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MarÍa Clemencia RamÍrez is a Senior Research Associate and a former Director (2005–2007) of the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History in BogotÁ.

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Between the Guerrillas and the State

Duke University Press

Contents

Acknowledgments..........................................................................................................................................ixAcronyms.................................................................................................................................................xiiiIntroduction.............................................................................................................................................11. History of Colonization, Marginalization, and the State: Guerrillas, Drug Trafficking, and Paramilitarism in the Colombian Amazon.....................212. Coca and the War on Drugs in Putumayo: Illegality, Armed Conflict, and the Politics of Time and Space.................................................543. Turning Civic Movements into a Social Movement: Antecedents of the Cocalero Social Movement...........................................................864. The Cocalero Social Movement: Stigmatization and the Politics of Recognition and Identity.............................................................1105. Negotiations with the Central Government: Clashing Visions over the "Right to Have Rights"............................................................1346. Competing States or Competing Governments? An Analysis of Local State Formation in a Conflict-Ridden Zone.............................................1677. From Social to Political Leadership: Gaining Visibility as Civil Society in the Midst of Increased Armed Conflict.....................................1838. Plan Colombia and the Depoliticization of Citizenship in Putumayo.....................................................................................214Epilogue.................................................................................................................................................233Appendixes...............................................................................................................................................239Notes....................................................................................................................................................253References...............................................................................................................................................283Index....................................................................................................................................................297

Chapter One

Guerrillas, Drug Trafficking, and Paramilitarismin the Colombian Amazon

The Amazon region has been seen by the central government both as asolution to land pressures elsewhere in the country and as a national securitybuffer zone to protect the country's sovereignty on its southern border.These views of the region have defined state policy toward the ColombianAmazon and fueled the sense of abandonment that drives the region's discourseregarding the central state. This chapter reviews the geographicalorigins and migration timeline of colonos of Putumayo and the Baja Bota.We will see connections between this process of colonization and otherevents in the region's history, the popular perception of the state and stateformation in the Amazon over the last century.

Several colono identities emerged as a result of colonization. This chapterexamines how these identities were constructed both within the Amazonregion and in relation to the central government, thus ascribing meaningsto the region and its inhabitants that the colonos have simultaneously resistedand reinforced.

The chapter also describes the arrival of FARC in western Amazonia as aresult of the violence that swept central Colombia between 1946 and 1966,their arrival in Putumayo in 1984, and their transformation into the authorityin the region. It relates the history of coca cultivation in westernAmazonia from its beginnings in the 1970s through its expansion into thedominant crop of the 1980s, and the ensuing war between FARC and drugtraffickers for control over coca production and marketing. A grasp of therole of both these forces in the region is crucial to understanding how thecocalero movement emerged and operated.

Finally, I track two waves of the paramilitary phenomenon in Putumayo:their arrival at the end of the 1980s, which was linked to narcotrafficking,and their second appearance in 1997 after they had come together underthe name United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidasde Colombia, AUC), a political and military group that declared war againstFARC. Paramilitarism not only increased political violence in Putumayo butalso changed the way its residents related to FARC.

Colonization of the Colombian Amazon:The Construction of an Empty Territory as a Receptor for Displaced People

The central government, in the hands of the dominant elites that have historicallyowned and run the state in Colombia, has traditionally classifiedAmazonia as baldío (terra nullius, legally vacant and unowned land), implicitlydenying the existence of those who lived there and re-designating itas a receptor for people displaced from other parts of Colombia. The colonizationof the Colombian Amazon began thus in the late nineteenth centuryand has continued ever since, mainly by residents of the Andean highlandswho left their homes in response to waves of social, political, and economicupheaval in central Colombia. Landless campesinos began to leave the highlandsin the 1930s in search of a more stable livelihood on the open frontier.Deprived of their small plots by large landowners, these campesinosmigrated to the marginal areas outside the agrarian frontier throughout thetwentieth century, allowing elites to sidestep agrarian reform and legitimizethe highly concentrated ownership of land that has characterized Colombia'srural property structure.

This migration accelerated in the 1950s due to confrontations betweenthe dominant Liberal and Conservative political parties in the interior of thecountry, a period known as La Violencia or the Violence. These traditionalpolitical parties fostered a bloody, vicious partisan rivalry in the countrysidethrough institutionalized patron-client relationships, pushing affectedcampesinos further and further away from the center. Colonization in the"margins" was later formalized by government settlement programs thatimplicitly recognized Colombia's structural land tenure problems.

