Legal, political and economic aspects of the tragedy in rural Colombia in recent decades: hypothesis for analysis
| Autor | Albert Berry |
| Cargo | Professor emeritus of Economics at the University of Toronto |
| Páginas | 25-41 |
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Over the last few decades, Colombia has been ranked, in the company of Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, among the three countries with the largest number of displaced persons in the world. In some of these years it also reported the highest homicide rates of the planet. The reasons for the tragedies are different in each country. Colombia has never had a government or a president directly involved in any massacres —as is the case of the president-dictator of Sudan— nor is it a country whose government is absent in large extensions of its territory, as is the case in Congo. However, even though it is not comparable to those countries, the Colombian tragedy is more surprising and more complex in terms of the factors that have produced this enormous number of deaths and displaced persons.1Of the countries that were mentioned,2 Colombia is the most developed in economic, social and institutional terms, which makes it seem odd that it should suffer such socio-political ills. For example, it has in place a series of democratic elements: not only is the central government elected,
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but political powers are widely distributed among the regions, not at all like a centralized dictatorship. However, some observers indicate that his form of ‘democracy’ creates incentives and opportunities for the generation of violence and injustice within the political processes themselves.
Traditional interpretations of the violence in Colombia in the 1940s and 50s, arising from inherited hatreds between members of the two traditional parties in the context of democratic elections, have not been comprehensive and have overlooked some of the more subtle and enduring elements. In later decades, the role of other political and economic factors—especially land ownership— seem to have been more relevant, and were probably more obvious that in the previous decades.
The Colombian State continues to be heterogeneous in terms of the behavior of its various bodies: it comprises a combination of forces, some of them dynamic and positive, others very negative, and there is no shortage of opportunists who take advantage of the situation to pursue their own interests (Estrada and Rodríguez, 2013). Many institutions within the State related to the land issue are highly corrupt. Of the countries with very high levels of violence, Colombia is apparently the one where the struggle over land has the greatest weight.3Colombia is known worldwide as a country that has experienced high levels of violence, a phenomenon that is relatively easy to observe and measure. It is less well known as a country of large injustices, which it has been unable to overcome. In this case, more so than in other countries, these two phenomena are closely linked. Much of the violence and injustice are associated with land ownership—dispossession, theft, extortion, legal manipulation, among others. Land ownership is currently highly concentrated, and much of this land has been appropriated in a sinister way, sometimes through violence, sometimes by other means. It would not be surprising if the percentage of current large properties that were acquired by legitimate means (in other words, without involving blood, dispossession or any type of fraud) is in the range of only 10 to 25%, depending on your definition of legitimacy. A broad definition would mean land acquisitions that did not
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involve any violence, coercion, bribing of bureaucrats, legal manipulation or similar means.4 In summary, justice in Colombia in connection with rural land matters has been in short supply, not only in absolute terms but also in comparison with most other countries. The State has been unable to prevent a huge number of injustices, and has often even facilitated such outrages.
Unfortunately, the conditions of the last half century in Colombia have produced a process of “selection of the worst”, in other words, those who ended up with land titles are, on average, those with the least moral qualities, because they are the only ones “willing” and “capable” of doing what needs to be done to acquire control over a property. According to the theory of evolution, selection favors the organisms that best adapt. In the economy it is the same: when markets function properly, the most efficient prevail. But when neither the markets nor the political system operate properly, the result is this “selection of the worst”. As demonstrated in so many countries and societies, such a balance is difficult to offset.
One of the questions that arises from the history of land in Colombia is the level of impact to be expected in the long term by having such as large percentage of income and wealth concentrated in people with low morals, including drug traffickers, perpetrators of dispossession and corrupt bureaucrats, just to mention a few. How, from this starting point, can a healthy political system and culture be built?
This special number of the magazine includes a series of studies that contribute to the analysis and interpretation of the conflict over land in Colombia. The issue is characterized by a level of dispossession that has been a constant feature of the nation’s history in the last decades. The essays seek to shed some light on this experience in order to answer the question: Why Colombia?
The studies address, among other things, legal and institutional aspects of these events; political responses to them, and interactions between the political and legal aspects. From afar, it does not seem obvious that legal and institutional aspects should have so much influence on a process that
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is often described as a “civil war”. In the context of a conflict of this type it is generally assumed that neither the law nor the institutions responsible for enforcing them are in operation. Furthermore, there is a perception that even in relatively normal times Colombia does not act very much in line with formal law, and instead uses other types of mechanisms based on power, sometimes political, sometimes physical, and occasionally of another type. Within this context, how much weight does the judicial/police system have, comprised by, on the one hand, a body of laws, decrees, etc., that supposedly establish the rules of the game, and on the other hand, the players within the system including courts, judges, lawyers, notaries (at least in part), the police and the military? What has its impact been on the dispossession process?
Any theory that seeks to explain the Colombian experience must include economic, political and socio-cultural elements, and propositions of this type abound. Theories that assign great weight to the characteristics of the judicial/police system are less numerous and, perhaps on first sight, less convincing. However, as one looks closer at the Colombian reality, such theories seem to acquire greater weight, directly and indirectly. This publication analyzes these matters in depth: how does the legal/judicial/police system help accentuate and/or mitigate the crimes (massacres, homicides, violent dispossession and other forms of dispossession) regarding land?
The major elements that contribute to violence in Colombia have been widely discussed in various studies; this is also true regarding injustice, but to a lesser extent. The key players include guerrilla militants, drug traffickers, paramilitaries, some property owners and some mining interests, all in the framework of a State that is on the one hand weak in terms of physical presence in remote areas of the country, and on the other hand weakened by the infiltration of those who benefit from the conflict and the presence of opportunist bureaucrats (including some members of the military and police) who are willing to favor one of the above groups in their own interests. The big losers were the dead left behind by the conflict, primarily small farmers.
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This unique tradition of violence during the 20th Century forms part of the historical context. Economic factors, in turn, have always played an important role in the episodes of violence and in the more chronic rural conflict. These factors seem relatively more significant in the experience of the latest decades that in earlier time periods. For example, drug trafficking, oil palm plantations, cattle ranching and land speculation, are all sources of large profits; all these are determining factors in the face of a weak state and legal system. The presence of so many players in the same drama, not to mention internal divisions and conflicts within some groups (for example among paramilitaries) implies a high level of complexity and perhaps a more dangerous mix than in any other country.
During the second half of the 20th Century, especially after the 1960s, dispossession increased markedly due to the armed conflict, drug trafficking and increased demand for land for agro-industrial development. In the 1980s and 90s there was an upsurge in violence involving extortion and kidnapping by the guerrillas; self-defense groups were created to combat the kidnappings, and the first paramilitary groups appeared financed by drug traffickers who, with the pretext of fighting off the guerrilla subversion, sought to control territories to manage their drug business. Leaders of small farmer organizations were murdered, massacres were committed and forced displacement took place.5The consolidation of the paramilitary groups took place between the 1990s and 2006, when their presence became permanent in...
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