2012 volume 30(4) pages 603 – 622
doi:10.1068/d4611

Cite as:
Ballvé T, 2012, "Everyday state formation: territory, decentralization, and the narco landgrab in Colombia" Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30(4) 603 – 622
Download citation data in RIS format

Everyday state formation: territory, decentralization, and the narco landgrab in Colombia

Teo Ballvé

Abstract. Since the 1980s rural Colombia has been torn asunder by the deadly conflation of political violence and the cocaine boom, fueling the displacement of four million campesinos. The northwest frontier region surrounding the Gulf of Urabá has been an unruly epicenter for this mass of dispossessed humanity, mainly displaced by paramilitaries. As an outgrowth of a complex alliance between narcos (drug traffickers) and agrarian elites, paramilitary groups simultaneously act as drug-trafficking private militias and counterinsurgent battalions, while using land appropriation and agribusiness as favored conduits for money laundering and illicit profit. Drawing on investigative ethnographic fieldwork into these dynamics in Urabá, this paper shows how state formation in Urabá is produced through the convergence of narco-paramilitary strategies, counterinsurgency, and government reforms aimed at territorial restructuring through decentralization. Relying on the conceptual cues offered by Lefebvre and Gramsci on state, space, and hegemony, I argue that Urabá’s narco-driven economies of violence are not somehow anathema to projects of modern liberal statehood—usually associated with tropes of ‘institution building’ and ‘good governance’—but deeply tied to initiatives aimed at making spaces governable, expanding global trade, and attracting capital.
Keywords: Colombia, territory, decentralization, paramilitaries, violence, state, Lefebvre

Restricted material:

PDF Full-text PDF size: 473 Kb

Your computer (IP address: 50.19.155.235) has not been recognised as being on a network authorised to view the full text or references of this article. If you are a member of a university library that has a subscription to the journal, please contact your serials librarian (subscriptions information).