Agrarian Social Structures, Insurgent Embeddedness, and State Expansion: Evidence from

Colombia

by

Charles Larratt-Smith

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Graduate Department of Political Science University of Toronto

© Copyright by Charles Larratt-Smith (2020)

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Agrarian Social Structures, Insurgent Embeddedness, and State Expansion: Evidence from Colombia

Doctor of Philosophy 2020

Graduate Department of Political Science University of Toronto

Abstract

In the context of civil war, the efficacy of counterinsurgency strategies varies dramatically

across space and time. While this process of state expansion produces different outcomes between

different national level cases, it also engenders diverging results at the sub-national level.

Counterinsurgent responses can lead to notable reductions in violence, an achievement mirrored by

improved stability and order in contested zones. Quite frequently, however, violence will increase as

stability and order worsen. The fact that state expansion into contested spaces produces such different

results across areas of extremely close proximity begs the following questions: How is the state able

to establish control, and by extension order, in some contested spaces more easily than in others?

Conversely, what enables armed non-state actors to withstand and survive this massive onslaught in

some cases, while failing elsewhere? Since 2002, the Colombian state has embarked upon a massive

state expansion project in many volatile areas of the country that were previously controlled and

governed by armed non-state actors. This projection of military, bureaucratic, and economic power

into these contested spaces has not always brought peace and stability with it, casting into doubt the

efficacy of the central government’s larger attempt at state expansion.

This dissertation explores the above research puzzle through a comparative historical analysis

of two sub-national counterinsurgency laboratories in rural Colombia which demonstrate enormous

variation in counterinsurgent outcomes: Montes de María and Arauca. I provide a longitudinal

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qualitative model that highlights the importance of pre-existing agrarian social structures on the

process of insurgent institutionalization in these spaces, or the ability of these armed non-state actors

to embed themselves in rural civilian communities. I find that those actors that are better able to

appropriate local cleavages in favor of specific constituencies will achieve a higher level of

embeddedness in these spaces and thus possess a higher level of populational control over civilians.

These advantages are crucial for insurgents during periods of state expansion, as they are better

equipped to protect civilian populations from counterinsurgent violence and to prevent potential

defection to their rivals.

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Acknowledgements

When I started this doctoral program, I never imagined that it would take me eight long years

to finish. My initial plan when I entered the incoming class in 2012 was to complete my degree

requirements in five years, which in hindsight was both profoundly naive and overly ambitious. Little

did I imagine then that the path to this moment would have unfolded as it did, but things happen for

a reason and I am thankful for the fact that I have reached this point. While I have lost some truly

important people along the way, I have also been fortunate enough to meet others who have

unexpectedly changed my life for the better. All in all, there are many people that I need to thank for

making this dissertation and degree possible, yet for the sake of brevity (and given the excessive length

of this dissertation) I will try to keep these acknowledgements as brief as possible.

To all of my friends and family who were genuinely supportive of this journey, and who in

recent years urged me to “stop being a student already”, I salute you. This frank advice provided more

than enough motivation for me to finish this dissertation and to put this chapter of my life behind

me. In academia, it is often easy to lose focus of what really matters in this world and that is those

close relationships which shape one’s life. The time spent with those closest to me, regardless of the

location, has kept me in check (and sane) and given greater clarity to what exactly I have been doing

with my life over the past eight years. While some did not understand and openly admitted as such,

others expressed their admiration for my willingness to chart my own course, regardless of the lack of

stability that this particular career choice presents. For this, I am eternally grateful for your honesty

and for forcing me to think about what it is that I am trying to do in this world. Special thanks to my

mother and father for their perennial moral support, my siblings for their consistent encouragement

and honesty, and my various groups of friends littered throughout the globe for providing me with a

useful distraction when I needed it most.

To Diana “Taba” Leal and Gimli “Pancelón” Leal, you are my heart and soul. From the first

moment we met until the present day, you have both held me down during the tough times and given

me extra motivation to live up to my potential for the greater good of the tabafamilia. Your patience

and willingness to accompany me to Toronto while I drafted and finished this dissertation has been

crucial and I hope that I can return the favor once we enter the next chapter of our life together,

wherever that may be. Words cannot describe how much you both mean to me. It would be remiss

to thank you both without including the extended family in Bogotá, Cúcuta, and Chinácota, who have

always supported me during this endeavor by giving me endless coffee and goodwill when I was

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working on this project during family visits. I am also indebted to you all for sharing your own unique

stories with me which have helped shape my work in numerous ways.

To all those in Colombia who helped me carry out my fieldwork and develop my dissertation.

First and foremost, I have to thank the incredible people at the Centro de Investigación y Educación

Popular (CINEP) for hosting me during the majority of my time there and for assisting in a variety of

ways with my project. Special thanks go out to the center’s director, Luis Guillermo Guerrero, and

particularly to Padre Fernán González González, the head of the Conflicto y Estado team. It was an

honour and a privilege to develop my dissertation under the guidance of such an eminent scholar of

your standing. Similarly, I have to thank the remaining members of the team, such as Víctor Barrera,

Andrés Aponte, Javier Benavides, Camila Carvajal, and fellow visiting researcher Javier Revelo, for all

of your assistance and late-night revelry over the past couple of years. My debt to the entire team and

CINEP is enormous and one which I will never forget.

There are numerous people outside of CINEP who also made my fieldwork in Colombia

possible. First, I would like to thank the three research assistants who helped me in Montes de María

and Arauca, Camila Carvajal, Diana Rodríguez, and Estefania Forero. Additionally, I would like to

give special thanks to Omar Gutiérrez Lemus, Lucho Celis, and the staff at Federación Luterana

Mundial Programa Colombia for sharing your insight and for putting me into contact with local

contacts on the ground in Arauca and vouching for me in the process. Similarly, I would like to offer

my deepest thanks to Dr. Pablo Abitbol and Eduardo Porras for providing me with the same

assistance in Montes de María. Also, I can’t forget Enrique Peña for his help providing contacts with

ex-military officials in Bogotá. Unfortunately, I cannot directly name those countless individuals and

research participants on the ground in Montes de María and Arauca who helped me out due to the

potential security risks, but the bravery you all possess in trying to confront the past is beyond

inspirational. If there is one thing I have taken away from this entire experience, it is that the human

capacity to overcome the worst forms of adversity knows no bounds, a lesson I have learned from

sharing with you all.

To my doctoral committee, I am enormously thankful for your crucial feedback and support

throughout this extended process. To Shivaji Mukherjee, you joined this project when it was just

beginning and sadly you will be the only original member who is there when it finishes. My deepest

gratitude for your help seeing this over the finishing line. To Catherine LeGrand, even though we met

by way of this dissertation I feel like we have known each other much longer. I will be eternally

appreciative of your willingness to join this committee on the eve of your retirement and your keen

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interest in my research progress. To Antoinette Handley, I owe you an immense debt for picking up

the pieces of my dissertation at what was a very bad moment for us both. Even though this dissertation

does not correspond to your regional or topical area of interest, your input and guidance has proven

instrumental to this dissertation and I have learned a great deal working with you over the past two

years. Additionally, I would like to thank both the internal and external readers, Jon Lindsay and Ana

Arjona, for their punctual revisions and vital feedback that has vastly improved my research.

To all those academics located at the University of Toronto and beyond who have assisted in

some shape or form with this dissertation, I owe you all a similar debt of gratitude. Similarly, I would

like to thank the administrative staff at the University of Toronto, in particular at UTM, for their

ceaseless support and for making my working experience at the university that much more memorable.

Special thanks to Norma Dotto and Terri Winchester at UTM, and to Carolynn Branton, Louis

Tentsos, and Sari Sherman at STG. Without you all, the department would cease to function. Of equal

importance, I would like to thank the various donors and grants who provided me with the necessary

financial assistance to carry out my fieldwork and draft my dissertation, including the Department of

Political Science, the School of Graduate Studies, the International Peace Research Grant Association,

the International Development Research Centre of Canada, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim

Foundation.

Finally, I need to express my gratitude to three people who unfortunately passed away over

the course of my time at the University of Toronto. To Ana María Bejarano, if it weren’t for you then

my life would have arguably taken a completely different and unknown course. When I applied for

this program and my application came before your desk in early 2012, you stated that you would be

more than willing to serve as my supervisor and as such the selection committee approved my spot in

the program. I can only speculate where I would be right now if you hadn’t supported my application.

Similarly, your guidance and mentorship early on helped me develop this dissertation and although in

the end you never got a chance to read my research, I like to think that it is influenced a great deal by

your own work. I will be eternally indebted to you for not only this experience, but also for the

opportunity of being your student, a distinction which opened numerous doors in Colombia that

otherwise might have remained shut to an unestablished researcher there. For the duration of the time

that I knew you, your courage battling cancer, while being a single mother and a highly regarded

Colombian academic at an elite North American university, inspired myself and all of those who knew

you.

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To Lee Ann Fujii, after Ana María you were the second faculty member in our department

who took me under your wing. Even though you didn’t have to and had no reason to look out for me

other than the fact that I worked for you that initial year, we built a rapport based on our common

research interests and our shared sense of humour. Similarly, I appreciate your honesty and candor

when it came to navigating the often difficult politics of the academic world. When Ana Maria became

sick again, you stepped up at a difficult time and served as my acting supervisor, eventually becoming

my permanent supervisor after her unfortunate passing in early 2017. Even though this was short

lived, your influence on my research has been profound and I like to think that you would be proud

of this dissertation. I feel privileged to say that I was both a student of Ana María and yourself and

will forever be thankful for your assistance during that rough patch of years.

To Andrew “Gillie” Gilchrist, I am writing this on the anniversary of your passing and it seems

like an eternity since we last saw one another given the number of events that have transpired during

that time. Fate has a strange way of working as I never intended to come back to Toronto, yet this

program changed all of that and in hindsight I am thankful for this opportunity which allowed you

and I to live together for your final year before you left us. As crazy as it was, you always served as a

useful and much needed counterbalance to the absurdities of the academic world and I will always be

thankful for our friendship. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about you and all of our ludicrous

interactions, as your absence will always hang over all of those who were fortunate enough to know

you. You were and will always remain my best friend and it pains me that I am finally arriving at this

moment and you aren’t here to see this happen.

This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of Ana Maria, Lee Ann, and Andrew.

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Table of Contents

List of Figures x List of Tables x-xi List of Maps xi Acronyms xii Introduction 1

A. The Puzzle 3 B. Why This Matters 6

C. Defining Terms 8 D. Literature Review, Theoretical Gaps, and Alternative Explanations 14 E. My Theoretical Model 23 F. The Structure of this Dissertation 38

Chapter Two. Research Design 40

A. Methodology 40 B. Research Design 44

C. Fieldwork 47 D. Rationale for National and Sub-National Case Selection 49 E. A Brief History of Colombia 54 Chapter Three. Pre-Existing Configuration 71 A. Montes de María 74 i. The Territorial Sphere 75 ii. The Economic Sphere 83 iii. The Political Sphere 86 iv. The Civic Sphere 90 B. Arauca 99 i. The Territorial Sphere 100 ii. The Economic Sphere 110 iii. The Political Sphere 117 iv. The Civic Sphere 121

C. Primary Cleavages in Montes de María and Arauca 131 Chapter Four. Insurgent Institutionalization 134

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A. Montes de María 137 i. The Territorial Sphere 138 ii. The Economic Sphere 147 iii. The Political Sphere 150 iv. The Civic Sphere 153 B. Arauca 156 i. The Territorial Sphere 157 ii. The Economic Sphere 174 iii. The Political Sphere 182 iv. The Civic Sphere 185

C. Provisional Predation in Montes de María and the Araucan Plains 192 D. Nested Governance in the Araucan Piedmont 199

Chapter Five. Period of Contestation in Montes de María 209

A. Evaluating Counterinsurgency Outcomes in Montes de María 214 B. Counterinsurgent Victory in Montes de María 217

i. The Paramilitary Incursion 219 ii. State Expansion 231 iii. The Insurgent Response 246 C. The Outcome 252 Chapter Six. Period of Contestation in Arauca 263

A. Evaluating Counterinsurgency Outcomes in Arauca 263 B. Short-term COIN Success in the Plains, Insurgent Resilience in the Piedmont 267

i. The Paramilitary Incursion 269 ii. State Expansion 279 iii. The Insurgent Response 296 C. The Outcome 308

Conclusion 318

A. External Validity 313 B. Montes de María 314

C. Arauca 319 D. En fin: Potential Theoretical Contributions and Policy Implications 325

Works Cited 328 Field Interview Guide 348

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List of Tables

Table 1. Insurgent Annual Finances in 1991 (USD) 61 Table 2. Territorial, Political, Economic, and Civic Spheres

in Montes de María (Pre-1980) 74 Table 3. Territorial, Political, Economic, and Civic Spheres in Arauca (pre-1980) 99 Table 4. Distribution of Public Land by INCORA in Arauca (1961-1989) 107 Table 5. Armed Actor Control in Montes de María (1980-1996) 194 Table 6. Armed Actor Control in the Araucan Plains (1980-2001) 195 Table 7. Armed Actor Control in the Araucan Piedmont (1980-2001) 201 Table 8. State of Conflict and Outcome per Municipality

in Montes de María (2000-2012) 216 Table 9. Armed Actor Control in Montes de María (1997-2007) 253 Table 10. Urban and Rural Population of El Carmen de Bolívar (1993-2005) 254 Table 11. State of Conflict and Outcome per Municipality in Arauca (2000-2012) 266 Table 12. Armed Actor Control in the Araucan Plains (2001-2010) 309 Table 13. Urban and Rural Population of Tame (1993-2005) 313 Table 14. Armed Actor Control in the Araucan Piedmont (2001-2010) 314

List of Figures

Figure 1. Analytical Sequence of Insurgency & Counterinsurgency 24 Figure 2. Key Variables, Critical Junctures, and Outcomes 26 Figure 3. Four Spheres of Contestation 35 Figure 4. Growth in Colombian Armed Forces - Number of Troops (1989-2015) 64 Figure 5. Colombian Homicide Rates per 100 000 Persons (1990-2015) 65 Figure 6. Armed Actions by Armed Actors in Colombia (1990-2011) 68 Figure 7. Character of Social Mobilizations in Montes de María 155 Figure 8. Character of Social Mobilizations in the Araucan Piedmont 190 Figure 9. Character of Social Mobilizations in the Araucan Plains 191 Figure 10. Forced Displacement in Montes de María and Arauca 212

Figure 11. Homicide Rate per 100 000 Residents in Montes de María (1990-2013) 215 Figure 12. Armed Actions and Confrontations in Montes de María (1998-2013) 216 Figure 13. Insurgent Trajectory and Counterinsurgency Outcome in Montes de María 218 Figure 14. Conflict Events Committed by Paramilitary Groups

in Montes de María (1988-2007) 222 Figure 15. Conflict Events per Insurgent Group in Montes de María (1988-2007) 247 Figure 16. Homicide Rate per 100 000 Persons in Arauca (1990-2013) 264 Figure 17. Armed Actions and Confrontations in Arauca (1998-2013) 265 Figure 18. Insurgent Trajectory and Counterinsurgency Outcome

in the Araucan Plains 268 Figure 19. Insurgent Trajectory and Counterinsurgency Outcome

in the Araucan Piedmont 269

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Figure 20. Forced Displacement in Arauca (1990-2013) 278 Figure 21. Caño Limón-Coveñas Oil Pipeline Attacks in Arauca (1986 – 2013) 281 Figure 22. Coca Crops Cultivated (Hectares) in Arauca by Municipality (2000-2012) 289 Figure 23. Conflict Actions Committed by Insurgent Groups in Arauca (1996-2013) 297 Figure 24. Mine Casualties in Arauca per Municipality (2000-2013) 298

List of Maps Map 1. Montes de María 76 Map 2. Arauca 101 Map 3. Caño Limon-Coveñas Oil Pipeline 177

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Acronyms

ABC - Arauca, Boyacá, and Casanare ACCU - Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá ACMM - Autodefensas Campesinas de Magdalena Medio ANUC - Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos ASEDAR - Asociación De Educadores Del Arauca ASOJER - Asociación Juvenil y Estudiantil Regional AUC - Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia BHMM - Bloque Héroes de los Montes de María BVA - Bloque Vencedores de Arauca CCAI - Center for Coordination of Integrated Action CERAC - Centro de Recursos para el Analisis de Conflictos CINEP - Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular COAGROSARARE - Cooperativa Agropecuaria del Sarare COIN - Counterinsurgency CONVIVIR - Cooperativas de Vigilancia y Seguridad Privada para la Defensa Agraria CRS - Corriente de Renovación Socialista CRUCIAGAR - Grupo Cívico Armado de Arauca DAS - Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad DEA – Drug Enforcement Administration DIJIN - Dirección Central de Policía Judicial e Inteligencia DSP - Política de Seguridad Democrática EDA - Estructura de Apoyo ELN - Ejército de Liberación Nacional EPL - Ejército Popular de Liberación ERP - Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo FANAL - Federación Agraria Nacional FARC - Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia FENSUAGRO - Federación Nacional Sindical Unitaria Agropecuaria FGO - Frente de Guerra Oriental FGN - Fiscalía General de la Nación HVT - High-Value Targets IDEMA - Instituto de Mercadeo Agropecuario IDP - Internally Displaced Person IHL - International Humanitarian Law INCORA - Instituto Colombiano de la Reforma Agraria JAC - Juntas de Acción Comunal JUCO - Juventud Comunista MIR-PL - Movimiento Izquierdista Revolucionario-Patria Libre PCC - Partido Comunista Colombiano PRT - Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores RINCA - Red de Inteligencia Naval del Caribe UAF - Unidad Agrícola Familiar UNDP - United Nations Development Program UP - Unión Patriótica USO - Unión Sindical Obrera de la Industria del Petróleo

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Introduction

“As usual the problem involves: first, the adversary, and second, the means to destroy him. There are 400 000 Arabs in Algiers. Are they all our enemies? We know they’re not. But a small minority holds sway by means of terror and violence. We must deal with this minority in order to isolate and destroy it. It’s a dangerous

enemy that works in the open and underground, using tried-and-true revolutionary methods as well as original tactics. It’s a faceless enemy, unrecognizable, blending in with hundreds of others. It is everywhere. In

cafés, in the alleys of the Casbah, or in the very streets of the European quarter.”

- Colonel Mathieu, The Battle of Algiers (1966)

“I remember when I was with Special Forces...seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to

inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and

hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms.”

- Colonel Kurtz, Apocalypse Now (1979)

Exhausted from a near sleepless overnight trip, I found myself struggling to stay awake in the

intense heat and discomfort of an old broken-down bus heading west along the main highway

straddling Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Suddenly, the driver shouted the name of my intended

destination, a rural village named Guachaca. Upon disembarking I quickly felt the piercing stares from

different people who were taking in my unexpected arrival. A man on a motorcycle shouted out to

me and asked me where I was going and when in reply I uttered the name of the rural homestead that

my contacts had given me, the man lurched forward and told me to hop on the back of his motorcycle.

As soon as my feet left the ground the driver accelerated dangerously down one of the unpaved access

roads into the jungle. Once we arrived our destination, I paid the moto-taxista and was greeted by Pacho,

the director of the foundation which I had come to the coast to work for. After introducing me to his

wife and children, we sat down and talked for a bit about my journey before we were suddenly

interrupted by the sound of a motorcycle horn from just outside the property. Pacho quickly rose and

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went outside to converse with the unknown motorcyclist and after a brief chat, he returned and

assured us that everything was in order.

I didn’t think about the incident again for the following two months. It was only on the eve

of my departure that Pacho confided to me what had really transpired that first day. He explained that

word of my sudden and unannounced arrival to Guachaca was quickly relayed back to the local

commander of the neo-paramilitary group that controlled the village and the surrounding zone, a

region coveted by armed non-state actors due to its strategic location as a drug trafficking corridor.

The commander dispatched one of his emissaries to the farm where I was staying to inquire about my

presence in the zone. After satisfying his questions, the emissary reminded Pacho that he was

responsible for me, and anything I did in the community would ultimately have to be answered for by

my host. Prior to this, I had noticed that the locals always seemed to be observing me and that

everything I did in Guachaca was common knowledge in the community. Pacho later explained that

these individuals were in fact key components of an extensive local intelligence network which

supplied the armed group with vital information about any and everything that transpired in the zone.

The local commander was the de facto ruler of Guachaca, more so than any elected politician or police

chief in the area. Even though the National Police and the Colombian military maintained roadblocks

on the coastal highway and even occasionally patrolled the unpaved access roads, Pacho pointed out

that they only controlled the road when they were on it. The neo-paramilitary group in contrast

controlled the entirety of the local territory and the people who resided on it, whether they liked it or

not.

Although this was not my first time in Colombia, this experience served as a starting point in

understanding how land and people are governed in this South American country and how alternative

sources of authority are able to impose their will on entire populations. This realization forced me to

ask how such groups are able to continue to control these communities even when the state expands

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its presence disproportionately in an attempt to pacify them, whether through the police, the military,

or other agents. Many years and countless hours of research later I have finally come to understand

that in countries like Colombia, Guachaca may not be so much the exception as the rule, as countless

other communities operate according to such situational ethics and the logic of populational control.

A. The Puzzle

In recent years, international security experts have warned against the threat posed by

‘ungoverned spaces’, insofar as these swaths of territory existing beyond the control of any central

government provide natural sanctuary to insurgents, criminals, and international terrorists alike

(Piombo 2007; Raleigh & Dowd 2013). The mere existence of these countries pockmarked with

‘lawless zones’ has been declared a grave security threat and one that: “[…]not only threatens the lives

and livelihoods of their own people but endangers world peace” (Rotberg 2002, 128). While there is

some truth to the claim that armed non-state actors thrive in spaces where the state is conspicuously

absent, a wealth of research has proven that these places are rarely “ungoverned” or “lawless”. Rather,

they are meticulously controlled and administered by alternative sources of authority (Mampilly 2011;

Staniland 2014; Daly 2016; Gutiérrez-Sanín and Barón 2005; Metelits 2011; Arjona 2016a; Gutiérrez

2019). In some cases, states are willing to permit these bifurcated sub-national distributions of power

and authority, as these may prove more effective and less costly forms of governance to the center

(Herbst 2000; Boone 2002; Staniland 2012; Duncan 2014). In others, the central state may feel

compelled by internal or external pressures to expand into these particular spaces in order to

recuperate control and integrate them into the rest of the country (Galula 1964; Leites and Wolf 1970;

Kilcullen 2010). The latter process of state expansion - or counterinsurgency (COIN) as most military

analysts and academics refer to it - produces results that are rarely the same across space and time.

State expansion sometimes produces notable reductions in violence, an achievement mirrored by

improved stability and order in contested zones. Quite frequently however, violence will increase as

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stability and order worsen. The fact that state expansion into contested spaces produces such different

results across areas of extremely close proximity begs the following questions: How is the state able

to establish control, and by extension order, in some contested spaces more easily than in others?

Conversely, what enables armed non-state actors to withstand and survive this massive onslaught in

some cases, while failing elsewhere?

Since 2002, the Colombian state has embarked upon a massive state expansion project in many

volatile areas of the country that were previously controlled and governed by armed non-state actors.

This projection of military, bureaucratic, and economic power into these contested spaces has not

always brought peace and stability with it, casting into doubt the efficacy of the central government’s

larger attempt at state expansion. Perhaps nowhere else is this range of outcomes more evident than

in a comparison of Montes de María and Arauca. Having served as counterinsurgent laboratories for

the Colombian government from 2002 onwards, these two particular sites demonstrate the mixed

results that accompany state expansion projects on a micro-level across disparate municipalities and

regions of the country. The incursion by the Colombian military into Montes de María in northern

Colombia saw previously astronomical levels of violence reduced almost completely within five years,

while armed insurgents were also expelled from this once heavily contested zone. Simultaneously, the

same military strategy was employed in Arauca and this state expansion produced a dramatic variation

of results between the department’s two sub-regions, the Araucan plains and the Araucan

piedmont. In the case of the former, there was a permanent decline in violent deaths, forced

displacement, and armed actions from 2002 onwards, an accomplishment mirrored by a dramatic

reduction in the armed insurgent presence in the sub-region. Meanwhile, the Araucan piedmont

experienced initial increases in the same indicators of violence, while insurgent groups fiercely resisted

the state’s onslaught. They have maintained a consolidated presence there until the present.

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I hypothesize that the Colombian state defeated the insurgents in Montes de María and the

Araucan plains by allying with paramilitary groups and landed elites to undermine weak insurgent

embeddedness in local civilian communities to physically dislocate the peasantry from the rebels, a

strategy that allowed it to bind civilians to the nascent counterinsurgent order. This proved successful

insofar as it effectively reclaimed control of these disparate territories (permanently in the case of

Montes de María and temporarily in the case of the Araucan plains). In contrast, the lack of success

achieved by the Colombian military in the Araucan piedmont was the result of its inability to weaken

insurgent embeddedness in civilian communities in the sub-region and to establish a viable alternative

to rebel rule. Quite simply, the sub-region lacked both landed elites and any substantial paramilitary

presence for the Colombian state to find any local buy-in to its counterinsurgent project. Armed

insurgent groups were heavily embedded in peasant communities, which in turn engendered a high

degree of populational control, binding peasants to the insurgent social order and preventing potential

civilian collaboration with counterinsurgent forces that were widely perceived as more predatory than

the guerrilla groups.

My theoretical model examines holistically the strategies of both competing sides amidst the

particular structural conditions in each regional theater of war, and rests on four core assumptions

about the efficacy of state expansion into spaces controlled by armed insurgent groups:

i. The success of counterinsurgency efforts is determined by their ability to weaken insurgent

embeddedness in civilian populations.

ii. Insurgent embeddedness is determined by the ability of these groups to appropriate local cleavages

shaped by pre-existing agrarian social structures.

iii. The greater the level of insurgent embeddedness, the greater level of populational control.

iv. High levels of insurgent population control provide these groups with greater monitoring and

enforcement mechanisms to prevent civilian collaboration with counterinsurgent forces.

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B. Why This Matters

According to the Correlates of War database on interstate and intrastate armed conflicts,

between 1816 and 2000, there were 464 such conflicts around the world, 79 of which (or 17% of the

grand total) were interstate while the remaining 385 are classified as intrastate (Kilcullen 2010). Since

the end of the Second World War in 1945, international (e.g. interstate) conflicts have subsided

dramatically (Lacina, Gleditsch, and Russett 2006). International geopolitical phenomena such as the

Cold War and the process of decolonization brought about a marked increase in internal conflicts and

civil wars around the globe (Brubaker and Laitin 1998). Whereas many of these armed conflicts were

in fact struggles for independence, others were driven by economic motivations, particular group

grievances, or a combination of both (Collier and Hoeffler 2004; Cramer 2003; Sambanis 2001; Stewart

2008). The costs of these civil wars have been extreme, as Fearon and Laitin’s (2003) tally between

1945 and 1999 counts: “[…]127 civil wars that killed at least 1,000, 25 of which were ongoing in 1999”,

with a “[…]conservative estimate of the total dead as a direct result of these conflicts is 16.2 million,

five times the interstate toll” (75). Beyond battlefield deaths, the collateral damage wrought by these

intrastate conflicts in incalculable, with the legacy costs including widespread poverty, high mortality

rates, and a greater likelihood of future conflict (Bayer and Rupert 2004; Black, Morris, and Bryce

2003; Fortna 2004).

The sudden increase in civil wars during the latter half of the 20 th century prompted various

colonial and emerging powers to study the causes of, effects of, and solutions to these constant and

seemingly endless civil wars throughout the globe. Driven by competition and imperial overreach,

these militaries amassed a wealth of counterinsurgent experience, whether the French in Algeria and

Indochina, the British in Malaya and Kenya, the Americans in Vietnam, or the Russians in Afghanistan

(Trinquier 1964; Nagl 2002; Fitzgerald 2013). The accumulation of COIN knowhow has generated an

expansive literature which focuses on past successes and failures, all of which supposedly provides

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important lessons for present and future state expansion campaigns. Unfortunately, many

‘COINdanistas’ or ex-field commanders, military instructors, and academics who study

counterinsurgency operate under the misguided assumption that all of these cases are essentially

similar and can therefore be addressed through a common solution. This analytical fallacy has caused

many to overlook the inconvenient fact that genuine COIN successes have been rare, and those that

do occur are often the result of insurgent weakness, external pressures, or the extremity and

ruthlessness of the tactics employed. There is a greater need for COIN experts to pay heed to Leites

and Wolf’s (1970) simple yet critical observation about modern insurgency:

Each major insurgency is, in some sense, unique, as suggested by the diversity of areas and circumstances in the list. But most of them have shared many features – organization, tactics, violence, coercion, persuasion, ideology, internal grievance, external influence. The common features make insurgency a proper subject for more general analysis. The diversity warrants caution to avoid pushing generalizations too far. (2)

Perhaps most worrying of all is that those individuals who wield enormous influence over

contemporary military policy continue to advocate a vigorous state intervention and expansion into

contested spaces in order to securitize and, by extension, pacify them of perceived threats, without

first taking other non-military options into consideration. Supporters of this strategy invoke its

successes in places as disparate as Kenya, Malaysia, Iraq, Sri Lanka, and even Colombia, all the while

ignoring its failures elsewhere. This is not to say that all state interventions into such spaces are either

complete successes or abject failures, rather that the results often vary dramatically even when within

areas of extremely close proximity and warrant greater evaluation. This dissertation examines the role

of the state when it expands into territory controlled by other armed non-state actors in order to

develop a better understanding of how military interventions into contested spaces can produce such

radically different outcomes during the course of civil wars. Although my research is rooted in an

inter-regional comparison of two different cases in northern Colombia, it may also provide important

insights into other cases of violent internal conflicts (i.e. the Democratic Republic of Congo, the

8

Philippines, Somalia, Syria, Mali, Myanmar, Sudan, Iraq, and Afghanistan) or states hosting a myriad

of armed groups with high levels of violence (i.e. México, Nigeria, El Salvador, Libya, Jamaica,

Honduras, South Africa, Venezuela, and Brazil).

C. Defining Terms

My use of the term state expansion is to address the shortcomings of the conventionally used

term counterinsurgency. While seemingly interchangeable, state expansion provides a more holistic

balance in terms of its meaning and definition when describing what the state is effectively attempting

to achieve when it inserts itself into spaces controlled by armed non-state actors. To paraphrase the

U.S. Army Field Manual 3-24, counterinsurgency “[…]is military, paramilitary, political, economic,

psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency” (Petraeus et al. 2006, 2).

As expansive and clear as this definition may appear, it fails to capture the logic of insurgency, an

omission which demonstrates the need for a more holistic interpretation. According to Kalyvas (2006):

“[…]civil war is, at its core, a process of integration and statebuilding” (14). This is reflected better in

some cases than others. For example, civil wars in developed countries such as Greece, Bosnia, or

Northern Ireland occurred in contexts where state formation had largely been achieved under previous

regimes, political orders which seemingly exercised a monopoly of violence throughout the entirety

of the national territory. However, most insurgencies and civil wars have emerged in states

characterized by fragmented sovereignty and these are still far more likely to experience internal

conflict than other states that have effectively achieved the monopoly of the means of coercion within

their territory (Fearon and Laitin 2003). The meaning of counterinsurgency in historically fragmented

countries such as Colombia is better captured by state expansion, meaning the belated attempt by the

central government to seize control and integrate regions of the country previously developed and

administered by non-state sources of authority back into the national fold. Although “state expansion”

is a more accurate term than “counterinsurgency” in the case of Colombia, it is complementary and

9

interchangeable with that term, rather than conflictive, and as such both terms are used throughout

this dissertation.

The concept of nested governance follows in the steps of previous works that highlight the

complex layering of different yet interconnected modes of governance at the national and sub-national

levels, all of which constrain political actors and their policies (Ostrom 1990; Tsebelis 1990; Sinha

2005). Historically, Colombia has been characterized by different levels of political competition in

which national political elites “[…]effectively delegated the running of the countryside and other

peripheral areas to local elites”, powerful individuals who governed these regional fiefdoms as they

saw fit, all “[…]in exchange for political support and not challenging the center” (Robinson 2013, 44).

Therefore, nested governance refers to the manner in which armed non-state actors insert themselves

between communities of people and the state in order to control and regulate formal and informal

processes between the two parties according to their own interest and objectives. Nested governance

effectively enables armed groups to carry out both informal processes typically ascribed to criminal

organizations such as the indirect rule of local populations, territory, and illegal rackets, and formal

processes centered on legal economic activities, electoral contests, and bureaucratic-administrative

institutions, all of which are nominally administered by the state (Duncan 2014).

Over the course of the current civil war, armed units from leftist insurgent groups and right-

wing paramilitary organizations have inserted themselves into these sub-national dynamics in an

attempt to control people and territory, sometimes forging alliances with malleable regional elites, in

other cases bypassing them entirely. Garay et al. (2008) label this phenomena “the co-opted

reconfiguration of the state”, a term which refers to legal and illegal organizations that employ

illegitimate practices to change the regional political order in order: “[…]to obtain sustainable benefits

for their own advantage and to ensure that their interests are validated politically and legally” (96).

Nested governance adheres to a similar logic. However rather than focusing solely on how armed

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non-state actors place themselves as interlocutors between macro and meso-level political institutions

and the communities they purportedly govern, this concept also takes into account how these groups

navigate formal and informal processes of a social and economic character (Arjona, Kasfir and

Mampilly 2015). In regards to informal processes, armed actors can control local territory and

populations through the effective deployment of violence against both civilians and the state, while

they can also explicitly regulate illegal economies such as extortion, kidnapping, contraband, and drug

trafficking (Beckert and Dewey 2017). However, as Gustavo Duncan (2014) highlights, such groups

are typically unable to invest the proceeds from such economic activities into the legal economy due

to the likelihood of state forfeiture. It would be similarly problematic for such groups to participate

directly in formal processes related to legal economic activities, electoral contests, and bureaucratic-

administrative institutions. Ostensibly, these are all administered by the state and thus armed non-state

actors need another means to capture power in these dynamics.

Provisional predation refers to a model of governance adopted by armed non-state actors that

prioritizes short-term group goals and objectives over the long-term consolidation of a comprehensive

social order in a given territory. Typically, a group that adopts provisional predation does so because

the objective conditions are not conducive to establishing nested governance – either due to the

collective rejection of such actors by local communities, or the lack of local networks to latch onto –

yet the result is that these groups end up controlling territory and economic resources, but lack any

meaningful embeddedness in the human terrain. Jeremy Weinstein (2007) describes such forms of

armed non-state rule: “The short-term orientation of opportunistic insurgencies, on the other hand,

tends to be detrimental to civilian populations…A constant demand for short-term rewards also drives

combatants to loot, destroy property, and attack indiscriminately” (10-11). While similar to Mancur

Olson’s (1993) work which distinguishes between the incentives guiding “stationary” and “roving”

bandits, the relationship between nested governance and provisional predation does not necessarily

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constitute a binary. Rather, these are two points on a broader spectrum of possible insurgent-civilian

relations which are liable to evolve over time given the changing structural conditions in which both

combatants and non-combatants exist.

According to my explanatory model, armed actors that successfully appropriate the pre-

existing cleavage (e.g. synchronize insurgent goals and interests with those of the local peasantry) are

far more likely to establish nested governance which enables such actors to better embed themselves

into local communities. Stronger insurgent embeddedness generates greater populational control, a

dynamic which binds civilians to the existing insurgent social order in these spaces. Conversely,

insurgent social orders characterized by provisional predation are generally the result of an inability by

armed actors to appropriate the primary cleavage, a shortcoming which limits the extent to which such

groups are embedded in such spaces, and weakens the degree to which civilians are bound to their

order. This reduced level of populational control makes it difficult for insurgent groups to repel and

defeat counterinsurgent challenges. The strength of inter-civilian linkages, or embeddedness as this

concept has been refashioned by Granovetter (1985), are integral to outcomes ranging from the

economic productivity of immigrant communities in the Global North, to the success of post-war

recovery efforts (Portes 1998; Colletta and Cullen 2000). However, while there is a plethora of

literature discussing the role of these linkages in enabling disparate outcomes in a variety of contexts,

there are few convincing explanations about how embeddedness is produced at the individual or group

level. The importance of this concept in the study of social networks is best articulated by Moody and

White’s (2003) observation that: “Embeddedness indicates that actors who are integrated in dense

clusters or multiplex relations of social networks face different sets of resources and constraints than

those who are not embedded in such networks” (105). The pre-existing conditions found in a specific

territory can serve as “anchors” or “barriers” to insurgent institutionalization which in turn great

affects meso and micro-level outcomes in civil wars. Anoop Sarbahi (2014) operationalizes

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embeddedness in the context of violent competition between armed non-state actors and highlights

its importance:

In view of gross power asymmetry between the warring parties, social embeddedness is crucial to the rebel’s ability to resist the powerful state and impose a costly stalemate - whether a rebel group is favorably inclined to negotiate, is susceptible to co-optation, presents a serious military challenge or marginally survives, and is highly influenced by this characteristic. (1474)

All communities possess varying degrees of inter-civilian embeddedness and the manner in which

these relations are conformed is unique to each one of them. Similarly, the manner in which armed

groups embed themselves in such communities depends on the pre-existing agrarian social structure,

the compatibility of their interests with those of local habitants, and the manner in which they attempt

govern and control both populations and territory.

My conceptualization of populational control bears much in common with the established

research from Criminology on social control. Although Political Science and Criminology have

remained fairly detached, many prominent scholars maintain that modern armed non-state actors have

more in common with criminal groups than with traditional insurgent forces (Kaldor 1999; Ross 2004;

Weinstein 2007). While this discussion lacks consensus and has already been debated exhaustively

within the social sciences, Criminology-based research that examines the societal constraints placed

on social deviancy is quite useful when analyzing how some armed groups are able to control local

populations even when they do not maintain complete territorial control in a particular space. Travis

Hirschi’s (1969) social bond theory argues that an individual’s attachment, commitment, involvement,

and belief in the established social order ultimately shape their conformity to its rules, values, and its

legitimacy. Individuals who live under a social order that permeates every facet of their daily lives and

places a great number of constraints on their agency: “[…]are unlikely to place their good standing in

society at risk through acts of crime and deviance” (Thyne and Schroeder 2012, 1069).

In sub-national theatres of conflict, deviation from the established rules means defying the

social code established by the dominant armed actor, and by extension, breaking from the normative

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constraints adhered to by the larger community. In spaces where insurgents possess a wide range of

enforcement and monitoring mechanisms, the probability of an insurgent sanction for violating the

established social code is all but guaranteed. Whereas Kalyvas (2006) argues that territorial control

“[…]allows the effective use of violence, thus deterring defection; opponents are identified and flee,

are neutralized, or switch sides” (124), this fails to capture the extensive socialization of local

communities which have developed for extended periods of time under traditional forms of authority

or armed non-state actors (Sluka 1989; Souleimanov and Aliyev 2017). De jure territorial control by the

state does not automatically destroy pre-existing constraints and the commitments that local habitants

may possess towards the long-standing social order, nor does it necessarily weaken or neutralize the

enforcement and monitoring mechanisms utilized by insurgent groups in these contexts.

Finally, the term agrarian social structure represents the convergence of various structural

conditions (land distribution, mode of production, state presence/absence) which shape regional

social orders. There is a substantial body of work on the importance of agrarian social structures on

rural conflict dynamics, and it is clear that these hierarchies do not materialize from thin air. Rather,

they are the product of the historical settlement and usage of the land, the social hierarchies which

develop over time, and finally the relations between peasants and landed elites (Tilly 1992; Wolf 1969;

Skocpol 1979). Agrarian social structures are important to processes such as insurgent formation and

state expansion insofar as they represent the human terrain in which armed actors attempt to embed

themselves by forging strategic alliances with specific groups, whether smallholding peasants,

merchants, or large landholders (Scott 1976; Paige 1978; Gutiérrez-Sanín and Vargas 2017; Brewer

2010). The pre-existing cleavages which emerge in distinct agrarian social structures affect the ability

of armed insurgent groups, paramilitary structures, and the formal military to penetrate and control

these rural spaces. These hierarchies can be vertical, characterized by highly stratified pyramid structures

with landed elites at the top and landless peasants at the bottom, or these can be horizontal, representing

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egalitarian structures with no discernible ruling class or elite constituency. In some cases, agrarian

social structures can trace their configuration back to colonial institutions designed to administer

agrarian communities (Boone 2002; Banerjee and Iyer 2005; Mukherjee 2018a, 2018b). In others, these

structures are shaped by top-down state policy directives or spontaneous migrations to inhabit

unsettled frontier zones (LeGrand 1986; Gootenberg 2003; Ballvé 2020).

D. Literature Review, Theoretical Gaps, and Alternative Explanations

Previous scholarship on historic contentious events ranging from the French Revolution to

the Arab Spring has examined the relation between state capacity and counterinsurgent efforts to

reclaim and control contested spaces (Tilly 1964; Greer 1935; Josua and Edel 2015; Alley 2013). My

research challenges many of the established arguments found in the dual literatures on

counterinsurgency and civil wars, suggesting that many of the potential alternative explanations used

to explain this particular research puzzle, whether counterinsurgency strategy, pre-existing institutions

and networks, territorial control and civilian collaboration, economic conditions, geography, have

analytical and theoretical limitations in regards to my cases. Additionally, my theory offers a way to

fuse the existing counterinsurgency literature with the emergent research agenda on civil wars and

armed non-state actors. In order to assess and evaluate the strength and resilience of insurgent social

orders, it is difficult to assess the strength and durability of these governance models until they are

challenged by counterinsurgent forces. It is during these critical junctures, I argue, that insurgent

embeddedness is tested and ultimately revealed. Given that embeddedness is what ultimately

determines counterinsurgency outcomes, there is a pressing need for the COIN literature to better

examine how such embeddedness is generated and weakened in peripheral spaces.

Despite more than sixty years of counterinsurgency knowledge derived from past conflicts,

military commanders and counterinsurgent forces continue to repeat past errors by assuming that a

fixed tactical approach can succeed anywhere, regardless of the context. Counterinsurgent military

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historian Douglas Porch (2014) describes this hubris: “For counterinsurgents, tactics became the end-

all, a formula that if properly applied would win such contests, irrespective of the strategic

environment, just so long as governments have the stamina to see the enterprise through to a

successful conclusion” (174). Numerous military experts and scholars alike have arrived at this

conclusion based on large-N cross-national comparative works, which fail to appreciate the meso and

micro-level dynamics on the ground (Staniland 2014b; Berman and Matanock 2015). More recently,

proponents of the pre-eminent population-centric theory believe that “hearts and minds” can be won

over solely with select discriminate violence and material inducements, a belief that overlooks strong

pre-existing ties that may exist between insurgents and civilians within a specific space (Petraeus 2006;

Kilcullen 2010; Dixon 2009; Lyall 2009; Fjelde and DeSoysa 2009; Taydas and Peksen 2012).

While my research suggests that it is extremely difficult for counterinsurgents to militarily

defeat insurgent groups while they remain embedded in local populations, I diverge from the core

assumptions of population-centric theories that civilian support or obedience is a by-product of

material inducements and/or good governance. I posit that robust insurgent embeddedness engenders

a strong level of populational control, a dynamic which impedes civilian collaboration with the state

during periods of contestation, regardless of potential rewards and punishments being offered by

counterinsurgent forces. In this sense, my theory gravitates more towards Hazleton’s (2017) emergent

“coercion theory”, which holds that counterinsurgent success or failure is largely shaped by “[…]the

application of brute force” against both civilian populations and insurgents themselves (81). I find that

in Montes de María and Arauca, there were two interconnected factors which proved instrumental for

COIN success or failure, paramilitary collusion and indiscriminate violence against civilians

(particularly in the form of forced displacement). My findings diverge from Hazleton’s model insofar

as they seek to explain sub-national variation in counterinsurgency and my theory operationalizes

agrarian social structures rather than elite linkages as the key variable in shaping these outcomes.

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The recent growth in literature on civil wars and armed non-state governance has seen the

emergence of a modest research agenda on the role played by pro-state militias and paramilitary

groups, a canon of work that has challenged the role of the state as a unitary actor in armed conflicts

(Romero 2003; Duncan 2006; Jentzsch et al. 2015; Daly 2016; Gutiérrez-Sanín 2019). This is important

insofar as more than two-thirds of civil wars over the past three decades have seen the deployment of

paramilitary groups, reflective of the changing nature of armed conflict and irregular warfare, and of

the utility of these groups in performing key counterinsurgency functions (Stanton 2015; Cigar 2014;

Staniland 2015). According to Aliyev (2016), however, there has been a theoretical bias in this

emergent literature on militias and paramilitary groups: “[…]although state-manipulated militias have

been featured prominently in the existing theory of paramilitary violence, it is the state-parallel groups

that have thus far remained unnoticed and undertheorized” (500). Addressing this theoretical deficit,

my work contributes to the growing literature the role played by independently created militia groups

in counterinsurgency operations. Specifically, I highlight how state-paramilitary collusion can create

the conditions conducive to successful state COIN outcomes through the delegation of indiscriminate

violence and human rights violations to these parastatal groups (Ron 2002; Alvarez 2006; Mitchell,

Carey, and Butler 2014).

Any serious undertaking which seeks to analyze counterinsurgency in Colombia, past or

present, needs to assess the role played by paramilitary groups in the development of anti-subversive

security initiatives, a phenomena which owes much to the prevailing U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine

during the Cold War (Thomson 2018). Even though Colombia has historically been characterized as

a democracy, albeit for long periods an exclusionary one, there has been a long history of Faustian

bargains between the official armed forces and these paramilitary structures, counterinsurgent

marriages of convenience which are normally attributed to authoritarian regimes during civil wars

(HRW 1996; Lyall 2010, Byman 2016). Whereas these groups composed in the 1960s could be

17

classified as “state-manipulated militias”, from the 1980s onwards paramilitary groups in Colombia

have been “state-parallel groups”, entities composed of different constellations of landed elites and

drug traffickers which had: “[…]slightly different components…tied to disparate grievances and

opportunities” (Gutiérrez-Sanín and Vargas 2017, 746). This variation aside, regional paramilitary

blocs were largely counterinsurgent expressions formed in response to insurgent predation against

landed elites, which almost always counted on some form of direct collusion with the Colombian

military (Gutiérrez-Sanín 2014). At the nadir of the armed conflict in the 1990s and 2000s, “[…]the

vast majority of non-combat politically-motivated killings, disappearances, and cases of torture {were}

carried out by army-backed paramilitaries” (Amnesty International 2005, 3-4). Other statistical

grounded research has found that while increased U.S. military aid to the Colombian armed forces

failed to reduce insurgent violence, it did lead to “[…]the diversion of foreign military aid from the

Colombian military to illicit paramilitary groups”, thereby strengthening their military capacity (Dube

and Naidu 2015, 266). Therefore, my theory posits that the repertoires of violence deployed by

paramilitary groups in Montes de María and Arauca was fundamental in explaining divergent sub-

national counterinsurgency outcomes in these two regions, particularly their usage of indiscriminate

violence against civilians.

State collusion with paramilitary structures and massive forced displacement clearly do not fall

in the best practices of the population-centric theory of counterinsurgency (Watts et al. 2014). Most

COIN successes, historic and modern, owe much to the deployment of unethical methods, often

violating International Humanitarian Law (IHL), rather than good governance or any prioritization of

the wellbeing of civilian populations (Hazleton 2017; Valentino, Huth, and Balch-Lindsay 2004;

Böhmelt et al. 2019). My work suggests that most counterinsurgent victories can be attributed partly

or fully to such tactics, an argument that is supported by many important cases from the distant and

recent past. The forced relocation of civilian populations has occurred in “[…]almost a third of all

18

counterinsurgency campaigns since 1816”, and has proven particularly useful in a variety of conflict

settings, whether deployed against Boer settlers in the Transvaal, ethnic Chinese migrants in British

Malaya, or anti-colonial nationalists in Algeria (Zhukov 2015, 1155; Lackman 1985; Hack 1999). This

tactic constitutes one of many violations of IHL seen in numerous “successful” scorched earth

counterinsurgency campaigns, indiscriminate and disproportionate state violence conducted against

groups as diverse as Mayan peasants in Guatemala, ethnic Chechens in the North Caucasus, and Tamil

civilians in Sri Lanka (Flynn 1984; Kramer 2005; Staniland 2014b).

For reasons of state weakness or plausible deniability, professional militaries often outsource

these questionable functions to paramilitary groups, a delegation of dirty war tactics that the

Colombian paramilitary boss, Fidel Castaño, once described in an interview:

The military can’t eradicate the guerrillas. I tell you that myself as I have waged war with them. The only way to defeat them is by finishing off the guerrilla’s social bases in every region and to create paramilitaries with what remains. The difference with the guerrillas is that they enter zones for the first time, where there is no violence, and they can fraternize with people and win them over without having to sacrifice anybody…Paramilitaries enter zones that are ravaged by violence and then they aren’t able to distinguish between guerrillas and peasants. They carry out a general cleansing and only after can they begin to talk with people. (Reyes Posada 2009, 131; emphasis added)

The cleansing operations referred to above involved the violent elimination or displacement of

any civilian suspected of being an insurgent sympathizer, as these counterinsurgent campaigns of

“draining the sea” through massive forced displacement was largely delegated to paramilitary groups

(Romero 2003; Tate 2003; Gutiérrez-Sanín 2019). Most, if not all, successful counterinsurgent

outcomes at the sub-national level owed much to the brutal efficiency of the paramilitary dirty war

conducted against civilian populations in collusion with the armed forces, a symbiotic campaign which

saw Colombia become one of the largest producers of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the world

(CODHES 2010; Ibañez 2008; Daly 2016). Similar to other phenomena seen in civil wars such as

recruitment and collaboration, it is hard to ascribe any one underlying motive for why forced

displacement occurs. The expansive literature conducted on the topic lists socio-political loyalties

(perceived and real), land redistribution, economic modernization, private accumulation, institutional

19

incentives, and armed violence as the main drivers behind forced displacement in Colombia (Vargas

and Uribe 2017; Gutiérrez-Sanín 2019; Steele 2017; Ballvé 2020). My work builds on this canon by

emphasizing the importance of direct indiscriminate displacement, or the intentional yet indiscriminate

forced displacement of entire communities of people, for successful counterinsurgency outcomes.

The study of how pre-existing organizational, institutional, and social endowments in

communities governed by armed non-state actors can influence their relations with civilians possesses

clear analytical limitations. While the networks that insurgent groups employ and depend upon to

build national-level organizations are of critical importance to their ability to challenge the state and

withstand the expected violent backlash from the ruling classes, there is also dramatic variation at the

sub-national level between disparate units of the same insurgent organizations (Staniland 2014a;

Sarbahi 2014; Arjona 2016a; Daly 2016; Gutiérrez Sanín 2019). It has been clearly established that pre-

existing endowments shape and determine the degree to which armed non-state actors are able to

embed themselves into particular spaces, although there is conflicting evidence as to the nature of this

relationship. Some scholars maintain that stronger social cohesion and organizational networks

engenders greater collective resistance to non-state rule and thus limits the extent of armed non-state

actors’ ability to govern local communities (Rappaport 2007; Brewer 2010; Arjona 2016a; Kaplan 2013;

2017). Others have demonstrated that armed actors can co-opt, infiltrate, and develop organizations,

formal and informal institutions, and networks to further consolidate control over populations and

territory (Parkinson 2013; Ramírez 2011; Mosinger 2018; Ronderos 2014; Rubin 2019; Larratt-Smith

2020). My research speaks to both literatures, as I find that the ability of armed groups to co-opt these

organizational endowments depends largely on the structure and density of these networks, as well as

the ability of armed groups to appropriate the primary cleavage as their own and successfully resolve

the dominant peasant grievance in a particular space.

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Stathis Kalyvas’s (2006) control-collaboration model greatly advanced our understanding of

how and why violence is generated in local contexts during civil war. It similarly offers valuable insight

into the conditions under which counterinsurgents are able to gain the crucial civilian support needed

to defeat insurgent groups. However, this model overlooks the role of socio-historic conditions which

may facilitate or impede cooperation with armed actors in contested spaces. The assumption that

violence is contingent on control of territory and the level of collaboration that armed groups obtain

from local populations is largely correct, but distant and recent history is replete with examples where

armed actors in contested spaces found local cooperation (and reliable intelligence) extremely hard to

come by despite their overwhelming territorial dominance, whether the Union forces in the

Shenandoah Valley of Confederate Virginia, the British Army in Western Transvaal during the Boer

War, or the 32 Battalion of the South African Defense Forces in Owamboland in South West Africa

(Eland 2013; Pakenham 1979; Steenkamp 1989). Similarly, armed groups with weaker levels of

territorial control have been able to prevent such civilian collaboration quite effectively due to other

local endogenous mechanisms (Vargas 2009; Bhavnani et al. 2011). As demonstrated by the cases of

Montes de María and Arauca, the degree of territorial control does not always produce a

commensurate level of collaboration and information which is required to defeat opposing actors.

High levels of insurgent populational control can make the cost of collaboration or defection to the

state substantially higher and hence unfeasible or unappealing, regardless of the potentially personal

risks they may assume for non-compliance with whatever actor has the greatest degree of control

within said space.

Many scholars highlight the prevalence of economic factors such as poverty and local resource

endowments, or “[…]whether insurgent groups have access to material resources”, as the primary

factors shaping insurgent-civilian relations (Weinstein 2007, 327; Ross 2004; Humphreys and

Weinstein 2006). The existing literature on the greed and grievance drivers of armed conflict has

21

examined the relationship between resource endowments, civil war onset, and insurgent mobilization

in great detail (Collier and Hoeffler 1998; Keen 1998; Hegre 2002). Most quantitative and case study

based research suggests that countries with resources such as oil and coca invariably are more likely

to experience the onset of civil war onset than those that do not (Collier and Hoeffler 2004; de Soysa

2002). In the case of Arauca, insurgent groups arrived and had already consolidated their presence

before the discovery of oil or the start of coca boom in the 1990s and 2000s. More importantly, if

economic endowments were in fact the sole source of insurgent strength and embeddeness in civilian

communities then it would have been reasonable to expect the insurgent groups to have been strongest

in the Araucan plains, which clearly benefitted from oil royalties more than all of the other

municipalities combined. While insurgents in Montes de María did not possess the same resources as

their colleagues elsewhere in Colombia, they nevertheless managed to control numerous lucrative

economic activities in the region until 2005, yet this did not enable the group to resist counterinsurgent

efforts to physically separate them from their civilian bases in the years prior.

Of equal importance, these cases suggest that the finances available to insurgent groups can

actually strengthen relations with local civilian bases, if they channel these resources back into the

communities in the form of social services and public works. Furthermore, when insurgent groups do

not depend on local individual contributions to finance their operations, peasants are more likely to

support them or tolerate their presence than in those regions where rebels resort to predation and

banditry to sustain themselves (Gutiérrez-Sanín 2008; Evans 2014; Olson 1993). My research finds

that insurgent groups that are able to capture and control the “economic sphere” are able to further

bind civilian communities into their established order due to dependence mechanisms, an additional

means of generating insurgent-civilian embeddedness in such contexts. Socio-economic factors such

as poverty and lack of economic opportunity almost certainly helped insurgent recruitment in both

Montes de María and Arauca, yet the fact that there was no substantial difference between these socio-

22

economic indicators in the two regions suggests that this was not a key variable in producing different

counterinsurgency outcomes. This is especially notable in the extremely high rates of rural poverty

found across both regions, corresponding with Leites and Wolf’s (1970) assertion that: “Historically

the success or failure of insurgency has not borne a simple relationship to the degree of poverty” (17).

Geographic and topographical considerations are frequently operationalized as an explanatory

variable in the study of insurgent mobilization and civil war. According to Fearon and Laitin (2003):

“Mountainous terrain is significantly related to higher rates of civil war” (85). The most famous

practitioners of 20th century guerrilla warfare plied their trade in such terrain, from Mao in the Jinggang

mountains, to Vo Nguyen Giap in Dien Bien Phu, to Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra, and it has

become conventional wisdom in the study of armed insurgencies that “[…]fighting on favorable

ground and particularly in the mountains presents many advantages” (Guevara 2002, 63). The history

of the Colombian civil war bears this observation out, but upon closer inspection it may not reveal

much about the role of topography on counterinsurgency outcomes. As Tollefsen and Buhaug (2014)

point out, mountainous terrain covered in forest or jungle is even more advantageous, as they

“[…]present major obstacles to armored vehicles and other heavy equipment as well as putting a strain

on supply lines, and dense forest canopies hinder aerial detection”(6). Thus, it is tempting to assume

that the labyrinthine hills covered in tropical jungle that Montes de María’s topography provides would

be ideal terrain for armed insurgents, whereas the virtually flat lowlands and open plains found

throughout Arauca would be considerably less suitable for the formation of a rebel movement.

However, as demonstrated by the results of Democratic Security Policy in both of these regions,

topography neither explains the variation in outcomes between two regions with dramatically different

physical terrain, nor between the sub-regions themselves found in Arauca.

Of similar importance, the availability and proximity of border refuges is of enormous value

to insurgent groups, as “[b]y moving from one side of the border to the other, the insurgent is often

23

able to escape pressure or, at least, to complicate operations for his opponent” (Galula 1964, 35;

Trinquier 1964; Scott 2000; Goodhand 2005; Salehyan 2009). As my cases demonstrate, insurgents in

Arauca were able to take advantage of the sanctuary made available to them in neighboring Venezuela,

a geographic endowment that was not available to insurgents from the very same groups in Montes

de María given its geographic location. Yet, it is difficult to ascribe any causal determinism to this

explanation due to the simple fact that state expansion was successful in expelling insurgent groups

from plains municipalities sharing extensive borders with Venezuela (Arauca municipality, Cravo

Norte). However, the very same strategy failed to dislodge and expel the same insurgent fronts based

in those piedmont municipalities located on the border (Arauquita, Saravena), and in the interior

(Fortul, Tame).

E. My Theoretical Model

My theory is based on explaining two causal processes key to understanding counterinsurgency

outcomes: (i) insurgent embeddedness in the human terrain, and (ii) counterinsurgent efforts to

disembed insurgent groups from civilian populations. Following state-centric frameworks established

by important works on insurgent formation and revolution in the Global South, I propose a similarly

holistic analysis of state expansion, albeit one that is inverted. As Jeff Goodwin (2001) notes:

“[…]successful revolutions necessarily involve the breakdown or incapacitation of states” (24).

Timothy Wickham-Crowley (1992) maintains a similar position by arguing that specific regime

characteristics are key to understanding the strength and efficacy of revolutionary movements that are

pitted against them: “Indeed, it was the nature of the regimes themselves that increased the likelihood

that the opposition would unite across classes and despite ideological differences; hence the regime

itself served to strengthen the opposition” (7-8). The study of counterinsurgency, however, focuses

on the inverse puzzle, or how the state confronts insurgencies militarily at the national and sub-

national levels. Therefore, I examine both the counterinsurgency strategy to expand its presence into

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spaces controlled by armed non-state actors, and more importantly, the specific characteristics of these

insurgent factions and their capacity to resist these counterinsurgent efforts. My model adheres to

historical and contemporary works on insurgency and counterinsurgency by arguing that the strength

and cohesion of a particular insurgent structure is contingent on its level of embeddedness in local

civilian communities (Zedong 2005; Guevara 1961; Trinquier 1964). The strength or weakness of such

insurgent-civilian linkages plays a deterministic role in whether an insurgent group can survive a

substantial counterinsurgent challenge or not. As Mampilly (2011) notes, most modern state expansion

campaigns are guided by a fundamental principle which focuses on “[…]severing the ties between an

insurgent organization and its civilian support base” (55).

Figure 1. Analytical Sequence of Insurgency & Counterinsurgency

Source: Author’s Elaboration

The structure of this historical-institutional model is quite simple. There are three phases and

two critical junctures which shape the overall sequence of each case examined. The pre-existing

configuration of a territory (Phase 1) is key to understanding the resources and constraints which

insurgent groups encountered upon their insertion into these spaces. The pre-existing configuration

phase primarily focuses on the formation and evolution of the agrarian social structure, or the

predominant rural class hierarchy which consolidated in these peripheral spaces prior to the arrival of

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armed non-state actors. Leon Zamosc (1986) highlights how rural social structures that emerge during

this period ultimately shape subsequent interactions between key actors and outcomes:

The socioeconomic structure of the countryside shapes the conditions for economic performance, defines the relative strength of the rural social classes, and sets the stage for their participation in the political processes linked to the development of capitalism. The way in which the agrarian question is resolved depends, in turn, upon a complex mix of historical, socio-economic, and political factors unique to each country. (7)

Agrarian social structures are characterized by different logics that are shaped by competing

demands from different social groups and their representative organizations which each seek to

structure and order local societies according to their interests. On the one side are landed elites, or the

dominant landholding class that promotes latifundia by seeking to accumulate and maximize their

control of land through an assortment of legal, political, and coercive mechanisms, generally at the

expense of the local peasantry who are forced to work for them under unfavorable terms (Boone

2014; Cramer and Wood 2017; Woods 2020). On the other side are peasants, or those who work in

agriculture as: “[…]a landless day laborer, a permanent wage employee, or a farmer working a small

holding” (Wood 2003, 5). In contrast to landed elites, peasants promote either a collective or

smallholding system of agriculture, seek access and title to land, a source of credit, and basic

infrastructure to develop external markets for their products (Giddens and Held 1982; Horowitz

2002). Although these are other important rural constituencies (merchants, middle-peasants, etc.) in

agrarian social structures which play a role in shaping these hierarchies, my model prioritizes

parsimony in light of the fact that rural land tenure patterns in the Global South tend to be highly

stratified between landed elites and peasants, demonstrating a need for analytical simplicity (Griffin et

al. 2002; Margulis et al. 2013).

The expansive study of civil wars has demonstrated that a deficiency of state presence, or the

relationship of groups to structures of power, in a specific territory makes it easier for other actors to

take root and develop territorial and populational control in the absence of the central government’s

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presence (Tilly 1969; Humphreys 2005; Reno 2003). In many cases, the uneven distribution of state

power throughout a national territory owes much to the colonial legacy of direct and indirect rule

(Mamdani 1996; Naseemullah and Staniland 2016; Besley and Reynal-Querol 2014; Wucherpfennig et

al. 2015). In the virtual absence of the state, different rural constituencies compete to shape the

character of local society, deploying distinct regulatory mechanisms used to resolve collective action

problems (Brewer 2010; Balcells 2017; Staniland 2014a; Arjona 2016a). These mechanisms are often

organizational endowments, both formal and informal, which reflect the collective action capacity of

a particular community (Oberschall 1973). However, these organizational endowments also tell us a

lot about the composition of agrarian social structures, and more importantly, the primary cleavages

circumscribing them (Gould 1995). Landed elites form their own clubs and associations to both

regulate their agrarian social structures, and to protect their interests from potential state reforms

and/or peasant unrest. Peasants similarly mobilize behind organizations created to administer and

protect their communities from external predation, and to articulate their demands vis-à-vis landed

elites and the state (Zamosc 1986).

Figure 2. Key Variables, Critical Junctures, and Outcomes

Source: Author’s Elaboration

Agrarian social structures strongly influence how insurgent groups decide to insert themselves

into a particular space. Such groups are attracted by conditions which appear conducive to

constructing an active and prosperous rebellion, a phenomenon Michael Rubin (2018) observes: “Civil

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war is fought on human terrain, in which the local population influences the belligerents’ interests in

seizing territory, the costs of doing so, and the capability to win and retain control” (4). David Kilcullen

(2010) places special emphasis on these primary cleavages in processes related to insurgent formation

and consolidation:

The center of gravity of an insurgent movement – the source of power from which it derives its morale, its physical strength, its freedom of action, and its will to act – is its connectivity with the local population in a given area. Insurgents tend to ride and manipulate a social wave of grievances, often legitimate ones, and they draw their fighting power from their connection to a mass base. (8)

Agrarian social structures ultimately shape and determine the primary cleavage that

circumscribes local spaces, social ruptures that represent local grievances and disputes rather than the

master cleavage of a civil war (Kalyvas 2003; Roldán 2002). According to Lubkemann (2005): “In

fragmented war contexts…the violence of military actors is appropriated and deployed in the service

of local-level social conflicts” (501). My model is based on the Maoist assumption that insurgencies

prioritize peasant support over that of landed elites, although it allows for the possibility that civilian

support does not necessarily function as a binary and in many cases armed actors will simultaneously

attempt to solicit support from multiple rural constituencies. However, this can prove difficult in

agrarian social structures where the primary cleavage exists between landed elites and the peasantry,

particularly if it is tied to the volatile “land question” (Mason 1998; Wood 2003; Albertus and Kaplan

2013).

Although some insurgent groups arrive to a zone abruptly and in large numbers, others slowly

infiltrate and build up their presence progressively. Regardless of the pace, this specific moment

(Critical Juncture A) begins the period of insurgent institutionalization (Phase 2). This phase represents a

causal process, or the “[…]particular type of sequence in which the temporally ordered events belong

to a single coherent mode of activity” where an insurgent group attempts to assume control of various

functions related to governance, whether it be the regulation of rural land tenure patterns, local

political contests, agrarian economies, or civic participation (Falleti and Mahoney 2015, 214). Some

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groups limit their responsibilities to providing security and order and little else, while others intervene

in the most intimate aspects of civilians lives in areas under their control (Mampilly 2007; Wiegand

2010; Arjona 2016b). The extent to which armed groups immerse themselves in local societies depends

on their immediate and long-term objectives, group ideology, and the extent and the degree to which

civilian communities collectively accept or resist their rule (Weinstein 2007; Gutiérrez Sanín and Wood

2017; Kaplan 2013).

The insurgent institutionalization phase indicates the arrival and consolidation of an insurgent

group into a particular space, and ultimately represents the period where insurgent embeddedness is

formed between these armed groups and the civilian communities in which they are operating. Given

how crucial insurgent embeddedness is in determining state expansion outcomes, it is necessary to

examine how this factor is generated in such contexts. David Galula (1964) claims that embeddedness

itself is determined by “[…]the tacit or explicit agreement of the population or, at worst, on its

submissiveness” (8), while his contemporary Roger Trinquier notes that “[…]the sine qua non of victory

in modern warfare is the unconditional support of a population” (1964, 8). Robert Taber (1965)

explains why civilian buy-in is so deterministic in forming insurgent embeddedness:

{The}population is the key to the entire struggle. Indeed, although western analysts seem to dislike entertaining this idea, it is the population which is doing the struggling. The guerrilla, who is of the people in a way which the government soldier cannot be, fights with the support of the non-combatant civilian population; it is his camouflage, his quartermaster, his recruiting office, his communications network, his efficient, all-seeing intelligence service. Without the consent and aid of the people, the guerrilla would merely be a bandit, and could not long survive. If, on the other hand, the counter-insurgent could claim this support, the guerrilla would not exist. (23)

Numerous works have demonstrated how civilian support in civil wars actually functions

(Petersen 2001; Wood 2003; Kalyvas 2006). My model builds on these various established

conceptualizations of civilian support that armed actors depend on. Jeffrey Sluka (1989) offers a binary

of “hard support’ and “soft support” in which the former represents those civilians that “[...]are

prepared to act legally or illegally in support of {insurgents}”, while the latter indicates those who

“[…]may do nothing at all other than tolerate the presence of the guerrillas” (137, 143). Ana Arjona’s

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(2017) more recent typology of civilian support and non-support for armed actors breaks down hard

support by distinguishing between “enlistment” and “spontaneous support”, while soft support is

categorized as “obedience”, or behavior that “[…]entails any action by a civilian after an armed group

has ordered her to do so, either directly or by establishing a general rule” (762). My model similarly

holds that while most armed groups attempt to maximize hard support for their rule, they expect

obedience as a minimum requirement of civilian populations living under their control.

Similar to the existing research on insurgent recruitment, it is enormously difficult to broadly

ascribe civilian support, both hard and soft, to any particular motive whether sympathy, revenge,

personal association, ideology, financial gain, or the prevailing set of socio-cultural norms (Wood 2003;

Lyall 2009; Reno and Matisek 2018). However, what ultimately matters for insurgent groups at the

community level “[…]is their unwillingness to act in any way that would interfere with the guerrillas”,

or for civilians living under their rule to obey their rules and not deviate from the established social

code (Sluka 1989, 137). My model maintains that agrarian social structures circumscribed by state

absence and/or local class conflicts provide armed insurgent groups with an opportunity to “[…]fill

a vacuum and cultivate all forms of cooperation” by appropriating these local cleavages, whereby

“[…]the armed group gains the opportunity to shape beliefs in ways that render both obedience and

spontaneous support” (Arjona 2017, 767). The most effective way of achieving local buy-in is through

the co-optation of local organizational endowments which provide potential anchors for armed

insurgents to foster widespread civilian adhesion to their nascent order. As Gould (1995) notes:

“[…]formal organizations – including clubs, correspondence committees, and militias – can exert an

enormous influence on the scale at which group identities are convincing to potential participants in

collective action” (21). Apart from deeper insurgent embeddedness, these mechanisms provide a

greater capacity for populational control, as insurgents can better monitor and enforce civilian

obedience in spaces under their control.

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The true test of insurgent embeddedness arises when these groups are challenged by

counterinsurgent rivals who seek to disembed them from the civilian communities in which they

operate, permanently displacing them these spaces. The moment (Critical Juncture B) demarcating the

end of the insurgent institutionalization phase and the beginning of the period of contestation (Phase 3)

occurs when a counterinsurgent rival appears in sufficient numbers to violently contest the insurgent

social order by attempting to take control of territory, resources, and local populations. There is

substantial variation in the manner in which counterinsurgent groups attempt to do this and the period

of contestation almost always escalates and intensifies the local armed conflict, thereby leading to

higher levels of violence in the process (Kalyvas 2006; Metelits 2011; Wood 2010). My model argues

that while insurgent groups require some hard support in relation to intelligence and manpower to

resist counterinsurgent attempts to expel them, what really matters to them during these conflicts is

widespread soft support in the form of obedience so as to prevent civilians from collaborating with

their opponents. Conversely, counterinsurgents attempt to weaken insurgent embeddedness in order

to prevent civilians from cooperating with these groups in an attempt to isolate and destroy them.

Therefore, the conflict between insurgents and counterinsurgents becomes a struggle for control of

the civilian population. The insurgents’ capacity to resist and withstand the counterinsurgent onslaught

depends in large part on their ability to remain embedded in local civilian populations, whereas the

counterinsurgents seek to weaken this embeddedness either through coercion and physical separation,

or good governance and material incentives.

Given that a central goal of counterinsurgency strategy is to disembed insurgent groups from

the civilian populations in which they operate, it is only logical that these armed non-state actors will

both attempt to protect civilians from counterinsurgent violence deployed to weaken this

embeddedness, and to deter civilians from collaborating with their opponents. The ability of insurgent

groups to protect rural populations from counterinsurgent attempts to forcibly separate the two is of

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crucial importance to the eventual outcome. While some groups prioritize protecting territory and

resources over people, my theory adheres to the maxim that: “The richest source of power to wage

war lies in the masses of the people” (Zedong 2005, 186). As David Kilcullen (2010) points out:

“[…]insurgents cannot operate without the support – active, passive, or enforced – of the local

population” (4). Echoing this, Suykens (2014) argues that: “Any rebel group interested in maintaining

legitimate relations with the population must offer protection. Without protection, at least against

counterinsurgency forces, civilians have little incentive to cooperate with rebels” (145). More than any

other resource endowment available to insurgents, civilian support will determine their ability to resist

and challenge the state in contested spaces, a strategic military benefit highlighted by Galula (1964):

“As long as the population remains under his control, the insurgent retains his liberty to refuse battle

except on his own terms” (15).

Continued civilian sympathy for insurgent groups during periods of contestation can manifest

itself in important ways that differ from the usual contribution of manpower, supplies, or information.

Timothy Wickham-Crowley (1992) emphasizes this fact: “Peasants, like others, have practical

resources to offer to the guerrillas. If peasant sympathy means that a fleeing guerrilla will be offered

shelter, or that, under even torture, peasants will not reveal guerrilla locations, then we may consider

those actions as indicators of “support”, rather than the feelings themselves” (53). Under the logic of

asymmetrical civil war, counterinsurgents possess a military and coercive advantage over insurgent

groups, which may or may not be sufficient to overcome the superior informational capacity

maintained by insurgent groups (Kalyvas 2006; Zhukov 2015). In the face of overwhelming

counterinsurgent pressures, insurgent groups seek “[…]not to win battles, but to avoid defeat, not to

end the war, but to prolong it” (Taber 1965, 147). However, for insurgent groups to avoid defeat and

prolong an armed conflict is extremely difficult, if not impossible, without peasant support. As T.E.

Lawrence (2005) highlights, insurgencies “[…]must have a friendly population, not actively friendly,

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but sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy” (284). In order to

achieve these tactical goals, insurgent groups need to prevent counterinsurgent attempts designed to

physically detach them from their social bases of support, while also providing a credible deterrent

against civilian collaboration with their rivals. My model suggests that insurgent groups that are more

heavily embedded in civilian populations have greater populational control due to the number of

enforcement and monitoring mechanisms available to them to better protect populations under their

control and to impede civilian defection to the state.

On the other side of the coin, the efficacy of counterinsurgent forces to disembed their

insurgent rivals depends on both the embeddedness of their insurgent rivals in civilian populations

and counterinsurgent linkages to local constituencies disaffected with rebel rule. As Dasgupta (2009)

highlights: “Local allies are central to counterinsurgency campaigns, but their role is not well

understood beyond the provision of general political support and access to local knowledge” (1). Apart

from these two obvious benefits, local allies who are willing to collaborate and even join

counterinsurgency operations are often those on the losing end of primary cleavage, whether large

landholders or ethno-religious minority groups (Gutiérrez-Sanín 2019; Abbs et al. 2020). Whereas they

represent potential local buy-in for counterinsurgents to appropriate meso and micro-level conflicts,

counterinsurgent forces appear as a way for these local constituencies to address the primary cleavage

circumscribing their communities. Local allies provide more than just material resources, potential

recruits, and local intelligence; they offer an expansive pre-existing social network that can be

mobilized in any number of ways against insurgent groups and their civilian bases of support (Brewer

2010; Sarbahi 2014; Daly 2016).

