Global Land Grabbing II

Land grabbing and conflicts over territories: Agro-industrial projects in Lower Atrato Jairo Baquero Melo

Paper presented at the International Conference on

Global Land Grabbing II October 17‐19, 2012 Organized by the Land Deals Politics Initiative (LDPI) and hosted by the Department of Development Sociology at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

1 International Academic Conference GLOBAL LAND GRABBING II October 17 – 19, 2012 Cornell University , Ithaca, New York

Land grabbing and conflicts over territories. Agro-industrial projects in Lower Atrato (Draft paper – Please do not quote or cite without author’s permission)

Jairo Baquero Melo 1

Introduction This paper aims to investigate land grabbing processes in a frontier region of Colombia, through the exploration of agro-industrial projects introduced in Lower Atrato. I put emphasis on the analysis of two agro-industrial projects: the expansion of oil palm companies in various river basins of Lower Atrato; and the plantain project in Cacarica by the Multifruits company. Therefore, by studying these economic sectors, the work analyses the incorporation of new territories into the global economy and inequalities associated with land grabbing, violation of territorial and environmental rights and the re-production of racial hierarchies. It also seeks to analyze the global forms of resistance to dispossession and land grabbing. From historical perspective, the introduction of global capitalism in the region took a boost through the timber economy in the twentieth century. However, the expansion of agro-industrial projects such as oil palm and plantain in the observed dimensions in the early twenty-first century has new characteristics. They are linked to global processes such as the international trade with its dynamics and regulations, the demand for biofuels, food crisis and global economic crisis. Also, with internal issues such as the armed conflict, land concentration, development policies promoting economic liberalization and extractivism and the expansion of territorial rights to ethnic communities. Main hypothesis is that the expansion of agroindustries linked to global dynamics such as the promotion of agro-fuels and food exports, has deepened processes of land grabbing in Lower Atrato, re-producing inequalities based on social hierarchies existing since colonial period. Studying land grabbing in Colombia –one of the most unequal countries in Latin American–, demand to consider the lengthy armed conflict, the adoption by the government of an economic model for global opening and indiscriminate extractive economy, and the processes of resistance of local communities against land grab and dispossession. Methodology involves field work trips to various places of Chocó and Urabá between 2011 and 2012; gathering information in public institutions; participant observation in Forums of social organizations; conducting interviews to members of social movements, NGOs, multilateral organizations and public functionaries; interviews to displaced population; and revision of national press and secondary sources.

1

Doctoral Candidate, Sociology, FU-Berlin, Desigualdades.net. Email: [email protected].

2 1. Theory Land concentration is one of the main categories which have re-produced inequalities in Latin America (Berry, 2010). Land distribution is not only an economic issue but also a political matter of conflict (Elden, 2010). The structure of land distribution worldwide has evolved within every society. At least since the beginning of the twentieth century, it has been linked to ideological and political models which offer views on how to define models of agricultural production, and thus definition of property rights. Also, the distributional differences between ethnic groups or regions are important, shaping horizontal inequalities (Stewart, 2001; Tilly, 2001, 2006). Land grab and dispossession are relevant topics of entangled inequalities, produced by transregional processes in historical and recent trends. As raised by McMichael (2011), land grab is not a new phenomenon, but it has historical roots in colonial periods and its articulation with the broadening of capitalist globalization.2 For McMichael, a market-driven enclosure project was deepened for extracting minerals and agro-exports during the neoliberal stage, due to structural adjustment that pushed states to get resources –by FDI revenues, for example-, for paying external debts. In the XXI century, “enclosure by land grabbing is driven by a combination of the food, energy, climate and financial crises” (McMichael, 2011: 1). The rise in the price of food and energy, turned land into the center of global speculation and coverage in cases of food and fuel supply scarcity. The World Bank reported that 111 million hectares of agricultural lands were acquired by investors only in four years, and 75% of the total, was acquired in Africa.3 In 2011, agricultural land acquired by foreign investors grew a 12%, with special role of China and Middle Eastern countries. Land grab has been linked to the migration of industrial agriculture to the Global South. The causes include “soil depletion in Northern “breadbasket” regions and rising costs of compensatory inputs, cheap land in the South increasingly accessible through new forms of “environmental diplomacy” (offset protocols/Clean Development Mechanism, World Bank governance interventions), climate and food crisis spurring biofuel and agriculture for development solutions implicating Southern land, and financialization” (McMichael, 2011: 1). To facilitate these trends, local governments design policies related with promotion of biofuels, mandates regarding land titling, and development policies that respond to food global demands and environmental responsibilities. For McMichael (2011), investment capital goes to land, food and biofuels, due to the accumulation crisis, linked to the declining of industrial productivity and the collapse in the 2

“The so-called “global land grab” continues the historic process of land enclosures described by Sir Thomas More in Utopia as “sheep eating men,” when English peasants were evicted from the commons to make room for private estates. Colonialism extended the enclosure movement as lands and habitats were commandeered for export monocultures and/or settled by colonists at the expense of indigenous peoples –a practice continued during the mid-twentieth century development era as new states sought to secure national territory and export revenues” (McMichael, 2011: 1). 3 World Bank (2010), Rising Global Interest in Farmland. Can it Yield Sustainable and Equitable Benefits? Washington, DC: World Bank.

3 derivatives market. Thus, between 2004 and 2007, “venture capital investment in biofuels grew 800%”.4 Agriculture became a long-term safe investment. In 2007, renewable crops surpassed non-renewable commodities such as oil and metals as prime performers in the commodities investment markets. This result has been linked to new demands for bioenergy and bioproducts derived from agriculture production. Land and agriculture also have turned into new investment frontier with economic revenues: “Physical agriculture’s assets are the new focus in longer term investments as institutional investors explore opportunities in everything from raw land to grain elevators to food processing plant”.5 Land grab is justified by enclosure policies adopted in the name of guarantying food supply to humanity and environmental preservation by green fuels. There is a ““logic of financialization” which privilege futures over productivity gains (…and a) development agency rhetoric regarding a “yield gap” between attainable and potential yields in agriculture on Southern lands” (McMichael, 2011: 3). With this yield gap is justified the proliferation of industrial agriculture to produce food and biomass, as world-corporate product, instead of serving for domestic supply of food and fuels. Agro-industrial projects are promoted on the assumption that value-chain agriculture could solve the yield gap, due to lack of productivity of small farmers, and the assumed sustainability of industrial agriculture. Visions which link small farming and poverty are very reductionists. The aim could be supporting small farmers (Berry, 2010), to avoid countries to become dependent on food imports. Large-scale land enclosure affects millions of inhabitants of rural areas which get their livelihoods from common lands and territories. The classification of those lands as “unproductive” tends to justify the large scale dispossession. In the Colombian case, between 2001 and 2005, almost 263.000 peasant families were evicted from 2,6 million hectares “by agrobussiness and/or by paramilitaries interested primarily in oil palm development”.6 One could claim the existence of conflicts over the definition and use of territories. The modernist narrative takes common lands as underdeveloped. However, communities which live in those territories, give to resources different uses including fuel, grazing, water, medicines, dietary diversity (McMichael, 2011: 4), as well as their culture and existence. Land grabbing also is justified in the name of conservation, through the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) protocols. At the end, “land is rendered cheap as a subsidy to investors by governments trading away social reproduction rights of smallholders, and transforming them into a labor force. The real costs include the rights of small producers to ancestral lands, food insecurity arising from the conversion of food-producing land to food- or fuel-crop export agriculture, environmental deterioration resulting from industrial agriculture, and increased greenhouse gas emissions” 4

Holt-Giménez, Eric. 2007. ‘Exploding the biofuel myths,’ Le Monde diplomatique, July 2007, 10-11, P. 10. Statement by a JP Morgan Executive Director, quoted in: Gillam, Carey. 2009. ‘Investors eye global ag sector for boost,’ Reuters, 21 June. Available at: http://globlalandgrab.org/5695 (cited in McMichael, 2011: 2). 6 Houtart, François. 2010. Agrofuels. Big profits, ruined lives and ecological destruction. London & New York: Pluto Press. (P. 107) (quoted in McMichael, 2011: 3). 5

4 (McMichael, 2011: 4). Also, human displacement, food shortages and ecological imbalances are associated with those costs. 2. Land grabbing in Latin America and Colombia Recently, the report “Transnational Land Deals for Agriculture in the Global South” (Anseeuw, et. al., 2012) claimed that land grabbing is affecting mainly the African, Asian and Latin American continent. The land rush is explained in Latin America, not just by agriculture and food security demands, but also by the increment in consumption levels in different regions of the world, in a stage of natural finite level of resources. Thus, in recent years, an 81% of land acquisitions are due to agriculture; a 9% is explained by forestry and carbon sequestration, mineral extraction and tourism; and another 10% of transactions are for unknown purpose. In Latin America, the advance of mining exploration in countries such as Peru, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil and Argentina, shows the “potential threat of international corporate activities on local populations’ land rights”. (Anseeuw, et. al. P.27). The Colombian Congressman Wilson Aries has denounced various cases of foreign land grabbing: the Brazilian group Mónica Semillas received $3.700 million from the governmental Agro Ingreso Seguro program, and was favored with $8.000 by FINAGRO; also, there is participation of companies from Italy, Chile, Brazil, United States and Spain, which grouped accumulate 134.000 hectares at the high plains (altillanuras).7 This is a strategic place for the “Agriculture of the XXI century” as is named by the Santos government, which has indiscriminately opened the economy for foreign investors, mainly for extractive activities. Land grabbing is being carrying out for speculative aims. Big extensions of the high plains are also owned by the richest Colombian entrepreneurs.8 Also, the Uribe´s Vice President has been accused for grabbing almost 10 thousand hectares in the region.9 Those lands have also received public investments during the Uribe and Santos´s governments. Thus, the “last great agricultural frontier” was given to the richest people of the country (and to foreigners), whilst several peasants and settlers remain without lands or forcibly displaced. New legislation under Santos also replaced the Family Agricultural Unit (UAF) with the Agricultural Business Unit (UAE), promoting land grabbing.10 Consequently, although in Colombia the percentage of purchased land by foreigners does not reach the levels of Brazil and Argentina, as stated in the report “Transnational Land Deals for Agriculture in the Global South”, we must consider that “many other Latin American countries are also facing commercial pressure on land, yet with different drivers (mining and conservation) and/or actors (domestic investors), as in the cases of Peru, Chile and Colombia”.11

