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Geoforum 128 (2022) 192–201

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Geoforum

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

The coloniality of power on the green border: commodities and violent territorialization in
Colombia's Amazon

Nicholas. Acosta García a,b,*, Niels. Fold c

to
School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, 41314 Gothenburg, Sweden
b
Department of Geoscience and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, 1350 Copenhagen, Denmark
c
Department of Geoscience and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, 1350 Copenhagen, Denmark

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: The dynamic frontier-making in Colombia's Amazon department of Caquet´ a is the focus of this article. Since the mid-
Coloniality of power nineteenth century, booms and busts of commodity production have been associated with violent struggles as actors
Frontiers
have challenged pre-existing orders and authorities. At different times, the area has been controlled by the Catholic
farmers
Coke
Church, the Colombian state, FARC and paramilitary groups, following the different boom-and-bust cycles of commodity
production. We use this case to theorise on the general mechanisms behind frontier-making.
War on drugs
Reading the frontier literature through the lens of the coloniality of power, we draw four interrelated categories to access
frontier-making analytically: commodity production, dispossession, hegemon, and subjectivities. These are used to
explain six distinct periods in the political economy of Caquet´ a and its spatial reconfigurations. We argue that current
issues of distrust on the state, violence, and land grabbing, are best understood as part of a historical continuum of
multiple actors keeping the area as a frontier space.

1.Introduction
What is the difference between a colono and a peasant?
In so many words, campesino is [someone with] a sedentary life de-cision […] the colono
is more nomadic than sedentary and always has an intentionality of 'I arrive here with the
perspective of heading somewhere else', so it is usually associated with the expansion of
the agricultural frontier.
(Interview with Juan, community leader from Bel´en de los Andaquíes)
The only difference between campesino and colono is that [the latter], enters for the first
time in an empty land to open it up […] if I don't have anything and I have to open up a farm
then I am a colono , I come to colonize the land because I do not have it.
(Interview with Diego, former FARC commander)
constitute categories through which people identify themselves (Ram-írez, 2011), and through
which they both resist and situate themselves in social hierarchies. These nouns also follow the
political economy of commodity production. Land, forests, people, animals, and plants have been
commodified in Caquet'a in cycles of boom and bust. An epicenter of coca farming and drug
trafficking, Caqueta has been one of the regions worst affected by the country's 60-year-long
'
armed conflict. For decades, FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia –
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group, and AUC
(Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia – United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia), a right-wing
paramilitary group , disputed the control of the territory and the illegal economies of cocaine
production. With the support of US anti-narcotics agencies, the Colombian army also attempted
to exert control in the area for decades. Since the 2016 'Final Agreement to end the armed
conflict and build a stable and lasting peace' (Peace Agreement) with FARC, the region has
been slowly moving away from its violent past given that a new set of conditions have arisen
from the agreement that promote a new kind of relationship between the state and its citizens. In
effect, this means that if this space becomes territorialized, there is potential to create an inclusive
model of peace in an area currently affected by the active presence of armed ac-tors, the illicit
economies of cocaine, deforestation, violence and

Settlers, Indians, peasants, coca growers, and ranchers are nouns employed to refer to
people in Colombia's Amazonian department of Caqueta.
'
As in other parts of the country, these denominations

* Corresponding author.
'
E-mail address: nicolas.acosta@bitacora.se (Nicholas. Acosta García).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.11.025
Received 16 February 2021; Received in revised form August 24, 2021; Accepted 18 November 2021
Available online 3 January 2022
0016-7185/© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
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Nicholas. Acosta García and Niels. Fold Geoforum 128 (2022) 192–201