Although it may seem intuitive, the ability of counterinsurgent forces to separate their

insurgent rivals from civilian populations is shaped by the level of insurgent embeddedness in these

very same communities. Quite simply, the more embedded insurgents are in a specific space, the

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harder it will be to disembed them from it. In contrast to the good governance and material

inducements prescribed by proponents of population-centric COIN theory, my model argues that

coercion and forced relocation has proven to be the most effective counterinsurgency method,

historically and presently (Plakoudas 2016; Hazleton 2017). Whether this tactic is planned and directed

by military commanders who forcibly relocate civilian populations to state-controlled spaces, or third-

party militias or paramilitary groups who forcibly displace entire “enemy communities” with selective

and indiscriminate violence, the result deprives insurgent groups of familiar human terrain, while

allowing counterinsurgent forces to develop more aggressive military operations against their

opponents (Zhukov 2015; Valentino, Huth, and Balch-Lindsay 2004).

However, separating civilian populations from insurgent groups through massive forced

relocation may succeed in “draining the sea” for counterinsurgent forces to better locate and target

their opponents, but it is not necessarily a guarantee of military success in itself. While Kilcullen (2010)

is correct when he argues that “[…]cutting the insurgent off from the population is a critical task in

counterinsurgency” (8), John Nagl (2002) posits that anti-guerrilla forces still need to persuade civilians

“[…]not to fight on behalf of, nor even support, the insurgents” (25). Similar to insurgent groups,

counterinsurgents can bind civilians to their own nascent order to establish populational control,

providing basic protection and “[…]human security to the population, where they live, 24 hours a

day” (Kilcullen 2009, 486). The sudden appearance of an armed competitor into contested spaces can

alter the pre-existing structural and social landscape, a sea-change that provides counterinsurgents with

an opportunity to appropriate shifting cleavages and to bind civilians to its own order by employing

“[…]a variety of means that have the effect of convincing the populace that their interests are better

achieved through siding with or acquiescing to the counter-insurgents” (Evans 2014, 259). Over the

course of violent local conflicts in which civilians are caught between armed actors trying to control

them, the primary cleavage can quickly change from pre-conflict grievances to more pressing concerns

34

such as safety and survival (Galula 1964). In such contexts, civilians are often willing to deny or shift

their support away from insurgent groups if another actor can better guarantee their lives, yet this

largely depends if they are physically separated from their former protectors or not.

The focus of the existing literature on counterinsurgency and civil war has centered on a

limited array of potential outcomes. These tend to gravitate towards military victory (incumbent or

insurgent), stalemate, and negotiated settlement (DeRouen and Sobek 2004; Licklider 1993; Mason

and Fett 1996; Walter 2002). As the cases of Arauca and Montes de María demonstrate, there is a

wider range of potential outcomes in such instances of state expansion. In regards to my own range

of outcomes these can either represent a definitive and conclusive result as a product of this state

expansion (e.g. victory/defeat), or are classified in more ambiguous terms

(advantage/stalemate/disadvantage) after a sufficient period of time has transpired without a clear

victor emerging. These more indefinite and fluid outcomes bear much in common with other

conceptualizations of fragmented power structures such as Vladimir Lenin’s (1975) “dual power”,

Charles Tilly’s (1978) “multiple sovereignty”, Paul Staniland’s (2012) typology on wartime political

orders, or more recently Gustavo Duncan’s (2014) “oligopolies of coercion”. Stalemate clearly

indicates a parity of control and power between competing actors. Advantage refers to when an actor

enjoys superior power capabilities over a rival who may be at a disadvantage yet is still able to compete.

Given the centrality of insurgent embeddedness to this theory, it is imperative to highlight the

different ways in which this variable can manifest itself in conflict settings. As demonstrated in Figure

3, there are four spheres of contestation which I use to assess the strength of competing armed actors

in a particular zone, all of which are intrinsically connected. The territorial sphere represents the

geographical space or landmass of a specific zone which different actors seek to control. The

economic sphere refers to the modes of production, extraction, and exchange which occur within the

zone in question. The political sphere encompasses formal and informal political institutions, electoral

35

contests, and political movements. The civic sphere is perhaps the most ambiguous of the four, yet

for purposes of parsimony and clarity it refers to the public space where civilians interact and organize.

People and the civilian populations they form are present across all four spheres and cannot be

disaggregated nor solely confined to any one of these. Armed groups compete with one another for

control of territory, economic resources, political power, and civil society, often in a bid to maximize

their level of populational control over local civilian communities. Whereas people draw all of these

spheres together, the numerous ways in which these spheres overlap is complex.

Figure 3. Four Spheres of Contestation

Source: Author’s Elaboration

The territorial sphere serves as a fundamental arena for insurgent-civilian interactions during

the period in which armed groups insert themselves into regional dynamics where they attempt to

control “[…]civilians and the territory upon which they reside” in order to construct and protect their

non-state social orders (Arjona 2015, 1). The pre-existing land tenure pattern, the prevailing local

systems of production, and the historic settlement pattern all shape the manner in which armed actors

will attempt to control these spaces, and the extent to which peasants and landed elites will allow them

to (Gutiérrez 2017). In some instances, armed groups will leave the pre-existing agrarian system

relatively untouched, whereas in others these actors will dramatically alter the prior system by violently

displacing targeted groups, whether peasants or landed elites, in an attempt to recalibrate these rural

36

dynamics according to their own ideological preferences (CNMH 2014a; Ballvé 2013; Gutiérrez-Sanín

and Barón 2005; Barbosa 2015). Territorial control is inextricably connected to the protection of those

populations residing within these spaces. As Mampilly (2011) notes, “[…]controlling territory allows

insurgents to offer utilitarian benefits to civilians in ways that groups without territory could never

do” (54). The importance of this is captured by Galula (1964), who observes that: “Once the insurgent

has succeeded in acquiring stable geographic bases…he becomes ipso facto a strong promoter of order

within his area, in order to show the difference between the effectiveness of his rule and the

inadequacy of his opponent’s” (12).

In contrast to Carl Von Clausewitz’s (1918) maxim that war is a continuation of politics by

other means, my research suggests that in many civil wars capturing power in the political sphere is a

means to an end. Operationalizing politics as a sphere of competition itself rather than as an

ideological impetus is thus a fairly recent phenomenon and somewhat unique in the study of

contentious politics. Various armed conflicts have emerged in countries endowed with long-

established democratic institutions and a constitutional rule of law. In such contexts, the political

sphere can also become another battleground between armed non-state actors and their opponents.

Matanock and Staniland (2018) describe this phenomenon: “[…]armed groups pursue a surprisingly

diverse array of electoral strategies. Some groups choose nonparticipation, ignoring electoral politics

or not trying to shift the balance of electoral outcomes. But many—perhaps most—armed groups

seek to use electoral politics” (710). Therefore, political power at the national and sub-national levels

can be operationzalized as a mechanism for competing actors to fortify their ranks and to gain an

advantage over their rivals.

The importance of the economic sphere cannot be overstated in the study of armed

mobilization and counterinsurgency. For any insurgency to consolidate a meaningful presence in a

particular community, it needs material support in order to house, arm, and feed its cadres (Zedong

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2005; Guevara 1960; Galula 1964). Conversely, for any counterinsurgency campaign to succeed, it

“[…] requires that attention be devoted to counterproduction efforts…rather than counterforce

efforts alone” (Leites and Wolf 1970, 78). Contending actors in civil wars compete for control over

local economies, legal and illegal, by offering security to peasants, merchants, landed elites, and

corporate interests alike in exchange for material support (Richani 2005; Gutiérrez-Sanín and Vargas

2017). In rural based armed conflicts, local agriculture serves as the basis for all economic activity, as

“[…]the real bases of economic and social life were located in the countryside, where haciendas and

peasants produced surpluses for the limited regional markets as part of their traditional pattern of

cattle raising and agricultural production” (Zamosc 1986, 9). Other economic activities may co-exist

alongside the agricultural economy, some legal (oil production, mining, external trade), and others

illegal (drug production/trafficking, illegal mining, contraband), yet all of these potential revenue

streams are fiercely contested over by rival actors in sub-national theatres of war (Duncan 2014).

Those armed actors that are able to control, regulate, and ultimately monopolize the economic sphere

often benefit from ensuing dependence this creates, a mechanism which further binds civilians to their

incipient social order.

The civic sphere represents what we broadly refer to as civil society, or the space outside of

formal political institutions where individuals and groups “[…]undertake collective action for

normative and substantive purposes”, one which is “[…]relatively independent of government and

the market” (Edwards 2011, 5). In the context of civil war, armed actors generally attempt to either

co-opt or negate the civic sphere outright (Ramírez 2011; DeGregori 1990; Romero 2000; Mustafa

and Brown 2010). Failure to control or destroy the civic sphere leaves strong repositories for civilian

collective action intact. These in turn can potentially serve as counterweights to the ability of these

actors to impose their will on civilian communities by mobilizing popular resistance against such

coerced forms of rule (Sauders 2011; Kaplan 2013, 2017; Arjona 2016a). Control of the civic sphere

38

is quite advantageous in terms of establishing populational control as it serves a fundamental role in

providing anchors or barriers to aspiring insurgent groups and counterinsurgent forces alike, while

also offering the means to mobilize populations and achieve immediate and long-term group goals.

The civic sphere provides the space for the creation of organizations, both formal and informal, to

resolve immediate collective action problems at the local level. As Gould (1995) points out, such

organizations foster “[…]the creation of social ties that encourage the recognition of commonalities

on a scale considerably broader than what would be expected on the basis of informal social networks

alone” (22). According to Oberschall (1973), these organizational endowments provide vital resources

for groups seeking to mobilize such as: “[…]a pre-established communications networks, resources

already partially mobilized, the presence of individual and leadership skills, and a tradition of

participation among members of the collectivity” (125).

F. The Structure of this Dissertation

Following the introduction, my dissertation is divided into six subsequent chapters. In Chapter

Two, I detail my research design, methodology, case selection, before providing a brief national level

history of Colombia in order to provide the appropriate context for readers unfamiliar with the

Colombian case. Chapter Three examines the Pre-existing Configuration phase in both Montes de

María and Arauca and highlights the antecedent conditions related to agrarian social structures, all of

which reveal the source and character of the primary cleavage that would eventually emerge and

circumscribe social conflicts in both zones. Chapter Four focuses on the arrival, consolidation, and

‘institutionalization’ of insurgent governance in the two zones, and more specifically how these

differed enormously across time and space. In Chapters Five and Six, I break down the period of

contestation which emerged as a result of the arrival of counterinsurgent forces into both Montes de

María and Arauca, and more specifically how this escalation of conflict altered the distribution of

39

control of the territorial, political, economic, and civic spheres between competing actors. These dual

chapters evaluate the outcome of state expansion in qualitative and quantitative terms and then explore

how these different outcomes were produced in these two zones according to my theoretical model.

Finally, Chapter Seven offers a cursory examination of the historical legacies of the Colombian state’s

intervention into Arauca and Montes de María, the external validity of my theory, and the theoretical

contributions towards other cases and the potential policy implications of my findings.

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Chapter Two. Research Design

“In Colombia, the question is: Who is going to kill us? The guerrillas, the paramilitaries, the narcos, or the politicians?”

- Jaime Garzón 1

A. Methodology

My research and explanatory model follows the lead of other historical-institutional based

works in the social sciences (Steinmo, Thelen, and Longstreth 1992; Mahoney 2000; Thelen 1999;

Fioretos, Falleti, and Sheingate 2016; Hall and Taylor 1996; Campbell 2012; Pierson 2004; Mahoney

and Thelen 2010; Pierson and Skocpol 2002; Streeck and Thelen 2005). It would be impossible to

answer the principal research questions of this dissertation by merely examining the period in which

the outcome was finally determined. Rather my explanation as to how the Colombian state succeeded

in expelling insurgent groups from some spaces - permanently in the case of Montes de María and

temporarily in that of the Araucan plains - while failing to do so in others such as the Araucan

piedmont owes a great deal to the manner in which these territories were settled, the organizational

endowments which emerged, and the manner in which leftist guerrilla groups arrived and

institutionalized their rule over the course of many years. Much path dependency scholarship is

dedicated to the creation, consolidation, change, and breakdown of formal political institutions over

an extended period of time (Dahl 1971; Collier and Collier 1991; Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and

Stephens 1992). The research of non-state social orders bears much in common with the above-

mentioned line of social inquiry, yet has not been given the same analytical priority in the discipline.

1 Jaime Garzón (1960-1999) was Colombia’s most famous comedian and television personality, also celebrated for his sharp social commentary and political activism. He was murdered on August 13th, 1999, by paramilitary hitmen in Bogotá. In the years following his death, several judicial proceedings determined that Colombia’s top paramilitary boss, Carlos Castaño, had ordered Garzón’s assassination at the behest of several top ranking military and intelligence officials.

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Tsai (2016) highlights this disparity, arguing that the “[…]direct theorization of informal institutions

represents a fertile frontier for comparative politics, particularly when combined with insights from

historical institutionalism about institutional stability and change” (270). Established research has

shown that armed non-state actors create and administer informal institutions in order to govern

civilian populations, a phenomenon which does not differ much from how formal political institutions

are utilized for the same purposes in non-conflict settings. As Ana Arjona (2016a) notes:

In war zones, such institutions can vary greatly as they prescribe different conducts for civilians, combatants, or both. With a variety of rules comes a variety of expectations. Civilians’ and combatants’ expectations about others’ behavior create specific patterns of social, economic, and political interaction. I define “wartime social order” as the particular set of institutions that underlie order in a war zone, giving place to distinct patterns of being and relating. (22)

My explanatory model accommodates both the role of structure and agency on the outcome

of interest by adopting what historical-institutional scholars refer to as ‘structured contingency’ (Karl

1990, 1997). Ana María Bejarano (2011) summarizes this approach succinctly: “[…]socioeconomic

structural transformations, as channeled by preexisting institutions (i.e., states and parties), add up to

a historical-institutional account of the kinds of struggles, the nature of the setting, and the types of

decisions that become available to political actors in times of change” (15). Structured contingency

provides an adequate comparative historical framework to analyze armed conflicts holistically by

focusing on the courses of action pursued by both insurgents and counterinsurgent forces following

critical junctures. According to Slater and Simmonds (2010), critical junctures are “[…]periods in

history when the presence or absence of a specified causal force pushes multiple cases onto divergent

long-term pathways, or pushes a single case onto a new political trajectory that diverges significantly

from the old” (888). My interpretation of the term adheres to this logic, especially in regards to

Mahoney’s (2000) corresponding assertion that “[…]once a particular option is selected it becomes

progressively more difficult to return to the initial point when multiple alternatives were still available”

(513). The role of agency, whether it be insurgent, counterinsurgent, or even civilian, following these

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critical junctures is of the utmost importance. As Capoccia and Keleman (2007) point out, “[…]the

range of plausible choices open to powerful political actors expands substantially and the

consequences of their decisions for the outcome of interest are potentially much more momentous”

(343). The strategies selected by actors to govern local populations, to combat their rivals, and to

maintain internal cohesion during critical junctures can ultimately shape the outcome of interest.

Jeffrey Haydu (1998) captures the importance of this timing: “Choices in one period not only limit

future options, they may also precipitate later crises, structure available options, and shape the choices

made at those junctures” (353).

The sequence based at the center of my analysis traces “[…]a temporally ordered set of events

that takes place in a given context”, which in this case is Montes de María and Arauca (Falleti and

Mahoney 2015, 213). The first phase of this sequence (Historical Configuration) represents the

antecedent conditions, or “[…]impersonal factors such as the socio-economic conditions, class and

social alliances, diffuse cultural orientations, and the like” which ultimately shape and determine the

institutional outcome of interest (Capoccia 2016, 93).

Two critical junctures that provided exogenous shocks to these regions have been identified.

The first of these occurred with the emergence of armed non-state actors in these zones and their

subsequent attempt to assume control of territory and people, initiating the second phase of the

sequence (Insurgent Institutionalization). In recent years much research has been conducted on the

causal process where armed non-state actors emerge to govern particular communities (Mampilly

2011; Zukerman Daly 2016; Arjona 2014, 2015, 2016a), and as Paul Staniland (2014a) notes: “We need

to take history seriously to understand how armed groups emerge” (5). The tools provided by a

historical-institutional approach offer the necessary context to understand how these groups are

formed and the degree to which they consolidate control of people and territory in a given space.

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The second critical juncture corresponds to the moment that counterinsurgent forces, whether

public or private, arrive and attempt to dislodge and displace these armed non-state actors from a

particular space once and for all (Period of Contestation). The interaction and confrontation between

various armed actors occurs in a localized setting where civilian agency also plays a critical role in the

territorial distribution of control and the production of violence (Kalyvas 2006). During this critical

juncture, the pre-existing structural constraints forged during the insurgent institutionalization phase

“[…]determine the range of options available to decision makers and may even predispose them to

choose a specific option” (Karl 1990, 7). Again, historical-institutionalism offers the best

methodological toolkit to unpack such a complex causal process where structure and agency collide

and interact to forge different outcomes in very violent and polarized settings, an evolving landscape

that David Kilcullen (2010) describes well: “[…]counterinsurgency is at heart an adaptation battle: a

struggle to rapidly develop and learn new techniques and apply them in a fast-moving, high-threat

environment, bringing them to bear before the enemy can evolve in response, and rapidly changing

them as the environment shifts” (2).

The primary method used to address the central research questions of this dissertation is

process tracing (Beach and Pedersen 2013; Falleti 2016; Bennett and Checkel 2015; Kittel and Kuehn

2013; Falleti and Mahoney 2015). George and Bennett (2005) describe process tracing as a

“[…]method [that] attempts to identify the intervening causal process – the causal chain and causal

mechanism – between an independent variable (or variables) and the outcome of the dependent

variable” (206). In the context of my project, process tracing implies a comparative historical analysis

of the primary sequence in Montes de María and Arauca in order to determine how state expansion

into insurgent controlled spaces engendered different outcomes. More specifically, my research design

and explanatory model are based around inductive process tracing, a method where “[…]the analyst

derives propositions and formulates sequences from empirical observations” (Falleti and Mahoney

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2015, 229). Such a method is useful when examining complex causal processes such as insurgent

institutionalization and counterinsurgency because “[…]if important political outcomes depend not

on a few socioeconomic conditions but on a complex chain of strategic interaction, they cannot be

explained except by reference to that chain” (Hall 2003, 387). When analyzing such a sequence using

inductive process tracing, the goal is to unearth and develop the specific causal processes which

ultimately shape the outcome. Trampusch and Palier (2016) highlight the utility of this method for

unpacking sequences which consist of complex causal processes: “[…]inductive analysis of processes

does not merely consist of naïve observations of empirical events from which theoretical ideas are

derived, but rather forms a theoretically informed analysis (= decomposition) of processes that looks

for causal chains between the observed events” (445). In the context of my dissertation, inductive

process tracing required a laborious exploration of principally qualitative sources due to the

methodological difficulty posed by measuring embeddedness, a challenge highlighted by Durkheim

(1933): “[…]social solidarity is a wholly moral phenomenon which by itself is not amenable to exact

observation and especially not to measurement” (24). Only by observing, analyzing, and comparing

the effects of strong social solidarity through observable phenomena like civic participation,

mobilizations, and a lack of civilian willingness to collaborate with counterinsurgent forces was I able

to assess the level of insurgent-civilian embeddedness in Montes de María and Arauca, and even this

was made difficult by challenges which Jeffery Paige (1978) points out:

The sociological description and measurement of social movements are limited by the ambiguous boundaries of the phenomenon itself. Social movements seldom create the kind of repeated observable structures which make measurement convenient. Their institutional structure, tactics, and ideology change continually, their limits in time and space are ill defined, and their range of support is often difficult to determine. (86)

B. Research Design

My research design was heavily shaped by the demands imposed by the need to carry out

inductive process tracing in order to examine my case studies of interest in intimate detail. The

development of my explanatory model was guided by existing statistical data from a variety of

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established think-tanks and government sources, the pre-existing secondary sources which focus on

these cases, an extensive archival ‘deep-dive’ of the media database housed by the Center for Popular

Research and Education (Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular – CINEP), and over one hundred

semi-structured elite and non-elite interviews conducted in Arauca, Montes de María, Cartagena,

Sincelejo, and Bogotá between January 2016 and December 2016. Those interviewed included regional

experts, academics, current and former government officials, members of the armed forces, leaders

and members of local civic organizations, human rights and peace activists, ex-combatants, indigenous

and Afro-Colombian community leaders, oil workers and union leaders, clerics, displaced persons and

other victims of the armed conflict. Depending on the interview participant, the questions centered

on the three aforementioned phases of the sequence of interest (historical configuration, insurgent

institutionalization, period of contestation) in the particular community in which they resided or

operated. More specifically, these focused on how insurgent control of the territorial, economic,

political, and civic spheres shifted and changed during these different phases. Between obtaining and

exhaustively analyzing all of the necessary field data to unpack the causal sequence in both Montes de

María and Arauca, I experienced considerable challenges, some more commonly experienced by social

scientists than others.

Firstly, Colombia provides an excellent national level case study to carry out both large-N

statistical studies as well as small-N comparative research on civil war and armed conflict due to the

fact that the country maintains a wealth of detailed records on these phenomena dating back decades.

The difficulty that emerges is that there is little consistency between many of the official and extra-

official sources of data in regards to the exact figures, a source of variation that is often caused by

disparities in data collection, classification, and built-in institutional biases. Furthermore, many of the

most comprehensive databases on all indicators of the armed conflict, social mobilization, and even

basic demographic information contain massive gaps for certain periods and places. Obviously, many

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of these quantitative black holes owe much to the escalation and de-escalation of the armed conflict

in specific places at a particular moment in time, all of which made data collection impossible at that

juncture. These deficiencies do not disqualify the available quantitative data. Rather, they compel

researchers to compare and contrast different sources to examine the broader trends found between

them and to filter out those sources which deviate severely from the majority. The confirmation of

these trends is crucial to trace the conflict narrative in question. While this may have been unacceptable

for a more quantitative research project, my methodology is clearly qualitatively driven and as such

does not depend on descriptive statistics for anything beyond their ability to evaluate certain crucial

indicators during specific phases of the larger sequence.

Another difficulty related to data collection and content analysis was the paucity of established

scholarly research on my case studies. While greater research has been conducted on Montes de María

than Arauca, both remain less studied than other regions of Colombia such as Urabá, Magdalena

Medio, and La Macarena. As a result, I was forced to depend on unpublished historical accounts,

media sources, court documents, and more recent reports from official and unofficial sources to shape

my understanding of these places. Subsequently, I rely strongly on the field interviews I conducted -

particularly in the case of Arauca – for much of my empirical support. This is challenging insofar as

in many cases these particular testimonies have never been documented before and are therefore much

more difficult to verify except by triangulation with other local testimonies and other secondary

sources. Joe Yates (2004) asserts that “[…]very rarely are marginalized people provided with an

opportunity to tell their story and have their voices meaningfully heard in the research process” (1).

However, researchers conducting field work in high-risk environments also need to take into

consideration Lee Ann Fujii’s (2010) caveat that: “People forget some details and misremember others.

They rearrange chronologies, confuse sequences, and give greater weight to some moments over

others. In addition, institutions of all kinds, from prisons to schools, socialize people to construct the

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past in certain ways” (232). In other words, social scientists should welcome every opportunity to talk

to those who have never been given a platform before, but by no means should they blindly accept

the veracity of field interviews without cross-verification or confirmation of crucial details. All of the

included information obtained from field interviews has been subjugated to a rigorous cross-

examination and only appears in the dissertation because it has been confirmed through triangulation

with other sources, established documentation, and/or the public record insofar as it exists in these

places.

C. Fieldwork

Conducting fieldwork as an outsider in a conflict or post-conflict setting provides a unique set

of challenges and risks (Fujii 2018; Kaplan 2017; Wood 2006). Furthermore, such high-risk field

research generally creates a plethora of ethical considerations for outside researchers, particularly in

instances where very clear power dynamics exist between the visiting scholar on one hand and local

habitants on the other (Lekha Sriram et al. 2009; Cronin-Furman and Lake 2018). As a North

American male, my presence and ability to conduct fieldwork in two rural war zones in Colombia

required an exhaustive ethics protocol and months of preparation in order to eventually visit the field

sites and to ensure my safety and that of my research participants. I owe a great debt to my institutional

affiliation with CINEP, one of Colombia’s oldest human rights and conflict research institutes based

in Bogotá, for sharing their networks with me and introducing me to individuals who conduct a variety

of functions on the ground in Montes de María and Arauca. Having an institutional sponsor that is

recognized and respected throughout Colombia provided me with a level of access to networks of

local researchers and community leaders that would have otherwise proven much more difficult to

establish. From these initial contacts with locals who were known on the ground, I was able to

successfully identify and locate a wide array of local participants who differed according to age, gender,

and vocation, but who shared a common experience of the armed conflict in these regions. Due to

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these cross-sectional networks, I did not have to depend on a ‘snowball sampling’ method of

participant recruitment, which can be fraught with selection bias and other difficulties due to the very

real allegiances and prejudices that most people on the ground possess towards armed non-state

actors, political movements, and the national government. For example, community leaders with

greater sympathies towards the insurgent groups or the armed forces are more likely in turn to

associate with other people with similar sympathies and thus it is easy to get trapped in these invisible

cohorts without actually understanding or perceiving them.

Local contacts in rural settings such as Montes de María or Arauca are absolutely crucial for

outsiders. Whether the armed conflict is active or the post-conflict reconstruction is underway, people

who live in such spaces are highly attentive to and vigilant of outsiders given their extensive

experiences with competing armed actors, and as such will often report any irregular occurrences to

whatever group happens to maintain control of that community. In other words, there are eyes and

ears everywhere. Thus, when establishing contact with willing participants and arranging interviews,

one should always follow the parameters set by the interviewees due to their far superior

understanding of local customs, rules, and perceptions. Interestingly enough, most research

participants in the Araucan piedmont wanted to conduct their interviews in a public setting in front

of other people despite the fact that this sub-region continues to be highly controlled by the insurgent

groups. In the Araucan plains and Montes de María on the other hand, participants more often than

not sought to speak in private settings and for this reason I was frequently forced to travel significant

distances on barely passable rural roads to interview them in the comfort of their home villages.

Finally, the logic of positionality manifests itself across time and space dependent on the

subject and the context they are in. Carrying out fieldwork as an outsider in high-risk contexts such as

Arauca and Montes de María obviously came with its advantages and disadvantages. My position and

stature as an academic researcher at an elite North American university affiliated with a widely

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respected Colombian human rights think-tank opened several doors that might have otherwise

remained shut. On the other hand, as a tall, light skinned North American male with red hair, I was

unable to either blend in or reduce my presence in an environment where such physical attributes

widely condemned me to being perceived as an American military advisor, a DEA agent, or a foreign

mercenary. Fortunately, I was able to offset this unwanted stigmatization by constantly being

accompanied by a Colombian research assistant. Over the course of numerous visits to Montes de

María and Arauca, I always hired a research assistant to help with crucial administrative duties related

to arranging, recording, and transcribing field interviews. Perhaps more importantly, these individuals

helped ‘soften up’ my personal image amongst locals in these zones while also offering a more efficient

means to socialize with local habitants in a manner typical to the Colombian countryside. Despite my

fluency in Spanish, in Colombia one has to socialize extensively in order to gain peoples’ trust before

requesting an interview with them, a skill that my different RAs all excelled in. In particular, the

presence of a Colombian research assistant not only made the research participants more relaxed, but

it also gave them enough confidence to converse about topics that otherwise would have been

extremely difficult for them to talk about with a foreign researcher.

D. Rationale for National and Sub-National Case Selection

Perhaps no other country provides more suitable case studies to explore this particular

research puzzle than Colombia. For over fifty years the Colombian civil war has produced any and

every negative externality associated with internal conflict as violence continues to be the medium

through which social, economic, and political disputes are resolved in this South American country.

Colombia also has a long tradition of armed insurrection, para-statal repression, and illicit criminal

networks all operating in the shadows of the legal bureaucratic authority (Palacios 2006; González

2014; Safford and Palacios 2002; Bejarano 2003). The extensive study of this topic has even led to its

own field of study in Colombia known as ‘violentology’ (violentología). The South American country

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possesses the longest running leftist insurgency in the world today and as such various swaths of the

national territory have existed under alternative forms of governance for decades at a time,

administered by Marxist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries alike (González, Bolívar, and Vásquez

2003; Arjona 2016b; Gutiérrez 2019). Finally, the recent attempts by the Colombian state and its allies

to displace and expel insurgent groups from their regional strongholds throughout the country is only

the latest of successive efforts by the country’s political elites and military to defeat armed challenges

to its rule (Porch and Delgado 2010; Mills et al. 2016; Kline 2009; 2015).

Civil wars, historically and presently, have rarely been fought between the state on one side

and a unified insurgent front on the other. Most internal conflicts have been fought between a variety

of formal and informal forces, on behalf of both the state and the insurgents, all interacting and

colliding in a variety of forms depending on the local conditions (Kalyvas 2006; Staniland 2012;

Gutiérrez-Sanín 2019). During each successive armed conflict over the course of the 20 th century in

Colombia, virtually every attempt at counterinsurgency has included such public and private armed

groups. Philip Mauceri (2004) captures this symbiosis succinctly: “The state response to insurgent

groups in Colombia can best be characterized as ‘abdication and privatization,’ a process in which

state actors provide the legal framework, legitimacy, logistical support, and on occasion armaments to

private societal actors in order to combat insurgents” (154-155). Throughout the entirety of the

current armed conflict, various administrations have legalized the creation of paramilitary groups

depending on the immediate pressures posed by insurgent groups, whereas others oversaw robust

military efforts to stamp out armed non-state groups where they could. Many of the pre-eminent cases

found in the COIN literature focus on expeditionary counterinsurgency campaigns – military efforts

directed from outside powers and manned with foreign troops - related to decolonization and the

vagaries of the Cold War. Colombia on the other hand represents a rich opportunity to examine

“[…]what happens when a government engages in extremely long-term operations, with only limited

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external support, against insurgents operating within its own territory” (Mills et al. 2016, 13). Colombia

thus represents a ‘home-turf counterinsurgency’ to specialists on the topic, even if it must be noted

that the United States’ military has played an integral if not indirect role in shaping counterinsurgency

doctrine in Colombia. With the implementation of Plan Colombia in 2000 and the initiation of

Democratic Security Policy in 2002, “[…]the Colombian military became larger, better equipped, and

more adequately trained”, all of which “[…]made it possible to attack FARC troop concentrations

and prevent the continuation of the insurgent groups’ transition to a war of movements” (Kline 2009,

45). Jorge Delgado (2015) emphasizes the crucial role of the U.S. government and military in the

formation and implementation of Democratic Security Policy:

Washington was eager to assist the {Government of Colombia} in the refinement of the main operational concepts of the {Democratic Security Policy}. The US Embassy in Bogotá insisted that it was necessary to ensure that ‘the Colombian strategy dovetails with the {United States government} effort’…The United States would assist through the framework of Plan Colombia to help the country to incorporate inter-agency coordination techniques efficiently to intervene in the areas with insurgent presence and promote economic development. (414)

For all of the reasons outlined above, Colombia serves as an excellent case study to explore

my principal research questions related to counterinsurgent efficiency and insurgent resilience. Within

Colombia the justification for my case selection and periodization is simple. Upon taking office in

2002, President Álvaro Uribe took full advantage of the military aid and assistance provided by the

United States under Plan Colombia and unleashed an unprecedented military offensive against armed

non-state actors (primarily leftist guerrillas) operating beyond the purview of the central government

in Bogotá (Isacson and Poe 2009). Serving two-terms consecutively until 2010, Uribe oversaw a

massive shift in the balance of power between the Colombian state and said actors while also

embarking upon a belated form of state-building in these spaces. The initial successes of Uribe’s first

term were obscured in his second term by scandals related to the means with which the president was

attempting to achieve his end goals. Despite continuing to apply pressure against the embattled

insurgent groups and overseeing several high profile targeted assassinations of insurgent commanders

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during the latter half of his tenure in power, Uribe left office midway through 2010 leaving various

regions of the country which remained under insurgent control (Delgado 2015).

An excellent baseline for comparing the overall efficiency of Colombian state expansion

efforts during this period – and more importantly to explain the variation in outcomes found

throughout Colombia - can be found in two locations which served as laboratories for Uribe’s eventual

nationwide military and state expansion project: Montes de María and Arauca. At the onset of his first

term, Uribe launched numerous military initiatives by Decree 1837 to reclaim the most violent areas

of the country which were contested by guerrillas and paramilitaries alike. Two “zones of rehabilitation

and consolidation” (zonas de rehabilitación y consolidación) were established, the first constituting three

municipalities in the department of Arauca, and the other encompassing twenty-three municipalities

in the departments of Bolívar and Sucre centered on the region of Montes de María. In these areas,

the military operated with emergency powers ostensibly with the aim of re-establishing and

maintaining public order (Leal Buitrago 2003; Defensoría del Pueblo 2003). It warrants mention that

in April 2003, some eight months after the establishment of these two special zones in Montes de

María and northern Arauca, Colombia’s Constitutional Court declared this controversial strategy to

be illegal and ordered Uribe to scale-back the more coercive tactics employed by the Colombian

military in these regions (i.e. mass arrests, arbitrary detentions, suspension of habeus corpus, etc.). Even

though this initiative was short-lived, these two regions remained heavily militarized and were subject

to the various incarnations of the Colombian government’s ever-evolving state expansion campaign

found in other conflict zones throughout the country (Amnistía Internacional 2004).

Paul Staniland (2014a) argues that ‘[…]a strong explanation of a small number of cases rather

than a vague, lowest-common denominator explanation of a large number of cases’ provides greater

value than more expansive yet less detailed studies of violence in similar contexts” (11). Similarly, my

research prioritizes a strong explanation of my cases, following in the stead of recent works dedicated

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to exploring sub-national variation in socio-political phenomena in order to examine “[…]important

outcomes that are difficult to detect with a national-level lens” (Giraudy, Moncada, and Snyder 2019,

5). These case studies also afford the benefits of both the most similar and most different methods of

case selection. The most similar method can be found in the contrast provided at the sub-departmental

and even sub-municipal level in the case of Arauca, as despite the shared contiguous territory, political

administration, and distribution of armed actors, the counterinsurgency outcomes varied between the

Araucan plains and the piedmont. The most different method can be seen in a comparison between

Montes de María and Arauca (Seawright and Gerring 2008). The case selection of these two regions

are justified by the following criteria: (a) both initially played host to strong contingents of leftist

insurgent groups, while also offering numerous illicit rent extraction opportunities such as coca

production/trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, and contraband; (b) both were subject to an AUC-

sponsored paramilitary incursion that was subsequently augmented by a military intervention

beginning with Decree 1837; and yet (c) the two demonstrate a drastic variation in conflict outcomes.

The focus of my analysis compares these regions in broad terms. However, in my theoretical

chapters I briefly examine this variation in outcomes using a mixed-methods approach which

incorporates statistical data and primary and secondary qualitative sources to assess the effect of state

expansion on three neighboring municipalities in both Arauca (Arauca municipality, Arauquita, Tame)

and Montes de María (San Jacinto, El Carmen de Bolívar, Ovejas). In these sub-sections, I specifically

focus on three municipalities in each region for purposes of parsimony and representation. Whereas

I conducted extensive fieldwork across five of the seven municipalities found in Arauca (Arauca

municipality, Arauquita, Saravena, Fortul, Tame) and five in Montes de María (San Jacinto, El Carmen

de Bolívar, Ovejas, San Onofre, Sincelejo), I reduce the focus to three municipalities in each region to

provide a better and clearer representation of the diversity of outcomes found at the sub-national

level. I selected Arauca municipality, Arauquita, and Tame because this provides an even balance

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between the piedmont and the plains; the first is clearly located in the plains, the second in the

piedmont, and the third is divided between the two sub-regions. Whereas Tame was not technically

included in the zone of rehabilitation and consolidation, it was nevertheless heavily militarized at this

juncture and experienced the highest rates of violence in the region. Furthermore, Tame does not

share a border with Venezuela, a geographical consideration which provides an important analytical

contrast when studying the effects of insurgent resilience in such contexts. The three municipalities

selected in Montes de María were at the geographical center of the region and also happened to be

three of the most heavily impacted by the regional armed conflict.

E. A Brief History of Colombia

Following Colombia’s independence from Spain in 1810, the fledgling republic got off to

rocky start. Political elites from both the Liberal and Conservative parties struggled to compete

peacefully, while geographical obstacles and opportunistic regional elites made centralization difficult,

as “[…]some historians assert that Colombia was a country in permanent war during the 19th century”

(Comisión Valenciana de Verificación de Derechos Humanos 2005, 27). All violent conflicts during

this period “[…]occurred along the lines of the ‘hereditary [partisan] hatreds’ between Liberals and

Conservatives” (Daly 2014, 345), as from independence well into the mid-20th century “[…]party

identification was inculcated in offspring in a fashion resembling religious belief” (Oquist 1980, 78).

Colombia remained free of civil war for the first four decades of the 20th century, in no small

part due to founding of the National Military Academy (1907) and the Superior School of War (1909),

both of which marked the beginnings of professional armed forces in Colombia (Rodríguez 1993).

The political ideology and partisan alignment of the newly founded professional military conformed

strongly to the Conservative party, as many officers were recruited from the provincial middle class,

an organic receptacle of support for this political party (Dufort 2017). In 1930, the Liberals took

control of the government after an extended hiatus, introducing several important progressive reforms

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which generated fervent Conservative opposition, and by extension political instability, factors which

brought boiling political and social tensions to the fore in the mid-to-late 1940s (Fluharty 1966; Tirado

Mejía 1981; Correa Peraza 2009).

After the Liberal loss in the 1946 presidential elections, both political parties faced growing

internal schisms between moderate and radical factions, exacerbating regional cleavages between

Liberals and Conservatives throughout the Colombian countryside during the first two years of

Mariano Ospina Pérez’s (1946-1950) term. On April 9th, 1948, the Liberal leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitan

was assassinated in downtown Bogotá, triggering el Bogotazo, a spontaneous series of riots which

engulfed the Colombian capital and left much of the city destroyed and hundreds dead in a matter of

hours (Bushnell 1993). In the aftermath of Gaitan’s assassination, the partisan-driven bloodshed

spread throughout the country, initiating a ten-year civil war known as la Violencia (Ortiz Sarmiento

1985; Oquist 1980; Henderson 1985).

Regional outposts which had historically been administered as personal fiefdoms by political

bosses (gamonales), quickly degenerated into armed conflict between hastily organized groups of armed

men purportedly representing one side or the other of the partisan impasse, yet many mobilized merely

to resolve longstanding local conflicts in their communities (Roldán 2002). The violence was chaotic

and unorganized for the most part, characterized by extreme sadism and the partisan cleansing of

entire sub-regions through massive forced displacement (Pécaut 1987). The partisan conflict

challenged peripheral power dynamics and agrarian social structures, as “[…]rural terror rearranged

social classes in the countryside and relations of leadership and power in the different regions”

(Sánchez and Meertens 2001, 17).

At the end of the carnage, la Violencia had “[…]wreaked havoc on 64 percent of the country’s

territory and left 250,000 dead” (Daly 2014, 333). In several regions, groups of Liberal guerrillas

formed to protect themselves and their communities from their Conservative rivals, in some cases

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amounting to irregular regional armies which were mobilized well beyond the end of this conflict

(Villaneuva Martínez 2012). President Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, who had himself come to power in a

1953 military coup at the height of the conflict, calmed most if not all regions of the national territory

with an offer of amnesty and concessions. However these efforts were not enough to prevent political

elites from both the Liberal and Conservative parties from joining together and making common cause

to force his ouster in 1958 (Ayala Diago 1996; Saénz Rovner 2002; Karl 2017).

The following two decades saw the pacted return to democratic rule by both the Liberal and

Conservative parties in an agreement known as the National Front, in which they alternated four

consecutive presidents between 1958 to 1974 in an attempt to prevent another episode such as la

Violencia (Bejarano 2011). The first decade of the National Front governments saw some notable

institutional and policy reforms. In 1958, the national government approved Law 19, a legislative act

which created community action boards (juntas de acción comunal - JAC), democratic, communal

organizations established at the neighborhood and village level throughout Colombia in order to create

a channel of communication between these citizens and their locally elected officials. Oliver Kaplan

(2017) clarifies the historical formation and original purpose of the JACs: “The juntas as an

organizational form were not imposed by the state. Rather, the state created and encouraged a legally

recognized vehicle that communities could freely adopt – it attempted to institutionalize local councils.

Virtually any community could be organized into a junta and recognized by the government” (80).

Following this, the basis for the National Front’s attempt at land reform, Law 135, was passed in 1961.

Apart from land redistribution, the official agrarian policy sought to ease rural tensions by extending

support to the decimated peasantry in minifundia areas and colonization zones alike, providing greater

technical assistance to improve productivity, increasing incomes by establishing and encouraging

peasant cooperatives, and making better services available to the Colombian peasantry (Zamosc 1986).

The new law also witnessed the creation of the Colombian Institute for Agrarian Reform (Instituto

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Colombiano de la Reforma Agraria - INCORA), the official state bureaucracy tasked with carrying out this

ambitious land reform campaign by distributing titles to landless peasants throughout the Colombian

countryside. However, from the beginning there was predictable opposition to the redistributive

project from radical Conservative politicians and rural landed elites. Marco Palacios (2006) describes

this: “From the outset, the government agency created to administer the reform (INCORA) was

submerged in legalistic quicksand that made expropriations almost impossible…By 1971 only around

1 percent of the land originally targeted in the reform had actually been expropriated” (182-3).

This controversial policy was complemented by the formation of the National Association of

Peasant Users (Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos - ANUC) in 1967, a national level organization

entrusted with matters relating to the adjudication and ownership of land (Fals Borda 1976). The

Liberal administration of Carlos Lleras Restrepo (1966-1970) wanted to provide an organizational

mechanism with which the Colombian peasantry could overcome any obstacles regional landholding

elites placed in their way: “On the one hand, the peasant economy would be reinforced in the regions

of minifundia and colonization, which would be helped by the direct intervention of ANUC in the

provision of state services. On the other hand, the landless peasants were offered help in areas of

latifundia, where ANUC’s pressure upon the landowners was bound to be crucial” (Zamosc 1986, 53-

4). Despite the terms of the National Front pact, popular pressure from regional landed elites against

the proposed reform generated a cleavage within ANUC between the Armenia line and the Sincelejo

line, with the former seeking to limit the extent of usable land parceled off to poorer peasants, while

the latter sought to deepen and widen these redistributive efforts. This impasse resulted in the Pact of

Chicoral, an agreement signed in 1973 between political and regional elites from both parties, large

landholders, and cattle ranchers, which withdrew support for the land claims of poor peasants while

attempting to redirect them towards the colonization of the most peripheral, unsettled regions of the

country in the Eastern Plains, the Amazon, and the Pacific Coast (Reyes Posada 1978; LeGrand 1989).

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Safford and Palacios (2002) describe this dramatic shift in national agrarian policy: “The second half

of the twentieth century has witnessed dynamic colonization in eight zones, covering some 300,000

square kilometres of land – almost a quarter of the nation’s territory. It has been estimated that some

375,000 were engaged in colonization in 1964, 1.3 million in 1990. Over the past fifty years they have

cleared and settled some 3.5 million hectares” (311).

The exclusionary tendencies of the bipartisan agreement shut out many social and political

actors who might have otherwise sought peaceful means of contestation, while the Colombian military

increasingly sought to repress any extra-institutional forms of dissent. It was in this exact environment,

that the country’s first leftist insurgent groups emerged in the mid-to-late 1960s. The Revolutionary

Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - FARC) was established as

the armed wing of the Colombian Communist Party (Partido Comunista Colombiano – PCC) in 1964 by

a handful of peasant leaders who had survived a military campaign to expel them from their

“independent republic” in Tolima department (Rivera Cusicanqui 1987). The National Liberation

Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN) was originally founded in the same year in San Vicente de

Chucurí in Santander department by a handful of idealistic young guerrillas who had been trained in

Cuba, radical university students, and a collection of Catholic priests inspired by the teachings of

Liberation Theology. Initially, the ELN embraced the foco theory of guerrilla warfare conceived by Che

Guevara in the late 1950s and early 1960s (Medina Gallego 1996).2

These insurgent groups were quite limited in the scope and scale of their operations until the

late 1970s and early 1980s. Many suffered near collapse when confronted with the overpowering force

of the Colombian military’s counterinsurgency operations during this period of time (González,

Bolívar, and Vázquez 2003). American military analyst Thomas Marks (2002) observes that this initial

2 While over the course of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s other smaller guerrilla groups and dissident factions would emerge, the FARC and the ELN were the most notable in terms of size and the capacity for action.

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period of insurgent incubation did not concern the country’s political elites, only the armed forces:

“[…]following La Violencia, the insurgents remained largely out there, out of sight, out of mind,

patiently building an alternative society. No one much cared…As long as the guerrillas were

revolutionary homesteaders in areas no one else wanted, the government bothered with them only

when their actions forced a response. It was the job of the police and the military, went the logic, to

keep an eye on them” (4).

After a series of crucial tactical and strategic reforms, the FARC and the ELN saw their

fortunes improve. The FARC held its Sixth Conference in 1978, at which the insurgent organization

concluded that a nationwide expansion was necessary for its very survival as a viable revolutionary

project. Following this early period of growth, the guerrilla group convened at the Seventh Conference

in 1982, where it decided to double the number of active fronts, establish a presence closer to and

within medium sized urban centers, and to involve itself in the protection and taxation of the

burgeoning illegal drug industry (CNMH 2014a).3 The confluence of illegal macro-economic trends

with poorly planned resettlement policies tabled by the National Front governments created the

conditions necessary for the FARC to enter the cocaine industry in the late 1970s and 1980s (González

2014). The ELN on the other hand initially eschewed any form of participation in this illicit trade.

After convening a national level congress in 1983, the group’s leadership sought to imitate the success

of the Domingo Laín front in Arauca and expand into regions rich in hydrocarbons. By 1986, the

insurgent group “[…]had grown by over 500% and had become a national organization” (Gutiérrez

and González 2008, 31; Peñate 1998). Additionally, both insurgent groups continued and even

increased their use of kidnapping and extortion as a means of augmenting their revolutionary budgets.

3 It was also at this conference that the FARC adopted the addendum ‘peoples army’ (Ejército del Pueblo) to its name, thus becoming FARC-EP.

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By the early 1980s a perfect storm was forming in Colombia. First and second-generation

guerrilla groups were expanding throughout the country and increasingly on the march in the

countryside, while the rapid growth of the international cocaine trade saw the South American nation

become the epicenter of this burgeoning illegal enterprise (Thoumi 1995). The main consortia fuelling

this industry used their newfound largesse to penetrate and corrupt domestic law enforcement, the

armed forces, and even local and national level politics. Simultaneously, the billions of illicitly gained

dollars returning to Colombia were laundered in a variety of legal businesses, and used to purchase

substantial tracts of land in rural communities (Bagley 1990; Molano 2004; Duncan 2014). The

territorial expansion of both the leftist insurgencies and nouveau riche drug traffickers created fresh

tensions in the countryside, as the former sought to extort the latter, along with other traditional

landed elites, often by kidnapping them and their relatives for ransom. Predictably, this practice

generated a violent backlash from the large landholders, new and old, who joined forces with drug

traffickers to sponsor nascent ‘self-defense’ forces to protect themselves and their properties from

further insurgent incursions (Ronderos 2014).

The Conservative government of Belisario Betancur (1982-1986) initiated peace negotiations

with the FARC in 1984, establishing a ceasefire between the guerrillas and the state. Simultaneously,

the FARC formed its political party, the Patriotic Union (Unión Patriótica - UP), to represent the

insurgent group in local and national level elections following the political opening of the 1980s. This

reform permitted the direct election of mayors and governors and paved the way for the eventual 1991

Constitution and the decentralization of the national political system as a whole (Archer and Chernick

1989; Eaton 2005). Unsurprisingly, the FARC peace negotiations eventually fell apart due to the

systematic violations of the ceasefire by the Colombian military, who in an alliance with nascent

paramilitary groups, unleashed a massive wave of violence against members and sympathizers of the

UP, a political cleanising which claimed thousands of lives in the mid-to-late 1980s (El Tiempo 2013).

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Table 1. Insurgent Annual Finances in 1991 (USD)

Source of Revenue FARC ELN

Kidnapping $21.9m $21.3m

Mining $8.9m $28.1m

Extortion $8.9m $12.7m

Public Embezzlement N/A $9.6m

Narcotics $99m N/A

Other $7.4m $5.9

Total $146.1m $77.6m

Source: Author’s Calculations (Based on Semana 1992)4

Despite the worsening violence, the FARC and the ELN aggressively expanded over the

course of the 1990s and consolidated a strong presence throughout the length and width of the

national territory. Kidnappings increased dramatically, particularly with the introduction of “miracle

fishing” (pescas milagrosas), in which the insurgents would set up roadblocks on intercity highways and

forcibly abduct more affluent travellers for ransom. Apart from vastly improved armaments for the

rank and file troops, the guerrillas also began to deploy the use of improvised bombs made from gas

cylinders (cilindros) which would be launched at military and police installations throughout rural

Colombia, often causing enormous collateral damage, both physical and human, due to the notorious

inaccuracy of these homemade projectiles (CNMH 2014a). The FARC in particular began to mount

military offensives against the Colombian armed forces, handing serious defeats to the Colombian

military in highly coordinated operations in rural theatres such as Miraflores, El Billar, and Las Delicias

(Mills et al. 2016; Barrera 2017).

Faced with the growing influence of the FARC and ELN, two of the largest and strongest

paramilitary organizations, the Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Cordoba and Urabá (Autodefensas

Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá - ACCU) and the the Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Magdalena Medio

4 This article was based on specific documents seized and retrieved from members of both the FARC and the ELN by the Colombian authorities over the course of 1991-1992 period. “In such a way it is not an exaggeration to say that in the past 20 months, the authorities have learned more about the FARC and the ELN’s finances than in the remainder of 30 years of the antisubversive struggle.” (Semana 1992)

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(Autodefensas Campesinas de Magdalena Medio – ACMM) sought to take advantage of Law 356 passed in

1994 which legalized “vigilance cooperatives” known by their acronym, CONVIVIR, which were in

reality self-defense groups or paramilitaries.5 Despite the official repeal of this controversial decree in

1997, the Castaño brothers, who were the founders and leaders of the ACCU, had already established

a national-level umbrella paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas

Unidas de Colombia - AUC) in 1996, and the nationwide expansion of the paramilitary project spread

like wildfire throughout the entire reach of the country (Romero 2003; Duncan 2006; Gutiérrez 2008,

2019).

Operating with the complicity of the Colombian armed forces, uninhibited by conventional

laws of war or modern conceptions of human rights, the paramilitary expansion across Colombia was

accompanied by a level of brutality and sadism which had not been seen since the darkest days of la

Violencia. The AUC was highly decentralized and wrought with internal rivalries and conflicts, yet all

paramilitary groups shared a similar repertoire of violence against their enemies. The paramilitaries

specialized in indiscriminate massacres, selective assassinations and disappearances, and the massive

forced displacement of civilians living in rural conflict zones, employing chainsaws, sledgehammers,

and even alligators (caimanes) to terrorize, murder, and dispose of their victims bodies in the most

publicly horrific way possible. The objective of this extreme violence ostensibly was

counterinsurgency, but in many regional and sub-regional cases the paramilitary project was actually

driven by landed elites seeking to preserve or re-obtain regional power, or by the paramilitary

commanders’ desire to control illegal economic opportunities related to extortion, drug trafficking,

and public embezzlement (González, Bolívar, and Vásquez 2003; Gutiérrez-Sanín and Barón 2005;

Duncan 2006). The objective of the paramilitaries was not simply the physical and symbolic

5 Vigilante groups or paramilitaries have a long and violent history in Colombia. Ironically enough, Law 48 was passed in 1968 during the administration of the progressive Carlos Lleras Restrepo, a decree which permitted the formation of these groups in rural areas in which guerrillas were known to operate in the general absence of the state (Richani 2002).

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elimination of the perceived enemies of the state-paramilitary project. Rather, they sought the

complete eradication of any insurgent order that had existed prior. Effectively, paramilitary groups

were engaging in a socio-political cleansing of various rural theatres of war, sometimes so the state

could govern these territories, in other instances so they could govern themselves (Gutiérrez-Sanín

2019).

Levels of violence reached an all-time high at the turn of the century amidst the paramilitary

boom and increased guerrilla consolidation in their respective zones of influence. In an attempt to

combat the international perception that Colombia was on the verge of being a ‘failed state’,

Conservative President Andrés Pastrana Arango (1998-2002) oversaw the negotiation and passage of

a multi-billion dollar military aid package, Plan Colombia, with the United States in 1999. The robust

joint-security agreement, initially conceived and outlined as an antidrug strategy, suddenly evolved

“[…]into a counterterror and counterinsurgency strategy” after the terror attacks of September 11th,

2001 (Sweig 2002, 124). Between 2000 and 2007, Colombia received some $5.4 billion USD in

assistance, of which slightly more than 80% was earmarked for the security forces (Isacson and Poe

2009, 4). Simultaneously, Pastrana opened talks with the FARC’s leadership, initiating the El Caguán

peace negotiations and granting the leftist insurgents a demilitarized zone consisting of five

municipalities in southern Colombia, covering an area roughly the size of Switzerland (Bejarano and

Pizarro 2004). It quickly became clear that the FARC was not negotiating in good faith, and was

instead using the talks as a means to strengthen and consolidate its presence throughout the country

(Mills et al. 2016). The massive surge in paramilitary violence at this juncture in time was equally

problematic, as the Colombian military were either turning a blind eye to their excesses, or directly

collaborating with them in carrying out their worst atrocities (González, Bolívar, and Vázquez 2003).

Unsurprisingly, the peace talks fell apart in early 2002, as both Pastrana’s credibility and the potential

for a negotiated settlement to the armed conflict were left in tatters.

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In the wake of the collapse of the Pastrana peace talks and amidst unprecedented levels of

violence, the Colombian electorate went to the polls in 2002 and voted in Álvaro Uribe Vélez, an

outsider candidate with a zero-tolerance policy towards the FARC. Upon taking office, President

Uribe harnessed the massive military aid provided by Plan Colombia and unleashed a hitherto

unprecedented counterinsurgency offensive christened ‘Democratic Security Policy’ (la Política de

Seguridad Democrática – DSP), ostensibly against all armed non-state actors operating beyond the

purview of the law. In reality, this campaign was primarily directed against the leftist insurgent groups

the FARC and the ELN. During this time “[…]the patterns of the past began to be broken and, finally,

the national government began to have effective control of the entire nation” (Kline 2009, 5).

Figure 4. Growth in Colombian Armed Forces - Number of Troops (1989-2015)

Year

Source: Barrera 2017 {Based on World Development Indicators – World Bank}

Under the auspices of DSP, Uribe sought to expand, overhaul, and modernize the Colombian

armed forces and police with the assistance of U.S. military advisors and their state of the art military

technology (Porch and Delgado 2010). Based on the oft-celebrated British counterinsurgency

playbook in colonial Malaya and Kenya, this policy sought the implementation of a three-step plan to

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control, stabilize, and consolidate territory (clear, hold, build) which was ruled or administered by

armed non-state actors, by expanding the Colombian state’s military and bureaucratic presence into

these spaces while simultaneously combating and expelling the insurgents (Isacson and Poe 2009).

While the Colombian armed forces underwent a massive expansion, tripling in size between 1994 and

2014, it also began to depend less on conscription and more on the recruitment and training of a

professional class of soldier. The Colombian military underwent a much-needed restructuring during

the Pastrana administration, particularly in the area of military intelligence, which proved to be of

enormous importance once Uribe actively deployed his soldiers to every conflict zone throughout the

country. It warrants mention that this latter component, along with the crucial military aid and

hardware provided by the United States under the terms of Plan Colombia, was perhaps the most

valuable asset the North American power bestowed on the Colombian state (Porch and Delgado

2010).

Over the course of Uribe’s two terms in office (2002-2010), DSP underwent a progressive

evolution of different phases, which reflected the government’s attempt to refine and improve its state

expansion efforts into the various conflict zones found throughout the national territory.6 Upon taking

power in August of 2002, Uribe tested out his incipient counterinsurgency strategy in two specifically

appointed “zones of rehabilitation and consolidation” in the volatile conflict zones of Arauca and

Montes de María. The following year, this policy was expanded to include Cundinamarca, the Andean

department surrounding Bogotá, with the Colombian armed forces successfully expelling the FARC

from the area around the capital during Operation Liberty I (Operación Libertad I). In 2004, this

operation was emulated in the FARC’s historic stronghold in the nearby southern departments of

Meta and Caquetá in what was christened Plan Patriot (Plan Patriota) (Leal Buitrago 2006). The

6 Uribe was the first Colombian president to successfully serve two terms consecutively, having amended the constitution in order to do so. However in his attempt to amend it again to serve a third term, the Constitutional Court overruled the proposal, thus restricting his time in power.

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contrasting success of Plan Patriot found between Cundinamarca, Meta, and Caquetá forced top

military officials to revise their tactics, and over the course of the following three year period (2005-

2007), the Colombian state’s counterinsurgency policy was reformulated according to the “Integrated

Action” doctrine, which sought to include both social and political components in order to better

complement the hitherto military focus of DSP. During Uribe’s second term, the president oversaw

the gradual implementation of the new counterinsurgency doctrine designed to strengthen and fortify

the state’s institutional presence in these confict zones, first with the creation of the Center for

Coordination of Integrated Action (CCAI) initiative in affected areas, followed by the unveiling of

Plan Consolidation (Plan Consolidación) in 2007. In response, the FARC adopted and implemented a

new military doctrine in 2008, Plan Rebirth (Plan Renacer), after years of military setback at the hands

of the Colombian armed forces (Mills et al. 2016). By 2009, PSD was again being re-branded with

‘Strategic Leap’ (Salto Estrategico), the final phase of Uribe’s counterinsurgency strategy before he

transferred power to his handpicked successor and former defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, in

2010 (Porch and Delgado 2010; Isacson and Poe 2009).

Figure 5. Colombian Homicide Rates per 100 000 Persons (1990-2015)

Source: FIP 2016 (Based on Data from the National Police and DANE) * Period highlighted in pink represents Democratic Security Policy

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The main successes of Uribe’s security policies, which both his most fervent supporters and

detractors alike will agree, were the dramatic reduction in levels of violence at the national level, the

securitization of most urban centers, and, perhaps most importantly, reclaiming control of the national

highway system. Prior to Uribe, inter-city transit had been extremely difficult due to guerrilla and

paramilitary activity on the country’s major highways (Delgado 2015). Between 2003 and 2006, the

Uribe administration negotiated the Agreement of Santa Fe de Ralito with the AUC, culminating in

the passage of Law 975, or the Justice and Peace Law (La Ley de Justicia y Paz) in 2005. This agreement

led to the demobilization of various paramilitary blocks throughout Colombia, an event which

highlighted the close historical ties, personal and professional, the president maintained with these

illegal right-wing organizations (Kline 2015).7 Cristina Escobar (2009) highlights the controversial

terms of Law 975: “The paramilitaries were granted additional benefits, such as a reduction in prison

terms for those convicted of crimes, allowing them to serve five to eight years in jail minus credits for

good behaviour and time spent in negotiations” (236). While the general consensus recognizes the

above mentioned achievements of Democratic Security Policy, the broader picture is not nearly as

clear. Isacson and Poe (2009) evaluate the efficacy of Uribe’s counterinsurgency campaign as neither

success nor failure, claiming instead that “[…]the results have been mixed” (4). Other analysts such

as US military instructor Douglas Porch (2012) assert that Democratic Security Policy “[…]is generally

lauded as evidence of the effectiveness of both counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine and security

assistance” (243).

Figure 6. Armed Actions by Armed Actors in Colombia (1990-2011)

7 Hailing from a prominent cattle ranching family in Antioquia, Álvaro Uribe entered local politics after his father was murdered in the early 1980s, allegedly by the FARC. By the time he had risen to become governor of his home department, he was one of the key proponents of the CONVIVIR initiative and has consistently faced strong accusations of links with paramilitary groups throughout his political career. At the present, many of his former cabinet members and close family members are either imprisoned or awaiting trial for their connections to crimes committed by such “self-defense” groups.

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Year

- Armed Forces - FARC - ELN - Paramilitaries - Other Guerrillas

Source: CINEP Database

While certain statistical indicators of conflict and public order do indicate that DSP succeeded

to a certain degree, Uribe’s second term in office experienced several scandals which brought into

question whether the ends did in fact justify the means. These scandals exposed the deep infiltration

of paramilitary groups in regional and national level politics (parapolítica), the systematic extrajudicial

killings of thousands of civilians by the armed forces in order to pass them off as guerrilla casualties

(false positives), as well as the illegal use of domestic security agencies to monitor and target members

of the opposition and civilians alike (Acemoglu, Robinson, and Santos 2013; Acemoglu et al. 2016).

However, during this same period a new strategic initiative to locate and assassinate insurgent

commanders was quite successful in taking down various High-Value Targets (HVTs) from the FARC

and the ELN, battlefield successes that sustained popular support for Uribe and his counterinsurgent

policy. 8 To date, Álvaro Uribe remains a powerful, if not polarizing figure in the Colombian body

politic, for the simple fact that he took the offensive to the guerrillas with unprecedented success.

While never able to defeat either the FARC or the ELN decisively on the battlefield, the Uribe

administration reduced their ranks and applied sufficient pressure to force these groups’ decimated

leadership to rethink their appetite for continuing the armed struggle. Whereas in 2001 the FARC and

8 In particular, during the second term of Uribe’s government, numerous high-ranking FARC commanders were killed in targeted bombings (Mono Jojoy, El Negro Acacio, Raul Reyes, Martín Caballero, etc.), a phenomenon which fuelled the public’s perception that the FARC was on its last legs.

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ELN possessed more active members than at any other time in their respective histories (FARC – 20

000 guerrillas; ELN – 4500 guerrillas), by 2012 the FARC had been reduced to between 8000-9000

insurgents in arms, while the ELN counted some 1500 (CNMH 2014a).9 Perhaps most importantly,

Uribe’s counterinsurgency strategy achieved enough on the battlefield to make his successor Juan

Manuel Santos’s peace process a possibility instead of a remote aspiration.

Since 2010, the Colombian armed conflict has entered a phase which can be aptly described

as the “end game” of the protracted civil war, with a more restrained counterinsurgency focus, coupled

with the initiation of the Havana Peace Process in 2012 between the Santos administration and the

FARC. The ongoing implementation of the accord is proving to be exceptionally difficult, particularly

in light of the 2018 electoral victory of Uribe’s candidate, Iván Duque Márquez, who was opposed to

the Havana peace process, and has thus done everything within his power to ensure that the actual

implementation of the peace accord does not occur. In recent years, several worrisome trends have

emerged. Since 2016 there has been a massive rise in the assassinations of community leaders and

FARC ex-combatants throughout the country, a phenomenon which can be attributed to the

fluctuations in local power dynamics in the aftermath of the FARC’s demobilization. Second, more

FARC dissident factions (disidencias) have emerged recently and are returning, or continuing to operate,

in their former zones of influence. On August 29th, 2019, several top ranking FARC commanders

publicly repudiated the 2016 treaty and made a renewed call for arms purportedly from their refuge in

neighbouring Venezuela, thus throwing the future of the Havana Peace Accords into jeopardy. Of

equal concern, coca cultivation has exploded over the past couple of years and has now returned to

previous record levels, if not greater. Finally, the ongoing political and economic crises in Venezuela

9 Calculating the exact strength of clandestine insurgent groups such as the FARC and ELN is extraordinarily difficult, if not outright impossible. However, these figures are fairly consistent between diverging official and unofficial sources. These do not include militia members, who are more difficult to tally than formal guerrilla combatants.

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has directly affected Colombia more than any other country in the region given the close proximity of

the two and the extremely poor bilateral relations between the Maduro and Duque governments.

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Chapter Three. Pre-Existing Configuration

“The past is not simply “received” by the present. The present is “haunted” by the past and the past is modeled, invented, reinvented, and reconstructed by the present.”

- Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian (1997, 9)

The pre-existing configuration of Montes de María and Arauca played a deterministic role in

shaping the manner in which insurgent groups were able to embed themselves in these regions. Ana

Arjona (2016a) posits that “[…]social orders are not created in a vacuum” (63), an observation echoed

by Oliver Kaplan (2017), who notes: “Civil wars are not fought in social vacuums. They are fought in

social landscapes. These landscapes are often variable, with notable social differences from one town

or village to the next” (34). Historically, state presence has been exceptionally weak throughout the

Colombian periphery, and in many cases only select elite constituencies had access to the state and

were often tasked in its absence with administering local territory and people (LeGrand 1986;

González, Bolívar, and Vásquez 2003; González 2014). The lack of state presence in rural communities

outside of the Andean highlands meant that landed elites were responsible for establishing and

administering their own agrarian social orders, or in the absence of such a class, this responsibility fell

upon local peasants who often looked to communal organizations and civic leaders for leadership

(Pécaut 1987; Fals Borda 1976; Reyes Posada 1978; Deas 1995).

In contrast to Jeffery M. Paige’s (1978) theory on peasant mobilization that suggests that

smallholding peasants are quiescent and thus unlikely to revolt, my research follows in the tradition

of Eric Wolf (1969) and James C. Scott (1976) by staking the opposing position. My theoretical model

holds that horizontal agrarian social structures are more conducive to insurgent embeddedness than

vertical structures due to the stronger level of communal cohesion between peasants. In the absence

of landed elites, horizontal rural hierarchies are more egalitarian and therefore peasant smallholders

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are more likely to share similar immediate and long-term interests which in turn solidifies common

identities between them. Durkheim (1933) emphasizes the importance of such shared interests for

communal identity formation: “The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to average citizens of

the same society forms a determinate system which has its own life; one may call it the collective or

common conscience” (79). This is not to say that landless or land-poor peasants in vertical agrarian

structures do not share common interests or identities. Rather, in such highly stratified and divided

class structures they are substantially more dependent on large landholders to survive and therefore

less prone to challenge their authority. As Wolf (1969) points out: “A rebellion cannot start from a

situation of complete impotence” (290). In cases where they do possess sufficient group cohesion and

resources mobilization to challenge landed elites, they face an almost certain violent counter-reaction,

one which is often accompanied with support of the armed agents of the state.

Organizational endowments are inherently tied to the character of the pre-existing agrarian

social structure. Peasant hierarchies shape how different groups ultimately organize and mobilize to

resolve their collective action problems. I argue that horizontal agrarian social structures that emerge

in spaces where the state and landed elites are conspicuously absent will develop a variety of local

mechanisms for resolving collective actions problems. This multiplicity in turn engenders a multiplex

network of organizational endowments that are reflective of the dense local peasant social networks

from which they emerge, mechanisms that will ultimately determine their capacity for mobilization

(Tilly 1978, 2003). According to Oberschall, a “[…]viable network of communal relations can be the

foundation and breeding ground for the rapid growth of modern associational networks” (Oberschall

1973, 123). James Scott (1976) echoes the importance of these civi networks: “[C]ommunitarian

structures…have, due to their traditional solidarity, a greater capacity for collective action. For such

villages, it would seem, the organizational barriers to action are reduced simply because they have

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recourse to an existing structure of local cooperation that has remained intact; their “little tradition”

is a ready made vehicle of action” (202).

Vertical agrarian social structures in contrast are unlikely to develop such a diverse array of

organizational endowments. These rural social hierarchies often are more prone to creating or

adopting monolithic organizational endowments that are centered around one principal civic

organization, or a handful of disconnected, competing organizations that are top-down structures. In

other instances, there will literally be a complete absence of organizational endowments found in such

vertical agrarian social structures. Joel Migdal (1974) attributes the organizational deficiencies found

in vertical agrarian social structures to the preferences of well entrenched landed elites:

Peasants under vigilant and strong lords had types of social organization which reflected the limitations the lord put on them. The most striking characteristic was the atomization of the community into individual households. In the extreme case of haciendas, for example, lords attempted to make themselves the suppliers of all peasant needs. The hacendado sought to direct as many of the peasants’ contacts as possible into dyadic relations with him, undercutting the need for dependence of the peasants on one another and thus undermining any possible basis of association that might challenge the lord. (42)

In the Colombian case, many of the relevant endowments which appeared during the period

in question were the result of top-down state policies that both created formal civic organizations at

the sub-national level in an attempt to improve local governance throughout the country (Eaton 2006;

Kaplan 2017; Vargas 2018). This provides an excellent opportunity for comparative analysis at the

sub-national level by examining the manner in which these civic reforms affected different

communities.

The rest of this chapter outlines the pre-existing configuration of Montes de María and Arauca

(plains and piedmont) in the territorial, economic, political, and civic spheres. The central focus is on

the long and short-term development of the agrarian social structures which emerged in these

disparate spaces, while also emphasizing the particular conditions found in these distinct zones prior

to the arrival of armed insurgents in the early 1980s. More specifically, the following sub-sections

examine the pre-existing land tenure patterns, the effects of the National Front reforms, the

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agricultural modalities, the limits to state institutions or presence, social mobilizations, and the role of

emergent civic organizations such as ANUC and the community actions boards in both Montes de

María and Arauca prior to the arrival of armed non-state actors in the early 1980s.

A. Montes de María

Initially founded as an isolated refuge for runaway slaves during the early colonial era, the

Spanish authorities in nearby Cartagena eventually asserted control of Montes de María over the

course of the 18th century. Similar to elsewhere in Colombia and Latin America, the Spaniards

established the hacienda (latifundia) land tenure system in the region, reordering local society into a

highly stratified rural hierarchy which persisted well into the 20th century. Following independence,

Montes de María was ostensibly governed by political appointees based in Cartagena, yet landed elites,

most of whom supported the Colombian Liberal party, were the de facto source of governance in the

underdeveloped and forgotten region.

Table 2. Territorial, Political, Economic, and Civic Spheres in Montes de María (Pre-1980)

Territorial

Political

Economic

Civic

● Hacienda

(Latifundista) Land Tenure Pattern

• Appointed Departmental Governors (Bolívar, 1857; Sucre 1966)

• Subsistence Agriculture

• Tobacco Boom (1850s onwards)

● Early 20th century

Peasant Leagues ● ANUC (1960s, 1970s)

Source: Author’s Elaboration

It was only during the mid-19th century tobacco boom that Montes de María was finally

integrated into the national economy, serving as a major production enclave for Colombia’s main

export at that point in time. However, with the sudden rise of coffee as Colombia’s main source of

foreign exchange in the first half of the 20th century, the regional tobacco industry slowly began to

languish, and large landholders and landless peasants alike turned to cattle ranching and subsistence

agriculture to survive. The region can trace its first civic organizations back to the rural peasant leagues

75

founded during the first decades of the 20th century, but it was the creation of ANUC in the late 1960s

that saw Montes de María become one of the main focal points of peasant activism in Colombia over

the course of the 1970s.

i. The Territorial Sphere

The region of Montes de María, also known as the Serranía de San Jacinto, can be found roughly

between the respective capitals of the departments of Sucre (Sincelejo) and Bolívar (Cartagena) in the

northern Caribbean coast of Colombia. Characterized by low-lying hills and covered in jungle adjacent

to the sea, in geographic terms the only major distinction between the sub-regions of Montes de María

is between the coastal zone (zona costera), the high mountain (alta montaña) and the zone below (zona

baja), but all share very similar historical traits.10 The region is comprised of fifteen municipalities, eight

from Sucre department (San Onofre, Chalán, Colosó, Ovejas, Palmito, Los Palmitos, Morroa,

Toluviejo), and another seven from Bolívar department (Córdoba, Zambrano, El Carmen de Bolívar,

San Jacinto, San Juan Nepomuceno, El Guamo, Maria la Baja), which cover a geographic area of 6466

square kilometers between the Magdalena river and the Caribbean sea (PNUD 2010). Ironically

enough, despite being located between two extremely important bodies of water, the region of Montes

de María possesses no rivers itself, as local populations have always been dependent on various local

streams (arroyos) for themselves and their livestock.

The territory is extremely complex. The maze of rugged hills covered in lush vegetation range

rise as high as 810 meters above sea level (el Cerro Maco), although the average peak is closer to 400

meters (Porras 2014). The coastal zone is found in those municipalities adjacent to the Caribbean Sea,

namely San Onofre, Toluviejo, and Palmito, whereas the high mountain and zone below are harder to

articulate in such precise terms. The high mountain is the intermediate area found between Maria La

10 Interview 38, Sincelejo (2016).

76

Baja, San Onofre, San Jacinto, El Carmen de Bolívar, Ovejas, Chalán, and Colosó. Whereas the

remainder of the region can be tentatively characterized as the zone below, this title refers more to the

eastern and southern swathes of Montes de María, particularly in municipalities such as El Guamo,

San Juan Nepomuceno, Córdoba, Zambrano, Los Palmitos, and Morroa. These distinctions are of

some importance but not enough to affect theoretical assumptions given the homogenous character

of the region’s peasantry and geography.