7 Congreso Visible (2011), “Más denuncias sobre extranjerización y acaparamiento masivo de tierras en Colombia”, Oficina Representante Wilson Arias, Agosto 31 de 2011. 8 For example by Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo, Julio Mario Santo Domingo and the Sindicato Antioqueño. Congreso Visible (2011), Op. Cit. 9 Congreso Visible (2011), Op. Cit. 10 Congreso Visible (2011), Op. Cit. 11 Anseeuw, W.; Boche, M.; Breu, T. ; Giger, M.; Lay, J.; Messerli, P. and K. Nolte.(2012). “Transnational Land Deals for Agriculture in the Global South. Analytical Report based on the Land Matrix Database”. CDE / CIRAD / GIGA, Bern/Montpellier/Hamburg. P. 10. (italics are mine).

5 Various indicators offer proofs of the high levels of land concentration in Colombia (Vega, 2012): “In the country, there are 114 million hectares, of which 51.3 million are considered as agriculture-livestock land; of this total, 36 million are devoted to extensive livestock production, expression of the traditional power of landowners and drug traffickers; 10 million hectares are suitable for agriculture, of which half is devoted to agro-industrial activities and the rest, slopes and tropical lowlands, are occupied by millions of farmers and settlers, of which only 15% have title ownership. 0.43% of the owners (large landowners) own the 62.91% of rural farm size, whilst 57.87% of the owners (smallholders), has a ridiculous 1.66% of the land. 53% of all registered land is concentrated in the hands of only three thousand large landowners. By its part, the GINI index of rural property rose in 2009 to 0,863”,12 one of the highest in the continent. Recently, the promotion of agro-business and agro-industries has been also linked to the protection that paramilitaries gave to enterprises, producing forced displacement (Oslender, 2010). In the midst of violence, members of armed groups grab lands, assets and other resources (Cramer, 2005). In the past, Marxist theories called this “primitive accumulation”. In the present, these trends are related whit processes of “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey, 2003: 145). Forced displacement from rainforests, rural and semi-rural areas to urban centres has played an important role in expansion of global capitalism. In The Great Transformation, Polanyi (1987) offered a picture of the effects that the promotion of economic liberalization has on local communities, with the expansion of enclosures. Forced displacement has sought to encourage migration to urban or semi-urban centers. The aim has been to deprive farmers and take their territories to carry out large-scale projects (Escobar, 2004: 60). The modernization process has sought to reorganize the population and territory, making difficult “the existence of autonomy within the nation-state” (Escobar, 2004, P.61). Escobar claims that “capitalist modernity has created massive displacement (of people) and impoverishment of our age; at the same time, it has been limited by both phenomena, bearing in mind that their own instruments appears as insufficient for the tasks that circumstances demand” (P.55). For Oslender (2006), de-territorialization is more complex than forced displacement, because de-territorialization is produced when free mobility is restricted within customary territories (Oslender, 2006). 3. The Lower Atrato region In Colombia, there are territories that have not been articulated with the nation-state as a consequence of the geographical fragmentation of the country. This involves remote rainforest areas, with wild geographies, isolated from the national economic and social development.13 Isolation of “national territories” or “frontier zones” has been justified with prejudices shaped in the economic centers. Myths and ideas on those territories have been constructed with eurocentric visions, which simplify and reduce realities in the scheme of the duality of 12

Vega Cantor, Renán (2012) “Colombia: capitalismo gangsteril y despojo territorial”, 17 febrero 2012, in: http://www.biodiversidadla.org/index.php/Portada_Principal/Documentos/Colombia_capitalismo_gangsteril_y_desp ojo_territorial 13 Serje, Margarita (2005), El revés de la nación. Territorios salvajes, fronteras y tierras de nadie, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Departamento de Antropología y centro de Estudios Socioculturales e Internacionales CESO.

6 civilization and barbarism. The goal of the hegemonic center is to reduce and submitting those populations (Serje, 2005), integrating wild territories into the nation-state project, through the colonization of its populations, territories and resources. The goal of the nation is giving sense to those territories, in the frame of tensions emerging in changing global forces, where the WorldEconomy determines the aims. During the XIX century, when post-colonial elites tried to shape a Republic, the goal was producing free and equal citizens.14 However, the elites criollas failed in forging new types of social relations, compared to those ones produced during the colonial period. The main reason was that this project existed within the capitalist and modern/colonial system (Mignolo, 2007). Relevant ruptures with the former racial and social order were absent. The afrodescendants were declared citizens, although there were no provisions to overcome the deprivation created with the slavery institution.15 The Lower Atrato region is at the north of the Department (Province) of Chocó, and is part of the greatest Pacific coastal region, which classify as “frontier territory”. It is located at the great Chocó Biogeográfico.16 Lower Atrato is formed by the Municipalities of Riosucio and Carmen del Darién (Maps 1a and 1b at the Appendix).17 This region was inhabited originally by indigenous Cunas, Chocó, Waunamá and the Chibchas del Sur. The indigenous population declined due to epidemic diseases brought by the Spanish.18 African slaves were brought by the Spanish, mainly for the exploitation of gold mines. Black populations adopted cultural and living customs of local indigenous groups. The most of the slaves arrived to the New Granada between the end of the XVI Century and the finalization of the colonial period (West, 2000: 152). African slaves were introduced due to the resistance of local indigenous groups to forced labour (mainly the Chocós); the fall in the number of indigenous groups; and the Real Prohibition of indigenous forced labour (West, 2000: 155). Starting from different points where they forcibly worked exploiting gold mines, the black people colonized the rest of the region. 14

Mosquera Rosero-Labbe, Claudia (2007), “Reparaciones para negros, afrocolombianos y raizales como rescatados de la Trata Negrera Transatlántica y desterrados de la guerra en Colombia”, in: Mosquera Rosero-Labbe, C. & Luiz Claudio Barcelos (2007), Afro-reparaciones: Memorias de la esclavitud y justicia reparativa para negros, afrocolombianos y raizales. Universidad Nacional de Colombia. 15 See: Mosquera C., Pardo M., Hoffmann O. (eds.) (2002), Afrodescendientes en las Américas. Trayectorias sociales e identitarias a 150 años de la abolición de la esclavirud en Colombia, UN-ICANH-IRD-ILSA, Bogotá. 16 The Chocó Biogeografico goes from Panama to the coastal area of Ecuador. This is a territory that share biological and physiological characteristics, as well as their inhabitants share cultural and social practices. The Chocó Biogeográfico is an area rich in biodiversity, inhabited mainly by afrodescendants and indigenous populations. 17 The Lower Atrato region has a strategic location. For that fact, it is planned to build infrastructure projects to facilitate the global insertion of the country. This is happening in the midst of integration process such as the Mesoamerican project which aims at integrating the region from the south of Mexico to the Colombian Darien. It includes proposals for an inter-Oceanic dried canal and railway line, the Transversal de las Américas road (part or linked to the Pan-American Road and a Bi-national electrical inter-connection between Colombia and Panama. See: Defensoría del Pueblo (2007), Resolución Defensorial No.51. Derechos Humanos en las subregiones de Bajo Atrato y Darién – Departamento del Chocó. Bogotá. P.8. 18 From 60 thousand Chocós and Waunamás in 1600, they declined to almost 36 thousand in 1768, and 15 thousand in 1793. West, Robert (2000), Las tierras bajas del Pacífico colombiano, Instituto colombiano de Antropología e Historia, Bogotá. P.146.

