying newer military equipment. Another focus of

the program is the strengthening of the National Police by: creating new mobile

squads to patrol rural areas; enhancing the technical capacity of the judicial police;

and expanding police recruitment (Ministerio 2003).

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 In what is obviously a process of strengthening the state’s coercive apparatus, of

particular interest is the third element of the Democratic Security. Couched in a

harmless rhetoric around “solidarity and cooperation among all citizens”, it is in

reality a way of making civilians actively allied with the army and police. For this

purpose, the government developed a network of civilian informants and peasant

soldiers. The latter are armed but not part of the regular army as they are not required

to leave their homes (Ferrer 2002). This arrangement ensures a constant preparedness

for combat, should a guerrilla unit appear. Peasant soldiers can capture rebels and

their sympathizers and eliminate any hostility / opposition towards the state army.

The network of civilian informants, the other tool for involving the citizenry in

the affairs of the state’s coercive apparatus, consists of more than one million people

(including children) whose task is to spy on neighbours, friends, colleagues, relatives,

and even own family members, and report (proofs are not required) any suspicious

activity that may be deemed as “anti-state” or “insurgent” (Ferrer 2002). Undoubtedly,

the encouragement of such reporting creates an environment conducive to false

accusations.

Not only do allegations lacking any proof whatsoever become a basis for arresting

individuals, but those detained are also denied the right to know the identity of their

accusers or what exactly they are being accused of. The secrecy and arbitrariness that

surround these flows of intelligence have reached the point where security forces have

been known to take along an informant with his / her face covered who points to

“suspicious” individuals to be detained (Privacy 2004). The legal mechanism

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embodied in the Defense and Democratic Security scheme make it a civil obligation to

participate in the persecution of the state’s enemy. As a result, the state has managed

to implant a new form of monitoring by shaping the conduct of its citizens in a very

subtle way. The Defense and Democratic Security Program (2002) stipulates that

certain items of the constitution may be temporarily changed (implying the suspension

of certain civil liberties) in order to better equip the state forces to combat terrorism.

The subordination of civil law enforcement to military security programs since 2002,

such as the one mentioned above, permits the suspension of individual and collective

rights, while granting more autonomy and immunity to state forces. Moreover, such

legal instruments enable the latter to violate human rights, without any repercussions

as long as such activities are claimed to be employed in response to a terrorist threat.

It has been found that the impunity rate for human rights abuses among military

personnel is extremely high and in fact matches the proportion of political crimes that

remain unsolved—a staggering 98 percent (Douglas 2001).

Another example of invasive surveillance practices and arbitrary types of

interference was DAS’ systematic engagement between 2004 and 2009 in illegal

phone tapping, email interception, and the monitoring of the activities of labour

unionists, human rights activists, journalists writing about the state’s connections to

the paramilitary, Left-wing politicians, as well as magistrates and Supreme Court

justices investigating former paramilitaries and politicians linked to the paramilitary

(HRW 2012). Alfredo Correa de Aldreis, a sociologist, was one of the many

individuals being followed by DAS. He was later murdered in the city of Baranquilla.

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 Legislation also serves to criminalize dissent and social protest while justifying

repressive tactics by state agents. The labeling of activists and social movements as

guerrillas is the principal way in which their demands are discredited and actions are

criminalized. This is how former president Uribe responded to international concerns

about the safety o f human rights workers in the country: “Every time a security policy

aimed at defeating terrorism appears in Colombia, every time the terrorists start to feel

weak, they send their mouthpieces to talk about human rights” (Femdndez 2003).

Mobilizations and marches by trade unions and student movements have been

especially harshly affected. In 2004, the Ministry of Social Protection, declared the

majority of strikes to be illegal, often citing public order as the main reason. This and

other recent changes in labour law have made it harder for workers to exercise their

freedom o f collective bargaining and association (Moloney 2005). Arbitrary legal

proceedings relating to charges of subversion against trade unionists and other human

rights defenders have been common. On numerous occasions trade unionists have

been killed whilst under criminal investigation or shortly after charges against them

were dropped. Many of the criminal proceedings opened against trade unionists have

been initiated on the basis of accusations by the armed forces and paid informers

instead of on evidence gathered in the course of independent and impartial criminal

investigations by the civilian investigative authorities (A I2007).

Intellectuals, educators, and journalists have also experienced a stigmatization,

criminalization, and discrediting of their work. For instance, Alfredo Correa de

Aldreis, a prominent sociologist, (mentioned earlier) was detained on June 17, 2004

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by DAS on a charge of rebellion while he was carrying out his studies on forced

displacement. He was later released due to lack of evidence. Three months later he

was assassinated in the city of Barranquilla (Colombia Week 2004).

The excessive prolongation of pretrial detention and criminal proceedings

against those accused by the state is another way in which legal mechanisms are put at

work. Liliani Obando, a Colombian academic, trade unionist, human rights defender,

sociologist, and film-maker was detained in August 2008 and kept in preventive

detention for 3 years and 6 months in Buen Pastor Prison Bogota, without being

convicted of any crime. At the time of her arrest she was working on her dissertation

on the Federation of Agricultural Workers and Small-Scale Farmers (Federation

National Sindical Unitaria Agropecuaria, or FENSUAGRO). She had been falsely

accused of rebellion and raising funds for the FARC based on evidence found among

the files in laptops belonging to former FARC commander Raul Reyes which were

recovered after the bombing-raid and ground assault on the FARC encampment in

Ecuador on March 1, 2008. In its 2008 report on these files, INTERPOL stated that

the computer documents had been kept for one week by Colombian authorities before

being handed over to INTERPOL. During that period of one week, the Colombian

authorities actually modified 9,440 files, and deleted 2,905, according to

INTERPOL’s detailed forensic report (Grandin and Salas 2011).

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5.3. Violence-based Mechanisms

5.3.1. State-sanctioned Violence

While legal mechanisms furnish the state’s coercive apparatus with legitimacy and

credibility to target those who express opposition to the status quo, the most common

method through which the state affects and controls the civilian population is armed

force, expressed in state-sanctioned violence and militarization. Torres-Rivas’ (1999)

defines state violence as the massive utilization of force by agents of the state or its

representatives, carried out in an organized manner and expressing itself directly or

obliquely, practically or symbolically against particular socially defined groups. In

Colombia, state-sanctioned violence is manifested in: arbitrary arrests; house raids;

excessive use of force at public protests / demonstrations; aerial fumigation that

destroys food crops and livestock; indiscriminate bombing; intimidation; beatings;

torture; forced disappearances; extra-judicial executions; and coordination and

collaboration among the state armed forces and paramilitary groups in carrying out

any of the activities listed above or any other forms of human rights violations

(discussed in Chapter Six).

Once the activities o f social movements have been criminalized (through legal

mechanisms), violence-based mechanisms, such as arbitrary detentions, come into

play. As Miliband (1973) argues, the military and police in capitalist countries are the

coercive agents of the existing social order and they are ready “... to take the field, so

to speak, against striking workmen, left-wing political activists, and other such

disturbers of the status quo” (123). For instance, Colombian small-scale farmer

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leaders who participate in demonstrations after negotiations with the government,

have often been labelled subversive and have been the victims of serious human rights

violations carried out by the security forces. In August 2003, Hermes Vallejo Jimenez,

a peasant leader in Tolima Department and one of the founders of the Association of

Small and Medium-Scale Farmers of Tolima (Asociacion de Pequenos y Medianos

Agricultores del Tolima, or ASOPEMA), was detained along with 25 more people,

including two members of the National Association of Hospital and Clinic Workers

(Asociacion Nacional de Trabajadores Hospitalarios y de Cllnicas, or ANTHOC)

based on claims made by informants found by GAULA who labelled the detained as

members of the ELN guerrilla. In May 2006, members of the GAULA detained

FENSUAGRO leader Miguel Angel Bobadilla and his partner Nieves Mayusa. During

the operation, the authorities attempted to force the couple’s elder child to say that her

parents were FARC guerrillas (A I2007).

In March 2011, SIJIN detained Jose Antonio Toroca, the president of the

Communal Action Board in the rural area Flor Amarillo in the municipality of Tame,

Department of Arauca who had led protests against the crimes committed by the

armed forces against children. Most recently, he had been very outspoken about the

case where two little girls were sexually abused and one of them killed in the presence

of her baby brothers by members of the armed forces (Humanidad Vigente 2011).

Student organizing has become the target of state violence since the 1990s in

response to its resistance against the complete privatization of higher education

(Dearden 2003). Numerous peaceful student protests took place across the country in

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late May and early June 2007 against the government’s National Development Plan

{Plan Nacional de Desarollo) aimed at privatizing higher public education as well as

the proposed article 38 of the Law of Transfers {Ley de Transferencias) which

intended to reduce drastically the budget for education, health care and basic

sanitation. ESMAD violently dealt with the demonstrations, rallies, and peaceful

occupations such as those at the University of Caldas and University of Cauca. On

May 31, 2007 at 3:00 am more than 100 members of ESMAD stormed into various

buildings of the University of Cauca in Popayan spraying teargas, destroying the

infrastructure, and beating up students. Fifteen youth were detained, among them the

leaders o f the student association. During that operation, a student named Genfor

Cobo was taken away by police forces and later disappeared (Centro de Medios

2007).

In addition to arbitrary arrests and the violent suppression of protests, state

forces have been involved in extra-judicial executions, torture and disappearances. On

August 5, 2004, members of Eighteenth Brigade executed Hector Alirio Martinez -

former president of the Departmental Peasant Association {Asociacion Departamental

de Usuarios Campesinos, or ADUC), Jorge Eduardo Prieto Chamusero - the president

of the National Association of Hospital Workers for the Department of Arauca

{Asociacion Nacional de Trabajadores Hospitalarios y de Cllnicas, or ANTHOC),

and Leonel Goyeneche Goyeneche - the treasurer of the Colombian Federation of

Labour for the Department of Arauca {Central Unitaria de Trabajadores, or CUT).

The murders occurred as the Reveiz Pizarro Group of the Eighteenth Brigade entered

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the neighbourhood of Carlo Seco in the municipality of Saravena, Department of

Arauca. They went to the house of the union leader Jorge Prieto early in the morning

and forcibly took him and his wife undressed to a space a few meters away from their

house. There they shot him and also the other two leaders mentioned above who had

stayed for the night at Prieto’s house. While the Ministry of Defense publicly declared

that the three individuals who were arrested by the army had started shooting as they

tried to escape, witnesses confirmed that the victims were taken out with their hands

tied, put down on their knees, and shot from a short distance. In the same event, other

unionists of Arauca - Samuel Morales Flores, president of CUT for the Department of

Arauca, and the president of the Union of Educators of Arauca {Asociacion de

Educadores de Arauca, or ASEDAR) who was at the house of Jorge Prieto at the time

the murder occurred - were detained and later jailed (Centro de Medios 2004).

On February 22, 2005 in Apartado, Department of Antioquia, members of the

counter-insurgency Battalion Cacique Lutaima Number 33 murdered two children,

one woman and two men on the farm belonging to Alfonso Bolivar. The bodies of the

adults were cut up into pieces. On the same day appeared the bodies of Luis Eduardo

Guerra Guerra, member of the Internal Council of the Peace Community of San Josd

de Apartado, Deiner Andres Guerra Tuberquia (11 year-old and son of Luis

Eduardo), and Beyanira Areiza Guzman (17 year-old). On May 17, 2005, in

Almaguer, Department of Cauca, troops belonging to the highland battalion Benjamin

Herrera, from Nineteenth Brigade, under the orders of Colonel Javier Alonso Diaz

Gomez, executed three peasants: Evert Papamija, Edwar Tulio Gomez and Romulo

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Rengifo. This occurred 24 hours after detaining them arbitrarily in the rural area of

Llacuanas. The event was announced by the mainstream media in the following way:

..once again the highland battalion Number Four managed to defeat two subversives

... Colonel Javier Alonso Diaz Gomez ... carried out profound offensives to

guarantee the security of the entire region, completing the development of the

strategic campaign o f Democratic Security...” (CINEP 2005a).

On May 27, 2007, in Quibdo, Department of Choco, the Embera Katio

indigenous communities had organized a peaceful mobilization, calling on the

government to send officials to negotiate solutions to the pressing needs of

communities, including education, health care, and an end to violence. The

government’s response was to send members of ESMAD to bum people’s clothes and

belongings and force them into buses without telling them where they were being

taken to. In this operation, 28 people disappeared of which 19 were children, and 13

were left seriously hurt. Moreover, ESMAD tortured the leader of the local indigenous

council, leaving him in critical condition, and threw three children from the

community of Docabu into the San Juan River (ONIC 2007).

5.3.2. Militarization and the Role o f the US

Militarization in Colombia has been expressed in the: i) increased presence of the state

troops in certain areas; ii) increased control of certain territories and their inhabitants

by the army (i.e. random searches of civilians conducted by military personnel at

roadblocks or other public spaces); iii) increase in the number of military bases; and

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iv) increase in the size of state troops. Military expenditure as a percent of GDP

increased from 2.2 percent in 1990 to 4.4 percent in 2003 (Holmes, Gutierrez, and

Curtin 2008). The size of the army increased by 52 percent from 249,833 in 1998 to

380,069 in 2005 (Rojas 2007).

The US has played a fundamental role in the militarization of Colombia

through funding, training, and the provision of equipment, troops, and experts, while

disregarding the fact the Colombian armed forces have one of the worst human rights

records in the world. As Miliband (1973) has put it, the purpose of US foreign policy

has always been to prevent the emergence of regimes fundamentally opposed to

capitalist enterprise. “As a general rule, the American government’s attitude to

governments in the Third World ... depends very largely on the degree to which these

governments favour American free enterprise” (Miliband 1973, 78). Since World War

II, under the responsibility of the Southern Command of the Pentagon, the US has

maintained a number o f military bases throughout Latin America, which has grown

since September 11, 2001 (Marion 2002). US - Colombian military cooperation has

been governed by conditions set in a number of bilateral agreements, including the

1952 Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement, the 1962 General Agreement for

Economic, Technical and Related Assistance, and related subsequent agreements in

1974, 2000, and 2004 (US Department of State 2009). US assistance has gone into

combatting subversion, narco-trafficking, terrorism and other perceived threats to

Colombia’s national security (Torrijos 2010) through specific military projects,

129 Still, Colombia’s own dedication of resources to militarization should not be underestimated.

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missions, or operations such as Plan Lazo (discussed in Chapter Six), Plan Colombia,

Plan Patriota, and Plan Salto Estrategico.

Starting in the 1980s, the Andean region has been the main focus of the US War

on Drugs. Between 1990 and 1994, $2.2 billion in mostly military assistance were

allocated to Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. In Colombia in particular, funds

were used for the creation of new police squadrons and massive spraying campaigns.

In 1999, the Plan for Peace, Prosperity and the Strengthening of the State (Plan para

la Paz, la Prosperidad y el Fortalecimiento del Estado) known as Plan Colombia130,

was put into place by the administration under Colombian President Pastrana and US

President Clinton. This was a six year strategy (1999-2005) for eliminating drug

trafficking and organized crime, strengthening institutions, and promoting social and

economic development. The total cost of Plan Colombia (1999-2005) was 10 billion

dollars - 35 percent o f it was financed by the US and the rest of the cost was covered

by Colombia. O f this total amount, 26.5 percent was devoted to the strengthening of

institutions, 16 percent to social and economic development, and 57.5 percent to

counter-narcotics operations and combatting organized crime. In practice, the

emphasis was on militarized counter-narcotics operations (mostly focused on targeting

the primary producers - the peasant coca growers) and intensive counter-insurgency

operations, both conveniently combined as a response to the “narco-terrorist threat”

130 According to the Colombian government, Plan Colombia’s components included: the fight against
narco-trafficking and terrorism; strengthening of law and justice and promotion of human rights;
opening of markets; comprehensive social development; comprehensive assistance for the displaced
population; and demobilization, disarmament and reintegration (PDA 2007).

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(Rojas 2007). The increased militarization that has been made possible through Plan

Colombia has also served to provide security for foreign investors throughout the

countryside. As far as reducing the cultivation and trafficking of illegal drugs, the

outcome is quite disappointing. Land under coca cultivation increased from 136,200

hectares in 2000 to 157,200 hectares in 2006. Moreover, the United Nations World

Drug Report 2008 estimated that there had been a 27 percent increase in the area

cultivated with coca in the period 2006-2007. Colombia remains one of the major

producers and exporters of cocaine in the world (Acevedo 2008).

At the beginning of 2007, Uribe’s administration presented the Strategy for

Strengthening Democracy and Social Development 2007-2013 (Estrategia de

Fortalecimientode la Democracia y del Desarrollo Social), which became known as

Plan Colombia II. The objective was to consolidate the achievements of the first phase

of Plan Colombia and the Defense and Democratic Security Program. Plan Colombia

II has six components: war against narco-trafficking and terrorism; strengthening of

justice and human rights; internationalization of the economy; social programs;

attention to displaced people demobilization, rendition and reintegration. The total

cost for Plan Colombia II was estimated at US$43 billion. A mere US$1.7 billion was

intended for socio-economic development (Rojas 2007). The main focus continues to

be on narco-trafficking, organized crime, and insurgency, together labeled as “narco­

terrorism”. Between 1998 and 2008, under Plan Colombia I and II, US aid to

Colombia included the following allocations: military and police aid (US$5.5 billion);

economic and social aid (US$1.2 billion); military equipment (US$1.3 billion);

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counter drug operations (US$176 millions); and humanitarian and civic assistance

(US$871,975) (Acevedo 2008). In her evaluation of Plan Colombia I, an analyst from

the Beckley Foundation Drug Policy Programme writes

Plan Colombia demonstrates the negative consequences of combining the war

on drugs and the war against terrorism ... Plan Colombia has shown how
addressing the originally discrete, yet what have grown to be inter-related,
problems of violent ‘Revolutionary’ politics and the illicit drugs trade via a
single strategy can have deleterious consequences. As such, the misleading
association between drug-trafficking and insurgence represented in the
politically popular phrase ‘narco-terrorist threat’ needs to be reconsidered and
separated ... [I]t is clear that a military approach against drug trafficking fails
to achieve democratic stability and peace since the increasing militarization of
the anti-drugs efforts can have devastating effects in terms of displaced
population, intensification of the conflict and the escalation of the violence
(Acevedo 2008).

In addition to financial aid for specific projects, US military involvement in

Colombia is expressed in intelligence operations, maintenance of bases, training

programs for local troops, and provision of equipment such as radar installations,

helicopters, and ammunition. In fact, out of non-NATO countries, Colombia is second

after South Korea in terms of the number of US-trained military personnel (Centre for

International Policy 2003). During the administration of President George W. Bush,

the US intensified military and economic bilateral ties with Colombia, including the
1^1
definition of a free trade agreement and the signing of the Supplemental Agreement

for Cooperation and Technical Assistance in Defense and Security (SACTA) in

November 2009 (Torrijos 2009). The defense agreement gives the US military access,

131 The US-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement was signed on November 22,2006. The US
Congress passed the agreement on October 12,2011.

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use, and free movement among two air bases, two naval bases, and three army bases,

in addition to an existing two military bases, as well as all international civilian

airports across the country. It also grants US personnel full diplomatic immunity for

any human rights abuses or other crimes committed on Colombian soil (Janicke

2009). The Colombian Constitutional Court suspended agreement on grounds that the

measure was never approved by the Colombian Congress and thus was

unconstitutional. The US military forces present at those locations situated across

Colombia, had to withdraw to other Colombian bases until the Colombian Congress

approves the agreement in a democratic manner (Pitarque 2010). Such other bases are

located in San Andres Island, Miraflores, Ariquita, Santa Marta, and Puerto Asis

(Castro 2002).

In May 2004, the Patriot Plan {Plan Patriota) was announced, which was a joint

initiative put forward by the Colombian and US government for a massive military

offensive, including the deployment of 15,000 troops into territories occupied by the

FARC. Moreover, the Patriot Plan provides legal privileges to US private companies

and their mercenaries (Calvo 2004).

In 2010, the Colombian Ministry of Defense launched Plan Salto Estrategico

with the objective of consolidating territories, such as Catatumbo, Cauca, los Montes

de Maria, the southern part of the Department of Tolima and the Department of

Narifto and Arauca, which have a high presence of guerrilla and other illegal armed

groups. According to the government, this project has six steps: i) identify the

territories for military operations; ii) assess the degree of presence of guerrilla or other

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leaders who can be captured, killed or made to demobilize; iii) capture the maximum

number of combatants and subject them to judicial proceedings; iv) conduct anti­

narcotic operations; v) occupy the areas which will likely be sought as refuge by those

who manage to escape; and vi) engage in social recovery of the territories (Semana

2009d).

On March 29, 2012, US Joint Chiefs of Staff Commander General Martin

Dempsey announced the newly formed Vulcan Joint-Task Force in Colombia, led by

Brigadier General Marcolino Tamayo Tamayo, which consists of 10,000 soldiers,

three mobile brigades and one fixed brigade, operating from a base in Tibu, in the

Catatumbo region Department of Norte de Santander, just two miles from the

Venezuelan border. Once again, the objective of this new task force is to fight narco­

trafficking and the insurgency as in the case of other similar joint-task forces that have

been created in Tumaco (Department of Narifio), Miranda (Department of Cauca) and

Tame (Department of Arauca). Dempsey announced that the US will send to

Colombia brigade commanders with practical experience in Afghanistan and Iraq to

work with the Colombian police and army combat units that will be deployed in areas

controlled by the rebels. Colombia has already formed special commandos for hunt-

and-kill missions as part of an aggressive military campaign through which the

government hopes to reach its goal of reducing the FARC guerrillas by 50 percent in

two years (Pimiento and Poland 2012).

From a military point of view, Colombia is a very important Latin American ally

for the US because of its strategic location in relation to the rest of Latin America.

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This is especially so given the rise to power of anti-neoliberal governments in

Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, and their emphasis on national sovereignty and

autonomy from US imperialism. Thus, the militarization of Colombia not only serves

to contain the insurgency and provide security for US enterprises operating inside

Colombia, but also to maintain a level of preparedness to deal with any challenges that

might arise from possible alliances between US-unfriendly governments in the region

and social movements inside Colombia.

Military cooperation between the US and Colombia has expanded in recent

years beyond Colombian borders. According to Pentagon officials, Colombia’s War

on Drugs and War on Terror represent a good model for what Afghanistan should aim

for. In fact, in January 2007, former Colombian Defense Minister (and currently

president) Juan Manuel Santos told reporters that the armed forces have trained more

than 100 Afghan security officials and have sent missions from its National Police

force to Kabul. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Peter Pace, praised Colombia's

leaders for using their country's long experience to help the Afghan government fight

a battle against drugs (Miles 2007).

Here is another example of how the US-Colombian alliance is having an impact

on other countries. The Colombian state, thanks to new monitoring and radar

interception technology provided by the US, was able to detect the precise location of

the FARC camp in Ecuador. On March 1, 2008 Colombia violated the territorial and

political sovereignty of that country by invading it through an aerial attack with

bombs and rockets, followed by a ground troop assault in which FARC deputy

217
commander Luis Edgar Devia Silva (alias Raul Reyes) was killed along with other

guerrilla members and four Mexican students (Leech 2008b).

On April 15, 2012 presidents Obama and Santos met during the Americas

Summit and agreed on a new military regional action plan that will include training

police forces in Central America and beyond (discussed in Chapter One). The

expansion o f counter-insurgency forces in Latin America is also part of a new national

security strategy released by the White House in February 2012 which, according to

US Defense Secretary Leon Panneta, will introduce “innovative methods” for

supporting counter-terrorist forces and expanding US influence in the region

(Pimiento and Poland 2012).

5.4. Ideological Mechanisms

The ideological production of the state’s coercive apparatus has been crucial in

facilitating its activities and allowing its penetration of the sphere of civil society.

When I speak of ideological production, I draw on Banneiji’s (2003) Marxist

conception of ideology as a mode of knowledge production which erases and distorts

social reality and creates “...a de-grounded, a de-historicizing set of concepts,

categories, and meanings which erase, occlude, reify, distance, or displace the

historical and the social...Their ideological image erases lived time with its complex,

contradictory multiple, and historically specific social relations” (164). The primary

element in the production of ideology is divorcing the ruling ideas from the class that

produced them by representing them as natural and in the common interest of the

218
majority and consequently, creating the impression that ideas rather than material

conditions are the primary movers of history. Ideological production does not exist for

its own sake. It is rather a means to an end and in Colombia it is accompanied by

military and legal mechanisms at play. Let’s briefly trace the ideology that has

historically accompanied state-sanctioned violence and militarization.

5.4.1. The Counter-insurgency War and the National Security Doctrine

In order to qualify for more US military assistance, Colombian officials portrayed the

guerrilla in terms that were consistent with American foreign policy priorities.

Accordingly, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, revolutionary movements were

primarily referred to as “communist insurgency”. This strategy appeared to work,

since the US quickly became involved in managing the internal affairs of the country

through the provision of military aid based on the rationale that “the continuance of

unsettled conditions in Colombia contributes to Communist objectives and threatens

the establishment of a pro-US, free enterprise democracy” (Stokes 2005). It was at this

time that the concept of the “internal enemy” was endorsed. US counter-insurgency

manuals explicitly outlined the centrality of civilian populations to any rebel

movement, thus linking civil society organizations to the problem of insurgency.

Consequently, Leftist political parties, minorities, labor unions, and other groups

became a military objective. Alfredo Vasquez Carrizosa, president o f the Colombian

Permanent Committee for Human Rights, argues that the creation of the “internal

enemy” according to the National Security Doctrine entailed a transformation of Latin

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American regular armies into counter-insurgency brigades directed against any

progressive forces. This was initiated by the Kennedy administration in the early

1960s:

What is known in Latin America as the National Security Doctrine...is not

defense against an external enemy, but a way to make the military
establishment the masters of the game [with] the right to combat the internal
enemy... it is the right to fight and to exterminate social workers, trade
unionists, men and women who are not supportive of the establishment, and
who are assumed to be communist extremists. And this could mean anyone,
including human rights activists such as myself (Chomsky 2003).

According to Rojas (2012), the National Security Doctrine distorts the functions

established for the military and police by Western democratic principles, allowing

them to intervene directly in sectors normally not recognized as their sphere of

competence, to fight internal “wars” against their fellow citizens, and to violate

accepted norms that would be recognized in international conflicts. Rojas argues that

this doctrine uses the term “security” in the most abstract sense and incorporates

elements of reactionary totalitarianism with a messianic notion of national salvation.

The basic principle in the ideological foundation of the National Security Doctrine is

fear. While security should be about living in a state free of fear, the objective of the

National Security Doctrine is for citizens to co-exist with the threat of terror, chronic

anguish and permanent risk. Suspicion, in the context of security, is imposed as an

explanation for the persecution of civilians and the implementation of any measures,

no matter how extreme.