Map 1. Montes de María

Source: Nicolás Herrera (2017)

Montes de María was first inhabited during the colonial era by runaway African slaves from

the nearby province of Cartagena, which was then the epicenter of the Spanish viceroyalty in northern

Colombia. These escapees eventually established clandestine communities (palenques) in Montes de

María, a region that “[…]offered the best strategic advantages” due to the abundance of “[…]thick

forests, swamps, and the mountains of María…topographic conditions which made it difficult for

Spanish troops to access the runaway territory” (Porras 2014, 338). The palenques encountered

77

something between mild resistance and general indifference from a sparse distribution of indigenous

tribes such as the Zenú, an ethnic grouping which had far greater presence to the southwest in what

is today the department of Córdoba (Falchetti 1995). Over the course of this period, the region also

witnessed the arrival of poor mestizos referred to as rochelas, who similar to their African descendant

counterparts, were also seeking greater refuge from the exclusive and repressive tendencies of the

Spanish colonial system (Fals Borda 1976).11

The Caribbean coast of Colombia was of enormous economic and geostrategic importance to

Spain, serving as a port of entry for the European colonization of not only Colombia, but also the rest

of Latin America.12 Initially, the isolated communities established in Montes de María were largely self-

sufficient and seemingly removed from this colonial framework, agricultural enclaves which thrived

on the illicit production of aguardiente, a potent sugar based liquor.13 The end of the encomienda model

of landownership and labor - a system of labor that effectively gave each successful conquistador the

right to the forced labor of all local native habitants who resided under their area of conquest - in the

early 18th century saw the emergence of the hacienda system. The new system differed from the old

insofar as former indigenous servants, African slaves, and poor mestizos alike were incorporated into

the ever-growing rural proletariat as “[…]different types of tenants, sharecroppers, and peons tied by

bondage debts” (Zamosc 1986, 9). Landed elites in Cartagena and Mompox expanded the hacienda

system and cattle ranching throughout the entirety of the Caribbean coast and by the dawn of the 19 th

century, Montes de María had finally been integrated into the rest of the colonial viceroyalty (Reyes

Posada 1978).

11 In Montes de María “individualism prevails, the nature of the montemariano is libertarian”. Interview 94, Sincelejo, 2016.

12 Interview 101, Sincelejo, 2018.

13 Interview 94, Sincelejo, 2016.

78

During the Wars of Independence, Montes de María was not spared from the death and

destruction that accompanied the violent conflict. Between 1815 and 1821, Ovejas, El Carmen de

Bolívar, and San Jacinto witnessed brutal encounters between the Royalist and Republican troops

(Támara 1997). With independence, the transfer of power from Spanish colonial elites to creole

oligarchs did not alter the social, economic, or political spheres in Montes de María in the slightest. If

anything, the first years of independence laid the foundation for what was to be the further

entrenchment of the hacienda system in Montes de María with the introduction of tobacco production

mid-century.14

The sudden conversion of Montes de María into an export-based enclave in the mid-19th

century put enormous tensions on the region’s peasantry by spurring the accelerated accumulation of

land by large landholders and foreign entrepreneurs alike.15 Following the War of a Thousand Days

(1899-1902), many mid-to-high high ranking military men who had participated in the conflict were

awarded large tracts of land in Montes de María for their service to the partisan cause, thus displacing

even more peasants from their smallholdings. The state of the national economy was in tatters after

the ruinous effects of this war and thus land may have been the only commodity worth anything in

real terms with which the political parties could incentivize their military leaders to mobilize and fight.

However, the land tenure pattern throughout the various villages and municipalities of the region was

hardly homogenous as land titling was a convoluted, complicated affair. Numerous rural communities

were comprised of peasant smallholders who worked extremely limited family plots in the general

absence of large landholders and survived through basic subsistence farming and small-scale animal

husbandry of chickens, hens, and pigs. For example, in the remote village of Las Lajas in the high

mountain of San Jacinto, the family plots were hereditary and measured between two and ten

14 Interview 101, Sincelejo, 2018.

15 Interview 34, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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hectares.16 Residents from other villages in the region comprised of smallholding peasant families

recall that the average individual farm was larger that those found in Las Lajas, yet did not exceed fifty

to sixty hectares maximum.17 In one village in the zone below of San Jacinto, local peasant leaders

claim that prior to the arrival of armed non-state actors to the region, local land “[…]belonged to

everybody and was shared”.18

In other communities, the majority, if not all of the land belonged to a couple of prominent

landowning families who had established themselves well before the advent of the 20 th century. In

Bajo Grande, a small hamlet in the zone below of San Jacinto, most local peasants either possessed

minimal amounts of land themselves or were landless, and thus toiled for large landholders who

themselves occupied public lands.19 Initially an indigenous village in the colonial era, the hamlet of

Chengue in the high mountain of Ovejas was eventually settled by the Oviedo and the Mariño families,

who established massive haciendas encompassing the whole surrounding area. Other peasants who

settled there ended up with no land and no other choice but to work for these particular families.20 In

nearby El Salado, a tobacco dry-port in the zone below of El Carmen de Bolívar, the Cohen Mesa

family were one of the wealthiest families in the area, with some twenty different properties measuring

up to ninety hectares apiece for a grand total of 1800 hectares worth of property in the rural zone.

The Cohen family contracted all the necessary labor needed to maintain agricultural production on

their estates in a sharecropping system which was widely deployed throughout rural communities in

Montes de María (aparcería), while they devoted themselves to other endeavors such as cattle

ranching.21

16 Interview 77, San Jacinto, 2016.

17 Interview 86, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

18 Interview 81, San Jacinto, 2016.

19 Interview 93, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

20 Interview 90, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

21 Interview 85, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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Thus, Montes de María by mid-20th century was a patchwork of multiple sub-regional land

tenure patterns in which the ownership of land varied markedly from one village to the next. The only

constant throughout the region is that the peasantry for the most part were land poor or landless and

survived due to subsistence agriculture and sharecropping schemes. Apart from the influx of

entrepreneurs and merchants from elsewhere in Colombia and beyond during the tobacco boom in

the 19th century, the composition of the regional peasantry remained largely static and homogenous,

with local habitants remaining within their native towns and villages their entire lives.22 A melting pot

of African, indigenous, and Spanish cultures, the region retained an extremely agricultural character

throughout the centuries, which is perhaps best evidenced by the long-standing practice of the minga,

a reciprocal labor exchange between neighbors in particular communities, who would work together

in a rotating cycle to perform certain labor intensive activities on their smallholdings to maximize

efficiency and protect their harvests (Pérez 2010).23

The mid-century carnage of la Violencia did not wreak havoc on Montes de María in the same

manner as it played out in nearby departments such as Antioquia, yet it did alter the composition of

the regional social hierarchy. During this period, numerous paisas fled their homes region due to

violence or the desire to improve their economic fortunes and many settled in Montes de María.24 In

Montes de María, the quick upward ascension of these migrants on the local hierarchy and their

particular ethos further complicated what was already a complex local social order. These migrants

were “focused more on entrepreneurship, building estates and acquiring private property, which

22 Interview 85, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 77, San Jacinto, 2016.

23 Interview 94, Sincelejo, 2016.

24 Paisas is the term used in Colombia to describe those hailing from the department of Antioquia, and the coffee axis (el eje cafetero) extending south along the western range of the Andes. They are distinguished in Colombia as: […]the nation’s sharpest businessmen and pragmatic technocrats, a region of aggressive colonizers who were also fiercely Catholic. A prolific lot…who gave rise to a society characterized by a sense of strong regional identity, large families, and small property holders” (Roldán 2002, 11).

81

clashed profoundly with local peasant, Afro-descendent, and indigenous traditions”, such as shared

work systems like the minga and customs of reciprocity.25

During the return to democratic rule under the National Front, Montes de María served as

one of the testing grounds for the mixture of agrarian reform policies of the 1960s, most notably Law

135 which created INCORA and gave peasants the right to occupy, work, and legally claim title to idle

land, even if it technically belonged to another landholder. Contrary to previous efforts at agrarian

reform such as Law 200 of 1936, the new legal regime established under Law 135 ensured that all

public lands (terrenos baldíos) were only able to legally be allocated by official state bureaucracies in the

form of INCORA and the National Agrarian Fund (Fondo Nacional Agrario), the former of which was

tasked with titling, the latter effectively serving as a land bank. Both of these entities under Law 135

were able to expropriate and redistribute unproductive lands which legally belonged to large

landholders and cattle ranchers.26

The role of INCORA in Montes de María produced mixed results, with some communities

receiving the necessary bureaucratic support in claiming title to idle lands which they had worked, in

many cases for generations, under the well established sharecropping system in the region. In Montes

de María, INCORA succeeded in procuring land from latifundistas and redistributing it to landless

peasants, with one-third to one-fourth of the available land in the region expropriated for the local

agrarian reform. For example, in neighboring Córdoba department, INCORA was only able to title

some ten thousand hectares of land for local peasants, a fraction of what the institute achieved in

Montes de María.27 Many communities previously dominated by large landholders suddenly

experienced dramatic shifts in the local social hierarchies because of the success of INCORA in

25 Interview 93, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

26 Interview 101, Sincelejo, 2018.

27 Interview 38, Sincelejo, 2016.

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breaking up these large unproductive estates. One elderly peasant in the village of Palmar (Ovejas),

recalls that “in the beginning there were large landholders”. However, with the arrival of INCORA

“the lands were distributed in general to give ten hectares to each family”.28

In other communities, local attempts by INCORA to break up the established latifundia were

less successful. For example, in El Salado “some peasants obtained land because INCORA broke up

a few haciendas”. However, others “stayed without land and began to struggle for it”, further generating

“large conflicts between the landholders and the peasants which left many dead”.29 In contrast to other

regions in Colombia, the state-designated metric for creating a self-sufficient family held farm, the

Family Agricultural Unit (unidad agrícola familiar – UAF), was lower and was thereby considered

insufficient by many local peasants in Montes de María. In Chengue, INCORA purchased a stretch of

land measuring some 77 hectares, in which 49 families were settled, each receiving personal plots

measuring 1.6 hectares in total, an amount of land sufficient for erecting a familial domicile and little

else. One local leader from Chengue explains that for this reason the agrarian reform “didn’t change

anything between peasants and large landholders”, land continued to be denied to poorer villagers and

“they had to keep working on the haciendas”.30 Another problem was the limited number of recipients

who were able to receive title from INCORA. In the high mountain community of Las Lajas (San

Jacinto), many families held hereditary title to extremely small plots ranging from two to ten hectares

in size, whereas another eight families had been able to obtain titles to larger tracts of land measuring

up to twenty hectares by INCORA. These fortunate individuals were a minority however, representing

roughly ten percent of the families in Las Lajas.31

ii. The Economic Sphere

28 Interview 91, Ovejas, 2016.

29 Interview 85, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

30 Interview 90, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

31 Interview 77, San Jacinto, 2016.

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Initially, the economic life of Montes de María was based on subsistence farming. However,

all of this changed with the sudden rise of the local tobacco industry in the mid-19th century. The

production of this crop was centered around the stretch of land which runs north from San Juan

Nepomuceno southwards through neighboring San Jacinto, El Carmen de Bolívar, Ovejas, Colosó,

Chalán, Los Palmitos and beyond. Tobacco production in Colombia in during the first half of the 19 th

century was principally concentrated in departments in the interior, namely Tolima and Santander,

with the state maintaining a monopoly on the production, marketing, and sale of the product.32 Montes

de María quickly became one of the most important producers of tobacco in all of Colombia. In 1857,

tobacco exports from El Carmen de Bolivar constituted a fifth of those produced in Ambalema

(Tolima), however, five years later the two produced practically the same amount of tobacco for export

in 1862. The following year, El Carmen de Bolívar led the entire country in tobacco exports and by

1888 the region produced more than the rest of Colombia combined (Posada Carbó 1998). The

expansion of the tobacco industry in Montes de María was centered in and around El Carmen de

Bolívar, which quickly became the unofficial capital of the region. Sincelejo served as the commercial

hub for the burgeoning industry, while the nearby town of Magangue, located on the Magdalena river,

became the collection center where all the tobacco was then sent upstream to foreign North American

and European markets.33

The increased demand for Colombian tobacco from European markets propelled both foreign

investment in the production of local tobacco and the migration of European entrepreneurs to the

region to monopolize the production and export of this particular cash crop. Newly established

commercial agencies would lend money to local peasants to plant tobacco, and in turn would purchase

the crops directly from them. This system was atomized and designed to encourage individual rather

32 Interview 94, Sincelejo, 2016.

33 Interview 38, Sincelejo, 2016.

84

than collective production, all in order to foster a greater worker dependency on the foreign buying

houses.34 Many of these foreign merchants would end up staying in Montes de María and quickly

converted their newfound economic success into extensive rural estates. An illustrative example of

this is the Cohen family, which came to be the dominant landholding family in the rural town of El

Salado in El Carmen de Bolívar. The family’s patriarch, a Jewish merchant from England, arrived in

El Carmen de Bolívar in the first half of the 19th century and quickly established himself as a leading

buyer for an English agency operating in the region.35

The tobacco industry remained the principal agricultural activity in Montes de María well into

the 20th century and was the driving force between the growth and quasi-modernization of the region.

By the turn of the century, Sincelejo, El Carmen de Bolívar, and Magangue had “[…]become the

biggest urban centers {in the region}. They grew 400% because they controlled the tobacco circuit in

the Caribbean”.36 The importance of tobacco was such that the chronic civil wars of 19 th century

Colombia did not affect production, as tobacco remained arguably the economic activity that sustained

the wartime economy and was thus spared from its destructive social and economic effects (Porras

2014). The sudden decline in regional tobacco production followed the end of the Second World War,

as the national economy had gradually shifted away from an export model based on tobacco to one

dependent on coffee, a crop whose production had surged in Colombia in the first half of the 20 th

century and peaked around the 1940s (Bergquist 1986; Bejarano 2011).37

The rise of tobacco in Montes de María brought sudden growth and stimulated the local

economy, however, when demand declined after la Violencia there was no agricultural activity of any

significance which could fill the void. Certain towns excelled in producing specific crops for domestic

34 Interview 101, Sincelejo, 2018.

35 Interview 85, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 94, Sincelejo, 2016.

36 Interview 94, Sincelejo, 2016.

37 Interview 38, Sincelejo, 2016.

85

consumption, such as avocado farming in Chengue (Ovejas), or yucca in San Rafael (Ovejas).

However, beyond these small production enclaves, the main two forms of agricultural activity which

continued in the face of the tobacco bust were subsistence farming and cattle ranching, the former

practiced by the peasantry, the latter by landed elites. As one local native of Ovejas puts it: “The

tobacco leaf was a curse, despite generating employment it also took the municipality backwards

because there was no diversification of crops, peasants were dependent on tobacco and if there wasn’t

any then they had nothing”.38 Another peasant leader from Las Palmas (San Jacinto) recalls that even

after the decline of tobacco that it remained the lifeblood of his community, employing some three

thousand families in the community. The crop enabled local peasants, as “each nuclear family was its

own company”, with tobacco “making them very prosperous and productive”.39 In El Salado (El

Carmen de Bolívar), tobacco remained a key crop throughout the 20th century. The village produced

between one and one and a half million kilos which were the “key sustenance which generated income

for families in El Salado”.40

Despite the apparent micro-level economic empowerment of peasant communities in Montes

de María, others contend that the tobacco boom and bust cycle in Montes de María enabled a deeper

entrenchment of an already very stratified class system with the arrival of foreign entrepreneurs who

were far better situated for local advancement, a process which led to the greater concentration of

land in fewer hands. According to Porras (2014):

The change was stimulating an active commerce, awakened, whose excesses began to be invested in the purchase and concentration of land, developing a latifundista logic which had characterized the province of Cartagena since colonial times, all of which entailed a break with the past, as until then the prevailing agrarian structure in Montes de María had been constituted exclusively by public lands, with public access for subaltern sectors comprised of the indigenous, Afro-descendants, freemen and peasants. As a consequence, new social conflicts arose, this time over access, tenancy, and use of the land. (347)

38 At its height, tobacco employed 1300 women and 400 men in the municipal capital of Ovejas alone. Presently, the industry employs some 130 women. Interview 92, Ovejas, 2016.

39 Interview 81, San Jacinto, 2016.

40 Interview 85, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

86

iii. The Political Sphere

Similar to most of Colombia outside of the capital and other major urban centers, formal

political institutions carried little importance in peripheral regions for most of the 20 th century. In

regions like the Caribbean coast or the Eastern plains, political power was wielded by landed elites

who were beholden to one of the two traditional political parties and were largely left alone by political

elites in distant Bogotá (Palacios 2005; Robinson 2013). The only time when these regional balances

of power were contested and reconfigured was during the outbreak of national level conflicts such as

la Violencia or the current protracted civil war.

While various Colombian historians have claimed that la Violencia and its partisan bloodletting

left the northern Caribbean region relatively untouched, this is disputed by locals and other experts

embedded in the region who remember that the predominantly Liberal region experienced violent

repression at the hands of the highly politicized, Conservative police forces of the era, los chulavitas.

Long time regional peasant organizer and ANUC leader, Jesús ‘Chucho’ María Pérez (2010) recalls

this partisan repression in Montes de María: “As such they {local Conservatives} were subjugating all

of the Liberals, not only with arbitrary imprisonment, but also with lashes from the whips of the

political police of the time” (10). Landed elites used “the armed wing of the regional police to displace

peasants from their plots and in particular those known Liberals who possessed land”.41 These micro-

level cleavages in many cases preceded la Violencia by decades, if not longer, and would emerge yet

again later on in the 20th century with the intensification of the more recent armed conflict. A telling

example of this is the family-based group known as ‘los Rodríguez’ from the village of Macayepo in the

high mountain area of El Carmen de Bolívar:

All the guerrilla groups throughout history - from the era of la Violencia when the Liberal guerrillas settled in Montes de María, until the intervention of the present guerrillas - declared war on los Rodríguez, who were Conservatives and had ties to the the political police in the time of {Conservative president} Laureano

41 Interview 93, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

87

Gómez. This is how the people of Macayepo became stigmatized as cattle rustlers and criminals over the course of several decades, due to one family which was devoted to breaking the law. In the middle of the 20th century, there was a massacre in Macayepo where there were women abused and where their breasts were cut off, all because of this stigma and the confrontation between the Liberals and the Conservatives.42

Prior to the arrival of armed non-state actors to Montes de María, the level of state presence

in the region was extremely limited. While the municipal capitals possessed a small contingent of

national police, the rural villages in the coastal zone, the high mountain, and the zone below were

virtually abandoned to regulate and govern themselves. One local peasant in the high mountain of San

Jacinto remembers that “there were no state entities which responded to or would solve our

problems”, as in the event that somebody died “we would take care of it ourselves”.43 Another lifelong

resident of El Salado echoes this level of official negligence:

Social policy was one of abandonment. There were no doctors. Maybe a nurse would visit once a week. There were no roads. To enter El Salado from El Carmen de Bolívar people would take five to six hours, if it didn’t rain. They put a health center there later which didn’t function, as there was no medicine or experts. To transport goods, we had to move everything by mule. The municipal government never fulfilled their social policies, as the relationship between the administration and the population was based on abandonment and a failure to keep promises.44

Rural towns and villages were lucky to count on the presence of a police inspector, although

this does not appear to have been a common feature of these agrarian communities found throughout

the coastal zone, the high mountain, or the zone below.45 Quite simply, “there was a total

disconnection between the municipal capitals and the rural zones”, a dynamic which was made worse

by inclement weather such as torrential seasonal rains which made local dirt paths impassable.46

Despite the weak state presence, communities throughout Montes de María were generally peaceful

prior to the arrival of armed groups over the course of the 1980s. One local farmer in Las Lajas (San

42 Interview 94, Sincelejo, 2016.

43 Interview 78, San Jacinto, 2016.

44 Interview 85, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

45 Interview 40, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

46 Interview 83, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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Jacinto) recalls that regardless of the isolation, “camaraderie, equality, and tranquility prevailed”.47

Throughout the patchwork of peasant communities across the region “everybody knew one another

and were like a family”, with people “lending one another a hand when they needed it”.48 According

to one fisherman from the idyllic coastal town of El Rincon del Mar (San Onofre):

It was paradise on earth. There weren’t problems of any kind. There was no electricity but everybody knew one another, and we used homemade lamps in order to see at night. The social fabric of the community was very strong. It was like one large family and everybody was brothers. There was no institutional presence however the village elders served as a kind of authority within the community. Also, local priests were like gods themselves.49

Even though the common recollection is that there was virtually no official state nor

institutional presence, this does not mean that formal politics did not exist in any shape or form in

Montes de María. In a pattern seen throughout the entire Caribbean coast, and in all of Colombia,

regional politics functioned along a well-entrenched pattern of clientelism. In rural dynamics such as

Montes de María and elsewhere in latifundia zones throughout the country, the landed elites’ political

power “[…]is based on the economic dependency of the peasants on the {boss} or large landholder”

(Reyes Posada 1978, 113). The logic of regional clientelist politics in Montes de María was simple, as

landed elites decided who their peons would vote for. A local expert explains this longstanding

regional practice:

Historically, people voted because the political capital of the region was based on land. What this entailed was that whoever had a lot of land not only possessed capital and the means of production, rather that those who worked their haciendas were also converted into votes. Before the commercialized clientelist dynamic such as vote buying, patronage dominated as everybody voted for whomever their boss wanted them to.50

Locals throughout the region recall that politicians and other candidates only recognized that

their communities existed during election campaigns. Political candidates were often linked to one of

47 Interview 77, San Jacinto, 2016.

48 Interview 78, San Jacinto, 2016; Interview 79, San Jacinto, 2016; Interview 81, San Jacinto, 2016; Interview 85, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

49 Interview 45, San Onofre, 2016.

50 Interview 93, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

89

the two traditional parties, yet there was virtually no ideological distinction between them as they owed

their position to their affiliation with regional political clan bosses (caciques).51 These political ‘clans’

found throughout Montes de María and the larger Caribbean region were family-based and often local

politics was the family business. Alejandro Reyes Posada (1978) describes one such politician from

Ovejas and how economic power was converted into political power and vice versa: “He is the heir

to political and economic power. He moves fifty percent of the tobacco wealth in Ovejas. His political

lieutenants are the tobacco-buying agents, who also trade in supplies and advance money to tobacco

growers. They force the peasants they buy the crops from, as much as the factory workers who process

the tobacco, to vote” (128).

iv. The Civic Sphere

Over the course of the 20th century, the civic sphere in Montes de María became a highly

contested space where peasants attempted to redress long-standing regional inequalities about land

distribution with landed elites. The extreme concentration of land engendered the “proletarianization

of the peasantry which led to the creation of large peasant movements.”52 The first decades of the 20th

century witnessed the emergence of increased peasant activism in rural Colombia and this trend was

especially strong in Montes de María. For example, the first agrarian union in Colombia was founded

by tobacco workers in Colosó in 1913. The first recorded instance of peasant mobilization occurred

in the 1920s when a local latifundista fenced in an expanse of land that was communal ground for local

small holders and was their main source of water and firewood. The union members promptly took

down the fences and reclaimed the commons. This event constituted “an exercise in the recuperation

and demand for their communal land. These agrarian unions functioned in favor of access to land,

51 Interview 85, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

52 Interview 93, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

90

indisputably along these lines and of course, as all unions do, to improve the labor dynamics for all

involved”.53

Various Liberal governments attempted land reform in the 1930s, most notably the creation

of Law 200 by the Alfonso López Pumarejo administration (1934-38). However, the application of

Law 200 ended up benefitting large landholders more than land-poor peasants in rural environs shaped

by highly unequal land ownership such as Montes de María. Landed elites were able to subvert,

manipulate, and co-opt local lawyers or judges into respecting their land titles, even if they were false

or established on a highly questionable basis. Despite the failure of the Liberal land reforms of the

time, peasant activists were not deterred from continuing to organize or mobilize in pursuit of their

common goals in Montes de María. Over the course of the 1940s and 1950s, even during the height

of la Violencia, a regional trade guild composed of tobacco growers and merchants alike, purchased

various expanses of land with the goal of giving small producers and cultivators access to their own

land.54

Early efforts at land reform by the National Front governments similarly failed as land

concentration intensified throughout the Caribbean coast, while thousands of sharecroppers and poor

rural tenants were forcibly evicted from the lands which they had worked for decades, if not

generations. In traditional latifundia regions such as Montes de María, this process was designed to

depopulate the available land, while increasing the number of cattle on these estates (Reyes Posada

1978). To make matters worse, the peasant capacity for collective action and resistance had declined

markedly over previous decades. The organizational legacy of the peasant leagues was in serious

decline, dropping from some 567 to some 89 active organizations by 1965, and given that half of these

original registered bodies were located in the Caribbean region, this reduction in peasant activism

53 Interview 101, Sincelejo, 2018.

54 Ibid.

91

presented an ominous sign for the future of the common peasant in regions such as Montes de María

(Zamosc 1986).

The Lleras Restrepo administration sought to give the peasantry the necessary tools they

needed to challenge these entrenched interests through the creation of ANUC, representing an

attempt to break the regional impasse imposed on the country by regional landed elites so that the

Colombian peasantry could assert their democratic rights. Rivera Cusicanqui (1987) describes ANUC

as a means “[…]to enable the organized peasantry to overcome its desperate poverty, demand and

obtain concessions from the State and the dominant classes, acquire and exercise its right to citizenship

and become a factor for democratization and political stability” (62). Through design and reach,

ANUC was designed to provide the entire Colombian peasantry with the means to unite in common

cause against the large landholding classes, regardless of geographical distance and regional

differences. A former ANUC leader from Montes de María summarizes the importance of achieving

this goal in the region: “All of these disperse communities united for the first time to work along the

same general lines to struggle for the general welfare of rural habitants” (Pérez 2010, 17).

The structure of ANUC was such that it gave the organization substantial influence from the

village level to the national stage. At the most local level, there was a local committee in every village

(corregimiento/vereda), which would serve as a pool of recruits from the ‘users associations’ (asociación de

usuarios) as they were called, to the association at the municipal level. The municipal association had a

board which was democratically elected, and these associations provided and received support from

the departmental association, which possessed at least one member from each municipal association.

Beyond this, ANUC possessed a congress known as the National Assembly, which was comprised of

all of the members of the departmental associations’ boards. Finally, there was a national level board,

composed of one representative from each departmental association, from which five members were

elected to the national executive committee to represent ANUC at the national level (Zamosc 1986).

92

In no other region did ANUC experience such a sharp rise and subsequent fall in later years

as Montes de María. When Sucre separated from western Bolívar in 1966 to become a department,

President Lleras appointed Apolinar Díaz Callejas, a progressive Liberal lawyer from Colosó and

assistant director of INCORA, as the first governor of the department. Under the departmental

administration of Díaz Callejas, Sucre became the first department to organize and convene a

departmental association of ANUC in 1968. The first few years of ANUC saw massive growth, with

some 600 000 members registered nationwide by March of 1968, a level of mobilization which was

sustained over the following years. By October, 1971, the organization possessed 989 306 registered

members, 28 departmental associations, 634 municipal associations, and some 13 983 trained leaders

(Zamosc 1986, 57). Mobilizing peasants at the sub-departmental level was not always easy, as ‘Chucho’

Pérez (2010) remembers this process in Montes de María and elsewhere in Sucre: “[…]the campaign

opened with a seminary to train leaders and operatives in the department. The enrollment of members

encountered various inconveniences, well there was a lot of fear on part of peasants who were scared

of being evicted from their small sharecropping or rental plots” (27).

When Carlos Lleras Restrepo’s term ended in 1970, the final National Front administration

led by Conservative Misael Pastrana Borrero inherited his ambitious ‘bourgeois reformist’ agenda.

However, the prevailing circumstances were such that the new administration and ANUC were

heading towards an imminent showdown. Peasant leaders from the organization complained that

other official state bureaucracies and entities related to agriculture and development had blacklisted

ANUC members from joining. Meanwhile, a wave of land occupations by peasant activists on the

Caribbean coast terrified regional landed elites and their political allies, a trend which generated fresh

problems because quite simply, ANUC was perceived to have gone “[…]beyond the state’s control”

(Reyes Posada 1978, 151). By the 1972 national level congress, ANUC split into two factions with

those more moderate peasant leaders who favored maintaining ties with the Colombian government

93

convening in the city of Armenia, while the majority of ANUC leaders at the departmental and

municipal levels who sought a complete organizational autonomy from the state sent their

representatives to an alternative congress in Sincelejo. The two currents, the Armenia line and the

Sincelejo line as they were called, would become even more polarized the following year when

President Pastrana sided with the moderate faction and large landholders nationwide with the

bipartisan Pact of Chicoral, which sought to “[…]impose a business model of integrated rural

development instead of the redistributive model of agrarian reform” (Porras n.d., 3).55

Despite this massive betrayal by the Colombian government, ANUC was in reality becoming

exactly what its members wanted it to be. Free from constraints imposed by political elites in Bogotá,

and armed with a nationwide peasant organization with local reach throughout the length and width

of the national territory, ANUC “[…]quickly became a pressure group instrumental in revealing the

total inability of the State to fulfill the targets of agricultural reform and its weakness in the face of the

landowners’ counter-attack which had quickly gained the support of splinter groups of the ruling

classes and their spokesmen inside the traditional parties.” (Rivera Cusicanqui 1987, 75). At this

juncture, ANUC began to deploy a new tactic which would cause massive upheaval in rural

communities throughout the country during the 1970s and 1980s: land occupations. And nowhere

else in Colombia were these more common or effective than on the Caribbean coast. Between 1970

and 1978, some fifty percent of all recorded land occupations in Colombia occurred on the Caribbean

coast, with almost a fifth of these, some 199 total, taking place in Sucre department alone (Zamosc

1986, 75). The rash of peasant evictions in the late 1960s coincided with the establishment and

consolidation of ANUC in Sucre, thus creating the conditions for increased peasant activism in the

region. One local activist recalls that in this department, those invading and occupying the land

55 Interview 93, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

94

“[…]were practically jurists”, as they “[…]knew the laws inside out” (Escobar 1982, 56). The

organization behind occupying idle haciendas “[…]was much better in Sucre”, as large landholders

were so frightened by the rise of peasant squatters that in 1971 they offered “[…]to hand over 10

percent of their lands for agrarian reform purposes” (Zamosc 1986, 79).

One of the regional focal points of this proliferation of land occupations was in Montes de

María, with the most affected areas being municipalities such as Ovejas, Colosó, Chalán, El Carmen

de Bolívar, San Jacinto, and Maria La Baja.56 The local municipal councils of ANUC were strong

proponents of the Sincelejo line and were the main protagonists behind the massive increase in peasant

occupations of large haciendas, a phenomenon which forced many landed elites to sell part or all of

their holdings to INCORA so that they could be parceled off to land poor peasants. A regional expert

recalls how these activists carried out these mobilizations:

They chose the objective with anticipation. The common characteristics that these lands had is that they belonged to exclusively latifundista families. The García Badell family from Corozal had more than 20 000 hectares of land in Ovejas, and these cattle ranchers had broken their contracts with sharecroppers and many of them knew the land perfectly and after they identified the properties, they went with their families and raised poorly improvised domiciles by cutting wood, cane stalks, and palms leaves, raising these structures and assembling a camping ground. These campsites were frequently destroyed by police and they would leave the property, but a few days, weeks, or months later they would return and reassemble the site, all of which generated a tense situation and conflict until INCORA intervened and declared the land a public good, a process which people called ‘Incorizing’ the land.57

This tactic proved to be a particularly effective modality of protest in Montes de María, as it

required between fifty to a couple of hundred participants who would invade large estates, construct

hastily built settlements on the occupied territory, and then slowly begin to work the land themselves.

The police had little recourse as “[…]they lacked the sufficient force to intervene in all of the different

invasions; it was impossible to dislodge all of the peasants” (Pérez 2010, 81). Clearly, such a strategy

was temporarily successful insofar as the proliferation of land occupations in different locations

56 Interview 94, Sincelejo, 2016.

57 Interview 101, Sincelejo, 2018.

95

impeded a massive coordinated response by landed elites and the state. However, participation in the

occupations began to wane considerably in the late 1970s and early 1980s once local peasant leaders

and peasants themselves began to be targeted violently in retaliation. While this form of social

mobilization continued to be employed well into the 1980s, others were used less frequently by

ANUC, as their repertoire of protest was expanded to include road and highway closures and other

occupations such as the ‘Seizure of Sincelejo’ in 1985, however these proved to be unsuccessful in

achieving the organization’s ultimate aims (Escobar 1998). All in all, the golden age of peasant activism

during this period saw some 140 000 hectares of land redistributed to landless peasants in the larger

region, representing close to 25% of the available land in the entire region (Porras 2014).

The surge in land occupations elicited two reactions from large landholders in Colombia at

this juncture: either they felt that resistance was futile and sold parts of their estates to INCORA so

they could be parceled off to poorer peasants, or they deployed local police and their own nascent

paramilitary groups to evict peasant squatters from their properties. The latter option became

increasingly common over the course of the decade, as “the implementation of the counter agrarian

reform with the Pact of Chicoral permitted Liberal and Conservative elites alike to cast aside

INCORA’s {land} titles with proto-paramilitaries”.58 Local cattle ranchers and latifundistas who were

loth to cede any part of their estates to peasant activists, would often deploy a combination of local

judicial ploys and private violence to impede the success of the occupation (Reyes Posada 1978, 165-

166). While ANUC had to contend at the regional and national levels with other similar peasant

organizations founded by the Catholic Church (FANAL), or the Colombian Communist Party

(FENSUAGRO), in Montes de María “FANAL and FENSUAGRO were minimal expressions of

rural civil society in Sucre”.59 The level of peasant collective action in Montes de María was remarkably

58 Interview 93, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

59 Interview 94, Sincelejo, 2016.

96

high during this period, and the level of coordination between associations from the village to the

national level were extremely efficient. ANUC members would collectively finance their leaders’ trips

to other locations in the region, or the country, thus creating a shared responsibility and a communal

investment in the outcome. One human rights lawyer from Sincelejo who grew up inside of the

organization explains the importance of this:

There was a very sophisticated system, protected by ethical commitments which permitted these peasant user committees at the village, town, or municipal levels to survive…a very strong type of organizational structure was needed to be able to function in an effective manner from bottom to top and from top to bottom to penetrate those spaces and recuperate land. Women and children had their function inside of this process, as men were the principal target to be captured and jailed so women fulfilled the vital role in the recuperation of land because they were in charge of preparing food for the men and they also got involved in the process, but when the situation got complicated with the police or the army. Women and children were those who shielded peasant leaders who were carrying out the protest or land occupation.60

The split between the Sincelejo and Armenia factions in the mid-1970s ended up reducing

overall membership in ANUC from 800 000 to 310 000, or a 61% decline in participation (Bagley and

Botero Zea 1978). To make matters worse, the local leadership of ANUC who formed the Sincelejo

line splintered into three different factions at this precise juncture due to ideological squabbles over

the preferred repertoire of action and mobilization, thereby weakening the organization and further

eroding regional peasant support for the cause (Zamosc 1986). ANUC hitherto had to contend with

FANAL and FENSUAGRO, but in Montes de María and beyond ANUC had remained the most

popular and the most effective peasant organization in terms of scope and ability to achieve results

on the ground. However, with the growing repression of landed elites and state agents against peasant

activists, the organization’s regional and national level leadership began to question what was the best

course of action for its membership. One faction called for continued autonomy from the state and

for ANUC to remain a peasant organization configured along the lines of a civic organization, while

another sought to convert ANUC into an autonomous political actor which would participate

60 Interview 101, Sincelejo, 2018.

97

democratically in local, regional, and even perhaps national elections. The third course of action was

for ANUC to combine all forms of struggle, violent and non-violent, in its confrontation with the

large landholding class and the state.61 These strategies were irreconcilable, as the success of the early

1970s proved to be the high point for peasant activism in Montes de María.

During this period, there were few other civic organizations which maintained a meaningful

presence in Montes de María. Community action boards (JACs) were formed sporadically throughout

the region yet they fulfilled a distinct function from that of ANUC. In those villages where a JAC had

actually been formed, the local junta president frequently served as the leader of the local ANUC

committee as well.62 Some villages and towns were fortunate enough in the sense that their JAC

actually performed its function and was able to deliver basic goods and services to the community. In

Las Palmas (San Jacinto), the JAC is remembered as “a vital organization for the development of the

village”, particularly in regards to local roads, health, and education.63 Similarly, the JAC “was a

management body and interlocutor between the community and the government to obtain basic

services and protect fundamental rights” in El Salado, as the junta was responsible for the village’s first

electric plant, high school, and local aqueduct.64 It appears that the JACs were far more common and

effective in Ovejas in comparison with the rest of the region.65 For example, in Chengue the village’s

JAC went door to door to collect familial quotas for the construction of a local electric plant, while

the entity also collaborated with the JACs in neighboring town to maintain the local roads connecting

61 Interview 94, Sincelejo, 2016.

62 Interview 85, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 93, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

63 Interview 81, San Jacinto, 2016.

64 Interview 85, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

65 Interview 91, Ovejas, 2016; Interview 36, Ovejas, 2016.

98

them.66 Until the arrival of armed non-state actors in Chengue, the JAC was the centrifugal source of

organization in the village.67

Other towns and villages in Montes de María were not so fortunate. Some possessed JACs,

yet these proved to be highly ineffective either due to corruption or state neglect. In Bajo Grande (San

Jacinto), there was a JAC however “it didn’t fulfill a fundamental role in the development of the

village”, while the neighboring community in Barcelona did not even have a JAC at all.68 This pattern

seemed to be common throughout the municipality of San Jacinto, with one taxi driver originally from

Las Palmas insisting that “the JACs don’t work in San Jacinto and haven’t historically contributed to

the development of the region because the local government distributes money to the usual suspects

and they don’t implement projects well”.69 The disconnect between JACs at the village level and the

municipal authorities is a common phenomenon which affects micro-level development throughout

Montes de María. One former JAC president from Caracolí in the high mountain of El Carmen de

Bolívar claimed that the local JACs “didn’t have the support of the municipal authorities”, a sentiment

echoed by a victims’ rights activist from Macayepo (El Carmen de Bolívar): “The JACs weren’t

effective in the development of Macayepo. It was just the junta presidents trying to dialogue with the

administration which only ignored them. Historically, there has been a disconnect between the

administration and the rural zones, they never listen to them or due to the poor roads, the presidents

end up missing their appointments with the mayors”.70

B. Arauca

66 Interview 90, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

67 Interview 101, Sincelejo, 2018.

68 Interview 80, San Jacinto, 2016; Interview 79, San Jacinto, 2016.

69 Interview 82, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

70 Interview 84, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

99

The history of Arauca consists of dual trajectories, one for the plains and another for the

piedmont. The plains were largely settled in the 17th century by Jesuit missionaries imported from the

Iberian peninsula, who established massive cattle ranches (hatos) throughout the vast expanses of the

region. The quasi-feudal, vertical social order that took hold during this period has persisted until the

present. The piedmont, in contrast, remained almost completely unsettled until the Colombian state

encouraged the directed colonization of the sub-region following la Violencia. Peasant settlers

established a highly egalitarian smallholding society in the piedmont that has characterized the zone

for over six decades. Following independence, Arauca was not classified as an autonomous

department until 1991, and was largely administered over the course of the 20th century by appointed

political administrators who all hailed from the plains cattle ranching elite, much to the detriment of

the piedmont population who remained largely forgotten by their neighbors. Extremely isolated and

more integrated into Venezuela, the economic life of Arauca depended wholly on cattle ranching in

the plains, and subsistence agriculture in the piedmont. Whereas the plains had little to no tradition of

communal organization and possessed little to no need for such structures, the piedmont quickly

became characterized by the dense webs of different civic networks (ANUC, JACs, cooperatives, trade

guilds, etc.) that emerged during the colonization period in the 1960s and 1970s.

Table 3. Territorial, Political, Economic, and Civic Spheres in Arauca (pre-1980)

Territorial

Political

Economic

Civic

● Hato (Latifundista) Land Tenure Pattern in Plains

● Directed/Spontaneous Colonization in Piedmont

(Smallholder Land Tenure Pattern)

• Appointed Intendential Administrator

(Until 1991)

• Cattle Ranching in Plains

• Subsistence Agriculture in Piedmont

● No organizational

endowments in Plains ● ANUC, JACs, Cooperatives, Trade Guilds, associations in

Piedmont

Source: Author’s Elaboration

i. The Territorial Sphere

100

The Eastern Plains consist of a series of extensive tropical plains which cover some 253 000

square kilometres in Colombia, and a further 300 000 kilometres in neighboring Venezuela. A bi-

national region, the plains are synonymous with extreme isolation, self-sufficiency, danger, and cattle

ranching. Even though the region constitutes some thirty percent of the national territory in Colombia,

it only accounts for less than one percent of the entire population (Rausch 2015, viii). In Colombia,

the plains are dramatically cut off from the more heavily populated Andean highlands and the

Caribbean coast by the Eastern Cordillera of the Andes, producing the isolation which has

characterized the region until the present. Within the plains themselves, there are two distinct

physiographic sub-regions which divide the larger region. Historian Jane Rausch describes these zones

as the “plains above” (llanos arriba) and the “plains below” (llanos abajo). However, within the plains

themselves everybody refers to these disparate geographical zones as the piedmont and the plains.

The piedmont consists of “[…]great alluvial fans formed by streams flowing east” from the Eastern

Cordillera, surrounded at the base by “[…]wide belts of fine-grained, moisture-retentive alluvium”,

which contains rain forests with soil adequate for the cultivation of bananas, cotton, corn, tobacco,

coffee, sugarcane, rice, and cacao amongst other crops. The plains on the other hand, are located to

the east of the piedmont and are characterized by a relief which is “[…]so level that there is rarely

three feet of difference between adjacent high and low points”. The soil is acidic and infertile, solely

capable of producing coarse grasses which in turn limits modern agricultural activity to the raising of

cattle and little else (Rausch 1984, 5).

Map 2. Arauca

101

Source: Nicolás Herrera (2017)

The plains section of Arauca consists of Arauca municipality, Cravo Norte, Puerto Rondón, as

well as central and southeastern Tame, whereas the piedmont covers Arauquita, Saravena, Fortul, and

the western and northern portions of Tame. There was very little to no contact between the Araucan

piedmont and the plains before the end of la Violencia in the mid-to-late 1950s. Prior to colonization,

the piedmont was nothing more than uninhabited jungle, save the various indigenous groups which

braved the formidable conditions. The two sub-regions were thus largely independent of one another,

as “historically there was a natural division between the piedmont and the plains due to the untouched

jungle”. Until the colonization of the piedmont and the discovery of oil in the early 1980s, “these two

zones were neither connected culturally nor commercially”.71

Prior to the arrival of the Spaniards in the mid-16th century, what today constitutes the

department of Arauca was populated for centuries by a variety of quasi-sendentary indigenous groups

such the Achagua, the Betoy, Jirara, and Tunebo (U’wa). The Betoy were the largest of these three

71 Interview 48, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

102

groups while the Jirara included several sub-groups scattered throughout the immediate region. The

Tunebo were primarily located in the piedmont, as their ancestral land is primarily located in the Sierra

Nevada de Cocuy and the descending areas into the piedmont region. There were also purely nomadic

indigenous groups which populated the Eastern Plains, such as the Guahibos, a group that developed

a reputation as fierce warriors who were the cause of the decline or eradication of other smaller groups

in the region prior to and after the arrival of European settlers in the plains (Rausch 1984, 19).

European contact with the Eastern Plains remained minimal until the 17th century due to disease,

climate, hostile natives, and the availability of better land elsewhere on the continent. Those Spanish

adventurers who were able to stomach the extreme precariety found in the massive plains stretching

throughout the Orinoco basin – namely slave hunters, ranchers, and missionaries - attempted

unsuccessfully to recreate the encomienda system (Gómez and Cavelier de Ferrero 2011, 181). However,

slowly but surely the new Spanish settlers were able to establish permanent towns which could

withstand the constant attacks of hostile indigenous bands and enact a viable mode of agriculture to

sustain these colonial settlements, a challenge which involved the importation and adaptation of

Andalusian livestock to a completely alien environment (Loy 1981). The success of these early Spanish

settlements in surviving the tough conditions of the Eastern Plains is owed almost completely to the

organizational prowess and work ethic imported to the region by the various Catholic missionaries

which began pouring into Colombia in the 17th century. As Jane Rausch (1999) notes: “The solution

was to hold the frontiers by employing missionaries to convert the indigenous people to Christianity,

to convince them to settle down in towns, and to incorporate them into Hispanic life” (8). The

alarming success of the Spanish colonization in the Eastern Plains by way of “[…]the paternalistic

character of the missionary” was quickly eradicating native culture in the region and “[…]transforming

the socioculture landscape into one that was European with a feudal character” (Pérez 2011, 189).

103

The most successful of these religious missions was the Jesuit order, which had attempted

unsuccessfully to enter the region in 1620, yet by mid-century this had succeeded in establishing

outposts and massive haciendas throughout the Eastern Plains. The strict hierarchical systems and

division of labor implemented at the Jesuit missions and haciendas were notable for the fact that

indigenous peons received food and clothing for their labor instead of wages, and by the mid-18th

century the Jesuits dominated the economic life of the Eastern Plains (Rausch 1984). Their ability to

establish successful settlements which were sustained by the sweat and labor of an indigenous

workforce, as well as their talent for raising “[…]vast herds of creole cattle - small, long-horned, slow

maturing and varicolored - as hardy a bovine as ever lived”, made the Jesuit missionaries the largest

producer of livestock in colonial Colombia (Loy 1981, 161). Due to the resentment and envy of other

religious orders, Spanish King Charles III expelled the Jesuits from the American colonies in early

1767 at a moment when “[…]the Jesuits controlled approximately 7620 indians, various haciendas

with hundreds of thousands of hectares, thousands of heads of cattle and horses, while also cultivating

sugarcane, bananas, fruit, coffee, and rice” (Rausch 1984, 83).

The Bourbon reforms of the late 18th century laid the conditions for the demise of Spanish

monarchical rule in the Americas. During the Wars of Independence, Simón Bolívar and his

multiethnic army of followers only began to turn the tide against Royalist forces when llanero troops

from both Venezuela and Colombia joined ranks. Initially opposed to independence, the soldiers

recruited from the plains formed the cavalry of the Patriot army and waged brutal warfare throughout

their home region and beyond (Pérez 2011, 195). The wars of independence brought absolute ruin to

the region and the colonial society that had been established there, and from which it would take the

next one hundred and fifty years to recuperate. Not only were the missions dismantled, the cattle

ranches pillaged, and the bulk of the region’s habitants displaced or killed, but the native communities

themselves relocated to the foothills and mountain refuges of the Eastern Cordillera and remained

104

there until long after the war. This conflict “[…]destroyed three centuries of territorial formation that

had been achieved through extreme cruelty and sacrifice… the haciendas were vacated, because the

combatants took all the cattle and horses as a war tax, bringing them to ruin” (Barona, Gómez, and

Domínguez 2011, 203). The human cost was immense. A census undertaken by the governor of the

plains at this juncture, reveals that in 1812, the plains population was 48 862 habitants, which by 1822

only constituted 17 451 persons, a decline of 31 411 people, or 64% of the overall population, in one

decade (Barona, Gómez, and Domínguez 2011, 213). The various abandoned haciendas were acquired

by private individuals following independence, yet the majority of the land in the plains remained

public lands.

The social composition of the plains changed notably from the mid-19th century to the early

1900s with separate waves of Venezuelan and European migration. As a result of a series of mid-

century upheavals known as the Federalist Wars, thousands of Venezuelan llaneros were displaced to

neighboring Colombia, where they brought the political disputes of their native land to the frontier

zone of Arauca. Arauca City was particularly vulnerable to what occurred in neighboring Venezuela,

as “[…]because of its border location, {Arauca City} was subject to the ebb and flow of political

disturbances in Venezuela as well as in Colombia” (Rausch 1993, 175). Over the same period of time,

a lesser contingent of European merchants who arrived via the Orinoco River settled in various towns

and villages along the Arauca River. At this moment in time, Arauca City became major hub for trade

in the Eastern Plains given its location next to Venezuela and the Orinico River basin. Given that

many products arrived from Europe, it was only natural that several European merchants – principally

Italians - also arrived to ply their trade on the Colombian-Venezuelan border (Pérez Bareño 2015).

Prior to the massive colonization of the piedmont in the aftermath of la Violencia, the sub-

region had been sparsely populated. For centuries, various indigenous groups had established quasi-

sendentary settlements along the various riverbeds of the piedmont, most notably the Tunebos (U’wa)

105

(Barona, Gómez, and Domínguez 2011). The only non-indigenous settlements found in the piedmont

prior to the colonization period were all found along the Arauca River in Arauquita, as the municipal

capital was founded in 1675 by Jesuit missionaries.72 Arauquita and those border settlements remained

largely isolated from the rest of Arauca until the colonization process began in the mid-to-late 1950s

(Rausch 1993), with many longtime residents claiming that until the 1970s and 1980s, local Colombian

children knew the Venezuelan national anthem better than their own, due to the fact that the only

radio and television channels were transmitted from the neighboring country. 73

Following the end of la Violencia, the early National Front administrations of Alberto Lleras

Camargo (1958-1962), Guillermo León Valencia (1962-1966), and Carlos Lleras Restrepo (1966-1970)

all sought to expand the state’s presence to more peripheral regions of the country such as the Eastern

Plains in order to ease the pressure caused by overpopulation and a highly unequal concentration of

land in rural Andean regions. An early study of these migration patterns categorized these migrants as

either “[…]those who came deliberately, determined to make an economic success of the venture”, or

“[…]those who came as a last resort, forced by outside pressure to flee across the mountains”. Their

acclimatization to the new zone depended on “[…]their own determination and will to succeed, which

is often lacking among those who have settled in the montaña as a last resort, seeking peace rather

than trying to expand the front” (Stoddart and Trubshaw 1962, 50).

In the Araucan piedmont, the process of colonization began in 1955 and was directed by the

Caja Agraria, a state entity which was tasked with administering the colonization process in terms of

formal titling and credit prior to the founding of INCORA under Law 135 in 1961 (Eidt 1967, 29).

Some fifty families first arrived and settled in Saravena just east of Cubará (Boyacá), a place that offered

the most accessible public lands available to those descending into the piedmont from the Eastern

72 Interview 15, Arauquita, 2016.

73 Interview 67, Saravena, 2016; Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

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Cordillera.74 The first arrivals were mule drivers, as “[…]only men entered the zone and when they

were settled and had made the land livable, they sent for their families”.75 The task of settling the land

required an intensive process of deforestation which in turn spawned the lucrative yet illicit cross-

border timber trade with Venezuela.76 The actual process of travelling to the piedmont and settling

public lands differed, although the most common route was the path leading from Pamplona (Norte

de Santander), to Cubará (Boyacá), which finally descended into Saravena. Quite frequently, groups

of families from the same towns and villages in departments such as Santander and Norte de Santander

made this journey together, with many establishing small hamlets composed of peasants from the

same locations in the Andean highlands.77 Travelling migrants first stopped in Tunebia (Boyacá) in

order to present the necessary paperwork to the regional office of the Caja Agraria so they could

legalize their claims. One such woman from Cáchira (Norte de Santander) who made this trek with

her young children remembers her colonization experience vividly:

Once we arrived at La Primavera and saw the land my husband had bought, there was no house or farm so we had to stay with my brother-in-law for a bit until we could build a wood and earth shack. We began to work clearing the forest by hand with only the aid of axes and machetes and in those early days we helped my brother-in-law with his cows so we could at least give milk to our small children. Our neighbors also helped out with food when there wasn’t any, as everybody helped one another out like that. Little by little we improved our situation and finally built a better house with greater comforts.78

The first wave of colonization was directed by the Caja Agraria and INCORA under ‘Project

Arauca One’ (Proyecto Arauca Uno). This phase of semi-planned migration saw roughly some 5000

families arrive in the piedmont over the course of the 1960s, settling principally in Saravena and Fortul

(El Espectador 2014). The standard unit of land which the Caja Agraria and later INCORA would

parcel off was fifty hectares of land, the UAF, a plot measuring three hundred meters by one hundred

74 In 1970 Saravena legally became independent of Tame, and similarly Fortul became a municipality in 1990. According to a local historian in Tame, “[…]the center of colonization was centered in Saravena and little by little it expanded towards Fortul, Arauquita, and Tame.” Interview 71, Tame, 2016.

75 Interview 67, Saravena, 2016.

76 Interview 12, Arauquita, 2016; Interview 98, Fortul, 2016.

77 Interview 23, Fortul, 2016.

78 Interview 96, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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meters. To demarcate the boundaries of their property, the migrants left large tree trunks strategically

exposed at the corners of their farms (el balizar). Barbwire fences were considered a luxury and would

only be introduced to local agricultural practices as time wore on.79

The second wave of colonization in the 1970s was more spontaneous, with new settlers

arriving and expanding the colonization zone’s limits to what is today the northern part of Tame

municipality all the way eastwards to the border between Arauquita and Arauca municipality.80 Many

of the new settlements encroached on historic indigenous lands and the large unproductive cattle

ranches found in parts of Tame. The reconfiguration of historic land tenure patterns coincided with

the increased dysfunction and inability of INCORA to fulfill its basic functions in Arauca, thus

generating new tensions between the recent arrivals and their llanero counterparts (Plazas Diaz 2017).

This was evident in the increasingly chaotic titling system which was in place, as initially the standard

practice for obtaining title for public land which was cleared and settled was well regulated and

enforced by INCORA.81 However with its eventual decline in the 1970s, many claims, legal and illegal,

were never properly sorted out in the piedmont.82

Table 4. Distribution of Public Land by INCORA in Arauca (1961-1989)

Period of Time 1961- 1969 1970- 1979 1980-1989

Municipality Titles Issue

d Total Area

(ha)

Average Plot (ha)

Titles Issued

Total Area (ha)

Average (ha)

Titles Issue

d Total Area

(ha)

Average Plot (ha)

ARAUCA 140 2776 19.8 33 2343 71 166 25526 153.8

ARAUQUITA 334 7703 23.1 804 33039 41.1 1444 70768 49.0

SARAVENA 735 30861 42 1277 38836 30.4 630 24771 39.3

TAME 2 86 42.9 1171 74315 63.5 2476 213217 86.1

Source: Sistema de Información de Desarrollo Rural - SIDER

79 Interview 23, Fortul, 2016.

80 Interview 71, Tame, 2016.

81 Interview 23, Fortul, 2016.

82 This lack of clarity in land titling and formal ownership was more strongly felt in Arauquita and Tame than in Saravena and Fortul, reflective of the chronology of directed and spontaneous colonization in the sub-region.

108

Every municipality in the piedmont has a particular mix of migrant populations, yet broadly

speaking “the population of the piedmont is multicultural with people from Santander, Boyacá, Valle,

Cudinamarca, Antioquia, and Tolima”.83 Saravena alone was settled by colonos from thirteen different

departments.84 Arauquita possesses a greater influence of Venezuelans and Afro-Colombians from

departments such as Cauca and Antioquia, as they were brought to the region during the height of the

timber trade.85 Tame is the only municipality in the entire department which possesses mountain,

piedmont, and plains, and thus is settled in certain part by creole llaneros, while the piedmont portion

of this municipality was colonized by migrants from all over Colombia. Due to proximity, Tame has

been heavily influenced by migrants from neighboring Boyacá, a department which for much of the

20th century maintained the distinction as being the poorest in the entire country (Rausch 2015). A

majority of migrants in the piedmont can trace their origins back to Norte de Santander, Boyacá, and

Santander (Rucinque 1972).

For the first decades of the colonization period, there was surprisingly little contact between

communities in the piedmont and in the plains, save northern Tame and western Arauca municipality,

both of which served as places where the two sub-regions finally met.86 The sudden influx of poor

peasants from the Andean departments such as Boyacá and Santander into the previously uninhabited

jungles of the piedmont dramatically altered the future balance of power in the department of Arauca,

as by the late 1970s “[…]the balance of population in the department had reversed, with almost three-

fourths of its 78,000-odd residents living in the piedmont.” (Carroll 2011, 181). These changes

predictably brought to the fore some latent tensions between the two populations, but the peasant

83 Interview 50, Arauca municipality, 2016.

84 Interview 67, Saravena, 2016.

85 Interview 98, Fortul, 2018.

86 This was largely the result of the lack of roads connecting the two sub-regions in any shape or form. (Interview 71, Tame, 2016)

109

settlers, despite sharing the same nationality as the llaneros, were never assimilated or fully accepted by

their counterparts in the plains.87 Unsurprisingly, the main flashpoint between colonos and llaneros in

Arauca was over land. As the colonization movement expanded beyond the focal point of Saravena

well into Fortul, Arauquita, and Tame, many of these peasant migrants found that the public lands

they had hoped to settle were already claimed by other recent arrivals, and therefore they pushed into

existing haciendas and other idle properties, effectively occupying these large estates. This was

particularly true in the part of Tame where the plains and the piedmont meet, as in many cases the

migrants effectively invaded and divided entire landed estates amongst themselves.88

Whereas indigenous groups saw their traditional way of life completely disrupted by the

encroachment of European migrants during the colonial period and the destruction of the Wars of

Independence, over the course of the 20th century the most frequent flashpoints between settlers and

natives in Arauca were the theft of cattle and other agricultural crops, a practice which invited violent

reprisals from rural homesteaders as time wore on (Rausch 1993). The colonization of the piedmont

claimed the last remaining space in the department which indigenous tribes could claim for themselves,

and while nominally better than their peers from the plains, relations between the new piedmont

arrivals in the 1950s and 1960s were also prone to periodic outbreaks of violence due to ongoing cattle

rustling committed by groups such as the Guahibo. After one such incident in Arauquita, the local

police inspector “backed by many people from the town, sent his men to the Island of Reinera and

the area near Lipa, and there they burned down the native settlements” (Pérez Bareño 2015, 39).

Another local in Tame recalls when various llaneros from this municipality poisoned between ten and

fifteen natives in retaliation for their incursion on local cattle ranches,89 while another sixteen were

87 Interview 67, Saravena, 2016.

88 Interview 73, Tame, 2016.

89 Interview 71, Tame, 2016.

110

notoriously ambushed and killed at La Rubiera in Arauca municipality in 1968 (Pérez Bareño 2015,

40). By the 1960s and 1970s, most indigenous groups were completely marginalized by the

colonization of both the plains and the piedmont, concentrated in a handful of impoverished

communities throughout Arauca.

ii. The Economic Sphere

From the time that Spanish settlers and missionaries settled in the plains straddling what today

is the Orinoco watershed between Colombian and Venezuela until the present, cattle ranching has

been the staple of all local economic life in the plains. In other regions of Colombia such as the

Caribbean coast or the upper Magdalena valley, cattle ranching was selected and practiced extensively

by land holding rural elites because ‘‘[…]the monopoly of available land was the only way to control

labor” and this in turn generated political power and territorial control for these particular individuals

(Reyes Posada 1978, 4).

The early Spanish settlers and missionaries brought the agricultural traditions of Andalusia and

Extremadura to the Americas by introducing the cattle ranch (el hato) to the plains due to the fact that

the climate patterns and the quality of soil and grasses prevented any other viable agricultural activity

save for the raising of livestock and the occasional harvest of plaintains, yucca, and corn.90 Cattle

ranchers depended on accessibility to massive stretches of land, without fences or impediments, in

order to sustain and raise their herds, and thus grazed them freely in the thousands of hectares which

surrounded their hato up to an extended radius (Otto and Anderson 1986). Their cattle were branded

or marked in order to keep track of which belonged to what hato. However, the concept of private

property was complicated, as formal title did not exist and ownership was very loosely established on

understandings between neighboring cattle ranchers and the general consensus that cattle were free to

90 Interview 69, Tame, 2016.

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roam as far as they pleased. A man’s social and economic status was entirely dependent of the amount

of cattle under his control, as “the elites were clearly defined and were composed of the hato owners,

large cattle ranchers, and land holders, who measure their wealth in cattle and in the amount of

hectares they possess”.91 In the absence of formal title: “A man claimed informally all the land

occupied by his cattle, and holdings of 2,500 square kilometers {250 000 hectares} were not

uncommon”. Only those ranches with more than 2,000 head of cattle were referred to as hatos and the

owners of these “[…]wielded most of the political and economic power” (Loy 1978, 507).

The introduction of the Spanish hato and the religious missions engendered an extremely

vertical social structure in the Eastern Plains of Colombia. While there was a very particular division

of labor established on the hato, the key roles were clearly defined by the owners themselves (ganaderos

or patrones), the administrators of their estates (mayordomos), and then the laborers (peones) who carried

out a variety of specialized functions on the hatos. On the ruling class and the expectations of their

subordinates, Rausch (2015) observes that: “The owners, at the top of this social pyramid, generally

lived in the towns. They formed a class apart, expecting complete submission from their workers in

this semifeudal arrangement” (6). Frequently, the peons and mounted llaneros “[…]lived outside the

the towns, had no access to schools or health facilities, realistic opportunities to gain title to land on

which they may have lived for many years” (28). Despite the dismantling of the hacienda system

established by the religious missions, private individuals re-asserted control over the trade in the 19th

century. However, what cattle ranching had recovered was severely limited by a restricted demand

from the Andean highlands, a trend influenced by the availability of better quality livestock from

nearby savannas in Cundinamarca and Boyacá, or even the Caribbean coast. There was also a

concerted effort by coastal ranchers and merchants to prevent their competitors in the plains from

91 Interview 48, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

112

expanding exports to markets within and outside of the country, a practice which had continued from

the colonial period (Loy 1981, 161).

The social and economic backwardness of cattle ranching in the Eastern Plains persisted in an

era when the trade experienced a pronounced boom in Colombia in the latter half of the 20 th century

(Van Ausdal 2009). Despite efforts by the authorities to legalize a system of land title and ownership,

local ranchers and their peons made little to no attempt to register their claims, nor were they

interested in the improved techniques adopted by their competitors elsewhere in the country,

innovations such as barbwire fences and improved African grasses for their cattle. With no intention

of applying for legal ownership, nor modernizing their estates and ranching practices, an anti-progress,

quasi-nomadic form of cattle ranching took hold in the region. The hatos which were not legally

constituted in the first place were frequently “[…]passed along from father to son without any

semblance of legality or documentation and anyone who sought to challenge this would either be

overwhelmed with lawsuits or armed confrontations” (Rausch 1993, 109). Isolated from internal

markets for their cattle, hato owners depended on both the legal and illegal trade of their livestock with

neighboring Venezuela via the Arauca and Orinoco rivers.

The practice of raising cattle in the plains remained largely consistent until certain events in the

latter half of the 20th century forced a belated, partial modernization of the industry. Following the

turbulence of la Violencia, particularly in places like Meta, Casanare, and Arauca, coupled with the

attempts of the early National Front governments to resolve the agrarian issue, the arrival of thousands

of landless migrants from the interior dramatically changed the regional dynamic. The sudden

introduction of thousands of peasants into a territory where an extreme concentration of land existed

in a climate where land title and ownership was extremely ambiguous predictably generated problems

for the hato owners and cattle ranchers. In a bid to quell the land invasions and lay claim to what they

believed to be theirs, local landed elites and ranchers belatedly erected barbwire fences to demarcate

113

their properties. Often these disputes between large cattle ranchers and peasant squatters would be

resolved by the local police inspector. Once the borders of their claim was somewhat established, they

would get approval from the police inspector before passing the documents over to the municipal

office of INCORA for legalization.92 They were able to do so despite the fact that “to erect fences

has always come with a high cost. Those who closed their properties first were precisely the rich or

those who brought a lot of cattle to take advantage of the pasture and grasses”.93 Perhaps nowhere

else was the threat of colonization felt more acutely than in Tame. Divided between plains and

piedmont, this particular municipality had always been characterized by large hatos.94 The mass arrival

of migrants in the 1960s and 1970s led to the fragmentation of numerous large estates by squatter

peasants. Others hastily erected fences in the hope of stemming future invasions (Pérez Bareño 2015,

61).

The effect of the introduction of barbwire fences on hatos in the plains compounded and

reinforced the extreme concentration of land, while also bringing to the fore the subtle enmity between

the owners and their peons, and between competing landowners themselves. The quasi-feudal social

relations that were characteristic of the plains from the colonial era well into the 20 th century have

persisted until the present. Notwithstanding improvements in the local quality of life and a modest

modernization of the form of cattle ranching practiced in the region, plains habitants continue

“[…]living as their ancestors lived” in highly vertical agrarian social structures with and large (and

mostly absentee) landholders on the top, and peons on the bottom (Loy 1981, 167).95

The state-driven colonization experiment in the Araucan piedmont lasted until the early 1970s

when national-level economic priorities shifted and support for aspiring homesteaders in colonization

92 Interview 100, Tame, 2016.

93 Interview 23, Fortul, 2016.

94 Interview 69, Tame, 2016.

95 Interview 74, Tame, 2016.

114

zones across the Colombian periphery began to dry up. However, this did not dissuade other migrants

from pouring into the sub-region to stake their own claim and settle small plots of land, with or

without formal title from the authorities. Over the course of these decades, a very unique model of

peasant society emerged in the piedmont of Arauca, one which was complemented by a distinct

economic modality geared towards a smallholding system of agricultural production.

The conditions of early piedmont society were harsh. One local leader from Gaitan (Arauquita)

recalls that even though the zone was calm and safe in his childhood, the “poverty was extreme”. To

compound this economic misery, the isolation of the piedmont was equally as severe as there were no

access roads, a lack of communication which “didn’t allow trade to exist” in the sub-region.96 Another

account from Saravena highlights this same lack of connection between villages within the sub-region

and beyond. Those who were sick were forced to travel downriver at considerable cost to Arauca City

for medical attention. What schools existed initially were in extremely precarious condition, with desks

made from bricks and crude wooden slabs. Piedmont residents depended on Coleman lamps for light,

although numerous peasants improvised and made their own appliances because electricity was not

made available until 1989, and even then it was only operational for two hours a day.97 These immense

hardships fostered a high level of self-reliance and collaboration amongst peasant settlers. Everybody

was expected to contribute in some shape or form, local exchanges were often based on a system of

barter and peasants “did not live under the logic of the market”.98 Their diet consisted of bush meat

(carne de monte), fish (which were caught in abundance in the extensive local fluvial system), and

whatever crops remained after harvest.99 There was a great deal of camaraderie and sharing between

96 Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

97 Interview 67, Saravena, 2016.

98 Interview 65, Saravena, 2016.

99 Interview 96, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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migrant peasants in these communities, yet the rough conditions predictably led to intense

confrontations when disputes over property boundaries arose.100

In the piedmont, a great familiarity existed between neighbors as “everybody watched each

others back”. Close interpersonal social relations served a strategic purpose in “generating protection

for those very same people in the sub-region”.101 The social fabric was extremely strong and was

described as “a deep rooted brotherhood” between local habitants where “everybody ate or nobody

did”.102 In contrast to the neighboring plains, the limits placed on peasants by this smallholding system

created both a closer intimacy with their neighbors, and less freedom at the same time.103 Neighbors

were expected to contribute to communal activites such as the maintenance and upkeep of common

spaces in their communities, while also helping to transport residents who were either ill or pregnant

to the nearest doctor or midwife.104 This high level of collective action was partly born out of necessity,

as the first authority to register a presence in the piedmont was local clergy, followed by the emergence

of local community leaders who disseminated lessons and little booklets to peasant settlers regarding

basic health advice such as malaria prevention, instructions on home construction, and even how to

effectively castrate livestock.105

The economic modality which emerged and developed in the sub-region was largely shaped

by the origins of the peasant settlers, the distribution of land as directed and overseen under INCORA,

and the quality of the soil. Unlike other sub-regions found in the Eastern Plains, the land tenure pattern

of the piedmont is one which is remarkably equitable, as quite simply “there are no elites, it is a

100 “There was always violence, even when the guerrilla groups weren’t present. Sometime people wouldn’t respect others

land. At that point, the community would solve these disputes amongst themselves, regardless of who was at fault.” Interview 63, Arauquita, 2016.

101 Interview 53, Arauca municipality, 2016.

102 Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016; Interview 96, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

103 Interview 74, Tame, 2016.

104 Interview 75, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

105 Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

116

smallholding peasant society”.106 The absence of large landholders, massive cattle ranches, and long

standing political bosses in the piedmont engendered horizontal social relations between local

peasants, a dynamic which has largely persisted to the present, albeit to varying degrees between the

various municipalities.107 There were peasants who possessed personal holdings larger than the UAF

of fifty hectares. However, given the fertility of the soil “the land is more productive” than in other

regions and thus “a farmer with one hundred hectares is a rich man”.108 Of equal importance, those

with larger plots of land “are not respected more because they have greater wealth”, and have

historically been willing to share their estates with landless migrants who arrived further along in time

during the colonization period.109 INCORA was effectively able to distribute smaller allotments of

land to migrants who arrived in the sub-region because the soil “was more fertile and therefore the

peasants needed less hectares to produce”.110 The main usage of the soil varied from village to village,

however the principal agricultural activities practiced in the piedmont were small-scale cattle ranching,

and the cultivation of plantains and cacao.111

Perhaps the only real class distinctions in the piedmont are between urban and rural residents,

meaning those who live in municipal capitals and those who live outside of them. In these towns,

there are merchants and everybody else. However, the former group does not maintain any outward

signs of superior affluence or status, and regardless of vocation in the towns “everybody helps

everybody else”. The only rural distinction of any note is between smallholders and those agricultural

workers (jornaleros) who are employed by them on their plots. According to one interview participant:

“Relations between the farmers and workers are good because they have the same interests. Highways,

106 Interview 49, Arauca municipality, 2016.

107 Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016; Interview 95, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

108 Interview 50, Arauca municipality, 2016.

109 Interview 64, Arauca municipality, 2016.

110 Interview 74, Tame, 2016.

111 Interview 71, Tame, 2016; Interview 67, Saravena, 2016.

117

services, and education, as everybody’s children, peasants and workers alike, study in the same

schools”.112

iii. The Political Sphere

Notwithstanding the waves of Venezuelan and European migrants to the plains, the cultural

identity of the sub-region remained fairly homogenous and was strongly tied to its partisan and

political allegiance to the Liberal Party. With every national-level civil war, the loyalty of the plains

elites to the Liberal cause grew even stronger, as one prominent Liberal general of the 19 th century,

General Vargas Santos, resided in Tame and organized an army in Venezuela just prior to the War of

a Thousand Days in 1895 and ended up invading and seizing control of Arauca City during the final

years of the 19th century (Rausch 1993, 179). As the partisan-driven violence and repression increased,

so did the resolve and partisan commitment of the Liberal fighters, a phenomenon which would be

passed from one generation to the next in the region over the course of the 20th century.

The outbreak of the partisan civil war throughout Colombia in the late 1940s had a strong and

lasting impact on the Eastern Plains region. Arauca was no exception as Guadalupe Salcedo was

arguably the strongest Liberal rebel commander in the region, if not the entire country, over the course

of the conflict. Born in Los Chorros, Tame, to a Venezuelan father and indigenous mother, Salcedo

was raised in Arauquita. The assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitan in April, 1948, brought ominous

consequences to Liberal bastions like Arauca. The local response was swift and violent in places such

as Tame, as a local politician recalls:

Some Conservatives here who were happy organized a dance in Las Queseras….The Liberals were disgusted and organized a group of boys to pacify those people so that ‘they wouldn’t dance’, haha, and they killed them all, hehe, a goddaughter of mine was killed. They killed her so that she wouldn’t dance, hehe, and everything started from there, the dislike and the hate. There were about eight deaths. They killed them with knives and machetes. (Pérez Bareño 2015, 44)

112 Interview 65, Saravena, 2016.

118

The wave of Conservative oppression followed. In the Eastern plains, those publicly identified

as Liberal supporters lost their jobs and were intimidated, while peasants were stripped of their lands

and often killed.113 Large landholders from Boyacá “[…]took advantage of situation to recoup lands

they had lost after López Pumarejo’s semi-land reform” (Rausch 2015, 34). Between the Colombian

military and the Conservative police, they targeted and killed everything that they associated with the

Liberal party in Tame (Pérez Bareño 2015).

Unwilling to idly sit back and accept the government’s numerous abuses, a combination of

local farmhands, cattle rustlers, and erstwhile victims of Conservative repression found common cause

against the Colombian government and began to organize and fight back. The first groups arose in

Tame, numbering around six hundred men armed with only sticks and clubs. However, these fighters

had the advantage of knowing the terrain very well. They were all very capable of swimming and

crossing the various local rivers in contrast to the army’s soldiers and the police. Furthermore, these

rebels hailed from local communities and “[…]the people loved the guerrillas more than the Army

because they were Liberals” (Pérez Bareño 2015, 47). Once organized, these rebel groups consolidated

their control of Liberal zones of influence and would launch frequent attacks on Conservative targets

wherever they were to be found.

These groups benefitted from the partisan cleansing of other regions, as numerous Liberal

refugees from Conservative strongholds such as Boyacá sought protection in numbers and ended

joining rebel groups in the Eastern Plains. Unlike other Liberal and Conservative insurgent factions

found elsewhere in Colombia during this chaotic time, the rebel army led by Guadalupe Salcedo was

quite disciplined and refrained from arbitrary violence against civilians, a tendency which reflected the

insurgent commander’s personal dislike for unjustified coercion. This in turn guaranteed the support

113 One such way of identifying Liberal supporters was through their partisan identity cards, a tactic which persists to this day in order to ostracize those who were born in a certain place, and who are stigmatized as such along these lines.

119

of the local civilian population in Arauca. As Jane Rausch (2015) writes: “Key to rebel success was

their ability to mobilize the civilian population in favor of their movement. By consolidating their

authority and power structures, they increased control” (43). A local military commander conceded

that the guerrillas had both the sympathy and complicity of the majority of local residents, who in

exchange for their support received security and order as Salcedo’s soldiers imposed their own legal

codes, courts, and even a system of taxation. Over the course of la Violencia, the Liberal guerrillas in

the Eastern Plains “[…]created enclaves that were effective centers of permanent refuge and often

insurmountable barriers to the imposition of government authority” (Rausch 2015, 49).

Following the sudden coup launched by General Rojas Pinilla in 1953, the new military

president was able to convince a Liberal general who had family in Arauca to go to the region and

persuade Guadelupe Salcedo and his followers to lay down their arms in 1953.114 Recognizing the need

for more inclusive policy proposals in the Eastern Plains, Rojas Pinilla sought to calm the region in

aftermath of the amnesty by offering free land to settlers and improved access to credit. The seeds of

the eventual colonization of the piedmont can be traced back to this period, as the Rojas Pinilla

administration “wanted to give work to all of the guerrillas, while also expanding agricultural frontier,

a process which evolved over the period from 1955 until 1980”.115 While helping to bring down the

Conservative government and serving as a key impetus for the agrarian policies proposed and

established in the 1950s and 1960s, the Liberal guerrillas ultimately failed to achieve any long term

reform in the region, as “[…]the true winners were the large landowners, who with the support of the

military would retain their control over the region” (Rausch 2015, 53).