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marginalization. and display' (Palsson, 1996, p. 68). In the Colombian Amazon, and the
In this article, we explore the complex spatial and economic history of the Colombian Amazon in general, the tropes of 'civilisation' and 'wilderness' have
'
Amazon department of Caqueta as a frontier space, in order to reveal the mechanisms been used to justify the often violent interventions (Larsen, 2015;
that have enabled and sustained it Ramírez, 2011; Taussig, 1987). This is the case as dispossession and
through time. This region is interpreted here as a socially produced disenfranchisement of indigenous peoples and the peasantry, has not
frontier (Watts, 2018), which reflects the overlapping and often meant their exclusion from society, but their reclassification as bearers
conflicting interests and ideas of the state's project of development, of of 'less than' or 'different' rights than the general population (eg
local elites, of social movements, of armed groups, and of local Anderson, 2009; Wade, 2016).
peoples. In particular, we trace the spatial and economic history of The frontier can be understood as a spatial dimension where social
Caquet´ a paying attention to the 'coloniality of power' as discussed hierarchies are actively produced, shaped and configured. Our theo-
by Aníbal Quijano (2000). His concept registers the ways Latin rization of frontier-making considers some fundamental questions in
America integrated into global capitalism by classifying peoples into the changing political economy:
hierarchies based on labour, gender and race, as well as through
establishing control over the resources for social reproduction and • What commodity is being produced, and by whom?
control over biological reproduction. By casting the frontier as a space • Who was disposed of?
of coloniality, we develop a theory of frontier-making to explain the • Who is setting the rules of the game?
spatial, economic and social dynamics involved in commodity extraction at the • What
edgesare of the
statesocial and ecological effects of such commodity
control.
Our argument is organized in the following way. After this intro- production?
duction, we elaborate on the principles of the theory of frontier-making.
The section that follows provides an in-depth and extensive overview Answers to such questions require investigation of the frontier space;
of the economic history of Caquet'a in order to show the relations that its determinants and drivers; the tensions, crises and transitions, and their
have facilitated the making of the frontier. Because of the extensive consequences; the struggles and resistance to the new regimes, and the
time scope of our analysis and in order to formulate our argument, we regimes' responses to contradictions.
rely to some extent on generalizations regarding the emic ways in Crafting the frontier implies (i) the reworking of a pre-established order that both
which mul-tiple actors present in the region identify themselves. disposes of someone (ie peasants, indigenous people) thereby making those resources
However, it is worth noting that within each of such categories there is available for accumulation; (ii) the establishment of a new regime for its economic
internal dif-ferentiation according to class, gender and race. We draw exploitation (ie slavery, extractive capitalism); and (iii) the shaping of people's subjectivities
'
three main conclusions from analyzing Caqueta as a frontier space. in relation to the commodity that is being produced (eg rubber farmers, ranchers, coca
First, contemporary forms of exclusion and integration reflect long- growers etc.). At the frontier, accumulation by dispossession proceeds through the
lasting social structures that facilitate commodity production and resource extraction.
reworking and reproduction of the coloniality of power. For example, most of the people
These structures point to the need for frontier geographies to attend to that migrated to Caqueta that identified themselves as settlers (colonisers, settlers) were
'
the ways in which the coloniality of power produces social hierarchies forcibly dis-placed farmers (campesinos) from other parts of the country looking for land
and spatial differences. Second, in frontier-making violence and to start a new one. Colono is an in between subjectivity (Molano, 1987; Ramírez, 2011,
accumulation by dispossession are deeply tied to attempts to render p. 36): it connects a hegemonic system that excludes the subject through dispossession
spaces governable for resource extraction, and the local people are and forced displacement, but at the same time allows them both to take possession of
only second-ondary to the economic interests of the powers that be (ie, land at the edges of state power – often disregarding the people who may already live
state and non -state actors). Current issues of deforestation and land there (Dest, 2021) – and to make a livelihood through the production of a commodity (eg
grabbing can be understood through the lens of frontier geographies land, coca, timber, cattle). In this sense, colono can be un- dered to belong to a hierarchy
driven by eco-nomic interests in resource extraction (ie coca production of social difference, to constitute a form of labor that converts the rainforest into agricultural
and speculation over land) and a struggle for control over space. And land, to be a category through which people self-identify, and yet include different kinds
third, what could be read otherwise as state failure, appears here as a of people under the same rubric, such as peasants, farmers, or former city-dwellers. In
combination of purposive action by the many actors in keeping the area as athisborder
process four constitutive elements of a theory of frontier-making become visible.
space.
'
This article draws heavily upon secondary sources on Caqueta and is complemented
by fieldwork conducted in the area in between 2018 and 2020. Field data was collected
as part of development research project in the area aimed at understanding livelihoods of
local farmers. Main source data includes four months of participant observation and 30 in-
terviews with stakeholders (farmers, authorities, environmental activists, businesses, First, the very fact that the newcomer is settling in a remote area
human rights defenders, armed actors). This array of data is complemented with a survey situates them in a worse position in the social hierarchy in terms of access
of 91 farmers in three municipal-ities concerning livelihoods, production, and participation to services, markets and infrastructure than someone who is in a
in local as-sociations and development initiatives. We use pseudonyms and omit territorialized space. The work of decolonial scholar Aníbal Quijano is
identifying characteristics of respondents for confidentiality. All in-terviews were conducted useful to interpret the hierarchical classification of peoples. Building on
in Spanish and were translated to English by the first author fluent in both languages. world systems theory, he argues that global capitalism is organized around
the legacy of colonial structures (Quijano, 2007a). During colonial times,
in the center, the labor-capital relations were organized through wages
while in the periphery it was through slavery, serfdom, petty commodity
production and reciprocity (Quijano, 2007a, pp.
2. A theory of frontier-making 121–122). This historical structure laid out during the conquest of the
Americas produced hierarchical categories that are malleable to the
Frontiers are usually defined and treated as the binary opposite of contingencies, necessities and conflicts that capitalist accumulation
territories, and as the edges of industrial capitalism and the 'civilized' entails (Quijano, 2007b, 2000). Coloniality is persistent because it is
world. In contrast, spaces that become ordered, controlled and the reconfiguration of colonial forms of domination integrated to the
managed are understood to be territorialized. Naming a space as a capitalist world-system (Grosfoguel, 2011). For Quijano, the
frontier is an act of hierarchisation. The vocabulary of frontiers denotes construction of modern hierarchies of Otherness is intrinsic to the
the Othering of a space so that it can be domesticated, conquered, ways post-colonial societies in Latin America are constituted. In this
setting, sport
expanded upon and exploited 'for the diverse purposes of production, consumption, the control over these subjectivities is a central element of social power.
193
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Nicholas. Acosta García and Niels. Fold