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 5.4.2. The War on Narco-terrorism and the Recycling o f the National Security

Doctrine

By the second half of the 1990s, with most of the socialist world no longer existing,

rebel groups were labeled “narco-guerrillas”, through which the Colombian and US

governments alleged their connections to narco-trafficking and criminal violence.

Following September 11, 2001, when combating terrorism was declared the first

priority of George W. Bush’s administration, the expansion and strengthening of the

Colombian state’s coercive apparatus became part of the War on Terror. According to

Uribe, it represented the legitimate struggle of the state against terrorist organizations

that finance their actions through drug-trafficking - i.e. the “narco-terrorists”. In

reality it was still the guerilla and the Left. As Palacio (1991) observes, the mission

against narco-terrorism can legitimate wartime standards:

Why is ‘narco-terrorism’ a more effective national and international rallying

cry than guerrilla insurgency? ... Many consider the guerrillas politically
‘altruistic’ aiming at changing society ... Terrorism on the other hand
threatens national foundations and the international community... It should be
condemned by the Right and the Left. Combatting terrorism is ‘in the common
interest of humanity’ (Palacio 1991, 120).

Moreover, as Broad (1993) explains, “Terrorism is a more convenient term because it

readily encapsulates all manner of anti-imperialist forces and arouses a more emotive

response than the stale cry of communism” (15). These and other scholars have

pointed to the continuity in state-sanctioned violence regardless of the variety of ways

in which it has been justified. In Stokes’ words, the War on Drugs and the War on

Terror are actually part of a long-term Colombian war of state terror that predates the

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end of the Cold War, with US policy contributing directly to the horrific human rights

violations today (Stokes 2005).

5.4.3. The ‘'InternalEnemy”

As we can see, in Colombia the Counter-insurgency War, the War on Drugs, and the

War on Terror have all been directed towards an enemy from within. In Rojas’ (2012)

words:

In a society of suspicions, there must exist an enemy that is monstrous,

perverse, and at the same time, abstract ... and omnipresent, a colossal
antagonist who exists paradoxically occult... So anyone can be the enemy ...
For 40 years, international communism was personified as any woman or man
who sought an improvement in their quality of life that challenged the interests
of transnational corporations and government (Rojas 2012,2).

Koonings and Krujit (1999) define the notion of the “internal enemy” as a condition

where military and civilian intelligence, through a supporting doctrine of low-intensity

warfare, is mainly focused on potential subversive forces within the national territory.

Who exactly is the “internal enemy” in Colombia? During the last 15 years

dominant discourses have publicly identified drug-traffickers and guerrilla groups as

the major threat that state forces must deal with. However, judging from the victims of

state violence (those arrested, imprisoned, tortured, murdered, etc.), it becomes clear

that in addition to members of the insurgency, in reality five categories of people are

targeted as the “enemy”: i) members of social movements and organizations such as

labor unions, peasant, indigenous, and women; ii) human rights lawyers and activists;

iii) educators, intellectuals, and students; iv) low-income rural populations residing in

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areas of strategic economic importance (such as petroleum and mineral deposits, gold,

and precious woods) and/or territories under the control of or in proximity to rebel

groups; and v) visibly poor people in urban areas (such as street prostitutes, drug

addicts, garbage and recycle collectors, the homeless, beggars, and petty thieves) who

are subjected to social cleansing (limpieza social) campaigns. While the first three

groups are victimized for their organizing and awareness-raising activities, the last

two commonly include people who are not necessarily politically active or mobilized,

but happen to disturb or pose an inconvenience to capital flows by virtue of their

existence.

5.4.4. A Step-by-Step Analysis o f the State’s Present-day Ideological

Production

The ideological mechanisms of the state’s coercive apparatus are intended to enhance

its capacities by drawing the civilian population into its networks and at the same time

justify the expansion of state presence into civil society spaces. This process occurs

through several steps. The first is to reinforce a demonized image of the “internal

enemy”. The second is to foster a culture of fear that confuses, paralyzes, and silences

those who ask questions or attempt to challenge the status quo. The third step consists

of demonstrating the capacity and efficiency of the state in protecting its population

from the “enemy”. Mainstream media, owned and controlled by the elite, has been the

central instrument in each of these steps. As Miliband (1973) remarks, the mass media

in advanced capitalist society is an expression of a system of domination and a means

223
of legitimating and reinforcing it. While there is alternative critical media and

journalists committed to revealing what lies behind dominant propaganda, due to the

intensifying militarization of the country they often do not have access to the sites of

massacres and conflict zones in general. As a result, in such cases reporters have to
1^
rely on military sources for details. If they are allowed to enter a “Red Zone” ,

usually they have to carry their work in the company of military personnel. Journalists

who manage to get hold of first-hand testimonies face grave danger if they choose to

make these public. For all these reasons, media coverage of Colombia’s conflict is

definitely characterized by a state-leaning bias (Fichtl 2005). In the case of foreign

journalists, the latter are usually flown to a specific destination chosen by the

authorities where they are presented with a story prepared by the local officials (Leech

2008a).

Let us look at each of the above steps of state ideological production in detail and

analyze the outcomes. To begin with, constructing a frightening image of the “narco­

terrorists”, as the government refers to the guerrilla when identifying them as the

principal security threat, is at the centre of dominant political ideology. The

representation of this revolutionary armed movement as an organization of dangerous,

irrational, and violent drug-traffickers is of central importance to the attainment of the

above objective. Hence, it would be useful here to engage in a brief deconstruction of

the “narco-terrorists” as an ideological category through which the guerrilla is

132 A “Red Zone” (Zona Roja) is an area designated by the government as dangerous due to the
presence of insurgents and potential combat.

224
labelled. This ideological category has come about through de-contextualization, de-

historicization, and manipulative selection of information. If we follow in broad terms

Marx and Engels’ (1846/1968) “three tricks” technique133 for deconstructing

ideological categories, we can see that the anti-subversion discourse publicized by

members of the military, politicians and academics, is never attributed directly to the

capitalist classes who are most interested in having the guerrilla disappear.134 The

notion of insurgency is separated from the historical and socio-economic context from

which the FARC emerged, characterized by extreme inequality and merciless

exploitation o f the majority of the population by a minority. As a result of this

detachment, the ideological category of “guerrilla” is emptied out of the social

experiences or conditions that went into making the actual guerrilla movement. The

category is then filled up with selections of empirical evidence that serve to portray it

as an evil force (Hristov 2009b). This is accomplished through the constant over­

emphasis on the alleged crimes committed by the FARC, such as kidnappings,

bombings of infrastructure, and selective assassinations. This is how the guerrilla

movement has been converted into the ideological category “narco-terrorists”:

Whenever killings of civilians occur, Colombian officials immediately blame

the FARC, and the mainstream media often then dutifully report the
accusations without investigating the crimes for themselves. And in those
cases in which evidence finally emerges that it was actually the Colombian
military or the paramilitaries that committed the killings, the mainstream

133 The “three tricks” were discussed in Chapter Two of this dissertation.
134 This corresponds to the two steps in ideological production which according to Marx and Engels
(1846/1968) entail separating the ideas from their origins (the rulers) and then associating these ideas
with individuals who are seen as having legitimacy or credibility.

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 media rarely reports the new findings, thereby leaving the impression that the
FARC was the guilty party (Leech 2008a).

Leech (2008a) has examined North American media coverage of Colombia’s conflict

and makes the following observations:

During President Uribe’s first term in office (2002-2006), the New York Times
published 21 news reports that referred to the killing of civilians in Colombia.
Seventeen of the reports held the guerrillas responsible for the killings ...
while the paramilitaries were blamed in two cases, the military in one, and
both the rebels and paramilitaries in the remaining instance. In every one of
the seventeen articles in which the guerrillas were held responsible, the only
sources cited were Colombian government or military officials. According to
the Times' articles, the guerrillas were responsible for 80 percent of the
killings ... However ... according to the CCJ [Colombian Commission of
Jurists135] report, the guerrillas were responsible for 25 percent of the killings
of civilians during President Uribe’s first term in office rather than the 80
percent suggested by the Times’ reporting. Meanwhile, the CCJ held the
paramilitaries responsible for 61 percent of the deaths and the Colombian
military for the remaining 14 percent.

It is interesting to note how kidnappings carried out by the FARC have received a

relatively considerable amount of Colombian and Western in-depth media coverage

that provides precise information about the victims, while other forms of human rights

violations of much larger magnitude and more severe in kind (assassinations and

forced displacement by state forces or paramilitary groups) are hardly mentioned. For

instance, in 2007, 521 Colombians were kidnapped (Leech 2008a), while 305,966

were forcibly displaced (usually through terror-based strategies) (CODHES 2009).

Yet, most North Americans are more likely to have heard of the former rather than the

latter.

135 Comision Colombiana de Juristas

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 The next step in the process of ideological production, the spread of fear, is a

logical outcome of the first step (bolstering an evil image of the “internal enemy”).

Through omission and misrepresentation, the population (especially in large cities) is

fed by the Colombian mainstream media a highly distorted image of the crisis in their

country. By presenting the enemy as cruel, dispersed, and unpredictable human rights

violator who could strike anyone at anytime from anywhere, the media has been

successful in instilling anxiety, insecurity, and fright with respect to one’s private

property and personal safety.

The third step consists of reinforcing the image of the state, and particularly the

military, as the intelligent and courageous guardian of the homeland (patria) and

savior of the people. One of the ways in which the state seeks to accomplish this is by

presenting to citizens the outcomes of “successful” anti-terrorist operations. On the

website of the Colombian armed forces and other institutions belonging to the state’s

coercive apparatus, there are daily updates on the results of combat operations carried

out against the guerrillas. Sometimes numbers are inaccurate or the numbers of fallen

state soldiers are not reported. In his analysis of Colombian media coverage of the

conflict, Leech (2008a) during Uribe’s administration the media created the

impression that the military is initiating more attacks compared to previous years and

that the guerrillas are primarily engaging in combat in order to defend themselves.

However, he explains that statistics produced by CINEP showing the number of

combats initiated by each armed actor in each year, indicate that FARC was almost as

much on the offensive as the state army. In other words, while the military has indeed
become more offensive-minded on the battlefield, the FARC was still capable of

launching attacks of its own in rural Colombia.

One of the strategies used by the state’s military to enhance its image of being

powerful and efficient in the fight against the guerrilla has been through staging

guerrilla deaths (montajes). The most famous montaje technique became known in

2008 as the “False Positives” scandal {Falsos Positivos) due to the magnitude of the

armed forces’ involvement in extra-judicial executions.136 This happened as the media

initially discovered that 11 young men from a very poor neighbourhood in the

periphery of Bogota were killed and registered as having died in combat in Ocafla,

Department of Norte de Santander. It turned out that these poor unemployed youth

were promised a job, were transported to Ocafla, and then murdered by the state

military. They were dressed in FARC uniforms and had weapons placed on their

bodies. Their deaths were recorded as guerrilla fighters killed in combat. As the

Fiscalia began to investigate, it turned out that these staged killings of guerrilla

fighters who were in reality civilians, were not a case of “few bad apples” as

government officials initially claimed. In fact, this was a widespread systemic practice

that involved military personnel from Fourth, Eleventh, Fourteenth and Seventeenth

Brigade, as well as intelligence agents and members of paramilitary groups across 12

departments of Colombia, and it had led to the death of more than 2000 civilians

(Semana 2008). In 2008, 2,742 members of the armed forces were being investigated

136 The term “falsos positivos" literally means “false positive”. The term “positive" is used by the
military to refer to captured or killed guerrilla fighters and is comparable to the notion of “body count”
used by the US military.

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for extra-judicial executions. In 2010, more than 40 were liberated due to statute of

limitations (Semana 2010b).

The end result of all this demonization of the enemy and glorification of the state

military leads many Colombians to feel that their need for safety can be met only

through the completion of the state’s mission of defeating the insurgency. The image

of a rebel with a rifle has come to symbolize a threat to peace, democracy, and

progress, and is contrasted to the image of the army as a sign of order and security.

The fostering o f a culture of fear in a multitude of subtle ways is complemented by the

military’s portrayal of itself not only as powerful and efficient in combatting the

“enemy”, but also as a friend of the people. Thus, cooperating with the state forces

becomes a patriotic duty. This is reinforced by statements addressed to the public such

as the following issued by the Commander of the Fifth Division Carlos Arturo Su&rez

Bustamante: “The Democratic Security is a reality towards the future. Every day the

network of cooperating good citizens grows” (Ejercito Nacional 2006). Images of the

armed forces combating the villain prevail in mainstream news and websites

belonging to the Colombian state. For instance, greetings for 2006 from the Mayor

General of Sixth Division, Luis Alberto Ardila Silva begins by glorifying deeds of the

army in the following way: “The men and women of the armed forces who with unity,

commitment, and efforts complemented by useful information from citizens, have

helped to neutralize terrorist activities of FARC, autodefensas, narco-trafficking...”.

Along the same lines, greetings from the Commander of First Division Justo Eliseo

Pefla on January 19, 2006 read as follows: “The remuneration for the real soldier is

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the gratitude o f the people whom he has sworn to defend and for whom he is willing

to go beyond his abilities to protect and save their lives, rights, and freedom...The

task of combating the terrorists requires confronting multiple dangers, we have to do it

with courage, strength, physical and moral spirit, but also with intelligence, decision,

and discipline in order to defeat terrorism, respecting human rights and international

human rights law ...” (Ejercito Nacional 2006). The government has been extending

its network of civilian allies through active publicity campaigns that play on people’s

fear o f terrorism, while at the same time evoking feelings of patriotism. For example,

a counter-terrorism poster created by the Colombian army showing a young happy

couple with a small child, with a military plane and soldiers in the background, reads

as follows: “United we can defeat terrorism. This is how we all win! Report any

suspicious action by calling 147” (Leech 2004).

5.5. Conclusion

“The more the state seeks to repress, the greater is the opposition it is likely to

engender, and the more opposition it engenders, the greater the powers which it must

invoke” (Miliband 1973, 243). We can see that the methods through which the state’s

coercive apparatus operates represent a fusion of legal, militaristic, and ideological

elements, all of which complement each other. The fundamental powers enjoyed by

the different bodies of the state’s coercive apparatus are guaranteed through a legal

framework, which also leaves open many possibilities for the abuse of authority

without any repercussions. At the same time, the law is used to impede social

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mobilization through the criminalization of basic civil liberties. Placing the activities

of social movements within the realm of criminality in turn provides a justification for

the abuse of power by state agents.

Marx and Engel’s concept of ideology has been quite useful in understanding the

ideological production of the state’s coercive apparatus and its two principal

consequences. The first is that the population is led into controlling its own behavior

in accordance with the interests of the upper classes and the state, by feeling

compelled to participate in the government’s mission of security. The second is that

unquestionable legitimacy is projected onto state-sanctioned violence and

militarization where the human rights violations and civilian deaths caused by the

state are seen as inevitable “casualties” in the quest for security and the elimination of

the “internal enemy”. According to Jessop (1990), the forms in which the state’s

legitimacy is institutionalized and expressed vary and the precise content is

constituted in and through politically relevant discourses. In the Colombian case, the

discourse around the “internal enemy” has been the one through which this legitimacy

has been constructed and on which it so firmly rests. The climate of fear and

insecurity maintained through ideological production, makes it possible for the state to

retain its democratic image in the eyes of the national and international public despite

the violation of human rights and curtailment of civil liberties. Both of these

mechanisms, legal and ideological, employed by the state’s coercive apparatus,

continuously prepare the ground for the military one to carry out its functions.

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 As more and more civilians are drawn into the intricate networks of the state’s

coercive apparatus, the boundaries between state and civil society become blurrier.

This in turn impedes the identification of the state’s coercive apparatus in its entirety

and its distinction from the rest of society. This, in fact, is one of the features of the

environment in which the phenomenon of paramilitarism thrives.

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 Chapter Six: Dynamics and Evolution of Paramilitarism in Colombia

(1960-2006)

This chapter examines the phenomenon of paramilitarism in Colombia and its

relationship to the state and the capitalist classes. Section 6.1 traces the emergence of

paramilitary groups from the 1960s to 1997. Section 6.2 discusses the activities and

sources of funding of the AUC from 1997 to 2006. Section 6.3 examines the

connections of the AUC to the state’s coercive apparatus (armed forces, police, DAS),

the justice system, the political system, INCORA / INCODER, universities, and

hospitals. Section 6.4 provides illustrations of the human rights violations carried out

by the paramilitary against different societal sectors: rural low-income populations

residing in territories of strategic economic importance; members and leaders of social

movements; educators; students; politicians; and journalists.

6.1. Origins and Evolution o f Paramilitary Groups (1960-1997)

Two principal sources of creation can be discerned in the evolution of paramilitarism:

the first was the Colombian state with the help of the US administration; in the

second, a leading role was taken on by the economically dominant groups. In both

cases, the strong mutual support between the state and a large part of the wealthy has

been crucial to the success o f the project. From here on, the term “paramilitary” will

be used to encompass both, paramilitary groups directly created by the state as well as

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those founded later by the elite and named themselves “self-defense forces”, since the

nature and purpose of the two has been essentially the same.

6.1.1. The Role o f the Colombian State in the Creation o f Paramilitary Forces in

the 1960s

By the late 1950s, Colombia had adopted the National Security Doctrine aimed at

destroying the “internal enemy”. In the early 1960s, the US and Colombian

administrations launched the military project Plan Lazo which was designed defeat the

guerrilla and also eliminate the potential for subversion by targeting sectors of the

civilian population that were considered fertile ground for communist indoctrination

and guerrilla support. The military aid and training that was part of Plan Lazo was

given on the condition that terror and violence will be used, since these formed a

legitimate part of the overall anti-communist offensive. For instance, the 1966 US

counter-insurgency manual specified that while anti-guerrilla forces should not

employ mass terror, selective terror against civilians was acceptable and was justified

as a necessary response to the alleged terrorism committed by rebel forces (Stokes

2005).

The Colombian and US leaders decided that to strengthen the counter-insurgency

operations, the Colombian state needed additional local assistance and so paramilitary

forces entered the scene to perform two main functions. Firstly, they were to

participate in the combat of guerrilla groups. A US field-manual entitled US Army

Counter-insurgency Forces, stipulated that “paramilitary units can support the

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national army in the conduct of counter-insurgency operations when the latter are

being conducted in their own province or political subdivision”. In a section entitled

“Secure Population Centers”, the manual explained how reserves of paramilitary units

can be used to “move rapidly to the assistance” of villages under attack from insurgent

forces (Stokes 2005, 64). Secondly, these groups were intended to monitor and gather

intelligence on the rebels, their civilian supporters, and social organizations by

establishing networks throughout the country. The leaders of paramilitary groups were

drawn from various bodies of the state’s coercive apparatus, as well as from those

societal sectors who were interested in maintaining the status quo, such as the young

elite “who wish to get ahead in business professions or politics”. The financial

assistance for organizing, training, and equipping paramilitary units was to come from

the “[US] Military Assistance Program, the US AID Mission...or other elements of

the Country Team” (Stokes 2005, 63-64).

While the United States took care of the financial and ideological aspects, the

Colombian state also played a key role in launching the paramilitary initiative. It

implemented many of the policies suggested by the US counter-insurgency manual in

order to discipline the civilian population through measures such as press censorship,

the suspension of civil rights to permit arrest on suspicion, and the forced relocation of

entire villages. President Guillermo Leon Valencia (1962-1966) boosted the anti­

communist campaign by declaring a state of siege whereby judicial and political

powers were transferred to the military while the latter was freed from accountability

to civilian authorities for its conduct. Decree 2298, which was passed in 1965,

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converted into Law 48 in 1968, and remained in effect until 1989, laid the legal

foundation for the establishment of paramilitarism by authorizing the executive

branch to create civil patrols by decree and ordering the Ministry of Defense to supply

them with weapons normally restricted to the exclusive use of the armed forces.

Subsequently, paramilitary bodies called “civil defense forces” were designed by and

incorporated within the Colombian military system (Stokes 2005). The target for

paramilitary actions was the “internal enemy”, which extended beyond armed

insurgents and encompassed legal political organizations demanding real democratic

reforms, educators, leaders of dissident groups, peasant movements, and labour

unions.

The existence of paramilitary groups meant a number of advantages for the

Colombian state and upper class. Firstly, the military machine was strengthened at a

lower cost than would have been entailed by an increase of the regular armed forces.

Secondly, the creation of this illegal state’s coercive apparatus extension was a

decisive instrument in combat, especially in rural areas where state forces were not

present. Thirdly, the state could now confront the guerrilla using the methods of the

latter - irregular war. Fourthly, monitoring and surveillance by authorities were

enhanced through the intelligence that the paramilitary conducted. Lastly, the armed

forces could partially reduce its image of a human rights violator in the eyes of the

international community since it could distance itself from the atrocities committed in

the course o f the Counter-insurgency War (Pizarro 2004).

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 6.1.2. The Role o f the Colombian Capitalist Class in the Creation o f

Paramilitary Groups (1980-1997)

Starting in the 1980s, the capitalist class of Colombia played a more direct role in the

setting up of paramilitary bodies, and used the same term as the state had given them

in the 1960s - “self-defense” forces. Nevertheless, the state promoted and supported

these initiatives and also at times participated directly as in the case of CONVIVIR

(discussed further on). The self-defense groups, as it will be illustrated, were very

similar in nature to the original paramilitary groups initiated by the state in the 1960s.

This second wave of creation was enacted by large-scale landowners, cattle-ranchers,

the mining entrepreneurs (particularly those in the emerald business), and drug-lords.

A key factor that facilitated the second wave of creating paramilitary forces was the

legal framework established in the 1960s, which paved the way for non-state armed

groups to attain legitimacy. While in 1989, paramilitarism was outlawed, the secret

connections o f military and police officials with paramilitary forces continued and so

did the economic support from various sectors of the capitalist classes. As Giraldo

(1996) remarks, the expertise of the paramilitary’s initiators and promoters had given

these organizations characteristics that allowed them to survive without losing

strength even after paramilitarism in Colombia became officially illegal.

The case of Puerto Boyaca, a town bordering the Department of Antioquia and

Boyaca, considered by many as the Vatican of paramilitarism, is a perfect illustration

o f how the prevailing anti-communist ideology, the state’s commitment to safe-guard

the power of the dominant classes, its willingness to allow the partial privatization of

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coercion and the existing legal framework all prepared the ground for the emergence

of self-defense groups. In 1978, President Julio Cesar Turbay militarized the area of

Puerto Boyaca where the FARC had been kidnapping and extorting cattlemen and big

landowners. The government assigned a military mayor and designed the Fourteenth

Brigade to oversee most social and economic aspects of life such as the movement of

people, foodstuffs, and medicines in the area. A number of communist city councils

were killed and right-wing organizations, such as the Colombian Society for the

Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property were established (Zarate-Laun 2001).

In 1981, the kidnapping of Martha Nieves Ochoa, whose brothers were members

of the Medellin drug cartel, was the impetus for the emergence of the armed group

called Death to Kidnappers (Muerte a Secuestradores, or MAS) based in Medellin and

Cali. It was formed by 223 drug-traffickers as well as some active members of the

army and police. In the region of Magdalena Medio, where landowners and

businessmen faced taxes and kidnappings by the FARC, MAS represented an efficient

strategy through which the drug-lords protected their own security and economic

interests within a context o f illegality. The movement adopted the ideology of anti­

communism, thus allowing its constituents to establish more solid connections with

sectors of the armed forces, given the common “internal enemy” that these two shared

(Contreras 2002).

Soon after that, Captain Oscar de Jesus Echandia, the military mayor of Puerto

Boyaca, and the Barbula Battalion, implemented the MAS model. At the end of 1982,

Echandia organized a gathering of cattle-ranchers, agribusinesses, merchants, local

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political chiefs from the Conservative and Liberal parties, representatives of the US

Texas Petroleum Company (TEXACO) which was exploring oil fields in the region

and had been involved in land disputes with peasants since 1928, and families of

kidnapped victims. The participants in this meeting, including around 250 company

owners, decided to develop a self-defense organization that would not only protect

them from the guerrilla but also clean the region from subversives. The new group

was named MAS, after the original organization. The funds for firearms, uniforms,

food, and salaries were provided by the cattle-ranchers and other businessmen, while

the state army offered strategic support. Between 1965 and 1968, the government

came up with legislation that authorized citizens to cooperate with the armed forces by

carrying arms and persecuting and assassinating suspected guerrillas (HRW 1996).

Making a good use of the legal mechanisms of the state’s coercive apparatus, MAS

together with the Barbula and Bombona battalions, not only defended the properties of

its members, but sought to break up the political organization of the Communist Party

and FARC through the systematic murder of peasant and civic leaders, unionists, and

teachers. Its initial subversion extermination campaign left about 800 people dead

(Zarate-Laun 2001).

After authorities had registered 240 murders in which the MAS was implicated,

President Belisario Betancur (1982-1986) ordered an investigation. In 1983, the

results of the Attorney General’s Office indicated that 59 of the crimes committed on

behalf of MAS were carried out by active police and military officers. In order to

better its image in front of the justice system and undermine the evidence, MAS was

239
reborn by inventing a public-oriented branch called the Peasant Association of Cattle-

ranchers and Agriculturers of Magdalena Medio (Asociacion Campesina de

Ganaderos y Agricultores del Magdalena Medio, or ACDEGAM). It was presumably

responsible for social works and assistance for peasants who were willing to join the

counter-insurgency fight. As with the anti-subversive strategy of the state’s coercive

apparatus, ACDEGAM operated through ideological and military means: the anti­

communist discourse served as a cover for the attacks, death threats, and murders

(HRW 1996). Exterminating the FARC’s political wing became yet another objective

of the state’s coercive apparatus and paramilitary groups once the Patriotic Union

(Union Patriotica, or UP) political party was established in 1984 during peace talks

with the government o f Belisario Betancur. From 1984 to the early 1990s in Puerto

Berrio, a little north of ACDEGAM’s headquarters in Puerto Boyaca, the Fourteenth

Brigade provided intelligence and military support to paramilitary groups in their

attacks against UP members (Dudley 2004).

The 1980s can be considered the golden age of paramilitary development, as

many new groups formed, expanded, and acquired financial and military strength

rapidly. One of the main reasons for this has been linked to the accelerated growth of

drug-trafficking. These two important phenomena - the use of violence on one hand

and the flourishing of criminal economic activity - must be understood as mutually

feeding each other for two reasons. Firstly, the need for those involved in trafficking

to protect their laboratories, illegal cultivations, and clandestine airstrips in rural areas

stimulated the emergence of local armed groups outside the state. Secondly, many

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drug-dealers had begun to invest their capital in millions of hectares of the best

agricultural land in the country in regions such as Magdalena Medio, Ariari, Uraba, as

well as the Department of Cordoba, Risaralda, Caldas, Quindio, and Valle del Cauca.