7

Achievement of freedom started during the colonial period in mining areas. In 1778, 38% of black population was free in Chocó. This number included those slaves who bought their freedom, the cimarrones which escaped, and mulatos who were liberated by their amos. In 1851 the slavery was “formally” and officially abolished in Colombia (West, 2000, P.161). However, this region remained as the poorest area in the country. After the legal independence of 1810, mines owners lived in cities such as Popayan, Cartagena and Medellin. Businessmen refused to establish at the Pacific, arguing the high rainfalls, which make it difficult for them to settle. However, Afro-descendants stayed there, consolidating cimarronaje processes. The Lower Atrato region is connected, or is part, of what has been called the Urabá region, a multicentric, pluriethnic, plutiregional and multitemporal territory, linked to long-term processes (Uribe, 1992). The Urabá region did not start during the 80s with the expansion of the banana economy, but it was early appropriated by different populations, and the banana economy was subsequently installed, due to the strategic location of Urabá. For Uribe (1992, P.10), regional violence related to the armed conflict since the 80s, have hidden various axis of historical continuance of Urabá as “disputed territory” and “territory under construction”. The hypothesis that Urabá has been a region of “late colonization” is wrong, as colonization has been a permanent process. There have been four historical continuance axes in Urabá:19 i) the dispute and conflict; ii) the looting and gathering economies; iii) the refugee and illegality; and iv) the resistance and survival (Uribe, 1992). The forests exploitation (for extraction of tagua, rubber, timber and raicilla) in Urabá and Lower Atrato responded to demands of world markets in the late XIX and early XX centuries,20 with participation of elites from economic poles such as Cartagena, Montería Panamá and Colón. They also attracted colonization and settlement from Chocó (black people), Sinú and the Caribbean region (blacks and mestizos) (Uribe, 1992, P.39). Chocó was integrated across the Atrato River to the trade of the economic center of Cartagena. Elites articulated the Chocó with Cartagena and the international market (Villa, 2011, P.6). After the War of the 1000 Days,21 Chocó acquired the political character of Intendencia, with less autonomy then the Departments. It strengthened the economic elite in Lower Atrato to initiate agribusiness projects (Villa, 2001, P.6). Agro-industrial projects such as the banana in Acandí and the sugar-mill in Sautatá (Villa, 2001, P.6), set specific types of social, economic and labor relations, as well as specific forms of territorial appropriation. For Villa (2011), two models converged in Lower Atrato: a peasant economy and the agro-industrial exploitation. The elites introduced a model of subordination and exploitation of people, for their servile labor. The mediation between those who sell products and those who gather them, are given through debt or advance. Workers were also forced to spend

19

Uribe de Hincapié, Maria Teresa (1992), Urabá: ¿Región o Territorio?, Corpourabá and INER-Universidad de Antioquia. 20 See: Villa, William (2011), Colonización y conflicto territorial en el Bajo Atrato. El poblamiento de las cuencas de la margen oriental, FUCLA-OXFAM (Versión preliminar). Leal, Claudia (2008), “Disputas por tagua y minas: recursos naturales y propiedad territorial en el Pacífico colombiano, 1870-1930”, Revista Colombiana de Antropologia, Vol. 44, Núm. 2, julio-diciembre, 2008, pp. 409-438. And Aprile-Gniset. J.(1993), Poblamiento, hábitats y pueblos del Pacífico. Colección Edición Previa, Universidad del Valle, cited in Villa, 2011 21 At the end of the XIX century.

8 their salaries in the same company. Debt or advance modalities have remained, for example, in the timber economy (Villa, 2011, P.9). 4. Territorial rights of Afrodescendants In Latin America, there are new geopolitical projects in opposition to those ones of the “Americas” (Cairo, 2008). Even so, this should not be understood just as the ‘reappearance’ of previously suppressed identities. Instead of being fixed, the indigenous identity is the outcome of dynamic and changing processes. They reflect a strategic identification for acting at local, national and international levels (Walsh, 2002). During the last decades, the indigenous and afrodescendants populations have demanded the “reconceptualization of the nation or of ‘the imaginary of nation’” (Oslender, 2008: 105). Territory and territorial rights are part of those processes. For Escobar (2008: 68), territory and space must be linked, because the defense of the territory entails the defense of an intricate pattern of place-based social relations and cultural constructions; 22 it also implies “the creation of a novel sense of belonging linked to the political construction of a collective life project. (...) At stake (…) is not just land but the concept of territoriality itself as a central element in the political construction of place in the basis of black and indigenous experiences. The struggle for territory is thus a cultural struggle for autonomy and self-determination (and…) this explains why for many people of the Pacific the loss of territory would amount to a return to slavery or to becoming common citizens” (Escobar, 2008: 68). One could assert that various strategies of afrodescendants to improve their situation have been related with their access to territories. A continuous process of territorialization started at the first moment they arrived to the Americas. Territorialization has been part of strategies of African slaves and their descendants to achieve freedom, inclusion and citizenship. Territorialization occurred also when of black population released from slavery (Arocha, 2009; Nina S. de Fridemann). Historically, afrodescendants have adopted individual and collective strategies to fight for freedom, inclusion and recognition, related with their access to the territory and natural resources (Ng´weno, 2007). However, one could claim the existence of a sort of “Territorialization from above”, related with the extension of rights to ethnic communities. Besides the progress in international law regarding indigenous rights, there have been also constitutional and institutional reforms in Latin America, recognizing the multi-ethnic character of nations (Van Cott, 2000; Wade, 2006).23 The most of the reforms have benefited indigenous groups and fewer have been addressed to black populations. In Colombia was approved the Law 70 of 1993 which defined the collective 22 Escobar defines “place”, in relation to three elements. First, the social mobilizations are “local struggles over culture, territory and place” (Op Cit, 2008, P. 7). The social movements are expressions of ecological and cultural attachment to place. The social movements conceptualize the Pacific as a “region-territory of ethnic groups”. And the place-based struggles “link body, environment, culture and economy in all of their diversity”. Second, “place” is a source of culture and identity. And third, many academic fields have given more importance in the last decades to movement, displacement, migration (etc.) and less relevance to place. 23 It must be recognized also previous experiences in which the nation was built in some countries with the idea of mestizaje (i.e. México). Also, in various countries (i.e. Colombia) the official speeches recognized the existence of heterogeneous cultural traits in society (Wade, 2006: 65; Wade, 2000).

9 territories of black population and opened the path to lands entitlement (Agudelo, 2005). The liberal multiculturalism guided the introduction of legal reforms in Latina America to expand those rights. The explanations of this shift in state policies towards ethnic minorities have been situated between two hypotheses (Wade, 2006): firstly, the interest of the state and capital on controlling the lands and resources in the collective territories (Escobar, 1997; Gros, 1997; Oslender, 2002); or as the attempt of economic capitalist interests to control its biodiversity (Escobar, 1997). Secondly, is emphasized the agency of social movements of ethnic minorities for demanding those rights (Arocha, 1998). 4.1.Constitution of 1991 and AT-55 Different political and social conflicts took the Colombian elites to establish the necessity of redesign the Constitution. In 1990, the government called for the election of a National Constituent Assembly (ANC), extended to different sectors of society. Black organizations failed in the election of one representative, and they supported the Embera indigenous Francisco Rojas Birry as their candidate for the ANC. For Agudelo (Op. Cit. 141), this was the result of the lack of experience in electoral participation by black movements, and the participation linked to traditional political parties. With the Constitution, the Colombian state adopted institutional changes to extend rights to black populations. Previously, in 1989 Colombia ratified the ILO Convention No. 169, related with rights of indigenous populations. In 1991, the new Constitution proclaimed Colombia as a multicultural and pluri-ethnical nation.24 This legal shift in cultural recognition and extension of rights, took place in the frame of multiculturalism in Latin America (Agudelo, 2005). The work of the indigenous representative, the social pressure and the support of various constituyentes, produced the inclusion of the Transitory Article 55 (AT-55) into the Constitution. It enforced the Congress to enact a Law that gave collective titles to black communities which ancestrally have lived in territories at the Pacific region. The AT-55 represented a partial victory for the black communities, because it focused on rural populations living at territories culturally differentiated (such as in Chocó). However, it excluded legal elements to support black population demanding policies against social discrimination and exclusion in urban spaces. Despite these limitations, the Constitution of 1991 and the AT-55 multiplied processes of social organization at the rural Pacific region and created for first time in history, legal opportunities for national social movements to support their claims (Agudelo, 2005, 133). It visibilized social organizations working since the 80s, and led to the proliferation of new social organizations. The AT-55 designated the public lands at the river basins of the Pacific region (the Pacífico rural ribereño), as lands capable of being collectively titled. However, the “territorial, political and cultural rights of the indigenous are greater than the rights achieved by afrodescendants” (Agudelo, 2005, 132).