It is as much a way people make sense of and self-identify with their
in-dividual experience, as it is a historical condition in the relations of
power between and among peoples (Quijano, 2001, p. 5). Reading the
literature on frontiers through the lens of coloniality of power allows us
to focus on the ways in which the structures to control the resources
for social reproduction are set in place through the production and
shaping of subjectivities and hierarchies, as we will elaborate next.
Second, the frontier is closely linked to the production of a com-modity.
The concept of frontier has been used to refer to spaces of capitalist
expansion where resources are made available for commodi-fication (eg
Barbier, 2005; Cleary, 1993; Moore, 2000), or through the creation of new
'fictious commodities' (Polanyi , 1944). The identification, recognition and
labeling of a resource frontier implies a social and physical space that is on
the verge of capitalist relations and forces of production. Cleary (1993)
working in the Amazon, notes the frontier expansion of capitalism onto
peripheral regions as incorporating formal and informal economies. Similarly,
Tsing (2015, 2005) describes un-regulated dynamics of forest-agrarian
activities as 'frontier capitalism' (2005, pp. 28–31), naming its spatial
dimension 'pericapitalist sites' (2015, p. 65) that in her vocabulary refers to
spaces that are simultaneously inside and outside capitalism. Moore (2000,
p. 412) takes the frontier as 'specific kind of space defined by the forward
movement of the (capitalist) system. Further expansion is possible as long
as there remains non-commodified land, and to a lesser extent labor,
“beyond” the frontier.' Therefore, literature on resource frontiers has focused
on the production of commodities such as palm-oil (Walker et al., 2009),
sugar (Moore, 2000), oil (Watts, 2018), cattle (Ioris, 2018) and even people
commodified through slavery (Kuan Bahamon, 2015). The effects of frontier
'
capitalism, Barbier (2005) argues, can lead to boom and bust patterns that
create resource-dependent economies, and may point to one of the causes
of uneven development.1 What is important here is that the commodity
production (with its boom-and-bust cycles) is facilitated by a particular form
of social and spatial reordering. In the frontier new relations of production
are determined, which serves as the basis for the consolidation of power and
of domination. Subsequently, people formally and informally associate and
identify themselves with the new spheres of production that intersect with
already existing hierarchies of class, gender, race and ethnicity. While social
reordering is reflected in the shaping of people's subjectivities following a
commodity (eg cau-chero, quinero), spatial reordering takes place through
the disposition of someone else's resources or property (eg indigenous
territories).
Third, the newcomer is able to settle because someone else has been
expelled from that land. The contemporary understanding of accumulation
by dispossession elaborated by Harvey (2005, 2003) implies the
continuation and spread of accumulation practices that Marx described in
his classical account of agrarian transformation in England, where the
primitive accumulation that preceded capitalism involved the expulsion of
the peasantry through enclosure. In frontier literature, Rasmussen and
Lund (2018, p. 389) note that frontier spaces 'are intimately connected to
commodification through processes of dispossession involving en-
closures, land grabbing, and other forms of primitive accumulation.' Watts
(2018) suggests that competition in capitalism drives the search for new
frontiers, constructing them socially. Capitalism, he argues, deploys the
capacities of its wealth, power and science to appropriate unpaid work
and energy elsewhere. Hence, in the literature, commodity production
often comes accompanied with some sort of dispossession (eg land,
forests, pastures), which in turn allows someone else to accumulate
wealth (Harvey, 2003). Our point here is to highlight that frontier-making
and accumulation by disposition are co-constitutive
processes.
And fourth, that a hegemon provides the support, symbolic or
otherwise (ie legitimacy, investment, infrastructure), for the settler's
1 been and what does it tell us about the mechanisms behind border-
See also Barham and Coomes (1994) for the rubber boom and bust in the Amazon.
194
Geoforum 128 (2022) 192–201
claim to the resources of production. As described by Gramsci (2005),
hegemony is a fluid process of struggle that make alternative political
arrangements seem beyond the horizon of possibility. A hegemon's
dominance is something that happens in the everyday where it is constantly
reproduced, defended, and adapted, as well as resisted and challenged. In
other words, hegemony is to some degree a negotiated process (Ballv´e,
2020, p. 8). The concept introduced by decolonial philosopher Santiago
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Castro-Gomez (2007) –the 'hubris of the zero point'– helps explain the
symbolic moves of the hegemon in dis-possessing someone. His concept
refers to the hubris in the hegemon's claim to enact history, produce territory,
bring progress, and create knowledge – at the expense of bodies, peoples
and natures that are thereby disposed and appropriated, used and erased.
At the frontier, a new hegemon upends a previously established social and
spatial order involving the loss of rights, and new restrictions and regulations
(Ras-mussen and Lund, 2018, p. 388). In this sense, scholars have focused
on studying the techniques that render frontier spaces governable. For
example, Peluso (2018) argues that borders are not only spaces claimed by
state domains of authority but can also be relational spaces that can be
simultaneously inside and outside of state power. Colloredo-Mansfeld and
others (2018, p. 451), take frontier-making as 'the undoing of community self-
governance [...] and opening of an undeveloped [space].' For Watts (2018),
the frontier is a form of social space where legitimacy and authority are
defined and contested. Thus, frontiers emerge in the spaces where regimes
of control are replaced by new ones (Rasmussen and Lund, 2018). To
describe this process, Uribe (2017) building on Agamben's (2005, p. 25)
notion of 'being outside, and yet belonging' defines frontiers as spaces of
'inclusive exclusion,' where certain rights are suspended in order to bring a
space under state control.
ˆ
Similarly, Cote and Korf (2018), employing Kopytoff's (1987) concept
of resource frontiers as 'institutional vacuums,' signal the way a political
center justifies intervention into a frontier in order to render it
governable. Yet as Ballv´e (2012) shows, instead of vacuums, these
are spaces of articulation among actors, including the state, which
create the conditions necessary for primitive accumulation, capitalist
expansion and state formation. Our interest in the hegemon's claim to
establishing re-gimes of control lies in its relationship with people at
the frontier, where exploitation and domination become legitimized,
and even naturalized, through structures of authority (Quijano, 2000).
Frontier-making not only implies dispossession, but also a legitimized
hierarchical classifi-cation of an Other so that they can be stripped
from property, rights, and resources. In turn, these often-violent
interventions and attempts for control in frontier spaces can create
situations of local resistance and distrust in the new regime.
To make sense of the spatial and social reordering taking place at
the frontier, we use these four interrelated principles as categories –
namely, subjectivities, commodity production, dispossession and
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hegemon– to interrogate the political economy We construct a historical
of Caqueta.
narrative for the region seeking to flesh out the reiterative redrawing of the frontier
throughout different periods. By doing so, we outline an approach to examine how
frontiers are repeatedly redrawn for commodity production and eventual capitalist
expansion.
3. Amazon, the green frontier
Few places have contained in the popular imagination such mysticism and awe as
the Amazon. It is after all the planet's largest rainforest and is considered as a biodiversity
hotspot of global importance (Myers et al., 2000). The department of Caqueta, stretches
'
with over
from the Andean foothills to the west into the Amazon 89,000
rainforest km2, several
and includes
rivers that eventually feed into the Amazon River.