The pre-existing land concentration and displacement of impoverished peasants was

aggravated dramatically by this trend. What some have described as a huge agrarian

counter-reform, gave rise to an alliance between the new landowning elite and the

self-defense, resulting in the consolidation of an authoritarian order in rural areas

(Pizarro 2004).

In the case of ACDEGAM, as more drug-traffickers from the Medellin cartel

who had bought lands in Magdalena Medio joined the organization in 1985, its

improved financial situation allowed for an increase in the quality and quantity of

armament. In 1987 and 1988, the organization sponsored training centers with foreign

instructors brought from USA, Israel, Great Britain, and Australia. One of the places

where instruction sessions were held was the estate known as “Las Tangas” - property

of the Castafio family.

A new version of the ACDEGAM model was initiated in the Department of

Cordoba and Antioquia by Fidel Castafio, a high-level paramilitary leader and a

prominent drug-trafficker at the time (now deceased), whose family possesses land in

the area. In the mid-1980s was bom the Peasant Self-defense of Cdrdoba and UraM

(Autodefensas Campesinas de Cordoba y Uraba, or ACCU), headed by Castafio

(HRW 1996). The ACCU engaged in the systematic elimination of peasant activists

and leaders in the northeast of the country in the name of the battle against

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communism (Zarate-Laun 2001). As time went by, these and other self-defense

groups gained mobilizational capacity and offensive powers, meanwhile the National

Security Doctrine was increasingly used to justify the violent methods through which

they protected the earnings and investments of the newly formed drug elite. The

Department of Santander witnessed the consolidation of paramilitary groups with the

assistance of the armed forces from 1986 to 1997 and the creation of one of the first

paramilitary bases in San Juan Bosco de Laverde in 1986. Some of the most

prominent founders and leaders of paramilitary groups in the mid-1980s were Jose

Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, alias El Mexicano, and Henry Perez, controlling the region

of Magdalena Medio; Fidel Castano, dominating the Department of Cordoba the

region of UraM and northern part of the Department of Antioquia; and Victor

Carranza controlling the emerald mining area in the western part of the Department of

Boyaca around the town of Muzo.

As already mentioned, through Decree 1194 from 1989, prison penalties were

established for civilians and members of the military who financed, promoted, trained,

organized, directed, or belonged to paramilitary groups. The decree, however, never

took on any concrete expression since none of the institutions belonging to the state’s

coercive apparatus engaged in any effort to contain the spread, prevent the emergence,

nor discontinue the functioning of paramilitary groups. On the contrary, the

collaboration between state forces and paramilitary bodies continued. At the same

time, self-defense organizations found creative ways to overcome the legal barrier and

continue their existence. For instance, ACDEGAM invented a political party called

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the Movement for National Restoration (Movimiento de Restauracion Nacional, or

MORENA). Except for few isolated instances of attempts by the justice system to deal

with members o f these groups, the machinery of terror sustained by the old and new

upper classes continued to function underground uninterrupted (Hristov 2009b).

In 1994, the government launched the Integral Plan for Rural Security (Plan

Integral de Seguridad Rural) which licensed civilians to arm themselves and

collaborate with the armed forces. As part o f this plan, the governor of the Department

of Antioquia at the time, Alvaro Uribe Velez, brought into being the Community

Associations for Rural Surveillance (Asociaciones Comunitarias de Vigilancia Rural)

called CONVIVIR through Decree 356 of 1994. Officially, as allies of the military

and the police, their primary duty was to report on disturbances of public order by

administering special private watch services in high-risk regions. In addition to

supplying the military with intelligence, most CONVIVIR members were equipped

with long-range firearms and were involved in the killings of suspected rebel

sympathizers. Thus, Uribe had in fact converted the CONVIVIR into groups of

immediate reaction support for the armed forces - a replica of the original

paramilitary bodies designed in the 1960s. By the time the CONVIVIR was outlawed

in 1999, most of the numerous paramilitary self-defense bodies had united, attaining

an organizational and military capacity that was unsurpassed by paramilitary forces in

any other Latin American country. In August 1998, just before the decree that

legitimated the CONVIVIR was eliminated, more than 200 members of 39 of these

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associations announced that they were joining the illegal network of the AUC

(Contreras 2002).

6.2. Paramilitary Organizations (1997- 2006)

6.2.1. The Birth o f the AUC

Towards the end of 1994, under the leadership of Carlos Castafio (head of the ACCU),

the first National Conference of Self-Defense Groups was completed and three years

later the United Self-Defense of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or

AUC) was formed. The initial nucleus of the AUC was the ACCU along with seven

other groups: Autodefensas de los Llanos Orientales, Autodefensas de Ramon Isaza,

Autodefensas del Cesar, Autodefensas del Magdalena Medio, Autodefensas de

Santander y Sur del Cesar, Autodefensas del Casanare, Autodefensas de

Cundinamarca and Autodefensas de Puerto Boyaca. The organization announced the

following principles as its basis: i) have a clearly defined anti-subversive doctrine and

political projection; ii) never abandon the struggle as long as the guerrilla exists, nor

give up because o f any obstacles that may appear; iii) only give up arms as a

consequence of a trilateral negotiation; iv) not get involved in drug-trafficking; v)

each person is to take responsibility for his own military actions; vi) actively carry out

the decisions taken by the central leadership of the organization; vii) define itself as a

political-military movement of an anti-subversive character with a right to a legitimate

defense, which seeks to reform the state but does not fight against it; viii) if any of the

groups under AUC get involved in drug dealing, those are to take on their own
responsibility; ix) other groups would be allowed to join the movement as long as they

comply with the above- mentioned requirements; and x) unity should always be

maintained.

In 2002 there were 22 paramilitary groups, some of which did not belong to the

AUC, distributed over 28 departments. In addition to recruiting its fighters from the

low-income rural and urban population, street gangs and common criminals such as

thieves, kidnappers, and sicarios, it has been documented that the AUC also

comprised former (and sometimes even active) state-army soldiers, military officers,

as well as some former guerrilla members. For instance, in 2000 Castafio claimed that

in his forces there were more than 1000 former state army soldiers and at least 135

former army officers (Pizarro 2004). The AUC presented itself to the national and

international community as “a political-military movement which uses the same

irregular methods as the guerrillas. Its members are not terrorists, nor common

criminals, but rather persons who have found it necessary to violate the law because

the Colombian state penalizes the legitimate right of self-defense even though it is

incapable of providing that defense” (Zarate-Laun 2001). In the words of Carlos

Castafio, “ ...we try to make sure that where there is a guerrilla troop, there would be a

self-defense one ... we have to go marching parallel to the way our enemy is

proliferating” (Pizarro 2004, 65). The Uribe administration opened formal

negotiations with the AUC in July 2003 and in February 2006 the government

announced the completion of the demobilization of the AUC.

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 6.2.2. A ctivities and Sources o f Funding o f the AUC

Even though many paramilitary bodies emerged as an instrument of the upper class

and depended on the latter for survival, during the last 20 years these organizations

have themselves been acquiring an ever-increasing amount of land and businesses.

Paramilitary groups today (including those who continued to exist after the

demobilization) exercise considerable economic power. While those who are paid a

wage to fight in the front lines commonly come from the poor sectors of society, the

founders, leaders, and financiers are in charge of vast quantities of resources.

Table 6.1: Sources of Funding for the Paramilitary

Dispossession Services Illegal Economic Activities Legal Activities
-Illegal -Protection for large -Drug-trafficking; -Land ownership;
appropriation of estate owners against -Arms-trafficking; -Plantations with
land by causing the incursion and taxation - Oficinas de Cobro oil-palm and other
forced by the guerrilla; (criminal structures offering cash-crops;
abandonment -Social Cleansing services for debt collection, -Casinos, Lotteries;
of rural properties. (limpieza social) assassination, and disputes -Gas Stations;
-Repression of social resolution); -Shopping Centres;
movements -Robbery and theft; -Prostitution
(e.g. labour unions) -Extortion of landowners, establishments.
through threats, murder small to medium-scale
and other forms of farmers, food producers and
human rights violations; vendors, gas stations,
-Facilitating the transportation businesses,
electoral victory of prostitution establishments,
paramilitary-friendly politicians, lottery-winners;
politicians by -Embezzlement of
eliminating opponents government funds.
and coercing the
population.

The first very important activity carried out by paramilitary groups is the forced

displacement of populations from areas of strategic economic and/or military

importance such as: land high in fertility; territories containing valuable natural

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resources such as minerals, gold, oil, or precious woods; areas used by the guerrilla as

transportation passageways; and fields with or suitable for potential illicit crop

cultivation. Before discussing the dynamics and consequences of forced displacement,

it is necessary to examine the conceptual significance of the latter and its relationship

to the concept “dispossession”.137 Forced displacement has been defined in this work

as cases where people have been driven by means of violence or threats to abandon

their place of residence out of fear for their own safety or that of their family. What

happens to the land once its owner has been forcibly displaced? Forced displacement

is an act which results in the forced abandonment of the property. Abandonment

implies the temporary or permanent interruption of use, enjoyment, access and

possession of things. Thus, forced abandonment is the result of the use of violence and

displacement of the population (Comision Nacional 2009). Most often the goal of

forced displacement is forced abandonment of the property and consequently

dispossession.138 The latter is defined by the Project for the Protection of Lands and

Heritage of the Displaced Population as:

...the action through which a person is deprived of his/her property,

possession, occupation, or any other right he/she exercises over his/her
property whether by judicial process, administrative act or through

137 The following definitions are grounded in the context of the Colombian armed conflict and may or
may not be folly applicable to other countries.
138 There are cases where the goal of forced displacement is not dispossession (i.e. the goal is not to
appropriate the property of the person who abandoned his/her property due to threats or violence). Such
are usually the cases in urban areas, where the paramilitary selects certain individuals (e.g. a union
leader, professor, judge, or politician) who due to the nature of their work or activism represent a threat
to the state, paramilitary groups or capitalist enterprise. Under such circumstances the individual (and
his/her family) is forced to leave their home and migrate to another city or emigrate abroad. Such
occurrences do not necessarily lead to dispossession and take place on an individual level (in contrast to
displacement in rural areas which most often affects an entire community or area).

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 circumstances related to the armed conflict ... The intention of dispossession
is the theft or expropriation of a good or a right (Comision Nacional 2009,24).

Paramilitaries have been largely responsible for most of the forced

displacements. A human rights report by Colombia’s Ministry of Defense shows that

the paramilitary has directly caused 46 percent of the forced uprooting of people from

their homes, compared to the guerrilla which is deemed guilty for 12 percent

(Contreras 2002). It is important to recognize that land in Colombia is a precious

resource. Given the few opportunities for formal employment, land continues to be a

vital source of subsistence for the rural population. At the same time it has been a

source of economic and political power and thus, as the country’s history has shown,

land has been at the heart of the armed conflict. Since the 1990s, through the use of

various terror strategies, the paramilitary has been massively displacing populations

across the Department of Antioquia, Cordoba, Valle del Cauca, Narifio, Caldas,

Choc6, and Bolivar.

Now I will illustrate the manner in which forced displacement, forced

abandonment, and dispossession have commonly taken place in Colombia. First, it

would be helpful to have some background on the circumstances surrounding the

property ownership of the small-scale farmers prior to their forced displacement. In

Colombia, usually such farmers had obtained titles to land in one of two ways. In the

first case scenario, they had been allocated a parcel and had received a loan, as part of

a government program, to start their own farm. Legally, they could not sell the land in

the first 15 years after the grant. Sometimes land grants had been made through

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collective title where a large number of families had all been given one large farm. In

the second case scenario, the small-scale farmers had colonized a baldio (an empty,

unused, or abandoned terrain) and after residing on it and farming it continuously for

10 years, had obtained a legal title. In such cases it was also common to be given a

loan by the agrarian bank to buy initial equipment and seeds. In both case scenarios,

the crops cultivated on these small-scale farms were typically subsistence crops, such

as beans, rice, yucca, com, plantain, and potato, which the farmers used to meet the

food requirements o f their own families as well as to sell the rest at the local market.

Typically when paramilitary forces engage in forced displacement, their goal is

to displace all residents in a given area so that many individual neighbouring plots are

vacated, and the resulting total area can be converted into a single large estate. This

bears an astounding resemblance to Marx’s (1867/1990) account of primitive

accumulation in England: “In several parishes of Hertfordshire, writes one indignant

person, twenty-four farms, numbering on the average 50-150 acres, have been melted

up into three farms” (886). The first and least violent way in which many small-scale

farmers have been displaced is to pressure them through intimidation and threats to

sell their land at unreasonably low prices. Often the coerced sellers do not even

receive the full price they had been promised. In such cases, despite the fact that the

sale was involuntary, it is still registered as a legal economic transaction between a

buyer and a seller and is not regarded as involving any forced abandonment.

Therefore, from a legal point of view this act does not constitute dispossession, even

though it constitutes forced displacement.

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 Under a different approach, when armed actors force people to abandon (not

sell) their property, several mechanisms come into play that ultimately turn the forced

abandonment into a dispossession where the land is ultimately appropriated by the

paramilitary. In the first type of cases, the owner is coerced into signing a document

stating that they abandon their property. Alternatively, the signature is forged. Either

way, INCORA139 declares the land abandoned and it becomes state possession. The

land is then “sold” to the paramilitary by INCORA/INCODER140 at a giveaway price.

Subsequently, the new owners improve the infrastructure and guarantee security by

having cleared the area of small-scale farmers considered to be a social support base

for the guerrilla. At that point they are able to sell the property at high prices to

Colombian and foreign investors, cattle-ranchers141, cash-crop plantation owners,

mining entrepreneurs and tourism businesses. In the Department of Cesar, for

instance, before 2000 (when the paramilitary came to dominate the area) the price of

one hectare of land was two million pesos. In 2009, the price was 60 million (Semana,

2009c). Similarly, between 2005 and 2009 more than 70,000 hectares in Los Montes

de Maria, Department of Bolivar, were sold to large investors at prices under 500,000

pesos. Today these same lands cost close to three million pesos (Semana, 2010c).

The following is one specific example of these mechanisms of dispossession at

play. In 1991, 72 landless families were granted a collective title to the farm La Pola

139 After 2003 INCORA became the Colombian Institute for Rural Development (Institute Colombiano
de Desarollo Rural, or INCODER). Both, INCORA and INCODER, have been equally involved in
legalizing the illegal appropriation of land by the paramilitary.
14 The functions and role of INCODER are discussed in more detail further on in this chapter.
141 The Cattle-ranchers’ Fund (Fondo de Ganaderos) has been the biggest buyer of such land.

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by INCORA in Chivolo, Department Magdalena. In 1997, a paramilitary unit under

the commander Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias Jorge 40, invaded La Pola and few other

rural areas with collective farms, including Pueblo Nuevo, San Angel, Chivolo, and

La Estrella. They assassinated some of the residents who lived on the collective farms.

On July 15, 1997 Tovar called on all those living on the farms La Pola, El Encanto

and La Palizua to attend a meeting at which he communicated that they had 15 days to

vacate the properties. Between 1997 and 2000, INCORA revoked the collective land

titles because the owners had “abandoned” the properties. INCORA then transferred

them to the names of members of the Bloque Norte of the AUC and Tovar’s

testaferros142. In other words, after the paramilitary massacred and forcibly displaced

people, INCORA documented that the owners had abandoned their properties. In

2011, an investigation was opened by the Fiscalia against six former employees of

INCORA and several employees of INCODER for links to the paramilitary and

complicity in forced displacement ( Verdad Abierta 2011a). The involvement of

INCORA as a state institution in land theft echoes Marx’s (1867/1990) findings on the

fusion between the propertied class and the political elite as well as the involvement

of the state in primitive accumulation in the 19th century, captured in the following

words: “3,511,770 acres of common land which between 1801 and 1831 were stolen

from them and presented to the landlords by the landlords, through the agency of

parliament” (890).

142 A testaferro is a person who is paid to have a property ascribed to their name (a front man).

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 The result of forced displacement, forced abandonment and dispossession has

been a large-scale cross country counter-agrarian reform through which approximately

10 million hectares of land have been transferred into the hands of the upper class

during the last 20 years according to the National Movement of Victims of State-

sponsored Crimes (Movimiento Nacional de Victimas de Crimenes de Estado, or

MOVICE)143 (Comision Nacional de Reparation y Reconciliacion 2009). For

example, in the Uraba region, Department of Antioquia, African oil palm-growing

companies have been appropriating the land abandoned by residents fleeing

massacres144 committed by the paramilitary (Donahue 2005). Many Afro-Colombians

who had secured land titles in this region have suffered intense attacks by these armed

groups. It is not a coincidence that a significant number of African oil-palm

plantations and processing plants are owned by paramilitary leaders in the Department

of Choco, Cordoba, North Santander, and the region of Magdalena Medio (Richani

2007). Marx’s argument that “ ...the systematic theft of communal property was of

great assistance, alongside the theft of the state domains, in swelling those large farms

which were called in the eighteenth century capital farms...” (886) is quite

appropriate here with regards to the function that present-day processes of primitive

accumulation have served in the establishment o f agribusiness farms. The paramilitary

has been known to use the strategy of forced displacement and forced abandonment

143 The Colombian state’s estimate is seven million (Comisidn Nacional de Reparacidn y
Reconciliacion 2009).
144 A massacre is defined as the murder of four or more individuals at the same time and place by the
same perpetrator.

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not only in rural areas with farming properties, but also in the case of commercial and

residential ones. For example, when paramilitaries arrived in the town of Calamar,

Department of Guaviare, in the early 2000s, they announced that all of the people who

have been living in Calamar for more than three years had to leave. Subsequently,

they repopulated the town and the new residents have been paying rent for the housing

and commercial establishments to the armed group in control of the town, instead of

the legitimate owners (CINEP 2005a).

In addition to forced displacement and dispossession, another activity that

paramilitary groups have traditionally engaged in is protecting large-scale landowners

from guerrilla attacks. The paramilitary also work to prevent the falling of a particular

area under rebel domination which would be usually followed by forced taxation or

extortion o f property owners by the invaders. The paramilitary “protection” consists

of not only combating any guerrilla forces that may appear, but preventing their

appearance using pre-emptive strategies such as monitoring villages and towns,

keeping lists of potential guerrilla sympathizers and collaborators and exterminating

such individuals, and instilling fear in general among the population through random

acts of terror intended to teach the public a lesson about what might happen to anyone

who dares to even think about supporting the insurgency in any way.

Another source of funding for paramilitary groups consists of protecting the

interests o f local and foreign capitalist enterprises by attacking any social forces that

emerge as an obstacle or a challenge to these. This is done by: impeding the work of

non-armed social organizations such as trade unions, indigenous, women, youth, and

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peasant organizations; disempowering movements by eliminating their leadership; and

silencing educators, intellectuals, journalists, students, and human rights activists. As

Richani (2007) explains, “The assassination of unionists and peasants is a ...

concerted attempt to stamp out collective bargaining and unionization and hence to

reduce both the cost and power of labour” (413). According to a declaration made in

front of authorities of the Colombian state and United Nations in 2002 by former

captain of the National Police and director of the SIJIN in Uraba (1996-1998),

Gilberto Cardenas,

The paramilitaries were created by the Colombian government itself to do the

dirty work, in other words, so that they kill all individuals who according to
the state and police are guerrillas. But in order to do that, they had to create an
illegal group so that no one would suspect the government o f Colombia and its
military forces ... members of the army and the police even patrol side by side
with the paramilitaries ... The paramilitaries ... favour the interests of the
multinationals in Colombia, and they are in charge of cleaning the terrain from
people who represent a challenge to their interests, such as unionists or popular
leaders, which disappear or are killed (CINEP 2005b).

Trade union activism has been one of the sectors subjected to the most threats,

intimidation, torture, and executions. MNCs are indeed one of the common sources of

funding for paramilitary groups.145 The case of Coca Cola’s bottling plants in

Colombia whose managers had contracted paramilitary security forces is now well-

known. The International Labour Rights Fund and the United Steelworkers of

America filed a lawsuit in 2001 on behalf of the National Union of Food Industry

Workers in Colombia (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Industria de

145 Examples of MNCs employing paramilitary groups include Chiquita Bananas Brand International
Inc. and Drummond Co Inc.

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Alimentos, or SINALTRAINAL) charging Coca-Cola with the crimes above. The

company responded to the accusations by devoting its resources toward a public

relations campaign and refusing to support an independent investigation of its human

rights record. Ultimately, the court dismissed Coca-Cola as a defendant, arguing that it

could not be held accountable for the actions of its bottling companies, even though

Coca-Cola was a major shareholder in these companies and has professed in

documents of its own creation that it retains the right to control workplace practices

and to “ensure that local managers abide by human rights conventions and domestic

law” (Borchert 2005).

Some politicians are also among the clients of right-wing armed groups. For

instance, during election times certain political candidates have been known to pay

these forces 100 million pesos for getting a seat in the Senate. For this price, the client

is guaranteed that during the campaign he/she would have no competition in their

jurisdiction and that people would vote massively for them {Semana 2005a).

Finally, the other kind of service that paramilitaries engage in is social cleansing

or limpieza social. In this case, the paramilitary takes the expression of organizations

formed to supposedly confront criminality. However, only certain social activities are

criminalized and thus targeted - mostly those that hurt the interests of business

owners, such as petty thieves, beggars, homeless, poor mentally ill people, garbage /

recycle collectors, informal street vendors, street prostitutes (as opposed to up-scale

exclusive prostitution establishments), drug addicts, and homosexuals (Hristov

2009b).

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 Paramilitary organizations also own different kinds of illegal business and often

these are managed by criminal groups. One type of illegal activity is extortion. For

example, since 2000, in Valledupar, Department of Cesar, landowners pay 20,000

pesos per hectare annually. In many transactions of livestock, the buyer and seller pay

2000 pesos per head. However, not only agribusinesses are targeted. Small-scale

producers and sellers of food must also pay a tribute. Many other businesses have also

been victimized {Semana 2005b). Neighbourhood store-owners and those in the

transportation business face death if they do not pay their “protection fee” (Semana

2005a) In exchange for the “security” offered by paramilitary forces at the bus

terminal in Valledupar, each bus leaving the city pays 3,000 pesos, the mini-buses

1,000 and taxies pay a monthly fee of 15,000 (Semana 2005b). There are other

companies in Valledupar that pay up to two million pesos per month {Semana 2005a).

Those with political power are also vulnerable to extortion. For instance, on

January 3, 2005 members of the AUC together with members of the public force

threatened the mayor of Mocoa, Department of Putumayo with death if he refused to

make monthly payments of two million pesos (CINEP 2005a). Finally, prostitution

establishments, lottery winners, and lawyers have also been among those targeted for

extortion {Semana 2005b).

Other forms of illegal businesses include illegal drugs production, drug-

trafficking (especially cocaine), arms-trafficking, robbery, and murder services. As

explained earlier, the founders of many paramilitary organizations that emerged in the

1980s were drug-traffickers who needed to safeguard their fortunes. Today the fusion

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of paramilitarism and drug-trafficking has reached a quite advanced stage. In 2007,

the paramilitary drug-traffickers’ collective annual income was estimated to be around

four billion dollars (four percent of the national GDP) (Richani 2007). Establishing

paramilitary dominance in rural areas often entails organizing and managing the

growth of illicit crops by the peasantry. For instance, testimonies from Puerto Lleras,

Department of Meta, indicate that when the paramilitaries arrived to the rural areas of

this municipality, they declared to the citizens that those who wished to remain living

there must begin to plant coca. The peasants were told that if they produced what was

required, the paramilitary would protect them and the state forces will tolerate their

work (CINEP 2005b). The paramilitary owns and manages most components in the

drug-trafficking chain from the stage of production to trafficking, such as illegal drug-

laboratories (known as cosmos)146 and the trafficking routes.147

Further, paramilitary groups are often in charge of gangs dedicated to particular

criminal activities, such as stealing cars or the smuggling of gas from Venezuela. One

such criminal organization that worked for the AUC and various drug cartels was La

Banda de La Terraza in Medellin. This organization consisted of 300 men who

engaged in stealing cars and re-selling them, robberies, kidnappings and the murder of

146 These are facilities often remotely located where the coca plant is processed and converted into
cocaine. Each cosina normally employs two to seven individuals.
147 The political economy of drug-trafficking involves many actors and most of them are
employed/controlled by the paramilitary: those who cultivate the coca plant (poor peasants) on their
own land or that owned by the paramilitary, the raspachines (those who pick the plant), the cosineros
(those who work in the processing facility where chemicals are added to the dry plant to turn it into
coca base), empacadores (those who pack it), security personnel who guard the laboratories, those who
transport it to a sea port or to an airport, cobradores (those who settle unpaid accounts), el patron who
is the owner of a given route (this refers not only to the physical space through which the illegal drugs
would be transported but also to the established arrangements and people along the way who make
possible the trafficking), and finally the distributors and sellers abroad.

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unionists and other individuals suspected of being communists (Semana 2005a). It is

in examples like this that we see the intersection of paramilitarism with organized

crime. The oficinas de cobro, which can be described as illegal collection agencies

that operate through death threats, kidnappings and murder, are also among the illegal

enterprises they run. The Bloque Cacique Nutibara is one example of a paramilitary

group that comprised criminal gangs and oficinas de cobro. Those who work for the

oficinas are sicarios. It is not uncommon to find active members of the police and

military participating in such ventures, as I show further on.

Another method of enrichment for paramilitary forces has been the infiltration of

government institutions which has enabled them to channel public funds into their

pockets. Lastly, the wealth that the AUC and other paramilitary groups have

accumulated has allowed their deep penetration of the legal economy as well. Land

has been one of the principal objects for capital investment. In addition to amassing

land, they have also invested in gas stations, lotteries, casinos, construction, and other

enterprises.

6.3. The Paramilitary and the Colombian State: Condemnation or Cooperation?

6.3.1. The State’s Coercive Apparatus and the Paramilitary: Strategic Symbiosis

The relationship between the paramilitary and two of the key institutions of the state’s

coercive apparatus, the military and police, takes on many forms, which can be

categorized as follows: i) failure of state forces to intervene in order to protect

civilians from paramilitary aggression; ii) tolerance for the establishment of

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paramilitary bases in proximity to military bases; iii) provision of firearms, other

equipment (such as helicopters), uniforms, and transportation services by the army to

paramilitary units; iv) exchange of captured guerrilla fighters by the paramilitary for

weapons and uniforms offered by the military; v) provision of space for the training of

paramilitary fighters in state military bases; vi) exchange of intelligence; vii) sharing

of personnel (individuals working at the same time for both, the state army or police,

and the paramilitary); viii) security provision for paramilitary activities by the state

army or police; and ix) joint operations (Hristov 2009b).