The colonization of Colombia's western Amazon has been so consistentthat mechanisms have been established for newly arriving colonos to integrateinto the area's social, political, and economic structures. Putumayo'scase is one of dynamic frontier expansion in which the state moved into newproductive areas while reproducing its institutions and the class structureupon which it was based (Moran 1988). The Colombian political culture alsoreproduced intense political rivalries, the exclusion of third parties, the dependenceof local authorities and political bosses on the central elites, andwidespread administrative corruption. However, the state presence was feltonly intermittently, and the frontier had "its own simultaneous autonomy,resistance, acquiescence, change, and persistence" (Whitten 1985, 47), aswill be discussed.

Colonos have been defined as a contingent population, as people whoarrive and leave along with an evolving cycle of commodity booms (rubber,pelts, gold, and most recently, coca) that had little lasting effect on their livesand culture. This construction represents the culture and identity of the migrantpopulation as a cipher: non-native and present in Amazonia only toextract wealth. Coca may seem to be just one more commodity of this kind,but it has had long lasting effects that distinguish it from the others.

The western portion of Colombian Amazonia (the departments of Putumayo,Caquetá, and Guaviare) received the majority of Amazonia's populationinflux (see map 1). In the 1990s, western Amazonia was highly populated,with 86.3 percent of the Colombian Amazon's total population at adensity of 2.5 inhabitants per square kilometer. Colonos were culturallydominant. Eastern Amazonia (the departments of Amazonas, Vaupés, andGuainía), by contrast, was characterized by a predominantly indigenouspopulation, significant urbanization and a much lower population densityof 0.1 inhabitants per square kilometer. Guerrilla activity and coca farmingwere found mostly in western Amazonia.

Marginalization and the Construction of a "Place Outside the Law"

The historically marginal Amazon region can be characterized as an "out-of-the-way place" (Tsing 1994), where the center can solve its problems withouthaving to make structural economic, social, or political changes. In Putumayo,the government added the ascription of a "place outside the law,"when coca cultivation—the main agricultural and economic activity of localcampesinos—was declared illegal. As increased coca cultivation attractedthe presence of the guerrillas, Putumayo came to be represented as a regioninhabited by criminals, thus furthering its marginalization.

During a Peace Forum in Puerto Asís, some had stated that "We havegone from being a violent state to being a barbarous state, in some caseswith the indifference of the citizenry." Soon afterward, the Mocoa-basedHuman Rights Ombudsman for Putumayo wrote to then-President Sampersaying, "We are attempting to put an end to 'the law of the jungle' where anyonecan violate another's right to life and physical integrity because he canbe sure that nothing will happen to him."

The views of these government officials evoked historical images of theregion that served to "explain" the ongoing violence. The region's barbaritywas reified; the area operated under "the law of the jungle"; lack of civilitywas the norm. Yet the local officials' analysis of the increasing violence wascontradictory. While they spoke of the struggle against impunity, their conceptionof the region as barbarous legitimated the reign of violence. Theirvery "explanation" justified the Colombian center's view of the region asmarginal, either empty or inhabited only by barbarians in their "naturalstate"—an open invitation to the "civilizing" influence of re-colonizationmissions.

The departmental government plan for Putumayo 1998–2000, namedthe Territorial Pilot Plan for Social Peace (Plan Piloto Territorial de Convivencia),described the department as dominated by the coca economy, "anextractive and inequitable development model" (12) within a weak and delegitimizedstate, racked by the resulting struggle over territory and generalizedviolence. This diagnosis deemed the violence "not a conjuncturalscenario but an evolving process" (13). The Plan explained that the violenceresulted from historical "barbarism" in the Amazon, a longstanding elementof the region's historiography, and one which meant, according todepartmental officials, "an unviable society without human rights, withoutrespect for rights, and without tolerance," where "democracy isn't feasible"(14–15). The coca economy was analyzed as "a focused strategy" (16) foundedon a lawless frontier, implying that certain places in Putumayo were barbarous(Lower Putumayo) while others were not (Upper Putumayo), a representationthat will be discussed in the next chapter (Government of Putumayo1998, 12–16).

Thus, the Amazon region was defined by the central government as aspace to be wrenched from the hands of lawless barbarians, conquered, andcured of its criminality and illegality. State repression (aerial spraying, militarization,and dirty war tactics) was legitimized through the constructionof "stereotypic and dangerous impressions" (Herbst 1994, 18) of the inhabitantsof Putumayo as criminals and guerrilla collaborators.