Turning the rainforest into a space of commodity production has
played a central role in the territorial expansion of the nation states
that claim part of its riches. Yet, just how significant has this process
making? The frontier has changed over time as resources become exhausted;
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Nicholas. Acosta García and Niels. Fold
However, it has left behind a social structure and a legacy of the
hierarchies of Otherness that facilitated such exploitation. In what
follows, we provide an in-depth overview of the political and economic
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history of Caqueta showing the way at the frontier, the coloniality of
power guides the interplay between commodity production,
dispositions, hegemons and subjectivities.
3.1. Colonizing the Amazon
In the nineteenth century the recently independent Spanish colonies
following uti possidetis juris (as you possess under law) began the
process of territorialisation. This came accompanied with the creation
of new frontiers areas for resource extraction and exploitation that
would help expand the domain of the new post-colonial states. As the
Andean re-publics inherited the geopolitical struggle of Spain and
Portugal over the control of the Amazon, they sought to defend their
territorial claims by contesting the Brazilian westward expansion
through military, eco-nomic, and cultural means (see eg Romero, 1983 ; Tambs, 1974).
The frontier was not only produced in terms of accumulation by
disposal of natural resources, but included the appropriation of
indigenous bodies and their exploitation through slavery (Table 1). The
frontier was drawn along the Spanish institutional legacy structured
around a double nation system: one nation for indigenous people and
one for the colonizers (Ng'Weno, 2007, pp. 74–75; Thurner, 1997).
Since 1843, the Colombian state (a hegemon), created a legal framework
commending the colonization of the indigenous peoples to the Catholic
church, first through the Jesuit and later with the Capuchin orders, in what through large estates (latifundio) was established. Notably, in 1933 the government
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today is Caqueta and Putumayo departments (Kuan Bahamon, 2015).
This included state support for the missionaries in order to concentrate
the Indians (indigenous population of Andaquíes, Huitotos, Coreguajes,
and Carijonas) in towns and 'civilizing' them; In practice, this included
forced education for children, forced labor for adults, and physical
punishments among others (Artunduaga, 1987; Bonilla, 1968).
Law 89 of 1892 extended the task to the Catholic Church of governing
'civilized' indigenous people. In effect, the law stripped them of their
economic rights to own and sell property as well as voting rights (Kuan
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Bahamon, 2015). The difficult access to the region that complicated the
Church's colonization, would be overcome when the first economic boom
of Quinine began.
Quinine is an anti-malaria compound extracted from the bark of the
Amazonian tree Cinchona spp. In 1883, the production of quinine
accounted for a third of Colombia's exports (Domínguez, 2005). Com-
panies owned by the country's elite used indigenous slave labor to
extract quinine, which would then be taken to the Atlantic Ocean by boat
through Brazil (Reyes, 2009; Sinchi, 2000; Uribe, 2017). During this
time, as settlers (settlers) moved into the region, several towns were
founded, first along the Andes' foothills and later inside the rainforest
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(CNMH, 2017; Vasquez Delgado, 2015). Towards the 1880s, the
growing production of quinine in plantations in Java and Sri Lanka
'
collapsed its prices (Domínguez and Gomez, 1990). While many
Colombian companies went bankrupt, others moved into rubber
extraction. Among them, was the Reyes Company, owned by the family
of Rafael Reyes (president between 1904 and 1909) who dreamed of
colonizing the Amazon and its 'savage' and 'cannibal' peoples by
creating a series of roads, waterways and an intercontinental railway
Table 1
First frontier space (1850–1930): Summary.
Main Commodities Quinine and rubber for international markets
Production
Dispossession Indigenous peoples' lands
Hegemon Catholic Church (Jesuits & Capuchins missions)
Main subjectivities Indians (Andaquíes, Huitotos, Coreguajes, and
Carijonas)
Quineros
rubber tappers
Geoforum 128 (2022) 192–201
(Domínguez, 2005; Uribe, 2017). After Quinine's collapse, Rubber became
the engine for colonization, and the Capuchin Mission was commended
with building the road infrastructure to cross the Andes (Kuan Bahamon,
2015). Notably, the Peruvian company Casa Arana gained a monopoly in
rubber production through enslaving, exploiting and killing over 40,000
indigenous people in the region (Pineda, 2000, p. 100; Sinchi, 2000). For
Taussig (1993), this is a situation of mimesis where the colonial view of
'savagery' of the Other reflects back the barbarity of the colonists. At the
time, several texts denounced the dire situation of the indigenous
population, including a book by Roger Casement published in 1911 in
England that prompted British capital to pull out from the Peruvian
'
company (Kuan Bahamon, 2015, p. 50).
Additionally, rubber production in the Amazon began declining as
rubber plantations in Malaysia and Sri Lanka were more profitable.
When the international rubber prices finally collapsed in the 1920s, the
government granted land titles to former entrepreneurs so they could
begin cattle ranching. The titles were conditional upon the construction of
road infrastructure, thus setting up the basis for the local elite (Artunduaga,
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1987; Domínguez and Gomez, 1990; Sinchi, 2000).
3.2. Dispossessing the Colonizers
In 1912, the Coloniser Society of Cagu´ an, with offices in the nearby city of Neiva in
Huila, was created with the purpose of providing cattle to the failed rubber workers in
exchange for clearing up the forest and planting pastures for cattle (Domínguez, 2005;
Sinchi, 2000). During the thirties and forties, the cattle ranching model of development
granted 5000 ha of land to the Lara family, which would later become the estate known
as Larandia (Sinchi, 2000). This estate would become the country's largest farm with over
60,000 ha through the disposal of small land-holders in its surroundings (Vasquez Del-
gado, 2015). Larandia was praised as the model farm for cattle ranching development
'
that conservative governments in the 1940s tried to replicate across the country.
Ganaderos (ranchers) emerged then as a new subjectivity from commodity production,
and a new hierarchical order (Table 2). While for the successful few, their new economic
power placed them at the top of the social order, for the unsuccessful majority that could
not scale-up their production, having cattle meant a new livelihood of petty commodity
production.
As the indigenous peoples that used to live in the forest were either
enslaved, killed or retreated further into the rainforest, the frontier was
drawn along the lines of nature/culture; between the human planted pastures
and the 'empty' natural rainforest. The front of settler expansion was along
the villages the Capuchins had created, where the new ranchers cleared
the forest and planted pastures (Artunduaga, 1987; Brücher, 1974).
Additionally, the war with Peru (1932–1933) over the Amazonian border
and hegemony between the two countries, prompted the Colombian
government to invest in road infrastructure connecting the Andes to the
Amazon as well as building military bases, such as Tres Esquinas in the
south of Caquet´ a (Sinchi, 2000). This road infrastructure, as Vasquez
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Delgado (2015) argues, imbricated the interests of the cattle ranching elite,
military control, and an anti-peasant bias.
The state's agricultural policy that promoted agrarian expansion
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through latifundios, was not unique to Caqueta:throughout the country
Table 2
Second frontier space (1920–1960): Summary.
Main Commodity Production Meat and hides for domestic markets
Dispossession Lands of former rubber tappers' (smallholders)
Hegemons The Colombian Military
Catholic Church (Capuchin mission)
Main subjectivities Indians (surviving indigenous peoples)
Livestock farmers
Colonists
Farmers
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Nicholas. Acosta García and Niels. Fold Geoforum 128 (2022) 192–201