The first most common way in which the state military has collaborated with

the AUC has been through non-intervention. As Joseph Contreras (2002, 233) has put

it, “Soldiers and paramilitaries greet themselves from far away, treat themselves a

compas [friends], strangely their schedules never cross. When the paramilitary attacks,

it is known that authorities would only get to the site after the former have already

left”. This was precisely the case with the Alto Naya massacre that took place in the

Cordillera mountains on the border between the Department of Cauca and the

Department of Valle del Cauca in April of 2001, where over 3,000 indigenous people

fled the area after 130 civilians were slaughtered by the paramilitary during a three-

day rampage (Craig-Best and Shingler 2003). On February 12, 2006 the Attorney

General’s Office sanctioned with suspension of 70 days army colonel Tony Alberto

Vargas Petecua, commander of the Eight Infantry Battalion, for failure to persecute

and combat members o f the AUC who committed the Alto Naya massacre. It has been

now proven that Vargas had knowledge of the site the paramilitaries had entered and

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did not take any security measures to protect the civilian population even though at

the time the armed forces were present in the nearby rural area of Timba

(Procuradoria General 2006).

In a similar case, the former commander of the Seventeenth Brigade General

Jaime Alberto Uscategui was found guilty for being a perpetrator by omission of the

massacre of Mapiripan, Department of Meta, where 49 residents were cut into pieces

between July 15 and 20, 1997 by the paramilitary. Another example comes from the

July 1999 testimony o f a former soldier from Battalion Voltigeros of the Seventeenth

Brigade. He witnessed how in 1997 under the orders of General del Rio (a notorious

paramilitary supported implicated in a multitude of ways with the AUC), the military

purposely retreated from San Jose de Apartado, Department of Antioquia and moved

to a neighbourhood further away in order to allow the paramilitary to enter the town

and assassinate civilians (CINEP 2005b). Another expression of the armed forces’

tolerance for these organizations is the presence of paramilitary bases in proximity to

those of the state. For instance, a 1999 testimony by an ex-soldier from Battalion

Voltigeros, indicated that the paramilitary base in Santa Catalina, Department of

Antioquia, was 20 minutes away from the headquarters of the Francisco de Paula

Velez Battalion (CINEP 2005b).

The state’s coercive apparatus not only fails to combat paramilitary forces or

protect the civilian population from their violence, but actually provides them with

weapons and other equipment, training space, uniforms, and transportation services -

a fact recognized as much by key paramilitary leaders as by agents of the state. The

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paramilitary leader Ivan Roberto Duque, alias Ernesto Baez, one of the initiators of

the Puerto Boyaca project and an ideologist of the paramilitary front of Magdalena

Medio, declared in May 2004 to the press at Santa Fe de Ralito (the site of the

government’s peace-talks with the paramilitary): “The arms that came to us here, in

San Juan Bosco Laverde, San Vicente de Chucuri, Puerto Boyaca, Magdalena Medio,

came with the stamp of the State ... And now they would say that the father will not

respond for the boy. They would have to see what they will do with the ... Monster

that they created” (CINEP 2005c). According to a testimony made in February 1998

to the CTI in Santa Rosa de Osos, Department of Antioquia, by former paramilitary

member Francisco Enrique Villalba Hernandez, the AUC block he belonged to had a

deal with Battalion Voltigeros of the Seventeenth Brigade. The army used to pay them

with arms, grenades and camouflage uniforms in exchange for captured guerrilla

suspects. In addition, among the many deals that General del Rio (mentioned above)

had with these “illegal armed groups”, is a case when he arranged the transportation of

100 MP5 machine-guns between Medellin and Puerto Boyaca (CINEP 2005b).

Further, General Uscategui, former commander of Seventeenth Brigade (mentioned

above in relation to the Mapiripan massacre) admitted in 2003 that the AUC used to

make their propaganda pamphlets, including those they were distributing at the

massacre in Mapiripan, on a computer which belonged to Battalion Paris. The same

computer contained their financial records such as the payroll for the entire front of

Guaviare consisting of 93 people (CINEP 2005c).

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 One of the mechanisms facilitating greatly the atrocities committed by the

paramilitary is the intelligence gathered by state security bodies. Coronel Carlos

Alfonso Velasquez Romero, who was the second commander of Seventeenth Brigade

and Chief of Major State between 1995 and 1996, revealed that there was a permanent

flow of information from his brigade to the AUC which maintained the latter informed

daily regarding the location of state army troops. Similarly, Major Oscar de Jesus

Echandia Sanches, one o f the founders of MAS, confessed in front of DAS in 1990

that in the 1980s the commander of Battalion Girardot used to send to Henry Perez, a

paramilitary leader and drug-trafficker of Puerto Boyaca, information about future

army operations in the area and the names of army personnel who were willing to

collaborate with AUC groups (CINEP 2005b). The other way in which intelligence

contributes to the victimization of more people by the paramilitary is through the

identification of suspected guerrilla supporters and sympathizers. This results in

executions performed by the paramilitary, which the state itself would not have the

right to carry out. For example, on July 15, 2003, in Cucuta, Department of Northern

Santander, Cristobal Esteban Pabon who had been accused by DAS and the state army

of being an ELN militant, but proven innocent by the Fiscalia, was forcibly taken out

of his house, tortured, and shot by the paramilitary (CINEP 2005d). The intelligence

generated by authorities also serves a third function: to extort. For example, in

February 2005 numerous residents in Arauquita, Department of Arauca, complained

that members of the armed forces have been stopping many people as part of their

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patrol duties and recording personal information including telephone numbers. Few

hours or days later, these residents were extorted by the paramilitary (CINEP 2005a).

The next way in which the connections between the state’s coercive apparatus

and the paramilitary are manifested is in the sharing of personnel as well as the

recruitment o f fighters from state troops. Prior to the demobilization, in paramilitary-

dominated municipalities, state employees who abandoned their jobs relied on being

hired by paramilitary chiefs. In December 2000, Minister of Defense Luis Fernando

Ramirez, stated that 40 sub-officials and officials who were dismissed for professional

misconduct, were accepted by these irregular armies (Contreras 2002). Many times

army soldiers and officials worked simultaneously for both the paramilitary and the

state. As argued by Captain Cardenas, former director of SI JIN, “ ...paramilitaries are

trained by the state army itself and the National Police and are assisted by them. Even

members o f the army and the police patrol side by side with the paramilitaries”

(CINEP 2005b). Furthermore, ex-soldier Oswaldo de Jesus Giraldo Yepes, who

worked for one of the battalions in Urabd under the orders of General del Rio between

1996 and 1997, made significant revelations to the Attorney General’s Office while in

prison, with respect to this issue. He confessed that he was obliged to assist

paramilitary units as were many soldiers from the Eleventh and Seventeenth Brigade.

He also mentioned numerous local, regional, and national paramilitary leaders who

used to frequently attend meetings with General del Rio at the headquarters of

Seventeenth Brigade in Carepa, Department of Antioquia (CINEP 2005b). Similarly,

Alonso de Jesus Baquero alias El Negro Vladimir - one of the most ruthless of
 paramilitaries in the 1980s who following his capture in 1989 admitted to over eight

hundred slayings - also confessed that he used to meet many times with General del

Rio and other officials of Battalion Reyes to coordinate activities in the area (Dudley

2004).

Additional evidence of the paramilitary connections to the state’s coercive

apparatus is security provision. The declaration of Captain Cardenas shows that in

1998 Colonel Santiago Parra Rubian, top commander of the police in Urabd,

Department of Antioquia used to received 30 million pesos per month to organize

armed protection for paramilitary units, allowing them to carry out their assaults

undisturbed (CINEP 2005b).

Other than through complicity, military aid, space, intelligence, coordination,

exchange of personnel, and security provision, the final and most extreme way in

which the state’s armed forces are implicated in paramilitary crimes is through their

direct participation. The testimony of ex-soldier Giraldo recounts that a captain by the

name Jaime Remolina Fontalvo, in the company of five soldiers and eight to ten

paramilitaries, used to set roadblocks near the town of Pavarando in the region of

Uraba, Department of Antioquia. There, the group used to stop rural buses and

forcibly take out passengers to an open field, shoot them, cut them up into pieces, and

throw them into the river. Giraldo remembers that in a period of 15 days he witnessed

between 50 and 60 cases of this sort. According to a confession made to the CTI in

February 1998 by paramilitary member Francisco Enrique Villalba Hernandez, the

massacre of Aro in Ituango, Department of Antioquia, which took place on October

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i
25 1997, was executed by some sub-officials and officials of the state forces working

side by side with their paramilitary partners. A helicopter belonging to Battalion

Girardot supplied the assassins with ammunition and medicines (CINEP 2005b).

There are plenty of cases where state’s coercive apparatus agents participate directly

in the murder, torture, threats, and extortions performed by the paramilitary.

The following examples demonstrate the different forms of cooperation

discussed so far. On February 16, 2000 members of the Bloque Norte y Anori of the

ACCU, with the complicity of troops from Battalion Fusileros belonging to First

Brigade, murdered 42 peasants in the rural areas of Flor del Monte, Canutal, and

Canutalito in the municipality of Ovejas, Department of Antioquia. Thirty-nine of

these individuals were tortured and had their throats slashed in front of their spouses

and children, while their houses were burnt. On May 24, 2005, in Saravena,

Department of Arauca, a young woman and her husband were detained by members

o f Battalion Gabriel Reveiz Pizarro 18. From the office of the battalion, the woman

was handed over to a paramilitary fighter who took her to the washroom in the same

building and raped her (CINEP 2005a).

In February 2007, former director of DAS, Jorge Noguera, was arrested after

being accused by the former Director of Information at DAS, Rafael Garcia, of

allowing the infiltration of DAS by the Bloque Norte led by Rodrigo Tovar Pupo,

alias Jorge 40. Noguera used to provide paramilitary commanders with information

about union leaders who were later executed. He was sentenced to 24 years in prison

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by the Supreme Court of Justice (Leon 2011). Garcia himself has been declared guilty

for eliminating the criminal records of drug-traffickers wanted for extradition.

6.3.2. Paramilitarism in the Justice System

Javier Giraldo, a Colombian parish priest, researcher, and Executive Director of the

Inter-church Committee of Justice and Peace has described the relationship between

paramilitarism and the justice system the following way:

[T]he Judicial Power has been the spinal column of the wall of protection of
paramilitarism, and it is the Judicial Power which creates the most basic
conditions permitting the military structure to continue projecting itself
through this corrupted body, which enjoys the vital substance of the state
sucked out by channels astutely hidden, and which at the same time makes
possible the speech of the Executive formally ‘condemning’ paramilitarism,
remitting it to ‘exhaustive investigations’ and processes of ‘justice’, at the
same time as he raises to the highest posts those who are authors and
promoters of paramilitarism, at the same time ‘absolved’ by ‘justice’ or
benefited by the routine filing of the evidence without acting on it (Giraldo
1996, 113).

One of the institutions of the justice system that have been penetrated by paramilitary

power is the Fiscalia. The testimony of Captain Cardenas, former SIJIN chief, reveals

how during the 1990s, members of the Fiscalia in Puerto Boyaca and the Urabd

region of the Department of Antioquia used to collaborate with paramilitaries in the

region. High-ranking officials of the Fiscalia have also formed alliances with

paramilitary groups. As in the case with the armed forces, here paramilitaries enter

institutional channels by forming connections with officials in high positions who can

then intimidate their employees in order to ensure that the interests of the crime

perpetrators would not be hurt by applying the law. Usually, individuals whose work

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is considered threatening to criminals, are reassigned to a different location or task,

forced to resign, or simply dismissed by their superior for a false reason. The

following occurrences, which followed the appointment of Luis Camilo Osorio to the

position of Prosecutor General in 2001, are quite illustrative. Fiscalia staff

investigating the finances of the paramilitaries of the Department of Cordoba and

other regions of high paramilitary concentration were dismissed. When the

investigator and director o f the Human Rights Unit of the Fiscalia, Pedro Diaz, issued

a security measure against General del Rio for collaborating with paramilitary

organizations during the time he was in command of the Seventeenth Brigade,

Prosecutor General Osorio demanded Diaz’ resignation (CIP 2008). Diaz’s successor,

Alejandro Ramelli, was pressured to quit in February 2002 after his and other

employees’ investigations had accused important individuals, such as Admiral

Rodrigo Quinones, of participating in drug-trafficking and paramilitary activities.

Later on, in November 2002, US officials accused Quinones of being one of the

highest-ranking military officials in recent history implicated in drug-trafficking.

Evidence pointed to his involvement in the shipment of cocaine to the US on behalf of

the Cali drug cartel and his failure to prevent the murder of 26 villagers during the

Chengue Massacre carried out by the paramilitary on January 17, 2001. Quinones

resigned from office in November 2002 after all these findings became public. Still,

the new prosecutor who replaced Ramelli, “did not find” enough evidence to arrest

Quinones (HRW 2003). Luis Augusto Sepulveda, a member of the Human Rights

Unit at Fiscalia, was the leading investigator on the attempt against the life of

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Congress member Wilson Borja (a former president of the National Federation of

State Service Workers - Federation National de Trabajadores de Servicio del

Estado, or FENALTRASE). Sepulveda, who had been working on Boija’s case for

one year, was fired in April 2002. When a resolution accusing Army Major

Maldonado of involvement in the attempted assassination was about to be issued,

General Osorio declared it baseless. CTI investigator Richard Maok Riano Botina,

who was carrying out investigative work concerning the infiltration of paramilitaries

within the Fiscalia, and had identified Ana Maria Florez (Director of the Fiscalia in

the Department of Norte de Santander) and her assistant Magali Moreno as being at

the service of paramilitary groups, was reassigned and not allowed to complete his

project. Riano found it necessary to go into exile (Cambio 2007).

6.3.3. Paramilitary Power in Politics

The paramilitary has attained wide-spread dominance over political governance at all

levels: presidential148, congressional, departmental, and municipal. This is expressed

mostly in the election o f politicians allied with the paramilitary. The paramilitary elite

finances the electoral campaigns of such politicians, eliminates their opponents, and

often coerces the population into voting for their candidates. By having these political

148 Former President Alvaro Uribe’s ties to the paramilitary are numerous, and often of a direct and
personal nature. The following are only a couple of examples. His estate Guacharacas in San Roque,
Department of Cesar has been the headquarters for a paramilitary group of 40 men led by alias Beto.
Uribe’s brother Santiago also has haciendas that have served as the bases for the paramilitary groups
(CINEP 2005b). For his 2002 election campaign, Uribe received $40,000 from Enilce Lopez who was a
manager of paramilitary businesses at the time (Moreno 2006). For more on Uribe’s paramilitary
background see Contreras (2002).

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figures in office, the paramilitary influences and even controls to a large extent

government decisions in favour of their economic interests and those of the capitalist

classes they represent. At the same time, paramilitary-friendly politicians facilitate the

operation of illegal businesses ran by these groups and channel public funds into their

hands.

Let us begin by looking at the presence of paramilitary power inside Colombia’s

congress.149 Seventy-seven percent of Congress members elected for the period 2002-

2006 had links to paramilitary groups {VerdadAbierta 2009a). In 2007, the Supreme

Court began investigating numerous connections between Congress members and

paramilitary organizations, which gave rise to what became known as the para-politics

scandal (escandalo de parapolitica). It was discovered that former Vice-president

Francisco Santos participated in the creation of the Bloque Central of the AUC and is

currently being investigated by the Supreme Court. Former Minister of the

Environment Sandra Suarez is also under investigation for links to paramilitary

commander Rodrigo Tovar Pupo. Fifty-three senators and members of the Chamber of

Representatives, as well as nine governors, have been found guilty by the Supreme

Court for links to paramilitary groups. There are 100 cases still in process. Seven of

the ten Senate presidents for the period 2002-2012 are being prosecuted for ties to the

paramilitary. Former Congress member Cesar Perez Garcia is being prosecuted at the

moment (2012) for his responsibility in the Segovia massacre, Department of

149 The Congress consists of the Senate (Senado) with 102 seats and the Chamber of Representatives
(Camara de Representantes) with 166 seats.

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Antioquia, where in 1988 the paramilitary murdered 43 people. Former Congress

member Alvaro Garcia has been found guilty for orchestrating the Macayepo

massacre, Department of Sucre in October 2000 where the paramilitary executed 15

people and caused the displacement of 200.

Alliances between members of political institutions and paramilitary

organizations were not isolated informal dark deals between corrupted politicians and

illegal armed groups, but were rather done in a systematic and often quite formalized

fashion and often took the form of “pacts” (agreements) signed by both sides. For

instance, in 2002, former Congress members signed the “Pacto de Singapur” with

paramilitary leader alias El Aleman to ensure that the paramilitary’s candidate Julio

Ibarguen Mosquera became the governor of Choco for 2003-2007. In 2003, former

mayors of the towns o f Monterrey, Tauramena, Aguazul, Villanueva, Sabanalarga,

and Mani in the Department of Casanare signed the “Pacto de Casanare” with the

paramilitary organization Autodefensas Campesinas de Casanare where they

committed to give 50 percent of their municipal budgets to the paramilitary leader

Martin Llanos. In 2002 paramilitary commander Rodrigo Tovar solicited support from

politicians in the Department of Cesar to facilitate the election of Mauricio Pimiento

as a senator and Jorge Ramirez Ubina as a member of the Chamber of

Representatives. In early 2000, the “Pacto de Chibolo” in the Department of

Magdalena was signed, which ensured that the paramilitary-friendly Jose Domingo

Davila Armenta became the Governor of the Department of Magdalena. Davila was

recently sentenced by the Supreme Court to 7 years and 6 months in prison for his

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linksto the paramilitary. According to Alvaro Osorio, chief of the Fiscalia’s

department responsible for reporting to the Supreme Court,

First they [paramilitaries] finance the election campaign of their candidate.

Once the candidate becomes a governor he would appoint to positions of
power individuals who would be favourably oriented towards the AUCand
would assign contracts that would feed the [economic]structures of the
paramilitary. This way of co-opting the state eventually allows paramilitary
power to reach such a point where it can be said that the real power is
exercised by them, so the administration of the department begins to function
in ways that benefit their interests (VerdadAbierta 2012c).

By accomplishing such a level of penetration of political institutions, the paramilitary

(who are themselves capitalists in terms of the founders, leaders, and commanders)

ensure that they can control decisions on who would get concessions and contracts

from the state and can ensure that their interests would be looked after. This is a

perfect illustration of Miliband’s (1973) argument with regards to the relationship of

the state to the economically dominant class: “The holders of state power are for many

different reasons the agents of private economic power” (51). As we can see, political

power is a means to protecting and advancing economic power and at the same time

economic power is a means to securing political power. The fusion of the two means

that the state and the capitalist class should always be considered in relation to each

other.

6.3.4. INCODER and the Legalization o f Paramilitary-led Dispossession

INCODER was created by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in

2003 by Decree 1300 and subsequently reformed by Law 1152 of 2007 (Ortiz

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2009).This entity replaced INCORA. INCODER was officially expected to develop

and promote different kinds of development programs for rural Colombia by

providing financial and technical support for agricultural, forest, and fishing activities,

facilitating access to land for small and medium-scale agricultural producers,

promoting research and capacitation, and administering land acquisition and grants

(INCODER 2012). However, since its inception, it has been involved in funds

embezzlement. During its first six years of operation, five of its managers were

involved in corruption scandals and were dismissed. In 2008, INCODER received a

budget o f 32 billion pesos to assist 1,200 families in need. Only 79 families have

benefitted and the rest of the money has still been unaccounted for (Ortiz 2009). Most

importantly, INCORA and subsequently INCODER have not been characterized

merely by isolated cases of corruption, but have rather served to legalize the

appropriation of land through violence and human rights violations. As shown in

Section 2.2 of this chapter, INCORA and INCODER have performed the most crucial

function in the process between the moment forced displacement occurs and the

moment o f paramilitary land appropriation by: first, declaring the land abandoned

(when in fact its inhabitants were coerced to abandon it and fleeing); second, revoking

the land title; and third, assigning the land title to paramilitary commanders, family

members, and their testaferros. For instance, in 1994 Jose Manuel Tirado was

threatened and forced to abandon his land in Necocli due to fear for his life and that of

his family. He submitted a letter to INCORA explaining the reason why he is leaving

the parcel o f land he was granted in 1987. He submitted a second letter in 1995 hoping

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that the institution would prevent him from losing his land, but in vain. In 2007, the

land appeared registered on the name of an unknown person who had never even

visited the site ( VerdadAbierta 201 lb).

6.3.5. Paramilitary Penetration o f Other State Institutions

The majority o f public universities in Colombia have been influenced by paramilitary

power. Members of such groups carry out intelligence operations by monitoring

student activist organizations, students and professors’ political orientation, and

course content, especially in social science programs (Semana 2009c; CJL 2010).

Individuals and groups identified as “the enemy” are intimidated, threatened,

disappeared, and assassinated. Examples of such forms of persecution are offered in

Section 6.2.3 and 7.4.2. Public hospitals are another kind of institution affected as

their resources have been channeled into the hands of paramilitary groups, as

mentioned earlier. The presence of paramilitary power inside all these institutions

continued after the demobilization of the AUC in 2006 and this subject is explored in

depth in Chapter Seven.

6.4. Illustrations of Human Rights Violations by Paramilitary Forces

The paramilitary produces terror through massacres, selective assassinations and

disappearances, random killings, torture, threats, as well as public torture and

executions.

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Table 6.2: Percentage of Civilian Deaths and Forced Disappearances for which the Paramilitary

Year Percentage
1993 18
1995 46
1997 69
1998 76
1999 78
2000 79
Source: CCJ cited in Aviles (2006).

Between 1993 and 2006, the paramilitary carried out 1,528 massacres that left

8,449 people dead (Semana Multimedia 2012). The following are some examples that

illustrate torture techniques that are part of paramilitary operations. On February 18,

2000, in El Carmen de Bolivar, Department of Bolivar, members of the Bloque Norte

y Anori o f the ACCU under the orders of Emmanuel Ortiz (ex-guerrillero of the

FARC), with the complicity of troops from Batallion de Fusileros of the First Brigade,

executed 46 peasants after torturing them, slashing their throats, and sexually abusing

the women. The ordeal began on the 18th of February in the morning and continued

until the 19th. When the paramilitaries were entering the town through the area of El

Salado, those who tried to impede their entrance had their throat cut or were hit in the

head with a screwdriver. The screams of the community only provoked laughter in the

victimizers to such an extent that the latter put on a vallenato (traditional Colombian

music) and began to drink the alcohol they had stolen by breaking into the nearby

stores. Later, they took out a three year-old girl from her house and put a knife on her

neck, in order to make her mother cook for all of them. According to the testimonies

“One girl was raped, made to eat cactus, and then left to die choking on her own

blood” (CINEP 2005c, 290). Between May 1 and 7, 2003, soldiers from XVIII

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Brigade, wearing AUC armbands, entered an indigenous reserve in the Department of

Arauca. On May 5, they raped and killed a 16 year-old girl who was pregnant, before

opening her belly. “They opened her up in front of everyone. The bodies of the girl

and the baby were thrown in the river” (AI 2004). On November 26, 2002, in the

Department o f Choc6, a member of the Afro-Colombian community of Jiguamiando,

named Cristobal Hinestroza Paz, was abducted by the paramilitary. He was then found

murdered and decapitated, his body mutilated into 77 pieces (Inter-church

Commission 2002).

6.4.1. Violence against Low-income Rural Workers and Small-Scale Farmers

According to CODHES, the paramilitary has contributed to conditions that caused the

majority of forced displacements. One of the initial steps in preparing the ground for a

displacement is to first eliminate those individuals who hold some kind of a position

of leadership in the community, who can influence public decisions and mobilize

people towards the accomplishment of a collective goal and the protection of common

interests. The following are examples of such cases. On January 9, 2003 in Cucuta,

Department of Northern Santander, paramilitaries executed eight people, including

Maria Rubiela Poveda Sanchez, who was pregnant at the time, and her 17 year old

son. Maria was a leader of the neighbourhood Crispin Duran. On January 24, 2003, in

Cajibio, Department of Cauca, paramilitaries killed Miryam Castafto de Caldono, a

peasant leader, member o f the Peasant Association La Conquista, and a human rights

promoter. On July 7, 2003, in Carmen del Darien, Department of Choc6,

paramilitaries executed Carlos Salinas Becerra, member of the Afro-Colombian

Community Peace Association of Puerto Lleras (CINEP 2005d).

In most such cases, the selective killings of leaders and suspected guerrilla

supporters, or the random torture and murder of civilians, has indeed produced the

results sought by the paramilitary - rapid freeing up of territory. For example, on

October 16, 2000, in the municipality of El Carmen de Bolivar, Department of

Bolivar, members of the AUC arrived to the rural area of Montes de Maria, some

dressed in uniforms belonging to the state armed forces and others in civilian clothes.

They gathered all residents, killed 20 and burned their houses. They also beat up many

others. As a result, more than 1,000 people fled towards the cities of El Carmen de

Bolivar and Sincelejo (Department of Sucre) (CINEP 2005b). Similar examples were

offered in Section 6.2.2 of this chapter. Displaced people are in a permanent state of

uncertainty, on the move, with little belongings and often no access to basic

sanitation, clean water, health care, and schools. They face a significant deterioration

in their diet, climatic changes (as they relocate from one geographic region to

another), sexual and other forms of violence, and social exclusion. Women in

particular are commonly victimized in the process of forced displacement. O f course,

it is important to remember that many of these conditions from the point of view of

the displacement are functional to the capitalist system. In addition to landless people

joining the reserve army of labour, as Marx (1867/1990) points out:

... the events that transformed the small peasants into wage-labourers, and
their means of subsistence and of labour into material elements of capital,
created, at the same time, a home market for capital. Formerly, the peasant

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 family produced means of subsistence and raw materials, which they
themselves for the most part consumed. These raw materials and means of
subsistence have now become commodities (893).

6.4.2. Violence against Leaders and Members o f Social Movements and

Organizations

Labour unions are one of the social movements attacked the most. According to Janet

Kuczkiewicz, director of trade union rights at the International Confederation of Free

Trade Unions (ICFTU), “The prevailing climate of violence against trade union

leaders, activists and members has given rise to an atmosphere of anxiety amongst

workers, who are often intimidated or threatened during collective bargaining or

strikes.” (Moloney 2005). Since the late 1990, over 3,500150 trade unionists have been

murdered (ICFTU 2005).