24

Article 7: “The State recognizes and protects the ethnic and cultural diversity of the Nation”. Republic of Colombia. Political Constitution of 1991. In: http://www.banrep.gov.co/regimen/resoluciones/cp91.pdf

10 4.2.Law 70 of 1993 and Decree 1745 of 1995 The AT-55 led to the design of the Law 70 of 1993, which was signed in August of 1993. The Law 70 of 1993 defined the territorial rights for black communities at the Pacific and similar areas of public and rural lands, and river basins, where population accomplishes traditional production practices. The Law 70 also included topics such as the cultural protection of the “Black Communities” in Colombia, identified as ethnic group, and the promotion of their social and economic development.25 By its part, the Decree 1745 of 12 October of 1995 aimed at ruling the Chapter 3 of the Law 70 of 1993. It defined a procedure to recognize the rights to collective property at the Lands of Black Communities. It also defined the role of the Communitarian Councils (Consejos Comunitarios) as the local authorities in charge of the management of the collective territories.26 The Communitarian Councils are composed by a General Assembly and a Junta. By 2001, the Colombian Constitutional Court, bearing into consideration the Law 70 of 1993, claimed that “la gente negra, afrocolombiana, raizal y palenquera” is covered by the same international ILO status as the indigenous populations.27 This included also the mechanism of “previous consultation”, in cases of exploitation of natural resources within the collective territories. 4.3.Guarantees for the respect of territorial rights of afrodescendants in Colombia In cases of exploitation of natural resources, there are legal instruments that aim to protect the territorial rights of afrodescendants. However, there have been enacted other resolutions that put in danger those rights. There are legal instruments to guarantee those territorial rights. The Article 35 of the Decree 1745 of 1995 established that a technical Commission would evaluate proposals of projects for environmental licenses, concepts, permissions and contracts, for natural resources exploitation, in cases when those lands are located in lands capable of being collectively titled. The Article 44 of the Law 70 of 1993, established that the black communities must participate in the design, elaboration and evaluation of studies of environmental impact, related with planned projects for those areas. The Article 76 of the Law 99 of 1993 claimed that the exploitation of natural resources should be made without affecting the cultural, social and economic integrity of indigenous and black communities, accordingly with the Law 70 of 1993 and the Article 330 of the Constitution, and with the previous consultation made with those communities. And the Decree 1320 of 1998 ruled the procedure of previous consultation to indigenous and afrodescendant communities, to accomplish the mandate of the content of the Article 76 of the Law 99 of 1993. However, the Resolutions 1516 of 2005 and 2038 of 2005, putted at risk the respect of territorial rights. Through them, the government stimulated the inclusion of black communities into (agroindustrial) productive projects, in association with companies. The resolution 1516 ignored the decrees and normative regarding the rights to previous consultation; it also took the black 25

República de Colombia (1993), Ley 70 de 1993. Congreso de la República. Agosto 27 de 1993. República de Colombia (1995), Decreto Numero 1745 de 1995, Octubre 12 de 1995. 27 Corte Constitucional. “Sentencia C-169 de 2001 sobre circunscripción nacional especial de grupos étnicos”. In: http://www.etnoterritorios.org/documentacion.shtml?apc=c1-1---&x=473. This Court Ruling regulated the Article 176 of the 1991 Constitution. 26

11 communities as “market actors” or enterprises; also, in the alliances with private actors, black communities are in worst position, because they cannot put capital, but the exploitation of natural resources. Thus, the communities lost their rights over territory, turning into labor force for the companies. The resolution 2038 also ignored the previous consultation (Coronado, 2006: 73). 4.4.Collective titling in Lower Atrato After the enactment of Decree 1745 of 1995, “the black communities started an intense process of collective titling, that benefited 60,418 families with the expedition of 149 collective titles (to March 2006), reaching a coverage of 5,128,830 hectares” 28 (see Map 2 at the Appendix). The titling process was supported by multilateral organizations such as the World Bank.29 Local communities of Lower Atrato achieved collective titling between 1997 and 2000. It was given by the INCORA to the Communitarian Council of Cacarica through the resolution 841 the 26th of April, 1999; and to the Communitarian Council of Jiguamiandó and Curbaradó through the resolutions 2801 and 22 of November of 2000, respectively. The extension of the title of the Communitarian Council of Curbaradó was 46.084 hectares.30 And the extension of the title of the Communitarian Council of Jiguamiandó is 54.373 hectares.31 Table 1. Collective titles at the Lower Atrato region. Communitarian Councils of the Collective Territories of Black Population Community (Collective Title) Dos Bocas Apartadó Buenavista Río Cacarica Cuenca del Río Salaquí Cuenca del Río Quiparadó Ríos La Larga y Tumaradó Truandó Medio Río Curbaradó Río Jiguamiandó Pedeguita Mancilla Vígia de Curvaradó y Santa Rosa Limón 28

Municipality Riosucio Riosucio Riosucio Riosucio Riosucio Riosucio Riosucio Carmen del Darién Carmen del Darién Carmen del Darién Carmen del Darién

No. Hectares 9616,9 18890,0 103561,0 60083,9 27914,1 110434,2 35800,5 46084,0 54373,0 49740,7 34230,6

Population 80 102 3840 2420 804 754 220 2415 2386 367 461

Year/Date of titling 13/12/1996 02/09/1998 26/04/1999 21/11/2000 21/11/2000 21/11/2000 21/12/2000 21/11/2000 21/11/2000 21/11/2000 21/11/2000

In: García, Pedro y Efraín Jaramillo, “Colombia: El caso del Naya”, Informe IWGIA No. 2. P. 16. “The World Bank approved a loan of US$39 million for the Colombian Ministry of Environment with the goal of supporting a Program for the Management of Natural Resources (PMRN) alongside the Pacific Coast of Colombia”. In: Sánchez, Enrique, Roque Roldán (2002), Titulación de los territorios comunales afrocolombianos e indígenas en la costa pacífica de Colombia. Banco Mundial. In: http://www.landnetamericas.org/browser.asp?c=49&CatID=480. 30 Communities benefited with the titling at the Curbaradó river basin were: “Bocas de Curbaradó, Brisas del Curbaradó, Andalucía, No hay como Dios, Costa de Oro, San José de Jengado, Buena Vista, Corobazal, Jengandó Medio, Las Camelias, La Laguna, Cetino, Villa Luz, El Guama, Despensa Baja and Despensa Media. INCORA information estimated that they included 642 families with 2415 persons” by the moment of the titling in 2005. In: Alfonso, Tatiana, Libia Grueso, Magnolia Prada, Yamile Salinas, and Julieta Lemaitre (comp.) (2011), Derechos enterrados. Comunidades étnicas y campesinas en Colombia, nueve casos de estudio, Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes. P.52. 31 Communities benefited from the collective title in Jiguamiandó river were: “Puerto Lleras, Puerto Nuevo, Uradá, Apartadocito, La Laguna, Nueva Esperanza, Santa Fe de Jiguamiandó and Caño Seco, comprising 483 families and 2.386 people, according to the census conducted by the INCORA during the certification process in 2005”. Alfonso (2011, et. al.), P.52. 29

12 Río Montaño Carmen del Darién 24880,0 428 21/11/2000 Turriquitadó Carmen del Darién 9283,7 93 21/11/2000 La Grande Carmen del Darién 13212,2 347 21/11/2000 Río Domingodó Carmen del Darién 38237,8 784 21/11/2000 Mayor del Bajo Atrato Unguía 33999,6 1640 21/07/2003 Cuenca del Río Acandí Seco, El Acandí 5454,0 306 08/01/2005 Cedro y Juancho La Cuenca del Río Acandí, Acandí 11233,8 472 08/01/2005 Zona Costera Norte La Cuenca del Río Tolo y Zona Acandí 13733,9 1536 08/01/2005 Costera Sur Source: Elaborated by the author, based on information of the Observatory of Ethnic Territories (http://www.etnoterritorios.org/); Alfonso, Tatiana, Libia Grueso, Magnolia Prada, Yamile Salinas, and Julieta Lemaitre (comp.) (2011), Derechos enterrados. Comunidades étnicas y campesinas en Colombia, nueve casos de estudio, Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes. And: Constitutional Court of Colombia. Sentencia T955/03.

By its part, the Communitarian Council of the Cacarica river was awarded with 103.561 hectares, located at the Forestall Reserve of the Pacific, within the Special Management Area of Darién.32 710 families and 3840 persons were favored with this title (See Table 1). 5. Land grabbing in Lower Atrato It has been raised that in the region of Lower Atrato, the total grabbed lands by paramilitaries since 1997, mainly by the Elmer Cárdenas Block, reached 22 thousand hectares,33 mainly affecting communities of Curbaradó, Cacarica and Domingodó. In collective territories of Curbaradó and Jiguamiandó, people could not sell or buy land. Even so, “entrepreneurs have acquired more than 20,000 thousand hectares in zona de mil aguas, supported by the Elmer Cardenas paramilitary block, killing 120 farmers, which forcibly displaced more than two thousand”.34 Table 2 shows the land grabbing size due to agro-industrial and extractive projects. Table 2. Land grabbing size in Lower Atrato (No. of hectares), by agro-industrial and extractive projects Extractive/Agroindustrial Project Project Company Multifruits - plantain Projects of Palm Oil 32

Size (hectares) of grabbed lands 387 has with intervention (planned/ negotiated for 20.000 has) 3.636 has

Location and affected communities Cacarica river

Curbaradó river

Source and year CODECHOCO (2011, P.22-23) INCODER, 2005

At the north its border is adjacent with the National Natural Park of the Katíos; at the west with the Indigenous Embera Resguardos of Perancho, Peranchito and La Raya; at the south with the black communities of Salaquí; and at the east, with the Atrato river. The area includes the following communities: Balsagira, Balsita, Bocachico, Bogotá, Bocas del Limón, Peranchito, Quebrada Bonita, Quebrada del Medio, La Honda, Las Mercedes Barranquilla, La Virginia Perancho, Las Pajas, Montañita Cirilo, Puente América, Puerto Berlín, Puerto Nuevo, San Higinio, San José de Balsa, Santa Lucía, Teguerré Medio, Varsovia, Vijao Cacarica and Villa Hermosa la Raya. (…) They are located at the jurisdiction of the Riosucio municipality, between the left margin of the Atrato river, and to the right of the Cacarica river”. In: Constitutional Court of Colombia. Sentencia T-955/03. P. 7. 33 VerdadAbierta.com, (2011), Op. Cit. 34 Molano, Alfredo (2010), “El proceso penal contra empresarios palmicultores aliados con paramilitares. El Chocó que desconocemos”, El Espectador, 06/10/2010.