114 By this point in time, the conflict had reached something of an impasse because “[…]the government couldn’t

dominate the guerrillas and that is natural; you know how guerrillas are difficult to defeat because they operate in their own environment.” (Pérez Bareño 2015, 38)

115 Interview 71, Tame, 2016.

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For the majority of Arauca’s post-independence history, the territory was classified at various

stages as either a comisaria (commisary) or an intendancia (intendancy) before finally becoming a

department in 1991. Following la Violencia, local governance in the region was practically non-existent,

as the entire intendancy of Arauca was officially administered from the city of Sogamoso in eastern

Boyacá.116 While intendencies were officially administered by executively appointed intendants, the

Araucan political elite was thoroughly dominated by a group of plains cattle ranching elites who were

fervent supporters of the Liberal party. Between this ruling group, there were two dominant factions

vying for control of the intendancy’s budgets: the Villabonistas and the Latorristas.117. These elites

exercised power through clientelist linkages with core constituencies primarily found in Arauca

municipality and Tame.

The faction led by Alfonso Latorre Gómez was more dominant from 1966 onwards. Latorre

was the intendancy’s representative in the mid-1960s before subsequently serving as the territory’s

senator from 1966 until 1990, although he was the veritable powerbroker of Arauca prior to the arrival

of the insurgent groups and the political opening of the mid-1980s. Latorre was responsible for

approving all appointed intendants - or those charged with administering the intendancy - and thus

controlled all public jobs and budgets in the department as a result (Carroll 2011). The Araucan

powerbroker maintained tight control over the region’s politics at the expense of the piedmont, a

distribution of power which “was problematic and less inclusive” due to the direction of public

budgets towards sustaining Latorre’s clientelist networks rather than investing in the development of

communities in both the plains and the piedmont.118 Formal political institutions in Arauca remained

116 Interview 13, Arauquita, 2016.

117 Interview 73, Tame, 2016.

118 Interview 67, Saravena, 2016; Interview 73, Tame, 2016.

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dominated by plains landowning elites until the political decentralization of the mid 1980s, leaving the

piedmont ignored and marginalized (Carroll 2011).

iv. The Civic Sphere

The national and regional effects of the National Front reforms in the late 1950s and 1960s

did not impact the Araucan plains in the same manner as they were felt in other regions of Colombia.

Until the discovery of oil in the early 1980s - and arguably until the present - the Araucan plains’

traditional social order continued to be defined by cattle ranching and a vertical social hierarchy.

ANUC did not emerge as a central motor of local peasant life, perhaps because of the general lack of

non-cattle related agricultural activity in the sub-region. Community action boards were established in

every village and neighborhood in the plains, as mandated by law, yet these JACs were not a crucial

component to local development or administration in these communities. One native of Puerto

Rondón comments that in his municipality “the creation of the JACs created a mechanism for co-

existence and respect, however, relations are more focused towards official state entities.”119 The

policies of the National Front made little contribution to the Araucan plains in terms of social

development and the traditional llanero social order persisted throughout the 20th century.120 Peasant

collective action was not a necessity in the plains for several reasons. Historically, relations between

peasants who resided in the same villages or worked on the same hato were characterized by a

reciprocity which manifested itself in various ways. Locals frequently engaged in a system of barter

(trueque), or would simply mutually share what scarce crops they produced on their land, as these

practices were sufficient to sustain these communities and hence local social organizations were not

necessary.121

119 Interview 53, Arauca municipality, 2016.

120 Interview 57, Arauca municipality, 2016.

121 Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

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This is not to say that peasant collective action (in the form of social organizations and mass

mobilizations) was not evident in the plains during this period of time. However, due to the fact that

Arauca municipality was the political capital and administrative center of the department, locals, in

traditional clientelist fashion, would frequently look to official government entities for handouts,

employment opportunities, and for the local government to resolve their problems, whatever they

may have been.122 As previously mentioned, Arauca municipality and the other plains municipalities

(Tame to much lesser degree) were historically more integrated into neighboring Venezuela by land

and river connections than they were with the Colombian interior, and therefore local peasants “had

access to more goods and they had less difficulty getting by” as the majority of their needs were met

by the more highly developed neighboring country.123 Similarly, the dearth of formal and informal

organization in the plains can be attributed to the extreme under-population of rural areas and the

sparse distribution of people, a dynamic which owes much to the historic influence of cattle ranching.

Participation in social organizations is weak “due to the large estates and distances between people

which mean that they aren’t in contact frequently, there is little organization in the countryside because

everything is concentrated in the towns”.124 A veteran union organizer from the piedmont who works

throughout the department highlights all of the above reasons in explaining the historic and present

lack of collective action found in the plains:

In the plains, the population is less active because there is not much criteria for unity. It {the plains} is where all the political, administrative, and financial power lies, which creates a scavenger culture: “What can I get from the government?” These interests divide the population. Another factor to take into account is that the plains are underpopulated which generates less contact between neighbors. From one farm to the next can take a day travelling on horseback in terms of distance.125

122 Interview 95, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

123 Interview 65, Saravena, 2016.

124 Interview 67, Saravena, 2016.

125 Interview 50, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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In stark contrast, the policies of the National Front governments were strongly felt throughout

the piedmont during the colonization period. INCORA took over where the Caja Agraria left off in

1962 as the main bureaucratic body responsible for overseeing the directed colonization of the

Araucan piedmont, approving and regulating the formal titling of small, evenly distributed plots of

land throughout these regions. During this decade “the entire social fabric was given life by the state”

in colonization zones such as the piedmont.126 After settling down in the zone “the migrants started

to organize, beginning with the Agrarian Social Organization (Organización Social Agraria)”, a peasant

movement which principally sought “state presence in this abandoned region with the goal of

guaranteeing their fundamental rights”.127 The history of INCORA in the piedmont is credited by

many longstanding peasant migrants in the sub-region as the driving force behind the directed

colonization and establishing a model peasant economy by preventing the emergence of any large

landholders.128 As such, it is remembered “with great affection and love by rural habitants” in the four

piedmont municipalities for the various functions it carried out in the early development and

settlement of these communities.

Apart from the adjudication and titling of land claims, INCORA also mapped out and cleared

the rough access roads which opened up unsettled lands to new arrivals from the interior, while also

providing credits to purchase materials to these homesteaders to clear their claims and erect

rudimentary domiciles.129 Under INCORA’s guidance, all newly arriving peasants to the piedmont

were enrolled in the sub-region’s biggest agricultural cooperative, the Agricultural Cooperative of

Sarare (Cooperativa Agropecuaria del Sarare - COAGROSARARE), while the institute also actively

126 Interview 95, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

127 Interview 48, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

128 Interview 49, Arauca municipality, 2016.

129 Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

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fostered participation in ANUC when it was established in the piedmont later on that decade.130

Various other projects such as the development of the famous local aqueduct system in Saravena

occurred under INCORA’s watch, however the state bureaucracy’s influence began to wane in the

early 1970s before becoming virtually defunct in the sub-region. According to a Fortul-based activist,

“corruption and political opportunism killed INCORA”, as others recalled that administrators from

outside the sub-region began to embezzle funds or use the organization for their own ends. The end

result of this corruption was the lack of funds to provide infrastructure connecting the sub-region to

the interior, and thus leading to its decline in Arauca.131

In the piedmont, ANUC was highly active and one of the most integral social organizations

in regards to local peasant participation, although “it was strongest in Saravena”.132 The municipal

chapter of ANUC in this municipality formed the frontline of the opposition to the increased

inefficiency of INCORA in the piedmont, and in response dramatically increased its confrontation

the Colombian state through mass mobilizations beginning with the first civic strike launched in

Saravena in 1972. Many of the ANUC leaders who emerged in the piedmont at this juncture in time

had previous experience organizing in the Santanders, or possessed some form of formal education,

and therefore were quite effective in their newfound capacity as community leaders in a colonization

zone.133 Migrants from both Santander and Norte de Santander had a massive influence on the

colonization process in the piedmont due to the fact the region was destroyed following more than a

century of constant civil wars, leaving a highly unequal land tenure pattern circumscribed by an

unproductive agricultural economy (Gutiérrez de Pineda 1968). The region’s historic resistance to

130 Interview 95, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

131 Interview 23, Fortul, 2016.

132 It is important to take into account the fact that “ANUC was an association for articulating claims, one which made

demands but did not manage resources.” Interview 74, Tame, 2016.

133 One local public servant in Tame cites the origins of peasants in the piedmont as the reason why locals participated so actively in social organizations such as ANUC and the JACs: “They were settlers from much more structured cities like Bucaramanga which had a greater degree of organization.” Interview 69, Tame, 2016.

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abusive forms of authority was complemented by a propensity for social organization, as many of the

first trade unions and popular social movements originated in the region in the first decades of the

20th century (Van Isschot 2015; Gill 2016). Confirming the regional legacy of this migration to Arauca,

a local religious figure observes that the piedmont “has been enormously influenced by the Santanders,

its population is characterized by being very active and quite fond of organizing”.134

Complementing the increased activity of ANUC over the course of the 1970s was the

emergence and consolidation of the community action boards as the most important local

administrative and deliberative civic organization in the piedmont.135 Throughout every community in

the sub-region, the JACs “have been the base for development and the mechanism to achieve results

from the state”, serving each village and town as a kind of “mini-state or government”.136 Although

the law that founded the JACs dates back to the late 1950s during the earliest years of the National

Front governments, these local councils only began to appear in the piedmont in the mid-to-late 1970s

at the encouragement of progressive local Catholic clergy.137 These councils are credited with having

fostered the development of rural communities throughout the piedmont, from the construction and

outfitting of local schools to establishing and improving hand-built roads and bridges, one of the key

challenges inhibiting basic communication between villages in the sub-region.138 Due to the quasi-legal

character of the JACs and the dense webs of these organizations at the village, municipal, and

departmental levels, the JACs historically served as a means to further expand and fortify peasant

134 Interview 49, Arauca municipality, 2016.

135 Perhaps the best description of the JACs come from a local teacher and union organizer from Tame. These organizations “represent the meeting point between civil society and institutionality. They have never administered state resources, rather they are tasked with managing and conceiving development projects for the development of these communities.” Interview 74, Tame, 2016.

136 Interview 53, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

137 Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

138 One former JAC president in rural Arauquita recalls neighboring villages joining together led by their respective juntas in order “to repair the roads and bridges which connected them”. Interview 63, Arauquita, 2016.

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social networks in the piedmont by “generating conscientious work throughout the community”.139

The juntas created what one prominent local activist terms “the new village” (la nueva vereda), a place

which “has schools for children and for communal meetings”, as the JAC is a body “which dialogues

with all of the state institutions which can provide benefits for these village residents”.140

Apart from ANUC and the JACs, a variety of different kinds of social organizations emerged

over the 1960s and 1970s in the piedmont. With the exception of COAGROSARARE which was

founded in 1963, a slew of other agricultural cooperatives, trade guilds (gremios), unions, and other

voluntary associations were formed during this period of time. These differed from the above insofar

as they were not created by the impetus of the state or local authorities, rather they were the product

of efforts at the local level by peasant organizers. This grassroots organizational boom saw common

peasant guilds formed for practically every distinct agricultural activity practiced in the piedmont

including cattle ranching, yucca, cacao, coffee, and plantains, while also others were constituted to

represent specific common vocations such as fishermen, transporters, teachers and students.141 In the

piedmont, the dense network of organizational endowments was characterized by a high level of

interconnectedness between them. For example, the same peasant leaders who served in ANUC would

also double as the president of their local JACs, while their constituents in these rural communities all

belonged to agricultural cooperatives and guilds (Gutiérrez n.d., 36). With the rapid decline of

INCORA and the sudden rise of peasant activism in the early 1970s, relations between the piedmont

population and the Colombian state worsened dramatically in a very short period of time, eventually

progressing into an armed confrontation as the decade wore on.142

139 Interview 65, Saravena, 2016; Interview 67, Saravena, 2016.

140 Interview 49, Arauca municipality, 2016.

141 In a trend that remains true to this day “participation in the guilds was extremely high, everybody belonged to at least

one.” Interview 67, Saravena, 2016.

142 Interview 95, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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There is strong evidence to suggest that the piedmont capacity for peasant collective action

was born of necessity due to the extreme inadequacy local settlers felt in term of official government

presence. A second-generation homesteader from Botalón (Tame) remarks that their very survival

depended on organizing: “In front of such a difficult situation, it was necessary to create cooperatives

to survive and colonize the zone. Various peasants would get together and work one person’s land,

later somebody else’s, and they rotated like this”.143 A community leader from Arauquita remembers

a similar level of selflessness and collaboration amongst local settlers in his community: “Before the

arrival of the oil industry, if a local community lacked a bridge or anything like that, the same people

would resolve it. If it was a bridge then they would build something provisional using wooden slabs

and there would be a beautiful competition between groups of local residents to see who could

contribute more”.144

One particular way in which peasant collective action manifested itself in public and

demonstrable manner was the emergence of mass mobilizations in the 1970s. Towards the beginning

of this decade, the radicalization of many peasant leaders coincided with the sudden rupture between

piedmont society and INCORA, and by extension the Colombian state.145 This confrontation

culminated in the first civic strike of its kind in the Eastern Plains, and arguably all of Colombia, during

this period of time. In March 1972, numerous peasant leaders throughout Saravena convened a

majority of the municipality’s peasant settlers in the municipal capital for thirteen days to protest the

lack of infrastructure and other forms of assistance to migrant communities. An estimated three

thousand peasants occupied the main square of Saravena with the support of peasant leaders and local

143 Interview 76, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

144 Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

145 Whereas INCORA was initially successful in breaking up and assigning titles for smallholders in the piedmont, it failed when it came to providing the other necessities of a fledgling society: “Later, in order to build roads the only way to make the state realize our necessities was to mobilize strikes and marches. Later on, these peasant mobilizations were organized in order to bring electricity to the department.” Interview 53, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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clergy alike, motivated by the fact that the population was completely isolated from the interior and

from one another, with a lack of access roads connecting even the municipal capitals of Saravena,

Arauquita, and Arauca municipality (Zamosc 1986, 93).146 This strike “represented the profound

tensions existing between communities organized by ANUC and the JACs” and the state, a situation

which was increasingly characterized by “enormous mutual mistrust”.147 The national government

eventually sent emissaries to restore calm to the piedmont by signing a pact with local notables in

order to meet a series of demands, which were quickly forgotten altogether by the official authorities.148

Following the first civic strike in 1972, several others followed over the course of the decade.

In a pattern which would become common in the years to come, the failure of the Colombian state

to properly address the peasant grievances expressed during the 1972 civic strike led to a fresh strike

three years later. Centered again in Saravena, the same core of peasant leaders this time convened

some seven thousand peasants to paralyze the town and the block the rudimentary unpaved road

leading to nearby Cubará for twenty-five days. That same year, Tame experienced its first civic

mobilization of this kind. Despite being llanero in character, the capital of this municipality was

sufficiently influenced by the colonization of the piedmont that in March 1975 virtually the entire

town mobilized to occupy Tame’s airport to protest the lack of teachers in the local high school.149

The shared sacrifice and risks that the civic strikes required of peasant settlers in the sub-region had a

fortifying effect on these individuals and their broader communities. Not only did these mobilizations

serve as a forum or means to make their demands, it also “created a political culture”, in which “the

146 Interview 49, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 95, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

147 Interview 1, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

148 One key demand was the construction of a bridge over the Bojabá River near the border of Saravena and Cubará in

neighboring Boyacá department. It was only constructed ten years later after another massive civic strike in the piedmont. (Interview 66, Saravena, 2016)

149 Interview 72, Tame, 2016.

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state was seen as an enemy because it repressed the peasants and didn’t take their interests into

account.”150

The historic abandonment of the department and the residual tensions that this extreme

isolation caused generated far greater problems in the piedmont than it did in the plains. Until the

belated construction of roads and other vital infrastructure in the department in the 1980s, Arauca

remained as disconnected as it had been one hundred years earlier (Rausch 1993, 124). One local

community leader in Arauquita remembers that in that period “there was no state presence

whatsoever” in the piedmont.151 Another peasant activist from the northern Tame comments on the

struggles her family endured in her infancy: “There was no power, roads, not even schools. The great

struggle that my parents had was to obtain a school”.152 The municipal capitals and towns were little

better. Tame was afflicted by a “total abandonment by the state”, an isolation which meant that the

streets were unpaved, there were no roads connecting the town to any other settlement, as “everything

was transported in and out by planes which had survived the Second World War”.153

Before the belated modernization made possible by the advent of oil rents in the mid-1980s,

the department was extremely underdeveloped. According to one regional historian, the education

system was abysmal, with one-fourth of eligible students attending high school, forty percent were

fortunate enough to attend elementary school of any kind, while neither pre-school nor post-

secondary education existed in the broader department. To top it all off, there was “no electricity,

running water, or sewage” in Arauca.154 A rural homesteader in Fortul recalls having to give birth by

herself in extremely precarious conditions: “I went into labor late at night and my husband was away

150 Interview 95, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

151 Interview 63, Arauquita, 2016.

152 Interview 75, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

153 Interview 72, Tame, 2016.

154 Interview 71, Tame, 2016.

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working in Venezuela. I had only my children with me at our farm and it was too risky to send my

eldest to fetch the nearest neighbors in the dark because I was afraid some animal would eat her, so I

ended up giving birth alone on the dirt floor and severing the umbilical cord myself”.155

The perceived abandonment by locals was not necessarily reflected in the actual presence the

Colombian state did maintain in Arauca. In many piedmont communities prior to the arrival of

insurgent groups, there was a basic presence of state sanctioned authorities. One lifelong resident of

Arauquita remembers that “before the arrival of the subversive groups, there was a court, a police

inspector, and a mayor, all of whom mediated local problems…more than anything these related to

property boundaries”.156 While the Colombian military did maintain small detachments in the

department to maintain the appearance that the national government was protecting the sovereignty

of the Colombian side of the border in the Eastern Plains, the reality is that the main unit of the armed

forces responsible for maintaining security and order in the region was a cavalry group, the “Guides

of Casanare” which were stationed in Yopal (capital of Casanare), a few days by horseback to the

piedmont.157

Those areas of the department which suffered from a comparable isolation due to the

‘absence’ of the Colombian state, yet which had access to greater luxuries were generally found next

to the Venezuelan border. Towns such as Arauca City and Arauquita were just as disconnected from

the interior of their own country as rural areas of the plains and the piedmont. However they

“benefitted greatly because they shared a border, they benefitted from Venezuelan oil, and they could

trade with them”.158 The existence of historic border trade and commerce between the two countries

ensured that “products of the first necessity” were made available courtesy of Venezuelan merchants,

155 Interview 96, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

156 Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

157 Interview 47, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

158 Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

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the local antenna broadcast was similarly Venezuelan, as the better quality of Venezuelan highways in

the states of Apure and Táchira meant that Colombian could travel from Arauca to Cúcuta (Norte de

Santander) in a fraction of the time it would take on extremely precarious access roads in Colombia.159

As Arauca lurched into the final years of its pre-modern period it was characterized by a

strange, contradictory dynamic in which local peasants sought greater state presence and all of the

perceived benefits that came along with this, while concurrently harboring “a total mistrust” towards

the very same state (Pérez Bareño 2015, 59). The establishment of social organizations such as the

JACs in every village and neighborhood of Arauca endowed the organizational infrastructure to 734

communities in the department.160 This hypothetically gave each community in Arauca a mechanism

with which it could dialogue with official state entities and interlocutors to promote its own claims

and development. These efforts coupled with the surge in social mobilizations over this period helped

give a greater organizational dynamic to the department. However, as the former political boss Octavio

Sarmiento laments, it was a case of too little too late:

A pure sentiment has prevailed that the state and its institutions are worthless, citizens keep turning their backs to the criteria of the state and its institutions, few care if the state addresses {their problems} or not, the population feels marginal to the decisions of the country’s center. The insularity has discriminated against us because it has served as a shackle which prevents us from walking with the necessary pace towards progress. (Pérez Bareño 2015, 64)

C. Primary Cleavages in Montes de María and Arauca

The primary cleavages which emerged in Montes de María and Arauca in the latter half of the

20th century were distinct to these agrarian social structures found in these regions, yet they were both

driven by the desire of rural actors to construct and protect the optimal social order for their particular

constituency, whether landed elites or peasants. The Colombian state’s presence was conspicuously

insufficient, if not completely absent, in both of these regions. What formal political institutions did

159 Interview 66, Saravena, 2016; Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

160 Interview 53, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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exist were co-opted by regional landed elites, and these political bosses paid little if any attention to

growing peasant demands in Montes de María or Arauca. The regional economies were dependent

entirely on agriculture, and peasants were effectively denied an opportunity at social advancement due

to excessive land concentration (in the case of Montes de María), and the lack of basic infrastructure

(in the case of the piedmont). In order to address these cleavages, peasant leaders in both regions used

civic organizations created by National Front governments to organize and mobilize their

constituencies to engage in diverging forms of collective action to achieve their goals vis-à-vis their

opponents.

Settled in the colonial era, the rural social dynamic in Montes de María became highly stratified

over the years due to implementation of the hacienda system and the eventual rise of tobacco

production following independence. The unequal distribution of land emerged as the primary cleavage

in the region over the course of the 20th century, with the entrenched vertical agrarian social structure

finding itself challenged by the top-down reforms of the National Front governments in the 1960s,

policies which fuelled an escalating cycle of contention between regional landed elites and land-poor

peasants during the 1970s. Zamosc (1986) articulates the zero-sum nature of this social conflict which

intensified in regions characterized by the latifundia system:

[T]he massive eviction of peasants and the acceleration of landlord enclosures wherever the definition of property was unclear would become clear expressions of the primacy of the conflict over land in the areas of latifundia. The landless emerged, therefore, as the main sector of the peasantry, and the possibility of an independent peasant economy clearly depended upon the result of their impending struggle to break the power of the landowners, destroy large-scale property, and establish themselves as free peasants. (29)

Similar to Montes de María, the Araucan plains were the product of hundreds of years of

colonial and post-colonial settlement, a process which witnessed the slow emergence of a vertical

llanero social order in Arauca municipality, Cravo Norte, Puerto Rondón, and southeastern Tame.

However, there has historically been little political or social conflict in the Araucan plains outside of

the bipartisan bloodletting manifested during la Violencia. In the absence of any such class conflicts,

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the centuries old enmity between creole descendants and indigenous groups emerged as the only

visible cleavage during the same period, albeit one that had dwindled in importance towards the end

of the 20th century. The lack of social conflict or a primary cleavage in the Araucan plains owes much

to the dependence of local habitants on large landholders and political elites and their patronage

networks which sufficed to meet peasant needs and demands. As Jessica Price (2019) points out:

“Where clientelist networks predominate, people are unlikely to develop independent protest capacity

and clientelist bosses are unlikely to lead protests” (408).

In contrast to Montes de María and the Araucan plains, the Araucan piedmont was carved out

of the inhospitable jungle by impoverished peasants from the interior of the country who had little to

lose following the turbulence of la Violencia. These migrants established a diverse society in the pocket

of territory stretching from the foothills of the Andes eastward through northern Tame, Fortul,

Saravena, and Arauquita. As the sub-region became increasingly settled over the course of the 1960s

and 1970s, robust horizontal peasant social networks mobilized for the greater state provision of

public goods and services, which the successive governments responded to with violent repression

and false promises. The inadequate state presence found in the piedmont during the colonization

period became the driving factor behind the various civic strikes which occurred prior to the arrival

of the insurgent groups. The fact that the land question had effectively been resolved in the piedmont

meant that peasants were wholly focused on other grievances related to the lack of public goods and

infrastructure, a reality which left these migrant communities completely isolated from the interior of

the country. According to Zamosc (1986), this cleavage was characteristic of colonization zones such

as the piedmont:

In this sense, the most important demands were those connected with roads, communications, and all the infrastructure that was needed to bring the products to the market, the prices of the pioneering crops, the basic credits, the procedures of land titling, and the introduction of services to support the peasant economy and to make the extremely difficult conditions of life more bearable. (28)

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Chapter Four. Insurgent Institutionalization

“People who live at subsistence level want first things to be put first. They are not particularly interested in freedom of religion, freedom of the press, free enterprise as we understand it, or the secret ballot. Their needs are more basic: land,

tools, fertilizers, something better than rags for their children, houses to replace their shacks, freedom from police oppression, medical attention, primary schools. Those who have known only poverty have begun to wonder why they should continue to wait passively for improvements. They see – and not always through Red-tinted glasses – examples of peoples who have changed the structure of their societies, and they ask, ‘What have we to lose?’ When a great many

people begin to ask themselves this question, a revolutionary guerrilla situation is incipient.”

- Mao Zedong, On Guerrilla Warfare (2005, 6)

Whereas the previous chapter outlines the pre-existing agrarian social structures which

emerged over time in Montes de María and Arauca, this chapter unpacks the process of insurgent

institutionalization in order to better identify and analyze the constellations of local anchors or barriers

that enabled or constrained insurgent strategies to consolidate control of territory, people, economic

resources, political institutions, and civil society in these disparate zones. While local anchors and

barriers are of enormous importance for armed non-state actors who are seeking to appropriate the

primary cleavage, these do not solely determine the degree to which an armed non-state actor is able

to embed itself in a given space. The role of agency is also of enormous importance, particularly after

critical junctures, as both insurgent groups and civilian communities need to decide upon a fixed

strategy of how they are going to manage their interactions with one another. As Ana Arjona (2017)

points out:

Armed groups combine different strategies to penetrate local communities, take over control over their territory, and establish different forms of rule. The use of violence, political mobilization, selective incentives, and governance – by which I mean the creation of new institutions and the provision of public goods – is essential in these quests. (764)

At such a crucial moment, insurgent leaders need to pay serious consideration to the primary

cleavage affecting these peasant societies, while also taking into account the pre-existing collective

action mechanisms used to address their grievances and the extent to which they can impose

themselves on such communities before experiencing collective resistance. If armed groups are able

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to appropriate the primary cleavage - or assume peasant grievances and mobilize effectively in support

of them - this allows them to better embed themselves in the human terrain and to establish a

comprehensive system of nested governance. The co-optation of key functions in the territorial,

economic, political, and civic spheres synchronizes and binds together the interests of armed non-

state actors with those of the civilian population, a process which legitimates the insurgents’ use of

selective violence against recalcitrant local figureheads of authority and civilians alike. Podder (2013)

argues that: “Unlike groups that are predatory, abusive, and disruptive for peace, certain {armed non-

state actors} offer alternatives to a weak and inefficient government as the legitimate representative

of minority grievances” (19). Upon doing so, armed groups become interlocutors between local

populations and the state, which during periods of heightened conflict and extreme polarization can

serve as a “pilgrimage” between individuals sharing a common grievance in the same geographic space,

a binding process that further commits insurgents and civilians alike to the same emergent non-state

social order (Anderson 2006; Rubin 2019; Levitsky and Way 2012; Ling 2006). These networks serve

as the basis for successful insurgent mobilization and consolidation (Viterna 2006; Parkinson 2013;

Staniland 2014). As Oberschall (1973) notes: “Rapid mobilization does not occur through recruitment

of large numbers of isolated and solitary individuals. It occurs as a result of recruiting blocs of people

who are already highly organized and participants” (125).

Some armed actors face considerable difficulties in appropriating local grievances and

embedding themselves in civilian populations, thereby lacking the necessary organizational structures

to regulate these populations. As Eric Mosinger (2018) notes, “[…]groups that fail to establish

stationary institutions turn to predation instead” (65). Such groups typically resort to provisional

predation when their attempts to insert themselves into peasant communities are met with barriers in

the form of communal resistance (e.g. a lack of local buy-in to their project), or when local conditions

provide little to no anchors for such groups to embed themselves with. In the case of the former,

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communities are often resistant to non-state rule when these groups maintain clearly different short

and long-term goals than local civilian communities, and when their imposition within pre-existing

organizations and institutions negatively affects their efficacy to mediate local collective action

problems and grievances (Arjona 2016b; Kaplan 2017). However, the pre-existing agrarian social

structures in many underdeveloped and atomized rural communities simply do not provide any

substantial anchors or barriers to armed non-stop actors (Pearlman 2020). Mkandawire (2002)

highlights this dynamic:

[T]he grievances that rebel movements claim to seek to address are often not salient in local political situations. There is no landlord from whom to free the masses or upon whose surpluses guerrillas can survive. Guerrillas cannot offer an immediate end to predation by local potentates, since such predation hardly exists; nor can they liberate peasants from the heavy exaction of national government. (199)

This chapter examines the second key phase - insurgent institutionalization - of the broader

sequence in question, focusing on the arrival, integration, and consolidation of leftist insurgent groups

in Montes de María and Arauca. Substantially shorter than the previous period examined in Chapter

Three, this timeframe nevertheless is crucial to understanding the context of the larger research puzzle

at the heart of this dissertation. The breakdown and inability of the National Front governments to

rectify the longstanding structural dynamics which had fostered chronic political infighting and rural

upheaval throughout Colombia since independence finally came to a head with the emergence and

consolidation of leftist insurgent movements founded in the 1960s.

Whereas previous civil wars in Colombian history were primarily driven by the extreme

competition between the Liberal and Conservative parties, a zero-sum political dynamic which gave

little other recourse to political impasse except for armed violence, the emergence of the current civil

war differed insofar as it was born not from partisan loyalties, but from the longstanding unresolved

struggle for access to and control of land throughout Colombia (Safford and Palacios 2002; Palacios

2005). During this period, various distinct actors have attempted to assert control of land and people

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in order to promote, establish, and protect a particular agrarian social structure, often through the co-

optation of the available organizational endowments in these particular spaces. Agrarian conflicts in

Colombia vary in character but are invariably tied to the land question, representing struggles between

armed actors who are appropriating local cleavages as their own on behalf on a specific constituency

(or constituencies) in an attempt to implement or protect their optimal agrarian model. According to

Dario Fajardo (2015), these agrarian conflicts:

[…]have been phenomena associated with the frequently violent usurpations of peasant and indigenous land and territory, misappropriations of the country’s public lands, private impositions of rent and other charges for access to this land, in no small occasion with the support of state agents, as well as land occupations on behalf of peasants without land or with minimal access to it, of properties established in an irregular manner. (3)

The principal insurgent groups in Colombia only truly began to develop a military capacity

capable of confronting the Colombian state over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, a period of time

which coincided with the meteoric rise of the cocaine trade and the decentralization of the country’s

political system between 1986 and 1991. While the former helped finance this insurgent expansion,

particularly the growth of the FARC, the latter provided a new arena for disparate armed-non state

actors to compete with the state and one another (Echandía 2006; López 2010). During this period

the municipal political institutions became highly coveted by armed non-state actors from the late

1980s onwards as their “[…]administrative decentralization, combined with their weakness in matters

of justice and public security, permit the illegal groups to profit from municipal income” (Rubio 2005,

108). Political power at the sub-national level became a mechanism for competing actors to fortify

their ranks and to gain an advantage over their rivals.

A. Montes de María In Montes de María, the pitched battles between ANUC activist and regional landed elites in

the 1970s inspired the formation of a handful of small insurgent groups in the early 1980s. The

escalation of this agrarian conflict between smaller insurgent groups and proto-paramilitary

organizations was finally punctuated by the full scale arrival of the FARC in the early 1990s, and by

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1994 this insurgent group had asserted territorial control over virtually the entire region. The FARC

sustained its operations in Montes de María primarily through the extortion and kidnapping of large

landholders, as well as becoming involved in drug trafficking throughout the region. Despite the

political decentralization between 1986 and 1991, the insurgent groups did not intervene much

influence in local politics, limiting their actions to enforcing abstinence during election and on rare

occasions making clandestine arrangements with municipal officials. Finally, the FARC’s attempt to

subvert and co-opt civic organizations, namely ANUC, was met with considerable resistance from

local community leaders, ultimately leading to a pronounced and length decline in regional civil society.

i. The Territorial Sphere

In the early-to-mid 1980s, numerous small leftist guerrilla groups began to appear in rural

communities in Montes de María, as the agrarian struggles of the 1960s and 1970s “seduced armed

groups to the region with the perception that maybe they would be able to find social support to install

an insurgent project with the possibility of success in Montes de María”.161 The first of these was the

Movimiento Izquierdista Revolucionario-Patria Libre (MIR-PL), followed by the near simultaneous arrival of

the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT), the Ejército Popular de Liberación (EPL), and the ELN.

Many of the insurgent leaders from MIR-PL and the PRT had been actively involved with ANUC and

the regional surge in peasant activism in the 1970s, and thus continued to support the ongoing land

occupations in the region. In contrast to the ELN and the EPL (and later the FARC), the MIR-PL

and PRT were largely locally led and manned. Native to Montes de María, they possessed pre-existing

ties with these communities, coupled with an intimate knowledge of the terrain. However, these early

insurgent groups were extremely small and therefore lacked the military capacity to carry out larger

attacks against their adversaries. Whatever security they offered to the regional peasant leadership was

161 Interview 38, Sincelejo, 2016.

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offset by the increased stigmatization they brought to these very same communities (Restrepo and

Rodríguez 2000).162

The EPL first arrived during this heady period and attempted to replicate the success with

which the group had implanted itself in the nearby region of Urabá and the south of Córdoba

department.163 The ELN arrived in Montes de María the mid-to-late 1980s, establishing the Frente Jaime

Bateman Cayón in the high mountains of San Jacinto, El Carmen de Bolívar, and Ovejas.164 Although

the group’s presence in the region was relatively modest as was that of the EPL, the ELN began to

kidnap and extort local cattle ranchers and hacienda owners to finance its regional operations (Duica

2013). Furthermore, the ELN strengthened its position in Montes de María by merging with the MIR-

PL in 1987. That same year the ELN attacked the oil complex at Coveñas, causing substantial damage

and demonstrating the group’s ability to target energy multinationals throughout the entire country

(Currea-Lugo 2014). The ELN suffered a setback around this time when the former MIR-PL leaders

who had quickly become disillusioned with the merger, split from the group by forming the dissident

Corriente de Renovación Socialista (CRS) in the early 1990s, only to demobilize shortly after in 1994.165

Proto-paramilitary groups in Montes de María gained greater traction as the confrontations

between peasant activists and landed elites intensified in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the

emergence of small insurgent groups. Many of the rural bourgeoisie finally caved in to their threats by

selling their properties to INCORA to be distributed amongst landless peasants, while other large

landholders steadfastly refused to give in to the insurgents’ demands and in turn were promptly

attacked for their recalcitrance (Verdad Abierta 2010). Some of these were longstanding patrons of

specific rural communities, while others were drug traffickers who purchased large tracts of land in

162 Interview 101, Sincelejo, 2016.

163 Interview 38, Sincelejo, 2016; Interview 77, San Jacinto, 2016.

164 Interview 84, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

165 Interview 36, Ovejas, 2016.

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the coastal zone and the zone below close to the Magdalena river. These initial insurgent assaults on

the regional landed elites caused the latter to “stigmatize the peasantry and they began to intimidate

and kill members of the community”. By the mid-to-late 1980s, there was a proliferation of these

proto-paramilitary groups throughout the region.166 One native from El Salado describes the rise of

these groups in the region: “In the 1980s, they began to form clans such as los Méndez sponsored by

the Cohens. They allied themselves with common delinquents to defend their land and this

phenomenon marked the beginning of paramilitarism in El Salado. These alliances were created

because the powerful families were afraid that the peasants were going to turn against them”.167 The

rise of these self-defense groups coincided with a dramatic increase in forced displacement and

selective assassinations in Montes de María, a phenomenon that received the explicit support of what

local military and police attachments did exist in the region (Verdad Abierta 2010).

Instead of directly engaging one another, insurgent and paramilitary groups in Montes de

María frequently targeted civilians perceived to be allied with one side or the other. The conflict

between the early insurgent groups and the paramilitary organizations only worsened when the FARC

entered the region in the early 1990s, as the various paramilitary factions proved too weak to impede

the guerrilla hegemon’s massive incursion into the zone (Verdad Abierta 2010). Compared to other

regions of Colombia, the FARC arrived in Montes de María in a rather belated yet abrupt fashion in

the period between 1989 and 1991 (CNMH 2009). The manner in which the 35th front (Antonio José

de Sucre front) and 37th front (Benkos Biohó front) arrived and settled in Montes de María varies

between communities found the coastal region, the high mountain, and the zone below. Local

community leaders from the pre-dominantly Afro-Colombian population in the municipality of San

Onofre remember the FARC arriving during this period in a very subtle fashion “with the goal of

166 Interview 80, San Jacinto, 2016.

167 Interview 85, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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penetrating society and recruiting members”, although their arrival coincided with a series of selective

killings of local peasants and community leaders.168 Similarly, the 37th front arrived in the zone below

“between 1989 and 1990 and started committing selective killings” and after the FARC “didn’t have

to hide from anybody because it had complete control of the territory”.169

The demobilization of other small insurgent groups (PRT, EPL, CRS) in Montes de Maria

between 1991 and 1994 left their former zones of influence wide open for the 35 th and 37th fronts to

move into.170 Many demobilizing insurgents from these smaller groups ended up joining the FARC

and the ELN, while others became active in local civil society and politics.171 The FARC’s strategy for

maximizing its territorial control was to establish a massive network of rural camps throughout the

region, utilizing small towns and villages primarily as a source of food, information, and as transit

corridors.172 In El Salado, after the 37th front first arrived it slowly turned the rural community into

“a strategic corridor” surrounded with a series of camps located within fifteen kilometers of the actual

village.173 Elsewhere in towns such as Las Palmas (San Jacinto), Chengue (Ovejas), Macayepo (El

Carmen de Bolivar), and Las Lajas (San Jacinto), local peasant habitants similarly recall that the

insurgents circulated between a series of isolated camps in the hilly foliage, transiting through their

rural villages with varying degrees of frequency.174

Under the command of Martín Caballero, the FARC aggressively took over Montes de Maria

in the early 1990s. A veteran of other guerrilla campaigns elsewhere in Colombia, Caballero had been

tasked with the creation and growth of the Bloque Caribe of the FARC on the Caribbean coast. The

168 Interview 43, San Onofre, 2016.

169 Interview 81, San Jacinto, 2016; Interview 36, Ovejas, 2016.

170 Interview 101, Sincelejo, 2016.

171 Interview 78, San Jacinto, 2016.

172 Interview 87, El Carmen de Bolivar, 2016.

173 Interview 85, El Carmen de Bolivar, 2016.

174 Interview 81, San Jacinto, 2016; Interview 30, Ovejas, 2016; Interview 84, El Carmen de Bolivar, 2016; Interview 77, San Jacinto, 2016.

142

FARC quickly occupied the territory left behind by the smaller demobilizing groups, while carving out

a vast area of influence in the heart of the larger region, particularly in the municipalities of Los

Palmitos, Ovejas, El Carmen, San Juan Nepomuceno, and San Jacinto, pushing the ELN to more

peripheral areas in the process (Duica 2013). The 35th front controlled municipalities located in Sucre

department such as San Onofre, Chalán, Los Palmitos, Morroa, Colosó, San Pedro, Ovejas, Tolviejo,

Buenavista, Galeras, Sincé, El Roble, Betulia, and San Benito Abad, while the 37 th front settled in

municipalities located in Bolívar department such as El Carmen de Bolívar, San Jacinto, María la Baja,

San Juan Nepomuceno, El Guamo, Mahates, Calamar, Zambrano, and Córdoba (MPE 2007a; MPE

2007b). The FARC’s regional presence also spilled over into nearby cities such as Sincelejo, Cartagena,

and Barranquilla.175 Martín Caballero brought numerous family members and old friends he trusted to

the region and assigned them to key positions in his insurgent block. Whereas most of the FARC’s

commanders in the zone hailed from outside the region, the rank and file combatants were largely

from the Caribbean coast and the south of Bolívar (El Tiempo 2007b; Araujo 2008).

The rise of the FARC’s 35th and 37th fronts as the armed non-state hegemon began in 1991

and ended roughly in 1994, when the FARC began to assert its regional dominance over peasant

communities, official state agents, landed elites (and their private ‘self-defense’ groups). At this time,

the FARC’s local structures finally took form. The 35th front was divided into three sub-units, while

the 37th front was configured into four. The 35th front was estimated to possess between 200 and 250

formal combatants, and these in turn were divided into three companies: the Carmenza Beltrán

company in Morroa, Colosó, Ovejas, Tolúviejo, San Onofre, Corozal, Chalán, and Los Palmitos; the

Robinson Jiménez company in the plains of Sucre just southeast of Montes de María, in Betulia, Sincé,

Buenavista, and Galeras; and finally the Policarpa Salavarrieta company which operated with the 37th

175 Interview 97, Bogotá D.C., 2017.

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front between the departments of Bolívar and Sucre (MPE 2007b). The 37 th front possessed

somewhere in excess of 250 formal combatants, which were spread between four sub-units: the Pedro

Góngora Chamorro mobile company; the Che Guevara company; the Palenque company in northeast

El Carmen de Bolívar, Zambrano, and Córdoba; and the Caribbean Special Forces Unit which moved

between El Carmen de Bolívar, San Jacinto, María la Baja, San Juan Nepomuceno, El Guamo,

Mahates, Calamar, Zambrano, and Córdoba (MPE 2007c). By the mid-1990s, the FARC had also

infiltrated the larger towns and municipal capitals of the region with a network of militia members,

who operated as civilians and thus were undetectable to most people in the region.176 The FARC

militias played a crucial role as informants to the guerrillas, passing along vital information about

“where the army and the police were moving and identifying who were paramilitaries”, while these

individuals also “were in charge of obtaining supplies for the insurgents”.177

The FARC’s incursion into Montes de María signified a new social order for the region’s

inhabitants, as the group’s sudden presence came with a variety of new regulations and sanctions for

those who violated them. The 35th and 37th fronts seized control of the main highways, the rural access

roads, and even the remote footpaths in the most hidden communities, and as such would often force

peasants to ask permission to move from one place to the next.178 Once the FARC settled in Montes

de María, the modest presence of the National Police and the Armed forces that did exist in the region

quickly vacated the zone (Verdad Abierta 2010). Over time, the insurgent group tightened its control

over civilian communities to the extent that peasants eventually were forced to ask the FARC

permission to slaughter their own livestock (CNMH 2009). The insurgents “imposed a military

discipline on the population” in their zones of influence, as the group was “very violent and arbitrary

176 Interview 42, San Onofre, 2016.

177 Interview 87, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

178 Interview 78, San Jacinto, 2016.

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as a mechanism to obtain greater control” over the region.179 The FARC depended on selective

assassinations to keep peasant communities in line, yet unlike the paramilitary groups which operated

in the region, the insurgents did not practice massacres (Verdad Abierta 2014).

Between 1994 and 1996, the FARC began to escalate the level of violent attacks directed

against the Colombian armed forces and the National Police, while also increasingly attacking non-

combatants and their properties, both of which constitute violations of International Humanitarian

Law. As demonstrated in Figure 12, the 35th front and the 37th front began to violently exercise its

authority in the region from 1994 onwards. More than half of these military actions and violations of

IHL occurred in the three neighboring municipalities - El Carmen de Bolívar, San Jacinto, and Ovejas

- which served as the historic crux of Montes de María (CNMH 2009). The military and the National

Police possessed a modest presence in the region, yet the FARC sought to completely eradicate the

Colombian state’s authority in order to supplant it with its own. The insurgent group’s strategy focused

on “[…]hitting the armed forces while at the same eradicating state institutions in the local sphere, all

of which implicated incursions into the more populated towns to destroy the police stations and other

public bureaucratic installations, especially mayoral buildings, the political institutional centers of

power” (CNMH 2009, 234). An example of the FARC’s usage of “seizures” (tomas) of towns during

this period occurred in the small rural municipal capital of Chalán. In December 1995, some sixty

fighters from the 35th front assaulted the town’s police installation, yet were repelled by the official

authorities. Undeterred, the FARC again attacked the police station three months later, this time

arming a donkey with large amounts of explosives and remotely detonating the farm animal in front

of the police station. Subsequently, an estimated eighty insurgents continued the assault on the eleven

police officers holed up in the remains of the station with rockets, grenades, and other explosives until

179 Interview 84, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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those surviving police officers surrendered only to be promptly executed and incinerated in the main

square (El Tiempo 1996b).

The uptick in military actions committed by the FARC in Montes de María coincided with a

similar increase in violations of IHL, most notably against landed elites who failed to meet regular

extortion payments (vacunas) and ransom demands, and also against peasants who resisted their newly

established hegemony or broke their social regulations (CNMH 2009, 234). Certain occupations

became extremely dangerous, as the increase of FARC manned checkpoints and roadblocks leading

in and out rural communities led to a rash of lethal violence against transport drivers who provoked

suspicion due to their unsupervised mobility in and around the region (Verdad Abierta 2014). As the

FARC became the de facto authority in Montes de María, the insurgent organization began to recruit

minors, both voluntarily and forcibly, some as young as twelve years of age. However, in instances of

forced recruitment, any resistance was met with a lethal punishment by the FARC, a situation which

led many families to leave their rural communities for the safety of nearby towns and cities (Verdad

Abierta 2014).

Whereas the FARC ostensibly entered Montes de María to protect and promote the rights of

the region’s historically disenfranchised peasantry, the 35th and 37th fronts committed brutal acts of

violence against lcoals peasants in Montes de María, while simultaneously protecting those large

landholders who paid monthly vacunas in exchange for their protection (Pérez 2010). Apart from the

FARC’s increased violence against the state, landed elites, and peasants in Montes de María, the

group’s intrusion into the lives of the region’s habitants became much more pronounced from 1994

onwards, stringently regulating crime, alcohol and drug consumption, sexual behavior, personal

appearance, and independent mobility.180 The FARC implemented curfews in many rural areas and on

180 Interview 87, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 30, Ovejas, 2016.

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the regional highways during this time, while also enforcing a strict edict against any contact with the

military or police under the pain of death. A former journalist from El Carmen de Bolívar recalls a

telling anecdote about how seriously this rule was enforced: “A teacher in the village of Ojito Seco left

her oldest son in the house and the army arrived and told him to sell them a hen. That night, the

guerrillas entered the village and they killed him for having sold the hen to the soldiers. The teacher

was a local nurse as well and she had to treat the guerrillas and still they killed her son”.181

From the 1994 onwards, the regional conflict in Montes de María entered an escalating spiral

downwards, from which it would not escape until well over a decade later. The municipal capitals also

became increasingly unstable, as in San Jacinto “police would hide in their stations at 5pm because at

that hour the guerrillas would come out on patrol throughout the town”, operating armed and

uniformed in plain view of everyone, the insurgents even “sat and drank beer in the main plaza”.182

While all armed actors were increasing their violent output, it was directed “[…]more against civilians

than between one another”. With the escalation of violence, both the FARC and the proto-

paramilitary groups “[…]were bringing reinforcements and growing” (Verdad Abierta 2010). The

Colombian authorities, most notably the armed forces, were noticeable mostly for their absence and

inaction against these armed groups as they quickly converted Montes de María into one of the most

hotly contested warzones in Colombia in the latter half of the 1990s.

The Colombian armed forces were present in the region, albeit primarily in the form of the

Naval Armada’s 1st Brigade of the Marine Infantry, which had larger installments near the Caribbean

sea and the Magdalena river, as according to Colombian law and the Navy’s martial code, these forces

were effectively prohibited from extending their military operations outside of a restricted radius from

where they were based near water, a limitation which allowed both insurgent groups and nascent

181 Interview 83, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

182 Interview 82, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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paramilitary organizations to expand and consolidate throughout the heart of the region (CNMH

2009, 197). The modest military presence was concentrated in the larger towns, municipal capitals,

and throughout a patchwork of certain bases, most of which had been belatedly created in 1986 by

the then-governor in order to combat the guerrillas. By the mid-1990s, the Colombian armed forces’

presence in the region was most notable in the Navy’s 5th Rifleman Battalion and the Rafael Núñez

School of Carbineers located in Corazal (Sucre), a base in Malagana (Mahates), another in Sincelejo,

and a training base near Coveñas, which was tasked with protecting the tail-end of the Caño Limón-

Coveñas oil pipeline. From the base in Malagana, the armed forces would carry out patrols in María

la Baja, el Guamo, San Jacinto, and San Juan de Nepomuceno, while only randomly venturing into El

Carmen de Bolívar, whereas from the installation in Sincelejo, the Colombian Navy patrolled San

Onofre and other municipalities southwards. Unsurprisingly, these insufficient regional forces lacked

both the “logistical support and means to participate in battle”, all of which generated negative results

for the military when it attempted to confront the insurgents during this time.183

ii. The Economic Sphere

In the case of Montes de María, insurgent groups did not find a bounty of economic

endowments as they did elsewhere in Colombia. According to one regional human right lawyer: “Of

all the fronts in Colombia, those in Montes de María were amongst the poorest”.184 The insurgents

were often forced to resort to coercive predation against civilian communities as in order to procure

basic necessities such as food and water, fostering “relations that were mainly economic” between the

two groups.185 One peasant from the high mountain village of Las Lajas (San Jacinto) explains the

effects of this increasingly one-way relationship: “There existed a great distrust on our behalf towards

183 Interview 97, Bogotá D.C., 2017.

184 Interview 38, Sincelejo, 2016.

185 Interview 82, San Jacinto, 2016.

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the insurgent groups. These groups never helped us organize to fight for our social demands. Instead

of taking care of us, they lived off of and began to extort us. Relations got really bad because one day’s

wages for a peasant was not enough for both his family and the insurgents. This ended up creating

hatred”.186

In accordance with the FARC’s internal policy that each front and block needed to be self-

sufficient by generating their own revenues, the 35th and 37th fronts quickly developed and expanded

local rackets to sustain their regional operations. The insurgent group supported itself economically

by extorting and kidnapping large landholders and cattle ranchers, eventually turning the region into

a major hub for the latter activity.187 In an effort to raise funds for their operations in the region, these

FARC fronts carried out a series of selective assassinations against landowners who did not meet their

demands, while dramatically increasing the number of kidnappings for ransom and destroying the

properties of those unwilling or unable to meet their extortion payments. The insurgent group

specifically targeted many of the most prominent families in the region, many of whom had ties to or

control of their own proto-paramilitary groups such as Enilse ‘La Gata’ López in Magangue and the

Cohen family of El Salado.188 The FARC would use rural communities as its “operational centers”,

according to one displaced peasant from rural Ovejas: “The guerrillas would leave their stolen cars

and also do kidnapping exchanges there, all of which produced a powerful stigmatization against the

community”.189

Whereas the FARC initially targeted recalcitrant landed elites for kidnapping for ransom, the

group eventually expanded its operations to the local highway system traversing the region in which

insurgents would arbitrarily abduct travelers they deemed sufficiently affluent for ransom at the

186 Interview 77, San Jacinto, 2016.

187 Interview 43, San Onofre, 2016; Interview 35, Ovejas, 2016.

188 Interview 85, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

189 Interview 36, Ovejas, 2016; Interview 36, Ovejas, 2016; Interview 38, Sincelejo, 2016.

149

random roadblocks they maintained.190 Other smaller groups in the region which did not possess the

capacity to hold kidnap victims for extended periods of time, nor to coordinate their release for

ransom, would nevertheless abduct regional inhabitants and in exchange for a finders fee, deliver them

to the FARC in their remote network of rural camps.191 During this period, the department of Sucre

become one of the largest hotbeds of kidnap for ransom, with 36 documented cases alone in 1996.

The national cattle ranchers association (Federación de Ganaderos - FEDEGAN) estimated the regional

damage to be in the hundreds of millions of (U.S.) dollars (Verdad Abierta 2010).

The goals of the FARC’s expansion into Montes de María varied. While coca was not produced

in the region, Martín Caballero eventually “was forced to turn to drug trafficking to sustain the fronts”,

given that Montes de María “was not a zone with many resources for insurgent groups”. 192 However,

the insurgent group’s participation in this illicit trade was minimal in comparison to other FARC fronts

elsewhere in Colombia. Many analysts maintain that the FARC sought to establish itself in the region

in order to link nearby coca-producing regions in the interior with the strategic export point found on

the Gulf of Morrosquillo. Drug traffickers had purchased large tracts of land in the coastal zone and

the zone below in the 1980s, and smuggling routes did exist in the region, yet Montes de Maria

represented a small fraction of the entire coastal trade, which in turn only constituted an estimated ten

percent of the national industry. Quite simply, most cocaine that did depart from the Caribbean coast

left through established ports at Santa Marta, Barranquilla, Cartagena, and the Gulf of Urabá.193

In reality, the FARC sought to expand its presence to the northern coast and Montes de Maria

was determined to be most geo-strategically important region where the insurgent group could create

and maintain militias in the nearby cities of Sincelejo, Cartagena, and Barranquilla. Furthermore, the

190 Interview 41, San Onofre, 2016.

191 Interview 94, Sincelejo, 2016.

192 Interview 38, Sincelejo, 2016.

193 Interview 94, Sincelejo, 2016.

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region also provided a chokepoint on important coastal highways - in particular the Troncal de Occidente

- which connected the interior of the country with the biggest port (Barranquilla), and as such was a

strategic line of communication vital to the national economy.194 Montes de María also served as a

natural mobility corridor for FARC cadres moving between interior regions and the northern coast,

while also serving as an advantageous entry point for illegal arms entering the country (Duica 2013).

Key to control of the region was the historic crux of the zone: El Carmen de Bolívar. This municipality

not only served as a natural land bridge between the Magdalena river and the Caribbean sea, it also

was the most heavily populated and economically affluent of all the municipalities in Montes de María,

and as such was coveted by all armed non-state actors operating in the region (Machuca Pérez 2016).

iii. The Political Sphere

Formal politics in Montes de María historically functioned by way of powerful family-based

clans which dominated electoral contests at the municipal and departmental levels. These families

maintained their power through extensive clientelist networks rather than any longstanding allegiance

to any of the traditional two parties and their respective party machines (Reyes Posada 1978).195

According to rural habitants in Montes de María, regional politicians only appeared in their

communities during election campaigns and only to engage in the widespread buying of votes.196

Candidates would spend large amounts of money to obtain the necessary votes to win local, regional,

and even national-level political seats, and in turn would either completely appropriate the municipal

and departmental budgets in order to make up for their campaign expenses, or would use their position

of privilege to peddle influence to regional elites.197

194 Interview 38, Sincelejo, 2016.

195 Available at: https://www.las2orillas.co/las-familias-se-aduenado-del-departamento-sucre/

196 Interview 77, San Jacinto, 2016.

197 Interview 92, Ovejas, 2016.

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In a telling example, one displaced peasant originally from the zone below of San Jacinto

recalls how a prominent large landholder and known drug trafficker, Luis Enrique ‘Miki’ Ramírez

Murillo, actively campaigned for the 1994 presidential campaign of Ernesto Samper in the region:

“There were illegal groups who had a lot of influence in politics. During the presidential elections in

which Samper was running, Miki hired buses to pick up as many people as possible to vote for said

ex-president and for the Liberal party. They entered the villages and municipal capitals in helicopters

and bulletproof trucks. After voting, others started handing out tamales and chicken to the voters”.198

In a vicious cycle, poorer local residents would sell their votes to political clans and their backers who

in turn would embezzle local budgets earmarked for development, thereby perpetuating the region’s

extreme underdevelopment.199 As public investment in Montes de María remained practically non-

existent due to this endemic political corruption, locals habitants in both municipal capitals and

isolated rural villages alike lacked basic amenities such as paved roads, drinking water and sewage,

basic garbage collection, and access to rudimentary healthcare and education.200

The decentralization of Colombia’s political system during this period suddenly made control

of municipalities particularly important to armed groups, as they were “[…]able to appropriate

decentralized public revenues and to use these funds to further reduce the state’s already limited

monopoly over the use of force”, while simultaneously establishing “[…]what are in effect parallel

states on both the left and right” (Eaton 2006, 537). As the region became increasingly contested by

a smattering of leftist insurgent groups and proto-paramilitary gangs in the late 1980s and early 1990s,

the violence spilled over into the political sphere. In particular, following the demobilization of various

smaller insurgent groups between 1991 and 1994, local paramilitary gangs began to engage in the

198 Interview 80, San Jacinto, 2016.

199 Interview 92, Ovejas, 2016.

200 Interview 28, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 46, San Onofre, 2016.

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selective assassinations of leftwing political activists and candidates throughout the region, many of

whom were demobilized guerrillas from the EPL, the CRS, and the PRT. The rise of a progressive

political movement, the Movimiento Cívico, in Sucre during this time stoked the fears of landed elites

and the official authorities alike, due to the fact that many of the group’s leaders had formerly belonged

to these armed groups.201 Therefore, regional political elites, large landholders, and the Colombian

authorities sought in tandem to prevent, through violence and intimidation, the electoral ascendance

of a political coalition which they perceived as sympathetic to the armed left. In 1995, paramilitary

groups killed the former mayor of Corazal, Luis Miguel Vergara, one of an estimated fifteen elected

representatives the Movimiento Cívico who were killed during this period (Verdad Abierta 2010). Other

leaders from the party were lucky enough to escape with their lives were either incarcerated under

spurious grounds, or forced into exile elsewhere in Colombia and beyond.202

Adding to a difficult situation, the FARC in Montes de María oscillated between forming

temporary alliances of convenience with certain politicians, promoting abstention from elections in

areas under its control, to outright persecuting other politicians with extreme violence. During this

period, the García Romero family, arguably the most powerful political clan in Montes de María and

Sucre department, were able to successfully negotiate with the FARC’s leadership in the region so as

to prevent the group from directly interfering in formal politics in exchange for a share of whatever

politicians pilfered from municipal and departmental budgets.203 These alliances between established

political figures and the FARC appeared to have occurred more frequently and randomly during this

early period, as the insurgent group maintained no political preference in terms of established party.

Rather, it attempted to attach itself to any candidate or project which looked likely to win (Pérez 2010).

201 Interview 94, Sincelejo, 2016.

202 Interview 101, Sincelejo, 2016.

203 Interview 90, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 87, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 94, Sincelejo, 2016.

153

In other instances, the insurgents abstained from direct involvement in regional politics,

possibly because of agreements made with certain politicians, while the armed group vigorously

promoted abstention amongst the region’s civilian population.204 Sometimes the FARC’s orders were

not sufficient in themselves to prevent locals from attempting to exercise their right to vote, so the

guerrillas attacked polling centers, burned ballot boxes, and knocked down electrical towers to disrupt

the electoral proceedings.205 If civilians were allowed to vote in peace, it was because “they had to vote

for a specific candidate”.206 Similar to regional proto-paramilitary groups at this juncture, the FARC

also began to selectively kill political candidates and activists throughout the region, most notably the

1995 assassination of Nelson Martelo, a widely beloved ex-governor of Sucre (Verdad Abierta 2010).

iv. The Civic Sphere

While the land invasions of the 1970s continued well into the 1980s, other forms of civic

mobilizations were introduced during this period. All of these new mobilizations ultimately proved

unsuccessful in achieving regional civil society’s aims. As Figure 7 illustrates, the majority of social

mobilizations from the 1970s until the early 1990s were land occupations carried out by peasant

activists, who were driven by motives centered in and around the recuperation and access to rural land

in Montes de María. Of similar importance, the majority of these social mobilizations over land were

local, meaning that they occurred at the sub-municipal or municipal level. Perhaps the most noticeable

trend found in these figures relates to the precipitous decline in social mobilizations between 1992

and 2006, a reduction which owes much to the increased bellicosity of the region’s armed actors, most

specifically the rise of the early paramilitary clans and the FARC in Montes de María during this period.

204 Interview 38, Sincelejo, 2016.

205 Interview 85, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 101, Sincelejo, 2016.

206 Interview 94, Sincelejo, 2016; Interview 86, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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The only major mobilizations which occurred during this period were peace marches which had been

organized by prominent local clergy such as Father Enel Beltrán.207

The rise of various local proto-paramilitary groups in Montes de María occurred slowly but

steadily over the course of the 1980s. While their repression was initially modest, this changed over

the period from 1989 to 1994 with at least a dozen paramilitary murders of regional civic leaders, left-

wing politicians, and union members (Verdad Abierta 2010; Verdad Abierta 2012). In late 1994, the

group Los Meza claimed the life of regional ANUC leader Rodrigo Montes. ANUC had remained the

strongest civic organization representing peasant communities at this troubled juncture, although it

was considerably weaker than it had been during the golden period of peasant activism in the region

during the 1970s. Apart from internal fragmentation and decreased results, ANUC continued to be

fiercely opposed in Montes de María by landed elites and their paramilitary allies, who both perceived

the peasant association as subversive. To further complicate matters, the FARC increasingly targeted

ANUC in the region, due to the fact that it had been created by the Colombian state.208 By the

beginning of the 1990s, regional civil society was “extremely weak”, as there were only traces of

peasant mobilization at the most local level due to the fact that peasant leaders “[…]could not act

outside of their communities” (Pérez 2010, 169).

Figure 7. Character of Social Mobilizations in Montes de María

207 Interview 101, Sincelejo, 2018.

208 Interview 38, Sincelejo, 2016.

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Source: CINEP Database on Social Conflict

The arrival of the ELN and more specifically the FARC in the late 1980s and early 1990s

effectively destroyed what was left of civil society in Montes de María. Ironically, almost all of these

insurgent organizations were initially attracted to the region due to the history of class conflct between

peasants and large landholders, yet these armed groups ultimately generated greater stigmatization

against those they purported to represent in the region merely by being present. Furthermore, there

was almost automatic discord between the region’s longstanding peasant leadership, which had spent

years organizing land occupations under the ANUC banner, and the FARC.209 The disagreement was

based on the insurgent group’s desire for ANUC to function as a trade guild and to take direction

from them instead of from their own executive committee. The insurgents began to threaten local

peasant leaders for “[…]the simple fact that they wouldn’t serve them” (Pérez 2010, 168). Eventually

the FARC began to co-opt the role of local civic leaders after a series of selective assassinations against

recalcitrant peasant activists, but they were ineffective because they issued their “[…]directives by way

of fear”, all of which led to a decline of communal participation in local civil society (Pérez 2010, 170).

Even though the FARC was supposedly organizing and administering this rural territory, the insurgent

group “never proposed nor executed a social project” for these communities in return.210 In sum, the

209 Interview 34, Ovejas, 2016; Interview 94, Sincelejo, 2016.

210 Interview 84, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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insurgent group tolerated zero dissent or other challenges to its authority in the zone, and as a result

local participation in civic organizations declined markedly during this time (Verdad Abierta 2014).

A clear example of the FARC’s effect on regional civil society can be seen in how local

participation in the JACs evaporated under the insurgent group’s rule. Those community action boards

which did exist fell victim to increased repression from the proto-paramilitary groups and the FARC

alike.211 In one village, Chengue (Ovejas), the JAC was quite important to the local community but

when the FARC arrived nobody wanted to participate anymore for fear of stigmatization and the junta

eventually disappeared.212 Another human rights lawyer confirms this account of what happened in

Chengue:

When the FARC arrived, they used the JAC as its principal interlocutor and they sent political messages through them. After the authorities would arrive and they took issue with the JAC because of its contact with the insurgents, all of which brought consequences and nobody wanted to belong to this organization because it had become a forced interlocutor for the insurgents. With the FARC’s arrival, the role of the community action board was affected, nobody wanted to participate, and as a result, all the progress, the activities, and the functions it had achieved were undone.213

Similar to Chengue, local peasants in Montes de María simply stopped participating in the civic life of

their villages in response to increased insurgent encroachment into their daily lives.214 Quite simply,

armed actors in Montes de María during this period “[…]by way of assassinations and threats,

destroyed ANUC, the JACs, the unions, and the human rights organizations” (PNUD 2010, 20).

B. Arauca The FARC and the ELN registered their first belligerent actions in the Araucan piedmont in

1980, setting the tone for a rapid territorial takeover of the entire sub-region. After a period of

consolidation, both groups sent fighters to lay claim the vast expanses of the Araucan plains in 1986.

211 Interview 28, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 38, Sincelejo, 2016.

212 Interview 90, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

213 Interview 94, Sincelejo, 2016.

214 Interview 85, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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By the late 1980s, Arauca was completely under insurgent control. Whereas, the ELN sustained its

operations by extorting the oil multinationals which appeared in Arauca in the early-to-mid 1980s, the

FARC depended more on kidnapping and extortion until the group began to develop a small-scale

coca economy in rural piedmont communities over the course of the 1990s. Both groups similarly

benefitted by capturing municipal and departmental budgets swollen with oil royalties from the mid-

1980s onwards, a feat which they achieved through their skilled deployment of “armed clientelism”,

or the co-optation of political institutions through a combination of electoral strategy and coercion.

By the new millennium, the FARC and the ELN, the latter in particular, controlled all political offices

in the department. This level of political control would have been difficult had in not been for the

insurgent groups’ ability to “co-opt the civic sphere”, directly infiltrating and regulating the vast

networks of civic organizations found throughout the piedmont.

i. The Territorial Sphere

The FARC was the first guerrilla group to launch an attack in the Araucan piedmont, when the

groups violently seized Fortul in March 1980, killing some ten police officers.215 The following year,

this insurgent front was christened the Guadalupe Salcedo front (10th front) of the FARC (El Tiempo

1998b). Some piedmont locals suggest that the 10th front was initially comprised of rebels who had

mobilized during la Violencia under the command of Guadalupe Salcedo himself and had subsequently

been in hibernation while still retaining their basic organizational structure in their struggle against

cattle rustlers in the Araucan plains (Velasco 2016).216 Others claim, more plausibly, that the FARC

arrived in Arauca during the guerrilla organization’s expansion to other colonization zones in

Magdalena Medio and Urabá during the same period of time, although at the request of local members

215 Interview 71, Tame, 2016.

216 Interview 51, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 69, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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of the Colombian Communist Party who resided and operated in Arauquita and Tame.217 Supportive

of this interpretation is the fact that the first FARC contingent to arrive in Arauca hailed from other

FARC dominated departments such as Caquetá, Tolima, and Cundinamarca (Gutiérrez and González

2008, 29).

Within a short period of its arrival in the Araucan piedmont, the FARC had established two

fronts which would continue to operate in the department until its demobilization in 2017: the 10 th

front in Arauquita, Fortul, and Tame, and the 45th front in the Sierra Nevada de Cocuy, a section of

the Eastern Andes which traverses the ‘ABC Corridor’, connecting the departments of Arauca,

Boyacá, and Casanare. The manner of the FARC’s arrival and settlement was fairly straightforward.

The insurgents would enter rural settler communities and their first order of business was to locate

the police inspector and effectively nullify their authority through exile, disappearance, or

assassination. Subsequent to this, FARC cadres either convened local habitants or visited their small

farms individually, all in order to announce their presence, their intentions, and the new social code

of conduct under their rule. This consisted of “zero tolerance for public drunkenness, fighting, spousal

or domestic abuse, and those who got drunk and made a scene were punished. They were in a certain

way the local police, they also resolved land disputes over property limits”.218 One such method for

achieving control was the widespread deployment of a network of informants, and “those who

opposed them were killed”. After a short period of incubation in which the FARC employed a cell

technique of recruitment in which each new member was required to solicit a fixed number of people

into the guerrilla fold, the insurgents were firmly entrenched in these local communities, as “everybody

was somehow related to these groups, there was always a family member, a friend, or an acquaintance

217 Interview 95, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

218 Interview 99, Tame, 2016.

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who formed part of their ranks”.219 A human rights lawyer in the piedmont who migrated with her

family to Caranal (Fortul) in the mid-1980s says that the first thing she remembers seeing upon her

arrival in the community was the FARC, which shortly thereafter attempted to abduct and forcibly

recruit her even though she was barely a teenager.220

The incipient FARC leadership in the piedmont took issue with the misallocation of oil

royalties and poor administration of the department in general. The insurgents “created work

committees in order to generate income and jobs for the community and little by little the guerrillas

were implanting themselves inside of these”.221 After a brief period of consolidation in the piedmont,

the FARC started to make incursions into distant cattle ranching zones in the plains municipalities

such as southern Tame, Puerto Rondón, Cravo Norte, and Arauca municipality over the course of

1985 and 1986. A widow from Caracol, a small plains village in northeastern Arauca municipality

describes the arrival of the FARC to her town: “When the FARC arrived, the DAS {a now-defunct

domestic security agency} was here and it counted on some twenty to thirty men, while the police had

approximately forty to fifty men. However, when some guerrillas killed a few of the DAS guys, they

all fled and abandoned us. At that moment the guerrillas established themselves here”.222 Similar to

the piedmont, the FARC employed a modus operandi in the plains where after eliminating rival claimants

to power (e.g. police, the military), the insurgents implemented their rules and regulations, namely

regulating cattle theft and land disputes between neighboring ranchers, while also extorting local cattle

ranchers by applying vacunas, or taxes for each head of cattle they possessed.223

219 Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

220 Interview 19, Saravena, 2016.

221 Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

222 Interview 56, Arauca municipality, 2016.

223 Interview 100, Tame, 2018.

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The main focus of the FARC in Arauca over the course of the 1980s was the consolidation of

a military presence in the strategically located department which could link the insurgent organization’s

historic stronghold in Meta and Caquetá with a transit corridor reaching the Venezuelan border via

Casanare and Arauca, coupled with the expansion and promotion of the UP.224 While the FARC

remained less involved in the peasant communities in which they operated in the plains, there were

certain commonalities to how the group operated between the two sub-regions. Peasants from both

the plains and the piedmont recall that the FARC during this period was “less violent” than the ELN,

yet with a “stronger, more consolidated organizational structure” than their insurgent rivals.225 It was

less involved in the civic sphere than the ELN, yet “closer to the peasantry and more territorial”.

Furthermore, their fronts also focused more on recruitment and revenue extraction, a trend that would

eventually lead them to begin the cultivation and processing of cocaine in the department in the early

1990s.226

Entering the final decade of the 20th century, the FARC’s fronts in Arauca could count on

support from nearby fronts in Casanare (the 28th and the 38th). After the setback experienced by the

national-level leadership during the Casa Verde assault carried out by the Colombian military in 1990

(Operación Centauro II), coupled with the FARC’s eighth conference held in 1993, this insurgent

organization sought to expand and fortify its presence in a strategic corridor along the foothills where

the Andes descend into the Eastern plains, thereby linking the Ecuadoran and Venezuelan borders

together. The FARC created new mobile units in Arauca, first with the Alfredo Castellanos column in

the mid-1990s, which was quickly followed by the creation of the Reinel Méndez column and the Julio

Mario Tavera column a couple of years after. All of this coincided with a departmental expansion of

224 Interview 50, Arauca municipality, 2016.

225 Interview 71, Tame, 2016.

226 Interview 49, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 50, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016; Interview 69, Tame, 2016.

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the guerrilla group’s ‘Bolivarian militias’ in villages and towns. By the end of the decade, the FARC’s

structures in Arauca, combined with those in neighboring Casanare, functioned as a form of ‘mini-

bloque’ inside of the Eastern Block of the FARC, all of which was under the command of Germán

‘Grannobles’ Briceño Suárez, the brother of Jorge ‘Mono Jojoy’ Briceño Suárez, the commander of

the Eastern Block and one of the most powerful members of the entire insurgent organization

(ACNUR 2007).

The emergence of the ELN in the Araucan piedmont in 1980 can be traced to two key events.

First, in the aftermath of the near-decimation of the ELN by the Colombian military at Anorí in the

early 1970s, the remnants of the insurgent group relocated and reorganized in Arauca in the years

following this defeat (Peñate 1998). Second, various peasant leaders - many of whom were originally

from Santander - who were active in local peasant civil society, faced increased violent persecution at

the hands of the Colombian military and police as the decade wore on (El Espectador 2014).227 These

particular peasant leaders felt that their only recourse was to arm themselves and their communities

and in the process made contact with mutual acquaintances in Santander who were longstanding

members of the ELN (Medina 1996; Plazas Días 2017). A nascent guerrilla cell in the piedmont

formed in Alto San Joaquín (Saravena) in 1978 and after two years of preparation some twenty

guerrillas promptly attacked a police outpost in Betoyes (Tame) in September 1980, killing four

officers and forcing the eight survivors to surrender their weapons. The Domingo Laín front of the

ELN was born (El Espectador 2014).228

227 The most recognized founders of the ELN in Arauca are Raymundo Cruz, his farmhand Atilano (surname unknown),

Efraín Pabón Pabón, and Daniel (surname unknown). All four were heavily involved in ANUC and other social organizations such as COAGROSARARE in the piedmont, and were amongst the leading organizers of the 1972 and 1975 civic strikes in Saravena (Interview 49, Arauca municipality, 2016). Pabón and Atilano hailed from Boyacá, Cruz from Cundinamarca, while Daniel was originally from Santander.

228 The ELN in the piedmont initially wanted to name the front after Guadalupe Salcedo but the FARC had already claimed that name, so they settled on Domingo Laín Sáenz, a Spanish priest who had joined the ELN in the 1960s only to fall in combat some years later.