Table 6.3: Number of Unionists Assassinated 2001-2006

Year Number of Unionists Assassinated
2001 209
2002 192
2003 102
2004 99*
2005 73
2006 77
Source: USLEAP(2011)
•Source: ENS (2010)
Although there appears to be an overall downward trend in terms of the yearly figures

for unionist assassinations, it should be kept in mind that homicides are not the only

150 Statistics on assassinated unionists from the late 1980s until present vary according to the
organization which provides the data. This is mainly due to the fact that in the late 1980s and early
1990s records of attacks against unionists were not always compiled. It is only in the second half of the
1990s that the ENS as well as international organizations such as ICTUR and ICFTU began producing
yearly accounts of the murder of unionists in Colombia. At the low end of the estimate, according to
US Labour Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP 2011), between 1986 and 2010 over 2,800
unionists were killed.

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form of human rights violations. The complexity and gravity of the panorama

becomes evident if we take into consideration the increase in death threats, arbitrary

detentions, raids, hate crimes, kidnappings, forced displacements, and forced

disappearances. In the spring of 2003, Carlos Castano sent a menacing e-mail message

to the Oil Workers Union ( Union Sindical Obrera, or USO) stating: “We declare all

USO leaders and the children of the USO members military targets. We have already

started actions against the workers’ children” (Moloney 2005). In addition to trade

unions, most other social movements and organization have been subjected to

paramilitary terror. On July 11, 2000, in the city of Barrancabermeja, Department of

Santander, paramilitaries assassinated Elizabeth Cafias Cano, a member of

ASFADDES and a founder of the Association of Families of the Disappeared of

Magdalena Medio. Elizabeth was the mother of Giovanny Herrera Cano and a sister

of Jose Milton Caflas Cano, both of whom disappeared on May 16, 1998 when

paramilitaries massacred seven people and disappeared 25 more. She had testified on

this massacre in front of the International Tribunal of Opinion which took place in

Toronto and Montreal, Canada in 1999 and subsequently in Barrancabermeja. The

following year she was murdered (CINEP 2005c). On August 19, 2000, in El Zulia,

Northern Santander, paramilitaries executed Marta Cecilia Hernandez Luque and her

husband Leonidas Quintero Mendoza. Marta Cecilia was the president of the

Association of Peasant and Indigenous Women since 1991 (CINEP 2005b).

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 6.4.3. Violence against Educators, Academics, Students, Journalists and

Politicians

Another category of people victimized by paramilitary aggressions is educators. The

victims range from distinguished academics to teachers in small rural schools. In

1998, Colombia’s famous sociologist and writer Alfredo Molano was forced to go into

exile in Spain after receiving numerous threats from the paramilitary. He had done

studies in the countryside on displacements, documented paramilitary massacres and

selective killings of human rights defenders, and actively denounced these by writing

for El Espectador (Molano 2005). On September 16, 2003, in Pasto, Department of

Nariflo, Jairo Roberto Moncayo, a student and local coordinator for the Permanent

Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, was assassinated by paramilitaries in

front of the San Felipe Church (Nicora 2004).

Politicians and journalists have also been targeted by paramilitary forces. On

September 25, 2000, in San Onofre, Department of Sucre, members of the AUC

executed a mayor candidate from the Liberal Party Lubian Perez Villada and another

person (CINEP 2005b). On July 15, 2003, in Natagaima, Department of Tolima,

members of the Bloque Tolima of the AUC murdered Alberto Marquez, a member of

the Association of Indigenous Councils of Tolima (Asociacion de Cabildos lndigenas

de Tolima, or ACIT) and secretary of the regional branch of the Communist Party

(CINEP 2005d).

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6.5. Conclusion

The creation of paramilitary forces has been as crucial to the Colombian state as it has

been to the capitalist classes. In addition to being a key counter-insurgency

instrument, paramilitarism has had far-reaching consequences on civilians by

advancing capital accumulation through dispossession and the repression of social

forces that seek to build an alternative socio-economic model to the one currently in

place. What Marx described as a process of primitive accumulation, has been an

integral element of paramilitary activity and, as Richani (2007) remarks, “...a typical

case where coercion is at the service of capital accumulation in one of its most brutal

forms” (414). Even though the AUC officially demobilized in 2006, paramilitarism

has not been dismantled and it continues to be employed by local and foreign

enterprises to advance the exploitation of the land, resources, and people. The next

chapter reveals how and why this has been happening in the “post-demobilization”

era.

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 Chapter 7: Five Years after the Demobilization of the AUC:

Paramilitarism and Capital Accumulation (2006-2011)

This chapter reveals the continuation of paramilitarism in Colombia after 2006.

Section 7.1 describes the peace negotiations between the government and the AUC

(2002-2004) and the subsequent demobilization of the latter. Section 7.2 questions the

authenticity of the demobilization process along several lines. Section 7.3 documents

the activities of illegal armed groups151 in the 2006-2011 period and examines the

notion of BACRIM (an acronym for bandas criminales or criminal gangs) as an

ideological construct used by the state and media discourses to create the illusion of a

rupture between a paramilitary past and a “post-paramilitary” present. Section 7.4

demonstrates why illegal non-guerrilla armed organizations are in fact paramilitary

groups, by analyzing their composition, links to state institutions, and activities.

Section 7.5 discusses the inefficiency and inadequacy of the legislative tools and

processes that have been introduced to bring about justice and reparations to the

victims of paramilitary violence. I explain how the resulting impunity is conducive to

the continuation o f the military and economic structures of paramilitarism. The

chapter illustrates how paramilitarism has continued to be an essential instrument for

capital accumulation by displacing peasants to free up land for extractive industries

151 By using the term “illegal armed groups” I refer to non-guerrilla armed groups present in the period
2006-2011. The Colombian government has labeled these organizations as BACRIM while I argue that
they are paramilitary in nature.

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and agribusiness as well as by repressing labour unions and other forms of social

activism.

7.1. The Demobilization o f the AUC

The Colombian government formally started a negotiation process with various

paramilitary groups in December 2002. The AUC presented to the government a

declaration in which they announced cease-fire starting December 1, 2002,

accompanied by a list of promises and demands. Some of the latter included: i)

guaranteed support for fighters while they were not active during the negotiation

process; ii) suspension of judicial processes against those paramilitary representatives

belonging to the negotiation team; iii) search for mechanisms to free imprisoned

paramilitaries; and iv) national and foreign investment in paramilitary-dominated

territories. The declaration also stipulated that they retained the right to “legitimate

defense” during the cease-fire should guerrilla forces attack areas under their control.

The AUC promised to release fighters who were under age at the time and discontinue

illicit crop cultivation. This declaration was backed up by 80 percent of the groups

belonging to the AUC. On December 23, 2002 Uribe authorized a law that enabled

negotiations to be carried out with any illegal armed groups, including the guerrilla

(CINEP 2002).

On May 13, 2004, the Tierra Alta Accord (Acuerdo de Tierra Alta) was

announced, which was to govern the negotiations which began on July 1, 2004 at the

site known as Santa Fe de Ralito, Department of Cordoba (Leech 2004). On July 15,

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2004 an agreement was reached between the government and the AUC, known as the

Accord of Santa Fe de Ralito (Acuerdo de Santa Fe de Ralito). The Accord stipulated

that the organization begin the gradual demobilization of around 49 paramilitary

blocks spread over 28 out of the 32 departments of the country, to be completed by

the end of 2005 (CINEP 2002). According to Uribe, this was the beginning of a

process “toward peace and the restoration of human rights” (Leech 2004).

Uribe’s administration did its best to accommodate the needs of these groups

with the help of several legislative measures, such as Decree 128 of 2003 oriented

towards pardoning their crimes. At one point, Luis Carlos Restrepo, the government’s

peace commissioner, stated that “For those who have committed crimes against

humanity, we are looking for punishment that would be other than jail” (Leech 2004).

Giving up illegally acquired land, performing community service, or paying a fine

and leaving the country were among these alternative “punishments” (Gutierrez

2005). The Justice and Peace Law {Ley de Justicia y Paz) was approved by Congress

on June 21, 2005 and by the Constitutional Court in May 2006 after the latter made

some modifications to the original version. It offers reduced prison sentences,

financial benefits (such as government stipends), and readjustment training for those

who demobilize. Prison sentences are limited to a maximum of eight years (Gutierrez

2005).

On February 15, 2006 the last two paramilitary blocks - the Heroes de los

Andaquies and Heroes de Florencia - demobilized. By March 2006, the media

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announced that 31,671 had given up their arms (Restrepo and Franco 2007), which

meant that the peace process initiated in 2003 was successfully completed.

7.2. Behind the Scenes of the Demobilization Process

There are several serious reasons to question the authenticity of the demobilization

process: i) paramilitary groups continued to engage in human rights violations during

the cease-fire; ii) a considerable number of those who participated in the

demobilization ceremonies were in reality not paramilitary combatants but hired

sicarios who pretended to be AUC fighters; iii) the quantity of weapons turned over

was much less than what the paramilitary were known to possess; iv) the subsequent

activities of those who laid down their weapons provided them with access to the

means of violence; and v) the legal and political measures employed to regulate the

demobilization process and its aftermath were highly conducive to impunity (Hristov

2009a).

To begin with, many Colombian and international human rights organizations

and even the US State Department, have documented that despite their declaration of

cease-fire, paramilitaries continued to carry out violent acts that victimized civilians

during the peace process. Between December 2002 and August 2004, according to

CCJ, 1,899 individuals were murdered or disappeared by the paramilitary (Gutierrez

2005). Among the dead are the famous academic Alfredo Correa de Andreis and the

indigenous leader Kankuamo Freddy Arias. A report by the National Ombudsman in

October 3, 2004, informed that “...some members of the AUC continue to perpetrate

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war activities such as massacres, selective assassinations, kidnappings, extortion,

forced displacement, expropriation of goods and recruitment of minors” (CINEP

2002). By December 2005, the number of assassinated and disappeared had climbed

to 2,300 since December 2002 (Equipo Nizkor 2005). A change in strategy had been

observed, consisting of a shift towards more selective assassinations as opposed to

large-scale massacres (of 10 persons or more).

The following cases are examples of violations committed by the AUC during its

official “cessation” of hostilities. In December 2002, the first month of the cease-fire,

the paramilitary murdered 84 people in the city of Cucuta, Department of Northern

Santander. In January of 2003, 150 paramilitary fighters crossed the border into

Panama, attacked two Kuna indigenous villages and killed four community leaders,

which caused the displacement of 500 people. In April of 2003, paramilitary fighters

and soldiers from the Navos Pardo Battalion entered an indigenous village near

Saravena, Department of Arauca, where they disappeared three people and raped four

indigenous girls, including a 16 year-old pregnant girl who had the fetus cut out from

her stomach. This caused the displacement of 800 people (Leech 2004). Between

2002 and 2004 the troops under the paramilitary commander Rodrigo Tovar were

responsible for the torture and assassination of 21 people in Aracataca, Department of

Magdalena and the region of Uraba, Department of Antioquia (Semana 2006). In 2004

alone, in Buenaventura, Department of Valle del Cauca, the AUC committed around

200 executions (CINEP 2005e). Between January 1 and February 19, 2005 in

Barrancabermeja, Department of Santander, the National Ombudsman registered 23

cases of murder, 14 forced disappearances, 34 threats, and 288 displacements

committed by paramilitary forces. In February 2005, in Bellavista, Department of

Choco, as a consequence of the death threats, roadblocks, and arbitrary detentions by

members of the Bloque Elmer Cardenas of the AUC who were preparing an offensive

against Front 57 of the FARC, 1,700 Affo-Colombian peasants were displaced from

six communities along the Bojaya River. On February 20, 2005, the paramilitary

murdered the brother and nephew of Marlene Olmedo Moreno, a member of the OFP

(CINEP 2005a). On July 3, 2005 in Dabeiba, Department of Antioquia, paramilitaries

forcibly took off Albeiro Higuita Agudelo from a local bus, tortured, and murdered

him. He was a member of the Peasant Association of Dabeiba. The paramilitary

check-point at this town had been operating with the collaboration of the local police

and the armed forces (Agencia Prensa Rural 2005).

Children were not only killed, injured, sexually and physically abused, and made

to witness atrocities by members of paramilitary groups. In August of 2005, a number

of human rights organizations in Medellin called attention to the forced recruitment of

children by the Bloque Cacique Nutibara, which had supposedly demobilized in

November of 2003. Members of this unit had been forcibly recruiting children from

Ward 13 of Medellin to work in intelligence operations, transport drugs and weapons,

serve as prostitutes, and collect extortion money (CSN 2005).

On September 10, 2005, in Valledupar, Department of Cesar, Luciano Romero

Molina, a distinguished human rights defender and a former leader of

SINALTRAINAL, was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by paramilitaries. Luciano

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had recently returned from a protection solidarity program in Spain (CSN 2007).

Between December 4 and 7, 2005, in the municipality of Curumani, Department of

Cesar, members of the Bloque Norte of the AUC, under the command of Rodrigo

Tovar, set road blocks and prohibited the movement of residents in and out of the

rural areas of La Mas Verde and Nuevo Horizonte. During this period they tortured

people, stole cattle and other goods, and stabbed and shot 22 unarmed peasants. Only

3 of the 22 bodies were identified by authorities later on, since the rest were eaten

partially by animals out in the open and had reached a severe state of decomposition.

This massacre took place despite the presence of state armed forces in the area

(Equipo Nizkor 2005)

The persistence of human rights violations during the cease-fire is not the only

reason to problematize the state’s so-called peace negotiations with the paramilitary.

Not all individuals who participated in the demobilization ceremonies were

paramilitary combatants. In the case of the demobilization of the 874 fighters of the

Bloque Cacique Nutibara, there was evidence that the organization was recruiting

criminals from the poor neighbourhoods of Medellin to present themselves as

paramilitary members during the official ceremony. This show received the following

response by the High Commissioner of Peace, Luis Carlos Restrepo: “Despite the

atypical process in Medellin, in which they turned to us street criminals ... and put

them in the package of demobilized ... we still believe in the validity of the process”

(CINEP 2002). Moreover, although the Bloque Cacique Nutibara had admitted to

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having 4,000 combatants, only 874 were registered as demobilized (Restrepo and

Franco 2007).

The laying down o f arms is another disputed question. There were discrepancies

between the number o f demobilized fighters and the much lower number of weapons

turned over, among various groups pertaining to the AUC such as Bloque Cacique

Nutibara and Bloque Norte who turned over only a fraction of the weapons they had.

Even though 31,671 combatants demobilized, only 18,051 fire-arms were given up.

Paramilitary commanders explained this discrepancy by resorting to the argument that

not all paramilitaries carried weapons and thus the ratio was five men to one weapon

(Restrepo and Franco 2007). If this was indeed true, there should have been 90,255

paramilitaries participating in the demobilization process.

Equally imperative is the question of the number of combatants who chose to

demobilize. Many authorities and others following the peace process were surprised to

find out that the number of paramilitaries turned out much higher than expected.

According to Jorge 40, “The State never had the efficacy and intelligence to know

how many we were ... If the country is surprised by this, I don’t want to even imagine

the dimension o f the surprise, if they would know the real quantity of self-defense

militias groups who didn’t want to demobilize ...” He added that the number of AUC

members “...can be much higher than double the figure of those who have

demobilized” (Semana 2006).

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 Many o f the rank-and-file demobilized fighters were initially recruited from the

poor sectors o f society. Without other skills and limited job prospects, these youth

were highly likely to re-enter the war scene in other ways and a large part of them did

so. To begin with, many were reincorporated into the state’s coercive apparatus. With

Decree 2767 of 2004, the Uribe administration offered an economic incentive for the

cooperation of former combatants with the police and military (CINEP 2002). In late

2005, Uribe came up with a plan to absorb AUC members by employing them to

patrol roads (Gutierrez 2005). Others have already turned into military informants

who are equipped with cellular phones and radios, walk around towns, gather

intelligence and spread fear (AI 2005b). In addition, the “peasant soldiers” component

of the Democratic Security Program (discussed in Chapter Four), provides a scheme

in which the demobilized can take up arms once again.

Another path that former AUC members have taken is the profession of sicarios.

It is not surprising that many ex-combatants turn to these activities, bringing along

military experience from powerful organizations where they have been trained to act

mercilessly. Finally, possessing the skills to terrorize the civilian population for the

purposes of economic gain, former AUC fighters and AUC security employees have

formed new paramilitary groups. This subject is discussed in the next section.

7.3. Paramilitary Groups in a “Post-paramilitary” Era (2006-2011)

Human rights organizations, NGOs, community organizations, social movements,

some research centres, and political figures have been documenting cases of violations

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against civilians carried out by illegal armed groups, after the so-called demobilization

in 2006. Contrary to claims advanced by the Colombian state and media, based on my

research I argue that what should be a “post-paramilitary” era (2006-2011) has been in

fact characterized by a continuation and in some cases strengthening of the military

and economic structures of paramilitarism. In fact, since the demobilization was

completed, paramilitary groups have been reorganized, recomposed, and “cleansed”

(meaning they have ridden themselves of allied groups and individuals who are no

longer useful to the paramilitary system for a variety of reasons), making the

restructured networks more efficient. Among the groups that have appeared since

2006 are: Las Aguilas Negras (in various regions), Los de Magdalena Medio (the

region of Magdalena Medio), Autodefensas Campesinas del Pacifico (Department of

Valle del Cauca), Autodefensas Campesinas Nueva Generation (Department of

Narino), Autodefensas Unidas de Antioquia (Department of Antioquia), Autodefensas

Gaitanistas de Colombia (Departments of Uraba, Cordoba, Medellin, Cauca), Los

Rastrojos (Northern Department of Valle, as well as Departments of Quindio, Choc6,

Narifto, and Cauca), and Ejercito Revolucionario Popular Anti-Subversivo de

Colombia-ERPAC (the Eastern Plains, also Departments of Meta, Casanare, Guaviare,

Arauca and Vichada), Los Paisas (Department of Magdalena), Los Machos

(Department of Valle del Cauca), Renacer (Department of Choco), Bloque

Conquistadores (Valle del Cauca), Muerte a Sindicalistas (Barranquilla), Los Macacos

(Departments of Meta, Vichada, and Casanare) and Mano Negra (Barrancabermeja).

These organizations are not completely new, since they include former AUC

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combatants and mid-level commanders who have rearmed, members of old groups

that officially remained active during the peace process and never demobilized (such

as the Bloque Cacique Pipinta), new recruits, criminal gangs, and police and military

officers, as well as even mayors and governors (Hristov 2009a).

7.3.1. The Continuation o f Paramilitary Activities

In July 2009, Colombia’s National Police estimated that non-guerrilla illegal armed

groups had more than 4,000 members and had a presence in at least 173 municipalities

in 24 of Colombia’s 32 departments. Non-governmental estimates of the number of

combatants were as high as 10,200 (HRW 2010). For instance, in the Department of

Cordoba, one o f the regions most dominated by the AUC, the groups Los Urabefios

and Los Paisas are present in all of the department’s 32 municipalities (Semana

201 Id). Human rights agencies and social movements have reported that these groups

engage in extortion, smuggling of resources, drug-trafficking, forced displacement,

selective assassinations, social cleansing and various forms of attacks and intimidation

against social movements, activists, and Leftist students and academics (Hristov,

2009a).

In April 2006, a paramilitary body, previously unheard of, appeared on the

horizon by threatening the life of the journalist, human rights defender, and son of a

former UP senator, Ivan Cepeda and his driver. The Autodefensas Campesinas Nueva

Generation sent a death threat on April 30, 2006, which read as follows:

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 The reason for our existence is more valid than before, the defense of liberty
and Colombian democracy, and until the last rifle belonging to the guerrilla,
oppressors of the Colombian people, is put down, we will continue in arms,
combating the guerrilla, utilizing all the means we have at our disposal. For a
free, honourable, just and peaceful Colombia. We are all members of self-
defense groups. Autodefensas Campesinas Nueva Generation (ACNG) (AI
2006a).

On May 8, 2006, the Jose Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective (Corporation

Colectivo de Abogados Jose Alvear Restrepo), received a threatening e-mail, of which

copies were also sent to the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia

(Organizacion Nacional lndigena de Colombia, or ONIC), the Latin American

Institute of Alternative Services (Instituto Latinoamericano de Servicios Alternativos,

or ILSA), the CUT, and the Colombian Platform of Human Rights, Democracy, and

Development (Plataforma Colombiana de Derechos Humanos, Democracia y

Desarrollo). The authors of the e-mail warned these organizations that “our homeland

no longer wants to have any knowledge of these guerrilla groups, the FARC or ELN

or anything else that resembles the Left, socialism or disguised communism”. The

message also stated that “we are making clear to you the AUC were our base and have

completed one phase of their service to the people of Colombia, and once the

processes of demobilization have been completed, we are now the present and future

of the Colombian state for years to come...we are present in 21 rural and urban

areas.. .and we operate in a variety of forms” (AI 2006b)

The 2006 Human Rights Report by the Christian Peacemakers Teams informed

o f the emergence of two groups called Aguilas Negras and the La Mano Negra, which

have been responsible for attacks against social movements’ leaders and human rights

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defenders. While they have been active in many regions of Colombia, they have been

carrying out especially large numbers of selective assassinations and social cleansing

in the city of Barrancabermeja, Department of Santander. Members of these groups

have also been offering services as private security guards employed by various

companies, as well as the gasoline cartel that steals gas from the government ducts in

the region known as Cienaga del Opon. There were 71 homicides and nearly 1,000

people were displaced as a result of the operation of these groups in 2006 in

Barrancabermeja (Christian Peacemakers Team 2006).

In Buenaventura, Department of Valle del Cauca, the Aguilas Negras,

Autodefensas Campesinas del Pacifico, and Bloque Conquistadores, have been

responsible for assassinations, limiting the transport of basic food products, impeding

the free movement of people, subjecting residents to forced searches, and imposing

prices on food in the city’s main markets. Food vendors and fishermen have been

obliged to pay taxes to these groups. Between January and May 2007, 265 people

were assassinated in Buenaventura; 20 of them were women (CINEP 2007).

On August 6, 2011 in the rural area of the municipality of Tierralta, Department

of Cordoba, 40 armed men arrived in the neighbourhood of Paila and massacred six

young men. This was the fourth massacre in the year 2011 carried out by the “new”

illegal armed groups. Manuel Wilches, who lost his son and two sons-in-law, said

“This assumption that it [the violence] is gangs against gangs is false. We are

peasants, and they killed my young ones” (Semana 201 Id).

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 7.3.2. The Myth o f BACRIMand the Invisibilization o f Paramilitarism

These “new” illegal armed groups have been labeled by the Colombian state with the

acronym “BACRIM” which stands for bandas criminates or criminal gangs, presumed

to be at the service of drug-trafficking. According to a statement by the Colombian

Ministry of Defense in March 2006, “...these delinquent gangs are in many cases

hired by FARC and in other cases are a product o f the recruitment carried out by drug-

traffickers who seek to form their private security groups” (Restrepo and Franco,

2007: 66). Moreover, in March 2006 the government’s High Commissioner for Peace,

Luis Carlos Restrepo, claimed that these groups “...are not self-defense [i.e.,

paramilitary]. What we have in various areas of the country are very small emerging

criminal organizations which are managing illegal crops ... these organizations are

completely dedicated to drug-trafficking and on many occasions also combine this

with extortion. We cannot call them self-defense” (Restrepo and Franco 2007, 66).

During his presidential speech at the National Police Commanders Summit on January

30, 2007, former President Uribe ordered that it should no longer be spoken of

paramilitarism (Restrepo and Franco 2007, 66). Subsequently, key figures form the

Colombian state military, such as Colonel Ricardo Restrepo Londono (El Tiempo

2009) - one of the official experts on BACRIM - as well as members from the

National Police, political analysts, and mainstream media, all declared that existing

armed groups are small in size and concentrated on the administration of illegal

businesses and not on an anti-insurgency fight.

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 What do the media say about all this? It is true that Colombian media (especially

those that claim to be politically neutral and analytically-oriented such as Revista

Semana) have made public some of the confessions of detained and extradited

paramilitary commanders that illustrate past connections between the AUC and

politicians or the AUC and the state military. However, the key word here is past.

While the public’s attention is consumed by shocking revelations about past deeds of

the para-state partnership, which most often become known in the form of scandals

(such as parapolitica [para-politics], falsos positivos [false positives], and chuzadas

[illegal interceptions / surveillance]), the ongoing present re-consolidation of

paramilitary groups and their terror strategies continues unchallenged and

unacknowledged. The word “paramilitary” is used only in the context of events that

took place prior to the demobilization.

There is a similar tendency even with human rights organizations. For instance,

in a March 2010 report by the UN High Commission on Human Rights, under the

section “Violations of International Humanitarian Law”, only two headings appear.

One is “Violations by State Forces” and the other “Violations by the Guerrilla”. There

is no mention of “paramilitary”. Surprisingly, a similar approach has been taken by

Verdad Abierta - an independent media outlet and research centre. One cannot

overestimate the wealth of material that Verdad Abierta has to offer. However, there is

one problem: under the heading “History”, it lists four stages of paramilitary

development, with the last stage being the demobilization period (2003-2006), giving

the impression that paramilitarism, as such, no longer exists. Once again, the language

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of the Colombian state’s ideology, which insinuates a rupture between the past and

present and erases the paramilitary from the country’s present violent landscape, has

indeed been so powerful and prevalent, that it has had an effect even on one of the

very few media dedicated to denouncing the human rights violations by the

paramilitary and the state. In sum, according to official state discourses, media, and

some human rights agencies, paramilitary groups no longer exist and the term

paramilitary has been definitively replaced with the label criminal gangs to refer to

any non-guerrilla armed group. With the invention of BACRIM, the government has

managed to virtually erase the presence of the paramilitary from the picture of the

armed conflict. The Colombian state is not alone in its fabrication of the end of

paramilitarism. Academic writings can reinforce this myth through de-historicized

fragmented characterizations of the paramilitary. Such writings were discussed in

Chapter Three.

The disappearance or invisibilization of paramilitarism, as a discursive strategy

used by the state and some scholars, bears some similarity to the abandonment of the

subject of political violence during the post-war reconstruction and peacebuilding

period in Central America starting in the 1990s until present. In this context, broadly

speaking, parallels between Central America and Colombia can be drawn in terms of

the continuity in existing forms of repression as well as the proliferation of some new

ones, the shift in the dominant security discourse particularly with regards to the

justifications offered for repressive forms of social control, and the ultimate purpose

that all of these have served. Pearce (1998) argues that in Central America, beginning

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in the early 1990s, Cold War ideology around the communist threat was gradually

replaced by issues around drug-trafficking and organized crime. After the peace

accords in El Salvador (1992) and Guatemala (1996), the new sources of disorder

were no longer the guerrillas but rather criminals, drug mafias, and youth gangs.