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Projects of Palm Oil

198 has

Jiguamiandó river

INCODER, 2005

Timber extraction by 232.012.21 m3 Various places at Riosucio TRIBUNAL Maderas del Darién and Carmen del Darién PERMANENTE DE company LOS PUEBLOS (2007) Mandé Norte project, 16.000 has Carmen del Darién, Agencia de Prensa IPC Muriel Mining Co. Murindó (2009) Source: elaborated by the author, based on information of CODECHOCO (2011), INCODER (2005).

As is shown in Table 2, various extractive projects have been carried out in lower Atrato. Timber extraction has been historically relevant in the region, mainly with the participation of Maderas del Darien, a Colombian company which has expanded to neighboring countries. By its part, the Muriel Mining Company sought to develop a mining project at the Cerro Careperro covering 16 thousand hectares, in a sacred mountain for indigenous communities. This project has received several denounces and has been interrupted by the authorities. Besides those extractive projects, the agroindustries have been important to explain land grabbing in the region. Two megaprojects could be remarked, the palm oil expansion by several companies, and the plantain project of Multifruits. Next sections will explain those processes. 6. Green grabbing due to the oil palm expansion in Lower Atrato Several economic actors have sought to expand or move the agricultural frontier from Antioquia to the Chocó, seeking new lands for developing agro-industrial projects. This has included the arrival of oil palm and banana, responding to global demands of biofuels and food. These processes have being accompanied by violence, due to alliances between official armed forces, paramilitaries and entrepreneurs, seeking to expel the people from the territories. 6.1.The arrival of the oil palm to Lower Atrato In the midst of armed conflicts, emerge structures of opportunity for armed actors to take control of lands and resources (Cramer, 2005). Land grabbing increases the concentration of lands and rural inequality, with the cost of forced displacement of local population. That has been the case in Lower Atrato. Even so, this process has occurred in articulation with other dynamics. On the one hand, seeking territorial control and monopoly of the force, the armed groups found additional incentives associated with taking assets and lands. On the other side, the actions of “new rich” people (mercenaries, new capitalists, etc.), has contributed to expand the capital forces, linking new wealth sources with the re-structuration of the national economy (Franco & Restrepo, 2011, P.270). Land grabbing in Lower Atrato has promoted land expropriation and concentration. Thus, it deeps the marginalization of impoverished groups of afrodescendants, creates new landowners, or strengthen others. This process has aimed at re-configuring the territory and its property structure. It rests on the definition of legal property but also on the creation of new economic societies which create asymmetries between entrepreneurs and peasants. That re-configuration is based on the introduction of new economic sectors, the expansion of the agriculture frontier, the injection of capital to industrial agriculture, and the creation of a new chain of economic activities linked to the division of capitalist labour (Franco & Restrepo, 2011, P.270).

14

Peasants have to fight not only against national landowners, but also with transnational capital, interested projects such as mining and infrastructure. Such transnational capital seeks “to clean” “inefficient” territories (Franco & Restrepo, 2011, P.270). The case of oil palm in Lower Atrato, is characterized by investments linked to banana companies from Urabá, linked to transnational markets (Franco and Restrepo, 2011). Those logics of land grabbing are in conflict with policies of ethnic territorial rights. The new and existing landowners are aware of the future expansion of new fields of capital accumulation, raised in the insertion of Colombia into the world economy. In Lower Atrato, the counterinsurgency actions and logics of capital accumulation are overlapped, giving rise to a war economy which produced a re-configuration of the territory (Franco & Restrepo, 2011, P.272). One special characteristic of Lower Atrato, is its proximity to the Urabá region, one of the main suppliers of banana for exports. National and transnational companies have presence there, and some have been involved in cases of human rights violation and support of paramilitary groups (e.g. Chiquita Brands). The Urabá has been linked to conflicts over lands, mainly since the 60s. Those disputes are linked to the idea that governments, entrepreneurs and settlers have had on Urabá as an “empty” territory (Uribe, 1992). The conflict has been mainly related with lack of definition of property titles, the hoarding of best lands by companies to monopolize and thus speculate with the value of those properties. Lands has been concentrated in cattle ranches, creating a landlord economy, which coexists with middle size parcels of banana, and with banana agribusiness. On the other side, there are subsistence economies and small units of production. Greater banana companies compete with smaller producers, and finally took their lands through speculative and violent means. War processes in Urabá moved toward Lower Atrato, because this region turned into a guerrilla’s hiding and resistance place. Thus, counter-insurgency actions moved also toward this territory. The Lower Atrato, a region historically configured by marginalized groups of indigenous, afrodescendants and mestizos, was integrated in the dynamics of the armed conflict with new actors and logics. Those processes have produced severe consequences on local communities. The “Operación Génesis”, carried out between 24 and 27 of February 1997, marked a break point in the conflict as well as a higher peak in the levels of violence. This counter-insurgency operation against the 57 Front of the FARC guerrilla was carried out by the 17th Brigade of the Army. It included army attacks by land and air, supported by paramilitary forces of the ACCU, involving dis-proportioned and indiscriminate use of force. Aerial bombings in Caño Seco, Tamporal and Arenales produced the forced displacement of thousands of people from the basins of the rivers Cacarica and Salaquí, toward the basins of the rivers Truandó, Jiguamiandó, Curbaradó and Domingodó. After the people´s forced displacement, started the articulation of paramilitaries and entrepreneurs to occupy those territories. 6.2.Causes of the origin of oil palm in Lower Atrato Oil palm industrial projects started in the region between 1997 and 2000, and were expanded between 2001 and 2005. The companies violated several laws, included those related with ethnic

15 territorial rights of afrodescendants and the humanitarian international law. The expansion of oil palm enterprises in Lower Atrato is explained by various factors: i)

Coalition of interest groups

In the midst of the counter-insurgency war in Lower Atrato, a coalition of interest groups took advantage of strategies, to create a new agro-industrial project. This coalition aimed at taking advantage of statements made by the governments, mainly since the 2000s, on the importance of integrating Colombia into the global markets and the expansion of oil palm. Dispossession strategies included violence and the cooptation of public institutions to facilitate the appropriation of lands. Paramilitaries worked for the interests of entrepreneurs, to produce the displacement of populations. Thus, paramilitaries were “corporative and counter-insurgency mercenaries” (Franco & Restrepo, 2011, P.283). On the other hand, public functionaries illegally gave land titles to those entrepreneurs, violating rights of local communities. The coalition included multinationals, banana entrepreneurs, cattle ranchers, traders, high range militaries, intellectuals, members of the church and rulers, among others (Franco & Restrepo, 2011, P.283). They are associated with other actors, such as unemployed peasants, narcotraffickers, adventurers, ex-guerrilla fighters and retired militaries. They guarantee for the coalition its security and protection, as they gain economic benefits in activities of looting and accumulation. The paramilitaries played an “organizing” role within the coalition. Vicente Castaño, a former leader of the ACCU claimed that he invited several actors to integrate this new economic project. In his words, “the aim was at bringing the rich to invest in such projects in different parts of the country. By bringing rich people to these areas, the state institutions will arrive. (…) Unfortunately the state institutions only work, when rich people are present (in a territory). It is necessary to bring rich people to every region of the country, and that (was) the mission of every commandant (of the ACCU)”.35 Castaño also recognized that paramilitaries had oil crops in Urabá. He said: “I got the businessmen to invest in those projects that are durable and productive”.36 He said this in relation with the issue of giving back the lands that paramilitaries grabbed to the peasants. He added that they (the paramilitaries) would give back those lands to “social programs” such as those carried out through productive projects. The paramilitaries thought that they were developing “new entrepreneurial models”, without recognizing its social impacts. ii)

Crisis of the Banana sector

The banana sector has been in permanent crisis since the 90s, “due to the global oversupply of the fruit, the fall in international prices, the restriction imposed by the European Union on Latin American bananas to access its market, the macroeconomic policies, and the violence in areas of production”.37 Thus, changing the international trade policies in sectors such as the banana, could avoid (or at least to ameliorate) those capital expansions toward new sectors such as the oil palm production. Even so, in Urabá did not took place a replacement of banana crops with oil 35

„Habla Vicente Castaño“, Semana, 5 de Junio de 2005. Ibidem. 37 AUGURA. “Historia”. Web page of the National Association of Banana Producers. In: http://augura.com.co/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12&Itemid=30. Consulted in November 25, 2011. 36

16 palm (in the same parcels), as it was the case in the Magdalena Department (Goebertus, 2008). Instead, the agriculture frontier was expended toward Chocó, supported by incentives offered by the governments during the 90s to the oil palm sector. Main investors that participated in these new companies came from Urabá, entrepreneurs of oil palm from Magdalena, and paramilitary actors that participated in land grabbing processes in Lower Atrato. iii)