smallholders were forcibly displaced (CNMH, 2017). In the 1950s, rainforest into productive land (Artunduaga, 1987; Brücher, 1970).2
across the country farmers organized in armed resistance as liberal Two subsequent development programs were financed by the US'
and communist guerrillas questioning state hegemony. The extreme 'Alliance for Progress' program for development and communism: Caquet´ a
'
violence that characterized this period gave it its name of La Violencia' (The1 (1963–1971) and Caqueta 2 (1972–1976 and 1976–1980) in the three
Violence). Families of several farmers we interviewed arrived in Caqueta aforementioned colonization fronts (Artunduaga , 1987; Marsh, 1983; The
during this time escaping from the horrors of the conflict in other parts programs promoted sugarcane, oil palm, and rubber farming. However,
of the country to start a new colonists. Among them, there is Benjamín, cattle ranching became the most common economic activity as it was the
a stocky man in his fifties whose family has been successful in raising easiest way for settlers, as haphazard agents in the state's project of
cattle, farming fish, and producing fruit – a diversification strategy to territorial control of the Amazon, to appropriate land after slash and burn
'
navigate the booms and busts of commodities. He identifies as a camp- (CNMH, 2017; Vasquez Delgado, 2015) . Unsurprisingly, the programs failed
pesino and as indigenous, as his grandfather was from the Nasa people in achieving their development objectives as farmers were unable to make
who live in the Andes, which shows some of the complexities involved profits, there was a general lack of state services, political instability, and
in people's subjectivity. When asked about his origins he explains: slow land titling led to widespread protests (Martínez Basallo, 2015).
'Initially our grandfather migrated from Cauca during the time when
liberals and conservatives were fighting. It was war […] They were
going to kill him because he was a liberal, so a friend helped him escape
' 3.4. Non-state hegemony
the area. First, he moved to Huila and He leftto[Cauca]
then with his wife and his
Caqueta.
five children, leaving behind his land and everything else.'
The lack of governance meant that the area was fertile ground for
In 1958, a political agreement for a power rotation scheme called the
National Front (National Front) between the conservative and liberal parties cocaine production, drawing a new frontier between legal and illegal
economies. The new frontier created subjectivities associated with coca
brought the conflict to a halt and demobilized the liberal guerrillas. However,
farming (ie cocaleros – coca farmers, campesinos that farmed coca;
the agreement also foreclosed the political arena for any other political
raspachines – coca leave pickers) (Table 4). Even though most of these
parties (CNMH, 2017). A few years later, in 1964, the state violently
same colono-farmers had spearheaded the state-sponsored settling
repressed the communist guerrillas in nearby department of Tolima, giving
' process into the rainforest and had tacitly given the state support for their
rise to FARC who set base in northern Caqueta (Pizarro Leongomez and
' claim over the Amazon, the emerging subjectivities were rapidly placed at
Moncayo Cruz, 2015). As latifundio owners resisted land reforms, demobilized
the bottom of the social hierarchy: they were criminalized and repressed
guerrillas were given land titles in peripheral regions such as Caqueta,
' by the state. The first coca bonanza was between 1977 and 1982 (Sinchi,
thereby expanding the agricultural land into the rainforest (Marsh, 1983).
2000), drug traffickers provided seeds and technical assistance to farmers
limiting themselves to an intermediary role. The boom allowed some of
the farmers to improve their livelihoods and invest in livestock (Hough,
3.3. State hegemony through development 2011). This kind of investment derived from coca profits continues today,
some of the farmers explained to us that it is not uncommon for them the
The next phase of territorialization continued through development sporadic cultivation of coca as a way to invest, diversify and expand their
interventions and centralized planning (Table 3). This included Law 2 farming. Cattle ranching expanded to the extent that by 1984, 95% of the
of 1959 through which the state declared the Amazon as a protected titled land had been turned into pastures feeding over 1.2 million cows
'
forest in an attempt to act as a hegemon to appropriate the rainforest (Sinchi, 2000, p. 119; Vasquez Delgado, 2015). Farmers began reducing
with the purpose of biodiversity conservation as well as for future coca production as cocaine prices fell, the state restricted chemical
resource exploitation (Arocha, 2004). The first development intervention precursors for coca paste, the military confronted guerrillas, and
was in 1959, Caja Agraria (Agricultural Bank) gave a group of former paramilitary groups moved into the area (Jaramillo et al., 1989).
guerrillas and forcibly displaced people symmetrical plots of 50 ha in
three fronts of colonization: Maguar´e in the municipality of Bel´en de The second coca boom (1984 and 1986) came as drug traffickers
los Andaquíes, La Mono in El Doncello, and Valparaíso which later from the Andean city of Medellín created large coca-producing enclaves
became a municipality in its own right (Eidt, 1967). While the program was unsuccessful
attempting to monopolize production and fend-off FARC by financing
Table 3
paramilitary groups (Vargas, 2003). Drug traffickers' incursion created
Third frontier space (1950–1970): Summary.
unequal trade conditions for cocaleros by the enclave areas and threat-
ened FARC's territorial control (V´ asquez Delgado, 2015). Within FARC
Main Commodities Rubber and Palm Oil for international markets
there was debate between opposing coca farming, and thereby alienating
Production
Dispossession Indigenous peoples' lands Table 4
Lands of smallholders of Caquet´ a
Fourth frontier space (1970–2000): Summary.
Lands of Andean smallholders (forcibly displaced and
resettled in Caquet´ a) Main Commodity Production Cocaine for international markets
Hegemons Colombian state Colombian state lands
Dispossession
Liberal and communist guerrilla groups Hegemon FARC
Subjectivities Indians (surviving indigenous peoples) Main Subjectivities Livestock farmers
Livestock farmers
Colonists
Colonists
Farmers
Farmers Cocaleros and Raspachines
' '
'Spontaneous Settlers'