These became the official target of the state’s coercive apparatus. In reality however,

political violence carried out by parainstitutional armed bodies linked to the state

military has persisted in these two countries and thus, the process of democratization

has been accompanied by the systemic violation of human rights particularly among

peasant movements and human rights defenders. Moreover, in recent years, new

security initiatives, such as CARS I (discussed in Chapter One) have been put in place,

the aim of which is to enable partnerships between the state military and police on one

hand, and private armed groups on the other, under the slogan “public-private

partnerships”. The ultimate purpose that such security projects serve remains

essentially the same as it was at the beginning of the post-war period in the 1990s - to

advance economic liberalization and enable the penetration of national economies by

global capital. As Pearce (1998) remarks, the debates around institutional, electoral

and political reform that were part of post-war reconstruction were linked to

discussions around economic privatization and structural adjustment. The state and the

local elites allowed the political participation of previously excluded groups in return

for their acceptance of capitalist modernization and renouncement of agrarian reform

and other wealth redistribution demands.

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 In sum, the invisibilization of the subject of political violence in Central

America from mainstream media, state discourses, and large part of the academic

literature, has served the purpose of obscuring the continuation of the political

character of a considerable portion of the violence enacted by state and

parainstitutional actors against those who contest the neoliberal model, while allowing

for the introduction of a novel justification for state-sanctioned violence (fighting

organized crime and drug-trafficking). In a somewhat similar fashion, in Colombia,

the introduction of BACRIM plays a twofold purpose: enabling the disappearance of

the paramilitary and its links to the state (i.e. political violence) as well as providing a

pretext for the continuing expansion and enhancement of the state’s coercive
1
apparatus both quantitatively and qualitatively ' which in turn secures the conditions

for further capital accumulation.

7.4. Behind the Veil of BACRIM: Dispossession and Repression

This section demonstrates why illegal armed groups labeled BACRIM are

paramilitary in nature and not merely criminal gangs.

7.4.1. Leaders and Members o f Illegal Armed Groups

In many cases, groups that are deemed by the government to be merely criminal

gangs, such as Los Rastrojos and Aguilas Negras, are led by and composed of former

152 Of course in the case of Colombia, unlike Central America, the existence of the guerrilla continues
to be the main element of the state’s security ideology.

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AUC fighters. The Aguilas Negras is an organization that has been terrorizing the

civilian population in different parts of the country since the AUC demobilized. It was

founded inside the official demilitarized zone of Santa Fe de Ralito during peace talks

with the government in 2005 by Carlos Mario Jimenez, alias Macaco, an AUC

commander responsible for numerous massacres (Semana 2009c). The Aguilas

Negras comprises former fighters of the Bloque Central Bolivar and three of its

leaders in 2007 were former AUC members. Leech (2009) quotes one of the leaders of

the Affo-Colombian movement on the Pacific Coast (Proceso de Comunidades

Negras, or PCN), as saying “Only the name is different. They are the same people.

The top commanders have gone; the new commanders are those who previously were

second and third-level commanders” (31). According to him, new paramilitaries

collude with the army and the local political establishment just as before (Leech

2009).

In a similar fashion, soon after the demobilization of Rodrigo Tovar alias Jorge

40 and his men of the Bloque Norte, another armed group, Los 40, was bom. Some of

the fighters who used to belong to the paramilitary organization led by Diego

Fernando Murillo alias Don Bema formed the group Los Paisas. Former combatants

who used to work for paramilitary chief Heman Giraldo Sema created Los Nevados.

All of these organizations are active on the Caribbean Coast (Semana 2007b). It has

been estimated that over 50 percent of the chiefs BACRIM groups are former AUC

members (Semana 201 lc).

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 There is evidence showing that various important former paramilitary leaders

currently in jail continue to coordinate illegal activities. In August 2007, various

recordings of conversations between jailed paramilitaries at the High Security Prison

of Itagui and their men at large were made public. One of these was a discussion

between Elkin Triana and another member of his organization outside of jail, known

as El Mono, about the sale of narcotics. Another conversation took place between

paramilitary member alias Goyo in the Itagui jail and a member of his paramilitary

organization who called him on his cellular phone to give him a report on the re­

armament of his men and the taxation of residents of various neighbourhoods in

Medellin by members of this group (Semana 2007a).

7.4.2. Relationship between the State’s Coercive Apparatus and Illegal Armed

Groups

The profound penetration of major state institutions by paramilitary power, illustrated

in the preceding chapter, remains in place today. State involvement through

complicity, tolerance, collaboration and direct participation in paramilitary activities

has not ceased. Colombian police and military personnel collaborate and often directly

participate in the operations of the so-called BACRIM groups as they did with the

AUC in the past. For example, the group Los 40 was formed as a former police officer

Miguel Villarreal Archila, alias Salomon, brought together demobilized paramilitary

fighters as well as members of the state police and armed forces. On August 31 2007,

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when 50 members of Los 40 were arrested, it was discovered that 18 of them were

active police officers (Semana 2007b).

In 2011, it was found that the leader of Los Rastrojos, alias Sebastian, had a long

list of active police, military, and DAS officials on a payroll. In a period of only four

months, such officials had received payments from Los Rastrojos that totaled

approximately $360,000 (Semana 201 Id). O f the 24 Los Rastrojos members captured

in Choco in May 2011, there were seven active police officers, two sub-officers from

the Navy, a CTI investigator, a secretary from the municipal court, and a municipal

council. In 2011, the police dismissed 300 officers for connections to BACRIM

groups and DAS dismissed 30 of its agents for the same reason. In the same year, 350

army members and 12 prosecutors were under investigation for links to illegal armed

groups. In 2010, the CTI captured an army colonel and a lawyer employed in the

Fiscalia who for two years stole army weapons and other equipment and sold them to

BACRIM (2011a).

Politicians’ alliances with paramilitary organizations have also been a constant

feature of the post-demobilization era. For example, the governor of Guaviare, Oscar

L6pez, who was elected in 2007, has had a close relationship with paramilitary

commanders Vicente Castafio and Pedro Oliverio Guerrero Castillo, alias Cuchillo

(died in 2010). The armed bodies under the command of these two paramilitary chiefs

have helped Lopez obtain thousands of acres of land in the department of Casanare

and to win the 2007 elections, despite of scandalous evidence against him (Semana

2009a). In another example, the political project of paramilitary groups in the

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Department o f Choco continued after 2006 as part of the “Pact of Singapur” (Pacto de

Singapur) where the paramilitary leader alias El Aleman, by funding the electoral

campaign of Julio Ibarguen Mosquera and administering repression against his

competitors, ensured that this paramilitary-friendly politician becomes the governor of

the department for 2003-2007. The same paramilitary groups later supported

Patrocinio Sanchez Montes de Oca who became the subsequent governor of Choc6 for

2008-2010 ( Verdad Abierta 2012c). Between 2003 and 2007, Matias Oliveros del

Villar, former mayor of El Banco, Department of Magdalena, along with his wife,

used to oblige all employees of the municipality to give 40 percent of their monthly

salary to paramilitary groups in the area (VerdadAbierta 2012b).

Since the para-politics scandals which first erupted in 2007, some of the smaller

political parties such as Colombia Viva, Colombia Democratica and Convergencia

Ciudadana, which had large portions of their membership investigated for links to

paramilitary groups, ceased to exist. But the colleagues, families (spouses, siblings,

and children), relatives and friends of those politicians under investigation formed

parties with new names that participated in the 2010 legislative elections. For

instance, former members of the three parties mentioned above created the new party

Alianza Democratica Nacional (ADN). In fact, Juan Carlos Martinez, a former senator

from Convergencia Ciudadana participated in the organization of the ADN even

though he was in prison. Similarly, former members of Convergencia Ciudadana

created the Partido de Integration Nacional (PIN) (Salas 2010). This practice of

recycling para-politicians by allowing that they be replaced by family members and

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friends, has not been limited only to the smaller parties. For instance, Marta Curi de

Montes, member of the Conservative Party, who aspired to become a senator in 2010,

is the daughter of Nicolas Curi who had been sentenced to four years in prison for

involvement with paramilitary groups, and is also the wife of William Montes who

was implicated in the para-politics scandal but was absolved. In another example,

Arleth Casado, wife of the former Liberal congress member Juan Manuel Lopez who

had been sentenced to 6 years in prison, became a candidate for the Senate in 2010

(Semana 2010a).

Another example of a continued presence of paramilitary power inside state

institutions can be detected in the practices of INCODER. As demonstrated in Chapter

Six, through various mechanisms INCODER has been in fact legalizing land theft by

issuing land titles to paramilitary chiefs for parcels they have acquired illegally, while

revoking the land titles of the victims of paramilitary terror. Since the demobilization

of the AUC, in the absence of any viable state solutions to the problems of displaced

people, many of the victims have joined together to demand land restitution and have

often attempted to recover their lands themselves. INCODER has been one of the key

agents to create and re-enforce obstacles to such initiatives by playing an important

role in the war for land during the post-demobilization era. There are several patterns

that can be observed in the manner in which INCODER has been supportive of the

paramilitary land-grabs since 2006.

In the first case-scenario, families who were forced to flee their homes in the late

1990s and early 2000s, eventually lost their land titles since, according to INCODER,

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they were away from their land for more than five years, which in itself constitutes

“abandonment” of the property.153 Thus, their titles were revoked without

investigating under what circumstances “abandonment took place. This has been the

case of many of those displaced by Rodrigo Tovar in the region of Magdalena Medio

( Verdad Abierta 2009b). In recent years, especially since 2006, as many of these

victims have returned to recover their properties, INCODER in turn claims to have

given these titles to other families in need; but in reality the property appears on the

names of fictitious persons and companies, third parties (the family or relatives of the

paramilitary owner), or testaferros. The end result is that the properties remain in the

hands o f those who had illegally appropriated them.

The second pattern has been one where displaced people have returned to re­

claim their lands and still hold titles. Most of these attempts, however, have been not

only unsuccessful but have had high costs, as community leaders have been threatened

and some have lost their lives. Let us look at the example of the Afro-Colombian

communities in the area o f Curvarado and around the river Rio Sucio, Department of

Choc6. Beginning in 1997, due to combat between the state army and the guerrilla,

and subsequently the arrival of paramilitary forces, at least 15,000 residents left their

homes and land where they used to plant com, yucca and plantains. Ten years later,

some of these people took the brave decision to return. The surprise awaiting them

153 The loss of property rights if the land is deemed to have been abandoned, applies in the following
cases: i) where peasants were allocated grants of small land-holdings by the government between 1960-
1990s and had to make re-payments every month; and ii) in cases where peasants occupied a baldio and
farmed it continuously for at least 10 years after which they were granted a land title.

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was that all their land, including where their homes and community cemetery used to

be, was cultivated with African oil palm. The present plantation workers live in

nearby shacks made out o f wood and plastic without any basic sanitation, and use the

community’s cemetery as an outdoor toilet. This is not an isolated case. In the

Department of Choco, 29,000 hectares of land to which Afro-Colombian communities

hold collective titles is occupied by agribusinesses; 7,000 of it is cultivated with

African oil palm. Most of the people who had returned with some hope, have given up

and left. But few of them built small wooden shacks in the nearby humanitarian area,

which has been established with the help of the some NGOs and currently are waiting

for the government to intervene so they can recover the land that legally belongs to

them and which is part o f their history and culture. Yet, neither the Inter-American

Human Rights Court, nor state forces, nor INCODER, have been able to revert the

harm already done. On the contrary, leaders of the displaced Afro-Colombian

communities, such as Orlando Valencia and Walberto Hoy os, have been assassinated.

As Ramon Salinas, a 65 years-old man who has been through this whole ordeal

expressed: “I have already endured everything - they killed my brother ... took away

my land, destroyed my town, threatened me, displaced me, and today I am starving”

(Semana 2009d).

A third kind of pattern in the continuation of dispossession in the post­

demobilization era has been one where small-scale farmers who have been forced to

abandon their land and have been living in extreme poverty and hunger on the

periphery of large cities, eventually turn to INCODER asking to be granted a small

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parcel of land on which to plant subsistence crops in order to meet the basic food

requirements of their families. INCODER has often turned down such requests,

stating that they are ineligible for such land grants because a registered a property

already appears under their name (i.e. they are not propertyless). In reality, this is the

very property that the victim was forced to abandon and is now already owned and

occupied by a third party (Agencia de Prensa 2010). In other cases, when peasants

return to their lands with valid titles, INCODER informs them that they owe large

amounts on government loan, since they have not been making payments for a

number of years. This of course is absurd because once the residents were forced to

abandon their land, they could no longer engage in farming activities and make

payments. Nonetheless, if they wish to retain their titles INCODER expects them to

begin paying the unsustainable debt that has been incurred throughout the years.

Facing financial ruin, their only option is to sell their land to the first offer made to

them, which is something pre-arranged between INCODER and the investor who has

been waiting to take hold of the property.

INCODER has continued to play a part in processes of land theft, many of

which originated before the demobilization of the AUC and have continued after 2006

as stolen properties change hands. Frequently, many of the small-sized properties that

were amassed by paramilitary commanders and their families and allies through

forced displacement, were subsequently joined (since displacements of numerous

small-scale farmers took place on neighbouring plots). The newly formed large estate

was then registered under the name of a mock company (i.e. a company only

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registered on paper but without any real operations). The company (owned by the

paramilitary) in turn sold the estate at a high price to a reputable enterprise. The buyer

purchased in good faith, without necessarily being aware of the dark origins of the

property and set up cattle-raising, reforestation projects, or cash-crops plantations on

it. This has happened repeatedly in different parts of Colombia. The entire process

involves some legal violations (in addition to the ones mentioned in Chapter Five) and

this is precisely where INCODER comes in. One specific example to illustrate the

point here is the fertile region Montes de Maria, located between the Department of

Bolivar and Department of Sucre. In Montes de Maria, 3,128 small-scale farms whose

owners were displaced were declared by the government as “under protective

measures” since 2004, after the victims officially declared their wish to recover the

lands which they were forced to abandon. The meaning of this status of “protective

measures” is that while investigations are going on with regards to the status of these

properties, the latter cannot be sold unless there is an authorization from its previous

owner (the victim) and an authorization by the Local Committee for Protection of the

Displaced. However, since 2008 INCODER has allowed such transactions to occur

without the authorization of all members of the committee or alternatively has

assigned the property a new registration number so that it would not appear among the

list of “protected” properties {Semana 201 la).

In October 2010, INCODER launched the “Shock Plan for Restitution and

Formalization” the objective of which was to re-establish the property rights of 459

families who had been forcibly displaced from their land. Although under the orders

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of the Supreme Court of Justice, INCODER issued administrative acts to re-establish

the property rights o f 32 families, until today none of these victims have attained the

material restitution o f their properties due to INCODER’s lack of initiative to ensure

that the properties would be vacated by their current owners and made available to the

victims (Castro 2012). In sum, as Colombian Minister of Agriculture Juan Camilo

Restrepo has put it, “INCODER is damaged and needs a total re-engineering”

(Semana 2010a).

The continued involvement of INCODER in dispossession (i.e. present-day

processes of primitive accumulation) is a clear illustration of Marx’s insistence that a

productive system is made up of its specific social determinations - specific social

relations, modes of property and domination, legal and political forms. Instead of the

strict “base-superstructure” interpretation of Marx’s theory, Wood (1981) helps us

understand that the productive base itself exists in the shape of social, juridical, and

political forms - in particular forms of property and domination. INCODER’s

activities demonstrate precisely this point - as a state institution it represents the legal

counterpart o f the system of accumulation present in Colombia. As Marx and Engels

(1846/1968) put it, “The conditions under which definite productive forces can be

applied are the conditions of the rule of a definite class of society, whose social power

deriving from its property, has its practical-idealistic expression in each case in the

form of the state” (60). INCODER is that component of the state which secures the

conditions for the rule and continuous enrichment of the landowning class.

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 As mentioned in Chapter Six, the university in Colombia is another institution

not immune to the influence and control of paramilitary groups. Once again, this

continues to be the case after 2006 as the following examples illustrate. In 2007,

Jaime Alberto Camacho Pico, the dean of the Industrial University of Santander

{Universidad Industrial de Santander), collaborated with a member o f the

paramilitary to compose a list of students, professors, and administrative personnel

who were thought to be “following the steps of the Left”. The dean and some of his

colleagues from the university administration attempted to pressure journalism

students from the Communication and Television Department of the university to

conduct video-recordings of student protests and meetings {Semana 2009c). In 2009,

the names of 15 people from the University of Antioquia, including student activists,

appeared on a list signed by the Bloque Antioqueflo paramilitary group that was

circulated among the university community and threatened these 15 individuals with

death. In addition, Alfonso Monsalve Solorzano, the Vice-President of Research at the

University of Antioquia for 2006-2009, used to be paid $2000 US a month when he

was the Dean of the Faculty of Human Sciences, by the former director of DAS Jose

Narvaez for providing information to DAS about suspicious students, professors,

researchers, and PhD candidates, many of whom were later assassinated by the

paramilitary (CJL 2010).

The embezzlement of public funds and the misuse of public facilities, such as

hospitals, by government officials who channeled such resources to paramilitary

groups, have also continued in the post-demobilization era. Between 2003 and 2007

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Angel Maya Daza, former manager of the state hospital Rosario Pumarejo Lopez in

Valledupar, Department of Cesar, had given paramilitary groups access to the

financial and administrative apparatus of the hospital. He and other colleagues

administered payments to the fictitious companies Dismed Ltda. and Ingemedical

which belonged to the paramilitary Enrique Guevara Cantillo of the Bloque Norte of

the AUC. The manager also used the hospital ambulances to transport paramilitaries

as well as their weapons and equipment {VerdadAbierta 2012a).

7.4.3. Activities o f Illegal Armed Groups

According to a 2010 report by Human Rights Watch

The successor groups are committing widespread and serious abuses,

including massacres, killings, forced disappearances, rape, threats, extortion,
kidnappings, and recruitment of children as combatants. The most common
abuses are killings of and threats against civilians, including trade unionists,
journalists, human rights defenders, and victims of the AUC seeking
restitution of land and justice as part of the Justice and Peace Process (HRW
2010, 39).

Two of the principal purposes of paramilitary violence, prior to the demobilization of

the AUC in 2006, were forced displacement and the persecution of social movements.

Both of these were accomplished through the use of terror-based strategies in the form

of threats, harassment, torture, rape, murder, and disappearances. The paramilitary

used to be identified repeatedly by official sources and human rights agencies as the

principal agent in forced displacement and the systematic killings of unionists. If

paramilitarism has indeed been dismantled, as Colombian politicians, the state’s

coercive apparatus, and the media would like us to believe, then one would logically

310
expect that the cases of forced displacement and unionist assassinations would have

decreased significantly. As I have shown, the situation has been quite the opposite.

As noted earlier, displacement has actually been exacerbated since 2006 as

paramilitary operations continue to seize land, which is then transferred into the hands

of cash-crop agribusinesses and mining enterprises or is used for illegal crops

cultivation. Land is also appropriated by paramilitaries themselves, as commanders

like alias Cuchillo, alias Loco Barera, and alias HH, have been expanding their

properties in the departments of Casanare, Meta, Guaviare, Vichada, and Arauca. By

2008, the figures o f forced displacement had reached a remarkably high level,

according to CODHES. From 2006 to 2007, (during the first year after the

demobilization) there was a 38 percent increase in displacement and from 2007 to

2008 there was a 25 percent increase (CODHES, 2009). During the five-year period

after the demobilization (January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2011), 1,512,405 people

were forcibly displaced (CODHES 2012). In fact, the Internal Displacement

Monitoring Centre (established by the Norwegian Refugee Council) declared in its

2007 Global Overview of Trends and Development report, that Colombia, Iraq and

Sudan together account for approximately 50 percent of the world’s displaced people.

Colombia has also earned the rather shameful reputation of being the world’s leader in

homelessness (Wilson 2010). Unsurprisingly, land ownership in Colombia continues

to intensify - in 2010 four percent of landowners controlled 61 percent of the best

quality land ( Verdad Abierta 2010). A study of the University of the Andes has found

that the rural Gini coefficient in Colombia is 0.85 (Semana 2010a).

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 As mentioned earlier, forced displacement is sometimes carried out in urban

areas, as this example from Medellin shows. In the first 10 months of 2009, according

to the Public Ministry’s Human Rights Unit for Medellin (Personeria de Medellin),

2,103 persons were displaced within the city of Medellin, nearly tripling the number

of reports received the previous year.

Table 7.1: Cases of Forced Displacement in Medellin in 2009

Armed Actor Responsible for Displacement* Percentage of Cases
Paramilitary Groups 32
Unidentified Armed Groups 24
Demobilized Paramilitaries 10
Gang members 28
Criminals 4
Army Personnel 1
Guerrilla Groups 1
Source: HRW (2010)
♦Based on victims’ testimonies

Nonetheless, land acquisition continues to be the major purpose of displacement

and therefore, deserves more attention. A considerable part of the paramilitary

violence in the post-demobilization era has been manifested in the re-victimization of

those who had been violently dispossessed by the AUC in the past. This has occurred

through a second wave of displacement (when former victims dare to return to their

homes and occupy the properties) or through the selective assassination of and threats

against leaders and members of movements for land recovery formed by the victims

of paramilitary violence as well as their supporters and those outspoken in favor of

land recovery. Forty-five leaders of various social organizations made up of victims of

paramilitary displacement, were assassinated between 2006 and 2010 (Semana 2010c)

and the headquarters of these organizations were burned down and robbed. Table 6.2

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offers some examples. In San Onofre, Department of Sucre, the land-recovery

struggles by 52 families who were forcibly displaced from their co-operative farm La

Alemania in 2002 by paramilitary group under Rodrigo Mercado Peluffo, converted

them into the target of paramilitary intimidations and attacks, resulting in numerous

deaths. In 2006 some of the families led by Rogelio Martinez, leader of the Movement

of Victims of State Crimes, who had become the representative and leader of the 52

families, returned to La Alemania. Gradually, the rest of the families followed their

example. They all worked on the farm during the day but returned to the town of San

Onofre at night. In April 2007 one of the farmers was found assassinated. In October

o f the same year 30 armed men, including some of those who participated in the

original displacement, entered La Alemania and threatened the occupants.

Subsequently, many refrained from going back to the farm. In July 2008, Martinez

began to receive death threats on his phone. Nevertheless, he and some of the other

families continued to work on the farm risking their lives. On December 24, 2008 in

the town of San Onofre, Martinez was approached by one of the demobilized

combatants from the Bloque de los Heroes de los Montes de Maria who accused him

of creating too much trouble for the paramilitary with his talk about stolen land and

mass graves. In January 2009, armed men approached Martinez and threatened him

again.

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Table 7.2: Assassinations of Leaders and Supporters of Victims of Forced Displacement 2007-
2011
Name Social Position / Occupation Date of Place
Assassination (Department)
Yolanda Leader of the Popular January 2007 Cordoba
Izquierdo Organization for Housing
Freddy Abel President of the Committee January 2007 Cordoba
Espitia for the Displaced of Cotorra
Valdiris Padron Leader of die Displaced of February 2007 Antioquia
Pueblo Nuevo de Neclocli
Osiris Amaya Teacher from the Wayuu March 2007 La Guajira
indigenous group and a
defender of the displaced
Jose Sosa Leader of the Displaced in May 2007 Valle del Cauca
Buenaventura
Luis Miguel Leader of the Displaced of May 2007 Sucre
Gomez Montes de Maria
Francisco Leader of the Peace Community May 2007 Antioquia
Puerta of San Josd de Apartado
Manuel Lopez Leader of the Organization for June 2007 Bolivar
Displaced People
Dario Torres Coordinator of the Humanitarian July 2007 Antioquia
Zone of Alto Bonito
Miguel Orozco Leader of the Displaced of Tumaco August 2007 Narino
Julio Cesar Member of the Foundation May 2008 Valle del Cauca
Molina Nuevo Amanecer of the Displaced
of Cartago
Azael Leader of 27 Forest Protector June 2008 Cordoba
Hernandez Families in Tierralta
Martha Obando President of the Association of June 2008 Valle del Cauca
Displaced Women
Alexander Leader of the Legion Afecto- July 2008 Antioquia
Gomez Retomo
Juan Jimenez Leader of the Displaced July 2008 Antioquia
John Correa Member of the Committee for the July 2008 Caldas
Defense of Human Rights
Walberto Leader of the Community of October 2008 Chocd
Hoyos Curvarado
Benigno Gil President of the National Peasant November 2008 Arauca
Table
Carlos Cabrera Leader of the Displaced of Arauquita November 2008 Arauca
Jaime Gaviria Leader of the National Peasant Table December 2008 Chocd
Alejandro Pino Leader of the Displaced in Process February 2009 Antioquia
of Land Recovery
Ana Isabel President of the Municipal Committee April 2009 Cdrdoba
Gomez of Families of Victims of the Conflict
Antonio Leader of the Association of Internally June 2009 Bolivar
Blandon Displaced Afro-Colombians

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Table 7.2: Continued
Name Social Position / Occupation Date of Place
Assassination (Department)
Jose Betancourt Member of the Peasant Association of July 2009 Antioquia
Bajo Cauca
Jesus Guacheta Indigenous leader May 2009 Cauca
Argentino Diaz Leader of the Displaced Peasants of January 2010 Choc6
Curvarado
Alberto Valdes Leader of the Association of Victims May 2010 Antioquia
for the Restitution of Land
Rogelio Leader o f the Movement of Victims of May 2010 Sucre
Martinez State Crimes
Alexander Coordinator of the Association of Victims May 2010 Cauca
Quintero of the El Naya Massacre
Luis Socarras Wayuu indigenous leader July 2010 La Guajira
Jair Murillo Leader of the Association of Internally July 2010 Valle del Cauca
Displaced Afro-Colombians
Beto Ufo Pineda Leader of the Organization Nueva Florida August 2010 Cauca
Alvaro Montoya President of the Board of Community August 2010 Antioquia
Action of San Jos£ de Apartado
Hernando Perez Leader of the Association for the September 2010 Antioquia
Restitution of Property and Land of Urata
Edgar Bohorquez President of the Association of United September 2010 Arauca
Displaced People
Oscar Maussa Leader of the Cooperative of Farmers of November 2010 Bolivar
Blanquicet
Yonnel Villamil Member of the Foundation January 2011 Tolima
Nuevo Amanecer
Andres Arenas Member of the Foundation January 2011 Tolima
Nuevo Amanecer
Eder Verbel Leader of the National Movement of March 2011 Sucre
Roacha Victims of State Crime
David de Jesus Leader for the Restitution of Lands in Uraba March 2011 Antioquia
Goez
Ana Cbrdoba Member of the Women’s Organization Ruta June 2011 Antioquia^
Pacifica de Mujeres and Leader of Displaced
Families in Medellin
Antonio Polo Democratico Party Member of the June 2011 Sucre^
Mendonza Municipal Council of San Onofre

Source: Semana (201 lb)

♦Source: Sanchez-Garzoli (2011)
♦♦Source: WOLA (2012)

After Martinez attended a forum in May 2010 where other leaders of displaced

people, together with NGOs, human rights activists, and government representatives,

discussed the issue of forced displacement, Martinez was shot and killed as he was

315
approaching the farm building in La Alemania on a moto-taxi. With his death, the

number o f peasants from La Alemania killed for trying to recover their land totaled 15

(Semana 2010c).