The “national adaptation” of the international promotion of biofuels

The efforts to boost this economic sector were increased in the XXI century, mainly responding to the rise of global demands of raw materials for biofuels industries.38 Countries of the north are the main demanders of biofuels, not least for its environmental benefits, but also because in some cases they are competitive with gasoline and diesel. Those countries import biofuels from countries of the south, despite tariffs and non-tariffs barriers remain high. Nevertheless, the production of raw materials for biofuels production has impacts at several levels. The proposed diversification of the agriculture –stated by the biofuels defenders– changes the use of lands previously used in food production impacting the food security of local populations. Also, the goal of adapting new lands for industrial crops tends to expand the agriculture frontier toward forested areas and rainforests, affecting the biodiversity and ethnic groups. Recent governments in Colombia have considered sugarcane and oil palm as promising crops, for biofuels production. In June 2004, during the Congress of FEDEPALMA in Santa Marta, former President Uribe exposed the reasons to incentive the oil palm sector. Since 2004, Uribe worked for his re-election (achieved in 2006), and introduced the oil palm industry as strategy to get resources for public policies. He linked this sector with the goals of fostering entrepreneurship and private property, as well as for creating a “country of landowners”.39 Uribe stated that the palm should represent in the future what the coffee represented in the past for the Colombian economy. Uribe proposed that Colombia should have 600 or 700 thousands hectares with oil cultivation, to compete with Malaysia that had 3,6 million hectares. In another speech, Uribe said that “the country could not be conformed to 200 thousand or 300 thousand hectares of oil palm, nor to 600 thousand hectares; instead, it should have millions to create employment, increasing peasants´ incomes and to produce that “biological oil”, or biodiesel”.40 Governments introduced economic incentives to growing the oil palm sector: incentives of the Fondo de Fomento Palmero (Law 138 of 1994) and the Fondo de Estabilización de Precios (Law 101 of 1993, Decree 2354 of 1996, and Decree 130 of 1998). Also, resources for investments from the Fondo para el Financiamiento del Sector Agropecuario (FINAGRO) and programs of subsidies to entrepreneurs interested in agribusiness. More recent legal instruments include:41 Policy Guidelines for Biofuels sector in the CONPES Policy Document No. 3510, 38 UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE ON TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT (2006), Challenges and opportunities for developing countries in producing biofuels, November 27, 2006. P. 3, 25. 39 The used expresión was „Un país de propietarios“. Presidencia de la República (2004a), Discurso del Presidente Álvaro Uribe Vélez en el Congreso Nacional de Fedepalma, Santa Marta, Junio, 2004. In: http://www.presidencia.gov.co/prensa_new/discursos/archivogen.htm. Consulted in November 20, 2011. 40 Presidencia de la República (2004b), „Palabras del Presidente Uribe al entregar proyecto de palma africana para el Magdalena Medio“, Sabana de Torres, 22 September, 2004. In: http://www.presidencia.gov.co/prensa_new/discursos/archivogen.htm. Consulted in November 20, 2011. 41 Marin, Lovett and Clancy (2011, Op. Cit. P.5).

17 2008; Policy Guidelines for Palm Oil in the CONPES Policy Document No.3477, 2007. In the agriculture sector, were introduced income tax exemptions for palm oil plantations, agricultural subsidies for irrigation and drainage, for plantations of palm oil, and for technical assistance; also agricultural soft credits. On the side of the industrial sector, have been created tax free zones, schemes of tax exemption (e.g., VAT for imported equipment such as ethanol distilleries), and price regulation with a establishing a minimum income for the producer. On the consumption side, government introduced obligatory blending targets42 and the tax exemption mechanism. Consequently, during the 2000s, the agriculture sector have experimented a change in the composition of its productive structure, with major importance of new commercial products.43. 6.3.Environmental issues Mingorance, Minelli & Le Du (2004) explored the viability, characteristics and impacts of oil palm cultivations in Lower Atrato. Their study stated the necessity to differentiate between the potentiality of lands for cropping oil palm, and the real possibility to introduce those crops. Municipalities that have been affected by oil palm crops in Chocó are Curbaradó and Belén de Bajirá. Also was affected the adjacent municipality of Mutatá in Department of Antioquia. The authors offered a classification of potential zones for cropping oil palm at the north of Chocó, offering three categories: suitable areas for oil palm cultivation, areas with any restriction, and not allowed areas. This classification is also crossed with the use potentiality for those soils. Thus, they state this classification and their characteristics. For each area, it is indicated: i) the potential use of lands, ii) the conflicts over its use, and iii) their classification in the Forested Areas Zones.44 42

Obligatory blending targets in Colombia established that by 2010, a 10% ethanol blend (and a 10% biodiesel blend) is required in cities with populations over 500,000. Starting in 2012, “all the gasoline-based motor vehicles up to 2000 cm3 manufactured, assembled, imported, distributed or commercialized in Colombia must be able to run on 85% ethanol-15% gasoline blend. Models before 2012 can run on 10% ethanol and 90% gasoline blend”. In the case of biodiesel, since 2012 “all the diesel-based motor vehicles up to 2000 cm3 manufactured, assembled, imported, distributed or commercialized in Colombia must be able to run on 20% biodiesel – 80% fossil fuels blend”. In: Marin, Lovett and Clancy (2011, Op. Cit. P.9). 43 National Colombian Government (2010), “Toward the Democratic Prosperity. Bases for the National Development Plan (2010-2014)“, Anexxes, P. 165. 44 This is the classification of potential zones for cropping oil palm at the north of Chocó (In: Mingorance, Minelli & Le Du (2004), P.109): i) Suitable areas for cultivation - Curbaradó river basin: agro-forestall vocation; under-used; Forest Productive Area. - Jiguamiandó river basin: agro-forestall vocation; under-used and with natural vegetation; Forest Productive Area and Forest Protected Area. - Unguía Municipality: agro-forestall vocation; over-used and with appropriate use; Forest Protective and Productive Area. - Cacarica river basin: agro-forestall and agriculture vocation; under-used; Forest Protective and Productive Area. - Salaquí river basin: agro-forestall and agriculture vocation; under-used and with natural vegetation; Forest Protective and Productive Area and Forest Productive Area. ii) Areas with any restriction - Truandó river basin: agro-forestall vocation; under-used and with appropriate use; Forest Protective and Productive Area. - Opogadó river basin to Domingodó river basin: agro-forestall and forestall vocation; under-used and with appropriate use; Forest Protective and Productive Area. iii) Not allowed areas - Acandí municipality: Conservation area; over-utilized; Forest Protective and Productive Area.

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They found that in the case of not allowed areas, the cultivation of oil palm should be discarded, as they are over-utilized zones and mainly conservation areas. In conservation areas and Forest Protective Areas, a big extension monoculture would damage the protective and conservationist capabilities of native forests. In the case of Forest Protective and Productive Areas, there would be restrictions for cultivations in the way of “plantations” as well as for associativist-horizontal models. This kind of models tends to produce crops of big extensions, and thus, they could also create green deserts. They also would generate pressures on peasants, due to debts and market fluctuations of prices. Oil palm monocultures are not forests, and they change the ancestral ecosystems, by their own new ecosystem, very poor in other species. Legal restrictions would also restrict the technics, technologies and chemicals, for being implemented in those plantations. Oil palm cultivations have not protective effect, nor imply a temporary forest disappearance (it would disappear for 50 years). 6.4.Companies and planted areas In 2005, the INCODER45 recognized the illegality of the land appropriation in territories where oil palm enterprises established,46 demanding more control on actions and omissions of various public institutions which facilitated land appropriation and illegal titling. INCODER “founds a completely planted area with oil palm, of 3.834 hectares, in topographic surveys and plans elaborated by INCODER functionaries, who overlapped that information with maps of the affected Communitarian Councils”.47 The companies with presence in both basins were: URAPALMA (2.723 has), Promotora Palmera del Curbaradó PALMADÓ (80 has), Palmas de Curbaradó (398 hectares) and Palmas S.A. (633 has). Even so, the extension of those crops in Jiguamiandó was 198 hectares, in Curbaradó reached 3.636 hectares. By the time of INCODER study, several of those cultivations of URAPALMA were in stage of production (their first harvest), to send the fruit to the extractive plant (located in Bajirá). INCODER determined that there was no clarity about the way the companies wanted to commercialize the product.48 INCODER founded that 93% of territories with oil palm belonged to collective territories of black communities in Curbaradó and Jiguamiandó (Ibidem.). Those enterprises showed to INCODER lands trading contracts that they apparently signed with local people.49 By 2005, - Juradó Municipaly: Conservation area; over-utilized; Forest Protected Area. - Corregimiento of Valle (municipality of Bahia Solano): Conservation area; with natural vegetation; Forest Protective and Productive Area. 45 Instituto Colombiano de Reforma Agraria y Desarrollo Rural. 46 INCODER (2005), Los cultivos de palma de aceite en los territorios colectivos de las comunidades negras de los ríos Curbaradó y Jiguamiandó, en el departamento del Chocó, Bogotá, marzo 14 de 2005. 47 INCODER (2005, Op. Cit.), P. 17. 48 Other trees were in earlier stages, at their first, second, third or fourth years. In other lands, soils were arranged to start harvesting. In the area of the Cetino community, there was a well-equipped nursery for small plants. Also, those enterprises built infrastructure for the development of the oil palm economy, including roads, drain channels, bridges and cables. 49 URAPALMA had a title in a property of 11 hectares that INCORA titled in 1987 (Resolution 688 of December 8, 1987), which URAPALMA bought to Angel Antonio Martinez. INCODER stated that those contracts lack of legal validity, as the Law 70 in its Article 15 stated that “the occupations carried out by external persons to the black