162

Over the following years, the ELN became firmly entrenched in piedmont society. The

Domingo Laín front “[…]was a guerrilla {group} of family members, friends, acquaintances,

neighbors, all of which allowed them to grow easily” (El Espectador 2014). This was not difficult for

the first generation leadership of the front as its’ founders were peasant leaders in ANUC and the

JACs who “decided to become guerrillas due to the abandonment of the state”. Furthermore, the

majority of peasant leaders in Sarvena and Fortul “either joined them or began to support their

project”.229 The ELN in Arauca deployed a strategy of “co-optation, subordination, and submission

of local power structures such as social organizations” (FIP 2015, 23). Thus, the founding members

of the Domingo Laín front already possessed substantial local networks and a strong capacity for

communal organization. Atilano and Daniel assumed command of the ELN in the piedmont after

Efraín Pabón was killed by the Colombian military in an operation in Santander, and the insurgent

front quickly consolidated control of many rural communities throughout the zone by establishing a

rigid code of conduct which was applicable to all and disobeyed by none (El Espectador 2014). As

one native from Saravena puts it, “there was room for debate but at the same time if one didn’t comply

with their law then they were going to die”.230

The severity of this social regulation worked. The social codes imposed by the ELN existed

in both towns and rural villages alike. One social leader remembers the extremity of some of their

prejudices: “Notices appeared where they advised that they were going to do a ‘cleansing’ of different

groups such as women who had relations with military men, and lesbians and homosexuals”.231 Other

prohibitions included long hair for men, excessive piercings, prostitution, consuming or dealing drugs,

thievery, and talking to a police officer or soldier. The punishments for breaking any of these ranged

229 Interview 95, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

230 Interview 48, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

231 Interview 66, Saravena, 2016.

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from clearing rural fields with machetes to execution.232 The ELN grew rapidly in the piedmont as

between its arrival in 1980 and 1982, the Domingo Laín front expanded from some 25 initial

combatants to 150 members assigned to commisions (comisiones), or local units of twelve to fifteen

fighters stationed in Saravena, Arauquita, Fortul, and Tame. The quick growth of the insurgent front

can be attributed to the fact that “[…]it was a guerrilla {group} of family members, friends,

acquaintances, neighbors, all of which allowed them to grow easily” (El Espectador 2014).

In contrast to the FARC during this time, the ELN preferred a more direct confrontation with

its opponents. The Domingo Laín front established the Simacota Company in 1986, a highly trained

mobile unit with commanders schooled in Cuba and Vietnam, founded with the express purpose of

carrying out larger, more logistically difficult operations against the Colombian military and National

Police. Similar to the FARC, the ELN also expanded into plains communities in Tame, Puerto

Rondón, Cravo Norte, and Arauca municipality during the mid-to-late 1980s, although it appears the

FARC was stronger in this sub-region.233 The leadership of the Domingo Laín front changed hands

around this juncture, with Armel ‘El Chino’ Robles Cermeño taking control of the ELN in Arauca. A

teacher and union activist by trade, under “El Chino” the ELN tightened its control over the piedmont

as violence against recalcitrant local figureheads of authority such as judges, civil servants, and political

activists increased (Velasco 2016). For example, the highest ranking Catholic priest in the department,

Bishop Jesús Emilio Jaramillo, publicly criticized the ELN, and in response three insurgents

kidnapped, tortured, and murdered Jaramillo in rural Fortul in early October 1989 (Semana 1989). The

ELN claimed responsibility while simultaneously accusing the Bishop of collaborating with the

military and nascent paramilitary groups, and also of embezzling funds that were earmarked for local

development projects (El Espectador 2015).

232 Interview 65, Arauca municipality, 2016.

233 Interview 56, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 100, Tame, 2018.

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During the first decade of insurgent consolidation in Arauca, the ELN expanded its formal

units, albeit in much smaller and more fluid commissions spread throughout the piedmont. Key to

the success of the Domingo Laín front was the development of hundred, if not thousands, of militia

members (milicianos) in the broader department. Whereas the ELN and FARC alike operated in plain

view in rural villages in Arauca, armed and uniformed, they functioned more clandestinely in larger

towns and municipal capitals. In these settings, they maintained control through the deployment of

militia members, who were trained cadres in service of the ELN who dressed and operated as civilians

in urban settings. As a lifetime resident of Saravena observes: “It is difficult to identify exactly who is

a militia member and who isn’t. They are invisible”.234 They were often armed and would carry out

small attacks or other acts of violence for the guerrilla organization, and perhaps more importantly

they would gather intelligence, send and receive messages between guerrilla units and civilians, and

perform other crucial tasks for the armed group.235 The Domingo Laín front aggressively recruited

local youth in the piedmont and established a network of indoctrination and training camps for this

purpose in the sub-region.236 Apparently in certain villages, attendance for local adolescents was

mandatory. The ELN also differed from the FARC in regards to the terms of enlistment, as the former

offered a particular form of military service which was a five-year commitment to the military wing of

the organization, after which one was free to leave the armed struggle, albeit with certain political and

social commitments remaining.237

Until the 1990s, the ELN in Arauca depended primarily on the Domingo Laín front, a

fearsome military unit which was supported by the specialized Simacota Company, while two fronts

234 Interview 66, Saravena, 2016.

235 Interview 65, Saravena, 2016.

236 The local school system served as fertile ground for insurgent recruitment. For example, Armel ‘El Chino’ Robles

was reportedly a teacher of Gustavo ‘Pablito’ Giraldo in the 1980s in a piedmont school. The student eventually replaced the teacher as the commander of the ELN in Arauca.

237 “The principal incentive to perform such a service was the lack of opportunities, especially academic and employment. It represented a good option to obtain power and money.” Interview 49, Arauca municipality, 2016.

165

in nearby Casanare (José David Suárez front and Los Libertadores front), one in northern Boyacá

(Adonay Ardila front), and another in the south of Norte de Santander (Efraín Pabón front), all were

available for support if need be. The ELN on the other hand relied on the Domingo Laín front to

serve as the focal point of its presence in the entire northeastern region of Colombia. During the

1990s, a second specialized unit, the Capitán Pomarés company, was established to augment the

Simacota company and to serve in the border area between Casanare and Arauca. The remainder of

the ELN’s presence in the department was divided between nine other commissions and vast

networks of militia members which maintained a presence in every municipality in Arauca (ACNUR

2007). In 1996, the ELN’s Central Committee formed the Eastern War Front (Frente de Guerra Oriental

– FGO), which consisted of all of the ELN insurgent structures operating in Arauca, the José David

Suárez front, the Efraín Pabón front, and the Adonay Ardila front (Fundación Ideas para la Paz 2015).

Mapping out the division of space between the FARC and the ELN in Arauca is a complicated

task. There were certain communities and even municipalities in which one group maintained

hegemony, yet the majority were very closely occupied and contested by both the Domingo Laín front

and the 10th front throughout the department. For example, the village of Pueblo Nuevo is literally

divided in half between members and sympathizers beholden to both groups.238 The only municipality

where one group maintains a near complete hegemony is the ELN in Saravena. The ELN also

maintains a greater presence in the piedmont corridor adjacent to the Eastern Andes which can be

found in western Fortul and Tame, as well as the border region with Venezuela along the Arauca River

in both Saravena and Arauquita. The FARC on the other hand has maintained a greater presence in

rural Arauquita, eastern Fortul, and certain parts of northeastern Tame.239 For the most part, the FARC

were more dominant than the ELN in the plains, a fact which can be explained by the greater presence

238 Interview 69, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

239 Interview 47, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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of other FARC fronts in neighboring departments such as Casanare and Vichada (Misión de

Observación Electoral 2007b). The ELN controlled the border region with Venezuela all the way

from Boyacá until virtually Arauca City, however the FARC dominated the border east of the

departmental capital all the way towards Vichada.240

During their first decade in Arauca, relations between the FARC and the ELN oscillated

between violent confrontation and pacific co-existence. A local leader from Botalón in northern Tame

recalls: “The ELN entered first and later the FARC. In the beginning, the two guerrillas were enemies

and were unable to see one another because they would kill each other, but with time they began a

dialogue and building ties. They also began to win over the peasantry because they supported our

social struggles”.241 Another resident of a rural plains community similarly experienced the competitive

ebb and flow between the two groups. The ELN arrived first in his village, but were quickly displaced

by the superior strength of the FARC and after a few minor skirmishes, accepted their position and

even “on occasion had to ask permission from the FARC to enter the town”.242 In other rural

communities which were too closely contested and shared between the two insurgent bands, the

guerrillas “didn’t divide territory, they divided the population” with the goal of dominating local village

councils (JACs).243 This practice of classifying virtually every rural habitant of the department and

dividing them accordingly along these insurgent lines is a practice which remains until the present.244

After settling into the piedmont and the plains over the course of the 1980s, the insurgent

groups’ presence on the rudimentary highway system in Arauca was ubiquitous, as they established

roadblocks and checkpoints on larger highways and rural roads (trochas) alike.245 As the tight control

240 Interview 8, Arauca municipality, 2016.

241 Interview 75, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

242 Interview 57, Arauca municipality, 2016.

243 Interview 75, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

244 Interview 22, Fortul, 2016; Interview 56, Arauca municipality, 2016.

245 Interview 52, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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of the department’s rudimentary transportation infrastructure shows, the provision of fundamental

public goods such as justice, security, and order were of paramount importance for both the FARC

and the ELN throughout every corner of Arauca. A women’s rights leader from Fortul describes this

dynamic: “In that era, the laws that ruled our society were created by the people and by the

guerrillas”.246 The FARC and the ELN succeeded in establishing themselves as the de facto arbiter of

justice in Arauca, a feat which these groups were able to achieve due to the insufficient deployment

of state manpower and the willingness of the insurgents to physically eliminate any rival claimants to

power without hesitation.247 Efforts to legally investigate and prosecute insurgents accused of

committing a variety of crimes always led nowhere, as the guerrillas forced countless judges to

renounce their positions and leave their posts in places such as Saravena, Fortul, Tame, and Arauquita

during the early 1990s. Failure to comply was accompanied by a certain death penalty. Indicative of

the insurgents’ success, some 218 of the 248 cases pending in the department in 1991 for serious

offenses such as homicide, kidnapping, and extortion were against known members of the FARC and

the ELN, while the remainder implicated members of incipient paramilitary structures in Arauca. Very

few, if any, of these cases were ever even investigated (El Tiempo 1991).

The insurgent justice which these organizations administered was quite severe and draconian,

however, it was also “much quicker” than that provided by the state, which in comparison was “very

slow”.248 Any perceived threats to their authority were persecuted and expelled from the department

or killed outright, as this treatment extended beyond the National Police and Colombian armed forces

to religious clergy.249 A disturbing practice emerged where women who greeted, conversed with, or

246 Interview 19, Saravena, 2016.

247 A former mayor of Arauquita claims that prior to oil “there were only five police officers for the entire municipality” and the insurgents were responsible for resolving issues related to “infidelities, the sale of property, everything” as the “state was not present”. Interview 13, Arauquita, 2016.

248 Interview 50, Arauca municipality, 2016.

249 Interview 56, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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even attempted to date men from either the police or the military were killed by the insurgent groups.

Over the period 1994 to 1995, there were between one to two dozen adolescent girls who were

executed by the ELN in Saravena alone, solely “[…]for being girlfriends or friends with police officers

and soldiers” (El Tiempo 1995b). A former mayor of Tame explains this macabre phenomenon:

“Women became military targets when they dated somebody from the military, as the insurgents

believed they could be turned into informants. In Tame, there was a guerrilla called Fidel Gallo who

they nicknamed the ‘ladykiller’ (el mata viejas) because he killed any woman who looked at a soldier or

a cop”.250

The extremely strict social code maintained by the insurgents in Arauca, historically and

presently, “had to do with security”.251 The FARC and the ELN provided security and order for the

communities under their control by deploying a highly developed system of populational control.252

People from outside the region faced enormous difficulty entering peasant communities in the

piedmont without being properly vetted by the insurgents first.253 The FARC and the ELN settled

disputes between family and neighbors, adjudicated weddings, issued work permits, appointed

teachers in local schools, and managed the local distribution and usage of land in the department.254

Of enormous importance to their control of the piedmont, the FARC and the ELN heavily intervened

in the local real estate market, effectively regulating all local land purchases and only allowing those

who were related or known to long-established local peasants to buy small plots in the sub-region.255

In places such as Tame where numerous settlers had obtained and developed their smallholdings by

250 Interview 73, Tame, 2016.

251 A peasant in Fortul highlights this apparent contradiction: “I never understood protection to be honest, because here nobody can slip up because the insurgents will kill them at once.” Interview 22, Fortul, 2016.

252 Interview 55, Arauca municipality, 2016.

253 Interview 53, Arauca municipality, 2016.

254 Interview 51, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

255 Interview 23, Fortul, 2016.

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means of squatting, these groups offered crucial support and protection to peasant migrants without

formal title.256

Recruitment was another area in which the FARC and the ELN competed. The two groups

sought to expand their ranks in the department by recruiting locally, principally from the rural, agrarian

communities in which they had consolidated a strong presence. Their target group was adolescents of

both genders, although it was not uncommon for the FARC and the ELN to attempt to recruit youths

as young as twelve or thirteen years old.257 In piedmont communities, the process of local recruitment

changed from voluntary to quasi-obligatory over the course of the 1990s. A piedmont native from

Tame recalls this:

Almost all of the members of the guerrillas were young people from the community, including in many cases my friends’ parents and my classmates. In the early 1990s, people enlisted because they wanted to, due to household needs, as there were no possibilities to go and study, no purpose, nor were their parents nor anybody else for that matter telling them they had to go and study a vocation. The insurgents would come and listen to them and give them a shoulder to cry on, all the while offering them money and other luxuries that one could only receive if they went that route. By the late 1990s, it became more of an obligation to go with them. According to the guerrillas, we had to accompany them, we had to defend the country, we had to give mandatory service to defend the land and all of that.258

The Gaviría (1990-1994) and Samper (1994-1998) administrations struggled to confront the

increased threat posed by the rise of the FARC and the ELN during the 1990s. As Omar Gutiérrez

(2010) notes: “Between 1992 and 1996, the same guerrilla fronts {in Arauca} labored intensely to

expand territorially and socially (a product of the terms set out at their congresses and conferences)”

(12). The Domingo Laín front and all of the other ELN structures in the department consolidated

considerable control over Araucan society. Various sources recall how the ELN became so belligerent

towards the military and the police that “[…]the police had to confine themselves in their main

barracks between 1995 and 2000”, as the group’s harassment of the authorities “[…]were routine

256 Interview 100, Tame, 2016.

257 Interview 96, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

258 Interview 99, Tame, 2016.

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affairs in the central plazas of Saravena, Arauquita, and Fortul” (El Espectador 2014).259 Even the

wives of police and military men “became military targets of the guerrillas, they killed them on the

highways in front of others to sow terror”. The plains sub-region was not exempt from the

intensification of insurgent activity against the state, as “[…]between 1996 and 2000 there was a

scourge of violence in Puerto Rondón and Cravo Norte”.260

During the second half of the 1990s the ELN increased its attacks on oil infrastructure in

northern Arauquita and Saravena. The FARC simultaneously began to engage in similar attacks while

also increasing its level of belligerency with the Colombian authorities to such an extent that by 1998

and onwards the group surpassed the ELN as the most active guerrilla outfit in the department

(Gómez Rivas 2016). In April of this year, insurgents from the FARC’s 10th and 45th fronts coordinated

a series of simultaneous attacks against both the armed forces and the police in four different

municipalities in the plains and the piedmont (Cravo Norte, Puerto Rondón, Saravena, Cubará) at

exactly the same time, leaving one civilian dead, ten policemen injured, while the guerrillas also stole

two ambulances, destroyed eight buildings, and blew up a section of the oil pipeline (El Tiempo

1997a). The conflict continued to produce civilian casualties on all sides, as in 1999 the FARC, under

direct orders from ‘Grannobles’, kidnapped and murdered three American activists, all of whom were

working for the protection of U’wa rights in their ancestral homeland in northwestern Saravena and

Cubará.

This period of time also marked greater confrontation on part of the guerrillas with authorities

across the border in neighboring Venezuela. The Venezuelan military and National Guard periodically

abused Colombians who crossed the border with any frequency. As the FARC and the ELN

strengthened their grip on the department in the 1990s, they began to make greater incursions into

259 Interview 69, Tame, 2016.

260 Interview 53, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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Apure and beyond, often with lethal results. In March 1995, the ELN attacked a military post in

Cararabo (Apure), leaving some eight Venezuelan soldiers dead. After this attack and the ensuing

political fallout between the Venezuelan and Colombian governments, the Colombian armed forces

deployed over one hundred extra soldiers to patrol the Arauca river and established two new bases on

the same waterway in an attempt to curb future incursions by either of the insurgent groups into

foreign territory (El Tiempo 1996c). Over the course of the next two years, the ELN structures based

in Arauca carried out eight further attacks inside of Venezuela and two separate executions of civilians,

increasing the death toll to twenty-four, nineteen of whom were members of the military or National

guardsmen (El Tiempo 1997b).

The election of Hugo Chávez in 1998 would quickly lead to a dramatic change in official policy

towards the Colombian armed conflict in Caracas, as the new president quickly adopted a policy of

neutrality. The previously assembled border commissions were suspended as Venezuelan border states

such as Apure, Táchira, and Zulia suddenly became rearguards for both the FARC and the ELN

(Malamud 2004).261 The ELN consolidated control of the Venezuelan side of the border stretching

from Saravena to Arauca City, whereas the FARC ended up settling further inside the interior of Apure

state.262 The new border policy permitted both insurgent groups a resting place which the Colombian

authorities could not enter, a staging ground for attacks against targets inside of Colombia, and a

further source of revenues, as they quickly divided up the available rackets with the Venezuelan

National Guard. One particular industry which had historically predominated the border region –

contraband - proliferated under the new regime, as when “Chávez devalued the Venezuelan currency

we began to buy everything in Venezuela, especially gasoline and even cattle. All of this was possible

261 Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

262 Interview 51, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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because the Venezuelan National Guard is very corrupt, and the guerrillas make things worse by

smuggling in large amounts of contraband and demanding taxes”.263

During the late 1990s, both formal and informal pro-state forces attempted to combat the

insurgent hegemony in Arauca. The first appearance of paramilitary groups in Arauca date back to

1983, a period when small paramilitary comprised of soldiers from nearby military detachments and

common criminals from the region threatened and eliminated peasant activists who led the civic strikes

throughout the department. Over the course of 1988 and 1989, a group called Grupo Cívico Armado de

Arauca (Cruciagar) appeared in Arauca municipality and was apparently responsible for a variety of

gruesome murders committed against peasant leaders from the piedmont (Carroll 2011, 211).264 In late

1998, another paramilitary group named ‘Cooperativa El Corral’ appeared in Arauca municipality under

the controversial terms of the CONVIVIR policy established during the Samper administration. The

group was stationed in front of the 18th Brigade of the Colombian military’s base in Arauca City and

began engaging in selective assassinations of trade unionists, peasant leaders, and other perceived

‘guerrilla sympathizers’, while also threatening and displacing particular communities which were

located on land which the multinationals wished to develop for further oil exploration (Carroll 2011,

241).265 The paramilitary group’s lifespan in the department was cut short due to revelations from a

prominent local journalist, Efraín Varela, that the group had been imported into Arauca from a

paramilitary haven in Santander department and the ensuing public outcry led to the dismantling of

El Corral.266

263 Interview 10, Arauca municipality, 2016.

264 Interview 21, Saravena, 2016.

265 Interview 8, Arauca municipality, 2016.

266 After Varela’s revelations went public in February 1998, a massive civic strike against the paramilitary incursion was convened throughout the entire department, a mobilization which helped force the national government to apply sufficient pressure in order to shut the paramilitary group down.

173

The worsening violence of the departmental armed conflict was evident in the increasingly

rash and irresponsible conduct of all the armed actors present in Arauca. In December 1998, the

Colombian armed forces carried out the targeted bombing of Santo Domingo, a small hamlet in

northeastern Tame where the army had been engaged in skirmishes with FARC a few days prior.267

The aftermath of the strike left seventeen civilians dead, six of which were young girls between four

and fourteen years of age, with some twenty-one wounded, some permanently disabled. One of the

support planes was manned by American contractors working for Occidental in support of the

Colombian Air Force, a fact which further fuelled the public backlash to the brazen carelessness of

the military operation (Semana 2009a). In the final years of the 1990s, the Colombian military and the

National Police did try, albeit unsuccessfully, to counter the alarming growth of insurgent activity in

Arauca. For example, the Colombian army deployed an astounding two thousand extra soldiers to the

municipality of Tame alone to combat both the FARC and the ELN during Operation Nemesis

(Operación Némesis) in June 1999. Despite the overwhelming level of force sent to the municipality, the

net result was some five ELN members killed in action (El Tiempo 1999).

A key limitation facing the Colombian government’s attempts to assume control of the

department was the inequitable allocation of military recourses. The priority of the armed forces in

the region was the protection of the Caño Limón oilfield and pipeline, a complicated task that

demanded the lion’s share of the state’s focus, thus leaving other rural communities in the plains and

the piedmont at the mercy of the FARC and the ELN. A former General of the 18th Brigade describes

these challenges: “The army’s fundamental problem was when the first oil wells appeared, the

government gave priority to the protection of the oil industry, the pipelines, and the oil production

stations. The little army presence that there was in the zone was devoted more than anything to protect

267 Interview 6, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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the oil resources than to say attack the terrorist groups”.268 During the worsening climate in the early

2000s, the Pastrana administration reinforced the pipeline’s protection, while perhaps more

importantly creating a support structure from the District Attorney (fiscalía), which was housed inside

of the 18th Brigade’s military base. This new unit accompanied anti-guerrilla units throughout the

department and in less than one year had captured fifty-six people purportedly involved in attacks on

oil infrastructure, a stark contrast from the two people who had been captured in the fifteen-year span

prior (Semana 2002).

Those troop deployments to towns and villages which were firmly under the control of the

FARC and the ELN were often quite ineffective due to the reluctance of the detachments to actually

operate in hostile territory and the limited timeframes in which they actually committed to such

operations. One peasant remembers when she lived in Puerto Nidia (Fortul) how once “they tried to

take control but they only lasted four months. It was absurd! The police and the soldiers were terrified

because there were so few of them”.269 In response to the state’s aggressions, the FARC and the ELN

explicitly forbid any form of contact with any representative of official authority in the department, a

transgression that was punishable by death. A woman’s rights leader from the piedmont recalls the

level of polarization: “The tension of the war was terrible here. Such was the level of mistrust that

even barbers were killed because they had cut the hair of soldiers and police”.270 Affirming this extreme

level of polarization and stigmatization, a religious leader in Arauquita comments:

Speaking with a soldier was reason enough to be killed. Also, any favor or job done for them was certain death. That’s why so many laundry women and shoeblacks were killed. You also couldn’t sell the soldiers or police anything. For that reason, people preferred to keep away from the soldiers, but at the same time they began to see the civilian population as accomplices of the guerrillas, as we didn’t inform them about the attacks that the insurgents had prepared for them. However, people were caught between a rock and a hard place. If they talked the guerrillas would kill them. It is in this context that the military became full of resentment and began to stigmatize civilians as guerrillas.271

268 Interview 47, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

269 Interview 22, Fortul, 2016.

270 Interview 19, Saravena, 2016.

271 Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

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ii. The Economic Sphere

Until the confirmation of vast oil deposits in northeastern Arauquita, Colombia had been a

net importer of petroleum. This all changed with the discovery of the Caño Limón oil field in 1982,

as “[…]the discovery of two billion barrels of oil deposits below the soil of the department of Arauca

allowed Colombia to become an important oil exporting country” (Sarmiento 2015, 11). However, the

extraction and transportation of this fossil fuel required the construction of a terrestrial oil pipeline

through Arauquita and Saravena, then onwards through the departments of Boyacá, Norte de

Santander, Cesar, Magdalena, Bolívar, and Sucre to the Caribbean port Coveñas. Ecopetrol partnered

with Occidental Petroleum, a multinational based out of California in a consortium called the Cravo

Norte Association (Asociación Cravo Norte), and by 1985 the Caño Limón – Coveñas pipeline was

complete and Arauca began to produce oil for export. Arauca quickly converted into one of the

wealthiest departments in Colombia as the massive windfall from oil rents finally provided the means

for the modernization of the department in the form of basic infrastructure and public goods and

services.

Yet, oil wealth also brought many problems to the region such as environmental degradation,

increased militarization, the escalation of the local armed conflict, and endemic corruption. The

establishment of a large oil production complex dramatically altered Arauca’s diverse fluvial network

as entire rivers, fresh water ponds, and lagoons dried up or were contaminated with the run-off

produced by production at Caño Limón.272 A local human rights worker describes the disruptive

effects of oil exploration on rural communities in Arauca: “The oilmen who began to carry out the

seismic, mineral, and energy exploration were the first displacers of migrants and indigenous people

who resided in and around the Caño Limón complex. These multinationals had the state’s complete

272 Interview 25, Tame, 2016; Interview 8, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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protection and they used the armed forces as a means to forcibly displace, expropriate, and strip people

of their land”.273 Many others had to endure the encroachments of the oil prospectors, which included

the construction of access roads through random properties amongst other disturbances, acts for

which they were never compensated.274 Additionally, many peasants abandoned their lands in search

of work at the oilfield.275 The illusion of stable work and career advancement provided by the oil

industry in Arauca led to an influx of new migrants into the department, in particular to Arauquita

and Arauca municipality.276 As most locals and recent migrants soon found out, the contracted workers

brought in by the oil companies themselves were from outside the department as “they did not hire

people from Arauca”.277

The discovery of oil in Arauca provided the means for local development in terms of creating

basic infrastructure and social services. For instance, the first major roads were constructed and

partially paved during this period, finally connecting all of the municipal capitals with one another,

and with the Colombian interior.278 Similarly the municipal capitals all grew substantially over this

period and the increased provision of services such as health and education reflected this population

shift, eventually accompanied by electricity, running water, and sewage treatment to varying degrees

of quality.279 However, the influx of oil money into Arauca also engendered a culture of extreme

corruption which has persisted until the present. Unsurprisingly, the infusion of massive amounts of

oil royalties gave local political elites with little to no official oversight the opportunity to engage in

massive acts of embezzlement and gratuitous public spending.

Map 3. Caño Limon-Coveñas Oil Pipeline

273 Interview 51, Arauca municipality, 2016.

274 Interview 96, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

275 Interview 53, Arauca Municipality, 2016.

276 Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

277 Interview 9, Arauca municipality, 2016.

278 Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

279 Interview 13, Arauquita, 2016.

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Source: United States General Accountability Office 2005

The traditional Liberal political elites from the Araucan plains operated with total impunity

and maintained their grip on power through highly developed webs of patronage throughout their

sub-region. While the previous two to three decades had seen the demographic balance of power in

Arauca shift to the piedmont, these political power brokers in Arauca City were loth to cede any of

their hard fought privileges to any outside challengers. This was perhaps most evident in the system

of royalties established after Caño Limón began to produce massive amounts of oil for export. While

the oil field was located in Arauquita right near the border with Arauca municipality, political elites

from the plains redefined “the limits between Arauca municipality and Arauquita. Supposedly Caño

Limón was to be divided fifty-fifty and that didn’t happen. From all the royalties, Arauquita only

received ten percent”.280 The oil transfer system between the department’s municipalities resulted in a

highly skewed redistributive royalty scheme which saw the majority of oil profits stay in Arauca

municipality.281 The direct manner in which these oil royalties were administered by local politicians

280 Interview 13, Arauquita, 2016.

281 Interview 68, Saravena, 2016.

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saw garish displays of corruption and wasteful spending, while also inhibiting other areas of economic

development due to the total prioritization of the oil industry in Arauca (Gútierrez 2010).282

Prior to the discovery of oil at Caño Limón, the presence of the Colombian state in the

department did exist but was minimal. This changed entirely with the development of the oil industry

in the early 1980s as “the state began to make its presence felt, but only through the armed forces”.283

This dramatic increase of the state’s coercive apparatus constituted what many describe as the

“militarization of the zone”.284 All subsequent official plans for the management of land and allocation

of public resources were “in service of oil and in favor of the oil companies”, with local residents

widely perceiving the state’s increased presence in Arauca as a means of defending the oil industry and

its interests in the department. 285 The massive increase of the Colombian armed forces and National

Police in the early-to-mid 1980s followed the arrival of both the FARC and the ELN to Arauca in

1980, an external shock that coincided with a period of guerrilla consolidation in the piedmont and

the plains.

The oil industry in Arauca gave guerrillas from the FARC and the ELN the capacity to capture

rents via extortion and kidnapping of employees of foreign companies working in tandem with

Ecopetrol (Semana 1985). Simultaneously, its mere presence, accompanied and protected by the

Colombian authorities, generated greater polarization with local peasant communities in the piedmont

due to the repressive measures of the state,286 the ruinous environmental effects of the extractive

activity,287 and the extremely inequitable distribution of rents produced by Caño Limón by the

282 Interview 2, Arauca municipality, 2016.

283 Interview 13, Arauquita, 2016.

284 Interview 14, Arauquita, 2016.

285 Interview 2, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 8, Arauca municipality, 2016.

286 Interview 65, Arauca municipality, 2016

287 The FARC and ELN were unable to prevent the establishment of Caño Limón due to their limited presence or military capacity, yet the insurgents were able to stop Occidental from developing an oil field discovered in Caricare (Tame) in 1983. Simply put, “[…]in this field the guerrillas didn’t let them {Oxy} extract.” Interview 8, Arauca municipality, 2016.

179

departmental government in Arauca City.288 The discovery of oil in Arauca exacerbated the primary

cleavage affecting civilian communities, while providing armed insurgent groups with additional

economic resources for their consolidation and expansion in the zone. A former army general who

served in the region for decades describes the effect of oil on the nascent insurgent project in Arauca:

“The violence and lack of security began to appear when it became known that there was oil in Arauca.

I attribute the need of these terrorist guerrilla groups to strengthen their finances in order to grow as

the generating cause of this violence”.289

The Domingo Laín front initially supported itself through kidnappings and the extortion of

large cattle ranchers and landholders on both sides of the Colombian-Venezuelan border.290 However,

the ELN’s well documented 1984 kidnapping of four foreign oil engineers employed by a German

contracting firm, Mannesmann AG, not only gave the insurgent group the financial resources to

expand, but more importantly it provided a blueprint for future revenue extraction in the department

and beyond (Velasco 2016; Carroll 2011). With the completion of the pipeline and the beginning of

massive oil production in Arauca in the period 1985-1986, the ELN started to attack critical oil

infrastructure and continued to kidnap personnel working for the oil multinationals and the

contractors who maintained their operations in exchange for financial remuneration. The ELN’s

subsequent penetration of local politics was such that they were both able to siphon off a considerable

percentage of oil revenues through municipal budgets and the extremely lucrative practice of extorting

local contractors who were hired to build infrastructure and perform public services in the larger

department.291

288 Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

289 Interview 47, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

290 Ejército de Liberación Nacional, “Crónica del surgimiento del Frente Domingo Laín”, January 14th, 2007.

http://www.cedema.org/ver.php?id=1734.

291 Interview 50, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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The ELN’s monopoly on this racket came under threat from the FARC in the 1990s. The

FARC substantially increased its attacks on oil infrastructure during this period in an attempt to co-

opt and control all of the potential revenues in the department from coca production to extortion of

the oil multinationals. For example, when the price of oil rose in September, 2000, the departmental

budget received an additional $223 million USD. The FARC leadership in Arauca told the then-

governor Gustavo Carmelo Castellanos that he needed to deliver half of that sum to the insurgent

group, or they “[…]would blow up the pipeline and there wouldn’t be money for anybody”. Upon

becoming governor in January 2001, Gallardo was given a month to hand over the FARC’s share and

upon neglecting to do so, the FARC attacked the pipeline with explosives ten times in one day (Semana

2002).

The rise of the coca trade in Arauca can trace its beginning to the late 1980s, when the FARC

gradually started providing coca seeds to peasant farmers who lived in areas where this particular

group maintained a very strong presence such as central and southern Arauquita. A peasant leader

from rural Arauquita recalls that: “Coca was one of the strongest products of our village’s economy.

The crop began approximately in 1987 and the boom occurred around 2000”. 292 Another farmer from

the municipal capital of Tame places this date around the same time, stating that “coca plants began

to be seen in 1988” in rural communities in the piedmont section of his municipality.293 Over the

course of the 1980s, the FARC had already consolidated itself firmly in Arauca, establishing

clandestine laboratories, landing strips for small aircraft, and smuggling routes for precursor chemical

needed to process cocaine throughout the department. Nearby departments in the plains and beyond

(e.g. Meta, Guaviare) which produced large amounts of coca would supply laboratories and transport

points in the piedmont region of neighboring Casanare where the merchandise would then be moved

292 Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

293 Interview 72, Tame, 2016.

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on to Arauca before being exported to external markets.294 The increased traffic of narcotics through

the department compelled local commanders of the 10th front of the FARC to introduce the crop to

peasant small holders in rural communities under their control.295 Over time, more and more peasants

began cultivating coca in the piedmont. However, the insurgents maintained a strict system of

regulation over land usage and only allowed peasant farmers to grow one hectare of coca for every

four that they planted for plaintains, yucca, cacao, and other subsistence crops in an effort to mask

the illicit activity.296

In sharp contrast to the FARC, the ELN prohibited any of its members from participating

directly or indirectly in the coca trade on ideological grounds. This explains why coca cultivation was

minimal to non-existent in peasant communities which were almost completely dominated by the

ELN such as Saravena.297 The growing coca trade in the piedmont attracted new arrivals from outside

the region due to the substantially better wages agricultural workers (jornaleros) could earn working as

coca harvesters (raspachines). The influx of agricultural workers generated greater demand for

restaurants, temporary housing, and bars, and directly financed a micro-level consumption boom in

these particular communities.298 Despite this influx of new capital, traditional agriculture suffered as

the production of coca “left local farms without labor” due to the exponentially greater wages offered

to harvest coca in compared to traditional crops.299 Villages such as El Oasis, Aguachica, Pueblo

Nuevo, Filipinas, Panamá de Arauca, and Bocas del Ele witnessed dramatic changes during this time

due to the massive influx of young men from other regions working as raspachines, a process which

294 Interview 12, Arauquita, 2016.

295 It is important to clarify that the FARC did not force anyone to plant coca in the piedmont, the decision was taken by peasants who sought to increase their earnings. Interview 99, Tame, 2016.

296 Interview 10, Arauca municipality, 2016.

297 Interview 8, Arauca municipality, 2016.

298 Interview 64, Arauquita, 2016.

299 Interview 76, Fortul, 2016; Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

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wrought increased public alcohol consumption and prostitution. The FARC continued to enforce the

local social code and to provide order, yet more than anything the insurgent group regulated the

production and sale of coca crops in the piedmont, eventually establishing a census of rural properties

that cultivated coca in order to keep accurate records about how many crops were to be expected

from each peasant farmer. If these producers fell short of the expected quota then they faced potential

exile or death due to suspicions that they sold their products to a non-sanctioned buyer.300 A former

political leader from Arauquita summarizes the effect of this industry on the FARC in the department:

“Before, the insurgents used to worry about the welfare of the people, but with the coca boom they

lost their way”.301

The FARC and the ELN shared other rackets in Arauca during this period such kidnapping

and extortion of large landholders and cattle ranchers. However, these practices eventually declined

over the course of the 1990s due to the damage caused to the industry by the excessively predatory

tendencies of the guerrillas throughout Arauca. In both the plains and the piedmont, every rural

habitant was charged a tax levied by the insurgents for every head of cattle they possessed. This clearly

was more detrimental to large landholders who possessed hundreds, if not thousands of cattle. A well-

known cattle rancher in Puerto Rondón assesses the damage done to this industry by the insurgents:

“Thirty years ago the farms of Puerto Rondón had close to 200 000 heads of cattle. The pressure of

the armed groups and the few highways that exist to transport the animals means that today there are

only 70 000 animals” (El Tiempo 2004a). In order to make up for the shortfall in revenue from what

has historically been a bread-and-butter moneymaking operation for guerrillas in Colombia, both the

FARC and the ELN increased their attacks on oil infrastructure in the latter half of the decade. The

insurgents groups also benefitted from a quota system they had established over local municipal and

300 Interview 99, Tame, 2016.

301 Interview 15, Arauquita, 2016.

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departmental budgets. For example, each group demanded ten percent of the total value of every

contract issued to contractors in Arauca, many of whom were either connected to the politicians

handing out the contract, or mere fronts for the insurgent groups themselves.302

iii. The Political Sphere

Prior to the arrival of the FARC and the ELN to the department, a cabal of cattle ranching

elites from the plains led by Alfonso Latorre dominated Arauca’s political institutions. The Araucan

powerbroker maintained tight control over the region’s politics at the expense of the piedmont, a

distribution of power which “was problematic and less inclusive” due to public budgets sustaining

Latorre’s clientelist networks rather than investing in the development of communities in both the

plains and the piedmont.303 This political dynamic changed dramatically in the first half of the 1980s

due to three key events: the arrival of the FARC and the ELN to the zone in 1980, the construction

of the Caño Limón oil complex in 1985-1986, and the direct election of municipal councils and mayors

beginning in 1986. Initially, plains elites represented by Latorre were able to assume control of the

influx of oil royalties which began to pour into the intendency from 1986 onwards, yet this proved

short lived. After two decades of substantial population increase in the piedmont, that sub-region now

outnumbered the plains, and this advantage was further multiplied with the consolidation of the FARC

and the ELN in Tame, Fortul, Saravena, and Arauquita (Carroll 2011).

Access to the oil windfall shifted dramatically in favor of the piedmont with the democratic

opening, a period which ushered in not only a new constitution, but also permitted the direct election

of municipal representatives, mayors, and governors for the first time in Colombian history (Eaton

2005).304 This electoral reform gave both insurgent groups the ability to intervene directly in the

302 Interview 73, Tame, 2016

303 Interview 67, Saravena, 2016; Interview 73, Tame, 2016.

304 The first fiscal year that oil royalties became available to the intendency’s government in 1986-1987, Arauca’s budget increased twenty fold (Carroll, 2011).

184

management at the municipal and departmental level by fielding and supporting political candidates

and parties in local elections beginning in the mid 1980s and early 1990s.305 Whereas the FARC was

first to enter the political sphere in the piedmont, first through the communist PCC and later with the

UP in 1985, the ELN broke from its historic policy of electoral abstentionism in 1988 when it began

to support a political faction known as the Saravena Liberals.306 This group of politicians were fearful

of the rise of the UP in the piedmont, and offered the Domingo Laín front access to municipal budgets

if the ELN would in turn use its control of local JACs in the piedmont to deliver votes towards their

candidates (Peñate 1991). The strategy worked swimmingly, as the UP and the Saravena Liberals

virtually controlled the department’s municipal councils and mayoralties until the early 2000.307

By the early 1990s, such was the dominance of insurgent influence in municipal and

departmental politics that “between 1986 and 2002 there was a kind of co-government between the

ELN, the FARC, and the Liberal party which implicated a constant agreement of budgetary plans with

the insurgents”.308 Local peasants were expected to vote for whichever candidate their local JAC

presidents decreed, as it was clear that these were the preferred options of whichever insurgent group

maintained greater influence over their communities, whether in the plains or the piedmont.309 It came

as no surprise to anybody in the department when the departmental senator, Elías Matus Torres, was

arrested in Bogotá in the company of the commander of the Domingo Laín front, Armel ‘El Chino’

Robles Cermeño, in October 2000 (Semana 2002). The conversion of Arauca from an intendancy to

a formal department in 1991 marked the first formal gubernatorial elections for the territory, as the

ELN was able to mobilize enough votes in the piedmont to successfully elect the Liberal candidate,

305 Interview 21, Saravena, 2016.

306 Interview 71, Tame, 2016; Interview 1, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

307 Interview 95, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

308 Interview 1, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

309 Interview 57, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 72, Tame, 2016; Interview 47, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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Luis Alfredo Colmenares Chía, to the post. In three successive departmental elections until 2002, the

ELN’s handpicked candidates won gubernatorial contests. In exchange for the group’s electoral

support, the governors were expected to designate certain cabinet posts and ministries to the

insurgents, while also adhering to the ELN’s budgetary demands (El Espectador 2014).

The system of insurgent governance has been characterized as “armed clientelism”, or a system

where armed groups deliver local votes to allied politicians in exchange for increased access to

municipal and departmental budgets and resources (Peñate 1998). The insurgent co-optation of

municipal and departmental political institutions generated both increased public investment in public

goods and services throughout the department, while simultaneously engendering a massive growth

in wasteful spending, corruption, and overt embezzlement of public funds.310 Often, the ELN and the

FARC would force politicians to open their books so that insurgent-linked accountants could verify

that the public servant in question was not mismanaging or embezzling municipal resources (Pérez

Bareño 2015). The methods of the FARC and the ELN to channel public funds to their own coffers

were varied and complex, “[…]an intricate mix of extortion and complicity for the budgetary

appropriation between the armed predator and the unarmed agent” (CODHES 2008, 14).

The most common medium to channel departmental and municipal resources to the target

communities was the JACs and other civic organizations. However, the insurgent groups had also

mastered the ability to siphon off funds through third party contractors and a series of shell companies,

while also perfecting countless methods of questionable accounting in order to avoid any potential

problems with external auditors. In many cases the FARC and the ELN’s fronts in Arauca would keep

the peace with their insurgent competitors by sharing the spoils of their electoral success by ensuring

fixed quotas of public budgets for the losing side.311 For instance, it has been calculated that of the

310 Interview 70, Tame, 2016.

311 Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

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$1.2 billion (USD) of oil royalties which the department of Arauca received between 1986 and 2002,

some $200 million of these “[…]arrived directly in the hands of the ELN”. Furthermore, the ELN

maintained an “almost absolute control” over the administration of the remaining $1 billion and how

it was invested in the department (Semana 2002).

iv. The Civic Sphere

The sudden transformation of Arauca into a major oil-producing zone in the mid-1980s

prompted the Colombian state to expand its presence in the department at a time when public

spending increased massively. In the face of such enormous changes local civil society in the piedmont,

now supported by armed insurgent groups, drew on a proven repertoire and launched numerous

strikes during this period to demand concessions and improvements in basic services for their

communities. These mobilizations became a constant feature of Araucan society well into the new

millennium. One local community leader in Saravena explains the high level of coordination and

commitment required to sustain universal participation in these civic mobilizations participation: “To

launch a civic strike was demanding because often they would last months. For these, the entire

community joined together and provided food or whatever else was necessary. Communal kitchens

were established and everybody either helped cook or performed other tasks so that we could hold

firm”.312

The first two decades of insurgent consolidation in Arauca saw a complete co-optation of

regional civil society by both the FARC and the ELN. Within a short space of time these armed groups

had taken over the civic sphere to the extent that “the FARC and the ELN had absolute control in all

of the social spheres”.313 While there appears to be local consensus that “all these organizations were

influenced at some point by the guerrilla groups”, it is important to emphasize that despite the similar

312 Interview 65, Saravena, 2016.

313 Interview 64, Arauquita, 2016.

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demands and discourse, “it wasn’t the guerrillas who organized nor pushed civil society from the

beginning”.314 The insurgents emerged in a context with a diverse and highly active local civil society

(in the case of the piedmont) and thus first went about co-opting these local structures, and then

promoted the creation of new civic organizations in order to organize and regulate local communities

in the sub-region.315 Local community leaders who resisted or proved unwilling to work within the

new power dynamic were quickly exiled or eliminated by the FARC and the ELN.316

Unlike other regions of Colombia where the newly formed community action boards

“[…]functioned from the start as paternalist tools of Liberal and Conservative gamonales who supplied

or obtained the funds for their activities” (Zamosc 1986, 38), the wave of JAC formation in the

piedmont during the mid-to-late 1970s saw these village councils operate relatively autonomously

given the extreme lack of institutional presence. Between 1986 and 1990, the rise of the FARC in local

electoral politics through the group’s political party, the Patriotic Union (UP), scared politicians from

the Liberal party, some of whom went to the Domingo Laín front and proposed an alliance. In

exchange for protection from the FARC and local votes mobilized via the JACs under the ELN’s

control, these elected officials would in turn channel public resources back to these JACs for local

development projects (Peñate 1991). From this period onwards the strategy worked and in a great

twist of irony the consolidation of the FARC and ELN in the zone converted local JACs into

clientelistic vehicles that delivered votes in exchange for favors. Under insurgent control, only those

who were identified as followers of either group were able to participate in JACs which were under

that particular group’s flag.317 From this juncture onwards, the Domingo Laín front in particular

supported a strategy “to expand inside of the JACs in order to multiply its political projects”, a plan

314 Interview 68, Tame, 2016; Interview 48, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

315 Interview 50, Arauca municipality, 2016.

316 Interview 73, Tame, 2016.

317 Interview 98, Fortul, 2016.

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which saw numerous mayors and governors linked to the group hold office throughout the

department.318

Peasant cooperatives had maintained a presence in Arauca since the founding of

COAGROSARARE in 1963, an agricultural organization in which each peasant migrant was enrolled

by INCORA upon settling their homestead. These organizations were designed to “give the peasant

infrastructure that the state did not”, serving as an intermediary for peasant producers in order to

commercialize their products in other markets, while also providing credit and equipment to local

members.319 The sub-region experienced “a boom in cooperativism and of a solidarity economy” from

1984 onwards, helping peasants “to regulate price speculation in the market” amongst other things.320

One such cooperative was the Instituto de Mercadeo Agropecuario (IDEMA), which, apart from serving as

commercial intermediary for local peasants and outside markets, also sold basic consumer goods to

peasants at highly reduced prices.321 Similar to the JACs, many of the principal cooperatives were

secretly owned by the ELN,322 as COAGROSARARE in particular reportedly “was directed by the

guerrillas”.323

Over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, there was also a surge in trade guilds and agrarian

unions (gremios) which emerged throughout the Araucan piedmont. Serving a function similar to that

of trade unions, agricultural laborers who produced specific crops such as coffee, cacao, or plantains,

would form these civic organizations together to develop common marketing strategies and to lobby

local political offices for support in this endeavor.324 These trade guilds were also formed along more

318 Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

319 Interview 98, Fortul, 2016.

320 Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

321 Interview 23, Fortul, 2016; Interview 73, Fortul, 2016.

322 Interview 49, Arauca municipality, 2016.

323 Interview 23, Fortul, 2016

324 Interview 70, Tame, 2016.

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professional vocational lines and by specific interest groups representing youth leaders and other such

civic groups. Both the FARC and the ELN supported and co-opted these trade guilds for their own

ends, yet the FARC “weren’t as strong as the ELN in their influence and power” over these

organizations.325 The FARC in turn attempted to create new organizations to replace those it had failed

to co-opt. One of these, Sistema Agrario, which the FARC hoped would challenge the ELN-controlled

ANUC, ended in failure after the insurgent groups attempted to militarize its members.326 Of particular

interest to the guerrilla groups, were those trade guilds centered on youth mobilization and

development. The FARC used the Juventud Comunista (JUCO) to organize local youth in communities

under its control, whereas the ELN depended on the Asociación Juvenil y Estudiantil Regional

(ASOJER).327 Both groups also heavily infiltrated the local teachers’ guild, the Asociación De Educadores

Del Arauca (ASEDAR), which ensured that all local teachers throughout the region were vetted by

either the FARC or the ELN prior to taking their posts, whether in the municipal capitals or rural

communities.328

The preferred repertoire of social mobilization, in particular civic strikes, of the 1970s

continued into the 1980s, albeit now with armed non-state actors serving as “the guiding light” of

local civic organizations.329 With massive civic strikes convened throughout the piedmont and Arauca

in 1982, 1987, 1988, and 1989, the insurgent groups “ensured order and coordinated people to make

these demands”, indirectly claiming credit for the eventual provision of local infrastructure and public

services due to the fact that they “had taught locals how to make these claims”.330 By ensuring that

participation in the civic strikes was mandatory and that no peasants engaged in free-riding, the FARC

325 Interview 72, Tame, 2016.

326 Interview 98, Fortul, 2016.

327 Interview 99, Tame, 2016.

328 Interview 23, Fortul, 2016.

329 Interview 50, Arauca municipality, 2016.

330 Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

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and the ELN were able to use civic strikes as a means of challenging the state while providing much

needed goods and services to local peasant communities in the piedmont and beyond (Sarmiento

2015).331 Such was the efficacy of the insurgent-led social mobilizations that during the latter half of

the 1980s, the competition between the two insurgencies in Arauca led to the piedmont

“[…]becoming the region of the country which produced more civic strikes {than any other} during

the Barco government” (Peñate 1998, 23). The civic strikes yielded results, as one local activist in

Fortul claims that “everything we have in the region in regards to health and education has been

achieved thanks to the strikes and the mobilizations”.332

Figure 8. Character of Social Mobilizations in the Araucan Piedmont

Source: CINEP Database on Social Conflict

The plains region of Arauca did not experience the same level of insurgent institutionalization

as the piedmont, nor did it see the emergence of such a robust local civil society.333 The role of social

organizations such as the JACs or ANUC and the deployment of mass mobilizations were minimal in

rural peasant communities in the plains due to under-population, and greater integration with

neighboring Venezuela (Loy 1978).334 However, this is not to say that civil society did not exist in the

331 “During this era, even disabled people mobilized.” Interview 65, Saravena, 2016.

332 Interview 23, Fortul, 2016.

333 Interview 56, Arauca municipality, 2016.

334 Interview 65, Saravena, 2016; Interview 95, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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sub-region. Given the presence of the oil industry in Arauca municipality, Arauca City served not only

as the political capital of the department, but also the administrative locus for this extractive activity

and therefore national level unions related to oil production such as the Unión Sindical Obrera de la

Industria del Petróleo (USO) maintained a strong presence there. Hence due to the political importance

of the municipality, many departmental, sub-regional, and regional civic strikes which originated and

spanned the piedmont municipalities also occurred in Arauca City for this reason.335

Figure 9. Character of Social Mobilizations in the Araucan Plains

Source: CINEP Database on Social Conflict

The rise in power of the ELN and the FARC during the late 1980s and early 1990s coincided

with a shift in mass mobilizations, as the efficient civic strikes of the past gave way to a new form of

social protest known as armed strikes (paros armados), in which the insurgents would shut down all local

and regional transportation, trade, and commerce in a brazen public display of their power. Local

social organizations were used to coordinate and communicate during these shutdowns, as any

individual caught breaking the terms of the armed strike would be severely punished by the insurgents.

The transition from civil strikes to armed strikes was partially motivated by the increased inefficiency

of the former to obtain their goals, while local citizens preferred the briefer yet more intense armed

335 Interview 8, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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strike as it did not require such a sustained and taxing personal commitment.336 Reflective of this

intensification in the repertoire of collective action was the simultaneous shift in the nature of their

demands expanding beyond basic social services and infrastructure to civil rights.337 These changes

were a response to increased repression at the hands of the Colombian military and police in the sub-

region, a trend which only served to intensify the primary cleavage between local citizens and the

state.338

In the face of this increased confrontation between Araucan civil society and the ELN and

the FARC on one side, and the Colombian authorities on the other, the armed forces accused local

peasant activists and organizations of actively supporting the insurgents, whereas departmental civil

society claimed that the official authorities were only interested in protecting the interests of the oil

multinationals.339 Both claims were true to an extent, as local human rights committees such as the

Fundación Joel Sierra were explicitly forbidden from documenting and mobilizing against human rights

violations committed by the guerrilla groups, and instead focused on those carried out by the official

authorities (Garay et al. 2017).340 By the late 1990s, these civic organizations had well developed

transnational advocacy networks with national and international-level contacts. The role of these

networks should not be understated, as these proved to be particularly effective in publicly

condemning and curbing the Colombian military’s behavior, while also preventing nascent

paramilitary groups from gaining a foothold in the department, as evidenced by the Santo Domingo

bombing and the forced demobilization of the Convivir El Corral in 1998 (Carroll 2011).

C. Provisional Predation in Montes de María and the Araucan Plains

336 Interview 98, Fortul, 2016; Interview 65, Saravena, 2016; Interview 99, Tame, 2016.

337 Interview 21, Saravena, 2016.

338 Interview 50, Arauca municipality, 2016.

339 Interview 25, Tame, 2016; Interview 13, Arauquita, 2016.

340 Interview 98, Fortul, 2016.

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The Araucan plains is intrinsically connected to the Araucan piedmont territorially,

economically, and politically, and the two sub-regions were controlled, historically and presently, by

armed fighters from the same FARC and ELN fronts (the Domingo Laín front, 10th front). However,

the manner in which armed units from these insurgent fronts arrived and embedded themselves in the

plains shares more in common with the provisional predation of FARC and ELN fronts in Montes

de María than with the system of nested governance established by the insurgents in the piedmont.

This divergence in insurgent embeddedness between the plains and piedmont strongly suggests that

pre-existing agrarian social structures play a deterministic role on processes of insurgent

embeddedness in civilian populations. This section examines how insurgent groups emerged in

Montes de María and the Araucan plains at a moment when the antecedent conditions were not

favorable to the creation of an insurgent social order due to the highly stratified agrarian social

structures dominated by landed elites who opposed such a revolutionary project, organizational

endowments that served as barriers to insurgent embeddedness, and primary cleavages that proved

difficult for these armed groups to appropriate.

In Montes de María, the main social conflict pit peasant activists against the regional landed

elites, particularly with the advent of ANUC in the late 1960s, a contest which saw enormous peasant

gains made prior to the arrival of leftist insurgent groups. The arrival of insurgent groups in the 1980s

and 1990s saw them intervene unsuccessfully on behalf of the peasant class, as their targeted

persecution of landed elites only generated greater stigmatization against ordinary peasants. In

contrast, the Araucan plains were largely absent of any such class conflict, all of which meant that the

centuries old enmity between creole descendants and indigenous groups remained the primary

cleavage. Thus, when various insurgent groups inserted themselves into these zones in the late 1980s

and early 1990s, they found that the antecedent conditions were not conducive to them appropriating

the primary cleavage. Faced with such conditions, the guerrilla organizations prioritized control of the

194

territorial and economic spheres at the expense of the political and the civic spheres. While these

groups initially maintained decent relations with civilian communities in their zones of influence, this

quickly changed after they had consolidated their presence and they began to behave in a more

coercive and predatory manner towards the local peasantry, thereby weakening what hard and soft

support they did maintain.

Table 5. Armed Actor Control in Montes de María (1980-1996)

Territorial

Political

Economic

Civic

● Minimal Insurgent Control of Rural Villages, Highways, and Municipal Capitals (1980-1990)

● Substantial Insurgent Control of Rural Villages, Highways, and Municipal Capitals (1991-1996)

• Insurgent Abstention from Municipal and Departmental Politics

● Insurgent extortion and kidnapping of landed elites

(1980-1991) ● FARC control of

smuggling, extortion, kidnapping (1991-1996)

● Absolute FARC Control of

Population (1991-1996) ● FARC Repression of Civic

Organizations, and Mobilizations

● Moderate FARC Regulation of Social Life

Source: Author’s Elaboration

Vertical agrarian social structures, or those which “[…]counterpose groups and individuals in

situations differently related to the means of production” can generate tensions between the different

classes found within such dynamics, yet this is hardly a guarantor for violent revolt across time and

space (Arrighi, Hopkins, and Wallerstein 1989, 412; Aron 1950). In such unequal rural settings,

“[c]ontrol over land has served as an important component of control over people” (Fisiy 1992, 18).

The highly stratified vertical social structures found in Montes de María and the Araucan plains are

reflective of this fact. In the former region, the historic land tenure pattern favored regional latifundistas,

a trend that was exacerbated with the introduction of tobacco cultivation in the mid-19th century.341 A

regional expert describes the intentionality of such a distorted rural landholding system: “From the

colony until the republic, the concentration of land had a primordial purpose of preventing the

peasants from access to land in order to force them to sell their labor to the landed elites who were

341 Interview 93, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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accumulating all the available properties”.342 Furthermore, Montes de María historically has had “[…]a

conservative and traditional elite, which impedes the construction of a relatively mobile social structure

with the potential for advancement, and which on the contrary is the basis for a social order

characterized by inequality and exclusion” (PODEC 2011, 32). Similarly, the plains have long been

characterized by a vertical social hierarchy which evolved as a product of the large historic cattle

ranching estates introduced by the Jesuit missions. According to a teacher in Tame: “Plains culture is

more hierarchical and social relations are vertical: large landholders, administrators, and peons. The

landholders always arrive to review their properties in an airplane and then leave, but the administrator

runs the estate and also controls the peons”.343

Table 6. Armed Actor Control in the Araucan Plains (1980-2001)

Territorial

Political

Economic

Civic

● Absolute Insurgent Control of Rural

Villages, and Highways

● Incursions into Municipal Capitals

● Municipal and Departmental Politics Contested between FARC and ELN

● ELN control of contraband, kidnapping

● FARC control of coca, extortion, kidnapping

● Absolute Insurgent Control of

Population ● Minimal Insurgent Regulation of the

Civic Sphere ● Moderate Insurgent Regulation of

Social Life

Source: Author’s Elaboration

The pre-existing organizational endowments found in Montes de María were largely

dominated by ANUC. The monolithic, all-encompassing peasant organization spearheaded a highly

effective peasant campaign to occupy and break up thousands of idle estates across Montes de María

over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, making rival organizations such as FANAL and

FENSUAGRO largely irrelevant. As a regional human rights lawyer puts it: “ANUC monopolized all

the territory’s social capital”.344 Similar to how socio-political relations functioned in Montes de María,

342 Interview 101, Sincelejo, 2016.

343 Interview 74, Tame, 2016.

344 Interview 94, Sincelejo, 2016.

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ANUC adopted a “[…]bureaucratic style of vertical leadership” over the latter half of the 1970s, a

clientelist transformation that bred “[…]widespread resentment against the exclusionist attitudes of

the national leaders, who had allegedly imposed a system of elitist control that rejected all initiatives

and points of view that seemed to deviate from their own criteria” (Zamosc 1986, 179-180). Equally

problematic, the localized and restricted nature of land occupations in Montes de María limited the

level of interactions which local participants had with those outside of their own particular

mobilization, while the regional ANUC leadership were those who served as liaisons between peasant

activists on the ground.345 Quite simply, peasants in Montes de María “[…]did not interact within

multiplier institutions that related peasants to large numbers of others – others who might be quite

different from themselves- whom they never saw” (Migdal 1974, 57).

In the case of the Araucan plains, the pre-existing organizational endowments and capacity

for mobilization were minimal to non-existent. The extremely unequal land tenure pattern engendered

a highly dispersed rural population, which devoted itself to a pre-modern system of agricultural

production, a dynamic that precluded the need for local peasants to organize. According to one

regional expert: “The land was already cleared and thus collective action was not necessary and each

person looked after their property and their cattle. Collective action was not necessary. This did not

create a culture of solidarity. Peasant organization has no relevance there”.346 In the Araucan plains,

the peasantry accepted the status quo and never attempted to redress these inequalities in a collective

manner. When large landowners finally decided to erect fences in order to demarcate their ill-defined

properties in the final decades of the 20th century, this practice was not driven by pressures from

below, rather by inter-elite disputes, as a native to the plains recalls: “There weren’t any problems

345 Interview 77, San Jacinto, 2016.

346 Interview 95, Bogotá D.C., 2016

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between the elites and peasants. On the other hand, there were numerous conflicts over the

distribution of land between the same landowners, many legal battles”.347

Insurgent groups struggled considerably to appropriate these cleavages and secure local buy-

in from any meaningful constituency when they arrived in Montes de María and the Araucan plains.

In the case of the former, various smaller insurgent groups established a modest territorial presence

in the region over the second half of the 1980s, but the FARC upon arriving “claimed total control of

the territory until the paramilitary incursion”.348 The FARC similarly attempted to appropriate this

primary cleavage upon its arrival in the region by supplanting local ANUC leaders, a gambit which

ultimately failed. After the organization’s leadership initially rebuffed the FARC’s advances, the

insurgents began to threaten, persecute, and assassinate local peasant leaders for “the simple fact that

they wouldn’t serve them” (Pérez 2010, 168). After eliminating the local peasant leadership, the FARC

proved to be an ineffectual replacement: “The power of the guerrillas was consolidated as they started

to co-opt the role played by ANUC activists, although they didn’t do it well. The activists were always

people with much clarity, while {the FARC} began to issue their directives by way of fear” (Ibid, 170).

Similarly, the insurgents “always wanted to influence the JACs, but they never succeeded in totally co-

opting these institutions nor the community”.349 Rather than protecting or increasing their gains, the

FARC’s clumsy appropriation of the peasant cause fuelled elite rage at peasants whom they

increasingly viewed as supportive of the insurgent groups. As one peasant leader during this period

observes: “{The FARC} said they were fighting for peasant land, but I don’t know of any territory

won by the guerrillas” (Verdad Abierta 2010).

347 Interview 69, Arauca municipality, 2016.

348 Interview 31, Ovejas, 2016.

349 Interview 85, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

198

In the Araucan plains, the FARC and the ELN were able to establish territorial control over

vast expanses of territory with minimal manpower, yet this meant that they maintained low levels of

interactions with rural civilian communities.350 Neither group attempted to redress the longstanding

unequal landholding pattern between hato owners and peasants, nor were they expected to, although

both guerrilla bands explicitly targeted wealthier rural elites for kidnapping and extortion, two practices

which led to the decline of cattle ranching throughout the sub-region.351 Given the complete

dependency of the plains peasantry on landed elites for their livelihoods, this economic downturn had

adverse consequences for them as well.

Neither the democratic opening of the 1980s nor the arrival of insurgent groups to Montes de

María and the Araucan plains prompted any serious recalibration in how traditional politics were

conducted in these two cases. In the case of the former, the FARC largely promoted abstention during

this period, a practice that would only change with the arrival of the BHMM in the late 1990s. In

accordance with the long-standing clientelist tradition of how politics were conducted on Colombia’s

Caribbean coast, in Montes de María “local politicians only visited rural villages during campaigns and

never returned afterwards”.352 The socio-political character of the region remained “[…]a political

administrative system in which “rural gamonalismo” is assumed as a management model where the

institutions in charge of the provision of goods and services that society demands are permeated by

clientelistic-electoral practices to the detriment of citizens exercising their rights” (PODEC 2011, 33).

The Araucan plains similarly experienced little insurgent intervention into the political sphere during

this period. Municipal politics in Puerto Rondón, Cravo Norte, and Arauca municipality remained

under the control of the traditional cattle ranching elites affiliated with the Liberal Party. Over the

350 Interview 56, Arauca municipality, 2016.

351 Interview 57, Arauca municipality, 2016.

352 Interview 79, San Jacinto, 2016; Interview 30, Ovejas, 2016.

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course of insurgent institutionalization in the sub-region, these groups “never had much influence,

nor did they force people to vote for one particular candidate or to abstain from voting altogether”.353

Upon their arrival in both zones, the insurgent groups violently displaced whatever vestiges of

the state were present in rural communities, an act followed by the establishment of various base

camps to ensure territorial control. While some of these were located closer to rural villages than

others, the presence of these camps in rural Montes de María and the Araucan plains converted civilian

communities into “mobility corridors” for the insurgent fighters. Insurgent interactions with civilian

communities ranged from sporadic to constant as a result of the fighters constantly transiting between

different camps, generating a perception amongst landed elites and the military that all local peasants

were guerrilla collaborators.354 Prior to the counterinsurgent expansion into the zone in the late 1990s,

this territorial control enabled insurgents to protect rural habitants from violence perpetrated by the

Colombian military and proto-paramilitary groups (CNMH 2015; Pérez 2010).355 Yet, the arrival and

consolidation of rebel groups in Montes de María and the Araucan plains did not produce formidable

insurgent embeddedness in these zones. The insurgents failed to appropriate the primary cleavage in

these zones, and instead opted to prioritize their own goals over those of the peasantry and the landed

elites. Unable to provide comprehensive governance to civilian communities under their control, these

armed groups settled for a system of provisional predation, where they maintained control of the

territorial and economic spheres while neglecting the political and civic spheres. This strategic failure

left them deprived of widespread local buy-in from any meaningful constituency, and without the

organizational infrastructure they would require to both protect and control civilian populations while

confronting and resisting the arrival of counterinsurgent forces in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

D. Nested Governance in the Araucan Piedmont

353 Interview 56, Arauca municipality, 2016.

354 Interview 77, San Jacinto, 2016; Interview 40, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 36, Ovejas, 2016.

355 Interview 83, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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Many scholars of rebellion and revolution maintain that social stratification between dominant

and subjugated classes is a fundamental pre-requisite for successful armed mobilization (Moore 1966;

Hobsbawm 1975; Skocpol 1979). However, cases such as the Araucan piedmont demonstrate that

horizontal agrarian social structures are similarly capable of producing formidable insurgencies. The

robust insurgent social order established by the FARC and the ELN in the Araucan piedmont owes

much to the manner in which these armed groups emerged and consolidated their presence in the

sub-region. The insurgent groups in the piedmont first appeared at a moment when the antecedent

conditions were highly favorable to the formation of an insurgent social order insofar as the

homogenous character of the sub-region’s population generated greater unity and substantial

organizational endowments. Furthermore, the primary cleavage that came to circumscribe piedmont

society was one between local versus external interests, a social conflict between peasant activists and

the Colombian state that intensified dramatically with the increase of civic mobilizations and state

repression during the 1970s. The FARC and the ELN were successful in appropriating this cleavage

by assuming state functions in peasant communities while fully supporting their struggles against the

central government, a successful intervention which saw these insurgent groups establish a form of

nested governance in the piedmont by gradually taking control and regulating all local interactions in

the territorial, economic, political, and civic spheres over the course of the 1980s.

The emergence of the oil industry only served to exacerbate the primary cleavage, and the

insurgent social order strengthened as a result due to the FARC and the ELN’s ability to appropriate

and invest the surge in oil revenues generated from Caño Limón into local infrastructure and

development projects. The worsening cycle of violence and state repression provoked by the conflict

between the insurgents and the Colombian military only served to further bind civilians to the

insurgent social order by maximizing support for these armed groups who were perceived to better

serve local interests than the state. As the conflict intensified over the course of the 1990s, so did the

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level of hard and soft support for the FARC and the ELN in the piedmont, a dynamic that would

prove to be extremely difficult for counterinsurgent forces to break during the period of contestation.

Table 6. Armed Actor Control in the Araucan Piedmont (1980-2001)

Territorial

Political

Economic

Civic

● Absolute Insurgent Control of of Municipal Capitals, Rural Villages,

and Highways

● Insurgent Incursions into Venezuela

● Municipal and Departmental Politics Contested between FARC (UP) and ELN (Saravena Liberals)

● ELN control of oil industry, public contracts, contraband, kidnapping, extortions

● FARC control of coca, extortion, kidnapping

● Absolute Insurgent Control

of Population, Civic Organizations, and

Mobilizations ● Intense Insurgent

Regulation of Civilian Population

Source: Author’s Elaboration

The antecedent conditions in the piedmont which proved favorable to the creation of an

insurgent order were its horizontal agrarian social structure and multivariate organizational

endowments. Similar to other colonization zones in the Colombian periphery, the piedmont was

literally carved out of the jungles by displaced and land poor peasants from the Andean highlands with

very little help from the state. The peasant settlers “had to live under great adversity and construct

their own territory by knocking down the forest with human strength and collective effort”.356 The

directed settlement of the sub-region by INCORA ensured that newly arriving migrants did not claim

more than fifty hectares per family, establishing an equitable ownership of rural property. As one

Saravena native explains: “The piedmont population is multicultural, with more limitations and less

freedom than the plains due to geography. The relations are more horizontal. There was and is greater

equality and there are no great estates. The fertility of the soil affects the concentration of land, as the

more fertile it is, the less hectares are needed to produce”.357

356 Interview 95, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

357 Interview 74, Tame, 2016.

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The clear lack of pre-insurgent class conflict in the piedmont can be explained by the simple

fact that “there were no elites there”.358 In the absence of landed elites who might have assumed basic

regulatory and administrative functions, and facing the same daunting challenges presented by their

harsh environment, peasant migrants in the piedmont constituted “a population where peasant

organization was fundamental in establishing itself”.359 According to one prominent human rights

defender in the department: “The piedmont was a colonization zone settled in the 1960s, 1970s, and

1980s. The majority of the migrants were landless peasants who lacked basic services. Under these

conditions, social organizations were a key element for the development of the zone”.360

The vast array of civic organizations which emerged throughout the piedmont to help peasants

survive the precarious conditions served as “multiplier institutions”, vehicles which increasingly

brought peasants from vastly divergent communities together during municipal and inter-municipal

civic strikes, widening and deepening these cross-cutting civic networks far beyond those merely based

on kinship or village of origin (Migdal 1974). This diversity of civic organizations made sure that even

in the event that one particular organization faltered or became ineffective, there were multiple others

available to coordinate and direct local peasant collective action. Of equal importance, membership in

these civic organizations promoted a common group identity between detached isolated communities

throughout the piedmont which were increasingly bound to one another by their shared interests, a

pre-requisite “[…]which groups articulate and pursue”, and which “[…]significantly affect real

struggles for power” (Tilly 1978, 118).

The FARC and the ELN emerged in the Araucan piedmont when the Colombian state’s

presence was minimal. These groups used pre-existing organizational endowments and the

358 Interview 49, Arauca municipality, 2016.

359 Interview 95, Bogotá D.C., 2016; Interview 63, Arauquita, 2016.

360 Interview 49, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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mobilization capacity of the peasantry as anchors to embed themselves into these communities.

Whereas the FARC arrived at the invitation of the local Colombian Communist Party members, the

ELN emerged organically from the regional civic leadership, and thus already intimately understood

and shared the same enmity towards the state as the rest of the piedmont peasantry. For both nascent

insurgent fronts, appropriating the primary cleavage in support of the peasant cause proved a seamless

task given the prevailing context. The Colombian state was increasingly perceived as the problem

rather than the solution throughout the piedmont and civilians threw their full support behind the

insurgent project, a decision that Wolf (1969) describes as a strategic move embraced by peasants to

guarantee their livelihood in precarious contexts:

Perhaps it is precisely when the peasant can no longer rely on his accustomed institutional context to reduce his risks, but when alternative institutions are either too chaotic or too restrictive to guarantee a viable commitment to new ways, that the psychological, economic, social and political tensions all mount toward peasant rebellion and involvement in revolution. (xiv-xv)

The success with which the FARC and the ELN appropriated the primary cleavage in the

piedmont is evidenced by the concessions gained from the civic strikes over the course of the 1980s.

Previous mobilizations had failed in the sense that the state failed to deliver on its promises, yet with

insurgent backing these strikes began to bear fruit in the form of bridges, roads, electricity, schools,

and other public goods and services in the piedmont (Carroll 2011). By synchronizing group goals to

those of the broader peasantry, the FARC and the ELN became wedded to civilian communities in

the piedmont, providing these groups with a crucial base of support that gave them the ability to

supplant the state in the sub-region. The benefits of expansive hard and soft support meant that the

FARC and the ELN “[…]could acquire almost everything they needed from the populace,

progressively attenuating government authority and creating “counter-institutions” to provide what

the government could or would not” (Long 2006, 22).

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Neither the insurgents nor the civilian population wanted the sub-region to remain isolated

and cut off from the rest of Colombia. Rather, they like other revolutionary challengers before them,

sought “[…]to enter the polity” (Tilly 1978, 54). The FARC and the ELN achieved the control of

territory and people within short order of arriving in the piedmont, as the insurgent groups

“[…]became the arbiter of conflicts between local settlers, and brought with it arbitrary practices,

firing squads, and inflexible and draconian codes of conduct for combatants as much as for the civilian

population which is still maintained to this day” (El Espectador 2014). The insurgent groups in the

piedmont quickly became interlocutors between peasant communities and the central government by

co-opting the civic sphere and the abundance of organizational endowments to serve as both a local

governance mechanism and a means of contesting the state, all of which enabled the gradual takeover

of local political institutions and productive activities.

The insurgent groups encroached further and further into the political and economic spheres

following the construction of the Caño-Limón oil complex and pipeline. This coincided with the

decentralization of Colombia’s political institutions in the mid-1980s, a reform that “[…]provided

armed groups with the opportunity to develop their activities and establish much better terms with

those municipal governments than with national institutions” (Boesten 2013, 247). The insurgent

social order in the piedmont strengthened considerably due to the FARC and the ELN’s ability to co-

opt municipal and departmental political institutions, a feat they achieved largely through their

deployment of local JACs in local elections to appropriate and invest the surge in oil revenues

generated from Caño Limón into local infrastructure and development projects demanded by peasants

during countless civic mobilizations (Peñate 1998).361 By addressing local grievances as their own,

insurgent groups in the Araucan piedmont gained legitimacy and expanded the reservoir for hard and

361 Interview 13, Arauquita, 2016; Interview 23, Fortul, 2016.

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soft support amongst the civilian population. Arjona (2017) breaks down the importance of

appropriating the primary cleavage:

By giving the community what it lacks, the group gives locals a reason to form positive beliefs about its involvement in local affairs. Locals are more likely to cooperate with a group that they believe works for their common good by both obeying and offering voluntary support. Second, by ruling over both public and private life, the armed group becomes a very powerful local actor. Because of its capacity to decide on many local affairs and bring about change, locals may want to be on good terms with the group. Those willing to have access to power, for example, are more likely to cooperate. And finally, as the armed group gains more sympathizers in the locality, others have incentives to cooperate in order to obtain the approval and recognition of their fellow residents. (767)

The success of the insurgent groups in controlling every aspect of piedmont society,

particularly in forcing concessions from oil multinationals and departmental political institutions, only

served to further exacerbate their confrontation with the state. The highly skewed distribution of oil

rents which favored the plains over the piedmont generated a widespread perception of relative

deprivation, as piedmont habitants “saw that the oil companies were taking all of the wealth and

weren’t contributing to local society”.362 The rise in military repression against peasant activists fuelled

the widespread perception that the state priority in Arauca was the protection of the oil industry, a

belief that ended up “creating greater loyalty to the armed groups”.363 Both the FARC and the ELN

took advantage of this climate by encouraging the pre-existing polarization between local peasant

communities and the state. This was a key component of the ELN’s revised ‘Popular Power’ (Poder

Popular) strategy devised in the 1980s, which viewed peasant civic organizations as the key to their own

social bases (UC-ELN 1990). Similarly, the FARC’s 10th front, in accordance with the expansive

agenda established at the insurgent group’s seventh conference in 1982, sought to cultivate greater

social interaction with peasant communities under their control by encouraging the creation of

‘solidarity nuclei’ (nucleos de solidaridad) in order to co-opt local organizations. The benefits for the

362 Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

363 Interview 65, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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insurgent groups were numerous, as each passing abuse led to the delegitimation of the state as the

veritable authority in the eyes of the sub-region’s habitants.364

The FARC and the ELN’s appropriation of the primary cleavage and their continued ability

to sustain it, even after many of the initial grievances related to lack of state investment were addressed

in the 1980s and 1990s, was crucial to keeping piedmont civilians bound to the insurgent order.365

Despite the hard fought gains made by the piedmont insurgents and civil society, the increased state

repression against these mobilizations sustained the peasant-state cleavage by shifting the focus away

from demands centered on public goods and services to the defense of human rights (Carroll 2011).