Threats and killings by the Aguilas Negras and other present-day paramilitary

groups have forced an exodus of families who had been relocated by the government

on farms confiscated from paramilitary drug-traffickers under investigation in the

Department of Valle del Cauca, Cordoba, Antioquia, Sucre, and Bolivar (Semana

2009a).

In addition to dispossession, the other principal paramilitary activity which

continues to take place today is the attack against labour union leaders and members.

On May 5, 2010 several members of the executive of the Valle del Cauca branch of

the Union of Colombian University Employees (Sindicato de Trabajadores y

Empleados Universitarios de Colombia, or SINTRAUNICOL), and members of the

local branch of the Confederation of Colombian Workers (Central Unitaria de

Trabajadores, or CUT) federation, received threatening phone calls and email death

threats signed by paramilitary groups. On May 20, 2010 all members of the executive

committee of the farm workers’ union FENSUAGRO received threatening phone calls

from the paramilitary. On July 18, 2010 Martha Cecilia Diaz, president of the

Santander Association of Public Servants (Asociacion Santandereana de Servidores

Publicos, or ASTDEMP), received threatening phone calls and e-mail death threats

signed by paramilitary groups (ICTUR, 2010). Attacks on the labour movement by the

paramilitary are not limited to death threats nor are the latter the only form of human

316
rights violations unionists face today. During the five-year period January 1, 2007 to

December 31, 2011, 205 unionists were killed (ENS 2011, El Comercio 2012). The

following are few examples.

On July 26, 2011 Rafael Tobon Zea, a member of the National Union of

Workers in Mining, Oil, Agro-combustibles, and Energy (Sindicato Nacional de

Trabajadores de la Industria Minera, Petroquimica, Agrocombustibles, and

Energetica, or SINTRAMIENERGETICA), was assassinated in Segovia, Department

of Antioquia. On 31 July 2011 Wilmer Serna, a member of the National Union of

Agricultural Workers (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Industria

Agropecuaria, or SINTRAINAGRO), was assassinated in Apartado, Department of

Antioquia. On July 31, 2011 Eduardo Fabian Zufiiga Vasquez, a member

SINTRAINAGRO, was assassinated in Apartado, Department of Antioquia. On

August 1, 2011 Over Dorado Cardona, National Secretary of labour issues of the

Colombian Federation of Educators (Federacion Colombiana de Educadores, or

FECODE), narrowly escaped an assassination attempt when armed men attacked him

in Medellin, Department of Antioquia. His bodyguard was wounded in the attack. On

August 30, 2011 Jailer Gonzalez, President of the Association of Peasant Workers of

Tolima (Asociacion de Trabajadores Campesinos de Tolima, or ASTRACATOL),

received a series o f death threats from paramilitary groups in Rovira, Department of

Tolima. On September 1, 2011 Jose Manuel Espinosa Pachon, President of the

National Union of Workers of the National Coffee Federation (Sindicato Nacional de

Trabajadores de la Federacion Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia, or

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SINTRAFEC), received death threats from paramilitary groups in Chinchina,

Department of Caldas. On September 1, 2011 Albeiro Valenzuela Soto, a member of

ANTHOC, received threatening phone calls from paramilitary groups, while attending

a strike by workers protesting against unfair dismissals.

Table 7.3: Number of Unionists Killed 2007-2011

Year Number of Unionists Killed
2007 39
2008 52
2009 47
2010 51
2011 29 *
Total 218
Source: USLEAP (2011)
♦Source: El Comercio (2012)

In addition to labour unions, other social movements have also been targeted by

illegal armed groups. On May 2, 2008 the National Ombudsperson warned authorities

of a threat that has been circulated through a pamphlet addressed to certain media

outlets, NGOs, politicians, and social organizations. The pamphlet stated that the

following list o f people and organizations are a military target: Senator Piedad

Cordoba, the Bolivarian Youth Movement, the Anti-imperialist Brigades, the human

rights Lawyers Collective Jose Alvear Restrepo, Corporacion Sembrar, the

Foundation for Solidarity with Political Prisoners, Corporacion Reiniciar, Corporacion

Yira Castro, Foundation Manuel Cepeda, Asonal Judicial, the Inter-church

Commission for Justice and Peace, CUT, Minga, Fundip, Asomujer, Tao, and

CODHES. Few specific individuals working with the Movement of Victims of State

Crimes, including Senator Ivan Cepeda, were also on the list. At the end of the threat,

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it was stated clearly: “We are not emerging gangs. We are the Aguilas Negras and are

here as an army o f social restoration” {Semana 2009b).

There are plenty of examples illustrating how civilians active in social

organizing who challenge market-oriented policies and projects promoted by the state

and private companies, continue to face risks to their lives and safety as they did

during the AUC reign. In August 2010 in the municipality of San Franciso,

Department of Antioquia, after the realization of an academic forum on land and

water where various social organizations debated the impacts of the proposed

construction of a hydroelectric plant, Aguilas Negras sent out flyers to the community

stating that their actions “...will focus on the municipalities in Eastern Antioquia

where there are still criminals and insurgents”. Moreover, the flyer warned “addicts,

drug-vendors and gossipers” to “correct their behaviour, otherwise they would be

declared a military target” (Semana 2010c).

7.5. Prospects for Justice and Reparations for the Victims of Paramilitary Violence

Combined with all factors discussed so far, impunity has served as a permissive

condition for the preservation and consolidation of paramilitary networks. Let us

briefly review how the Justice and Peace Law, the extradition of paramilitary

commanders to the US, the lack of progress in the prosecution of para-politicians, and

the Victims and Land Restitution Law, have all served to reinforce the image that the

Colombian state seeks to bring justice and reparations to the victims of paramilitary

violence, when in fact the state is incapable and unwilling to dismantle paramilitarism.

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Five years after the Justice and Peace Law was approved, only two convictions have

been made. O f the 31,671 demobilized paramilitaries, two thirds have been pardoned

and have not received any sentences at all ( Verdad Abierta 2012c). From the 10

million hectares of land154 stolen from small-scale farmers by the paramilitary,

INCODER has distributed only 894,000 hectares to displaced people {El Tiempo

2012). It should be noted that this does not constitute land restitution since the

property distributed is not the one that belonged to them, but is rather of poor quality,

remotely located, without infrastructure or a terrain that belongs to a national parks.

Another example of legal measures conductive to impunity and the preservation

of paramilitary networks is the extradition of 14 paramilitary leaders to the United

States in May 2008 where they are in the process of being prosecuted for drug

trafficking. What is presented as a punishment is in reality a move to protect both part

o f the terror apparatus: the paramilitary chiefs and the Colombian state agents

involved in paramilitary operations. Instead of being investigated for crimes against

humanity and war crimes, including some two hundred massacres, the disappearance

of at least forty-nine thousand people, and numerous cases of torture, beating,

mutilation, rape, recruitment and abuse of children, and so on, they are prosecuted for

the crime of drug trafficking. As a result of these extraditions, neither the Justice and

Peace Law nor ordinary Colombian justice can be applied to those responsible form

mass human rights violations; they are also out of the reach of the International Court

154 This is an estimate by MOVICE. The Colombian state’s estimate is seven million (Comisibn
Nacional de Reparacidn y Reconciliacion 2009).

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of Justice because the United States does not recognize its jurisdiction (Hristov

2009a).

The presence o f paramilitary power at all political levels has been so pervasive,

as illustrated earlier, that despite the investigations of paramilitary politicians

underway, the Colombian state is unlikely to cleanse itself of paramilitarism anytime

soon. There are four institutions in charge of investigating the links between

paramilitaries and politicians: the Supreme Court of Justice, the Fiscalia, the Attorney

General’s Office (Procuradoria General de la Nacion) and the Commission for

Accusations against Members of the Chamber of Representatives. But there is very

little collaboration among these four institutions. Through the confessions that some

of the demobilized paramilitary commanders have made, 11,179 politicians,

government officials, and entrepreneurs have been implicated with paramilitary

groups. Yet, there have been very few convictions. For instance, in the Department of

Antioquia, one of the departments with the most para-politics, by 2012, 22 former

Congress members had been on trial but only seven have been sentenced. Of eight

politicians who were known to have committed crimes against humanity, particularly

for having participated in massacres, only two have been sentenced. Due to the lack of

resources and personnel, investigations proceed very slowly and many cases result in

statute of limitations (vencimiento de terminos) as a result of which the case is closed

without any further judicial process taking place. According to judicial investigators,

the businesses that resulted from para-political alliances remain intact. The capture of

the principal leaders does not affect the structures. Even if Congress member (co­
owner o f a business) has been sentenced, the enterprise is not investigated or closed

down since there is no specialized unit in the Fiscalia to investigate the paramilitary

economy (VerdadAbierta 2012b).

Lastly, let us look at the Victims and Land Restitution Law155 (Ley de Victimas

y Restitution de Tierras, Law 1448) which President Juan Manuel Santos signed on

June 10, 2011. One of the most important and most highly debated issues covered by

the law is that of land restitution. This law is presented as a tool that would help in the

restitution of millions of hectares of lands stolen / illegally appropriated through

human rights violations and the return of these to the rightful owners. There is a

considerable skepticism among some of the Left in Colombia towards this promise. It

is my belief that the Victims and Land Restitution Law is just another strategy to

divert attention away from the fact that paramilitary groups continue at this very

moment to engage in dispossession and freeing up of land for the expansion of

agribusinesses and mining operations by local and foreign capital. I will provide here

a short summary of the key shortcomings of this law.

To begin with, the law considers only two million hectares of land to have been

illegally appropriated and there is a big discrepancy between this figure and the

estimate by other social organizations and movements, such as MOVICE, who put the

figure at 10 million. Secondly, victims eligible for land restitution under this law are

only those who lost their land after 1991. Clearly, this excludes hundreds of thousands

155 For more on this law and its decrees, see the government’s website
http://www.leydevictimas.gov.co/

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o f other victims who were dispossessed in the 1980s. Thirdly, victims are expected to

provide precise information related to their land registration and a large part of the

victims no longer have such documents after having to flee their homes in terror and

living in precarious conditions for many years. Fourthly, the law requires the victims

to travel to the region from which they were displaced in order to present their case to

the judge. Many are too frightened to go back, given the continuation of paramilitary

attacks against land-recovery initiatives. Thus, it is very likely that many people

would be impeded from reclaiming their land.

As demonstrated earlier, often the land has passed from the hands of the original

expropriators (the paramilitary) to testaferros or companies or individuals who may

well claim to have bought it in good faith, making the process of establishing the

rightful owner very difficult. In addition, as a report from Amnesty International

(2012) explains

[I]f someone is in possession of land and has developed it, for example for
agro-industrial production, they will only be required to pay a rent to the
rightful owner, unless it can be proved that they stole the land in the first place.
As the vast majority of demobilized paramilitaries are not under investigation
for human rights violations, it is extremely unlikely that many people who
were acting in collusion with them or on their behalf will be exposed, so
proving that occupiers acted illegally is both difficult and rare (16).

Another interesting point that the Amnesty International (2012) report makes is that:

Illegal armed groups have frequently brought in civilians from the area and
from further afield to work on agro-industrial projects on stolen lands. Many
of these workers are forcibly displaced and the Law could result in the
recognition of claims by these workers over the lands they currently work,
possibly at the expense of others who were forcibly displaced from these areas.
.. .The Law does not appear to provide full support to peasant farmers wishing
to return to their lands and engage in subsistence agriculture. Rather, the

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 emphasis appears to be on encouraging peasant farmers to participate in agro­
industrial, infrastructure, tourist or mining projects. In effect, Article 99 could
see the continuation of some agro-industrial projects which were either the
reason for the forced displacement in the first place, or were initiated in the
wake of land theft resulting from human rights abuses (15).

The law stipulates that those who qualify for compensation are the victims of the

armed conflict. This leaves one wondering about those who have been re-victimized

through new waves of displacement in the post-demobilization era. Such people

would not be recognized as victims of the armed conflict but victims of BACRIM (or

criminal gangs) and therefore would not be eligible to make claims under this law. To

conclude, the Victims and Land Restitution Law was never truly intended to bring

about reparations to the victims and reverse the counter-agrarian reform under way in

Colombia. The single most important reason is that the law is based on two false

premises. It rests on the notion that the armed conflict is a thing of the past and that

current armed groups are not paramilitary. Thus, the state renders invisible the reality

that neither the armed conflict nor paramilitarism is over. The problem of forced

displacement and land expropriation cannot be resolved as long as the present

existence of the problem is denied. To believe that the damages of the past can be

repaired by the same system that caused the damages is completely absurd.

7.6. Conclusion

As I have shown, the demobilization process’ lack of authenticity and the rearmament

of many of those who demobilized have served to reproduce the terrain of violence

now characterized by the presence of old paramilitary groups now under new names,

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as well as the formation of new groups founded and led by former AUC chiefs, mid­

level commanders and their security personnel. These illegal armed groups in the

post-demobilization era continue to engage in many of the traditional paramilitary

activities, including the two of special interest in this dissertation - dispossession and

repression. These organizations continue to have access to multi-level support

networks inside major state institutions and benefit from the established practices

whereby state employees facilitate and participate in their military and economic

endeavours.

In the face of all this evidence, we can see that the Colombian state’s invention

of BACRIM is far from being grounded in the reality of the armed conflict today.

While criminal gangs do exist in Colombia, to reduce present-day illegal armed

groups to “criminal gangs” is more than a gross distortion of reality. Criminal gangs

do not have the kind of solid relationship with judicial, political, and military state

institutions that is necessary to secure impunity for their crimes, provide them with

ammunition, facilitate their operations, and convert illegally accumulated wealth into

legal capital. Even “criminal organizations”156 (which is understood to be criminal

activity of more sophisticated organization) is not an adequate term to describe these

156 According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, “organized crime” can defined as "two or more persons
consorting together on a continuing basis to participate in illegal activities, either directly or indirectly,
for gain". The sources of organized crime revenues could be broken down as follows: pornography,
prostitution, bookmaking, gaming houses, illegaljotteries and other gambling, loansharking, and
extortion. Other activities considered to constitute organized crime are: white-collar crime (e.g.,
insurance and construction frauds and illegal bankruptcies), arson, bank robberies, motor vehicle thefts,
computer crimes and counterfeit in credit cards and illegal drugs (Canadian Encyclopedia 2012).

325
groups.157 Most criminals cannot expect systematic collaboration from state

institutions like the military, police, DAS, and INCODER that provide them with the

security and legitimacy to ensure their operations are successful. Criminals also do not

share a common enemy with the state (i.e. the guerrilla) and do not typically attempt

to exterminate the urban and rural labour movement. Clearly, it is time to think about

how to conceptualize the paramilitary as a violent actor and its relationship to the

state, the capitalist classes and processes of land acquisition and capital accumulation

in general. The next chapter proposes a new analytical framework for this purpose.

157 More discussion on this subject and the relationship between the paramilitary and criminal
organizations is offered in Chapter Eight.

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 Chapter 8: Towards a New Analytical Framework for Understanding

Paramilitarism

The way the paramilitary is defined is crucial since it can determine whether the

existence of paramilitarism today is acknowledged or hidden. Throughout this

dissertation, my goal has been to identify properly and analyze a persistent

phenomenon implicated in processes of capital accumulation, the creation of

inequality, the use of irregular armed force, and the perpetration of human rights

violations in an officially democratic country. To be able to adequately capture the

emergence and development of paramilitarism in Colombia, I propose an anti-

ideological analytical framework based on the following guiding principles.

8.1. First Principle: Paramilitarism as a Political, Economic, and Military

Phenomenon

Paramilitarism must be viewed as a multi-dimensional phenomenon that is

simultaneously economic, political, and military in nature. Each of these dimensions

has a specific expression(s) at any given point in time which may later change.

Throughout history, paramilitary operations have included persecution and combat of

guerrilla forces, attacks against civilians perceived as left-wing and/or guerrilla

sympathizers, violent dispossession through forced displacement, and operation of

criminal enterprises. The paramilitary has political presence at all levels of political

institutions as illustrated in Chapter Six and Seven and they support right-wing pro-

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 1eo

neoliberal politicians. Thus, paramilitary activities spill over the political realm of

right-wing ideology associated with maintaining the status quo, the military realm

constituted by the use o f armed force to murder civilians and combat guerrilla forces,

and the economic sphere through the ownership of land, as well as legal and illegal

businesses (see Figure 2).

1581 do not consider the paramilitary to be a political movement since they are a political power already
inside the state.

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 Figure 2: Dimensions of Paramilitarism

ECONOMIC
DIMENSION
-Legal: c o m p a n ie s , lan d

-Illegal: d ru g -traffick in g ,
oficin as

PARAM UTARY

ILITARY D MENSIO
-A rm ed g ro u p s
e n g a g e d in se le c tiv e
killings, m a s sa c re s , POLITICAL DIMENSION
to r tu r e , -P ro -s ta te rig h t-w in g
d is a p p e a ra n c e s , a n d a n ti-su b v e rsiv e
c o m b a t o f t h e g u errilla; id eo lo g y ;
Sicarios a n d O ficinas; -R e p re s e n te d in all
levels o f g o v e rn m e n t.
In te llig e n c e G a th e rin g .

The presence of the paramilitary in all three types of realms is made possible

through the use of violence and the end objective is economic in nature. For instance,

the election of paramilitary-friendly politicians is accomplished through campaigns of

intimidation of voters and assassinations of opposition candidates. The significance of

having politicians who represent the interests of the paramilitary is that economic

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policies, legal procedures around land registry, and military security projects all

facilitate capital accumulation by the those who employ paramilitary forces. Similarly,

if we look at the military realm, the combat of the guerrilla, which implies the use of

violence, is done with the aim of protecting the security and interests of capital. Those

who accumulate capital, whether through legal or illegal means, see peasant

movements, labour unions, and left-wing educators, for instance, as obstacles to the

advancement of their interests as much as they see the guerrilla as an enemy and

consequently, resort to violence whenever necessary to neutralize the threat. Hence,

what appears to be a dichotomy between a political movement (as Romero 2003 saw

the paramilitary) versus a criminal organization that uses violence to gain wealth (as

Duncan 2005 defined it) is false, since the question of whether the paramilitary is after

political gain or material assets has to do with its strategy at a particular point in

history, but not its underpinning motivations, (i.e. enrichment), which have remained

consistent throughout history. Exercising power and influence over political decision­

making is a means to an end. As Miliband (1973) explains:

More than ever before men now live in the shadow of the state. What they
want to achieve, individually or in groups, now mainly depends on the state’s
sanction and support. But since that sanction and support are not bestowed
indiscriminately, they must, ever more directly, seek to influence and shape
the state’s power and purpose or try to appropriate it altogether. It is for the
state’s attention, or for its control, that men compete... (3).

This principle, which enables us to recognize the multi-dimensional nature of

paramilitarism, can help us to challenge the Colombian state’s ideological construct of

BACRIM, which rests on the characterization of the paramilitary (by some

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academics) as a criminal organization. The ideological support for this claim is that

paramilitary units used to have the political objective of defeating the insurgency,

while illegal armed groups today are interested only in illicit enrichment through

drug-trafficking, extortion, and other illegal activities. Drawing on Bannerji (2001), an

anti-ideological analysis is not about replacing “false” content with that which is

“true”, but looking at the social relations shaping knowledge production. It is true that

illegal armed groups today carry out extortion, drug-trafficking and other illegal

operations. Nevertheless, the ideological production here consists of the conjuring act

where a multi-faceted phenomenon is viewed in terms of one expression only at a

given moment in time. Subsequently, these different expressions (from different time

periods) are contrasted with one another and it is concluded that what exists today is a

fundamentally different phenomenon from what was in the past. A closer look at the

recent history of paramilitary development reveals how this is done.

Prior to the demobilization, the paramilitary’s sources of funding encompassed

criminal activities. They worked with and in many cases owned (the way one can own

a franchise) criminal organizations which engaged in the smuggling of gas and

weapons, extortion, assault of vehicles that transport money, condominium and house

robberies, and the operation of casinos, brothels, and live sex show entertainment

establishments. La Banda de los Calbos in Cali and La Banda de la Terraza in

Medellin are two examples of criminal organizations that worked for the paramilitary.

For instance, La Banda de la Terraza used to provide the paramilitary with stolen cars

so the latter could drive the corpses of the victims to the mass graves. Yet, this

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criminal facet of the pre-demobilization paramilitary reality has remained mostly

unspoken of. One of the reasons for this was that the AUC used to present itself to the

national and international community as “a political-military movement which uses

the same irregular methods as the guerrillas. Its members are not terrorists, nor

common criminals...” (Pizarro, 2004: 120). The AUC portrayed itself as an anti­

insurgent armed movement which was not criminal in nature and did not seek private

interest but rather had collective ideals. The purpose of the social discourse of the

AUC was to gain a political recognition as a legitimate force. Some academics, such

as Romero (2000), considered the paramilitary to be a political actor because of its

origin and counter-insurgency projection. Moreover, in order for paramilitary

commanders to receive all the special benefits under the Justice and Peace Law (after

the demobilization process), such as five to eight years in jail for massacres, the

paramilitary had to be perceived as an armed organization with a political agenda.

Emphasizing their criminal characteristics would only have damaged this image.

The situation is exactly the opposite today, once again based on the underlying

interests at stake. Since too much has already been revealed about the state’s

connections to the paramilitary, it is undoubtedly more convenient to create the

impression that all those connections, no matter how numerous and profound, belong

to the past, presuming that paramilitary groups no longer exist today. To this end, the

Colombian state and media pose the categories of “drug-trafficker versus

paramilitary” or “criminal versus anti-subversive”, as being necessarily mutually

exclusive (as a number of authors discussed in Chapter Three had presented them). In

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other words, the claim is that armed organizations of the past were paramilitary

because they were anti-subversive while armed forces today are criminal because they

engage in drug-trafficking. One kind of expression of paramilitarism from the past

(military realm - combatting the guerrilla) is compared to a different kind of

expression (economic realm - drug-trafficking) from the present. One of the

advantages of such an ideological manipulation is that the Colombian state no longer

has the same degree of responsibility to provide support to the victims of forced

displacement or other forms of human rights violations carried out by present armed

groups since these are (according to the state’s definition of BACRIM) no longer

related to the country’s armed conflict.

8.2. Second Principle: Paramilitarism as a Structural Phenomenon

Paramilitarism is rooted in the economic and political structure of Colombian society.

As capitalism evolves, so does paramilitarism. A structural phenomenon implies long­

term or persistent patterns of relationships. Paramilitarism has been intertwined with

the advancement o f capitalism in the form of violent dispossession and repression.

Let’s for a moment look at one of the central features of the current economic

landscape, the importance of which cannot be overestimated - the exacerbating

concentration of land caused by: i) neoliberal policies which have benefited agri­

businesses and foreign companies at the expense of small-scale non-cash-crop

producing farmers whose livelihoods have been destroyed; ii) money laundering

operations of narco-businessmen who have invested their capital in land; and iii)
forcible displacements of populations from areas of strategic importance, enabling

local and foreign companies, big landowners, and paramilitary lords to amass large

territories of the best land in Colombia. In this context of increasing poverty alongside

increasing wealth, many of the dispossessed are forced to grow illicit crops, work for

self-defense / private security armies, or join guerrilla forces. As long as there is a

guerrilla presence, the reliance of large estate owners on private armed groups for

protection, will continue. This trend in turn serves as a pretext for the strengthening of

the state’s coercive apparatus. It is through this self-reinforcing cycle that the civilian

population continues to be drawn into and impacted by the destructive forces of

violence.

In addition to the question of land, increasing wealth inequality in general is a

fertile ground for the persistence of illegal armed bodies. As the gap between rich and

poor becomes more and more pronounced, the struggle of the latter to improve their

situation intensifies. These efforts take two forms, both of which are favourable to the

formation and sustainability of groups of paramilitary nature. On one hand, the joint

struggles of many low-income citizens have given rise to diverse popular movements,

which represent a challenge to the status quo and are therefore a target for repression

by the state’s coercive apparatus and the paramilitary. On the other hand, given the

high levels of unemployment, subsistence opportunities limited to the informal sector,

and low incomes on which it is difficult / impossible to survive, people from the poor

sectors o f society are willing to do anything in order to move upwards on the

economic ladder and attain something resembling the lifestyle enjoyed by the rich.
Many of them see no other option but to resort to common crime, while others join

well-developed organizations dedicated to theft, extortion, kidnapping, and drug-

trafficking. The growth in delinquency and organized crime is paralleled by the

increase in private security and social cleansing operations (which also contract

civilians). As we can see, all of these interrelated socio-economic processes produce

conditions that require violent measures and at the same time provide the human

resources to enact those (Hristov 2009b).

The relationship between paramilitarism and neoliberalism illustrates the

simultaneous existence of cooperation between the paramilitary’s economic and

military structures. Paramilitarism has served an important function in the neoliberal

restructuring of the country. It has helped to implement neoliberal policies or has

facilitated activities promoted by neoliberal politicians. Such examples include:

resource extraction by foreign companies where the paramilitary has been involved in

displacing residents and providing security to companies; export-oriented agriculture

such as African oil palm plantations, where the paramilitary has been responsible for

displacing rural communities; and attacks on labour unions and other movements that

rise up against neoliberal policies such as privatization and labour deregulation.

Ironically, the relationship between paramilitarism and neoliberalism represents a

vicious cycle. The increasing poverty and insecurity, which are the outcomes of

neoliberalism, mean that more human resources are available to be channeled or

recruited into paramilitary networks that can in turn displace more people and

facilitate more capital-friendly development and so on. This is why I argue that the

335
paramilitary is the embodiment o f the use of violence for purposes of capital

accumulation through its two basic functions: to dispossess and to suppress. As

Richani (2007) argues, the neoliberal economic model is consistent with the class

interests of most bourgeoisie factions, including the narco-bourgeoisie, with its

ideological orientation that calls for ffee-markets. Thus, according to him, the

paramilitary, narco-bourgeoisie, and their political allies form a “reactionary

configuration” which applies labour-repressive practices in agri-businesses and other

economic activities they operate. This is why I would like to emphasize here that

reducing paramilitary violence to criminal acts is completely misleading since it

would imply that the violence is merely used to support an illicit activity (such as

drug-trafficking), when in reality paramilitary violence is used to enforce the politico-

economic system in place. If we recognize the deeper underlying structural features of

paramilitarism, we can more easily discern its continuity into the present.