19 those companies had projections to expand oil palm, by buying improved lands to individual members of the Communitarian Councils and by buying lands outside the collective territories. The total projected area reached 17.839 hectares.50 The strategy of these companies to try to give a legal face to their illegal territory occupations is the trading of “lands improvements” to particular people who claim having titles previous to the enactment of the Law 70; or to individual members of the communitarian councils. Oil palm companies and cattle ranchers also have used the strategy of buying private properties that were issued by the mechanism of tiling uncultivated land (adjudicación de baldíos) before the introduction of Law 70. Those properties were excluded from the collective titling. With this modality, these companies bought (or were negotiating) 142 properties, involving 13.592 hectares.51 ASIBICON was the company that mainly used this strategy, acquiring 41 titles of 9.008 hectares. 6.5.Social resistance and oil palm crisis Currently, the enterprises remain in the region, controlling big extensions of territories by bringing foreign workers to occupy those lands, or by putting enclosures and introducing livestock. However, several plantations of oil palm were or have been destroyed by returned communities which previously were forcibly displaced from the region. That has been the cases of Humanitarian Zones in Curbaradó and Jiguamiandó basins. Several resistance strategies have also emerged in the region in the midst of those processes, including those of local people who stayed in the forest near their properties (the “encaletados”). After the massacre of Las Brisas in 1997, several people runaway to adjacent areas going through the Curbaradó river to save their lives. 52 Several groups of population returned to their lands, and kept resisting violent actions of paramilitaries and entrepreneurs. They have created refugee areas such as the Humanitarian Zones, which try to defend the application of the International Humanitarian Law. Also, there are Biodiversity Zones, which aims at procuring the environmental protection and food security. They have been supported by national NGOs such as the Interecclesial Commission of Justice and Peace, which have been accompanied by Peace Brigades International. By other side, several hectares of oil palm plantations in Lower Atrato were affected by the But Rot Disease (BRD).53 The companies have lost their investments, although they refuse to abandon those territories. Instead, they have installed “re-pobladores” to demonstrate their ownership. Local communities have resisted those strategies, staying in their territories and pressuring government to apply a census to determine the “legal” owners of those lands.

communities, in lands issued as collective territories, would not give rights to external persons to get titles nor recognition of improvements to the lands, and thus, they would be considered as bad faith possessors”. INCODER (2005, Op. Cit.), P. 20. 50 INCODER (2005, Op. Cit.), P. 21. 51 INCODER (2005, Op. Cit.), P. 29. 52 “All those people who stayed, was organized, kept hidden (encaletados) in the mountain, sleeping, starving. But we did realize that some people stayed, because the displacement was “to drops and drops and drops”, and we realized that until two years after”. Testimony of a displaced person during the massacre of Las Brisas in 1997. In: Comisión Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz (2005). La Tramoya. Derechos Humanos y Palma Aceitera Curbaradó y Jiguamiandó. Banco de Datos del CINEP. October, 2005. P.35. 53 This information was extracted from interviews to institutional actors (Ministry of Agriculture, and Ombudsman Offices) as well as social activists in Chocó and Bogotá, between September and October, 2011. I reserve the names of the persons for security reasons.

20 7. Multifruits´ agro-industrial project of plantain The Multifruits Company was created in 2001, the same year when the Paramilitaries declared their intention of controlling the Cacarica river basin. The main shareholders of the company were Juan Manuel Campo Eljach and César Cárdenas Rendón. Between 2004 and 2007, the Legal representative of the company was Campo (Table 1). Initially, Multifruits concentrated its operations in the Municipality of Necoclí (in Uarabá), where the owners bought the estate “El Atravesao”, with 279 hectares for plantain export. Previously, this property was a public land which the INCORA titled to Ramiro Arango Jaramillo in 1983. The property was transferred to Virginia Díaz viuda de Arango in 1985. In 19 January of 1998, she sold the estate to Elmer Cárdenas in 34 millions, “although this paramilitary had died one month before in combats against the FARC”.54 Also, Elmer Cárdenas “transferred” the estate by 16 April 2004 to his brother César Cárdenas Rendón for 30 million of pesos. In 16 June of 2004, César Cárdenas sold the estate to the Multifruits Company for 200 million. Juan Manuel Campo Eljach, member of the Conservative Party, was part of the President Uribe’s coalition. He was the main Multifruits shareholder and occupied administrative positions.55 Multifruits was supported by the Paramilitar John Jairo Rendón Herrera, alias “Germán Monsalve”. The Paramilitary Block Elmer Cárdenas had interests –as well as presence in the Board of Directors of the company Multifruits.56 Multifruits gave credits to peasants through Asocomun for growing plantain. However, several families lost their lands due to this strategy of indebting peasants. Paramilitaries pressured them for working packing plantains but they did not pay them for their work. Monsalve obliged farmers who got large debts, to sell their lands by good or bad means. According to a displaced person, “about 300 farmers went into debt with alias “Germain Monsalve”, and at least 120 families had to leave their land”.57 7.1. The Asocomun NGO 58 The Asociación Comunitaria de Urabá y Córdoba (Asocomún), is an NGO created on the 16 February of 2002, by John Mario Rendón Herrera, alias „Germán Monsalve“, brother of Freddy Rendón Herrera, alias “El Alemán” –the Comandant of Paramilitary Block Elmer Cárdenas. Asocomun was described as an Association of community action boards (Juntas de Acción Comunal), coordinated by the Elmer Cárdenas Block, through which the paramilitaries achieved social, political and economic control in Urabá.59 Multifruits was linked to Asocomun, with credits that alias Germán Monsalve60 gave to farmers –trough Asocomun-, to peasants to crop 54

VerdadAbierta.com, (2011), “La telaraña de los Paras”, Martes, 14 de Junio de 2011. In: http://www.verdadabierta.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=3330 55 Red Informativa Virtin (2007), Op. Cit. 56 VerdadAbierta.com, (2011), Op. Cit. 57 VerdadAbierta.com, (2011), Op. Cit. 58 This section is mainly written with information from: VerdadAbierta.com, (2011), Op. Cit. 59 In its statutes, Asocomun sought to achieve: “Sustainable integrated development of the associated communities, through participation, consultation and management of social, economic, educational, health and environmental projects”. VerdadAbierta.com, (2011), Op. Cit. 60 Germán Monsalve, besides being recognized as member of the Paramilitary Block Elmer Cardenas, was an evangelic pastor, which gave biblies as presents in meetings. Monsalve had influence in decisions took at the

21 plantain for Multifruits. 61 Asocomun was relevant in the structure and economy of paramilitaries in Urabá. Asocomun sought channeling resources from public and private sectors, through projects and programs, seeking funding from national and international agencies. In this sense, it aimed at controlling the Familias Guardabosques project to achieve manual eradication of crops of illicit use. Asocomun designed the Tulapa Horizonte de Esperanza project, grouping 72 communities, to apply for resources of the Familias Guardabosques Program, coordinated by the Presidency. Between 2004 and 2007, Asocomún signed contracts with governmental institutions and Majors Offices in Urabá (Necoclí and Turbo), the INCODER, Acción Social, Ministerio de Agricultura, Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje (SENA), International Organization for Migration (OIM), Corpourabá and from other regional administrative bodies and Universities. Also, it was recognized at international level by the CEPAL, which included Asocomun in 2006 among finalists of the contest Experiencias de Innovación Social, supported by the Kellogg Foundation. For VerdadAbierta.com, the value of contracts signed by Asocomun, reached $1.607 million. Asocomun was linked to the Multifruits Company as well as with other rubber and timber exploitations. Indirectly, it is assumed that Asocomun received money from the Plan Colombia, for cacao and rubber projects, at the San Juan de Urabá Municipality, with value of $375.167 US dollars from USAID. VerdadAbierta.com claimed that USAID mentioned Asocomun in a report of 2006, in which it studied the viability of the project presented by this organization. USAID do not mention Asocomun in other reports. However, reports of the Fundación Codesarrollo in 2009 showed the participation of Asocomun (as accompanying management organization) in a project supported by USAID. Even so, the Fundación Codesarrollo informed that Asocomun abandoned the project and for that reason, it will be sued in 2008. Asocomun played also the role of influencing regional political and economic arenas.62 7.2. Illegal territorial agreement in Cacarica In 15 April 2005 was signed a “Strategic Alliance” (in the frame of the Resolution 1516 of 2005) between a representative of the Company Multifruits and a member of the Communitarian Council of the Major Council of Cacarica. The agreement was signed for a term of 50 years (with possibility of extension for 50 years more) to give rights of exploitation of 20.000 hectares of the collective title located between La Balsa, La Balsita, Varsovia and Bendito Bocachico. However, the member of the Communitarian Council that signed the alliance was not the legal representative of the territory, as it was stated by the Constitutional Court of Colombia in 2004.63 Castaño House (one of the most influential paramilitary estructures). Monsalve surrended in Panama in 2009, to the United States Justice, accused of charges of drug trafficking and terrorism. 61 VerdadAbierta.com, (2011), Op. Cit. 62 This organization gave economic resources to Antonio Valencia Duque in his political campaign in 2006. Thanks to this support of the paramilitaries in Urabá, he was elected as Senator, thanks to resources from the Familias Guardabosques program controlled by Asocomun.VerdadAbierta.com, (2011), Op. Cit. 63 This pronunciation of the Court resulted from a previous denounce by communities, due to illegal timber exploitation that various companies carried out in the same territory. Red Informativa Virtin (2007), Op. Cit.