cessful in its development objectives –as it did not consider terrain

features (eg water availability), or training for the settlers (many of
2
whom were city dwellers who had never worked the land), and did The Capuchin Mission's political influence came to an end shortly after the publication of a
not provide basic infrastructure– it succeeded in territorialising the book by journalist Victor Bonilla (1968) that questioned the legacy of the Mission and their abuses

area through the 'spontaneous' settlers (Artunduaga, 1987). These of the indigenous population including physical punishments, land expropriation and forced labor;
he has labeled the Mission's power as a state within the State.
were forcibly displaced peasants from other regions that arrived at
the same time as the selected colonists and were more successful in turning the

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Nicholas. Acosta García and Niels. Fold
ating their social base, or accepting cultivation under strict regulation of budget of $1.3 billion which were used for antinarcotic operations, support
production (Reyes, 2009). According to Diego, a former FARC com-
mander we interviewed, 'FARC were never coca exporters [...] FARC
regulated the coca market and conditioned the prices to the traffickers
in order to help the campesinos [...] But also sustaining a price that
covered the [campesino's] labour, we levied a tax,' called grammage.
By the end of the eighties FARC had become a hegemon controlling
'
coca production in Caqueta (Carroll, 2011). Coca brought large sums
of money to the region that circulated in the local economies. For
example, a farmer we interviewed recalls that even though he was not
directly involved in coca production, his farm could not keep up with
local de-mand for food, fish, poultry, eggs, and meat consumed by the
raspachines workforce. For those involved in coca production, it was a
good business harvesting every 45 days and being paid in cash by
traffickers. However, it was and still is a risky activity leaving already
vulnerable farmers at the mercy of armed actors, state or otherwise. It
is worth noting that as Ciro Rodriguez (2016) argues, campesinos'
decision to cultivate coca is not only related to land conflicts (access
and ownership of land) but also to the difficulty experienced cultivating
those lands due to poor soils, lack of infrastructure , and lack of state
support and services. For farmers, the coca economies are often the
only development path available to overcome the precarious conditions in whichher two
In the nineties increased coca production in the departments of and
'
producer,Putumayo turned Colombia into the largest cocaine pro-Caqueta
surpassing Peru and Bolivia (USGAO, 1999). In addition, the government
adopted neoliberal policies from the 'Washington Consensus' (Apertura
Econ´ omica – Economic Opening, in the national discourse) which
promoted a shift from producing cattle for meat and hides towards pre-
condensed milk, precursor of powder milk for export (Hough, 2011). By
the mid-nineties, 80% of Caquet´ a's population lived from coca farming
(ElTiempo, 1995; Sinchi, 2000). In consequence, the government
introduced Plante (Plan nacional dedevelopment alternative – National
plan for alternative development), as a 'contingency strategy' complementary repressive force using the farms as a scenario for armed combat, and
to the military efforts against drug trafficking (DNP, 1994). The program
intended to diversify farmers' incomes by 'alleviating the unstable working
and income conditions that farmers would be put under, once the illicit
economy disappears, or that it be-comes drastically reduced (DNP, 1996).
Plante was criticized and opposed by most coca growers and campesinos
alike as the herbicides used in aerial spraying also killed subsistence crops treated as the enemy, while rich mestizo and white farmers enjoy protection from
(DNP, 1996; Semana, , 1996; Walsh et al., 2008). Furthermore, widespread
protests involving 200,000 coca growers in Caqueta and Putumayo
'
prompted the government to include development plans, such as
electrification, roads, education, and healthcare in its policy (ElTiempo,
1996). As Ramírez (2011) argues, these social mobilizations showed
cooperation between the state and civil society to oppose violence, and
had the purpose of bringing the state that until then was perceived as
absent by the local population.
3.5. Answered spaces
In 1998, the Pastrana government (1998–2002) was elected promising to
seek a peace agreement with FARC (Ríos Sierra, 2016). That same year,
peace talks began granting FARC a de-militarized zone of 42,129 km2 that
included the municipality of San Vincente del Cagu´ an in the northern part of
'
Caqueta (OPPDH, 2010). FARC used the area as center of operations, where
they regrouped and rearmed expanding the area to 54,302 km2 (ElTiempo,
2000). In addition, in 2001 the AUC sent paramilitary groups from the
' Main Commodities
Caribbean to Caqueta combat front in the south of the in order to form a
department attempting to surround the de-militarized zone and marking the
beginning of a new cycle of violence for the control of coca production taxes
(La Open Truth, 2011).
In 2000, the US funded Plan Colombia to counteract what the US'
State Department called 'narco-terrorists' (Livingstone, 2003), which did
not distinguish between and among campesinos, coca growers, ras-
pachines, guerrillas and paramilitaries (Table 5) . The program had a
Geoforum 128 (2022) 192–201
for the peace process with FARC, military assistance and training to
Colombia's armed forces, and economic development in peripheral
regions (Asher, 2009). According to General Parra, who was in command
of the sixth division covering Caquet´ a, Putumayo and Amazon
departments: 'Plan Colombia, provided resources for aviation,
communications, and training, which strengthened the Army […] to attack
the threats, and recover the territory by earning the population's trust.'
When the peace talks collapsed in 2002, the security situation rapidly
deteriorated. FARC, paramilitaries and the army fought for territorial
hegemony affecting all spheres of life in the department. For example, in
2002 one of the mayors was assassinated, and 10 out of 16 mayors left
'
Caqueta fearing for their lives (ElTiempo, 2002).
The military bases built during the war with Peru became the center
of US-Colombia operations from where indiscriminate aerial spraying
of coca farms was coordinated (Lyons, 2016). In addition, Plante,
which was already underfinanced, was scrapped as the country was
undergoing economic recession. In El Doncello, residents experienced
the con-flict as an open war. Gabriela is a woman in her seventies,
she self-identifies as a peasant spending her days attending a few milk
cows, feeding fish in a pond and helping one of her daughters raise
theychildren. She explained that the army harassed her and her
are immersed.
two daughters in the noughties as they were seen as FARC
collaborators: 'They surely thought I was collaborating [...] I think so
because just outside [my house] some army soldiers were killed and
they thought that in here there were guerrillas. It was very hard. They
would come at night and break all the light bulbs and then they would
start breaking the roof. Why? Because people are evil, the state is evil.
I went to the ombudsman in Florence. They told an army Lieutenant to
come and see what was happening, he never came.' Both the word
'trust' in the General's speech and this farmer's experience are not
haphazard. For several farmers we interviewed the army is seen as a
treating farmers as suspects and as potential guerrillas. This projection
of farmers as col-laborators replicates a long-term system of hierarchies
of Otherness following categories of gender, class, race, and ethnicity
(Quijano, 2000). Women, indigenous, and poor campesinos and
campesinas are either placed at the bottom of the state's priorities or
state.
Plan Colombia continued under US President Bush's 'war on terror'
(Livingstone, 2003). Locally, it was combined with newly elected Colombian