8.3. Third Principle: Dialectical Relationship between the State and the Paramilitary

The relationship between the paramilitary and the state has always been dialectical in

nature, meaning that it is a dynamic two-way relationship where each side shapes and

affects the other’s evolution. It is characterized by flows of weapons, intelligence,

money, and commodities of high monetary value such as illegal drugs, land, and

businesses. All of these sustain a wide spectrum of mutually beneficial activities, the

success of which depends on the collaboration between members from each entity.

The paramilitary’s predatory violent activities generate the revenue, while the state

336
provides the stamp of legitimacy, transforming the illegal into legal (e.g. INCODER

discussed in Chapter Six and Seven). The paramilitary’s terror strategies repress and

attack popular organizing to neutralize those who challenge capital and the status quo

and who, according to the state represent a threat to security, while state forces

provide security back-up and reinforcement for paramilitary operations. The

paramilitary ensures the disappearance of state enemies against whom the state has no

concrete proof, while state employees ensure the disappearance of documents and

witnesses that serve as evidence of the paramilitary’s human rights violations.

This dialectical relationship between the state and the paramilitary is circular in

nature. It began as the state laid the legal and military foundation for the existence of

paramilitarism in the 1960s when it recruited and armed civilians to operate as

paramilitary forces. This outward expansion from the centre (the state) towards

sectors of civil society, reached a new stage in the 1980s as the economically and

politically dominant sectors of civil society initiated the creation of paramilitary

bodies themselves. The latter were outside the official state structure but developed in

a continuous relation to it. The state tolerated them and provided military assistance in

the form of weapons, training, bases, uniforms, transportation and so on. In the late

1990s, by the time o f the unification of these groups under the name AUC, the

paramilitary had reached such a high degree of financial and military power and

territorial control, that it was able to establish mutually beneficial relationships with

institutions beyond the state’s coercive apparatus, such as the criminal justice system

and the political system at all levels. This last development can be depicted as an

337
inward movement where forces from outside the official boundaries of the state (AUC

and other paramilitary groups) penetrated state institutions. To help us conceptualize

this dialectical relationship, it is useful to refer to Jessop’s (1990) understanding of the

state, which according to him “...does not exist as a fully constituted, internally

coherent, organizationally pure and operationally closed system but is an emergent,

contradictory, hybrid and relatively open system” (346).

Two processes can be identified as part of this circular dialectical relationship.

The first has been the decentralization and outsourcing of violence where the state no

longer holds monopoly over the means of violence. This represents what I would like

to call a socialization of the state’s networks of terror, where the state’s coercive

apparatus expands outwards and incorporates civilians into its networks.

Manifestations of this include: the initial creation of paramilitary groups under Plan

Lazo in 1965; the creation of CONVIVIR in 1994; and the civilian informants and

peasant soldiers of the Defense and Democratic Security Program of 2002. The

outcome o f the socialization of the state’s networks of terror has been units that have a

civilian face but nonetheless engage in activities that serve the state’s mission of

security and the preservation of the status quo. Thus, while the means of violence are

no longer solely in the hands of those officially employed in state institutions, they are

used in accordance with the state’s agenda to neutralize and control the “internal

enemy” (i.e. guerrilla and social movements that seek to change the politico-economic

model currently in place).

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 The process I have described here as an outward expansion of the state’s coercive

apparatus and the incorporation of civilians into its networks is accompanied by

another kind of process (which can occur simultaneously) - the inward penetration of

state institutions by paramilitary organizations. In other words, while the state’s

coercive apparatus extends into civil society by involving civilians into its security

operations, the second process enables paramilitary power to exercise influence and

control over the functioning of these institutions and the outcomes of their actions. It

is then no longer only a question of controlling the means of violence but rather most

spaces inside the state. We may call this process the paramilitarization of the state or

alternatively, the institutionalization of paramilitarism. This, however, presents no

danger to the state itself or the status quo since paramilitary power is in essence the

power of the capitalist classes who use violence to advance their interests. Even the

rest of the economically dominant classes who do not directly employ violence to

dispossess or to suppress dissent and enrich themselves, still benefit from the violence

that suppresses the working majority, given the inherent conflict between the

bourgeoisie and the labouring classes. Therefore, the penetration of the state by

paramilitary power is in reality the present-day expression of a long historical pattern

in Latin American history - the state’s lack of autonomy from the elite. Moreover, it is

a direct living evidence of Marx and Engels’ (1848/1987) statement in the Communist

Manifesto: “The executive of the modem state is but a committee for managing the

common affairs o f the whole bourgeoisie” (p. 23).

339
 Figure 3: Dialectical Relationship between the State and the Paramilitary

STATE'S COERCIVE APPARATUS

D e c e n tra liz a tio n D e c e n tra liz a tio n

a n d O u tso u rc in g o f a n d O u tso u rc in g
V io len ce o f V io len ce

GROUPS OF ARMED CIVILIANS GROUPS OF ARMED CIVILIANS

(PARAMILITARY BODIES) (PARAMILITARY BODIES)

Penetration of State Institutions

by the Power of Paramilitary Groups
(Paramilitarization of the State)

This dialectical relationship between the state and the paramilitary blurs the

division between state and civil society and problematizes the scholarly treatment of

these as two distinct areas of analysis. Also it makes more difficult the distinction

between legal and illegal. The founding principle of the state of law - the equality of

all before the law and the illegitimacy of any citizens using force to submit others to

their interests - is destroyed. The existence of paramilitarism gives the state’s coercive

apparatus a peculiar quality - a kind of elasticity or flexibility. As Palacio (1991) put

it,

340
 ...to conceptualize parainstitutional mechanisms as separate from formal
institutional ones gives the mistaken impression that a real dividing line exists
between them. On the contrary, the Colombian State’s effectiveness lies
precisely in its ability to combine seemingly opposed structures and
mechanisms. This is why we argue that in Colombia parainstitutionality points
to State flexibility. Colombia’s particular style of democracy requires such
flexibility (118-119).

The fluid boundary between state and civil society is also something that has been

emphasized by Jessop (1990) in his work on the state in capitalist society.

Above, around and below the core of the state are found institutions and
organizations whose relation to the core ensemble is uncertain. States never
achieve full closure or complete separation from society and their precise
boundaries are usually in doubt. Their operations also depend on a wide range
of micro-political practices dispersed throughout society but concentrated and
condensed in the core of the state. And they also enter into links with emergent
state-like institutions above the nation-state at an inter-state level (342).

Indeed, Colombia’s landscape of violence illustrates this point through the multiple

relations of interdependency among key violent actors.

Figure 4: Interrelatedness among the State, Paramilitary Groups, and Criminal Organization

STATE

PARAMILITARY CRIMINAL
GROUPS 'g a n iz a t io n s

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As mentioned earlier, paramilitary organizations own or control sectors of organized

crime. Drug-trafficking, a typical example of a criminal activity, depends on the

services of the paramilitary. The state has traditionally used paramilitary groups to

carry out its “dirty jobs”. At the same time, the state’s coercive apparatus has assisted

in many ways paramilitary illegal activities, including those linked to narco-

trafficking. At this point it is important to realize that as the paramilitary’s financial

power has grown, these right-wing armed organizations have been increasingly

providing lucrative work for state-employees, especially those in the military and

police, to supplement their salaries. Portraying the paramilitary mainly as an

instrument at the disposition of the state and dismissing the fact that today the right-

wing armed groups provide extra jobs for state-employees, can obscure the

paramilitarization of the Colombian state and the ways in which the two (state and

paramilitary) complement each other. In sum, the paramilitary cannot be seen as a

mere extension o f the state’s coercive apparatus or as an entity totally independent of

it. The two mutually constitute each other.

8.4. Transnational Aspects of Paramilitarism

The development of paramilitarism in Colombia has been partially made possible

through the constant US military aid which has been channeled through the state’s

coercive apparatus into the hands of private armed groups. During the expansion of

paramilitary organizations in the 1980s and 1990s, Israeli mercenaries were present in

Colombia to provide training for the former. In the last 20 years, the increased

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presence of US, Canadian, and European enterprises in Colombia and their interaction

with local resources and labour has been implicated with the use of paramilitary

groups as part of private security operations (as illustrated in Chapter One and Six).

The Colombian paramilitary model is currently being implemented across Central

America under the label of state-civil security partnerships and Colombian

paramilitary fighters have already been recruited in Honduras (as discussed in Chapter

One).The principal social sectors funding paramilitarism - agribusinesses, extractive

industries, and drug-traffickers are members of the global capitalist class or the TCC.

They have a lifestyle characterized by the same trends in fashion, travel, and

entertainment, as the elite from other parts of the world. They have luxury mansions

with domestic servants, private security, and expensive cars, their children study in

elite schools, and they go to Europe and the US for vacation and shopping. As we can

see, with regards to its emergence, funding, and functioning, paramilitarism exhibits

transnational linkages. In addition, as an ideology and a military project, it is presently

being exported to its Latin American neighbours who have not overcome their own

legacy of state-terror.

8.5. Conclusion

The engagement of paramilitary groups in activities that lead to capital accumulation

has not been recognized as capitalist by a considerable part of the academic literature

due to the fact that activities such as drug-trafficking and forced displacement are seen

as external to the sphere of the legal economy. They are regarded as phenomena

343
peculiar to the armed conflict that have no consistent connection to the real course of

capital accumulation. The underlying logic of such thinking is an echo of Weber’s

view of capitalism where only the peaceful and rational acquisition of wealth is

characterized as being capitalist in nature. The analytical framework I have proposed

for conceptualizing paramilitarism helps to re-think the social costs and mechanisms

that sustain capitalism. A complete discussion of the conclusions that can be drawn

from this study is offered in the next chapter.

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 Chapter Nine: Conclusion: The Future of Paramilitarism

Violence has been a central and permanent feature of Colombia’s history up

until the present. This dissertation has sought to contribute a new way of conceiving

the social reality of Colombia’s armed conflict by situating violence within the

context of local and global processes of capital accumulation. In this concluding

chapter, I briefly highlight the principal insights presented in each of the previous

chapters, following which I discuss the broader inferences that can be drawn from this

study about the role of organized private (yet state-sanctioned) violence under

capitalist social relations.

The dissertation began by demonstrating the relevance of the subject of

paramilitary violence beyond Colombia. This was done by looking at: i) linkages

between paramilitary forces and foreign capital; and ii) the use of right-wing violence

as part of processes of land-grabbing as well as the repression of labour and other

popular movements. Here I provided examples of the connections between

paramilitary forces and North American companies operating in the primary-resource

extraction sector in Colombia, the export of the Colombian paramilitary model as the

blue-print for the 2010 security initiative for Central America (CARSI), and the

violent dispossession of the rural population across Latin American.

Chapter Two consisted of an overview of classical and some contemporary

theories on capitalism, the state, and violence, from which I drew basic conceptual

tools to apply to my analysis of the role of violence in Colombia’s political economy.

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Both Marx and Weber’s theories point to the importance of propertylessness (a class

of propertyless people) for the existence of the capitalist relations of production. This

is a crucial point since the creation of landlessness is indeed what lies at the heart of

the Colombian conflict. Both Marx and Weber recognize violence as an essential

element of the state. However, Weber treats the state as autonomous from the class

relations that it serves to sustain, while Marx helps us discern the connection between

the power of the state and the dominance of the capitalist class. Hence, Marx’s

concepts o f class, exploitation, and primitive accumulation formed the foundation of

the theoretical lenses through which the historical development of capitalism in

Colombia was viewed in this dissertation. Weber’s argument about the state as having

a monopoly over the means of violence has also been carefully considered throughout

this work especially since it informs the claims of many contemporary scholars of

parainstitutional violence.

Chapter Three considered the literature on the different modalities of organized

private violence, where paramilitarism has been viewed as one such modality, and

contended that although paramilitarism intersects with other forms of parainstitutional

violence, it is qualitatively distinct. The chapter then considered the question of how

paramilitarism has been theorized and how useful existing conceptualizations are for

understanding not only the Colombian case, but also making broader inferences about

the role of parainstitutional violence under capitalism. After examining three major

approaches (the “weak state”, the paramilitary as a criminal actor, and the paramilitary

as a subcontractor of state-terror), I argued that none of them have been able to

346
adequately situate paramilitary violence within unfolding processes of capital

accumulation and economic globalization.

The empirical material presented in Chapter Four to Seven illustrated that capital

formation and the participation of the majority of the population in capitalist

production on terms that favor the dominant class (while reproducing its own

marginalized position), are inextricably linked to the use of paramilitary violence.

Chapter Four examined the social relations of production, state structure and class

struggles during each major historical period from conquest and colonialism to

neoliberalism. The chapter demonstrated that state and paramilitary violence has been

a continuous and intrinsic element of the history of capitalism in Colombia that has

made possible the progressive impoverishment of the working majority of the

population accompanied by the concentration of wealth and the establishment of

control over resources and political power by a minority. As with most other Latin

American societies, the destruction of people’s sustainable livelihoods by

dispossessing them from their means of subsistence and the continuous transfer of

control over resources (land and other natural resources) into fewer and fewer hands,

have been stable features of Colombia’s history in general. As Molano (2005) has

rightfully put it, the history of this country is a “...history of incessant, almost

uninterrupted displacement” (81).

Chapter Five discussed the legal, military, and ideological instruments that the

Colombian state’s coercive apparatus employs against the civilian population. Chapter

Six documented the evolution, growth and expansion of paramilitary networks

347
between the 1960s and 2006. The chapter illustrated that paramilitarism has had far

reaching consequences with regards to the massive forced displacement of people,

concentration of landownership, consolidation of the presence of foreign enterprises,

and deterioration of labour conditions. It has also been one of the greatest challenges

faced by the Left and those who struggle for social transformation in Colombia.

Chapter Seven attempted to show the sharp contrast between state discourses

insinuating the end of paramilitarism and the reality on the ground, by exploring the

characteristics of the leaders and members of present-day armed groups, the different

forms of human rights violations carried out by them, and their mutually advantageous

relationship with members of key state institutions. All of the empirical material

presented showed that paramilitarism, as perhaps the most creative and intelligent

effort by the state-elite enterprise to counteract revolutionary processes and at the

same time allow the use of violence for the acquisition of wealth, has not been

eradicated with the so-called demobilization in 2006. In order for one to argue that

armed groups today are not of paramilitary nature, one must become completely

oblivious to the following: the ongoing present-day forced displacement; the threats

and assassinations of labour unionists and members of other social movements; the

attacks against victims of past paramilitary crimes (or their families) who have stood

up to demand justice and reparations; the re-victimization of formerly displaced

peasants who have attempted to recover their stolen land; the right-wing tone of the

threats against leaders of popular mobilizations, the insurgency, and those who in the

348
past have been targets of social cleansing operations; and the continuous collaboration

between state officials and members of these armed groups.

Chapter Eight proposed an analytical framework based on three principles that

enable us to grasp the ways in which paramilitarism is the embodiment of the use of

violence for the purpose of dispossession, the exploitation of resources and labour,

and the suppression of dissent. The first principle directs us to look for the economic,

political, and military dimensions of these armed forces at any given point in time.

The second principle points to the long-term recurring / structural features of this

phenomenon. These include the paramilitary’s affiliation with the wealthy sectors of

society, repression of the struggles of those impoverished by the current politico-

economic model, involvement in illegal activities, positive relationship with the state,

and the use o f violence for purposes of capital accumulation. The third principle

highlights the dialectical relationship between this armed actor and the state.

These three principles can also be employed to determine whether a specific

armed actor is paramilitary in nature or not, which can be of considerable significance

given the myriad of parainstitutional actors and high levels of violence across Latin

America today. Moreover, if we hope to eliminate the forces that engage in human

rights violations, we need to understand first the conditions and mechanisms that

sustain them while at the same time making their existence necessary. In other words,

we need to grasp the social embeddedness of armed actors, including the economic

and political linkages they exhibit.

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9.1. Final Conclusions

The first and most important conclusion of this dissertation is about the

relationship between violence and processes of capital accumulation. In order to

elucidate the forces that have enabled the impoverishment of the greater part of the

population and its continuous position of subordination and dependence within the

current hierarchy of power, my analysis exposed the acts of violence that dispossess,

discipline, and keep people inside exploitative and alienating social relations. The goal

was to draw attention to the material motivations guiding the organized use of armed

force on one hand, and the repressive, coercive, and militaristic practices that facilitate

the implementation of market-friendly (and thus elite-friendly) policies on the other. It

was demonstrated that dispossession and labour repression have been the two kinds of

violent practices that have enabled capital accumulation, thus giving rise to three

major structural developments in Colombia’s society: i) the formation of and/or

sustainment of the principal capitalist classes - the landowners, agribusinesses,

extractive industry enterprises, industrialists and drug-traffickers; ii) the progressive

exacerbation o f patterns of unequal wealth distribution; and iii) the implementation of

neoliberal measures, such as the privatization of public enterprises and the elimination

of restrictions on FDI, as well as the consolidation of free-trade agreements with US

and Canada which further enhance foreign companies’ access to Colombia’s resources

and labourforce. In sum, paramilitarism, carrying with it old and contemporary forms

o f dispossession, is part of the social meaning of capitalism.

350
 Secondly, my study confirms the ongoing nature of primitive accumulation as a

geographically and historically pervasive element of capitalism which constantly

seeks to recreate the basic prerequisites for its functioning - access to resources,

labourforce, and markets. The above-mentioned two kinds of violent practices

constitute methods of primitive accumulation that have been underway throughout the

development of capitalism historically and have been especially accelerated as global

capital penetrates deeper into the developing world through the exploitation of

resources and people.

The third insight from this study is that a formally democratic political regime

can co-exist with violence-based regulatory frameworks that often result in the

perpetration of gross human rights violations. As Koonings and Krujit (2004) explain,

this is precisely one of the noteworthy characteristics of contemporary Latin American

societies - the de facto co-existence of formal constitutionalism and electoral

democracy on one hand and the use of force to pursue economic or political interests

on the other. The Colombian case illustrates precisely how this combination is made

possible through the use of paramilitary force. Moreover, given the penetration of

most state institutions by paramilitary power, it is imperative to view it not only as a

military phenomenon but as an institutional ensemble, operating from both within and

outside the state.

Fourth, this dissertation hopes to contribute to the theoretical guidelines for

analyzing the state under neoliberalism. During the last 30 years processes of

capitalist globalization have encouraged or supported the emergence of

351
parainstitutional armed actors as a result of which the state no longer exercises a

monopoly over the means of violence. Nonetheless, far from representing a threat to

state power, these armed actors assist the state in performing its role of guaranteeing

security for private capital (whether local or foreign). Therefore, the decentralization

of violence must be understood not as a sign of state weakness, but rather as a more

efficient strategy for securing foreign investment, protecting local landownership

structures, enabling the further expropriation of small-scale property holders, and

disempowering labour.

9.2. Emerging Themes for Future Studies

This work can serve as a departure point for subsequent investigations of

paramilitarism. We have seen how the latter exacerbates class inequality. However,

considering that class, gender and other forms of inequality mutually sustain each

other, it would be quite useful to investigate how the phenomenon of paramilitarism

contributes to or aggravates gender inequality in Colombia. Such a study could branch

into several directions. One would be to examine how violence against women is used

as a political tool to silence female activists, politicians, and leaders of popular

organizations and consequently to disempower social movements and impede

systemic change. Another would be to consider how the cultural meanings that

paramilitarism promotes encourage the further objectification and inferiorization of

women.

352
 This study also leads to the more general question about capitalism and the well­

being of humanity. Does capital inevitably violate human rights in order to exist? The

Colombian experience challenges the Weberian understanding of capitalism as a non­

violent enterprise. Given the deepening inequality even within developed countries as

well as the increasingly repressive and militaristic measures against dissent, one might

ask whether we are witnessing a pattern where the violent tendencies o f capitalism are

becoming more and more pronounced in core countries the way they already are in the

developing world. Certainly in the case of Colombia, as long as the central feature of

the current politico-economic model is the existence of dominant classes whose aim is

to maintain their power and privileges and enrich themselves by progressively

dispossessing the working class and destroying all forces of resistance, paramilitarism

will continue to flourish.

353
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 ACRONYMS

ACCU Autodefensas Campesinas de Cordoba y Uraba (Peasant Self-

defense of Cordoba and Uraba)
ACDEGAM Asociacion Campesina de Ganaderos y Agricultores del
Magdalena Medio (Peasant Association of Cattle-ranchers and
Agriculturers of Magdalena Medio)
AC IN Asociacion de Cabildos Indigenas del Norte del Cauca
(Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca)
ACIT Asociacion de Cabildos Indigenas de Tolima (Association of
Indigenous Councils of Tolima)
ADN Alianza Democratica Nacional (Democratic National Alliance)
ADUC Asociacion Departamental de Usuarios Campesinos
(Departmental Peasant Association)
Al Amnesty International
ANDI Asociacion Nacional de Empresarios de Colombia (National
Association of Industrialists)
ANIC Agencia Nacional de Inteligencia Colombiana (National
Colombian Agency of Intelligence)
ANTHOC Asociacion Nacional de Trabajadores Hospitalarios y de
Clinicas (National Association of Hospital and Clinic Workers)
ANUC Asociacion Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos (National
Association of Peasants)
ASEDAR Asociacion de Educadores de Arauca (Union of Educators of
Arauca)
ASFADDES Asociacion de Familiares de Detenidos y Desaparecidos
(Association of Family Members of the Detained and
Disappeared)
ASOPEMA Asociacion de Pequefios y Medianos Agricultores del Tolima
(Association of Small and Medium-Scale Farmers of Tolima)
ASTDEMP Asociacion Santandereana de Servidores Publicos (Santander
Association of Public Servants)
ASTRACATOL Asociacion de Trabajadores Campesinos de Tolima
(Association of Peasant Workers of Tolima)
AUC Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (United Self-defense of
Colombia)
BACRIM bandas criminals (criminal gangs)
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
CARSI Central American Regional Security Initiative
CINEP Centro de Investigation y Education Popular (Center for
Popular Research and Education in Colombia)
CIP Center for International Policy
CJL Corporation Juridica Libertad (Juridic Corporation Liberty)

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CODHES Consultoria para los Derechos Humanos y el Desplazamiento
(Consultancy on Human Rights and Displacement)
CONVIVIR Servicios Especiales de Vigilancia y Seguridad Privada
CRIC Consejo Regional Indigena del Cauca (Indigenous Regional
Council of Cauca)
CSN Colombia Support Network
CTI Cuerpo Tecnico de Investigation (Technical Investigative Unit)
CUT Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de Colombia (Confederation
of Colombian Workers)
DANE Departamento Nacional Administrative de Estadisticas
(National Administrative Department of Statistics)
DAS Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (Administrative
Department of Security)
DIJIN Direccion de Policia Judicial (Judicial Police)
ECOPETROL Empresa Colombiana de Petroleos S.A. (Colombian
Petroleum Company)
ELN Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (National Liberation Army)
ENS Escuela Nacional Sindical (National Trade Union School)
ESMAD Escuadron Movil Antidisturbios (Anti-Disturbances Mobile
Squadron)
EZLN Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional (Zapatista Army of
National Liberation)
FALANGE Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Anti-comunista de Guerras de
Eliminacion (Anti-communist Liberation Armed Forces of
Wars of Elimination)
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization (UN)
FARC Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia)
FARC-EP Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—Ejercito del
Pueblo (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People’s
Army)
FDI Foreign Direct Investment
FECODE Federacion Colombiana de Educadores (Colombian Federation
of Educators)
FEDERACAFE Asociacion Nacional de Cafeteros (National Federation of
Coffee Growers)
FENALCO Federacion Nacional de Comerciantes (National Federation of
Traders)
FENALTRASE Federacion Nacional de Trabajadores de Servicio del Estado
(National Federation of State Service Workers)
FENSUAGRO Federacion National Sindical Unitaria Agropecuaria
(Federation o f Agricultural Workers and Small-Scale Farmers)
GAULA Grupos de Action Unificada por la Libertad Personal (Joint

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 Action Units for Personal Liberty)
HDI Human Development Index
HRW Human Rights Watch
IBD Inter-American Development Bank
ICFTU International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
ICTUR International Centre for Trade Union Rights
HE Institute for International Economics
IMF International Monetary Fund
INCODER Instituto Colombiano de Desarollo Rural (Colombian Institute
for Rural Development)
INCORA Instituto Colombiano para la Reforma Agraria (Colombian
Institute for Agrarian Reform)
ISI Import Substitution Industrialization
MAS Muerte a Secuestradores (Death to Kidnappers)
MLN Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional (Movement of National
Liberation)
MNCs multi-national corporations
MORENA Movimiento de Restauracion Nacional (Movement for National
Restoration)
MOVICE Movimiento Nacional de Victimas de Crimenes de Estado
(National Movement of Victims of State-sponsored Crimes)
OCENSA Oleoducto Central S.A.
OFP Organizacion Femenina Popular (Popular Feminist
Organization)
ONIC Organizacion Nacional Indigena de Colombia (National
Indigenous Organization of Colombia)
ORDEN Organizacion Democratica Nacionalista (National Democratic
Organization)
PCC Partido Comunista de Colombia (Communist Party of
Colombia)
PCN Proceso de Comunidades Negras
PDA Polo Democratico Altemativo
PIN Partido de Integracion Nacional (National Integration Party)
PRI Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional
Revolutionary Party)
SACTA Supplemental Agreement for Cooperation and Technical
Assistance in Defense and Security
SIJIN Seccion de Investigaciones Judiciales e Inteligencia, de la
Policia (Department of Judicial Investigations and Intelligence)
SINALTRAINAL Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Industria de
Alimentos (National Union of Food Industry Workers)
SINTRAFEC Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Federacion Nacional

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 de Cafeteros de Colombia (National Union of Workers of the
National Coffee Federation)
SINTRAINAGRO Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Industria
Agropecuaria (National Union of Agricultural Workers)
SINTRAMIENERGETICA
Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Industria Minera,
Petroquimica, Agrocombustibles, and Energetica (National
Union of Workers in Mining, Oil, Agro-combustibles, and
Energy)
SINTRAUNICOL Sindicato de Trabajadores y Empleados Universitarios de
Colombia (Union of Colombian University Employees)
TCC Transnational Capitalist Class
TEXACO Texas Petroleum Company
TNCs transnational corporations
UDA Ulster Defense Association
UGB Union de Guerreros Blancos (White Warriors Union)
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNHD United Nations Human Development
UP Union Patriotica (Patriotic Union)
USLEAP US Labor Education in the Americas
USO Union Sindical Obrera (Oil Workers Union)
UVF Ulster Volunteer Force
WB World Bank
WNU Weekly News Update on the Americas
WOLA Washington Office on Latin America
WTO World Trade Organization

378