Participation in the mobilizations was expected of everyone in these communities, regardless of

gender, age, ethnicity, or religion, as a peasant activist from rural Tame describes the immense

sacrifices made by common people in the face of frequent state violence: “All the nearby communities

joined together and fought for their rights. It wasn’t easy because people shed their blood, lost their

freedom and lives, but despite this they helped to develop our communities. When people went to the

strikes, they were willing to fight and give their lives.”366 Sustained polarization strengthened insurgent-

peasant identities by providing a common adversary, a fact accentuated by Gruber and Pospisil (2015):

“Identity is a crucial factor in any conflict setting because it differentiates ‘us’ from ‘them’, thus shaping

and being shaped by the conflict at the same time” (231).

This cycle of escalation only served to draw the insurgent groups and the piedmont population

closer together. By the 1990s, the FARC and the ELN had established a robust insurgent order, one

that was firmly entrenched in the piedmont. A newspaper article from this period captures this

insurgent hegemony:

They are the real power, the para-state. They settle conjugal and family conflicts, they select the teachers and through armed pressure the towns have electricity. People aren’t afraid as they are accustomed to living with

364 Interview 95, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

365 Interview 47, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

366 Interview 75, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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the guerrillas. The para-state of Arauca is a territory prohibited to everybody, the Army, the Police, the departmental and national government, the Liberals and the Conservatives, the corporations…for everything that doesn’t have the blessing of the guerrillas. There are kilometers and kilometers of highways under the control of armed subversion. On the highway that leads from Arauca’s capital to the {village} of Panamá de Arauca, there is an enormous sign written with white letters on a green background that says: Vehicular transit is forbidden from 7pm to 5am. Simón Bolívar Guerrilla Coordinating Board. (El Tiempo 1992)

The insurgent groups’ ability to insert themselves between the piedmont population and the state,

serving as an armed interlocutor by administering and regulating all formal and informal processes in

the territorial, economic, political, and civic spheres gave the FARC and the ELN complete

populational control over civilians. The state’s violent yet ineffective attempts to break these peasant-

insurgent linkages over the two decades preceding Democratic Security Policy only served to fortify

this level of control, a group dynamic which Durkheim (1961) suggests is the product of violent

contention:

When a society is going through circumstances which sadden, perplex or irritate it, it exercises a pressure over its members, to make them bear witness, by significant acts, to their sorrow, perplexity or anger. It imposes upon them the duty of weeping, groaning or inflicting wounds upon themselves or others, for those collective manifestations, and the moral communion which they show and strengthen, restore to the group the energy which circumstances threaten to take away from it, and thus they enable it to become settled. (459)

Of equal importance, when people are united by a common cause, identity, or adversary (or

any combination of the three) and they endure sustained levels of highly polarized confrontation, it

becomes more difficult over time for individual members or groups to break away from their specific

group due to sunk costs and extreme group pressures. For piedmont residents during this period,

neutrality was not a viable option for civilians while defection was an offense punishable by death.

This escalation of revolutionary commitment seen in the piedmont is well described by Levitsky and

Way (2013) in path dependent terms when they analyze the resiliency of revolutionary party structures

elsewhere in the world:

[I]ntense polarization sharpens “us-them” distinctions, strengthening within-group ties and fostering perceptions of a “linked fate” among party cadres. Where cadres have participated in prolonged violent struggle, they are more likely to view party membership in “moral” terms, and to frame choices about cooperation or defection in terms of loyalty rather than a simple material calculus. The polarization generated by revolutionary wars often persists into the post-revolutionary era, effectively “trapping” potential defectors

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within the ruling party. When the opposition can be credibly linked to historic enemy and when abandoning the ruling party is viewed as disloyalty or even treason, the cost of defection will be high. (9)

By the time the counterinsurgent expansion into the department began with the 2001

paramilitary incursion and the ascendance of Álvaro Uribe the following year, relations between the

civilian population and the authorities “were non-existent” in Arauca, largely due to the strict and

highly effective prohibition maintained and enforced by not only the FARC and ELN, but also by the

entirety of the piedmont civilian population. According to a prominent trade unionist and activist

from the piedmont: “If the insurgency has done anything in regards to the civilian population, it has

been to train us to distance ourselves from the armed forces because we have been classified as being

the enemy’s collaborators. For this, the same community has been hurt by the military as they have

attacked us”.367

367 Interview 50, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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Chapter Five. Period of Contestation in Montes de María

“The first method, labeled "tightening the encirclement" (or "tightening the noose"), was to be used when the

encircled area was small and the enemy weak and consisted of a simultaneous advance around the entire perimeter. The second, or "hammer and anvil," technique involved an advance by only a portion of the

encircling forces, while the remaining elements waited for the guerrillas to be driven upon their defensive positions, which were often established along some barrier or obstacle. The third approach consisted of

sending one or more forces into the encircled area, splitting it into two or more smaller pockets, which were then reduced piecemeal. Finally, the fourth tactic, which was to be used when the guerrillas had established a strong fortified position, employed a powerful assault force to overrun the main guerrilla bastion. Once this

had been achieved, the encircling forces would advance to mop up the remaining resistance.”

- Andrew J. Birtle, U.S. Army counterinsurgency and contingency operations doctrine, 1942-1976 (2006, 140)

“But when there is no king to conquer, no capital to seize, no organized army to overthrow, and when there are no celebrated strongholds to capture, and no great centres of population to occupy, the objective is not so easy to select. It is then that the regular troops are forced to resort to cattle lifting and village burning and that

the war assumes an aspect which may shock the humanitarian. “In planning a war against an uncivilized nation who has, perhaps, no capital,” says Lord Wolseley, “your first object should be the capture of

whatever they prize most, and the destruction or deprivation of/which will probably bring the war most rapidly to a conclusion.” This goes to the root of the whole matter. If the enemy cannot be touched in his

patriotism or his honour, he can be touched through his pocket.”

- Colonel C.E. Callwell, Small Wars - Their Principles and Practice (1906, 40)

Amidst a backdrop of skyrocketing violence and intense polarization, the Colombian state and

its paramilitary allies began to push back against insurgent groups during the late 1990s and early

2000s, forcing many sub-national armed units of the FARC and the ELN into retreat. The period of

contestation began with three simultaneous events: the nationwide paramilitary expansion beginning

in 1997, the increased role of the United States in the funding and training of the Colombian military

from 1999 onwards, and the ascendance of Álvaro Uribe Vélez in 2002.

The preceding period of insurgent institutionalization throughout Colombia generated a

massive stigmatization against civilians living in rural zones controlled by such groups. The widespread

perception amongst regional landed elites, paramilitary groups, the armed forces, and the central

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government in Bogotá was that virtually everybody living in these territories provided some form of

hard or soft support to the insurgent groups. This perception overlooked the fact that disobedience

or non-cooperation with insurgent rules and directives in such spaces was punishable by a severe if

not lethal sanction. Civilians living under insurgent rule thus found themselves doubly condemned, as

they needed to obey and respect insurgent social codes, yet in doing so they were branded as

sympathizers and supporters of the guerrilla groups by the state authorities. Eric Fichtl (2004)

describes the pervasiveness of this stigmatization at the time:

One recurrent theme in accusations of collaboration is “guilt by association,” though in Colombia’s boundless war, most victims are never afforded a chance to prove their guilt or innocence. In this climate, if one person is accused of collaboration with an armed faction, his or her entire family is often considered suspect. This principle has frequently been applied to the entire populations of towns, especially by the state security forces in reference to towns and villages in guerrilla-dominated areas.

Historically, the Colombian military has been tasked with directly confronting insurgent

groups, yet regional commanders were all too often quite content to remain in their bases while the

insurgents controlled the countryside due to the lack of pressure from above (Porch and Delgado

2010). The key function of paramilitary groups on the other hand has been “[…]to develop repressive

operations against the civilian population and to implement a model of counterinsurgent warfare in

which paramilitaries have proven to be an effective instrument”, an objective achieved through the

“[…]physical elimination, disappearance, and forced displacement of community leaders and their

social bases” (González et al. 2003, 61).

In the context of the current civil war, the nationwide paramilitary expansion under the AUC

occurred years before the negotiation of Plan Colombia or the implementation of Democratic Security

Policy. There is an obvious need to distinguish between the formal armed forces and other state-

parallel paramilitary groups, but in light of the fact that both share a common enemy, a relatively

similar cause, and collaborated in a variety of ways, my model holds that the period of contestation

begins when the first counterinsurgent groups inserts itself into insurgent controlled space in an

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attempt to combat its rivals. As seen from these two cases, paramilitary groups and the military do not

necessarily expand into such spaces simultaneously and hence this periodization needs to be clarified

as such.

Counterinsurgent forces did not merely arrive and converge in insurgent controlled zones such

as Montes de María and Arauca by way of historical accident. Rather, paramilitary bosses and top

military officials targeted regions that were heavily stigmatized as guerrilla havens. Upon first entering

these territories with the goal of dismantling the established insurgent social order, the prevailing

paramilitary strategy was driven by an oversimplified perception which made no distinction between

combatants and non-combatants. The majority of paramilitary blocs throughout Colombia avoided

direct militarily engagement with insurgent groups when they could. Rather, their function was to

“cleanse” insurgent spaces, or to eliminate the social bases of support for these groups found in the

countryside by way of massacres, selective assassination, and especially forced displacement

(González, Vásquez, and Bolívar 2003; Gutiérrez-Sanín 2019).

More so than the Colombian military at this juncture in time, this paramilitary expansion

stemmed the guerrilla growth which had begun in the early 1980s, as this particular state-paramilitary

symbiosis “[…]proved to be unprecedentedly efficacious in cutting the guerrillas’ access to the

population by attacking the guerrillas’ social base through land dispossession, threats, homicides and

massacres” (Dufort 2017, 341). The paramilitary strategy of “draining the sea” was practiced widely

throughout the country, making Colombia one of the world’s largest producers of internally displaced

persons during the period of contestation (CODHES 2010). There is substantial variation between

the manner in which disparate paramilitary blocs functioned and how they forged relations with

official state agents and regional landed elites alike, yet there was a playbook for how they entered

insurgent controlled spaces and used violence. Throughout Colombia, formal military patrols would

deploy in order to clear a specific zone of locally based insurgent units, and paramilitary forces would

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arrive in the immediate aftermath to conduct brutal cleansing operations against the civilian

population. Their extra-lethal repertoires of violence were intentional and designed to destroy the

social fabric of peasant communities in insurgent controlled zones, a strategy explained by Alejandro

Reyes Posada et al. (2010):

Indiscriminate massacres serve as a catalyst to scare the population which does not identify with the paramilitaries and to organize new bases of support in their favor with those persons who don’t flee. The massacre was thus a military technique to select adversaries or friends where civilians displaced by the terror exercised by the “liberators” implicitly confessed their adhesion to the guerrillas, and as a consequence, justified a posteriori their victimization and the theft of their land. (103)

In most cases, these particular communities were targeted collectively for merely having

shared the same proximate space as insurgent groups. Having cleansed these spaces of perceived

sources of insurgent support, “[…]the paramilitaries brought in their own cadres: the latter’s role was

to ‘protect’ the population against guerrilla influence” (Rojas 2009, 228). Paramilitary blocs thus served

“[…]as a rearguard that consolidates - with an antisubversive program - the territories taken by the

army” (Gutiérrez Sanin and Barón 2005, 6). These vacated properties would then be recycled among

paramilitary sponsors, supporters, or by the fighters themselves in a reconfiguration of the pre-existing

regional land tenure pattern (Human Rights Watch 1998).

Figure 10. Forced Displacement in Montes de María and Arauca

Source: Author’s Elaboration (Data from Observatorio del Programa Presidencial de Derechos Humanos y Derecho Internacional Humanitario de la Vicepresidencia de la República)

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The importance of paramilitary groups to counterinsurgency outcomes in Colombia cannot

be understated, as their efficacy owed much to the amount of local buy-in that these groups obtained

from landed elites and peasants in contested spaces. State-parallel militias such as those found in

Colombia possess advantages that state-manipulated militias do not. Distant and recent history is full

of state-manipulated militias which defected to the insurgents once they received their weapons and

training (Galula 1964; Tucker 2015). In contrast, autonomous paramilitary groups are frequently

mobilized organically by constituencies disaffected with insurgent predation and can draw on local

networks and resources for the counterinsurgent cause.

The successful negotiation of Plan Colombia in 1999 coincided with the AUC expansion

throughout Colombia, and quickly turned the South American country into one of the largest

recipients of U.S. military aid in the world. The dramatic infusion of military hardware and expertise

sought to modernize the Colombian state’s capacity to combat drug cultivation and trafficking first

and foremost, an undertaking which largely focused on the modernization and professionalization of

the country’s underdeveloped military (Porch and Delgado 2015). With the election of Álvaro Uribe

Velez in mid-2002, the Colombian military was finally unleashed against leftist insurgent groups under

the new president’s Democratic Security Policy in August of the same year. Within his first month in

office Uribe selected two “zones of rehabilitation and consolidation”, or heavily contested guerrilla

zones, to test out his new counterinsurgency strategy: Montes de María and Arauca (Delgado 2015;

Leal Buitrago 2006; Kline 2009). Over the course of his first term in office, the Colombian military

expanded its presence into every sub-national conflict zone in an attempt to confront and expel leftist

insurgent groups from these spaces. The efficacy of the Colombian state’s counterinsurgency efforts

in rural war zones was heavily shaped by the preceding efforts by paramilitary blocs and their local

allies to dismantle insurgent organizational infrastructure and their networks of civilian support.

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The following two chapters chapter break down the period of contestation in Montes de María

and Arauca, and warrants mention that each region possesses different temporal parameters. While

the period of contestation in both Montes de María and Arauca first began with the paramilitary

incursion, the arrival of the distinct AUC units in these two regions occurred at different junctures.

Furthermore, the success of the joint state-paramilitary project in Montes de María led to the expulsion

of insurgent groups from the zone by late 2007, bringing a long overdue peace to the region. In

contrast, Arauca remained a heavily contested zone throughout Uribe’s two terms in office. By the

time he finally left office in 2010, the FARC and the ELN still controlled the department. In these

two chapters I analyze the disparate effects of state expansion into these regions, how these

paramilitary incursions into Arauca and Montes de María unfolded, the subsequent expansion of

conventional forces into their territory beginning in late 2002, how insurgent groups were affected by

and how they responded to these enormous challenges to their established rule, before analyzing the

final counterinsurgency outcomes.

A. Evaluating Counterinsurgency Outcomes in Montes de María

The Colombian state massively expanded its presence into Montes de María and Arauca in

2002 with the intention of expelling the guerrillas once and for all from their strongholds throughout

Colombia. The counterinsurgent strategy based on clearing, holding, and consolidating territory that

had previously been controlled by armed insurgents proved largely successful in Montes de María, yet

a few key municipalities – El Carmen de Bolívar and Ovejas in particular – remained highly contested

until 2006. A brief analysis of municipal homicide rates for every one hundred thousand residents in

Montes de María, a useful metric to ascertain the stability (or lack thereof) of a given location, reveals

the efficacy of Democratic Security Policy in reducing violence in this region. As Figure 11

demonstrates, the homicide rates in San Jacinto, El Carmen de Bolívar, and Ovejas experienced

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fluctuations due to the ebb and flow of the local conflict, yet all declined markedly over the same

period of time, thus indicating a notable improvement in security.

Figure 11. Homicide Rate per 100 000 Residents in Montes de María (1990-2013)

Source: Author’s Elaboration (Data from Observatorio del Programa Presidencial de Derechos Humanos y Derecho Internacional Humanitario de la Vicepresidencia de la República)

The difficulty considering the homicide metric in isolation is that it does not capture non-

lethal forms of violence deployed by armed actors such as forced displacement, kidnapping, and

disappearances. As such, homicide rates, while helpful, need to be augmented by other indicators of

armed conflict. It is possible to develop an accurate idea of the level of control exercised between

competing actors by comparing and triangulating qualitative accounts from local residents, secondary

analyses conducted by Colombian research institutes, and other quantitative sources of data on violent

actions initiated (e.g. armed actions and confrontations) committed at the municipal level by the

Colombian military, insurgent groups, and paramilitary organizations. Unlike homicides, armed

actions require a higher level of logistical coordination and collective action from specific actors and

therefore represent not only the presence of competing actors, but also the intensity of the armed

conflict in a given place at a particular moment in time.

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Figure 12. Armed Actions in Montes de María (1998-2013)

Source: Author’s Elaboration (Data from Observatorio del Programa Presidencial de Derechos Humanos y Derecho Internacional Humanitario de la Vicepresidencia de la República)

According to Figure 12, El Carmen de Bolívar and Ovejas witnessed a rise in these attacks

between 2002 and 2006, only for these to fall off dramatically afterwards, whereas San Jacinto

maintained comparatively low levels of armed confrontation during the same period. These descriptive

statistics largely concur with a study conducted by the Conflict Analysis Resource Center (Centro de

Recursos para el Analisis de Conflictos – CERAC), a Colombian think tank specializing in the study of the

domestic armed conflict and other violence. CERAC’s typology examines how the armed conflict

affected each and every municipality in Colombia from 2000 until 2012. While two of the three

municipalities in question in Montes de María were deemed to have been “strongly affected” by a

“high intensity” level of armed confrontation between opposing actors during this period, the conflict

was classified as ‘interrupted’ in Montes de María.

Table 8. State of Conflict and Outcome per Municipality in Montes de María (2000-2012)

Municipality State of Conflict Intensity Result

San Jacinto Interrupted Conflict Low Intensity Lighly Affected & Interrupted

El Carmen de Bolívar Interrupted Conflict High Intensity Strongly Affected & Interrupted

Ovejas Interrupted Conflict High Intensity Strongly Affected & Interrupted

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Source: CERAC Typology by Municipality of the Armed Conflict

The success of the state expansion campaign in Montes de María was very visible within the

region and beyond. A local community leader in El Carmen de Bolívar remembered that prior to

Uribe’s first term, “the situation and public order was terrible, there was a lot of fear. The guerrillas

painted their graffiti on houses and made incursions into the municipal capital. People didn’t leave

their houses after 8pm. There were threatening flyers, and the highway was closed after 6pm and

nobody could travel anywhere”.368 A community leader from San Onofre similarly recalled that travel

before Uribe was extremely difficult, if not impossible due to the insurgent and paramilitary control

of the highways. But from 2004 onwards, “that all changed. One could travel at night to Cartagena or

Sincelejo at night without any fear”.369 A peasant farmer in the high mountain of San Jacinto similarly

credited Democratic Security Policy for improving security in his rural community completely, stating

emphatically that: “Uribe’s government was the best. Thanks to him we could recuperate our land in

our village after having been displaced. Like that, law and order finally arrived as four thousand men

entered the zone to combat the guerrillas. Uribe said in his first term that he was going to save Montes

de María and he did”.370 Most everybody interviewed recognized the targeted assassination of Martín

Caballero as signaling the death knell of the regional insurgencies. Former Colonel Colón described

this event in simple terms: “After October 24th, 2007, not a single living guerrilla remained in Montes

de María. Not a single FARC, ELN, or ERP militant”.371

B. Counterinsurgent Victory in Montes de María

The arrival and territorial consolidation of both the FARC and the ELN in the late 1980s and

early 1990s caused great panic amongst landed elites in Montes de María. As a result, large landholders

368 Interview 28, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

369 Interview 42, San Onofre, 2016.

370 Interview 78, San Jacinto, 2016.

371 Interview 97, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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and cattle ranchers convened in Sucre with regional political bosses and paramilitary leaders from

neighboring Córdoba to form the Bloque Héroes de los Montes de María (BHMM) in 1997. The incursion

of this paramilitary group into the heart of the region began in 1997 with a string of massacres in rural

communities. Based in the coastal zone and the zone below adjacent to the Magdalena River, the

paramilitaries operated in tandem with the 1st Marine Infantry Brigade of the Colombian Navy and

conducted incursions into supposed guerrilla strongholds to rid the insurgents of their social bases of

support. The methods employed were some of the most brutal ever in the context of the Colombian

conflict, as between 1997 and 2002 Montes de María became the region with one of the highest levels

of forced displacement and massacres in the country. The paramilitary strategy was based on making

periodic incursions into guerrilla-controlled territory in the high mountain and the zone below in order

to conduct selective killings, forced displacement, and massacres, all with the aim of destabilizing their

opponents. The end result of this campaign was that by the time Álvaro Uribe came to power in 2002

and converted the region into one of his “zones of rehabilitation”, Montes de María had arguably

become Colombia’s most violent killing field.372

Figure 13. Insurgent Trajectory and Counterinsurgency Outcome in Montes de María

Source: Author’s Elaboration

The state expansion campaign in Montes de María succeeded in severing local communities

from the insurgent groups, eventually expelling the insurgents from the region within five years of its

implementation. Beginning in 2004, the local attachment of the Colombian Navy began to directly

372 Interview 26, Cartagena (2016).

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confront the BHMM, a strategic decision that both forced the paramilitaries to demobilize the

following year in 2005, while also generating local buy-in from many civilians who had been brutally

victimized by this particular group. The ELN was not able to resist and retreated from the region in

2003-2004, while the FARC’s fronts initially withstood the onslaught, but were increasingly

surrounded and cut off as the war ground on. Initially, the FARC succeeded in avoiding a direct

confrontation with the Colombian military, although the increased level of rebel desertions gave

regional military commanders the intelligence they needed to locate and strategically bomb these

insurgent refuges. Finally, in late 2007 both the 37th and the 35th fronts virtually collapsed with the

targeted assassination of local commander Martín Caballero, a feat which saw all surviving members

either disperse elsewhere, or surrender to local authorities.373 With a superior numerical advantage and

a vastly improved technological capacity, the Colombian armed forces made good use of intelligence

and collaboration which came from a local peasantry that had been extremely traumatized by the

paramilitary incursion while simultaneously feeling betrayed by insurgents.

i. The Paramilitary Incursion

The BHMM owes its formation to the confluence of local, regional, and national level

paramilitary trends. By the early-to-mid 1990s, the entrance of the FARC had greatly weakened most

of these first generation proto-paramilitary groups, and as a result, regional landed elites formed their

own CONVIVIR organizations during the Samper administration in a futile attempt to stem the

guerrilla tide (Verdad Abierta 2010). Despite these efforts, the FARC had firmly consolidated itself in

the region by 1996 and was committing acts of violence against large landholders with far greater

frequency. The AUC had sponsored the formation of two powerful blocks to the west and east of

Montes de María - Bloque Córdoba and Bloque Norte – and the Castaño brothers then centered their

373 Interview 87, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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attention on the formation of the BHMM in 1997. According to Verdad Abierta (2010):

“Paramilitarism {in Montes de María} was born in 1997 at a meeting on the farm, Las Canarias, owned

by the ex-governor Miguel Nule Amín in the rural area of Sincelejo…It was convened to seal a

counter-guerrilla alliance between a hundred farmers and politicians with some paramilitary bosses

who came from the neighboring department of Córdoba”.

The BHMM was able to quickly assemble hundreds of soldiers by incorporating the remnants

of the proto-paramilitary clans and the regional Convivir apparatus into its fold, while also recruiting

local peasants, insurgent desertors, army guides, and common criminals. The BHMM’s leadership

represented the rank-and-file’s makeup, as all except the top-ranking commander, Edward ‘Diego

Vecino’ Cobos Téllez, were born and raised in Montes de María. His three top sub-commanders –

Rodrigo ‘Cadena’ Mercado Peluffo, Uber ‘Juancho Dique’ Bánquez, and Román Zabala – were all

native sons of the region. It warrants mention that whereas Diego Vecino was the top ranked

commander, he was more the ‘political’ head of the BHMM while Cadena served as the military

commander for the paramilitary group (Tribunal Superior de Bogotá Sala de Justicia y Paz 2017). As

a young man, Cadena began was a member of the proto-paramilitary group, Los Rodríguez, in his home

village of Macayepo, before eventually rising to assume a leadership role within the new organization

(Verdad Abierta 2010).

The BHMM was divided into four fronts, all ostensibly under the central command of Diego

Vecino, who in turn had the full support of regional politicians, paramilitary bosses from neighboring

Córdoba and Magdalena departments, and other powerful figures. These fronts were broken down

into sub-regional spheres of influence, including the Gulf of Morrosquillo (coastal zone), Canal de

Dique (coastal zone/Cartagena), the Plains of Bolívar and Sucre (zone below), and La Mojana (south

of the region). Each front served as a quasi-autonomous group in their zone of influence, staffed with

young men largely recruited from Montes de María or other communities on Colombia’s Caribbean

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coast.374 Many recruits were insurgent defectors, who after abandoning the FARC and seeking refuge

in local military installations, would then be passed along to the BHMM.375 Young men and women

from the region, some of whom were minors, were motivated by various considerations ranging from

vengeance to economic enticements, while others were simply tricked or coerced into enlisting.376

According to Sarah Zukerman Daly’s (2016) index, the BHMM was a locally configured group, as

upon demobilization in July 2005, some 58% of the 598 demobilized fighters were from Montes de

María, while 67% of the block’s troops remained in the region after disbanding (106-107).

The BHMM first arrived, settled, and established a network of bases in those municipalities

adjacent to the Magdalena River and the coastal zone, sub-regions which boasted a substantial

presence of large landholders, cattle ranchers, and drug traffickers.377 Not only did these municipalities

boast organic allies and sponsors, but the FARC’s presence in these particular communities was not

as consolidated as it was in either the high mountain or the zone below, providing the BHMM with a

launching pad to make incursions, effectively creating a cordon around the heart of the larger region.378

The BHMM also maintained a considerable presence in municipal capitals such as Córdoba Tetón,

San Juan Nepomuceno, El Guamo, San Onofre, El Carmen de Bolívar and San Jacinto, as the armed

group were also present in the closest metropolitian areas, Sincelejo, Barranquilla, and Cartagena.379

The paramilitaries made inroads into these more densely populated communities by first arriving

dressed as civilians in order to cultivate local informants so that they could determine who was

supporting the insurgent groups with information or supplies.380 Having identified these potential

374 Interview 39, San Jacinto, 2016; Interview 34, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016;

375 Interview 30, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

376 Interview 33, Ovejas, 2016.

377 Interview 82, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

378 Interview 88, Sincelejo, 2016.

379 Interview 87, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

380 Interview 42, San Onofre, 2016.

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targets, the paramilitaries then entered these towns in unmarked vans and would either assassinate

these targets on the spot, or forcibly abduct and make them disappear permanently.381

Figure 14. Conflict Events Committed by Paramilitary Groups in Montes de María (1988-2007)

Source: Author’s Elaboration (CNMH 2009, 238) Paramilitary incursions into the high mountain and the zone below were conducted in a

familiar pattern where the Colombian military would enter and clear a particular area first, and upon

departing would then be replaced by a paramilitary patrol that would brutalize the community. In

other instances, various paramilitary detachments from different fronts would arrive simultaneously

in a targeted community from every direction, overwhelming any insurgent or civilian resistance that

was offered.382 After torturing and killing those who had previously been singled out by informants as

insurgent collaborators, the paramilitary troops would frequently appropriate all the livestock they

could find before leaving.383 En route to the specified destination, the paramilitaries would often kill

whomever they came across, either to prevent them from warning others of their approach, or to

simply demonstrate their power and authority. As one community leader from Macayepo recalls:

“Various times they would come up the mountain to attack guerrilla camps and upon descending again

381 Interview 82, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

382 Interview 82, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

383 Interview 77, San Jacinto, 2016.

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would kill everything they found”.384 These ‘caravans of death’ were a common tactic of the BHMM,

with the entry and escape routes leading to and away from the various massacre sites littered with

selective assassinations.385 Another common tactic of the BHMM during these incursions into the high

mountain and zone below was to establish temporary roadblocks and checkpoints on highly travelled

rural access roads, where they would detain, interrogate, and kill certain travellers who were deemed

suspicious by the counterinsurgent forces.386Many civilians were targeted merely for transiting

frequently between the urban and rural areas. For example, in January 2000, over a dozen young men

who sold snacks informally on the buses to and from El Carmen de Bolívar were detained, abducted,

and disappeared by the BHMM (Verdad Abierta 2014).387

From its arrival, the BHMM violently targeted what remained of Montes de María’s civic

leadership, killing Guillermo Montero Carpio, the regional president of ANUC, in broad daylight in

Sincelejo on June 11th, 1997 (El Tiempo 1997). During this period, ANUC and the regional peasant

movements “became completely invisible” due to the escalating violence, a fact which was reflected

by the almost total decline in civic mobilizations.388 Other civic leaders and political activists from the

left were systematically hunted down by BHMM hitmen in Montes de María. The armed group not

only carried out extensive assassination attempts against former municipal mayors and council

members within the region, but also extended its scope to urban centers as far away as Barranquilla,

killing several former militants and leftist activists who had taken refuge there (Corporación Nuevo

Arco Iris 2014).389 The practice of killing community leaders sowed greater fear and broke down

communal trust between peasants living within these communities because locals understood that

384 Interview 84, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

385 Interview 29, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

386 Ibid.

387 Interview 42, San Onofre, 2016.

388 Interview 101, Sincelejo, 2016.

389 Interview 93, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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somebody amongst them was providing information to the BHMM. One night in San Rafael (Ovejas),

the local BHMM detachment arrived in the dead of night to eliminate a notable local civic leader.

Instead of searching for him at his family residence, the assassins went directly to his mistress’s home,

where the intended target was in fact staying that particular night. Following his assassination, there

was “mutual distrust between neighbors who had once trusted each other with everything”.390

In addition to selective assassination, the BHMM also generated massive levels of forced

displacement in Montes de María. Driven by the counterinsurgent ethos of “draining the sea to kill

the fish”, the BHMM forcibly vacated rural zones of civilian populations in order to deny the FARC

and other smaller insurgent groups the vital support networks on which they depended to operate.

Through a brutal deployment of selective and indiscriminate violence, the paramilitary group quickly

converted Montes de María into one of Colombia’s highest regional producers of internal displaced

persons. In the case of Bajo Grande, most habitants were forcibly displaced in 1996, and when many

tried to return a few years later, this provoked the paramilitaries to burn the entire village to the ground

in an act of reprisal.391 Often, this pattern of forced displacement occurred in communities which had

previously experienced land conflicts between large landholders and their proto-paramilitary groups

on one side, and peasant smallholders on the other, providing a mechanism for landed elites to assert

their interests at the expense of the peasantry.392

However, the sudden increase in paramilitary massacres was arguably the key factor in

emptying the countryside in Montes de María. From the time of its arrival, the BHMM would commit

the majority of these massacres on its own, but when the armed group needed assistance from more

established blocks elsewhere on the coast, it could depend on their support. This was exemplified by

390 Interview 36, Ovejas, 2016.

391 Interview 80, San Jacinto, 2016.

392 Interview 81, San Jacinto, 2016.

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a series of extremely violent massacres committed in the rural village of El Salado located in the zone

below of El Carmen de Bolívar between 1997 and 2000. By the 1990s, El Salado had become one of

the largest flashpoints in the broader region, with fierce conflict ensuing between the FARC and the

proto-paramilitary group, Los Méndez, which was backed by the Cohens, the town’s most wealthy

landowning family. In 1995, Santander Cohen was under siege from the insurgents and the head of

the local Battalion of Marine Infantry came to his rescue. However, the FARC ambushed the rescue

squad as it left the village, killing Cohen, the commander, and twenty-eight other soldiers (Semana

2020). El Salado permanently became stigmatized as a guerrilla village in the eyes of the Colombian

military and paramilitary fighters in the region.

On February 16th, 2000, three disparate groups of paramilitaries from the BHMM, Bloque

Norte, and Bloque Córdoba, three hundred men in total, descended upon El Salado from every road

leading to the village.393 Led by insurgent deserters, the different paramilitary troops proceeded

towards El Salado on foot, confiscating all livestock they found and killing any civilian they

encountered. The local FARC detachment quickly found out about the impending advance and set

out to confront the various paramilitary factions descending upon El Salado. After realizing how

outnumbered they were however, the insurgents retreated rapidly and warned locals who remained in

the village center to flee immediately (CNMH 2009). By the morning of February 18 th, the

paramilitaries arrived in El Salado in full force. One survivor describes what ensued:

They got everybody together in front of the church, identified themselves as the AUC, and they told us that they were under orders to burn the town to the ground and kill everybody. They told us that we were guerrilla auxiliaries. The first five people killed were singled out by informants, but after that it turned into a game of chance: they forced us to say a number between one and twenty and if you said the wrong number, they would kill you. If people cried for their family members, they were also killed. Fear consumed all of us as the paramilitaries stayed for three days after the massacre. In this time, they raped women. All of these deeds were accompanied by music as they took all the instruments out of the House of Music and they celebrated every death accordingly and showered themselves in rum and beer. The most astonishing thing is that from the 16th until the 20th, the paramilitaries were inside of El Salado controlling and terrorizing people and we weren’t allowed to cry, we weren’t allowed to bury the victims, and despite how close the Malagana military base was, two hours by car, and the one in Corazal, an hour and fifteen minutes by car, the proper authorities

393 Interview 40, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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never mobilized, neither the Marine Infantry or the National Army, to help us in our time of need. The worst was about fifteen minutes to half an hour after the paramilitaries left, the armed forces arrived via the exact same road they had left on. The community saw how some of the soldiers who entered had actually been at the massacre as paramilitary combatants.394

By the time the various paramilitary factions had left the village, sixty residents had been brutally

murdered, some by dismemberment and impalement. In the aftermath of the second massacre in three

years, El Salado and its outlying areas became a virtual ghost town due to the massive exodus of local

residents (CNMH 2009).

Similar to paramilitary blocks elsewhere in Colombia, the BHMM frequently deployed sexual

violence against men, women, and children in Montes de María. Rape would often be used by

paramilitary forces during its incursions into communities to commit selective assassinations, forcibly

displacement, and massacres. During the massacre in El Salado, many women were forced to strip

naked and dance in front of their husbands, some of whom were subsequently abused sexually by

paramilitary fighters. One young woman who was pregnant was impaled for allegedly being a guerrilla

informant, while another sixteen-year old named Nayibis Contreras was hung from a tree and stabbed

with bayonets for supposedly dating a guerrilla commander stationed nearby (Verdad Abierta 2009;

Semana 2008b). In contrast to leftist insurgent groups which maintained strict prohibitions against

sexual violence towards civilians, the BHMM did not possess such regulations against this type of

predatory behavior. One mid-ranking paramilitary commander, Marco ‘El Oso’ Tulio Pérez, who

presided over the rural coastal community of La Libertad in San Onofre, was a notorious culprit of

such crimes. He would reportedly rape underage girls in front of their families and abduct others and

keep them against their will for days (Verdad Abierta 2008).395

While the BHMM principally sought to vacate the countryside of any potential social networks

of support for the regional insurgent groups, the paramilitary block also directly clashed various times

394 Ibid.

395 Interview 45, San Onofre, 2016.

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with the FARC, the ELN, and even the Revolutionary People’s Army (Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo

– ERP).396 Between 2000 and 2002, there were eighteen registered confrontations between the BHMM

and insurgent groups, mainly the FARC, with notable battles being fought in rural communities

throughout the region. These confrontations produced dozens of combatant deaths, while also

forcibly displacing numerous civilians from their communities in the process, and were based more

on these various armed actors attempting to assert “strategic control over vital {geographic} points”,

in particular the local highway system and natural corridors, than any determined effort to eradicate

their opponent entirely (Echandía 2006: 203; Cantor 2018). Following the beginning of the AUC’s

nationwide ceasfire under the terms of its negotiations with the Uribe administration in December

2002, the BHMM and the FARC avoided entering one another’s territorial strongholds in an unofficial

pact of non-aggression (Porch 2012).

The entrance and consolidation of the BHMM in Montes de María occurred with the overt

and explicit support of the regional authorities, namely the 1st Marine Infantry Brigade of the

Colombian Navy and the National Police. According to one peasant leader in the high mountain of

San Jacinto, “the military never touched the paras, they would pass right by them and let them continue

on their way”.397 Similar to other regions of Colombia, the military and their paramilitary alies would

refer to one another as “cousins” (primos), and one such benefit provided by such an alliance was that

casualties inflicted upon the insurgent groups by the BHMM were attributed and claimed by the 1st

Brigade.398 In other instances, it has been established that members of formal state apparatuses

disguised themselves as paramilitaries in order to participate in massacres, as some individuals

396 The ERP was a breakaway faction of the ELN in Montes de María that formed in 1996 and inhabited a few rural spaces in the high mountain before demobilizing in early 2007.

397 Interview 77, San Jacinto, 2016.

398 Interview 89, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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effectively moonlighted for the armed group when they were not on duty.399 Many of those formal

agents who did not directly participate in paramilitary operations would nevertheless provide the

BHMM with classified intelligence to carry out selective killings (Verdad Abierta 2009). Such was the

level of intelligence sharing that local civilians “weren’t able to denounce the paramilitary abuses

against the community because they would find out immediately”.400 Those who did attempt to report

such crimes committed by the BHMM would often be intercepted, abducted, and killed immediately

after leaving the police station or military base where they had registered their complaint.401

Even though coca was neither cultivated nor processed in the region, Montes de María

nevertheless possessed various potential points of departure to export this illegal merchandise abroad,

as somewhere between thirty and thirty-five tons of cocaine were exported annually from the Gulf of

Morrosquillo between 2002 and 2004 (Verdad Abierta 2010).402 BHMM commanders organized

shipments through different coastal routes, serving as middlemen between producers in nearby coca

regions and foreign clients who arrived in the Gulf of Morrosquillo to purchase their narcotic

shipments (Verdad Abierta 2009). While much of the BHMM’s revenues were derived from drug

trafficking, the armed group were also actively involved in extortion schemes of large cattle ranchers,

local merchants and transportation workers, and the lucrative practice of embezzling public funds

from departmental and municipal budgets and public contracts (CNMH 2012; Verdad Abierta

2010).403

In contrast to the insurgent practice of largely abstaining from municipal and departmental-

level politics, the BHMM was founded with the overt support of regional political elites and this

399 Interview 79, San Jacinto, 2016; Interview 80, San Jacinto, 2016.

400 Interview 42, San Onofre, 2016.

401 Interview 43, San Onofre, 2016.

402 Interview 97, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

403 Interview 46, San Onofre, 2016; Interview 42, San Onofre, 2016; Interview 36, Ovejas, 2016.

229

remained the case throughout the armed group’s tenure in Montes de María.404 This relationship was

based upon electoral needs and the effective deployment of violence. After the paramilitaries

consolidated their presence in Montes de María, the armed group quickly eliminated any elected

official or aspiring candidate who opposed their project.405 In order for its preferred candidates to win,

the BHMM used widespread voter intimidation tactics and vote buying to ensure the desired outcome,

as in one telling example only one candidate ran in the 2003 mayoral elections in San Onofre. Quite

simply, no other candidates were allowed to participate.406 Reflecting a nationwide trend, the BHMM

did its part to bring out the vote for Álvaro Uribe’s 2002 presidential campaign by publicly threatening

to kill anybody who did not vote for him, and by also casting false votes using identification cards of

people who were living outside of Colombia, or those who were long deceased.407

The region’s political elites were directly involved in the planning of paramilitary operations

and other assorted acts of violence. Political barons who held seats in the National Congress such as

Miguel Nule Amín and Álvaro García Romero were directly involved in the planning and execution

of the paramilitary massacre in Macayepo, yet perhaps no other politician in Montes de María blurred

the line between elected representative and paramilitary fighter more than Salvador Arana. In his

capacity as governor of Sucre between 2001 and 2003, Arana – who would later serve as Álvaro Uribe’s

ambassador to Chile - ordered the assassination in March 2003 of the then-mayor of El Roble,

Eudaldo León Díaz Salgado, because Díaz had publicly denounced Arana as corrupt. The governor

was also directly implicated along with Cadena in the previous killing of Yolanda Paternina, who had

been investigating the Chengue massacre (Semana 2008). One individual who served as Arana’s driver

during this period, Jairo Antonio Castillo Peralta, later came forward and testified to something that

404 Interview 42, San Onofre, 2016; Interview 46, San Onofre, 2016.

405 Interview 46, San Onofre, 2016.

406 Interview 89, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 35, Ovejas, 2016; Interview 43, San Onofre, 2016.

407Interview 45, San Onofre, 2016; Interview 46, San Onofre, 2016.

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was an “open secret’” in the region, namely “that the real paramilitary bosses in the region were for

many years the politicians” (Verdad Abierta 2008). Over the course of the BHMM’s tenure in the

region, the para-political alliance completely dominated politics from municipal councils to the

election of departmental governors, and national-level congressmen and senators. The extent of the

parapolítica scandal in Montes de María was extensive, with some thirty-five politicians indicted and

tried for their links to the BHMM, eight of whom were former mayors, seven ex-councilmen, a former

departmental legislator, three former governors, three former congressmen, three active congressmen,

and three sitting senators elected for the 2006-2010 term, and two mayors and five councilmen who

were elected to office in 2007 (Verdad Abierta 2009).

The BHMM’s relations with civilians can best be described as predatory and repressive, as the

group instantly surpassed the FARC in terms of its cruelty and willingness to arbitrarily use violence

under any and every circumstance imaginable. As one native of El Carmen de Bolívar puts it: “At least

with the guerrillas you could negotiate, whereas with the arrival of the paramilitaries everything got

worse, the situation completely deteriorated”.408 One consequence of this was the loss or

decomposition of the ‘social fabric’ (el tejido social), as neighbors ceased to trust or confide in one

another due to the fact that certain individuals opted to collaborate with the paramilitary block.409 In

El Rincon del Mar, where Cadena forced townspeople to regularly attend his meetings, locals obliged

out of fear, because as one fisherman put it “our own people sold us out”.410 A similar binding

mechanism forced civilians in other communities under the BHMM’s control to wittingly become

informants. In the municipal capitals of Zambrano, El Carmen de Bolívar, San Juan Nepomuceno,

San Jacinto, Córdoba Tetón, and El Guamo, locals would automatically report the presence of

408 Interview 34, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

409 Interview 32, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

410 Interview 45, San Onofre, 2016.

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outsiders in the town to the nearest paramilitary detachment for fear of being reported on by some

other resident for not doing so (Verdad Abierta 2011).

With such a system of populational control firmly established in areas under its occupation,

the BHMM enacted a strict and coercive regulatory regime of civilian communities throughout Montes

de María. All social and familial conflicts were adjudicated and resolved by the local paramilitary

commander. One former JAC president in rural San Onofre describes this dynamic: “If you had a

problem with your wife, it wouldn’t be resolved by the Police Inspector. The paras would sort it out

with weapons and they would put you to work cleaning for a week, or whatever else they felt like”.411

All local community meetings were explicitly prohibited, and numerous locals from across the region

remember that the paramilitaries established a curfew that was rigidly enforced, as from 6pm onwards

people were not even allowed to sit in front of their homes.412 Apart from these restrictions, the

BHMM frequently expropriated civilians of their personal property and the paramilitary bloc had no

particular interest in local economic development or sustaining a basic standard of living for those

civilians living under their mandate. Local agriculture stagnated due to the inability of those living in

towns and even villages to travel short distances to tend to their plots in rural areas, all of which

“generated poverty because the paras changed our livelihoods”.413 A displaced farmer from rural San

Jacinto affirms these dramatic economic changes: “Economically it was impossible to live in San

Jacinto. There was no source of employment whatsoever. The community didn’t dare try to take our

products outside the municipality. Consequently, this created a local dynamic of barter”.414

ii. State Expansion

411 Interview 46, San Onofre, 2016.

412 Interview 89, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 32, San Jacinto, 2016.

413 Interview 44, San Onofre, 2016.

414 Interview 41, San Jacinto, 2016.

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In the end, the BHMM succeeded in emptying out the countryside in Montes de María, with

close to 120 000 people fleeing their rural homes for the relative safety of nearby municipal capitals

and cities (PODEC 2011). Verdad Abierta (2010) describes the effect of this displacement: “The

paramilitary expansion destroyed everything except for the guerrillas, which was supposedly its

principal objective…It destroyed the poorest families, leaving hundreds of widows and orphans with

their souls and estates in ruins. It dispossessed peasants of their land and crushed what was left of

local leadership. It asphyxiated any political renewal that was starting to come to life”. However, the

BHMM’s extensive dirty war throughout the region paved the way for Uribe’s eventual success in

expelling the insurgent groups from Montes de María. Initially, the region was identified and targeted

by the Uribe administration due to the widespread stigmatization that it was an insurgent haven. One

resident in El Carmen de Bolívar recalls that the state’s authorities claimed that in the region “of every

three men, two are guerrillas”.415 One former journalist from El Carmen de Bolívar affirms that “there

were a lot of guerrillas settled in the zone”, and that Uribe was driven by the strong electoral support

he received in Montes de María to deliver on the election promises he made “to counterattack the

insurgent groups in the region”.416 Many others highlight the fact that Uribe selected Montes de María

to be a test site for his security policy because he along with the military high command “decided to

create a strategy to show results in a zone where they could be achieved”.417

In reality, much of the massive forced displacement caused by the paramilitary incursion in

the late 1990s and early 2000s was driven by regional landed elites to carry out a counter-agrarian

reform to violently take back land won by peasant activists over the course of the 1970s and 1980s

(Duica 2013). When the state expanded its presence into Montes de María, instead of redressing these

415 Interview 31, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

416 Interview 83, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

417 Interview 36, Ovejas, 2016.

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extensive land seizures, it sided with those responsible for the dispossessions by “forcing local

peasants to leave the countryside and sell their lands at a loss”.418 A doctor from El Carmen de Bolívar

says that with Democratic Security Policy, “there was more security to protect the land than the actual

community itself”.419 According to one peasant leader from Chengue (Ovejas): “It was a strategy to

demonstrate results at the international level to attract an injection of capital while enabling the

entrance of entrepreneurs with the goal of buying land. The objective responded more to the clearance

of the zone so these businessmen could enter and cultivate mega-crops like African palm and teak”.420

Ex-General Rafael Colón of the Marine Infantry’s 1st Brigade during this period deconstructs Uribe’s

intervention in Montes de María: “Uribe’s biggest challenge was to show the country that the

government was present throughout the territory and that the FARC was not going to maintain its

military capacity in places where kidnappings, illegal checkpoints, and other crimes were daily news.

There were also very strong political interests and many wealthy cattle ranchers around the Gulf of

Morrosquillo. It was a strategic zone with political and social conditions that needed to be attended

to”.421

Thus within Álvaro Uribe’s first month in office, the military’s powers were expanded

dramatically at the expense of the civil liberties and freedoms of the region’s habitants with the

introduction of a variety of new restrictions.422 During Uribe’s first year in office, his government

outlined the Integrated Strategy for Highway Security (Estrategia Integral de Seguridad en Carreteras), which

sought to counteract any threats posed by armed non-state actors or criminal groups to Colombia’s

highway system (República de Colombia 2003). In Montes de María, the most notable change was the

418 Interview 92, Ovejas, 2016.

419 Interview 34, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

420 Interview 30, Ovejas, 2016.

421 Interview 97, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

422 Interview 35, Ovejas, 2016.

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state’s instant takeover of the major highways traversing the region (Troncal del Caribe, Troncal del

Occidente) by establishing a series of heavily armed military checkpoints. Prior, travel throughout the

region was impossible due to the FARC’s ubiquitous presence on the main highways and rural roads

alike (Porch 2012). After the official authorities successfully reclaimed control of these roads, the

regional military and police placed intense restrictions against nocturnal travel, implementing a curfew

from 6pm in the evening until 6am in the morning, a restriction that would only be lifted four years

later in 2006.423 The expansion of these military checkpoints not only served to regulate traffic and

assert control over the regional highway system, but also as a means of collecting intelligence and

cutting off the insurgent groups’ access to food and other supplies. This was done through rigorous

controls placed on the amount of food, medicines, batteries, cigarettes, and portable radios that rural

inhabitants were allowed to take from urban centers back to their small towns and villages.424 At the

final checkpoints controlled by the Colombian government, soldiers maintained detailed records of

how much each family consumed every week, and strictly regulated the amount of goods and

consumables each passing civilian was transporting to their communities.425 If an individual was

carrying more than their weekly allowance of goods, then the surplus would be confiscated and

returned only the following week.426

According to a former general, prior to Plan Colombia: “Montes de María was the land of

nobody. Not the navy, not the army, not the police. Some bases were set up there but they didn't do

anything”.427 Existing military installations were located in Corazal, Malagana, Sincelejo, and Coveñas,

while the National Police maintained an ineffective presence in most municipal capitals. Following the

423 Interview 29, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 88, Sincelejo, 2016.

424 Interview 29, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

425 Interview 40, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

426 Interview 77, San Jacinto, 2016.

427 Interview 101, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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implementation of Plan Colombia and later Democratic Security policy, patrol bases and smaller

installations were installed in San Jacinto, San Juan Nepomuceno, el Guamo, Córdoba Tetón, La

Cansona (El Carmen de Bolívar), Chalán, Ovejas, and San Onofre. Apart from these, the Colombian

armed forces channeled greater resources into patrolling, and by extension, controlling the Magdalena

River and the Dique Canal, while also increasing security of the Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline and

two communication towers located at Cerro Maco and Cerro la Pita. This increase “allowed for more

profound operations and permanent patrols which meant greater control of the territory”.428 Whereas

in 2000, the region could only count on one thousand police and military personnel, by 2004 this had

risen dramatically to eight thousand armed authorities (Cantor 2018).

As was the case of the zone of rehabilitation and consolidation in Arauca, the Constitutional

Court ostensibly prohibited the extension of the security initiative in Montes de María in early 2003

after only eights months of implementation. In reality, however, the militarization of the zone

continued throughout the remainder of Uribe’s time in office (PODEC 2011). The expansion of the

armed forces coincided with the entrance of various specialized judicial bodies to develop and

prosecute cases against suspected insurgent collaborators, most notably the District Attorney’s office

(Fiscalía General de la Nación - FGN), the Central Command of Judicial Police and Intelligence (Dirección

Central de Policía Judicial e Inteligencia – DIJIN), and a newly created Elite Group unit (Grupo Élite) whose

responsibility was to track down and detain suspected insurgent auxiliaries429 The implementation of

Democratic Security policy in Montes de María also saw the creation of the informant network (red de

cooperantes) in civilian communities to prevent and prosecute potential criminal acts, and the

development of the rewards program (programa de recompensas) to pay informants for information which

prevents “[…]terrorist attacks or the capture of members of illegally armed groups” (República de

428 Interview 97, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

429 Interview 36, Ovejas, 2016; Interview 41, San Jacinto, 2016.

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Colombia 2003). Under this system, the potential rewards which informants could claim were based

on the military’s valuation of the targets themselves. The third measure was the renewed efforts of the

national government to induce and incentivize members of armed groups to turn themselves in and

demobilize voluntarily, as per the conditions outlined in the Presidential Decree 1228 of 2003.

Based largely in rural communities, the network met with mixed results as in some cases

informants were given military training and were converted into anonymous military guides called

‘caratapadas’ due to their faces being covered in order to shield their identities. They would in turn

accompany military patrols to rural villages during raids and point out purported insurgent

collaborators to their handlers.430 In numerous cases, peasant community leaders ended up becoming

informants themselves, a fact which devastated what remained of regional civil society during this

period due to these individuals’ expansive knowledge of local dynamics.431 A local leader from El

Salado echoes this, stating “the first thing we lost was trust in other people and in the institutions in

our own community. That’s how the social fabric deteriorated so badly”.432 Similarly, a community

leader from rural San Onofre cites the informant network as having “generated distrust within the

community, between friends and family. It produced a decomposition of the social fabric”.433

Numerous others claim the informants network was successful in their particular communities due to

the financial incentives, although many used the program to settle personal scores or to simply provide

misleading information about innocent people in order to collect the reward.434 While the network

“was an excellent strategy in itself”, it ultimately suffered from “a lack of quality control of information

to check whether it was true or false”.435 From 2002 onwards, there was a marked increase in the

430 Interview 84, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 35, Ovejas, 2016.

431 Interview 43, San Onofre, 2016.

432 Interview 40, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

433 Interview 46, San Onofre, 2016.

434 Interview 92, Ovejas, 2016.

435 Interview 97, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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number of arbitrary detentions and mass arrests in Montes de María. According to official assessments,

some 328 people were captured in twenty-six separate mass arrests orchestrated by the district

attorney’s office between 2003 and 2004 in Bolívar department, of which 231 were eventually released.

Most of these individuals were arrested and detained based on the word of paid informants. Tellingly,

a majority of the accused “[…]exercised leadership and the defense of rights or fulfilled tasks which

guaranteed the subsistence and continued presence of peasants in rural zones difficult to access” (El

Espectador 2017).

While the success of the informant network remains in question, two other intelligence-

gathering initiatives proved instrumental to the Colombian military’s eventual counterinsurgent

success in Montes de María. The first of these was tied into the promotion of the desertion and

demobilization initiative promoted by the national government throughout the country.436 Despite the

serious risks and challenges associated with insurgent desertion, an act punishable by death within all

of the active insurgent groups in the region, many rank and file and even middle ranking commanders

attempted to escape. Upon surrendering to the official authorities, they were detained for up to one

month in the nearest battalion where they were extensively debriefed by military intelligence officials

(Araujo 2008).437 The second initiative was not necessarily designed as an intelligence-gathering

strategy, although it clearly became one during its implementation throughout the region. Although

numerous displaced peasant communities attempted to organize their collective returns (retornos) to

their abandoned villages and towns prior to 2002, these attempts became far more frequent under the

Uribe administration. Previous attempts at a large-scale return were almost always thwarted by the

BHMM and the FARC alike. However, the armed forces began to accompany these displaced peasant

populations back to their communities in order to protect them from any potential attacks from armed

436 Ibid.

437 Interview 87, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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non-state actors. Following the massacre and mass displacement in Macayepo, that village was virtually

abandoned. However, most peasants found the living conditions in Sincelejo more intolerable and

sought to return. They were only able to do so by collaborating with the Colombian military to evict

the insurgent groups from their community. One peasant leader from this village describes this

process:

When Uribe became president, his government began to look for displaced peasants from Macayepo in Sincelejo and he gave us the option to return under one fundamental condition: we had to help combat the guerrillas. The Armada provided total security for us and they began to transport us in helicopters to return to our land. In light of the help provided by the government, the return began in 2004 and people from Macayepo decided to arm ourselves to confront the guerrillas, as we had a large amount of resentment and hate for them. The government paid three million pesos for every guerrilla killed in action. This prompted people from Macayepo to turn into guides because many members of the Armada hired us to tell them where the guerrillas were camped and to show them all the different routes and corridors. To serve as guides, we had to camouflage ourselves and they trained us militarily, even teaching us how to detect anti-personal mines. If we didn’t collaborate with the government, they threatened to not provide any security for the process of our return. In this context, Macayepo’s people weren’t able to leave alone to go anywhere, nor to work. We always had to be with soldiers who protected us because we were completely stigmatized as being paramilitaries and the insurgents wanted to kill us.438

The regional armed conflict changed markedly over the course of 2003 as the Armada’s

command structure experienced an important rotation. In early 2003, Admiral Guillermo Barrera

relocated his headquarters from Cartagena to the municipal capital of San Jacinto at the orders of

President Uribe. Almost simultaneously, Colonel Rafael Colón assumed control of the 1st Brigade.

Both men set out to learn from the failures of the zone of rehabilitation and consolidation initiative.

Despite the infusion of new military resources under Plan Colombia and Uribe’s Democratic Security

policy, the 1st Brigade of the Marine Infantry achieved minimal operational success against leftist

insurgent groups prior to the shakeup of the command structure. The ascendance of Barrera and

Colón in 2003 saw the two military commanders dramatically altering the focus of the Armada’s

operations by channeling the newfound military might of the 1st Brigade against both the BHMM and

the FARC with equal ferocity. Whereas from 1997 until 2003, the regional armed forces overtly

collaborated with the BHMM when conducting operations in Montes de María, from 2003 onwards

438 Interview 84, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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the regional military command began to disrupt the paramilitary bloc’s economic networks, while

actively trying to capture and prosecute high-ranking BHMM commanders such as Marco ‘El Oso’

Tulio Pérez, who was arrested and jailed in 2003. The very visual manner in which the 1st Brigade

combated the regional paramilitary structures generated an unprecedented amount of civilian goodwill

for the military in Montes de María (Porch 2012).439 As a result of the nationwide demobilization of

the AUC under the Justice and Peace Law (La Ley de Justicia y Paz), the BHMM formally demobilized

in a ceremony in María La Baja in July of 2005.

The successful persecution of the BHMM by Colón and his troops ultimately proved

instrumental in the Armada’s subsequent battle against the remaining leftist insurgent groups in the

region. The paramilitary demobilization prompted more peasants to return to their rural communities,

albeit under the protection of the armed forces.440 From October 2003 onwards, Colonel Colón had

been waging what he called ‘the battle of Aromeras’ against the FARC’s 37 th front in an extremely

inhospitable rural zone of El Carmen de Bolívar, Zambrano, San Jacinto, and San Juan Nepomuceno

(Araujo 2008). The increased military pressure directed against the FARC’s 37th front in the Aromeras

culminated in Operation Neptune (Operación Neptuno) in June of 2004, waged by the Neptune Task

Force (Fuerza de Tarea Neptuno) with 13 counterguerrilla and intelligence organisms and a Special

Forces battallion (GILES) attempted to dismantle the Che Guevara company. However, the

insurgents had vacated the zone prior in anticipation of the operation, demonstrating the FARC’s

highly developed intelligence network in the region while underscoring the difficulty the armed forces

maintained in supplying troops with basic supplies and water in these rural expanses (Porch 2012).

439 Interview 45, San Onofre, 2016; Interview 84, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

440 Interview 28, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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According to one displaced peasant from San Jacinto, 2004 marked a breaking point from that

moment onwards “the guerrillas began to withdraw due to the high military investment”.441 The FARC

had been reduced from 500 armed combatants to 220 in a matter of years, with the remainder being

killed, captured, or demobilized, while kidnappings dropped from 131 in 2002 to 30 some two years

later (Semana 2004). Apart from the increased number of displaced peasant returning to their rural

communities, there were also other signs of greater civilian collaboration with the state authorities at

this juncture. Similar to the usage of ‘caratapadas’ in Macayepo, the Colombian Marines increasingly

used expert peasant guides (zorro-solos) to track insurgent marches and patrols (Araujo 2008). The

creation of the Joint Command of the Caribbean (Comando Conjunto del Caribe) integrated the command

of all the branches of the armed forces in the region in late 2004, providing long overdue assistance

from the Colombian army and air force to the Naval Armada’s 1st Marine Brigade, while offering

improved weaponry such as high caliber morters and mine resistent armoured vehicles. The Command

was also plugged into the Naval Intelligence Network of the Caribbean (Red de Intelligencia Naval del

Caribe – RINCA), an organ which had substantially upgraded its human intelligence, signal intelligence,

and counterintelligence after 1998. In short time, counterintelligence operations uncovered networks

of FARC infiltrators in local military structures, with some eighteen soldiers arrested as a result (Porch

and Delgado 2010; Porch 2012).

Over the course of 2005, the Colombian air force bombed southern Aromeras relentlessly

during Operation Fortress (Operación Fortaleza), while the armed forces succeeded in seizing control of

valuable geostrategic points, while also tightening the perimeter around the 37th front and installing

fixed patrol bases at principal elevations. In June, Operation Omega picked up where Operation

Fortress left off, as the Joint Command of the Caribbean carried out some 383 military actions until

441 Interview 41, San Jacinto, 2016.

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December. Through a constant deployment of helicopter incursions, the regional military command

succeeded in assuming control of key spaces in the high mountain and the zone below, while also

destroying Martín Caballero’s principal camp which was located near Aceituno. The Command’s

strategy produced several key captures and desertions of mid-ranking commanders, all the while

tightening the noose around the Che Guevara company which protected Caballero (Araujo 2008).

The increase in insurgent desertions from 2003 onwards was crucial in improving the

Colombian armed forces intelligence capacity in Montes de María, particularly in light of the mixed

results of the informant network in the zone. Upon surrendering, insurgent deserters provided detailed

information to the official authorities regarding guerrilla structures, personnel, and the locations of

their base camps; in some cases they would even serve as guides to track down insurgent groups in

rural zones (El Tiempo 2007a). The intense control of food entering rural communities directly

affected the insurgents’ diet and morale, while the dramatic surge in military operations forced

insurgent patrols to constantly be on the move in order to avoid the incessant helicopter assaults on

their camps (Araujo 2008). One former member of the 37th front who escaped and demobilized in

2004 claims that by that point “we couldn’t eat well let alone sleep, all of which brought an intense

exhaustion”.442 From 2003 onwards, RINCA began intensely filtering and better deploying the human

intelligence it obtained, establishing a rubric known as the ‘Five Rings’ (los cinco anillos), where

informants were compartmentalized according to their relation and proximity to Martín Caballero

(Araujo 2008). The 1st Brigade began to aggressively intercept and disrupt the insurgent supply chain

from nearby cities to the guerrilla camps, thus eventually forcing guerrilla combatants themselves to

go into nearby towns to procure supplies where they would then be captured, or in some cases take

advantage of the opportunity to turn themselves in to the authorities. The improved local intelligence

442 Interview 87, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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was also crucial insofar as it allowed the Naval Armada to develop operations to locate and claim

control of insurgent water sources scattered throughout the region, a vital resource for all actors given

the lack of rivers in Montes de María (Araujo 2008).

(Due to the increased pressure following Operation Omega) Caballero did not realize that

military intelligence officers had infiltrated the FARC’s ranks, while others had flipped Caballero’s key

contact in Medellín who frequently visited her commander in his rural camps (Las Dos Orillas 2014).

Based on the intelligence gleaned from these sources, the Joint Command of the Caribbean planned

an audacious mission, Operation Paris Lineage (Operación Linaje París), which was designed to both

rescue high value hostages and to neutralize Caballero simultaneously on New Year’s Eve of 2006.

During the surprise attack on Cabellero’s camp, six of his fighters were killed, including his girlfriend

and one of his sons; the insurgents also lost numerous armaments and other valuable supplies (Araujo

2008). In the first four months of 2007, there were substantial insurgent desertions from all armed

groups in Montes de María, many of them high ranking commanders, with 49 from the FARC, 30

from the ERP, and 11 from the ELN (El Tiempo 2007d).

Between February and July of 2007, the Joint Command had successfully captured one of

Caballero’s cousins, two of his sons, and one of his nieces outside of Montes de María and from these

RINCA had obtained vital intelligence on the FARC commander’s movements (El Tiempo 2007a;

Semana 2007a). Over the course of Operation Alcatraz, the naval intelligence organ used both

insurgent deserters and double agents to great effect. As Porch (2012) highlights, “The net result was

that guerrillas or milicianos who were killed, captured, or defected, disappeared with irreplaceable

knowledge of logistical and revenue sources” (265). With supply lines severely disrupted, the FARC

could no longer produce the requisite number of homemade mines needed to slow the advance of

Marine foot patrols, the patrols incessantly hunted Caballero and his personal security ring supported

by a fleet of helicopter gunships and artillery manned by the armed forces from strategic summits

243

throughout the zone. Over the course of the latter half of 2007, the FARC had become so desperate

due to the escalation of pressure and the dire conditions that they were fighting amongst each other

over chocolate bars.443 On October 24th, a military infiltrator in Caballero’s camp phoned in his exact

coordinates using GPS, and the Joint Force of Dissuasive Action (Fuerza Conjunta de Acción Disuasiva -

FUCAD), a newer integrated force created one year prior, was dispatched. Half an hour later an Air

Force bomber had delivered a precision strike to the camp in the rural hamlet of Aceituno (El Carmen

de Bolívar). As a result of Operation Aromo, Martín Caballero and 19 other FARC fighters were killed,

while another three wounded were quickly captured after the assault (El Tiempo 2007a; Porch 2012,

266).

With the decapitation of the FARC in Montes de María, the armed forces “achieved a

complete recuperation of territory”, as from this pivotal moment onwards “the FARC retreated and

ceased to have a presence in the zone”.444 Most insurgents still loyal to the guerrilla organization were

forced to regroup in the south of Bolívar and the Bajo Cauca region, yet some isolated fighters

remained and tried to reactivate the regional insurgency, attempts that were all thwarted by the

Colombian military. Other more astute fighters turned themselves in and demobilized (Caracol 2008a;

El Espectador 2008). While most rural inhabitants assert that the insurgent groups quickly disappeared

from their communities and were not seen again after the success of Operation Aromo, the Colombian

authorities continued to kill and capture the remnants of the FARC and the ELN in the zone until

2010, as after this juncture it appears that the 35th and 37th front relocated permanently to northeastern

Antioquia (El Espectador 2012).

Clearly the Colombian military deserves much credit for ending the armed conflict in Montes

de María, but many of the military’s more controversial methods for combatting armed non-state

443 Interview 97, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

444 Interview 35, Ovejas, 2016; Interview 36, Ovejas, 2016.

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actors are still remembered unfavorably by the region’s civilian population. Apart from the Naval

Armada’s clear collusion with the BHMM and the proto-paramilitary groups which preceded it,

another controversial practice employed by the 1st Brigade in the region was the generation of “false

positives” (CNMH 2009; Caracol 2009). A more common form of mistreatment perpetuated by the

armed forces throughout Montes de María with alarming frequency was the widespread stigmatization

of civilians as guerrilla auxiliaries.445 This negative behavior manifested itself in a variety of ways. In

the aftermath of the horrendous massacre in Chengue, a Marine patrol arrived on the scene the soldiers

“beat, robbed, and kicked people still in the village”.446 In another instance, a peasant recalls how an

army unit arrived in his village of Las Lajas (San Jacinto) and, after beating his son, taped a flare on

his back and told him it was a bomb while simultaneously mocking him.447 In a serious violation of

International Humanitarian Law, the armed forces refused in many instances to let international

organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross enter rural communities because

they thought they would aid wounded insurgents.448

The Naval Armada stigmatized and persecuted what remained of civil society in Montes de

María from 2002 onwards.449 It was only in 2003 that civic organizations began to re-appear in the

region after a prolonged hiatus due to the increased returns of displaced peasants to their rural

communities. This coincided with the creation of the Foundation Development and Peace Network

of Montes de María (Fundación Red Desarrollo y Paz de los Montes de María), an initiative spearheaded by

the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Mennonite Church, and the regional

diocese.450 Simultaneously, the Naval Armada began to attempt to replace and fulfill many of the

445 Interview 79, San Jacinto, 2016.

446 Interview 90, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

447 Iterview 77, San Jacinto, 2016.

448 Interview 97, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

449 Interview 26, Cartagena, 2016.

450 Interview 29, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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functions previously carried out by civic organizations in Montes de María in order to co-opt the civic

sphere and other public spaces. This conformed with one of the central goals of Democratic Security

Policy, which was for the Colombian government to work “[…]with every sector of civil society” to

promote security, including “[…]the academic sector, the private sector, with national and foreign

human rights non-government organizations, with local civic associations, and with the Church”

(República de Colombia 2003, 17). According to Esquivia Ballestas and Gerlach (2009): “[…]the

concentrated military presence in the region undermines the authority of civilian leaders and results in

the militarization of society. The military is smothering civil society by directing sports programs,

health centers, and schools and controlling the public space” (297).

Apart from its functions related to security, counterinsurgency, and public order, the military

began to link local farmers in the region with business and tourism interests in Cartegena and beyond

to “stimulate development and incentivize solidarity” by way of providing security to local

communities (Semana 2004). The Colombian government unveiled social programs throughout

Montes de María such as Families in Action (Familias en Acción), a cash transfer initiative to subsidize

poorer families based on how many children they had per household (Porch 2012). Subsequent

research has demonstrated how Familias en Acción functioned as an effective electoral tool for Uribe’s

government, one which simultaneously deepening clientelistic relations of dependency between

civilian communities and the Colombian state (Barrios González 2011; Velasco 2016). Cantor (2018)

elaborates how social programs such as these influenced local community organizations in Montes de

María:

[T]he Armed Forces sought to co-opt local social organisations into a policy of both favouring their presence and acquiring information on the guerrilla. Officers intervened directly in community meetings and social assistance programs were established to win over sectors of the community. Money was offered to youths to act as informers. Those individuals who opposed the Military presence were publicly signaled as ‘suspicious’ – i.e. suspected of guerrilla links – and numerous leaders were arrested and detained on this basis, causing several families to re-displace. On at least two separate occasions, paramilitaries entered the town with the connivance of soldiers and threatened individuals. The community became ‘intimidated and

246

divided’, with sectors that benefited from the social programs arguing that if the Military left the guerrilla would now attack them. (409-410)

By the time Martín Caballero had been killed in late 2007, regional civil society had experienced

a complete rebirth in Montes de María. Prior to the demobilization of the BHMM and the defeat of

the FARC, local civil society slowly but surely started to reappear, although under a totally different

guise. Fearful of past stigmatization, many younger relatives of former ANUC leaders took the helm

and organized victims rights groups and civic associations throughout Montes de María, albeit with

completely different names.451 Most mobilizations at the present are based in the municipal capitals

given the dramatic transformation of the rural landholding pattern in the region. Following the

massive forced displacement and the virtual evacuation of the countryside in the region, paisa

entrepreneurs and agribusinesses alike entered Montes de María following the defeat of the FARC

and bought massive tracts of land from displaced peasants at prices substantially below market value.452

Thus, the once highly active peasant civil society has now been transformed into an urban

phenomenon which has focused its demands on lack of social services and inadequate infrastructure,

and perhaps more interestingly has conformed to regional clientelist traditions in terms of their

cohesion (or lack thereof) and motives. Coinciding with the nationwide implementation of Plan

Consolidation, regional civil society became dependent on external sources for funding, thereby

causing an intense competition between community leaders for resources from these outside bodies.453

iii. The Insurgent Response

Following the FARC’s territorial consolidation in the mid-1990s, the insurgent group entered

the new millennium by dramatically escalating its armed confrontation with the Colombian state, a

dynamic which only worsened with the arrival of Álvaro Uribe to the presidency in 2002. Prior to

451 Interview 93, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

452 Interview 26, Cartagena, 2016.

453 Interview 97, Bogotá D.C., 2016; Interview 90, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

247

2002, the FARC had increased its incursions into municipal capitals, kidnappings, and attacks on a

variety of state targets, most notable police stations, mayoral offices, and even against politicians and

aspiring candidates in Montes de María (El Tiempo 1997d; El Tiempo 1997e; El Tiempo 1998).

Following the implementation of Democratic Security Policy in 2002, the main insurgent groups in

Colombia all adapted and changed their military strategies from movement-based warfare to classic

guerrilla warfare. This was particularly noticeable in Montes de María, as former General Rafael Colón

describes: “The insurgents became more agile and divided themselves into smaller groups. They also

began to use anti-personnel mines, attacked helicopters lending support to troops, and their terrorist

actions grew”.454 As can be inferred from Figure 22, the FARC was the most active insurgent group

in Montes de María from 1994 until 2007, although the group’s military capacity was severely curtailed

from 2004 onwards by the Colombian military’s efforts. The ELN increased its level of bellicosity

between 1999 and 2001; however after this brief period the Jaime Bateman Cayón front never again

produced the same level of engagement.455

Figure 15. Conflict Events per Insurgent Group in Montes de María (1988-2007)

Source: Author’s Elaboration (CNMH 2009, 233)

454 Interview 97, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

455 Interview 30, Ovejas, 2016.

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The FARC’s strategy during this period heavily depended on the extensive deployment of

improvised landmines to prevent Marine patrols from accessing the remote network of insurgent

camps in places like Aromeras, which was so heavily mined that is was referred to by the insurgents

as ‘Cambodia’ (Camboya) (Araujo 2008). The entrances to each camp were carefully protected with

these improvised devices, while these installations were not accessible by rural roads or even footpaths,

as the guerrilla fighters would literally hack a clearing through the jungle to reach them. Given the

scarcity of water in the region, especially during the dry season, rural water sources such as wells and

creeks were of enormous importance to both the military and the insurgent groups, and became a

critical flashpoint between these actors. The FARC’s fronts increasingly targeted military patrols at

these water sources by planting numerous mines in and around them in anticipation of a Marine

incursion. From 2004 onwards, the success of the Joint Command in confiscating the necessary

material to produce landmines forced the insurgents to improvise, and they thereby began to rig

“Vietnamese traps”, or camouflaged pits with a depth of two meters that were lined with sharpened

wooden stakes smeared with excrement or acid, leading to several military casualties due to the fatal

injuries and infections they produced (El Tiempo 2004).

The deaths and injuries caused by these tactics dealt a serious psychological blow to the

military’s morale, they also however led Martín Caballero to overestimate his own organization’s

military capacity (Porch 2012). By avoiding direct confrontation and skillfully deploying these

landmines, the FARC was able to stave off the military’s growing offensive until 2005, when the Joint

Command of the Caribbean’s strategy began to asphyxiate the insurgents, not only of the materials

they needed to produce landmines, but also of other basic necessities such as food and medicines.

Despite the noose being tightened around the insurgent group’s neck, the FARC was still capable of

launching lethal attacks against the regional military command, as evidenced by an ambush prepared

and carried out by the newly integrated 35th and 37th fronts in June, 2006, an operation which left nine

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soldiers dead as they were patrolling the El Carmen de Bolívar-Zambrano highway (Araujo 2008).456

The FARC also increasingly resorted to attacks on vital infrastructure, namely electrical towers. Over

the course of the armed conflict, Martín Caballero’s group is credited with blowing up some fifty of

these, seriously disrupting the regional electrical grid in the process (Semana 2007a).