Uribe government's (2002–2010) policies, whose 'democratic security'
aimed at FARC's military defeat and ignored the social roots of the conflict.
Armed actors deployed different war techniques attempting to secure
territorial control: While the military dominated the skies, on the ground
armed actors (paramilitaries, guerrillas and the army) restricted all spheres
of life, including social relations and mobility –through curves and checkpoints.
For example, FARC used rulebooks that told farmers how to conduct
themselves (Cancimance Lopez, 2017). Farmers were caught in the middle
'
of the conflict. Most people in these areas suffered the war and were forced
to flee or to endure the moments of conflict, as Lucia explained. She is a
middle age
Table 5
Fifth frontier space (1990–2015): Summary.
Dehydrated milk for international marketsCheese and meat for
Production domestic markets
Dispossession Colombian state lands
Landed property (small and big)
Hegemons Colombian state
FARC
Paramilitaries
Main Subjectivities Livestock farmers
Colonists
Farmers
Cocaleros and Raspachines
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woman from El Doncello, who does cattle ranching as her main liveli- 3.6. A Power swap vs. territorialisation?
hood, and thinks of herself and her family as small-scale ranchers.
When asked about her experience during FARC's presence in the area, she recounted: Before the 2016 peace agreement, according to General Parra, FARC
'
were the ones that set the rules and enforced them in Caqueta (Table 6).
As such, they would control and authorize the exploitation and use of
The morning after the [2006] elections, there were guerrillas '
natural resources (Cancimance Lopez, 2017; Ramírez, 2011). This
everywhere. They locked down the police [in town]. One couldn't
included forbidding logging and timber extraction, hunting and fishing in
buy or sell anything, nor go out […] only [one] neighbor was left
certain times and places and organizing mining activities, thereby shaping
because most of them were gone […] We couldn't cross the road
landscapes at gun-point (Baptiste et al., 2017). In addition, as FARC's
because there were landmines […] We cuddled up in a corner in a
Diego explains, they used to organize meetings and resolve local disputes
bedroom […] We collected rain water because people said the
in the villages. According to the Army, however, people lived scared and
guerrillas were poisoning the water.
repressed by FARC.
FARC and paramilitaries set landmines and used road and electrical For FARC's Diego, the peace negotiations in Cuba were different
infrastructure as a means to control space. During our fieldwork in than the previous ones, as they incorporated the army as an actor.
2019 and 2020, nearly 15 years after Lucia's experience, we ran into The agreement had six main points covering: (i) agrarian development
an NGO doing mine clearance in the region. Until recently, local people politics, (ii) FARC's political participation, (iii) end of the armed conflict,
had to contend not only with the left-over explosive devices from the (iv) a solution for drug trafficking, (v) victims, and (vi ) a mechanism for
conflict, but also with poorly maintained roads to take out their public participation through a referendum. On the ground, FARC's sol-
agricultural products to the markets, as these were used by FARC to diers were asked about their opinion concerning beginning negotiations
slow down the army and paramilitaries (cf. Penaranda ˜ Currie et al., with the government. Once the negotiation concluded, FARC held a
2021). Bridges and electrical towers were destroyed by FARC to conference where they internally ratified the agreement. In Caquet´ a,
undermine the state's legitimacy, and in the case of paramilitaries, Diego was tasked with monitoring and verification of the agreements.
In the
dead bodies were left on display to terrorize and control the population (CNMH political arena, the agreement was defeated in a referendum in 2016.
2017).
As the government's democratic security advanced through aerial The government nevertheless ratified the agreement through Congress.
spraying of coca crops in San Vicente and military pressure on coca Shortly after, the guerrillas were concentrated in camps in rural areas
farmers, FARC responded with violent actions against the state and private where they began a process of reincorporation into civilian life.
companies, such as Nestl'e (Reyes, 2009). Nestl´e Corporation had As the army began moving into previously FARC-ruled spaces,
become 'the only viable option for these coca producers turned small- they confronted distrust and a general lack of legitimacy. Years of
scale cattle ranchers' (Hough, 2011: 1030). Nestl´e had built its eco-nomic aerial spraying of coca and subsistence crops had taken their toll. As
regional empire through the expansion of milk-processing infrastructure part of their strategy of 'winning back' the local population, the army
that included the construction of a pre-condensation plant in Florencia in provided basic medical services, airlifted seriously ill patients from the
1974, construction of cooling stations in El Doncello and San Vincente rural areas to the cities, and, in some places, built road infrastructure.
(Nestl´e , n.d.), as well as commissioning smaller milk collection centers These interventions are significant, since most municipalities have
throughout the region to take advantage of the petty commodity livestock very limited economic resources compared with the army's huge
farmers scattered throughout the department. By 2006, Nestl´e had budgets and capacity to reach remote areas. Similar to the repressive
become a milk monopsony working together with Fedeg´ an (Federaci´ on approach taken by the military in Brazil to control deforestation in the
Nacional de Ganaderos – National Cattle Ranching Federa-tion) promoting Amazon (Otsuki, 2013), the army in Colombia was also in charge of
milk and meat production, providing credit and extension services, as well 'expelling' new settlers from national parks (eg ElTiempo, 2019a). In
as helping farmers improve pastures (Hough, 2011; Sinchi, 2000). remote areas, the army became the only face people get to see of the
state. In effect, the army can be seen as one armed actor (a hegemon) replacing
Nestl´e's economic dominance made it a target for FARC's actions. FARC's repressive approach towards the local population, that included
First, in 2006, FARC held an 'armed strike' halting all economic activities sanctions such as banishing someone from the area for non-compliance
'
in Caquet´ a, including Nestl´e's daily purchase of 100,000 L of milk with its rules (Cancimance Lopez, 2017), meant that with the Army's
'
(Semana, 2007; Vasquez Delgado, 2015). Second, in early 2007 FARC arrival people began extracting timber, burning the rainforest and
blew-up a milk storage tank in San Vincente, burnt one of the company's hunting again. When asked about this, Diego explained that he has
milk trucks and destroyed the milk collection center in El Doncello told the Army the following:
(ElTiempo, 2007a). In addition, FARC forced ranchers to stop selling
their milk to Nestl'e affecting over 2000 of them (ElTiempo, 2007b). As If you do not change that conviction that you have an internal
an unintended consequence of FARC's actions, the number of local enemy, you see in every peasant an enemy. If you do not try to
cheese factories increased, effectively breaking Nestl'e's milk monopoly really reach people with things, not just wanting to buy them, but
(Semana, 2008 ). Uribe's government accused the cheese factories of to show them that you are really here for them; If you do not do
being front operations for FARC, that in combination with the indis- that, people are not going to believe in you. Several of them [army
criminate coca aerial spraying strengthened FARC's social base
'
( VasquezDelgado, 2015) . was founded upon fear and violence, where
most of them were not in agreement with the presence of armed actors
in the region. Thereafter, the intensity of the conflict waned allowing Table 6