The stigmatization of this "marginal and peripheral" region and populationby the Colombian heartland brought about resistance in the form ofprotest movements. Here it is worth considering Slater's (1998, 387) assessment that "regional social movements have challenged the existing territorialityof the state and in this struggle new forms of spatial subjectivity andidentity have emerged." The cocalero social movement of 1996 challengedthe state in this way, as will be discussed further.

Periods of Migration and Regional Origins of Colonos in Putumayo

This section provides a history of colonization in Putumayo and the BajaBota of Cauca. As will be discussed, coca farming stimulates migration (forexample by harvest workers who follow the crops), but is by no means theonly cause of colonization in the region.

There have been five distinct waves of migration into Putumayo. RomanCatholic missionaries were the first to attempt to colonize the ColombianAmazon region in a first wave from 1850 to 1946. However, indigenous resistanceprevented any permanent colonies until 1887 when a concordat betweenthe Vatican and the Colombian government authorized permanentmissions on the Amazon frontier. Missionaries constructed the first roadsto the region from central Colombia. They founded towns such as PuertoAsís in 1912, to defend Colombian sovereignty near its southern borderand sponsored white settlers in order to "civilize" the territory and providethe indigenous "savages" with a way of life to emulate. Two main expeditionsbrought colonizers to the Amazon from the Colombian center duringthis period. The first, in 1890, was intended to extract quinine and thesecond, from 1903 to 1930, was to gather rubber. The constructed horrorof the jungle, of savagery and cannibalism, and its related imagery led thecolonizers during the rubber boom of the early twentieth century to ascribethese characteristics to Putumayo and to create a space of death, terror, andcruelty. Extra-legal rights and rules allowing for violence were agreed uponin this context. Today's Putumayans refer to the period of the rubber boomwhen they attempt to explain the "barbarism" that some state representativesascribe to the region, as discussed above.

In 1930, a border conflict between Colombia and Peru stimulated furthercolonization, as the Colombian government established an ongoing militarypresence to reinforce its sovereignty over the area. Military forces completedroads that had been begun by missionaries years earlier. These includedroads from Pasto (in the highlands of Nariño) to Mocoa, Neiva (in the highlandsof Huila) to Florencia, and La Tagua to Puerto Leguízamo (see map 3).

The second wave of colonization was a result of La Violencia. Partisanviolence broke out as Liberals began to persecute Conservatives during the1930–46 period of Liberal party hegemony. Conservative Mariano OspinaPérez won the presidential election of 1946, and during the next four yearsConservatives began to persecute Liberals. Social movements initiated duringthe Liberal regime were repressed and violence intensified. Between 1946and 1958 political violence was rampant, mostly in Tolima, Huila, Valle delCauca, Cundinamarca, Boyacá, Antioquia, Viejo Caldas, Santander, Norte deSantander, and the eastern plains (Llanos Orientales) of Arauca, Casanare,Meta, and Vichada (see map 4). The violence provoked a mass exodus fromthese regions and dramatically increased the population in the Amazon lowlands.

The third wave of colonization in Putumayo took place from 1963 to 1977.In 1963, the Texas Petroleum Company (Texaco) began to explore for oil inthe municipalities of Orito, Acae, San Miguel, and Valle del Guamués. Statedevelopment programs including a project for the colonization of Putumayowere begun in 1964. In 1965, approximately 200 kilometers of roadswere built and people settled along them (Alomía et. al. 1997, 17). In thelate 1960s, highly productive oil reserves were discovered. During a 3-yearperiod, Texaco drilled fifteen oil wells and built a 310-kilometer pipeline tothe town of Tumaco on the Pacific Coast. Petroleum-related activities createdhigh expectations for employment, but only 1,000 local workers werehired (Corsetti, Tommasoli, and Viezzoli 1987, 145). Production was export-oriented.Colonization began in Valle del Guamués and continued in PuertoAsís. Colonos founded today's town centers of coca production in Putumayo,such as La Dorada, San Miguel, El Placer, El Tigre, and Siberia.

A fourth wave of migration took place between 1977 and 1987. Coca cultivationhad begun and a coca boom quickly developed. This economic bonanzabrought new colonos into the Amazon region and triggered a declinein non-coca subsistence agriculture by established colonos. From this pointon, local economic activities were increasingly dominated by the cocaine-drivendemand for coca.

Between 1987 and 1996, coca production increased and then stabilized. Afifth wave of migration from the departments of Huila, Cauca, Valle, Nariño,Caldas, and from Ecuador continued to enter the area until 1994. After that,smaller numbers of migrants continued to enter the department, attractedby opportunities for coca production and by increasing activity in the oil industry.

Continues...

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