Two advantages maintained by the FARC during this period was the inhospitable terrain of

rural Montes de María, and the group’s impressive internal discipline. From 2005 onwards, Caballero

and his personal phalanx of protection provided by the 37th front’s Che Guevara commission

principally operated in the Aromeras. This zone was described by a Colombian journalist as “[…]a

completely unpopulated zone, a desert where water is practically non-existent. There are small oases,

but many were mined by the guerrillas to prevent the soldiers from supplying themselves. The

temperature exceeds 35 degrees Celsius. It is a little hell” (Semana 2007b). This was a seemingly perfect

environment for a skilled guerilla commander to operate, albeit one which would eventually be turned

against the insurgents. From mid-2005 onwards, the insurgent fronts had effectively reconfigured and

were deployed in different groups, as “[…]the troops were close but the guerrillas didn’t give up.

Caballero organized them in commandos of six units that silently spied on soldiers and mined the

terrain surrounding them” (Araujo 2008, 266). Porch (2012) highlights how Caballero and his troops

staved off being killed or captured for as long as they did:

A master of insurgency, Caballero offered no significant target to attack, only atomized assailants often dressed as civilians who could only be picked off with concise intelligence by small groups of special operators capable of moving after dark – precisely those capabilities that the Colmar lacked in 2004…Caballero kept his forces constantly circulating among well defended campsites that contained assembly and training areas, kitchens, caletas (raised, covered sleeping platforms), and water. Guerrillas were trained to hide their tracks and move in irregular patterns to discourage pursuit, and to remain aware of escape routes and rendezvous points if forced to disperse. (262)

456 The FARC’s two fronts in Montes de María merged into one from the beginning of 2006 onwards due to the dramatic reduction in troop size, and as a strategic gambit. Martín Caballero remained the top FARC commander in the region, with the 35th front’s commander ‘Manuel’ taking second in command (Araujo 2008, 298).

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The internal discipline imposed by Caballero and all other commanders was severe. In contrast

to military patrols, which notoriously left tracks wherever they went, the insurgents carefully avoided

leaving any trace of their movements. During intense military operations, insurgents would operate in

virtual silence, whether preparing and cooking food or cutting firewood, they were extremely careful

not to produce enough smoke as to give away the location of their camps. The use of radios and cell

phones to communicate was strictly prohibited. Water tanks were carefully transported by mules to

the FARC’s remote camps, with the insurgents disguised as common mule herders (muleros), and in

the absence of these animals, ordinary fighters were used to carry these receptacles (Araujo 2008). In

order to avoid detection at military checkpoints, the insurgents and their collaborators needed to find

deceptive means of smuggling these supplies into rural communities, often moving foodstuffs around

in improvised garbage carts (zorras) to avoid detection.457 Messages sent by Caballero, whether to

subordinates in the region or his superiors elsewhere in Colombia, were dispatched by a trusted group

of confidants, most of whom were actually direct relatives of the guerrilla commander (El Tiempo

2007c). During the 2006 national elections, the FARC commander dispatched several of his more

trusted fighters to nearby municipal capitals in order to gather information on troop buildups in these

more heavily populated areas (Araujo 2008). However, as the pressure mounted in 2004 and 2005,

increasing numbers of insurgents took advantage of these supply and reconnaissance missions to

abandon their revolutionary commitment by turning themselves in to the authorities.

The most common factors behind these defections were the ever-worsening conditions. Even

high and mid-ranking commanders deserted during this period due to the severe conditions and

discipline demanded by Martín Caballero. Many of the deserters were young women who ended up

pregnant or with young children as a result of passing romantic encounters with young men who were

457 Interview 88, Sincelejo, 2016.

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similarly enlisted in the insurgent ranks, and fearing for the future of their children turned themselves

in at the first opportunity presented itself (El Tiempo 2007e). The FARC had long regulated sexual

relations between its fighters, in particular to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and as such pregnant

females were punished for not instantly reporting a potential conception to their commanders. If

possible, these young women would be forced to undergo abortions, or in the case that the pregnancy

was too advanced, then they would be required to give up their children for adoption after delivering

them (Araujo 2008).

Many of rank and file recruits in Montes de María were undereducated or illiterate adolescents

as young as fourteen years of age, who were taken from their peasant communities and quickly

indoctrinated by their guerrilla superiors (El Tiempo 2007e). Apart from the ease with which these

impressionable peasant recruits could be molded by insurgent commanders, another benefit to the

group was the fact that these fighters felt powerless to escape as their superiors knew who their families

were and where they lived. Similar to how they treated infiltrators within the group, the FARC

maintained a zero tolerance towards deserters. Insurgent assassins were frequently deployed to

municipal capitals and beyond to locate and assassinate fleeing members of the group. In the event

that fighters successfully turned themselves in and demobilized, their family members were often tried

and sanctioned in their stead, thus dissuading potential defectors from abandoning the cause (Araujo

2008). This threat only compounded the extremely difficult terrain and the FARC’s vast network of

insurgents, militia members, and sympathetic peasants throughout the rural expanses of Montes de

María. Nonetheless, despite these daunting circumstances, hundreds of fighters ended up deserting

during the tail end of the regional armed conflict.

Insurgent relations with civilians became more coercive and repressive during the period of

contestation between the BHMM, the Colombian armed forces, and the myriad of insurgent groups

which remained in Montes de María. When regional civil society began to resurface during the early

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years of Democratic Security Policy, it was restricted to municipal capitals and returning peasant

communities, both of which received substantially greater protection from the Colombian military. In

zones where the FARC held sway, however, the insurgent group threatened various displaced

communities from returning due to their perception that these peasants were now beholden, and by

extension, more loyal to the Colombian state than to the insurgent social order. Similarly, the FARC

prohibited international organizations such as the Red Cross and UN agencies from entering rural

communities where they held sway from 2004 onwards, as peasants in these zones were forbidden

from participating in any externally administered social projects (Cantor 2018). While the FARC’s 37th

and 35th front continued to retain the temporary loyalty of some peasants by purchasing their livestock,

in other cases their fighters began to break a cardinal rule of the larger organization by appropriating

livestock belonging to civilians in the zone under spurious circumstances (Semana 2007b). From 2005

onwards the regional insurgent groups became increasingly cut off from their remaining sources of

income from kidnapping and extortion, and as a result were far more predatory towards those civilians

which remained in communities under their control than at any other point in the past.458 This

economic pressure generated widespread resentment amongst peasant communities who had long

tolerated the insurgent groups at their own expense.459

C. The Outcome The period of contestation in Montes de María lasted roughly from the BHMM incursion in

1997 until the complete defeat of the regional insurgencies in late 2007 with the death of Martín

Caballero. The joint state-paramilitary expansion into Montes de María significantly reconfigured the

territorial distribution between all armed actors in the department. Firstly, the BHMM virtually

expelled all the insurgent groups from those municipalities adjacent to the Caribbean Sea and the

458 Interview 77, San Jacinto, 2016.

459 Interview 36, Ovejas, 2016.

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Magdalena River, boxing the rebels into the high mountain and the zone below. The Colombian armed

forces expanded their presence substantially throughout the region by seizing complete control of the

principal municipal capitals and the major highways. The insurgents in response, retreated and fortified

their presence in rural communities in the high mountain and the zone below. Solicited by municipal

and departmental level political elites in both Bolívar and Sucre, the BHMM successfully seized control

of the majority of municipal and departmental level political institutions in Montes de María during

this period. Paramilitary influence in regional politics endured well beyond the demobilization of the

BHMM in 2005. The BHMM incursion also succeeded in wresting control of valuable drug trafficking

routes between the south of Bolívar department and the Gulf of Morrosquillo from the FARC, while

the state’s control of the region’s main highways deprived the insurgents of lucrative extortive and

kidnapping opportunities that had once been abundant.

Table 9. Armed Actor Control in Montes de María (1997-2007)

Territorial

Political

Economic

Civic

• Counterinsurgent control of municipal capitals and highways (2002-2007)

• Contested control of rural villages (1997-2007)

• Counterinsurgent control of departmental and municipal politics (1997-2007)

• Insurgent violence against politicians and disrupted elections (1997-2007)

• Insurgent control of extortion, kidnapping (1997-2004)

• Counterinsurgent control of extortion, drug smuggling, public embezzlement (1997-2005)

• Insurgent/Counterinsurgent repression of civic organizations and mobilizations (1997-2003)

• Counterinsurgent control of civic organizations and mobilizations (2004-2007)

Source: Author’s Elaboration

From 2005 onwards, the Colombian military’s efforts to encircle and asphyxiate the insurgents

began to produce results, as insurgent supply chains were severely disrupted and the shortages of basic

items negatively impacted their capacity to continue to produce highly effective landmines, while also

prompting greater insurgent defections due to weakened morale. Finally, the paramilitary incursion

into the region decimated what remained of civil society in Montes de María, forcing civic leaders and

their organizations into hiding. However, this changed in 2003 when a rash of new civic organizations

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emerged in the region with the support of international organizations, promoting a variety of peace

building and human rights based initiatives which were tolerated and even passively supported by the

regional authorities, thus bringing the civic sphere under the protection of the Colombian state.

These separate yet interconnected counterinsurgent processes fostered the conditions for state

victory in Montes de María. The BHMM incursion succeeded in physically disconnecting civilian

populations from the insurgent groups, while also destroying whatever hard and soft support the

FARC maintained among civilian populations. As Table 10 demonstrates, there was a meaningful

demographic shift between rural and urban populations before and after the BHMM incursion into

El Carmen de Bolívar, the municipality most severely impacted by the armed conflict in Montes de

María. This municipality became increasingly urbanized over this period of time, a social phenomenon

which can be attributed to the massive forced displacement carried out by the BHMM in rural

communities throughout the municipality and the larger region (Porras 2014). Displaced peasants

tended to flee to the nearest municipal capital or city, a fact which is reflected in the immense informal

slums established by IDPs in the outskirts of El Carmen de Bolívar, San Jacinto, Sincelejo, and

Cartagena (Cantor 2018).460

Table 10. Urban and Rural Population of El Carmen de Bolívar (1993-2005)

Municipality Urban Population % of Population Rural Population % of Population Total

El Carmen (1993) 38.289 58% 27.711 42% 66.000

El Carmen (2005) 49.434 73% 18.529 27% 67.963

Source: DANE (1993, 2005)

Between 1997 and 2004, numerous villages in Montes de María that had long been stigmatized

as bastions of insurgent support suffered brutal massacres at the hands of the BHMM which were

designed to spur direct indiscriminate displacement, a wave of violence directed at civilian

communities which the FARC proved unable or unwilling to prevent. In Chengue, a BHMM incursion

460 Interview 26, Cartagena, 2016; Interview 38, Sincelejo, 2016.

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in 2001 saw twenty-eight men sledgehammered to death and the entire community forcibly displaced,

a bloodletting prompted by the “stigmatization of Chengue as a guerrilla village”, a lethal stereotype

which took hold because “the community didn’t generate strong and clear distance between

themselves and the guerrillas”.461 For inexplicable reasons, the FARC were not present during the

massacre even though the insurgents maintained two camps on the outskirts of the village. Following

this, Chengue’s survivors “lost all fear and respect that they had for the guerrillas”.462 In the brutal

massacre of El Salado, the FARC was present in the vicinity of the village during the buildup to the

mass killing, yet ended up fleeing.463 According to one former member of the FARC’s Che Guevara

company, some guerrillas returned to the village during the massacre but opted not to intervene: “Later

when they returned and saw what the paras were doing they decided not to enter because the number

of deaths would have been greater and it would have made things worse”.464

The lack of insurgent protection for civilian communities in Montes de María debilitated the

FARC for the remainder of its time in the region. Its inaction in the face of the BHMM’s extreme

brutality “[…]exposed the FARC’s inability to protect its constituency, which triggered an exodus or

transfer of allegiance that ultimately drained their strategic rear areas”, weakening whatever

populational control they had previously exercised (Porch 2012, 268). The BHMM “[…]designed a

circle of massacres in villages and hamlets around Montes de María” in order to “[…]confine the

guerrillas to the hills”, leaving only a smattering of peasants remaining in the deserted countryside who

were composed of “[…]those who supported the insurgent groups, those who had some sort of power

in the zone, and those who had nowhere else to go” (Semana 2004).465 The implementation of

461 Interview 94, Sincelejo, 2016.

462 Interview 90, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

463 Interview 82, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 33, Ovejas, 2016; Interview 84, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

464 Interview 87, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

465 Interview 82, San Jacinto, 2016.

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Democratic Security Policy on the heels of the paramilitary incursion prompted a sea change in civilian

perceptions of and support for the FARC in Montes de María, as “those who once were guerrilla

informants suddenly became informants for the state”.466

The worsening of insurgent-civilian relations in Montes de María predates the implementation

of Democratic Security Policy. According to a peasant leader from Chengue, by 1998: “Nobody

trusted anybody else, fear prevailed, and the minga and our autonomy and prosperity was lost. Our

relations with the guerrillas were based on submission”.467 A peasant from another rural community

in Ovejas confirms this: “Democratic Security Policy complemented what had already been building.

The guerrillas were straying from what it meant to be a guerrilla and they had lost their way.

Communities stopped supporting them and with the beginning of Democratic Security Policy they

began to wither”.468 The FARC were increasingly predatory towards civilian communities that were

already vulnerable to counterinsurgent abuse and violence. One peasant from a remote community in

the high mountain of San Jacinto recalls this worsening of relations: “They were based on fear. If the

population didn’t follow their rules then the guerrillas would kill them. For example, if a peasant

refused to sell the guerrillas a hen, then that was cause for death”.469

Thus, when the Colombian military expanded its presence in the region in late 2002, it found

many civilians brutalized by both the BHMM and the FARC who were more than willing to

collaborate. According to one peasant, “everybody turned into an informant”, as another remembers

that “there were all sorts of economic and personal incentives such as revenge against the guerrillas”.470

For many, the stigmatization that the FARC brought to the civilian population in the region and its

466 Interview 90, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

467 Interview 30, Ovejas, 2016.

468 Interview 36, Ovejas, 2016.

469 Interview 77, San Jacinto, 2016.

470 Interview 35, Ovejas, 2016; Interview 30, Ovejas, 2016.

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failure to protect their purported social bases from paramilitary abuses engendered a deep hatred and

a widespread desire for revenge against the insurgents (Semana 2004).471 Others grew tired of the

instability of the armed conflict and the inability to live on their land in peace. For one rural habitant

in El Carmen de Bolívar: “People were tired of living with these groups and resented them. That’s

why they ended up collaborating with the state”.472 A former ERP fighter similarly cites exhaustion as

a key factor in driving a wedge between insurgents and civilians: “The civilian population grew tired

of the guerrillas because they threatened them and on occasion robbed things from them too. As a

result they started to collaborate with the government by informing in order to get rid of them”.473

The high level of stigmatization of peasants in Montes de María similarly caused problems for

civilians caught between the insurgent groups and their opponents, as “[t]he onus was on locals to

prove that they did not even passively support the insurgency”, a task which could only be proved by

collaborating with counterinsurgent forces (Porch 2012, 185). Within these regions, many peasants

perceived themselves as neutral, communities “stuck between these actors who committed abuses

against them”.474 However, from the outside “powerful stigmas were used against entire towns and

villages and everybody was branded as a guerrilla”.475 The switch in civilian collaboration only really

began to occur when Democratic Security Policy was established, as civilians were encouraged “first

by the military encirclement and then the increase in troops” and only then people “began to

collaborate and contribute in order to defeat them”.476 It became increasingly clear as more and more

civilians began to collaborate with the Colombian military that the perception that “[…]the guerrillas

flourished in Montes de María only because the people supported them” was in fact “a myth” (Porch

471 Interview 36, Ovejas, 2016.

472 Interview 84, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

473 Interview 88, Sincelejo, 2016.

474 Interview 85, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

475 Interview 89, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

476 Interview 92, Ovejas, 2016.

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2012, 253). While the counterinsurgents did seek active collaboration and other forms of hard support,

they also prevented many who had previously offered soft support to the insurgents to cease doing

so, thereby denying these groups of this vital source of assistance. Evans (2014) highlights the

importance of such strategic shifts in civilian support: “{Counterinsurgency} is not simply about

breaking the will of the insurgents to endure conflict but convincing the community from which this

highly localized emerges that the population’s interests are better served by acquiescence to – and,

ideally, support of {counterinsurgent forces}” (268).

As can be expected in an evolving context during civil war, the primary cleavage is susceptible

to change as the circumstances continue to develop and transform. In such contexts, previously

hardened attitudes and grievances give way to more primordial concerns, as Galula (1964) notes:

“[…]the population’s attitude in the middle stage of the war is dictated not so much by the relative

popularity and merits of the opponents as by the more primitive concern for safety” (14). In Montes

de María, the primary cleavage changed somewhat. Although it was still influenced by peasant access

to land, it shifted from the question of ownership to one of occupation and return. Victims of

paramilitary displacement desired more than anything else to return to their homes. Virtually all

accepted that the only way for this to happen was the expulsion of the insurgent groups, and the only

clear-cut way for this to be achieved was by supporting the counterinsurgents, or at a minimum,

ceasing to obey the insurgents. In such conflict dynamics where civilians are not intimately bound to

robust insurgent social orders, most individuals prioritize “their survival and that of their children”

over everything else (Evans 2014, 269). Montes de María proved no different as the reconfiguration

of the primary cleavage ended up uniting most civilians, regardless of their socio-economic position.

For displaced peasants living in the region’s municipal capitals, the Colombian military ended up being

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the best provider of protection, particularly after the armed forces began to persecute the BHMM as

vigorously as they confronted the FARC and other insurgent groups from 2003 onwards.477

Perhaps the best example of how the Colombian military bound civilians in Montes de María

to the counterinsurgent cause was through the accompanied returns to previously abandoned villages.

Certain brave groups of individuals attempted returns prior to 2003, but it was only really when the

Marine Infantry and other state authorities actively began accompanying these returns that displaced

peasants were able to permanently re-settle their communities. Ironically, the peasant returns ate away

at what remained of the insurgent groups’ civilian support, while shrinking the physical space available

for them to operate in. The efficacy of the returns varied depending on the village, yet this strategy

was successful for the counterinsurgent cause insofar as it forced civilian returnees to depend on the

Colombian military and the National Police for their security, and by extension their livelihood, thus

further driving a wedge between the peasantry and the insurgent groups. The most successful of these

returns occurred in Chinulito, where, similar to Macayepo, the National Police and a group of peasant

soldiers “[…]set geographical limits around the town within the confines of which it ‘guarantees

security’. The Public Force has told community members that they should ask for permission to go

outside these limits – beyond which most of the Chinulito campesinos’ lands lie – and troops will

accompany them” (Cantor 2018, 398).

Rather than being a case of the Colombian state “winning hearts and minds”, the returns were

largely driven by necessity and coercion. The peasant returnees grudgingly accepted the military’s

accompaniment, but complained about the abusive tactics employed by the counterinsurgent forces.

In rural villages like El Salado, Las Palmas, and Pijiguay, the military willfully ignored judicial rulings

from national-level courts and directly co-opted local civic organizations and their funding, detained

477 Interview 41, San Jacinto, 2016.

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and jailed dissident civic leaders, damaged civilian property, and violently threatened returnees who

would not serve as informers (Cantor 2018, 409-410). One former peasant leader from El Salado

comments that: “Even after having returned, the military continued to engage in selective

assassinations and arbitrary detentions against the community”.478 The FARC’s coercive attempt to

recover control of territory and people left behind by the BHMM demobilization saw an increase in

insurgent violence against purported counterinsurgent collaborators, a wave of selective violence

which only served to further drive civilians into the military’s arms given that it was the only option

available to them (Araujo 2008).

The massive displacement of the regional peasantry gave the Colombian military an

opportunity to increase its control over territory and people at the expense of the FARC, a shift in the

balance of power that Nagl (2002) argues is devastating to insurgent fortunes: “Once the local and

regular armed units are cut off from their sources of supply, personnel, and, most importantly,

intelligence, they wither on the vine or are easily coerced to surrender or destroyed by the security

forces with the aid of the local populace” (28). Perhaps more importantly, the sudden shift in military’s

relations with the BHMM under Colonel Colon and Admiral Barrera “generated trust and credibility

in the Armada”, while displacing the paramilitaries from their strongholds, co-opting the spaces they

controlled, and encircling the FARC in the broader region.479 As Kilcullen (2010) notes: “Like any

opponent in any war, an insurgent enemy needs to be pinned against an immovable object and “fixed”

in order to be destroyed” (9). Of equal importance, Long (2006) suggests that “[…]successful COIN

operations appear easier in isolated battlefields”, an observation that events bore out in Montes de

478 Interview 40, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

479 Interview 84, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 94, Bogotá D.C., 2016; Interview 97, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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María because of the Colombian military’s ability to deny the insurgent groups an effective rearguard

by cutting off their mobility corridors (8).480

This territorial isolation further weakened the FARC as the group “[…]was increasingly

reduced to the unpopulated region, arid and mountainous, far from urban centers and from their

historic social base” (Semana 2007b). From 2004 onwards, the encirclement of the FARC tightened

around the “[…]isolated and resource starved” Aromeras, as Porch (2012) notes: “For Caballero, the

Aromeras became a prison with the Colmar guarding the flank of the Magdalena and denying him

population centers” (268). The region’s freshwater sources were limited to a series of creeks and

streams which evaporated during the dry season, and the BHMM and the armed forces had long cut

the insurgents off from the Magdalena river, leaving them extremely vulnerable during extended

droughts (Araujo 2008). The military “slowly began seizing control of rural water sources”, and the

Armada’s control of the main highways and access roads similarly “countered the flow of food

supplies, arms, and munitions to the guerrillas, while hampering drug trafficking in the region”.481 A

former FARC fighter recalls that: “We had to smuggle small amounts of food through different means

because the controls were rigorous”, while another peasant from rural San Jacinto remembers that

during this period “the military were in the village permanently and the guerrillas were starving to

death”.482 Towards the end of the regional conflict, a high-ranking FARC commander deserted and

turned himself in “after three days in the hills without eating, yet he had three million pesos in his

pocket”.483

The worsening conditions and increased military pressure against the insurgents in Montes de

María from 2004 onwards led to increased guerrilla desertions. John Nagl (2002) suggests that

480 Interview 38, Sincelejo, 2016.

481 Interview 101, Sincelejo, 2016.

482 Interview 87, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 77, San Jacinto, 2016.

483 Interview 38, Sincelejo, 2016.

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desertions are valuable to a counterinsurgent cause: “In a battle against insurgents, persuading fighters

to surrender and provide information on their comrades is much more effective than killing them”

(93). Years of provisional predation in rural communities generated modest insurgent populational

control, and the FARC in Montes de María did not possess sufficient levels of internal cohesion and

commitment to commit its fighters to high levels of risk and adversity. As such, “[t]his made them

vulnerable to desertion, facilitated by the proximity of towns like Carmen and incentivized by the

expansion and publicizing of a demobilization program” (Porch 2012, 268). The tightening

encirclement of insurgents in the Aromeras, coupled with growing desertions and the shortages of

munitions and other components needed to prepare land mines both weakened morale and the

FARC’s capacity to organize sufficient defensive military measures.484 Increasingly, insurgent deserters

provided more and more valuable information to Colombian military intelligence, leading to the

captures of several of Martín Caballero’s family and inner circle, ultimately enabling the Joint

Command of the Caribbean to locate and decapitate the FARC leadership during Operation Alcatraz

in late 2007 (Araujo 2008; El Tiempo 2007a).485 After the death of Caballero, the remaining insurgent

troops promptly fled the region for good, representing a substantial insurgent defeat in the broader

Colombian armed conflict.

484 Interview 77, San Jacinto, 2016.

485 Interview 87, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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Chapter Six. Period of Contestation in Arauca

Sonny: That's what it comes down to, availability. The people in this neighborhood who are on my side, who see me every day, they feel safe, because they know I'm close. And that gives them more reason to love me. But the people who want to do otherwise, they think twice, because they know I'm close. That gives them

more reason to fear me.

Colagero: Is it better to be loved or feared?

Sonny: That's a good question. It's nice to be both but it's very difficult. But if I had my choice, I'd rather be feared. Fear lasts longer than love. Friendships that are bought with money mean nothing. You see how it is

around here, I make a joke --everybody laughs. I know I'm funny, but not that funny. It's fear that keeps them loyal to me. But, the trick is not to be hated. That's why I treat my men good, but not too good. I give them too much they don't need me. I give them just enough where they need me, but they don't hate me.

- A Bronx Tale (1993)

A. Evaluating Counterinsurgency Outcomes in Arauca

The counterinsurgent strategy that was largely successful in Montes de María met with more

limited success in Arauca. There, any illusion of progress was based upon the initial achievement of

the Colombian army and the paramilitary Bloque Vencedores de Arauca (BVA) in reclaiming key spaces

in the plains, namely in Tame and Arauca municipality. In contrast, the state’s expansion into the

piedmont neither reduced violence, nor weakened the insurgent groups’ control over territory and

people living outside of the municipal capitals. As Figure 16 demonstrates, Arauquita and Tame were

marred by extremely high homicide rates between 2002 and 2010, a level of violence which one would

expect to find in a fiercely contested micro-level war zone. In contrast, the homicide rates in Arauca

municipality declined noticeably over the same period of time, representing a notable improvement in

security. Arauquita and Tame experienced extremely high incidences of armed actions and

confrontations between 2002 and 2010, similar to their respective homicide rates per every hundred

thousand residents. Arauca municipality maintained a comparatively low level of armed confrontation

during the same period. Again, these descriptive statistics confirm the variation of outcomes between

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and within these cases, with Democratic Security Policy being successful in Montes de María, partially

successful in the Araucan plains, and largely unsuccessful in the Araucan piedmont.

Figure 16. Homicide Rate per 100.000 Persons in Arauca (1990-2013)

Source: Author’s Elaboration (Data from Observatorio del Programa Presidencial de Derechos Humanos y Derecho Internacional Humanitario de la Vicepresidencia de la República)

Of equal importance, all three of the municipalities in question in Arauca were deemed to have

been “strongly affected” by a “high intensity” level of armed confrontation between opposing actors

during this period, and the conflict was “persistent” or “permanent” in Arauca. These classifications

conform for the most part with my findings, with the notable difference being the characterization of

Arauca municipality, and by extension the plains sub-region, as a zone which continued to be a high

intensity conflict zone after Uribe’s tenure in power. As this chapter demonstrates, the guerrillas lacked

any comprehensive presence within Arauca municipality after 2005. However, they still supposedly

maintained active militia members in urban centers and rural towns of geostrategic value. According

to my sources, any violent actions committed by either the FARC or the ELN in Arauca municipality

265

from 2005 onwards were the result of incursions made by these groups into and around the capital

from neighboring Arauquita or Venezuela.486

Figure 17. Armed Actions and Confrontations in Arauca (1998-2013)

Source: Author’s Elaboration (Data from Observatorio del Programa Presidencial de Derechos Humanos y Derecho Internacional Humanitario de la Vicepresidencia de la República)

In the plains, virtually every interview participant recalled how the insurgent groups were

quickly displaced from the sub-region when the BVA arrived in 2001. A former victim from rural

Arauca municipality remarked that: “When the BVA arrived they came with the military and between

the two they finished the guerrillas off, there were only five to ten guerrillas and the paras and the

military had hundreds and therefore they couldn’t confront them”.487 According to a local journalist

in Arauca City, prior to 2002 the departmental capital was dangerous due to frequent shootings,

bombings, and kidnappings. After Uribe, “there was greater tranquility, the army strengthened, there

were a lot more enemy captures and less massacres”.488 Despite the initial gains of the counterinsurgent

efforts in the plains, various participants acknowledged that the insurgents returned to their

486 Interview 47, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

487 Interview 57, Arauca municipality, 2016.

488 Interview 4, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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communities following the demobilization of the BVA in late 2005. One local from Cravo Norte

noted that before Uribe “the guerrillas were seen clearly throughout the plains”, but after “they weren’t

seen in uniforms or with arms, they operated in another way”.489

Table 11. State of Conflict and Outcome per Municipality in Arauca (2000-2012)

Municipality State of Conflict Intensity Result

Arauca Municipality Permanent Conflict High Intensity Strongly Affected & Persistent

Arauquita Permanent Conflict High Intensity Strongly Affected & Persistent

Tame Permanent Conflict High Intensity Strongly Affected & Persistent

Source: CERAC Typology by Municipality of the Armed Conflict

By contrast, most if not all interview participants in the piedmont roundly rejected the idea

that Democratic Security Policy had achieved its objectives in the sub-region. One civil servant from

Saravena remarked: “If Uribe’s strategy had been successful, the FARC and the ELN would have

ceased to have a presence in Fortul, Arauquita, Tame and Saravena, but that wasn’t the case”.490

Another peasant leader from rural Arauquita claims that: “During Uribe’s time the guerrillas

maintained the same presence in the village. When Uribe was campaigning he promised that in six

months the situation and security were going to get better, but that was a lie. On the contrary it got

worse”.491 In Fortul, a local business owner commented that while there was an increase in police and

military presence, “the guerrillas never lost social or territorial control in general terms”.492 A Tame

native was slightly more optimistic, opining that the state expansion “slightly reduced the scourge that

the insurgents had created, but in the end the strategy failed to remove the guerrillas”.493

B. Short-term COIN Success in the Plains, Insurgent Resilience in the Piedmont

489 Interview 53, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 55, Arauca municipality, 2016.

490 Interview 48, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

491 Interview 63, Arauquita, 2016.

492 Interview 76, Fortul, 2016.

493 Interview 70, Tame, 2016.

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The period of contestation in Arauca lasted roughly from the BVA incursion in mid-2001 until

Álvaro Uribe left office in August 2010. The joint state-paramilitary expansion into Arauca

reconfigured the territorial distribution between all armed actors in the department considerably.

Firstly, the BVA expelled the FARC and the ELN from the plains sub-region entirely, whereas the

Colombian armed forces expanded their presence throughout the department by seizing partial if not

complete control of all municipal capitals and most of the major highways. The insurgents, in

response, retreated and fortified their presence in rural communities in the piedmont, while

simultaneously expanding deeper into neighboring Venezuela. The Colombian state and the BVA

successfully seized control of departmental level political institutions, not to mention municipal

governments in the plains. The state-paramilitary expansion reduced attacks on the department’s oil

infrastructure and changed how oil royalties were redistributed within the department, temporarily

denying the insurgent groups’ access to these public revenues. Even though the insurgents, primarily

the FARC, came to occupy the rural spaces left behind by the BVA following the paramilitary block’s

demobilization in 2005, they did so in a very subtle manner, one which was considerably less intrusive

than the social order they established prior to the counterinsurgent takeover in the early 2000s.

Insurgent groups continued to operate in municipal capitals in the plains such as Tame and Arauca

City, but through clandestine militia members, who provided information and organized occasional

insurgent attacks against the Colombian military or National Police.494

Figure 18. Insurgent Trajectory and Counterinsurgency Outcome in the Araucan Plains

494 Interview 51, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 68, Tame, 2016.

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Source: Author’s Elaboration

In the Araucan piedmont, the FARC and the ELN resisted and ultimately obtained an

advantage over the Colombian state because they had successfully achieved nested governance and

were thus heavily embedded in local communities prior to the state expansion campaign. By the time

that state attempted to expand into the piedmont and expel the insurgents, local habitants were firmly

bound to the insurgent social order - whether they liked it or not - and they were effectively unable or

unwilling to support the state under any circumstances. Even though the reasons underpinning the

longstanding primary cleavage pitting the piedmont peasantry against the Colombian state had

changed since the 1980s and 1990s, the inability of the central government and the Colombian military

to offer a viable alternative to insurgent rule and their ongoing repression of civilian communities

ensured that local habitants continued to perceive official authorities as their enemy. Furthermore, the

insurgent groups had proven during the paramilitary incursion that they were wholly dedicated to the

protection of their social bases from their opponents, and did their best to prevent either the state or

the paramilitaries from inflicting violence upon them, or from displacing them from their land. While

much of this good will was eventually squandered when the ELN and FARC began targeting civilians

themselves during the inter-guerrilla conflict, peasants in the sub-region possessed no other option

but to continue to obey guerrilla rules and directives, regardless of how abusive they may have become.

Figure 19. Insurgent Trajectory and Counterinsurgency Outcome in the Araucan Piedmont

Source: Author’s Elaboration

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i. The Paramilitary Incursion

Since the late 1980s, various nascent paramilitary groups supported by regional military

detachments and large landholders attempted to establish a meaningful counterinsurgent presence in

Arauca but failed. The ability of the BVA to succeed where its predecessors had failed was largely

owed to the simultaneous nationwide expansion of the AUC overseen by the Castaño brothers. The

national paramilitary umbrella group had successfully exported armed units to nearby regions in

Casanare, Boyacá, and Norte de Santander in late 1990s, and Arauca remained the only region in

northern Colombia without a substantial counterinsurgent presence. In early 2001, the AUC

leadership was restructured into a ruling council split between those paramilitary commanders whose

priority was political (counterinsurgency), and those more focused on economic goals (drug

trafficking). In 1999, Vicente Castaño appointed a pair of twin brothers - Miguel ‘Pablo Arauca’ Ángel

Múnera and Víctor ‘Sebastian’ Mejía Múnera – to lead the new paramilitary block into Arauca. These

brothers, also known as ‘the twins’ (los mellizos), were prominent drug traffickers from the Valle de

Cauca region in southwest Colombia and “they wanted to imitate paramilitaries in order to participate

in the AUC demobilization process so they could redeem their crimes”.495 The Múnera brothers

sought to convert their ill-gotten fortunes into belligerent status in order to legalize their assets, and

to receive favorable terms for their numerous crimes under a demobilization agreement with the

Colombian government. The twins not only were willing to assume responsibility for the BVA, they

actually purchased the AUC ‘franchise’ for a sum rumored to be between $2.5 and $4 million USD

(Verdad Abierta 2010a).

Planning a paramilitary incursion into what was one of Colombia’s most guerrilla-consolidated

zones required local allies with networks to political and economic elites sympathetic to their cause,

495 Interview 72, Tame, 2016.

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and an organizational infrastructure with links to the official authorities. Fortunate for the BVA, Julio

Acosta Bernal, a prominent politician in Arauca municipality possessed such networks and

connections. Acosta Bernal previously had maintained ties with the ELN as a Liberal party member,

yet quickly jumped ship to the other side when he felt that it was a more viable pathway to power in

Arauca.496 Previous efforts to establish a paramilitary presence had been difficult as evidenced by the

demobilization of the Convivir El Corral in 1998. However, the AUC was emboldened by the success

with which another paramilitary block - Bloque Centauros - had been exported from northwestern

Colombia to neighboring Casanare department and thus supported the BVA’s planned incursion into

Arauca with manpower and logistics from the Bloque Centauros.497

Similar to other paramilitary groups elsewhere in Colombia, the BVA maintained a highly

vertical structure. The upper echelon of paramilitary block consisted of the Múnera brothers, and their

second in command was Orlando ‘Rubén’ Villa Zapata, who had previously been involved in drug

trafficking and paramilitary activities in Valle de Cauca. In reality, he was also the de facto military

leader of the BVA from 2001 to 2005. The military apparatus of the BVA initially possessed only 200

hundred combatants spread across two companies named ‘Búfalo’ and ‘Cóndor’ which in turn were

divided into three anti-guerrilla units composed of four squads apiece. However, shortly after the

initial incursion, the BVA received an additional 200 reinforcements who had been trained in Hato

Corozal in northern Casanare, and the block was reformed into eight companies spread across Tame,

Puerto Rondón, Cravo Norte, and Arauca municipality (CNMH 2014b). The leadership of the BVA

consisted largely of individuals whose origins lay in the disparate drug trafficking cartels of

southwestern Colombia, while the first rank and file foot soldiers (patrulleros) who entered Arauca were

496 Interview 51, Arauca municipality, 2016.

497 Interview 12, Arauquita, 2016.

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from the Caribbean and Pacific coasts, Antioquia, and Valle de Cauca.498 After some time, the

paramilitary structures began to recruit young men from the plains, specifically individuals with

experience in the armed forces and guerrilla deserters.499 The BVA was a ‘non-local’ paramilitary block,

meaning that only some 14% of its 687 members were actually from Arauca. Following the groups’

demobilization in late 2005, only 6% of these ex-combatants remained in the department (Daly 2016,

106-7).

On August 7th, 2001, the BVA finally crossed the San Salvador bridge spanning the Casanare

River and entered Tame, beginning a four-year period of conflict and violence that would change the

department of Arauca forever. The paramilitaries first established bases in San Salvador and Puerto

Gaitán in southern Tame, before moving northwards towards the municipal capital. The entrance of

such a large contingent of heavily armed and uniformed paramilitary fighters into Arauca was largely

made possible with the distraction provided by a simultaneous military operation, Operation Arawak,

launched by the Colombian army’s 18th brigade against the FARC in northern Tame (El Tiempo 2001).

Almost overnight, the BVA quickly consolidated control of the plains in central and southeastern

Tame, establishing a network of rural base camps and setting up roadblocks on all local highways, as

“[…]the strategy was to keep occupying the highway corridors to create roadblocks and control all

movement in the department” (Verdad Abierta 2010b).

In order to enter the municipal capital, the BVA first “arrived dressed as civilians and they

began to sell raffles in the marketplace with the goal of investigating everybody’s background”.500 Once

they had gathered sufficient intelligence, the BVA made incursions into guerrilla controlled

neighborhoods with assistance from the National Police, killing suspected insurgent collaborators.

498 Interview 70, Tame, 2016; Interview 71, Tame, 2016; Interview 72, Tame, 2016.

499 Interview 69, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 57, Arauca municipality, 2016.

500 Interview 70, Tame, 2016.

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Over a one-week span in October 2001, the BVA coordinated the assassinations of Arauca’s two

national-level political representatives in rural Tame and Bogotá, Octavio Sarmiento Bohórquez and

Alfredo Colmenares Chía.501 After the BVA consolidated control of Tame, the paramilitary block

expanded northwards until the invisible border where the plains meets the piedmont in the northern

part of the municipality and then began to migrate east towards Puerto Rondón, Cravo Norte,

eventually extending to Arauca municipality and thus controlling the entirety of the plains sub-region

of Arauca by early 2002. The collaborative strategy employed by both the Colombian military’s 18 th

brigade and the BVA dispersed the overwhelmed FARC and ELN contingents in plains communities,

permitting the irregular paramilitary group “to establish an army-like presence” in the zone.502

The success of the BVA in consolidating territorial and populational control over part of

Tame, Puerto Rondón, Cravo Norte, and Arauca municipality also owes much to their coercive

repertoire. Upon arriving in Arauca and establishing a firm presence in the plains, the BVA unleashed

a wave of massacres against peasant communities in the both the plains and the piedmont, with those

in the latter occurring most frequently in the territory found along the invisible border between the

two sub-regions. The logic underpinning the brutality of the paramilitary massacres in Arauca “was a

strategy to show the BVA’s power and domination”.503 The manner in which the massacres were

conducted varied according to whether the paramilitaries were merely making a temporary incursion

into a given community or if they maintained a permanent presence there (CNMH 2014b). In one

such example in early March 2003, a paramilitary patrol commanded by a particularly merciless mid-

ranking paramilitary commander named (alias) Martín intercepted seven young men – four of whom

were brothers - travelling together along a rural road in this desolate stretch of the Araucan plains near

501 Interview 72, Tame, 2016.

502 Interview 2, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 21, Saravena, 2016; Interview 56, Arauca municipality, 2016.

503 Interview 69, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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the Venezuelan border. The paramilitaries took them to a nearby interrogation and torture chamber

manned by the BVA. After accusing the men of being members of the ELN, the commander killed

two of the brothers in front of the others. He then proceeded to force one of the surviving brothers

to fight one of his foot soldiers, and when his subordinate began to lose the physical contest, Martín

executed the defenseless victim. The paramilitaries proceeded to hang the fourth and final brother

from a nearby tree, before finally descending upon the three other detained men with knives and

machetes. After killing them, Martín and his men carved ‘ELN’ in their chests, before finally

dispensing of their corpses by the side of the unpaved highway leading to the municipal capital for all

to see (Verdad Abierta 2009).504

The BVA frequently targeted politicians, community leaders, JAC presidents, journalists,

teachers, businessmen, and municipal civil servants. Upon taking over Arauca municipality, the

paramilitary block unleashed a wave of selective killings against any public critic of previous

paramilitary efforts in the department, most notably gunning down the well-known journalist, Efraín

Varela, in broad daylight on July 28th, 2002.505 Apart from more conventional arms, the BVA’s methods

also included the use of chainsaws, while also incorporating wild animals into their repertoire, as the

group employed venomous snakes, attack dogs, and even caimans, a breed of alligator specific to

tropical environments in South America, to torture and kill its victims (El Tiempo 2012a).506 The BVA

further distinguished itself from its insurgent rivals through sexual violence. The paramilitary group

committed systematic violations of this nature against both men and women in Arauca during the four

years that it operated in the larger department. One survivor from Caracol recalls a disturbing case of

such violence:

The paras killed my godfather - the only homosexual in our town and the JAC president - along with his eleven year-old stepson whom he was responsible for. They killed them both for fun. At first, they attempted

504 Interview 57, Arauca municipality, 2016.

505 Interview 10, Arauca municipality, 2016.

506 Interview 55, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 75, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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to force my godfather to rape his stepson and when he resisted, the paramilitaries raped and killed both of them. They strangled the child and after they hung them both so it looked like a suicide.507

Given the armed group’s composition principally consisted of young males from outside the region,

combined with the top-down ethos of pillage and plunder which was embodied by the bloc’s

commanding structure, it became common practice for paramilitary patrols to kidnap young women

from civilian communities and take them back to their rural bases where they would then physically

and sexually abuse them before taking their lives (Verdad Abierta 2012b).508

The BVA planned, coordinated, and carried out their expansion, consolidation, and military

operations closely in concert with the Colombian military and National Police detachments

throughout the department. Paramilitary foot soldiers operated numerous roadblocks and checkpoints

on major highways, often for months at a time. Those civilians travelling through the plains who were

stopped and deemed suspicious by the BVA patrolmen due to the origin of their identification card

or some other arbitrary indicator, were taken out of their vehicles and executed by the side of the

road.509 Purportedly, in the municipal capitals of Tame and Cravo Norte, the “paramilitaries and the

police would conduct patrols side by side”.510 Further contributing to local confusion was the fact that

local detachments of the Colombian armed forces would often disguise themselves as paramilitaries

in order to carry out illegal operations.511 Whereas the state authorities needed the paramilitaries to

carry out illegal tasks which they could not be publicly seen engaging in, the BVA needed “the

information that the army provided them with in order to expand and advance to new territory”.512

As many civilians found out the hard way, reporting official military misconduct or paramilitary crimes

to the proper authorities all but guaranteed that the BVA would find out, almost always resulting in

507 Interview 55, Arauca municipality, 2016.

508 Interview 71, Tame, 2016; Interview 58, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 73, Tame, 2016.

509 Interview 74, Tame, 2016.

510 Interview 25, Tame, 2016.

511 Interview 19, Saravena, 2016.

512 Interview 71, Tame, 2016.

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the deaths of those well-intentioned citizens.513 During this time, numerous selective assassinations

and massacres were conducted effectively as joint operations, with the official authorities detaining

and profiling civilians first, after which they would depart and the paramilitaries would arrive

instantaneously and kill those suspected of being insurgent collaborators.514 One teacher in Tame

remembers a particularly illustrative example of the state’s collusion with paramilitary fighters:

There was a woman walking in the main square who two paras mistook for somebody else they wanted to eliminate. One of them jumped off their motorcycle, grabbed her by the hair and put a gun to her head, before realizing that she wasn’t the intended target. They took off and the woman, who was quite shaken up, went to the main police station in order to report what had just happened. When she entered the police commander’s office, he was sitting there relaxing with the two men who had almost just killed her. She fled Tame the following day.515

Despite the very public way in which the BVA and state agents interacted in Arauca, the

former was still responsible for funding its own operations and predictably the block was heavily

involved in the departmental drug trade from the moment it entered the zone.516 The BVA arrived in

Arauca at precisely the same moment as the FARC-led coca boom in the piedmont, and the BVA and

the insurgent groups clashed most frequently in places along the piedmont-plains border where this

crop was cultivated in large quantities.517 Aside from seizing important cocaine production and

transportation routes in the plains, the BVA also levied heavy protection payments against all local

merchants and cattle ranchers to subsidize its income from the drug trade. However, the BVA was

excessively predatory compared to its insurgent competitors in this regard, as the armed group’s

exorbitant demands of rural landholders and urban merchants alike led many to ruin. In many cases,

513 Interview 52, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016; Interview 70, Tame, 2016.

514 Interview 51, Arauca municipality, 2016.

515 Interview 25, Tame, 2016.

516 Interview 1, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

517 Interview 49, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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the paramilitary commanders would seize hundreds, if not thousands, of cattle from large landholders,

and transport the stolen livestock to be slaughtered and sold in Casanare and Meta.518

When the BVA entered Arauca, most of the elected representatives in the department were

beholden to either the FARC or the ELN. However, this dynamic changed rapidly after the

paramilitaries began to violently target prominent political figures. Most of the traditional political

leadership at the departmental level - and the municipal level throughout the plains – were either killed

or exiled from Arauca by the BVA. Those who were not, ended up being disqualified from office and

incarcerated once Uribe took power in 2002 for their reputed ties to insurgent groups (Pérez Bareño

2015). Some prominent politicians paid attention to national level political currents and thereby

decided to solicit the assistance of the BVA in seeking higher office, whereas others were effectively

the handpicked candidates of the paramilitary block in municipal and departmental elections. Julio

Acosta Bernal made electoral alliances with both Uribe and the BVA, propelling him to the

governorship in 2004.519 In office, Acosta was flanked by paramilitary bodyguards while keeping a

blacklist of political opponents who were to be eliminated by his counterinsurgent protectors.

Eventually, Acosta was convicted and incarcerated for his role in the homicide of a local civil servant

(Verdad Abierta 2009b).520 In Tame, Alfredo Tafur Guzmán became mayor in 2003 with the overt

backing of the BVA in that municipality. A fervent opponent of the insurgent groups, Guzmán was

rumored to keep a rifle on his office desk, as he oversaw the most violent period of paramilitary

violence in Tame during his tenure in office.521

In contrast with other highly organized paramilitary blocks found elsewhere in Colombia, the

BVA did not try to govern the populations under its control in the plains by providing basic public

518 Interview 73, Tame, 2016.

519 Interview 1, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

520 Interview 4, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 72, Tame, 2016.

521 Interview 70, Tame, 2016.

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goods and services. To the contrary, the armed group violently subjugated local habitants in the plains,

exercising an extreme level of social control which was both abusive and predatory, a form of rule

that contrasted sharply with the previous social code enacted by the insurgent groups.522 The

paramilitary block punished and even killed civilians who violated their norms of decency, a strict set

of standards which outlawed men with long hair, homosexuals, and people who smoked marijuana.523

Locals were not allowed to be outside of their homes after 6pm, whereas intra-municipal travel became

impossible due to the intense stigmatization of rural and urban residents alike.524 Countless civilians

who risked travel during this period were killed at both paramilitary and insurgent manned

checkpoints.525 The BVA’s campaign in the rural sector of the plains led to massive forced

displacement to municipal capitals. Those peasants who opted to remain in their rural communities

were often enlisted into forced labor for the local paramilitary company.526 Despite the high level of

control the BVA maintained over peasant communities in the plains, “relations between the paras and

the population did not exist, nobody wanted to interact with them because they generated a lot of

fear”.527

522 Interview 70, Tame, 2016.

523 Interview 71, Tame, 2016.

524 Interview 75, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

525 Interview 52, Arauca municipality, 2016.

526 Interview 55, Arauca, municipality, 2016; Interview 100, Tame, 2016.

527 Interview 70, Tame, 2016.

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Figure 20. Forced Displacement in Arauca (1990-2013)

Source: Author’s Elaboration (Data from Observatorio del Programa Presidencial de Derechos Humanos y Derecho Internacional Humanitario de la Vicepresidencia de la República)

Even though the BVA had established a well-developed network of bases throughout the

Araucan plains, the paramilitary block’s numerous attempts to make inroads into the piedmont met

with little success. Whereas neither the FARC nor the ELN were able to offer much resistance to the

paramilitary incursion in the plains, the insurgents ferociously rebuffed their counterinsurgent

opponents when they attempted to enter the piedmont. The dense surveillance networks long

established by the insurgent groups throughout the sub-region helped them detect any potential

attempt by counterinsurgent forces to infiltrate these communities, overtly or covertly, further binding

insurgents and civilians together in the defense of their territory.528 The FARC and ELN cooperated

to establish a security cordon along the piedmont-plains border in Tame and Arauquita and waged

several intense battles with the BVA in towns located on this divide such as La Cabuya, Betoyes, and

Corocito (El Espectador 2014).529 Unable to enter the piedmont north of Tame, the BVA resorted to

528 Interview 23, Fortul, 2016; Interview 61, Arauquita, 2016; Interview 98, Fortul, 2016.

529 Interview 100, Tame, 2016.

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carrying out periodic incursions from Tame’s municipal capital into piedmont settler communities on

the border between the two sub-regions and committing horrific massacres and selective

assassinations against civilians.530

It warrants mention that the BVA “[…]had its best success beginning in 2002, coinciding with

the National Army’s military offensive through the Zones of Rehabilitation and Consolidation under

Democratic Security Policy” (CNMH 2014b, 58). Desperate for results, the BVA primarily directed

their violence at unarmed civilians, specifically in the northeast corner of Tame municipality, as the

group proved incapable of inflicting significant damage on either of the insurgent groups.531 Frustrated

with their inability to move beyond the border between the plains and the piedmont, the Colombian

military and National Police escorted a small detachment of BVA fighters to the municipal capital of

Saravena in order to destabilize the insurgent hegemony in the piedmont from within by establishing

a rearguard presence in the municipal capital to encircle insurgents from both sides.532 Protected by

the official authorities there, the paramilitaries engaged in a series of selective assassinations against

local civic leaders.533 One local community activist remembers this brief paramilitary appearance in

Saravena: “There was a paramilitary presence in Saravena for one or two weeks. They were located in

an abandoned house that was close to the police station. However, they never succeeded in penetrating

the community, but yes they committed atrocities”.534

ii. State Expansion

In the 2002 elections, Uribe won the support of four out of the department’s seven

municipalities – Arauca municipality, Cravo Norte, Puerto Rondón, and Tame – and was determined

530 Interview 68, Tame, 2016.

531 Interview 16, Saravena, 2016.

532 Interview 66, Saravena, 2016.

533 Interview 51, Arauca municipality, 2016.

534 Interview 65, Saravena, 2016.

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to implement his counterinsurgency strategy in Arauca. One human rights leader in Saravena recalls

that when Uribe became president, “he assured everybody that he would kick the guerrillas out of

Arauca in three months”.535 The new president “considered Arauca a department completely

controlled by the guerrillas and he began what he called a process of recuperation of territory”.536

From the beginning, Uribe had two interconnected goals in the department: to dismantle insurgent

networks in Arauca, and to protect oil infrastructure from insurgent attacks. Both of these objectives

were vital to what many perceived as Uribe’s ultimately goal, namely “to raise investor confidence in

the region”.537 According to a former commander of the 18th Brigade, these objectives preceded

Uribe’s rise to power: “In 2001, the oil companies invited me to a meeting and presented me with

statistical information about the losses and what these meant to the company. In that year the terrorist

attacks had skyrocketed and Oxy was on the verge of abandoning the country and closing their wells,

and this caused alarm in the government”.538 Insurgent attacks on vital oil infrastructure in Arauca had

been growing substantially since the late 1990s, and by 2001 attacks on the pipeline reached an all-

time high, with both insurgent groups registering an astonishing 115 attacks, or one attack almost

every three days.

Shortly after taking office, Uribe declared a state of internal disturbance (conmoción interior) and

soon decreed the creation of two “zones of rehabilitation and consolidation” in Arauca and Montes

de María (El Tiempo 2003a). In Arauca, the military was given judicial powers “[…]to conduct

searches and make arrests without warrants, restrict the movement of civilians, and prevent foreign

journalists from entering the zones”, while also granting “[…]military commanders with authority that

superseded the rule of local elected officials” (Leech 2003). A state of emergency effectively existed

535 Interview 21, Saravena, 2016.

536 Interview 1, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

537 Interview 25, Tame, 2016.

538 Interview 47, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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where all civil liberties were suspended, curfews established, road travel heavily curtailed, mandatory

censuses imposed on local habitants to gather and catalogue their personal information, while other

trivial measures were similarly enacted (El Tiempo 2002). The entire department had already been

increasingly militarized with the implementation of Plan Colombia, but Uribe’s new initiative targeted

Arauca municipality, Arauquita, and Saravena, the three municipalities which hosted the Caño Limón

oilfield and pipeline. The Bush administration had earmarked some $99 million USD of

counterterrorism aid to bolster the protection of oil infrastructure in Arauca alone, an initiative which

also authorized the presence of U.S. Army Special Forces in the department “[…]to provide

counterinsurgency training to Colombian soldiers responsible for protecting the pipeline from rebel

attacks” (Leech 2003). The logic behind this strategy in Arauca was to encircle the insurgent groups

territorially, as “[…]while the national government ordered the militarization of the border corridor

(Saravena, Arauquita y Arauca), the paramilitaries entered the department form the south, and from

there they began their expansion towards the north in the direction of Venezuela” (CNMH 2015, 135).

Figure 21. Caño Limón-Coveñas Oil Pipeline Attacks in Arauca (1986 – 2013)

Source: Gómez Rivas 2014 (214)

Prior to this, the zone of rehabilitation and consolidation in Arauca had also encountered

several challenges within and outside of the department. When Uribe’s decree came before the

282

Constitutional Court for renewal again in late April of the following year, the judicial body declined to

grant the zone an extension, killing the initiative in legal terms. Uribe’s inspector general (procurador)

and the country’s leading Ombudsman (defensoría del pueblo) submitted a co-authored report one month

following the dissolution of the zones, in which they gave the following evaluation of the initiative:

“The experience of the zone of rehabilitation and consolidation in Arauca was a failed experiment in

qualitative and quantitative terms, especially if human rights are taken into perspective. Neither the

increase in armed forces, nor the informant strategy, nor the peasant soldier strategy has given the

expected results” (Semana 2003). Two military initiatives in particular caused widespread anger in the

targeted communities: the Soldier for a Day (Soldado por un día) program, and the Peasant Soldier

(Soldado campesino) recruitment drive. The first initiative brought local children into military bases where

military personnel dressed as clowns would entertain them, while encouraging them to report

suspicious activities at home and in their communities to the proper authorities. The second initiative

sought to recruit young men and women from rural communities into the armed forces given their

superior knowledge of local terrain, and more importantly, local populations. The aforementioned

report criticized both of these intiatives strongly for “involving minors in the conflict”, and for

creating a dynamic where “family members were converted into military objectives” (El Tiempo

2003b).539

The end of the zone of rehabilitation and consolidation project in Arauca merely indicated a

reframing of the Colombian state’s counterinsurgency campaign in Arauca and Democratic Security

policy carried on unabated after the Constitutional Court’s decision.540 During this escalation of the

regional conflict, the Colombian army quickly grew from 5766 to 7839 military personnel in Arauca,

of which 3000 were specifically assigned to the protection of oil fields, pipelines, and electrical towers

539 Interview 16, Saravena, 2016.

540 Interview 24, Saravena, 2016.

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(Gutiérrez 2010, 41; Gómez Rivas 2014, 215). Prior to 2002, the military also possessed three other

army battalions located close to the municipal capitals of Arauquita, Tame, and Fortul. After Uribe

assumed office, existing installations were fortified substantially, while several new ones were created,

most notably a Cavalry unit in Saravena, three counter-guerrilla battalions in Arauca municipality

alone, and an energy and infrastructure battalion adjacent to the Caño Limón oil complex. In addition

to these, the Colombian army dispatched a Rapid Deployment Force (FUDRA) unit to the department

in November 2002, which was replaced shortly after by the newly created Mobile Brigade No. 5, a

military unit established specifically for rural deployment deep in inaccessible rural territory.541 The

National Police in Arauca saw their numbers multiply dramatically during this period with an

additional 180 sworn officers dispatched between the department’s seven municipalities, while an anti-

riot squad was added to its ranks (Defensoría del Pueblo 2003; Fichtl 2003).542 The National Armada’s

Advanced Fluvial Post No. 42 in Arauca municipality was given extra manpower and new speedboats

to patrol the department’s watershed, increased air cover was provided by the Air Combat Command

No. 1 in Puerto Salgar in Cundinamarca department, and a peasant cavalry was created to support

official authorities in their battle against cattle rustling in the plains (Amnesty International 2004;

Gómez Rivas 2016).543

Under the auspices of Plan Colombia, an enormous new military base was completed on the

outskirts of Saravena’s municipal capital to house the newly established No.18 General Gabriel Revéiz

Pizarro Cavalry battalion, an installation that “was almost a small city in itself”.544 This base was built

specifically to house ten helicopters supplied to the Colombian military in Arauca to help protect the

Cañó Limón-Coveñas oilfield and pipeline from insurgent attacks, an outlay which claimed almost

541 Interview 47, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

542 Interview 67, Saravena, 2016; Interview 70, Tame, 2016.

543 Interview 13, Arauquita, 2016; Interview 24, Saravena, 2016.

544 Interview 65, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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three-quarters of the total U.S. military aid allocated to the department (USGAO 2005). In very little

time, the security at Arauca’s main oil producing facility was upgraded and it “[…]became a highly

technological center of protection and strict control of everything that moved near its perimeter” (El

Espectador 2014). The sudden technological advantages given to the Colombian military in Arauca

over its insurgent rivals were immense. According to the former commander of the 18th Brigade:

A fundamental factor of this technological benefit had two aspects: one, in intelligence with the electronic means to intercept communications and all of that, and two, the capacity to engage in combat at night. The guerrillas already knew how the army acted. They knew that helicopters and airplanes weren’t able to fly after 6pm, so they carried out all their actions at night - incursions, the movements of large columns of fighters, attacks on towns - because they knew that the army wouldn’t react because it didn’t have the means to. Night combat technology was acquired, night vision equipment so helicopters and planes could fly at night and it completely changed the balance of combat. Attacks against the oil pipeline were reduced because we in Arauca had the support of a plane crewed by intelligence agents who watched over the pipeline at night, who would patrol the pipeline and look where there were suspicious people and they would inform troop patrols by radio in real time. These would take off in a helicopter and arrive at the site in question in a few minutes. Our reactive capacity increased significantly.545

The troops responsible for reacting to potential attacks on oil infrastructure on short notice generally

belonged to the Mobile Brigade No. 5, all of which were trained by the U.S. military advisors

dispatched to Arauca. Arriving in January 2003, some sixty-eight U.S. Special Forces instructors

divided between the main battalions in Arauca City (thirty advisors) and Saravena (thirty-eight

advisors) taught counterinsurgency tactics and psychological warfare operations to some 1600

Colombian army regulars by 2005 (USGAO 2005; Defensoría del Pueblo 2003).

The sharp rise in attacks on the Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline in 2001 prompted regional

military commanders to examine ways in which they could combat these acts of sabotage. For

example, from the opening of the pipeline in 1985 to 2001, only three people had ever been prosecuted

for some eight hundred attacks in Arauca. The former commander of the 18th Brigade reflects that

“for the most part these occurred because there was total impunity, none of these terrorist acts, the

deaths, the losses, absolutely nothing had been investigated by the judicial authorities”.546 Other

545 Interview 47, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

546 Interview 47, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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sources explore the source of this impunity, highlighting the fact that local prosecutors were from

Arauca and “like the rest of the population, they were either scared of or co-opted by the guerrillas”

(Semana 2003). As a result, the Attorney General’s Support Structure (Estructura de Apoyo – EDA) was

formed, a group of district attorneys dispatched from Bogotá who stayed on base with the army and

accompanied the troops when they conducted military operations throughout Arauca. With the

military intelligence gained during these operations, the Attorney General’s office and the EDA began

to prepare and prosecute cases against the responsible parties on a hitherto unprecedented scale.547

From the onset of Uribe’s first term in office, the Colombian government simultaneously

promoted the recuperation of regional political institutions and in order to achieve this objective in

Arauca, the Colombian government and military would need to find a way to break and permanently

disrupt the FARC and the ELN’s longstanding hegemony of departmental politics.548 As a former

elected representative from Tame points out, during this period “the ELN had absolute control of the

governorship”.549 After a team of legal investigators from the District Attorney’s office arrived in

Arauca in mid-2001, they uncovered the vast infiltration of the insurgent groups into municipal and

departmental politics (Garay Salamanca et al. 2017). Over the following two years, this specialized unit

of investigators and the regional military developed ‘Operation Dignity’ (Operación Dignidad), which

quickly led to the judicial disqualification in 2002 of the then-governor, Hector Gallardo, a vacancy

which Uribe quickly filled through a series of political appointees, some of whom were ex-military

officers, until the following gubernatorial elections in late 2003. The political turbulence of this period

was punctuated by the assassination of the mayor of Puerto Rondón, and the successive resignations

547 Ibid.

548 Interview 47, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

549 Interview 72, Tame, 2016.

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of the mayors of Saravena, Arauquita, and Fortul that same year due to death threats from various

armed actors (Gómez Rivas 2016).

The departmental political reconfiguration was achieved in part by the extreme violence

unleashed against the traditional political class in Arauca and the Colombian state’s ability to judicially

interfere in the electoral proceedings and to harass and persecute those not aligned with Uribe’s project

into quiescence or exile. During the 2003 gubernatorial elections, it appeared that Helmer Muñoz, a

well-known piedmont-based priest and critic of Uribe, might win the governor’s seat over Julio Acosta

Bernal. Alarmed, the national government intervened in the elections to alter the outcome “[…]by

arresting just five days before the election, virtually all the major contenders for governor and Arauca

{municipality} executive that were not Acosta allies or Acosta himself, accusing them of links to the

guerrillas” (Carroll 2011, 247). As seen with the case of Hector Gallardo, Uribe frequently exercised

his right to make appointments to vacant posts during this period, invariably filling these vacancies

with military appointees.550 According to one high-ranking oil union leader at the time, “between 2002

and 2004 the armed forces governed Arauca more than the mayors did”.551 In 2006, Uribe won the

support of five of Arauca’s seven municipalities in that year’s presidential elections (Arauca

municipality, Cravo, Norte, Puerto Rondón, Tame, Saravena), an electoral shift that was mirrored by

the success of those parties supportive of his government, most notable the Radical Change (Cambio

Radical) and the Citizen Convergence (Convergencia Ciudadana) parties (Gómez Rivas 2016).

The increased protection afforded to oil infrastructure in Arauca represented a greater resolve

on the part of the national government to sustain departmental oil production at a time when oil prices

were rising fortuitously, having doubled between 1998 and 2001 and continuing to climb.

Furthermore, new exploration concessions had been granted to foreign energy multinationals

550 Interview 6, Arauca municipality, 2016.

551 Interview 8, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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throughout the department, and the ability to develop these potential reserves depended entirely on

massive improvements in local security conditions (Carroll 2011).552 Under Uribe, this prerogative

became even more clearly defined as Occidental Petroleum’s Caño Limón concession was extended

in perpetuity in 2004.553 The imperative to protect Arauca’s oil fields and pipelines was partly driven

by the fiscal demands of the national government, but Uribe also sought to deny the insurgent groups

continued access to these extortive revenues. In a bid to further weaken their economic networks,

Uribe stripped control of Arauca’s oil revenues from the governor and local mayoralties in early 2003,

assigning the National Commission of Royalties this responsibility instead (El Tiempo, 2003c).

This controversial move was not without basis, as according the Anti-Corruption unit of the

Attorney General’s office, of the $1.3 billion USD that Arauca received in oil royalties between 1988

and 2003, at least $390 million of these were directly funneled to the ELN and the FARC in Arauca,

while the former group purportedly exercised control over the remaining funds by way of regulating

departmental budgets and the commission of contracts (Semana 2003; Duque Daza 2017). In an effort

to cut the armed groups off completely from collecting their quotas from public contracts, Uribe

assigned the construction of the $21 million USD Tame-Arauca highway to the Colombian army’s

Engineer Battalion, stating emphatically that “[…]we aren’t going to allow one peso more to be taken

by the corrupt or to {get into the hands of} the guerrillas” (Semana 2003). However, according to one

civil servant in the region “the money was handed over to the army and the highway ended up costing

triple the projected amount and was never fully completed by the army”.554

Another key source of illicit finance for Arauca’s insurgent groups, mainly the FARC, was the

cultivation of coca and drug trafficking. By the new millennium Arauca had become a relatively

552 Interview 18, Saravena, 2016;

553 Interview 8, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 13, Arauquita, 2016.

554 Interview 24, Saravena, 2016.

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significant producer of the illicit crop. The majority of coca was produced in rural communities in

Arauquita (see Figure 22), but peasants also grew modest amounts of the crop in northern Tame,

eastern Fortul, and Saravena. Under the anti-narcotics framework of Plan Colombia and the

counterinsurgent ethos of Uribe’s Democratic Security policy, it was only logical that the two would

find common cause and be fused together in places such as Arauca. Beginning in late 2003, the anti-

drug strategy in Arauca depended on both aerial fumigations of glyphosate and manual eradication

efforts to reduce the amount of coca grown in the department (Waked Sánchez 2013). The initial

impact of this strategy when it was implemented in 2003 was severe, however, it took another five

years to permanently lower coca cultivation in the department.

The use of glyphosate and the aerial fumigations campaign were controversial throughout

Colombia, and Arauca was no different as during this period the department underwent five rounds

of fumigations, often with the use of U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency aircraft (FIP 2014).555 The aerial

fumigations ended up destroying everything that came into contact with the glyphosate. According to

one woman in rural Tame, “the fumigations finished everything, the plaintains, the yucca, with

everything”.556 A community leader in Fortul concurs, noting that “whether there were coca crops or

not the plane would lower and we couldn’t eat because the food was poisoned and that’s why so many

people got sick”.557 The negative effects of the fumigations ended up working to an extent, as “with

the fumigations people stopped growing coca and began to earn a living by other means”.558 The

severe consequences of the glyphosate campaign forced many peasants in the piedmont to reluctantly

embrace manual eradication efforts, as one such municipal initiative (Familias Guardabosque) in

Arauquita offered a monthly $100 USD subsidy to every peasant who planted alternative crops such

555 Interview 47, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

556 Interview 22, Fortul, 2016.

557 Interview 23, Fortul, 2016.

558 Interview 14, Arauquita, 2016.

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as cacao instead of coca, with some 1600 families participating on over six thousand hectares of land

in that municipality alone.559 A human rights lawyer from rural Fortul confirms this, stating “in reality

we eradicated coca ourselves because the fumigations screwed us”.560

Figure 22. Coca Crops Cultivated (Hectares) in Arauca by Municipality (2000-2012)

Source: FIP 2014 (Based on Data from the UNOCD)

State efforts to strengthen local justice were only as effective as the intelligence that local

prosecutors received, and several new and controversial initiatives were unveiled to compel local

civilian populations to denounce others in their communities and provide information to the military.

Despite the strong resistance from local communities and the Constitutional Court, the military’s

attempts to recruit and enlist local children and youth as sources of local intelligence, the informant

network initiative with the accompanying rewards program was unveiled throughout Arauca. Several

issues quickly arose with these initiatives, a prime example of which was the deployment of Operation

Dignity between 2001 and 2003. Both the 18th Brigade and the EDA sought to systematically target

and dismantle insurgent social networks in order to cut off armed groups from their civilian bases of

support in Arauca through a series of mass arrests (capturas másivas). One such mass arrest carried out

between the army and the National Police in Saravena’s municipal capital during the early months of

the zone of rehabilitation and consolidation project on November 12th, 2002, saw roughly two

559 Interview 13, Arauquita, 2016.

560 Interview 19, Saravena, 2016.

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thousand individuals detained and then taken to the local stadium to await processing. Out of these

thousands of people, some ninety persons were actually singled out by the military’s collaborators and

in the end, only forty-three people ended up being processed and tried, all civil society leaders, and

while the majority of these were eventually absolved, four of them received lengthier jail sentences.561

According to one civil servant from Saravena, “the informants that the government recruited were

delinquents, political opportunists, and schemers”, who would denounce innocent people because

“for every person they fingered they earned two million pesos and no more proof was needed”.562

The military command in Arauca unanimously perceived all local civil society “to be directed

and led by the guerrillas”, failing to appreciate the complex relationship between the insurgent groups

and the vast array of civic organizations in the department.563 Omar Gutiérrez (2010) describes this

dynamic as another front in the regional armed conflict: “There existed a ‘social front’ in this security

policy, one dedicated to weakening organizations that represented the interests of migrants, peasants,

union members, the indigenous and those who had declared their open opposition to Álvaro Uribe’s

government. At the same time, greater space was given to strengthen certain programs designed to

consolidate the presence of the state in conflict zones (Familias en Acción, Guardabosques, etc.)” (29).

By specifically targeting regional civil society and deploying mass arrests of this nature, the armed

forces clearly “tried to break the social fabric under the pretext of taking the water from the fish”,

according to one prominent regional trade union leader.564 During this period, military commanders

were placed under immense pressure by the executive to deliver results in their persecution of the

insurgent groups, and those who did not produce the expected outcome were quickly rotated to a less

561 Interview 21, Saravena, 2016; Interview 8, Arauca municipality, 2016.

562 Interview 48, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

563 Interview 47, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

564 Interview 8, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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prestigious posting (Porch and Delgado 2010).565 A former mayor of Arauquita similarly notes that

the increased expectations from the top led to greater abuses against civilians given their relative lack

of success capturing or killing the actual enemy, as “Uribe demanded results and the guerrillas weren’t

easy to find”.566

The national government and regional military command also resorted to explicitly judicial

tactics to prosecute the war in Arauca in the civic and political spheres. As previously noted, one week

prior to the closely fought 2003 gubernatorial, mayoral, and legislative elections in the department, the

military and police participated in a coordinated joint operation throughout Arauca and beyond to

arrest “[…]the cream of the crop of Araucan leadership” (Pérez Bareño 2015, 152; El Tiempo 2003c).

The most common charge tabled against Arauca’s civic, political, and economic leadership during this

period was “rebellion” (rebelión), the legal term employed in Colombia that indicates the crime of

directly aiding the insurgency. Of those who were tried and convicted of this charge, most were

transferred to serve their sentences in prisons across the country in an intentional bid to separate them

from their constituencies.567 Many individuals who were jailed insist that their conviction was the result

of highly dubious judicial proceedings (e.g. virtual hearings) based on unverifiable informant testimony

and little else, and several of these sentences were later reduced or overturned entirely after captured

insurgents testified that these civilians were in fact innocent of the charges they were convicted of.568

In the plains, the “informants network functioned substantially better than in the piedmont

because there was a greater military presence”.569 The Colombian army was even able to cultivate rural

informants in communities controlled at different times by the insurgent or paramilitary groups. As

565 Interview 47, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

566 Interview 13, Arauquita, 2016.

567 Interview 47, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

568 Interview 67, Saravena, 2016; Interview 20, Saravena, 2016.

569 Interview 68, Tame, 2016.

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one rural inhabitant from Arauca municipality claims, “Here, people have been collaborating with the

military ever since they first arrived”.570 However, not all of these instances of collaboration were

voluntary, as similar to the piedmont and other regions of Colombia, the armed forces were guilty of

“forcibly recruiting underage people to create a youth informants network”.571 This aside, Democratic

Security Policy received substantially greater civilian support in the plains due largely to the reduced

level of insurgent attacks and other incidences of violence. Furthermore, with increased security came

greater economic stability, as explained by a journalist based in Arauca City: “Uribe’s first term was

good for the region. First security improved and then more business arrived. However, this didn’t

happen in the entire region. Arauca municipality grew the most, as if you go to Arauquita you see the

same poor roads that they had ten years ago”.572 Another plains native echoes this sentiment, claiming

that from 2005 onwards “the security situation has improved considerably. There are also better roads

and things have improved in terms of the quality of education, thanks to the municipal and

departmental governments”.573

In order to assume greater control over the territorial sphere, the Colombian military and

National Police had to clear, hold, and consolidate a permanent presence throughout the department

at the expense of the insurgent groups who had long maintained hegemony over every centimeter of

Arauca’s territory. Whereas counterinsurgent efforts had effectively cleared the plains of the FARC

and the ELN by the end of 2002, the piedmont remained a guerrilla fortress. The Colombian state

prioritized those spaces where its presence was most consolidated (namely municipal capitals and

urban centers) and quickly moved to seize control of the departmental highway system from its

opponents. As existing military and police installations were expanded and fortified in municipal

570 Interview 57, Arauca municipality, 2016.

571 Interview 51, Arauca municipality, 2016.

572 Interview 4, Arauca municipality, 2016.

573 Interview 9, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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capitals in Tame, Fortul, Saravena, Arauquita, and Arauca City, the authorities established robust

security perimeters around the main square (traditionally home to both the mayor’s office and the

police station), and a strict curfew which all inhabitants were forced to obey.574

Initially, the Colombian military’s expansion into the department’s highway system saw the

FARC, the ELN, the BVA, and the official authorities maintaining separate checkpoints in their

respective zones of influence. However, around 2004 the insurgent groups finally vacated the main

highways, retreating into the rural expanses of the department (El Tiempo 2005). Regardless of which

actor controlled the main highways, from six in the afternoon onwards a curfew took effect and all

traffic came to a virtual standstill until the following morning.575 The increased military presence on

the main highways from 2003 onwards proved to be “a very successful psychological factor against

the guerrillas”, but it also cut many rural habitants off from the municipal capitals. 576 The military

would interrogate individuals commuting from rural communities to urban centers, trying to convert

them into informants. Unsurprisingly, people who lived in the villages stopped going to nearby towns

due to the inherent dangers these tactics posed to their safety.

The Colombian state’s counterinsurgency campaign in Arauca consisted of two principal

phases under Uribe: the first coincided with the joint state-paramilitary expansion into the department

from 2002 until late 2005, whereas the second began with the demobilization of the BVA and the

evolution of Democratic Security policy under Plan Consolidation until Uribe left office in 2010. The

first phase saw the Colombian armed forces engage the insurgent groups in armed clashes some sixty-

five times, with the overwhelming majority of these taking place in the piedmont (Gutiérrez 2009).