farmers to continue with their cheese and dairy production. According to Sixth frontier space (2010-): Summary.

FARC's Diego, the war's tide began to change between 2007 and 2008. Main Commodity Production Dehydrated milk for international markets
Several FARC military defeats including the death in combat of three Cheese, meat and fish for domestic markets
Dispossession National Parks
members of FARC secretariat (their commanding body), brought FARC
Indigenous peoples' lands
in 2012 to the negotiating table with the Santos government ( 2010– Colombian state
Hegemons
2018) and after long negotiations an agreement was signed in 2016 FARC dissidences
(Ospina Ovalle, 2017). Main Subjectivities Livestock farmers

Colonists
Farmers
Fish farmers

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Nicholas. Acosta García and Niels. Fold Geoforum 128 (2022) 192–201

officials] had asked me: 'you have to help us recover our credibility rainforest, or wait until they can claim land titles (Campbell, 2015). The
with the people, so that campesinos trust us.' former coca producing areas then became pastures for cattle ranching
(cf. Cleary, 1993; Ioris, 2018; Walker et al., 2009).
Ramírez (2019) argues that the peace agreement challenged the state's militarization
While the state's push to build trust can be seen as part of a
strategy providing a window to treat inhabitants of conflict areas as citizens rather than
strategy to win hearts and minds of the local population, it also shows
criminals. To deal with their lack of popularity, the army deployed two programs called
that changing one hegemon (FARC) for another (the state) is a
'Faith in Colombia' and 'Passion in Caqueta' aimed at: 'telling people in the country to
complex process that implies building relations, reciprocity and responsibility.
come visit the region “here are your armed forces, come to the river, come to the tourist
This strategy also implies a symbolic move in the social hierarchy,
sites.” So, when people see the soldiers doing that, people begin trusting and the
where the local people are no longer treated as criminals but as
popularity of the army rises. Also, with the Battalion of Engineers we have helped building
citizens. At this point, we'
cannot tell whether this strategy could put
roads in several places' (Interview with General Parra). This strategy for territorialization
an end to the frontier logic in Caqueta, with its boom-and-bust cycles
by creating alternative local livelihoods based on tourism follows a similar dynamic
of commodity production. Rather, we can affirm that territorialization
described by Ojeda (2012) where in the early noughties the army secured spaces for
necessarily needs trust among the many actors in the region and a
tourism for rich Colombians.
sense of re-sponsibility among them, something that will depend on
whether the State can bring the economy of cocaine into its sphere of
control, either through legalization or through furthering its ill-fated military action
In addition, the army has led the effort of bringing international cooperation agencies
to the region: 'the agencies would not come if there was no security. We have worked to
4. Conclusion
strengthen local NGOs […] Our mission is to attack armed groups, but [also] we have to
help because there are no roads. If this department had roads everywhere everyone
In this article we have shown that Caqueta's continuous spatial restructuring for the
would be better' (Interview with General Parra). As argued by Ballv´e (2012, pp. 612–613)
control of the resources for social reproduction follows the drawing and redrawing of the
roads in Colombia are both material and symbolic projections of the state's reach into
frontier facilitated by hier-archies of Otherness. The coloniality of power links together
'uncharted' areas, to the point that state presence or absence is equated with the presence
these hi-erarchical forms of socioeconomic and spatial difference. In Caqueta, the
and quality of those same roads. '
expansion of commodity production takes place by the (re)production of categories
through the delimitation of new frontiers that open-up re-sources for extraction until they
become exhausted, they are violently repressed or their markets collapse. A case in
According to the farmers we interviewed, since the beginning of the peace process
point is the relationship between coca production and deforestation in the Amazon since
they stopped paying taxes to FARC. However, several of them acknowledge the presence
at least the 1970s, where the constant making of land available for settlement is sustained
of FARC dissident groups that did not join the Peace Agreement. Also, several farmers
by the creation of new hierarchies that facilitate resource exploitation, be it of indigenous
claimed that prior to the signing of the peace agreement, FARC told campesinos to begin
peoples. , of the rainforest, or of coca farmers and campesinos.
farming coca as that would make them eligible for future state subsidies handed out to
cocaleros who stopped coca farming. From our survey, at least 10% of the farmers were
receiving the state funds either by being former cocaleros or by simply living in the same
area as cocaleros. This highlights the geographical approach the government has '
Analyzing Caqueta as a frontier space reveals at least three aspects.
implemented to deal with coca production. It can also be understood as a process of
First, contemporary forms of exclusion and spatial difference produced by the
pulling the farmers from an illicit economy into the sphere of the state, thereby
coloniality of power are rooted in long lasting social structures dating back to
territorializing areas where there was no explicit state presence or control.
the eighteenth century that facilitate commodification and accumulation, akin
to what Grosfoguel (2011) calls the 'colonial situation' to refer to continuation
of colonial forms of domination pro-duced by colonial cultures and structures
of global capitalism. At the frontier, the coloniality of power links together the
However, the heavy hand of the state and its military continues to
production of hier-archies of Otherness, the control over the resources for
manifest. A few months after our 2019 fieldwork, the air force bombed a
' social reproduction, the malleability and adaptability of commodity production,
camp of FARC-dissidents in Caqueta. This was presented on
and the hegemon's particular possibility to upend a previous social and spatial
national media as a success by president Duque. A few days later, a congressman
order – at the expense of whatever existed there before (Castro-Gomez, 2007).
denounced that there were 18 minors at the camp site who had been forcibly recruited
Hence, what could be at first understood as an institutional vacuum is in fact
from the nearby area. The few that survived the strike were killed by ground troops (W '
the manifestation of a hegemon that is producing a social and spatial
Radio, 2019). The minister of defense stepped-down just before congress held a vote of
reordering for accumulation by dispossession.
no confidence (ElTiempo, 2019b). The ramifications of this event were palpable during
our last field visit in 2020, limiting our access to the rural areas. Our informants said
Second, that Caqueta's particular history of booms and busts of
people were afraid of an escalation of violence and the recruitment of minors.
the production of different commodities, has left a fragmentation of
territorial control and of the peasantry displayed in the multiple sub-
jectivities discussed. Hence, the question of governing these spaces,
Coca production is a complex issue that links access to land, rural
that include dealing with the problems and grievances of those at the
development and biodiversity conservation. The frontier logic helps
bottom (ie, peasants, small-scale ranchers, indigenous peoples etc.),
explain the coca dynamics. Landless peasants move into remote areas
comes as secondary after the hegemon's concern of securing control
in the rainforest, clearing it through slash and burn and begin
over the land and its resources for commodity production (Peluso,
subsistence production. As the soils are poor and the location of the
2018; Scott, 1998). From this point of view, deforestation, violence,
farms is remote, coca farming is the only alternative that secures a
and land grabbing are symptoms of the logic of the frontier.
livelihood (Ciro Rodriguez, 2016). Coca has several advantages over
Third, we theorized four principles for the (re)creation of the front-
other crops. First, traffickers and intermediaries provide seeds and agricultural supplies.
tier: commodity production, disposal, hegemon(s) and sub-jectivities.
Second, the leaves are harvested by raspachines that move from farm to
Thereby, we added a spatial dimension to Quijano's (2007a, 2001)
farm. Third, when the farmer processes the leaves into coca paste, the
coloniality of power and operationalized it in its application.
intermediaries or traffickers come to the farm and buy it in cash at
Since colonization begins at a frontier, the ideas stemming from Latin
controlled prices. When the State begins moving into these 'remote' areas,
American decolonial scholarship help us understand the basis of social
either through military operations or through development infrastructure,
control in a postcolonial context, such as Caqueta's. Reading the
the settlers either sell the land and move further into the
frontier with attention to the coloniality of power shows the active creation of

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' Geoforum 128 (2022) 192–201
Nicholas. Acosta García and Niels. Fold
hierarchies for social control, and brings nuance to the spaces where
'
accumulation by dispossession is taking place. The case of Caqueta
allowed us to both develop and showcase the application of this theo-
retical approach on frontier geographies. However, there is much
potential for it to be further developed beyond description, for example,
looking into the interrelations between and among the four principles.
The story of lack of territorializing Caquet' a need not be seen as a
failure of the state, but rather as a combination of purposive action by
the many actors in keeping the area as a frontier space. Colonialization,
development and violent interventions have been attempts at appro-
priating the rents derived from such space. However, as Karl Polanyi
(1944) argued, the logic of capital is to commodify the land and labor
that provides the basis for continued accumulation, that in turn un-
dermines the human and natural basis of the system. The history of
'
frontier-making in Caqueta illustrates this dynamic. In one way or
another, the bust of each cycle of commodity production can be traced
to the undermining of the very basis that gave rise to it. This includes
the Othering of the local population who are treated as 'savage,' 'illegal'
or 'terrorists,' and the exploitation of the local nature through forest
clearing for pastures, through indiscriminate aerial spraying of crops
(legal or otherwise) with herbicides , and through, literally, the use of
explosives and weapons. To understand the frontier as a space of the
coloniality of power, we have proposed an approach that examines
the creation of subjectivities associated with commodity production
and their classification in hierarchies, hoping to cast light on the
mechanisms behind the social production of the frontier.
CREdiT authorship contribution statement
' Colombia University
Nicholas.Acosta García: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing
– original draft, Writing – review & editing, Formal analysis, Validation.
Niels. Fold: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – review &
editing, Formal analysis, Validation.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
'
We are grateful to the farmers of Caqueta for participating in this
study, as well as to our partners in the region for facilitating fieldwork.
Also, to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark for funding this
research through grant 17-M11-DTU.
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