For its part, the BVA militarily engaged the FARC and the ELN nine times during this period, mostly

574 Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

575 Interview 25, Tame, 2016; Interview 18, Saravena, 2016.

576 Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

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in northern Tame, while tellingly the Colombian military only engaged the BVA once, a clash that was

the result of the armed forces intervening in a harsh battle being fought between the paramilitaries

and the insurgent groups in Betoyes (Tame).577 The biggest success of this period, apart from the

dramatic reduction in attacks on departmental oil infrastructure, was the partial dismantling of the

FARC and ELN’s urban militia structures in the municipal capitals of Tame, Saravena, and Arauca

municipality, and the securitization of the Arauca’s main highways.578 Furthermore, the Colombian

government’s efforts to weaken the armed group’s finances were relatively successful as seen by the

steep decline in coca cultivation and the successful attacks on cocaine processing laboratories (El

Tiempo 2005).

The second phase of Uribe’s Democratic Security policy in Arauca saw the Colombian military

more effectively collect and employ local intelligence in major operations, and it also recalibrated the

local balance of power by explicitly targeting the FARC’s fronts and columns while maintaining a

temporary ‘alliance’ with the ELN. Whereas the 18th Brigade and the Mobile Brigade No. 5 continued

to plan and execute large-scale military operations throughout Arauca, the regional military command

started to see greater results midway through Uribe’s second term in office. In one short span in 2008,

successive coordinated military operations by different branches the Colombian armed forces used

intelligence gleaned from guerrilla deserters and undercover guerrilla infiltrators to either arrest or

assassinate many key FARC leaders in Arauca (El Tiempo 2008a; Semana 2009c).

Whatever positive results were achieved in Arauca during this period were contrasted by

several egregious cases of human rights violations committed by the Colombian military. Uribe’s

demands for concrete results coincided with more frequent cases of “false positives”, the most

notorious of which occurred in August, 2004, when a Colombian army unit from the Colombian

577 Interview 47, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

578 Ibid.

295

army’s General Gabriel Reveiz Pizzarro battalion detained and shot three unarmed civic leaders in the

rural village in Saravena during Operation Storm I (Operación Tormenta I). Subsequently, the military

command claimed that these union activists were killed when they resisted arrest for purportedly being

members of the ELN.579 After demands from regional civil society, the local medical examiner

reviewed the corpses again and concluded that the men were in fact shot in the back from close range,

thereby disproving the official version of events (Carroll 2011; Semana 2008).

The expansion of the armed forces into a heavily consolidated insurgent zone did little to

improve relations between the military and the civilian population.580 According to one piedmont

native, “these relations were forced under Uribe”, as people were obligated to tolerate the increased

presence even though the soldiers would damage their properties and confiscate their livestock

without compensation.581 A schoolteacher from Saravena claims that soldiers continued “to stigmatize

everybody as guerrillas”, while a peasant leader from rural Arauquita says that when they did arrive in

his community, they would invariably “put the population at risk by camping out in the local school”,

a tactic likely to provoke an insurgent attack on the village itself.582 Another local businessman in

Fortul remembers that things worsened considerably during the paramilitary incursion as “the military

took people out of their homes in the middle of the night and killed them to pass them off as false

positives”.583 In one horrific incident, members of the Army’s 18th Brigade dressed up in BVA

uniforms and detained a pregnant sixteen-year old widow named Omaira Fernández near a local

stream in Betoyes before raping and decapitating the young woman in front of horrified bystanders.

579 Interview 50, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 21, Saravena, 2016; Interview 16, Saravena, 2016.

580 Interview 49, Arauca municipality, 2016.

581 Interview 50, Arauca municipality, 2016.

582 Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

583 Interview 67, Saravena, 2016; Interview 75, Fortul, 2016.

296

During this macabre act, her unborn fetus was ripped from her corpse, dismembered, and placed in a

plastic bag before being discarded alongside its mother in the stream (Fichtl 2003).

iii. The Insurgent Reaction

Whereas the FARC and the ELN’s fronts in the piedmont successfully resisted both the BVA

incursion and the pressures of Democratic Security Policy, members of these very same fronts were

quickly displaced by the paramilitary incursion in the Araucan plains. Offering virtually no resistance

to counterinsurgent forces, or protection to civilian communities that they had long ruled over, the

insurgents fled to the safety of the piedmont or neighboring Venezuela, effectively ceding control of

the sub-region to the BVA and the Colombian military until 2005. For example, when the BVA made

an incursion into the village of Caracol in northeastern Arauca municipality in 2002, insurgent fighters

sought refuge in neighboring Venezuela, leaving their former civilian charges behind to face the

paramilitaries alone.584 Unlike Montes de María, where the BHMM succeeded in isolating the insurgent

groups by emptying the countryside of civilian populations, the BVA incursion into the Araucan plains

caused massive forced displacement while also dislodging and expelling the FARC and the ELN, albeit

temporarily, from the zone. The insurgent groups were not nearly as embedded in the plains in the

same way, as “the guerrillas were practically exported from the piedmont to the plains. There, they

hadn’t penetrated community in the same way nor did they form any social structures”.585 The lack of

sufficient pre-existing anchors and a primary cleavage proved to be barriers to insurgent

embeddedness, as FARC and ELN commanders prioritized control of territory and economic

resources as was reflected in the system of provisional predations they established throughout the sub-

region.

584 Interview 57, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 56, Arauca municipality, 2016.

585 Interview 74, Tame, 2016.

297

Figure 23. Conflict Actions Committed by Insurgent Groups in Arauca (1996-2013)

Source: Author’s Elaboration (Based on Gómez Rivas 2014, 209)

Whereas the BVA incursion failed to successfully penetrate the piedmont, the near simultaneous

implementation of Democratic Security Policy forced the two insurgent groups in Arauca to change

their strategies and methods of engaging with their opponents due to the overwhelming numerical

and technological superiority enjoyed by their opponents. Whereas the FARC’s fronts in Arauca

continued to attack its opponents with a high level of frequency, the ELN’s military capacity seemingly

waned from 2003 until Uribe left office in 2010 (Gómez Rivas 2016). The FARC became even more

bellicose in reaction to the ascendance of Uribe and the implementation of Democratic Security Policy,

regularly deploying bicycle and car bombs throughout the department to great and lethal effect (El

Tiempo 2003d; El Tiempo 2003e). The ELN adopted a more cautious strategy, having experienced a

dramatic reduction in its military capacity throughout Colombia during this period (FIP 2015).

According to one civil servant from Saravena, “the ELN simply went into retreat and remained quiet

for four to five years so that they weren’t defeated”.586 This owes much to the fact that between 2002

586 Interview 53, Arauca municipality, 2016.

298

until 2006 the ELN held exploratory talks with the Uribe administration over potential peace

negotiations, talks which finally came to fruition in 2006 and lasted until 2008. Despite these efforts,

the group continued to deploy selective violence against civilians throughout Arauca, particularly

against suspected informants. The Domingo Laín front explicitly forbid the entrance of unknown

persons into communities under its control, whether travelling salesmen or homeless persons, as there

was a rash of homicides against a group of clowns in Saravena who had mistakenly travelled to the

municipality for work (Semana 2003).

Figure 24. Mine Casualties in Arauca per Municipality (2000-2013)

Source: FIP 2014 (49)

While both the FARC and the ELN maintained different military capacities and repertoires

during this period, they also responded to the implementation of Democratic Security Policy by

changing their territorial prerogatives and troop movements. Following the paramilitary incursion

throughout the plains over the course of 2001 and 2002, the two insurgent groups relinquished any

territorial claims there, instead channeling all of their efforts into holding onto the ABC corridor which

connected the piedmont and the Eastern Andes with Venezuela, a mobility corridor which was of

enormous geostrategic importance to the FARC and the ELN in the piedmont.587 Another shared

tactic embraced by the FARC and the ELN in Arauca in reaction to the new counterinsurgency regime

587 Interview 68, Tame, 2016.

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was the growing use of anti-personal landmines to prevent the advance of military or paramilitary

troops into their territory. The growing dependence on such improvised explosive devices was most

notable in the two piedmont municipalities which bordered the plains, Tame and Arauquita, and as

can be seen in Figure 24, the level of casualties these devices produced increased dramatically

throughout Uribe’s first term in power before slowly declining from 2007 onwards (FIP 2014).

The militarization of the zone led to a dramatic reduction in insurgent attacks on the Caño

Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline from 2002 onwards, yet the guerrillas changed course and began to attack

and sabotage other targets such as local highways, making inter-municipal travel much more

complicated.588 Unable to sustain previously high level of attacks against the oil pipeline, the FARC

and ELN began attacking the electricity grid, which supplied fifty percent of the power to operations

at the Caño Limón oil complex. Between 2002 and 2005, the surge in these types of attacks affected

Occidental Petroleum’s production in Arauca to the tune of $117 million USD in lost revenues

(USGAO 2005, 16). These tactics proved so effective that the insurgent groups began to bomb

electrical towers during departmental and municipal elections when their candidates were either

disqualified from competing or not electable. In one such case in 2009, the votes had to be counted

by candlelight due to the blackout caused by guerrilla attacks on the electrical grid.589

During this period, both insurgent groups, the FARC in particular, began to persecute and

attack elected representatives throughout Arauca, especially those who maintained ties with the BVA.

For example, the FARC made seven assassination attempts against Julio Acosta Bernal during his

tenure in office, while the ELN tried numerous times to kill the mayor of Tame, Alfredo Guzmán

Tafur.590 All political parties that were aligned with Uribe’s own Party of Unity (Partido de la U), were

588 Interview 13, Arauquita, 2016.

589 Interview 4, Arauca municipality, 2016.

590 Interview 22, Fortul, 2016; Interview 65, Saravena, 2016; Interview 4, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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persecuted and effectively prevented from operating in Arauquita, Saravena, and Fortul.591 The

decimation of the parties traditionally controlled by the FARC and the ELN in Arauca, the UP and

the Saravena Liberals, saw the latter insurgent group made discreet alliances with a rash of new political

vehicles, while the former declared outright war on all elected politicians, regardless of partisan

affiliation, as “the FARC wanted to make the state disappear” in Arauca.592 A former mayor of

Arauquita recalls this violent period: “When I was mayor, the FARC tried to kill me three times and I

was forced to request a military and police escort. I was declared a military target and they killed five

of my staff. As mayor I wasn’t even able to go outside to the main plaza, but the contractors could

travel to rural communities unmolested to give extortion payments to the guerrillas”.593

The insurgent social code remained in full effect during the period of contestation. Women

had to be extremely cautious of how they dressed so as to not attract the attention of soldiers or the

police.594 Any civilian who greeted, publicly acknowledged, or sold anything to the official authorities

became “a fixed military target” of the FARC and the ELN.595 Apart from a prohibition against

religious proselytism, there continued to be an implicit sanction against homosexuality, and other

behavior deemed by the guerrillas to be in violation of their norms of decency.596 Similar to how the

BVA persecuted those civilians with ID cards issued in the piedmont municipalities, the FARC and

the ELN conversely “judged and sentenced persons with identification from the plains”, and thus

movement beyond one’s immediate community became an enormous challenge.597 Due to the fact

that paramilitary spies first entered Arauca disguised as salesmen or homeless travelers, the insurgents

591 Interview 11, Arauquita, 2016.

592 Interview 14, Arauquita, 2016.

593 Interview 13, Arauquita, 2016.

594 Interview 69, Tame, 2016; Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

595 Interview 63, Arauquita, 2016.

596 Interview 19, Saravena, 2016.

597 Interview 69, Tame, 2016.

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began “to persecute new arrivals because they thought they were paramilitaries of state infiltrators”.598

From 2001 onwards, the two insurgent groups also “froze all land sales out of fear that the

paramilitaries would arrive”, keeping the traditional smallholding peasant land tenure pattern intact.599

Despite the increased brutality of the insurgent groups towards civilians in the piedmont, most people

perceived them as fairer and less gruesome than their paramilitary counterparts and thus preferred the

insurgents’ presence to that of the BVA.600

The sudden expansion of the state into Arauca changed the spatial distribution between all of

the disparate actors in the department. The Colombian military and the National Police’s increased

presence forced the insurgent groups to operate more surreptitiously in the face of such overwhelming

oppositional force.601 In contrast, the ascendance of Hugo Chávez to the Venezuelan presidency saw

a substantially more relaxed attitude on behalf of the Venezuelan armed forces towards insurgent

groups such as the FARC and the ELN which operated on their soil. While both insurgent groups

had increased their incursions into Venezuelan territory since the latter half of the 1990s, this process

accelerated with the election of Chávez and more importantly with the implementation of Democratic

Security policy in 2002. In the neighboring Venezuelan state of Apure, FARC cadres that had been

displaced by the BVA from Arauca municipality fled across the river and consolidated their presence

in towns located in the interior such as Elorza, Puerto Infante, and Guasdualito, whereas the ELN

consolidated a corridor directly on the Venezuelan side of the Arauca River, stretching westwards

from El Amparo to La Victoria and beyond. From this juncture onwards the insurgent groups

exercised greater authority and control in Apure than the Venezuelan authorities did.602 From

598 Interview 9, Arauca municipality, 2016.

599 Interview 23, Fortul, 2016.

600 Interview 75, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

601 Interview 61, Arauquita, 2016.

602 Interview 57, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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Venezuela, the FARC and the ELN controlled contraband, arms, gasoline, and drugs entering and

exiting Arauca, while also carrying out military operations and assassinations from their border

refuge.603 In a telling example, the top commander of the Domingo Laín front, Carlos Emilio Marin

Giraldo alias “Pablito”, was arrested and incarcerated in a maximum-security prison in Bogotá in 2008.

The following year he was transferred to the departmental lockup in Arauca City for a hearing, and

within days of his arrival a special ELN commando unit broke into the prison complex, killing one

guard and leaving others wounded, before rapidly escorting the insurgent boss across the river to a

safe house in Venezuela, a refuge where he has remained to the present day (Semana 2009d).

The sudden insertion of the BVA and the implementation of Democratic Security policy

brought the FARC and the ELN together, albeit temporarily, in a joint security agreement to prevent

both the Colombian state and its auxiliaries from entering the piedmont.604 Locals in both Arauquita

and Tame – the two piedmont municipalities bordering the plains – recall how the FARC and the

ELN established a security cordon on the border between these two sub-regions, and according to

one religious leader in Arauquita, “any stranger who entered the piedmont was killed. They were

watching absolutely everything and they didn’t allow infiltrators or paras to enter”.605 In contrast to the

plains, where “the guerrillas didn’t confront them, they were the first to flee”, the FARC and ELN

troops in the piedmont fought the BVA’s attempted incursion with blood and fire.606 These conflicts

frequently spilled over and provoked a spate of indiscriminate and selective violence against civilians

by both the insurgents and the paramilitaries in retaliation for their perceived collaboration with their

opponents.607 The temporary alliance between the insurgent groups in Arauca, and the efforts of the

603 Interview 13, Arauquita, 2016. Interview 10, Arauca municipality, 2016.

604 Interview 4, Arauca municipality, 2016.

605 Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016; Interview 99, Tame, 2016.

606 Interview 55, Arauca municipality, 2016.

607 Interview 69, Tame, 2016; Interview 72, Tame, 2016.

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ELN’s Domingo Laín front in particular, to directly confront the BVA “[…]succeeded in containing

the paramilitary advance in what is known as the battle of Corocito in rural Tame, where a four-day

confrontation left various dead on both sides”. During this clash, the ELN was able to “[…]push the

paramilitaries back towards their rearguard where they had the support of the armed forces…it was

this battle that prevented the paramilitaries from settling in the Laín’s historic zone” (El Espectador

2014). After 2003, the direct confrontations between the FARC and the ELN on one side and the

BVA on the other virtually came to a halt.

In contrast to other regions in Colombia, when the BVA demobilized in late 2005 they

completely vacated the plains in the process. Neither demobilized BVA fighters nor other such neo-

paramilitary groups arrived to fill the void, and the two insurgent groups quickly re-occupied these

spaces and “punished those persons who had supposedly collaborated with the paras”.608 Whereas the

FARC’s fronts in Arauca were quick to re-occupy the plains in the aftermath of the BVA

demobilization, the various other territorial reconfigurations between the two insurgent groups in

Arauca and Venezuela during this period were both a cause and result of the impending war between

the competing insurgencies.609 From the late 1990s onwards, relations between the FARC and the

ELN in Arauca had become increasingly strained due to the former group’s encroachment on rackets

historically controlled by the latter. The FARC’s increased forays into extorting the departmental oil

industry helped the group recuperate whatever financial losses it had experienced due to the

Colombian military’s fumigation campaign in Arauca beginning in 2002, although this further strained

inter-guerrilla relations in the department (Semana 2002). Simultaneously, the Domingo Laín front

broke with the ELN’s longstanding edict against the drug trade in 2005 and started to horn in on the

608 Interview 69, Tame, 2016.

609 Interview 51, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 74, Tame, 2016.

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FARC’s coca monopoly.610 The immersion of the ELN into this business led to greater micro-conflicts

over local resources, territorial control, and municipal politics, all of which had previously been fought

over in a relatively peaceful manner in Arauca.611 In late 2005, two mid-ranking insurgent commanders

and their entourages from the 10th front and the Domingo Laín front met in northern Tame, yet the

meeting quickly devolved into chaos when the ELN commander shot his rival dead.612 In the fallout

from this deadly encounter, the top-ranking FARC commander in Arauca ordered his troops “to finish

with whatever vestige of the ELN” they could find in the department (Semana 2006).

At first, the FARC and the ELN confronted one another directly in rural communities where

they had closely co-existed for decades in Tame, Arauquita, Fortul, and even parts of Saravena.

However, after a while “they started to attack the peasants too”, and soon “there were entire villages

that were abandoned” throughout the piedmont.613 Whereas previously, the insurgent groups “told

people that they could sympathize with whichever of the groups they wished”, with the inter-guerrilla

war the FARC and the ELN “forced people to sympathize with one group or another, all of which

meant a guaranteed death for those who were on the wrong side”.614 Those who remained and

committed to one side were left vulnerable to having their children forcibly recruited, or to be attacked

by the opposing group.615 Thousands of others opted to abandon their farmsteads and fled to the

relative safety of the nearest municipal capital.616 One peasant leader from a village in rural Arauquita

recalls the effect of this conflict on his village: “They divided the village as if it were the Berlin Wall.

You couldn’t pass from one side to the other because the guerrillas didn’t want any information to

610 Interview 75, Bogotá D.C., 2016; Interview 22, Fortul, 2016.

611 Interview 47, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

612 Interview 22, Fortul, 2016.

613 Interview 13, Arauquita, 2016.

614 Interview 72, Tame, 2016.

615 Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

616 Interview 16, Saravena, 2016.

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filter out. They started killing a lot of innocent people and the social fabric started to fall apart as

people were separated and mistrusted everybody else”.617

The dense web of civic organizations was hit particularly hard by this conflict. Prior to this,

the vibrancy of the civic sphere was threatened massively due to the escalation of violence between

the FARC, the ELN, the BVA, and the Colombian military. Despite this, local civic organizations had

witnessed a shift from the previous civic and armed strikes to the formation a transnational advocacy

network extending well beyond the piedmont to include alliances with national and international level

organizations. This expansion helped piedmont civic organizations battle several high-profile cases in

the legal arena, resulting in public relations triumphs for local interests over the Colombian military,

oil multinationals, and their domestic elite allies (El Tiempo 2002; Gutiérrez 2010). Tellingly, regional

civic leaders were even able to mobilize a massive protest in 2002 against the BVA’s incursion and the

presence of American military advisors in the region (Carroll 2011). The FARC and the ELN’s

longstanding control of the civic sphere in the piedmont helped them rigidly control the political and

economic spheres in Arauca for two decades, while also functioning as a crucial mechanism to monitor

and regulate local communities serving as the front line of defense against paramilitary advances.618

This dynamic worsened during the ELN-FARC war. In particular, the community action

boards became even more intensely contested than before. One former JAC president from La

Horqueta (Tame) remembers that at one meeting “the FARC came and kidnapped us to pass sentence

when the ELN arrived and bullets started flying. We all fled running and ended up in Saravena”.619 In

villages and towns that were historically divided between the two groups, each rebel faction fielded

their own candidate in the JAC elections, or in some cases two separate community action boards

617 Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

618 Interview 72, Tame, 2016; Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

619 Interview 19, Saravena, 2016.

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were established, one for each insurgent faction, and all locals had to pledge allegiance to one side or

the other.620 Even though regional civil society was impacted greatly by this conflict, the surge in

violence compelled many local leaders, in tandem with the religious group, Pastoral Social, to create

new lay-based organizations which “managed to solve the village’s problems despite the pressures

from the guerrillas”, mechanisms which proved “key in maintaining ties strong enough to survive the

conflict”.621 Miraculously, piedmont civil society remained “[…]strong, extremely well networked,

unified with respect to social movement actions, and extraordinarily successful”, even during the worst

of the inter-guerrilla violence (Carroll 2011, 228).

Many believe that the inter-guerrilla war was a deliberate strategy of the Colombian state in

the region, as military officials elsewhere in Colombia admitted that they did actually seek to pit

competing insurgent groups against one another at this juncture (Porch 2012).622 The Colombian

military in Arauca had in fact made a covert alliance with the ELN in Tame to combat the FARC in

the department.623 This alliance principally existed between a commander of a one powerful ELN

commission in Tame and the Colombian army, with both sharing information on their rivals’ while

coordinating attacks so that they did not step on one another’s toes.624 Following the incarceration

and subsequent escape of ‘Pablito’, those ELN commanders who had made these alliances were

purportedly tried and executed by the group’s leadership for these counterrevolutionary tactics, but

by then it was common knowledge in the piedmont that such an alliance had existed (Semana 2009e).

After more than five years of outright conflict, the national level leadership of the FARC and the ELN

620 Interview 99, Tame, 2018; Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

621 Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

622 Interview 16, Saravena, 2016; Interview 49, Arauca municipality, 2016.

623 Interview 15, Saravena, 2016.

624 Interview 99, Tame, 2018.

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compelled their regional leadership in Arauca to establish a ceasefire in order to meet and permanently

resolve their differences in 2010.

The damage caused by the inter-guerrilla conflict was enormous. Local estimates place the toll

in excess of eight hundred deaths and fifty thousand displaced.625 One former politician from Tame

states that the insurgent war “damaged relations with civilians and delegitimized the groups in good

part”.626 A peasant leader from rural Arauquita corroborates this claim, insisting that the FARC and

the ELN were forced to negotiate to end the conflict because “people were completely tired of the

war and the insurgents lost legitimacy and respect”.627 Despite the shift in public perception towards

the insurgent groups, virtually all civilians continued to recognize them as the de facto authority in the

piedmont. Prior to the conflict, the FARC had a military and territorial advantage over its rival.

However, from 2008 onwards the ELN regained the upper hand, especially after ‘Pablito’ escaped

from prison.628 Reflecting popular sentiment in Arauca, a community leader from Arauquita claims

that “the FARC were better militarily but the ELN won that war because they started to target civilians.

They took control of the communal movements while the FARC was gradually neglecting the social

and political spheres”.629 The ELN’s victory was reflected in the terms of the inter-guerrilla truce itself,

an agreement that clearly demarcated boundaries between the two groups in Arauca. The ELN

recuperated its hegemony in historic piedmont strongholds such as Saravena, Fortul, Arauquita, and

Tame, whereas the FARC kept some of its territory in the triangle between Fortul, Arauquita, and

Tame, while claiming control of the plains municipalities, albeit in a much more subtle manner than

before.630

625 Interview 14, Arauquita, 2016.

626 Interview 52, Tame, 2016.

627 Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

628 Interview 4, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 63, Arauquita, 2016.

629 Interview 14, Arauquita, 2016.

630 Interview 49, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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C. The Outcome

The efficacy with which the BVA entered and established control of the Araucan plains was

the result of both the FARC and the ELN’s weak embeddedness in the sub-region, coupled with the

brutality of the counterinsurgent tactics employed. Similar to Montes de María, the insurgent groups

in the plains had intensified their persecution of large landholders and cattle ranchers over the course

of the 1990s, all of which fueled the stigmatization of local peasants as guerrilla collaborators by landed

elites and the Colombian military, further exacerbating an already highly polarized social dynamic in

the process. This stigmatization of civilian communities in the Araucan plains resembled Tilly’s (1999)

observation on extreme nationalism, insofar as rural elites were driven by “[…]claims to prior control

over a state, hence the exclusion of others from that priority. It authorizes agents of the nation to

subordinate, segregate, stigmatize, expel, or even exterminate others in the nation’s name” (172).

Already pre-disposed to the extreme paramilitary ethos of “re-stating the state”, landed elites threw

their considerable support behind a veritable paramilitary project when the AUC presented this

opportunity to them in the early 2000s, yet many of them ended up victims of the BVA (Gutiérrez

and Barón 2005).

In an unfortunate twist of irony, the stigmatization of the region’s peasantry as a common

enemy by landed elites and the Colombian military overshadowed a contrasting reality, one in which

local peasants had seen little to no actual gains under their predatory insurgent guardians. Upon their

arrival in plains communities, the FARC and the ELN found multiple barriers and few anchors to

develop a robust insurgent social order. The society comprised a highly atomized and dispersed

peasantry with little organizational capacity that was also heavily dependent on the massive cattle

ranching estates for their very livelihoods. Similarly problematic was the fact that the primary cleavage

between creole settlers and indigenous groups had lost most of its importance over the latter half of

the 20th century and thus there was no widespread peasant grievance to appropriate. Additionally, due

309

to the overwhelming dominance of the insurgents in co-opting all departmental and municipal political

posts from the late 1980s onwards, plains based insurgent structures were spared from having to bring

out the vote in peasant communities under their control. Faced with these conditions, the FARC and

the ELN quickly resorted to provisional predation upon their arrival in the plains, prioritizing

territorial mobility and economic resources over governance, security, and order. Thus, when these

groups were confronted by the BVA and the Colombian military, they unsurprisingly retreated to

Venezuela or the piedmont, leaving their former civilian charges to pay the costs of having tolerated

rebel rule for so many years.

Table 12. Armed Actor Control in the Araucan Plains (2001-2010)

Territorial

Political

Economic

Civic

• Counterinsurgent control of rural villages, highways, and municipal capitals (2001-2005)

• Minimal insurgent control of rural villages (2006-2010)

• Insurgent control in Apure (2001-2010)

• Counterinsurgent control of departmental and municipal politics (2001-2009)

• Counterinsurgent violence against leftwing politicians (2001-2005)

• Counterinsurgent control of contraband, coca, and extortions (2001-2005)

• FARC control of contraband, coca, and extortions (2005-2010)

• Counterinsurgent repression of civic organizations and mobilizations (2001-2005)

Source: Author’s Elaboration

As Timothy Wickham-Crowley (2015) highlights, the most important public good provided

by any aspiring non-state ruler is “[…]to protect the populace from both internal and external

violence” (65). The long-term viability of armed groups to rule communities is heavily dependent on

their ability to protect their social bases from external predation (Kalyvas 2006; Mampilly 2011;

Metelits 2011). When the insurgent groups - principally the FARC - returned to occupy the plains in

the aftermath of the BVA’s demobilization in order to assume control of local informal economic

activities (e.g. extortion, drug trafficking, and contraband), they did so in a substantially less visible

and conspicuous manner than before due to the lack of any meaningful civilian support for their

renewed presence. Similar to Montes de María, the case of the plains demonstrates how the efficacy

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of the paramilitary dirty war created the necessary conditions on the ground for the short and long-

term success of counterinsurgent outcomes in these sub-national theatres of war (Gutiérrez-Sanín

2019). Even though the BVA expelled the FARC and the ELN from the plains, state expansion

ultimately proved unable to permanently remove the insurgent groups in the long-term, thereby

producing this particular counterinsurgency outcome (state advantage-insurgent disadvantage). This

result owes more to the spillover effects from the piedmont insurgencies and the short-termism of

the Colombian military’s strategy in the plains, yet still raises several questions about the overall

efficacy of Democratic Security Policy in the Araucan plains.

When the period of contestation began in the piedmont, both the FARC and the ELN oversaw

a complex and exceptionally robust system of nested governance throughout the sub-region.

However, this strength did not necessarily mean that the entire civilian population cared for,

supported, or appreciated the presence of the FARC and ELN in their day-to-day lives. Rather, the

pervasiveness of the insurgent rule locked civilians into their social order, regardless of their personal

beliefs or sentiments towards the dual insurgencies. According to a former civil servant from Tame,

peasant-insurgent relations during this period were characterized by alignment, displacement, and

mortality, representing different logics based on coercion, affection, and/or material gain:

The guerrillas embedded themselves deeply in piedmont society and a relationship was formed based on submission, collaboration, and fear. The population has always had a degree of familiarity with these groups because they have family members, friends, and acquaintances who belong to them. The guerrillas did good things such as prohibiting the use of dynamite for fishing and they also legalized marriages. But they also created a lot of suffering, they became instruments to kill people.631

These relations oscillated between “domination and cooperation”, yet were “determined more

by armed pressure than by the conscience. Civilians are motivated by an instinct to survive”.632 Of

equal importance, peasant communities in the piedmont possessed “greater ties to the insurgent

631 Interview 71, Tame, 2016.

632 Interview 64, Arauquita, 2016; Interview 74, Tame, 2016.

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groups because everybody had friends and family members who belonged to them”.633 The FARC and

the ELN “usurped the state’s functions” and for this reason “the population has applauded the

subversive groups”. The guerrillas regulated and structured local communities and “supported their

petitions and demands while the state promoted prison and exile”.634

The wholesale insurgent co-optation of the civic sphere enabled these groups to capture

political power in the department, regulate order in local communities, while also protecting the

peasant smallholder system from external predation (Peñate 1998; Duque Daza 2017; Larratt-Smith

2020). The FARC and the ELN’s control of community actions boards, peasant cooperatives, trade

guilds, and other civic organizations provided excellent monitoring and enforcement mechanisms,

yielding broad networks of local information. Virtually all of these organizations were infiltrated to

the extent that the insurgents “essentially knew everything that occurred inside of these groups”, and

were thereby able to regulate their activities. Crucially, insurgent control of local production, trade,

and commerce engendered a particular dynamic where peasants could either support the insurgent

project and share in the benefits – whether providing intelligence or voting for a certain candidate -

or merely remain obedient and receive nothing.635 As one religious leader in Arauquita describes this:

“To be neutral was difficult. It was to opt for a very poor life and one without many opportunities.

The guerrillas banded together and co-opted everything and the population was forced to sympathize

in some form or another to eat or to work”.636 In binding civilian livelihoods to support for the

insurgent social order, the FARC and the ELN guaranteed that the local peasantry was going to be

633 Interview 49, Arauca municipality, 2016.

634 Interview 50, Arauca municipality, 2016.

635 Interview 49, Arauca municipality, 2016.

636 Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

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stigmatized by the state, as local civilians “had to bow their heads to the insurgents because they

depended on them”.637

Contrary to the paramilitary incursions in Montes de María and the Araucan plains, which

created very favorable conditions for the Colombian military to pry civilian support away from the

established insurgent social order, the BVA enjoyed no such success in the piedmont. The insurgent

commitment to protecting the piedmont, reinforced by the wholesale support of the sub-region’s

civilian population for repelling the paramilitary advance, not only generated widespread goodwill and

gratitude towards the insurgent groups, but also highlighted the extreme brutality of the BVA and thus

drove civilians further into the insurgents’ arms (El Espectador 2014).638 According to a peasant leader

from rural Tame:

One in a certain way was thankful to god that the ELN and the FARC were there and they didn’t let the paras enter at that time because they committed so many massacres. If you were the mother of somebody in the guerrilla groups then they would kill you. The paras would kill your father, mother, brothers, everybody. At that time, people preferred that the guerrillas were there.639

In light of the well-known fact that the Colombian military collaborated intimately with the

BVA, relations between civilian communities and the armed forces reached a new low, as a human

rights defender in Tame puts it: “People felt unprotected with them. They never acted and only

stigmatized us”.640 If anything, the collaboration between the BVA and the Colombian Army’s 18 th

brigade only exacerbated the pre-existing cleavage, with the insurgent groups and the piedmont

peasantry on one side, and the Colombian state on the other. In Tame, the municipality most affected

by the regional armed conflict and also the only one divided evenly between the two sub-regions, the

insurgent security cordon was largely effective at protecting rural civilian communities in the piedmont

from being forcibly displaced by counterinsurgent forces as happened in the plains. As Table 13

637 Interview 59, Arauquita, 2016.

638 Interview 13, Arauquita, 2016; Interview 75, Bogotá D.C., 2016; Interview 99, Tame, 2016.

639 Interview 75, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

640 Interview 70, Tame, 2016.

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demonstrates, this municipality saw its urban population decline during the same period, a trend which

reflects the paramilitary takeover of the municipal capital and the virtual immobility caused by the

territorial dynamic of the regional armed conflict.641 Quite simply, piedmont habitants could no longer

travel to the plains or the municipal capital and vice versa, under the pain of death from the BVA, the

FARC, and the ELN.642

Table 13. Urban and Rural Population of Tame (1993, 2005)

Municipality Urban Population % of Population Rural Population % of Population Total

Tame (1993) 16.437 54% 14.037 46% 30.474

Tame (2005) 19.134 40% 28.442 60% 47.576

Source: DANE (1993, 2005)

In the case of the piedmont, insurgent-civilian relations were increasingly characterized by

violence and submission during the period of contestation, although this did not weaken insurgent

populational control in the sub-region. The absolutism of nested governance in the piedmont raised

the costs of disobedience or defection substantially, as it would require the virtual abandonment of

one’s family and community. Firmly bound into the existing social order, piedmont civilians were

unwilling or unable to collaborate with agents of the state which they had long perceived as their chief

adversary. Kalyvas (2006) describes this level of polarization as a “fanaticism” comprised of “[…]an

uncompromising and passionate commitment for a particular cause that overcomes other

connections” (65-66). This throws into question the logic underpinning population-centric

counterinsurgency approaches, namely that all civilians are driven by simple cost-benefit econometric

measures predicated on a belief that presumes “[…]the population to be completely indifferent to

insurgent and counterinsurgent, so whichever side provided the better set of incentives and

disincentives would prevail.” (Long 2006, 29).

641 Interview 25, Tame 2016; Interview 71, Tame, 2016; Interview 99, Tame, 2016.

642 Interview 25, Tame, 2016; Interview 75, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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There were certainly some civilians who perceived state expansion as a potential opportunity

to disobey or defect from the insurgent social order, but both insurgent groups were highly effective

at deterring any potential collaboration or support for the Colombian state during this time. According

to one peasant leader from northern Tame: “Some people started to collaborate with the army, but

the guerrillas bribed a commander to give them information about who was informing. This

commander sent them a file with their names and phone numbers and all those who had called were

killed”.643 In another instance, the FARC killed a husband and wife in rural Tame because their adult

son had enlisted in the Colombian army (El Tiempo 2004c). Women suspected of interacting with

members of the military or the police were only spared on the condition that they become informants

for the insurgent groups on the threat of having their children forcibly recruited into their ranks

(CODHES 2008). Rural communities that did not sufficiently resist counterinsurgent incursions were

accused of being paramilitary collaborators and forcibly displaced elsewhere by the insurgent groups

(El Tiempo 2004d). In a telling example, fourteen detectives who arrived in the (then BVA controlled)

municipal capital of Tame to assume investigative functions in early 2004 were forced to sleep on the

floor because no transport or moving company would dare deliver beds and other equipment to their

headquarters out of fear of becoming an insurgent military target (El Tiempo 2004e).

Table 14. Armed Actor Control in the Araucan Piedmont (2001-2010)

Territorial

Political

Economic

Civic

• Contested control of municipal capitals, rural villages, and highways (2002-2010)

• Insurgent control in Apure (2001-2010)

• Counterinsurgent control of departmental politics (2002-2009)

• ELN control of municipal politics

• ELN control of contraband, contracts, extortions (2001-2010)

• FARC control of coca, extortions (2001-2010)

• ELN control of civic organizations and mobilizations

Source: Author’s Elaboration

643 Interview 75, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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Various initiatives implemented under Democratic Security Policy, such as the informants

network, peasant soldiers, and ‘Soldier for a day’, sought to break these ties “by directly involving

people in the not only in the use of force, but by implicating that everybody had to collaborate which

only worsened the existing level of polarization”.644 Counterinsurgent forces wilfully or ignorantly

ignored the fact that obedience was the minimum requirement for civilian communities living under

insurgent control and conflated this soft support for active collaboration, a failure which ironically

only further bound insurgents and civilians together. According to a peasant leader from a rural

piedmont community, given the high frequency of insurgent-civilian interactions, “anybody could be

accused of being an insurgent collaborator for having sold these groups a chicken or for giving them

lunch, all of which we were directly or indirectly forced to do”.645 The pervasiveness of nested

governance in the piedmont gave civilians no option but to be allied with them, as one migrant settler

in rural Fortul elaborates:

In this place the insurgents classify you. You are for one side or the other. I don’t consider myself part of either group, but because I arrived here thanks to my brother and he is classified as supportive of the FARC, then so am I and that’s how it is. Here, you have to be classified, and they are the ones who decide and they don’t ask you anything. I don’t know the ideology of either group, nor do I share it, and look at me.646

Pre-insurgent peasant grievances against an unresponsive state were addressed with the sudden

modernization of the department in the 1980s and 1990s, yet the continued stigmatization of

piedmont civilians as insurgents helped the FARC and the ELN to re-frame the primary cleavage in

existentialist terms with the state as a repressive enemy which sought to undo peasant gains by

destroying and rebuilding piedmont society in favor of elite interests. Such a zero-sum contest helped

these groups sustain the primary cleavage well into the 21st century. As Lipset and Rokkan (1967) point

out, the more polarized such socio-political conflicts become, the more they are “[…]no longer over

644 Interview 25, Tame, 2016.

645 Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

646 Interview 22, Fortul, 2016.

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specific gains or losses but over conceptions of moral right and over the interpretation of history and

human destiny” (11). Galula (1964) similarly highlights how primary cleavages driving insurgencies

can change over time: “All wars are theoretically fought for a political purpose, although in some cases

the final political outcome differs greatly from the one intended initially” (8).

The failure of the counterinsurgents to sufficiently weaken insurgent populational control in

the piedmont was compounded by several other strategic and operational errors, which only further

fuelled negative civic-military relations in the sub-region. Faced with two powerful insurgencies that

permeated every sphere of Araucan society and were strongly emdedded in rural communities

throughout the piedmont, the counterinsurgent forces could not depend on sheer coercion or force

alone if they were to dislodge and expel these groups from the zone. As Huntington (1968) observes:

“Numbers, weapons, and strategy all count in war, but major deficiencies in any one of those may still

be counterbalanced by superior cohesion and discipline” (23). The Colombian army initially faced

enormous challenges locating active insurgents themselves, and instead attempted unsuccessfully to

dismantle their social bases by prosecuting Araucan civil society through a series of mass arrests,

unlawful detentions, and selective assassinations.647 The minimal benefits accrued from this strategy

were far outweighed by the renewed vigor with which piedmont civic organizations mobilized against

the counterinsurgent cause in the department. The civic sphere became another battleground on which

the state was ill prepared to fight, let alone win, against the insurgent groups (Semana 2003). Given

that most of these civic leaders detained or killed “were not part of formal insurgent structures”, the

groups themselves “were not really affected by this strategy”, as civil society itself saw the emergence

of new leaders to replace those prosecuted in this war and did not cease mobilizing.648

647 Interview 14, Arauquita, 2016; Interview 16, Saravena, 2016; Interview 25, Tame, 2016.

648 Interview 48, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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Democratic Security Policy was successful in Arauca insofar as it increased the state’s presence

in the department - more so in the plains than the piedmont – but it ultimately failed to completely

expel the insurgent groups from the broader region. Whereas state expansion reconfigured the plains

in a way that favored the state after the implementation of the counterinsurgency program, it was

considerably less effective in the piedmont as the eventual outcome saw the insurgent groups maintain

their considerable advantage in the sub-region. Amongst the counterinsurgents’ gravest errors was the

prioritization of protection for departmental oil infrastructure. Following the massive military

expansion in Arauca during the failed “zone of rehabilitation and consolidation” initiative, a

disproportionate percentage of the troops were deployed to protect the Caño-Limón oil complex and

pipeline, a strategic decision that not only left several other areas of the department undermanned, but

more importantly it sustained the primary cleavage vis-à-vis the civilian population.649 For many, this

confirmed the widespread perception that the Colombian military was in service of elite state interests

and foreign multinationals and little else. The counterinsurgent forces also failed to master the regional

geography by denying access of key geostrategic spaces to the piedmont insurgents. While the BVA

incursion effectively cut off the FARC and the ELN from the rest of the Eastern Plains, the insurgent

groups still maintained control over the vital ABC mobility corridor adjacent to the Eastern Cordillera,

allowing them to transport large amounts of personnel, weapons, and other resources between the

interior of the country and neighboring Venezuela (FIP 2015). Similarly, attempts by the Colombian

army, the National Police, and the BVA to establish a counterinsurgent force in Saravena’s municipal

capital failed, ceding an effective rearguard to the FARC and the ELN, which offered ample room for

them to enter and exit the piedmont at will.650

649 Interview 47, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

650 Interview 19, Saravena, 2016; Interview 12, Arauquita, 2016; Interview 51, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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Conclusion

“Who won and who lost is not a question. In war, no one wins or loses. There is only destruction. Only those

who have never fought like to argue about who won and who lost.”

- Bao Ninh, The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick (2017)

The broader trends that emerged during Álvaro Uribe’s eight years in power cast a positive

light on his administration. Practically all major indicators of violence and violent crimes declined

substantially between 2002 and 2010, while the Colombian state assumed an unprecedented level of

control over the country’s cities and basic infrastructure. The national economy bounced back from

the severe recession of the late 1990s and early 2000s, a macro-economic recovery that owed much to

renewed investor confidence in the capacity and leadership of the Colombian government under

Uribe. However, it becomes clear upon closer inspection that this period of massive state expansion

throughout Colombia produced results which represent a more nuanced and complicated narrative.

Democratic Security Policy was neither a total success nor an abject failure as the cases of Arauca and

Montes de María demonstrate. In many regions, the counterinsurgent strategy forced the insurgent

groups to recalibrate their strategy by adopting a more defensive posture, yet they were still able to

maintain populational control in these zones due to their high level of embeddedness in civilian

communities. Additionally, the limited time frames of the state’s mission favored a positive outcome

for the insurgent groups, as they simply adapted and waited for Uribe to leave office before

aggressively reasserting their control over territory and people. In those spaces where the Colombian

armed forces achieved military victories over insurgent groups, they were largely able to do so due to

the favorable conditions created by previous paramilitary campaigns which enabled them achieve

some degree of local buy-in while depriving their competitors of this vital source of support. However

more often than not, the Colombian military failed to consolidate their hard-fought territorial gains in

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these places by establishing a veritable institutional presence to administer and govern civilian

communities in the aftermath of the armed conflict. This final chapter briefly assesses the external

validity of my theoretical model, the long-term effects of state expansion into Arauca and Montes de

María, and the theoretical contributions and potential policy implications of my research beyond the

study of state expansion and civil war.

A. External Validity Leo Tolstoy (1998) once wrote that: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is

unhappy in its own way” (2), establishing what we now know as the “Anna Karenina” principle.

Bejarano (2011) applied this concept to the process of state formation in the Global South, suggesting

that internal conflicts were the organic expressions of competing groups during the long and often

painful process of social organization. I argue that the Anna Karenina principle is equally applicable

to civil wars, as no two armed conflicts are the same across space and time, thus making the task of

establishing the external validity of theories generated through the rigorous examination of one

specific national-level case difficult. However, numerous other scholars have established high-quality

theoretical models based solely on intensive studies of the Colombian case, demonstrating that while

this specific civil war in unique in its own right, it is far from an outlier in the greater number of cases

worldwide (Carroll 2011; Arjona 2016a; Daly 2016). Additionally, Colombia provides arguably one of

the most important national-level cases to examine sub-national variation in conflict processes given

the duration of the civil war and the proliferation of armed actors competing and colliding in virtually

every region of the country.

With that said, my theory has limitations in regards to which cases it could potentially explain

and which it cannot. First and foremost, in the tradition of the Tilly school of warmaking as state

formation, my model and particularly the temporal sequencing would encounter difficulty explaning

counterinsurgency outcomes in cases where insurgent groups are not the first armed actor to emerge

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in these spaces and where the state or pro-state armed groups have already consolidated a legitimate

institutional presence prior. Additionally, other cases which do not experience any pronounced or

sustained counterinsurgent effort to confront and displace such groups would similarly prove difficult

to explain using my model given its focus on state expansion, although my theory does offer some

analytical value in the study of insurgent formation and consolidation in such contexts. For all other

cases which have seen rebel groups attempt to co-opt and mobilize local power structures in support

of their causes, only to be countered by concerted efforts by the state and their allies to confront and

defate them, my theory provides a blueprint to break down and analyze the variation in outcomes at

the sub-national level.

B. Montes de María The armed conflict in Montes de María ended following the targeted assassination of Martín

Caballero in October 2007. Those active FARC members who remained in the zone and had not

deserted, fled, or been captured would soon be arrested or killed in subsequent mop-up operations in

the months following Caballero’s demise. With the successful expulsion of insurgent groups from the

region, Montes de María should have served as a model showcase for a successful counterinsurgency.

However, this was not to be. The reconstruction of the zone in the post-conflict period was marred

by many of the same problems which had brought the vicious civil war to the region, namely massive

land accumulation by agricultural entrepreneurs, insufficient institutional presence, endemic

corruption, and the emergence of neo-paramilitary gangs. State expansion had won the battle so to

speak, but it had not won the peace in Montes de María.

By 2008, the Colombian armed forces had seemingly pushed all armed non-state actors from

the left and the right out of the zone through force or compromise. The Armada’s Marine Infantry,

the National Police, and other defense and law enforcement agencies arrived to previously abandoned

communities in Montes de María to cement the territorial gains made by Democratic Security Policy

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in the region. The final three years of Uribe’s presidency were notable for the absence of insurgent

and paramilitary groups in Montes de María,651 but this tranquility was quickly shattered by the

emergence of neo-paramilitary groups known as ‘criminal bands’ (bandas criminales - bacrims) in the

region. Reflective of a larger phenomenon occurring throughout Colombia, in the years following the

insurgent defeat, various different bacrims expanded into the zone. Drawing on many demobilized

fighters and unemployed local youth, the pre-eminent bacrim in Colombia, the Gulf Clan (el clan del

golfo), laid claim to Montes de María, driving the other groups out and asserting hegemony over illicit

rackets in the region, while also lending support to regional political clans and rural entrepreneurs

seeking to accumulate land (Isacson and Poe 2009; El Espectador 2018).652

The effects of the counterinsurgent push into Montes de María forever altered the social fabric

of the region, as the collateral damage caused by the regional armed conflict on the civilian population

was immense. One native of El Rincon del Mar says that while now his village can count on the

presence of the Armada and the National Police, “to this day the fear and the mistrust persists in the

community”.653 A widow living in an informal slum of San Jacinto credits Uribe with “cleaning up the

mess that was here”, but that following his exit from power “there was more drug use, prostitution,

and children dropping out of school”.654 Another victim of paramilitary violence asserts that the

conflict affected women the most: “Everything fell upon women. We lost brothers, husbands, and

children. Women received the majority of abuse and we have been acknowledged less than everybody

else”.655 In the post-conflict context, many locals complain that the only individuals in the zone who

have received reparations or justice are demobilized insurgent and paramilitary fighters, many of

651 Interview 44, San Onofre, 2016.

652 Interview 26, Cartagena, 2016.

653 Interview 46, San Onofre, 2016.

654 Interview 32, San Jacinto, 2016.

655 Interview 39, San Jacinto, 2016.

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whom continue to live in the same zone where they once committed numerous crimes against civilians.

As a local doctor from El Carmen de Bolívar puts it: “Many of those who committed the massacres

still live in these very same communities as the first people to enlist in these groups were members of

our own communities”.656

The destruction and the rural reconfiguration wrought by the regional conflict in Montes de

María left a majority of the zone’s habitants in poverty. Many blame the insurgent groups, the FARC

in particular, for bringing about this economic ruin on the region, a downturn so pronounced that one

regional expert claims “even ten years after the end of the conflict the economy remains depressed”.657

A community spokesperson from San Jacinto expresses his confusion over the FARC’s destructive

behaviour which he blames for the dismal state of the regional economy: “We don’t understand why

they persecuted everybody here, the bread basket of the Caribbean. We were a productive region, but

today we are impoverished, and they are responsible for that” (Verdad Abierta 2014). It is widely

argued in the region that the massive paramilitary displacement was driven by a planned counter-

agrarian reform sponsored by economic interests from within and outside of the region (Pérez 2010).

Following the death of Martín Caballero in 2007, wealthy interests from outside the region, principally

Antioquia, purchased large swaths of property in Montes de María, and quite often these land sales

occurred under duress or other very highly questionable circumstances (Isacson and Poe 2009).658

From roughly 2007 until 2010, an estimated 79 000 hectares of land were sold in Montes de María,

principally in El Carmen de Bolívar, to individual entrepreneurs and agribusiness consortiums, often

through intermediaries including regional political and economic elites, some reportedly quite close to

President Uribe himself, who knew how to take advantage of the massive rural reconfiguration.659 One

656 Interview 34, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

657 Interview 97, Sincelejo, 2016.

658 Interview 30, Ovejas, 2016; Interview 92, Ovejas, 2016.

659 Interview 93, Bogotá D.C., 2016; Interview 92, Ovejas, 2016.

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multinational corporation devoted to construction and building materials, Argos Group, ended up

acquiring substantial amounts of land in El Salado and elsewhere and was later found in Colombian

courts to have accumulated much of this land through unethical and illegal methods (El Espectador

2016).

Initially, many in Montes de María thought that the injection of external capital into the

region’s agricultural economy would generate employment and stimulate other modes of regional

production, yet this was not to be.660 The new class of large landholders began to plant crops foreign

to the region such as African Palm and Teak, establishing a monoculture based model which required

substantially less labour than other traditional crops such as tobacco or avocados.661 This abrupt shift

changed “generated further displacement due to hunger and necessity” in the region, as the new

monoculture based agricultural paradigm “ruined the peasant quality of life in Montes de María”.662

One displaced peasant in San Jacinto remarked that in the municipal capital “there is no source of

formal employment”.663 A rural based peasant from the same municipality commented that “there

exists no type of productive project which helps the peasantry develop their land, nor can we count

on any type of support from the local government”.664 The existing formal economy only produces a

handful of private sector jobs, while public sector employment is dominated by clientelist webs of

patronage. Most young people work in the massive informal economy (el rebuscar), either selling

products in the street or driving mototaxis.665

In the aftermath of the FARC’s defeat and exit from the region, the Colombian armed forces

remained in charge of much of the day-to-day administration of Montes de María, while regional

660 Interview 33, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

661 Interview 27, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 29, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

662 Interview 33, Ovejas, 2016.

663 Interview 39, San Jacinto, 2016.

664 Interview 77, San Jacinto, 2016.

665 Interview 28, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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politics continued to be dominated by familial political clans who had previously allied themselves

with the BHMM. Porch (2012) describes this: “Despite the fact that former congressmen and senators

who supported the paramilitary groups are in jail, the party machine continues to elect the nephews

and cousins of these men…And the political establishment tolerates it!” (269). These clans continue

to ally themselves with whichever party offers the greatest electoral success, regardless of the prevailing

ideology.666 A peasant from rural San Jacinto captures this dynamic well: “Here everybody supports

Uribe, nobody speaks badly about him. However, President Santos won here against Uribe’s candidate

because money talks. Everything is driven by interests”.667 Candidates continue to engage in

widespread vote buying practices with the understanding that expenditures spent during the campaign

will be recouped by embezzling the public budgets.668 A former displaced habitant of Ovejas

characterizes the region’s political culture succinctly: “The two families that control politics in Ovejas

steal, but in the coastal idiosyncrasy people don’t care just as long as they build something. But

progress is very difficult because the families try to destroy what the other one builds instead of

building on top of it”.669

Unsurprisingly, regional political institutions are mired in corruption and fail in the delivery of

basic public services. In the region’s largest urban centers, municipal capitals such as El Carmen de

Bolívar, San Jacinto, and San Onofre, there remains no provision of water despite the vast amount of

public funds earmarked by different adminstrations for this basic utility.670 Other utilities such as

electricity and gas are often only found in municipal capitals and even then their provision is expensive

and unreliable.671 Local infrastructure is in abysmal condition further preventing an impediment for

666 Interview 34, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

667 Interview 78, San Jacinto, 2016.

668 Interview 28, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

669 Interview 92, Ovejas, 2016.

670 Interview 39, San Jacinto, 2016; Interview 27, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

671 Interview 44, San Onofre, 2016.

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rural habitants to access state services.672 The privatization of the Colombian health care system under

Uribe similarly did little to impact the precarious state of existing clinics and hospitals in the region.673

Most rural habitants needed to seek care in the larger municipal capitals while others were forced to

travel to Cartagena or Sincelejo to seek care.674 Primary and secondary education improved somewhat,

but principally in the urban centers and even then there were scant opportunities for the region’s youth

to continue their studies at the post-secondary level.675

During Democratic Security Policy, the Colombian military succeeded in co-opting the civic

sphere to a certain extent in Montes de María and regional civil society only began to re-assert its

independence from state influence following the departure of Uribe from office and the passing of

Victims Law (Law 1448) passed in 2011 under the government of Juan Manuel Santos.676 Many of

these new grassroots organizations were formed to both reconstruct the social fabric of rural

communities devastated by paramilitary displacement and the regional armed conflict.677

Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of various communities to form and use these organizations as

a means to solve local collective action problems, results are limited due “the lack of support on behalf

of local political institutions which don’t respond to demands nor do they back any real intervention

by these organizations”.678 Even though security and public order have improved, many civic leaders,

particularly those advocating land restitution and victims rights, have been threatened.679 Furthermore,

most civic efforts became entirely dependent on international and national-level financing for their

survival, yet many civic leaders “see peace as a potential injection of resources in the same way that

672 Interview 97, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

673 Interview 39, San Jacinto, 2016; Interview 28, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 43, San Onofre, 2016.

674 Interview 44, San Onofre, 2016.

675 Interview 28, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016; Interview 43, San Onofre, 2016.

676 Interview 30, Ovejas, 2016; Interview 93, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

677 Interview 81, San Jacinto, 2016.

678 Interview 77, San Jacinto, 2016.

679 Interview 43, San Onofre, 2016.

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the local governments do”.680 Ironically, contemporary regional civil society, like ANUC before it, has

adopted the clientelist political character typical of the Caribbean coast.

C. Arauca

Despite the vast resources invested by the Colombian state in expelling the insurgent groups

in Arauca, these groups remained highly embedded in local communities in the piedmont, while also

retaining a formidable capacity to carry out sophisticated operations in the Araucan plains. Democratic

Security Policy may have changed some aspects of local society in Arauca between 2002 and 2010, yet

after Uribe left office the FARC and the ELN continued to operate throughout the department and

the armed conflict continued unabated. For example, only a few months into Juan Manuel Santos’s

tenure, sub-lieutentant Raúl Muñoz Linares of the Colombian army’s 18th brigade raped a fourteen

year old girl in a rural village in Tame before murdering her and her two younger brothers with a

machete in an attempt to cover up the horrendous crime (El Tiempo, ‘Subteniente’, 2012b). In the

ensuing public uproar, the ELN assassinated a judge based in Saravena, Gloria Constanza Gaona, who

was overseeing the case against Muñoz. It was widely thought that the insurgents killed Gaona for her

perceived lenience towards the defendant, but it later it emerged that she was targeted because she

was in the process of preparing judicial cases against several mid-ranking ELN members (El

Espectador, ‘Condenan’, 2015b). While the initiation of the FARC peace negotiations in 2012 led to

reduced attacks and violent actions committed by this group against the state and civilians alike in

Arauca, the ELN in contrast increased their level of bellicosity over the same period and continue to

commit attacks and military operations at the present (FIP 2015). In the wake of the 2016 Havana

Peace Accord, many FARC members in Arauca demobilized and reported to the demobilization

camps. However, numerous others remained active and now constitute a resurgent dissident faction

in the department.

680 Interview 30, Ovejas, 2016; Interview 90, El Carmen de Bolívar, 2016.

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The insurgent code against civilian interaction with state authorities in the piedmont continued

uninterrupted in the post-Uribe period. In Arauquita, Saravena, Fortul, and Tame it is still prohibited

for local residents to fraternize or help the National Police and the Colombian army.681 These

authorities in turn continue to mistrust and abuse civilians in the sub-region, as one peasant leader

from rural Tame explains: “When the soldiers arrive they don’t ask for things from the peasants.

Rather they take them, their chickens, eggs, and whatever they need to feed themselves”.682 Following

Uribe, the armed forces and the National Police reduced their level of engagement with the FARC

and the ELN and the frequency of their patrols, a change which allowed the insurgent groups to

reassert territorial control over the department “but not with the same liberty as they enjoyed before

Uribe”.683 Relations between the state authorities and rural communities have scarcely improved, with

one peasant leader declaring that “it can’t be said that relations have improved because there are no

relations, although now we aren’t as afraid of the military”.684 Another rural habitant echoes this

sentiment: “At the present the army has tried to change for the better but people don’t believe them.

We still have a certain mistrust”.685 The ELN still regulates draconian prohibitions throughout the

piedmont such as the ban on motorcycle drivers and passengers wearing helmets so that insurgent

militia members can identify everybody passing through their communities.

The escalation of the regional armed conflict saw the insurgents end up on top, albeit at a very

high social cost to civilians in the department. One teacher from the piedmont describes these effects

as including “widespread mistrust, the division of social sectors, fear, and pain for all the deaths. The

results have been terrible”.686 Women were disproportionately affected as many lost their husbands

681 Interview 4, Arauca municipality, 2016.

682 Interview 75, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

683 Interview 61, Arauquita, 2016.

684 Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

685 Interview 63, Arauquita, 2016.

686 Interview 25, Tame, 2016.

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and sons because “the first to fall in war are the men”. Many were displaced to towns urban centers

where there are scarce employment opportunities, and many of their children “quickly become drug

addicts and resort to prostitution and are then judged and sentenced by the guerrillas”.687 In the plains,

the social fabric similarly disintegrated and never quite recovered. Similar to the piedmont, illegal drug

consumption, robberies, child prostitution, and teenage pregnancy have become all too common.688

Numerous rural communities that were forcibly displaced by the BVA have never recovered, and even

those that have seen the arrival of new habitants are reluctant to trust the newcomers for fear that

“they might do the community damage or start informing on people”.689 To complicate things, the

recent economic collapse in neighboring Venezuela has seen thousands of Venezuelans migrate

through the department, as FARC dissidents have recruited many young migrants into their ranks.

The ELN on the other hand has taken it upon itself to regulate and sanction those Venezuelan

migrants who fall afoul of its social code, as reportedly the insurgent group has murdered dozens of

these individuals in the last year alone (Human Rights Watch 2020).

Under Democratic Security Policy, Uribe was temporarily successful in reducing the

insurgents’ control of departmental and municipal political institutions. However, these groups, the

ELN in particular, were quick to reassert control of various municipal mayoralties, while also inserting

key people in departmental institutions and agencies once Uribe left office.690 To participate in

elections from 2010 onwards, “candidates needed the blessing of the insurgent groups”.691 Whereas

these aspiring politicians toured rural communities during election campaigns with the FARC and the

ELN’s approval, once elected “they don’t come back unless they need to meet with the guerrilla

687 Intevriew 75, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

688 Interview 51, Arauca municipality, 2016.

689 Interview 55, Arauca municipality, 2016.

690 Interview 9, Arauca municipality, 2016.

691 Interview 76, Bogotá D.C., 2016.

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commanders”.692 While the state’s presence and institutional capacity was supposedly strengthened in

Arauca during Democratic Security Policy, many civilians “preferred to go to the guerrillas to resolve

their problems, whether personal, communal, or business related”.693 The guerrilla groups have

encountered a few electoral setbacks in the department in the following years, most notably the success

of Uribe’s mayoral candidate, Yesid Lozano, in the ELN stronghold of Saravena, and the departmental

vote against the Havana Peace Accord in the nationwide 2016 referendum, both seen as silent protest

votes against the continued insurgent hegemony in Arauca (FIP 2016).694

Araucan politics continue to be characterized by gross mismanagement and corruption, even

in the face of declining oil production. In contrast to previous levels of public engagement, politicians

in both the plains and the piedmont only visit rural communities during election campaigns. Many

current departmental politicians hail from outside the department and hence “only think about their

own interests”, a trend which has led to “a decline in public participation because people are tired and

have no expectations of the candidates anymore”.695 The influx of oil royalties in the 1980s led to the

modernization of Arauca, but over thirty years of economic mismanagement and corruption have

seen the quality of basic infrastructure and public services stagnate.696 Despite the billions of dollars

in oil royalties generated for Araucans over the past three decades, the majority of these resources

have been squandered on useless public works, or outright pilfered by the armed groups, local

politicians, and contractors.697 The highways that peasant activists fought so hard for during the 1980s

692 Interview 75, Fortul, 2016.

693 Interview 67, Saravena, 2016.

694 Interview 65, Saravena, 2016.

695 Interview 57, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

696 Interview 2, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 11, Arauquita, 2016; Interview 16, Saravena, 2016; Interview 51,

Arauca municipality, 2016.

697 Interview 6, Arauca municipality, 2016; Interview 10, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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and 1990s are in serious disrepair and are frequently dynamited by the insurgent groups during periods

of intensified confrontation with the Colombian state.

The departmental economy has suffered from the exhaustion of key oil wells at Caño-Limón

which are slated to dry up around 2022. Apart from oil production, the department has never been

able to develop any alternative productive industry that can generate sufficient income or employment

for the department to subsist on. Small producers in the piedmont and cattle ranchers in the plains

similarly face enormous challenges developing internal markets to generate revenues and stimulate the

departmental economy, leaving many to sell their products as contraband in neighboring Venezuela

when the binational exchange rate is advantageous to such cross-border trade.698 Similarly, various

rural farmers complained of the sudden disappearance of markets in Casanare or Meta for their

livestock, a change which they attribute to the Uribe family’s monopolization of pig raising throughout

the plains during his presidency.699 One local human rights defender in Arauca municipality evaluates

Uribe’s counterinsurgent strategy on the local quality of life in bleak terms: “The only thing that Uribe

did was to militarize the zone. There is no new employment, no improvement in the quality of life,

nor are there universities or possibilities to keep studying. There are young men who don’t have any

option but to join the guerrillas”.700

Civil society in Arauca remains strong and diverse, a surprising feat given the decades of armed

conflict that have torn away at the social fabric. At the present, various civic organizations have been

able to claim a modest degree of autonomy vis-à-vis the insurgent groups but only to the extent that

they do not collaborate with the state or exceed the parameters established by these armed actors.701

Until the FARC’s demobilization in 2017, both insurgent groups continued to maintain absolute

698 Interview 10, Arauca municipality, 2016.

699 Interview 62, Arauquita, 2016.

700 Interview 2, Arauca municipality, 2016.

701 Interview 49, Arauca municipality, 2016.

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control over the JACs in the piedmont. Following the demobilization of the BVA and the return of

many displaced peasants to rural communities, the community action boards experienced a resurgence

in plains communities where they had long remained inactive due to the paramilitary incursion and

low levels of communal participation.702 In a twist of irony, many residents in both the piedmont and

the plains claim that due to the demobilization of the FARC, local JACs have lost much of their

impetus due to a decline in local participation. Quite simply, when these civic organizations were

supported and regulated by the insurgents, civilians possessed far greater motivation to comply with

their dictums and to contribute both the time and resources to sustain them.703

D. En fin: Potential Theoretical Contributions and Policy Implications

My dissertation clearly offers a great deal in regards to the study of insurgent formation, non-

state governance, and counterinsurgency, but the theoretical model provided also has potential to

contribute to explanations about other socio-political phenomena such as organized and unorganized

criminal dynamics, authoritarian and illiberal regimes, and more generally how embeddedness is

formed in precarious contexts. Perhaps most importantly, this research demonstrates the utility of

such embeddedness in fostering outcomes that are generally regarded by contemporary statesmen and

military commanders as negative and counterproductive. Social embeddedness is required on a

massive scale to foster the necessary collective action required by rebellions and revolutions alike

(Popkin 1979; Lichbach 1994; Petersen 2001; Wood 2003). However, social embeddedness in

contentious spaces can also serve as an inherently positive force, whether due to its ability to mitigate

interethnic violence (Varshney 2002; Belloni 2001), or because of its capacity to help foster conditions

for peace between warring actors in civil wars (Guelke 2003; Paffenholz and Spurk 2006; Farrington

2008; Orjuela 2003). Conversely, recent works grounded in the study of armed conflict and violence

702 Interview 72, Tame, 2016.

703 Interview 99, Tame, 2016.

332

have noted that the role of embeddedness may often intersect with that played by armed non-state

actors in theatres of conflict, and often for ends which are neither peaceful nor pluralistic (Belloni

2008; Arjona 2016a; Staniland 2014; Zukerman Daly 2016). This dissertation contributes to the latter

canon of research by establishing a dialogue between scholarship which focuses on the importance of

informal institutions (Helmke and Levitsky 2004; Bratton 2007; Grzymala-Busse 2010), with works

that study the formation of local social orders during times of conflict and the agency of civilians in

this complicated process (Mampilly 2011; Staniland 2012; Kaplan 2013; Arjona 2009; 2014; 2014b).

My theory on the historical processes that generate social embeddness between peasants in

rural communities, peasants and insurgent groups, and peasants and counterinsurgent forces, may also

be deployed to understand socio-political phenomena where binding group dynamics affect individual

agency, often superceding decisions or option which are in fact in a person’s best interests.

Environments where organized and unorganized criminal dynamics reign, whether the Camorra in

Naples or the Rolling Sixties Crips in South Central Los Angeles, demonstrate similar conditions

where the state and non-state source of authority overlap, yet most civilians who reside in these spaces

are beholden to the social order and the accompanying code of conduct implemented and enforced

by the latter, regardless of the former’s ability to intervene and prosecute inviduals when they please.

Many civilians may not appreciate or even particularly like these non-state groups, yet they understand

that defection to and collaboration with the state almost always comes with high personal costs that

transcend violent sanction, with familial and communal ostracization and forced exit often awaiting

those who are not killed outright for their transgressions. Similar situational ethics can be found in

authoritarian and illiberal regimes and may go a long way to explaining the resilience of such political

orders and the absence of widespread social upheaval against repressive and deeply unpopular regimes.

Apart from the obvious sanctions for challenging, opposing, or not supporting an autocratic ruler,

group pressures may also dictate individual support, acquiescence, general indifference and apathy in

333

such dynamics. The theoretical implications of this may go a long way to explaining how these regimes

survive by binding the minimum necessary amount of people to the established order through either

positive or negative inducements, an avenue of inquiry that is particularly relevant in the current global

context where democratic regression is in flux the world over.

Finally, this dissertation suggests that when there is an alternative to military counterinsurgency

- whether a negotiated settlement, power sharing agreements, political decentralization, or

bribery/appeasement - that these are all more desirable than the escalation of an armed conflict in

which the biggest loser will be the civilian population caught between the competing actors. As this

dissertation demonstrates, strategies which involve highly questionable and outright illegal tactics can

often be the most effective, thus incentivizing counterinsurgent strategists and political leaders with a

shaky moral compass to reframe and repackage such measures in a seemingly humane manner which

conforms to existing International Humanitarian Law. If these other options do prove unavailable,

then the strategies selected, developed, and deployed should involve the advice or input from

stakeholders on the ground, or if this is impossible, then from individuals who do possess sufficient

knowledge about the antecedent conditions of the space in question to make sound and ethical policy

recommendations. As Evans (2014) notes, “[…]the social assumptions underlying counter-insurgency

doctrine demand substantive engagement from social scientists and sociologists in particular. Absent

this engagement, stakeholders find themselves in the odd position of having a theory of warfare

focused on social behavior that is practically untouched by those who make the study of social

behavior their life’s work” (257).

334

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Field Interview Guide 1) Regional Expert/Researcher, Bogotá D.C., January 2016. 2) Employee at Defensoria del Pueblo, Arauca municipality, January 2016. 3) Former Public Defender, Arauca municipality, January 2016. 4) Journalist, Arauca municipality, January 2016. 5) Prison Warden, Arauca municipality, January 2016. 6) Social Worker, Arauca municipality, January 2016. 7) Police Chief, Arauca municipality, January 2016. 8) Oil union boss, Arauca municipality, January 2016. 9) Journalist, Arauca municipality, January 2016. 10) Journalist, Arauca municipality, January 2016. 11) Religious Leader, Arauquita, January 2016. 12) Cattle rancher, Arauquita, January 2016. 13) Ex-mayor, Arauquita, January 2016. 14) Civic leader, Arauquita, January 2016. 15) Ex-mayor, Arauquita, January 2016. 16) Ex-teacher/Union leader, Saravena, January 2016. 17) Journalist, Saravena, January 2016. 18) Indigenous Leader, Saravena, January 2016. 19) Human Rights Defender, Saravena, January 2016. 20) Teacher, Saravena, January 2016. 21) Human Rights Defender, Saravena, January 2016. 22) Internally Displaced Person, Fortul, January 2016. 23) Activist, Fortul, January 2016. 24) Civil servant, Saravena, January 2016. 25) Teacher, Tame, January 2016. 26) Regional Expert/Researcher, Cartagena, February 2016. 27) Regional Researcher, Cartagena, February 2016. 28) Internally Displaced Person, El Carmen de Bolívar, February 2016. 29) Victims Rights Leader, Ovejas, February 2016. 30) Victims Rights Leader, Ovejas, February 2016. 31) Victims Rights Leader, El Carmen de Bolívar, February 2016. 32) Internally Displaced Person, San Jacinto, February 2016. 33) Victims Rights Leader, Ovejas, February 2016. 34) Teacher, El Carmen de Bolívar, February 2016. 35) Victims Rights Leader, Ovejas, February 2016. 36) Victims Rights Leader, Ovejas, February 2016. 37) Civic leader, El Carmen de Bolívar, February 2016. 38) Regional Expert/Lawyer, Sincelejo, February 2016. 39) Internally Displaced Person, San Jacinto, February 2016. 40) Victims Rights Leader, El Carmen de Bolívar, February 2016. 41) Teacher, San Jacinto, February 2016. 42) Civic leader, San Onofre, February 2016. 43) Local habitant, San Onofre, February 2016. 44) Internally Displaced Person, San Onofre, February 2016. 45) Local habitant, San Onofre, February 2016. 46) Civic leader, San Onofre, February 2016.

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47) Former Army General, Bogotá D.C., December 2016. 48) Civil servant, Bogotá D.C., July 2016. 49) Human Rights Defender, Arauca municipality, July 2016. 50) Peace activist, Arauca municipality, July 2016. 51) Human Rights Defender, Arauca municipality, July 2016. 52) Human Rights Defender, Arauca municipality, July 2016. 53) Civil servant, Arauca municipality, July 2016. 54) Internally Displaced Person, Arauca municipality, July 2016. 55) Internally Displaced Person, Arauca municipality, July 2016. 56) Internally Displaced Person, Arauca municipality, July 2016. 57) Local agricultural worker, Arauca municipality, July 2016. 58) Local agricultural worker, Arauca municipality, July 2016. 59) Religious Leader, Arauquita, July 2016. 60) Local agricultural worker, Arauquita, July 2016. 61) Religious Leader, Arauquita, July 2016. 62) Civic leader, Arauquita, July 2016. 63) Human Rights Defender, Tame, July 2016. 64) Civic leader, Arauquita, July 2016. 65) Youth leader, Arauca municipality, July 2016. 66) Civic leader, Saravena, July 2016. 67) Business leader, Saravena, July 2016. 68) Former teacher, Saravena, July 2016. 69) Victims Rights Defender, Arauca municipality, July 2016. 70) Human Rights Defender, Tame, July 2016. 71) Local historian, Tame, July 2016. 72) Journalist/Former mayor, Tame, July 2016. 73) Former mayor, Tame, July 2016. 74) Teacher, Tame, July 2016. 75) Civic leader, Saravena, July 2016. 76) Local businessman, Fortul, July 2016. 77) Civic leader, San Jacinto, August 2016. 78) Agricultural worker, San Jacinto, August 2016. 79) Internally Displaced Person, San Jacinto, August 2016. 80) Internally Displaced Person, San Jacinto, August 2016. 81) Civic leader, San Jacinto, August 2016. 82) Taxi Driver, El Carmen de Bolívar, August 2016. 83) Former journalist, El Carmen de Bolívar, August 2016. 84) Victims Rights Leader, El Carmen de Bolívar, August 2016. 85) Victims Rights Leader, El Carmen de Bolívar, August 2016. 86) JAC President, El Carmen de Bolívar, August 2016. 87) Demobilized FARC fighter, El Carmen de Bolívar, August 2016. 88) Demobilized EPR fighter, Sincelejo, August 2016. 89) Demobilized AUC fighter, El Carmen de Bolívar, August 2016. 90) Civic leader, El Carmen de Bolívar, August 2016. 91) Agricultural worker, Ovejas, August 2016. 92) Internally Displaced Person, Ovejas, August 2016. 93) Regional expert, Bogotá D.C., September 2016. 94) Regional Expert/Lawyer, Sincelejo, August 2016.

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95) Regional Expert/Researcher, Bogotá D.C., December 2016. 96) Internally Displaced Person, Bogotá D.C., December 2016. 97) Former general of the Naval Armada, Bogotá D.C., December 2016. 98) Agricultural worker, Fortul, December 2016. 99) Internally Displaced Person, Tame, December 2016. 100) Internally Displaced Person, Tame, December 2016. 101) Regional Expert/Lawyer, Sincelejo, December 2016.