22 To achieve the agreement with the authorities in the ethnic territory, the company used legal tricks and pressure from paramilitary groups to divide the afrodescendant communities. 64 When Campo was asked about the illegal appropriation of territories in Cacarica, he affirmed: “my work in this region is to produce money, there is no other cause other than money, (…) I know of news about the paramilitary incursion in that area but do not know any details about it”.65 Campo is nephew of an industrial agro-businessman who directed the INCODER during the Uribe’s government, and who is in jail66 due to corruption.67 7.3. Multifruits´s Global alliances In 2004, Multifruits signed a contract with CI CONSERBA S.A. with the aim of producing and exporting plantain. CI CONSERBA S.A. was established in San Francisco California USA, and is a subsidiary of the multinational Del Monte. The contract stipulated that Multifruits had an estate at Necoclí, Antioquia, where the plantains must be cultivated between 2004 and 2005, to produce in 2006 almost two thousand boxes per weak. The production would be exclusively sold to the company. The contract was signed for a period of six years with possibility of automatic prorogation. In 2005, the Company CI Multifruits S.A. signed another contract with the company Del Monte Fresh Produce. The contract was initially for 8 years –with possibilities of renovation-, in which Del Monte Fresh Produce acquired the total amount of production of plantain (“primitivo”), cacao, palm oil, among others, produced in the communities of La Balsita, Varsovia, San José de Balsa and Bendito Bocachico, within the Collective Territory of Cacarica. The contract between Multifruits and Del Monte estimated to export weakly 52 tons of plantain toward United States and European markets. 68 The News Agency AP affirmed to have copy of the contract between Multifruits and Del Monte, in which is stated the production area of 20.000 hectares. However, Campo Eljach said the crops of the company only occupied 120 hectares, and the exports reached 1500 plantain boxes by 2007. By its part, Del Monte Fresh Produce recognized the agreement with Multifruits. However, it cleared not having lands in Colombia nor operated plantations. It also affirmed that the plantain it bought from the region, is picked up at the Turbo Port, which is the place for exports of Multifruits. The accusations of social organizations and NGOs against the Multifruits project in Cacarica, rests on various elements: it is carried on lands where thousands of afrocolombians were murdered, tortured and forcibly displaced by the paramilitary strategy. Paras and entrepreneurs 64

Red Informativa Virtin (2007), Op. Cit. Red Informativa Virtin (2007), Op. Cit. 66 El Universal (2012), “Rodolfo Campo Soto, exgerente del Incoder fue enviado a La Picota”, In: http://www.eluniversal.com.co/cartagena/nacional/rodolfo-campo-soto-exgerente-del-incoder-fue-enviado-la-picota66885. (Consulted: 7 May, 2012). 67 He was accused in the case of Agro Ingreso Seguro. This was a program which aimed at distributing subsidies among small, medium and large farmers, but instead benefited large landowners, with corruption in the Agriculture Ministry and INCODER. Currently, the former Ministry of Agriculture is in jail, being judged by this case. 68 Red Informativa Virtin (2007), Op. Cit. 65

23 re-populated those territories. Due to this fact, the establishment of the agro-export project of Multifruits is illegal. Illegality is identified also in the ways by which the lands were appropriated. Firstly, through violence, to give pace to impunity and oblivion embedded in the strategy of “Strategic Alliances”. And then, they divided the local communities to achieve their signature for a contract, which allowed the company to introduce monocultures. 8. Other modalities of land grabbing: livestock and illicit crops On the other hand, much of the land grab in lower Atrato is explained by the expansion of cattle ranching in the region. As shown in Table 3, more than 15 000 hectares of the area are used to pasture for livestock. This happens at the cost of logging and population displacement. Paramilitaries and cattle ranchers control large extensions of land, putting fences and cattle to control the territory (Ascoba, 2009). Table 3. Land grabbing size in Lower Atrato (No. of hectares), by livestock and illicit crops Agro-industrial Project Livestock

Size (hectares) of grabbed lands 810 has

Livestock

15.128 has

Location and affected communities Curbaradó river

La Larga-Tumaradocito, on the bank of the road Riosucio-Bajirá. Crops of Illicit use 243 has Different places at (coca) Municipality of Riosucio Source: elaborated by the author, based on information of INCODER (2005), CODECHOCO (2006) and UNODC (2011).

Source and year INCODER, 2005 FCA, CORPOURABA AND CODECHOCÓ, (2006, P.47) UNODC (2011, P.34) FCA, and CORPOURABA AND

This practice occurs within areas defined legally as collective territories of black communities. Also, between 2000 and 2010, arrived to Lower Atrato crops of illicit use (specifically coca), mainly in Riosucio, near to the border with Panama (UNODC, 2011). It is worth mentioning that the crops have come to this region from the South Pacific (Nariño, Cauca, Valle del Cauca and south Chocó) and from Urabá. These crops have been introduced by armed groups with presence in the region. These crops may also be considered as strategy for grabbing lands by drug traffickers and armed groups. Preliminary conclusions A general conclusion extracted from this work, is that recent trends of global land grab are reenforcing and re-producing historical inequalities created in Latin America since colonial times. In the studied region, various elements help to sustain this conclusion: land grabs for agroindustries, but also for other extractive projects, livestock and illicit crops have been accomplished within collective territories of indigenous people and afrodescendants. Thus, land grab aims at displacing these ethnic communities. The paramilitaries have supported the land grab with racialized discourses about Chocó as backward and impoverished region. They have claimed to bring the progress which –in their words-, only arrives when rich (and white) people inhabit a region (Semana, 2005). Those actors have sought to expand the agrarian frontier, grabbing fertile lands or changing ecosystems of forests and wetlands. Paramilitaries and

24 entrepreneurs have sought to introduce black communities into servile labour relations for the monocultures. And the impacts of violence on afrodescendants have been disproportioned, in the number of forcibly displaced and murdered people. One idea for further investigation is that recent land grab is part of the structural racism in Colombia, and the processes of producing a ethnocide against indigenous people and afrodescendants in the midst of the Colombian war. By its part, in both cases of plantain and palm oil, there have been significant impacts on the environment, including logging of cativo, alteration of river channels and construction of infrastructure such as roads through plantations (Codechocó, 2011). Similarly, the legal rights of black communities have been violated, undermining the customs and traditional ways of production, introducing a monoculture, attracting external workers and attacking the customs and beliefs of the ancient inhabitants of these territories. In both cases, there has been a division of the local communities. Thus, the dispute is also related with the legality or illegality of the Junta of the Communitarian Councils. In Curbaradó, two Juntas dispute the legality to take decisions over territory, one supported by companies, and another by NGOs (Molano, 2010, Op. Cit). Currently, representatives of palm oil companies maintain control over some parts of lower Atrato territories, expanding livestock as strategy for grabbing lands. Several lands remain under legal dispute, in the midst of restitution policies adopted by the Santos government. However, several restitution leaders have been killed, and the entrepreneurs have created “anti-restitution armies” to avoid the government to give back those lands to the peasants.69 The Multifruits case shows the importance of considering the political and economic asymmetries between external companies and local communities. The companies negotiate with a leader, without the agreement of all the community. There are internal conflicts within the communities and the companies take advantage offering money to few leaders. In the Multifruits case also there is a direct and indirect relationship between violence, dispossession, land grabbing, international trade and international cooperation. This leads to questioning from the moral point of view, the international support and recognition which companies, agencies and governments give to productive projects linked to global markets, developed within ethnic territories where afrodescendants have been killed, tortured and displaced. Bibliografía • • •

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Maldonado-Torres, Nelson (2009), “Rousseau and Fanon on Inequality and the Human Sciences.” C.L.R. James Journal 15, no. 1 (2009): 113-34. (Here is cited the previous version (in: http://trinity.duke.edu/globalstudies/wpcontent/themes/cgsh/materials/events/reflections_Maldonado-Torres_respondent.pdf). P.19. Marin, Victoria, Jon C. Lovett and Joy S. Clancy (2011), “Biofuels and Land Appropriation in Colombia: Do Biofuels National Policies Fuel Land Grabs?”, International Conference on Global Land Grabbing, 6-8 April 2011, Land Deals Politics Initiative (LDPI), Journal of Peasant Studies, & Future Agricultures Consortium (University of Sussex). McMichael (2011), “Interpreting the Land Grab”, TNI's Agrarian Justice. Meza, Carlos Andrés (2006), “Territorios de frontera: embate y resistencia en la cuenca del río Cacarica”, universitas humanística, no.62 julio-diciembre de 2006 pp: 385-429. Mignolo, Walter (2007), La Idea de América Latina, Gedisa Editorial. Mingorance, Fidel, Flaminia Minelli & Hélène Le Du (2004), El cultivo de la palma africana en el Chocó. Legalidad Ambiental, Territorial y Derechos Humanos Human Rights Everywhere & Diocese of Quibdó Mosquera C., Pardo M., Hoffmann O. (eds.) (2002), Afrodescendientes en las Américas. Trayectorias sociales e identitarias a 150 años de la abolición de la esclavirud en Colombia, UN-ICANH-IRD-ILSA, Bogotá. Mosquera Rosero-Labbe, Claudia (2007), “Reparaciones para negros, afrocolombianos y raizales como rescatados de la Trata Negrera Transatlántica y desterrados de la guerra en Colombia”, in: Mosquera Rosero-Labbe, C. & Luiz Claudio Barcelos (2007), Afroreparaciones: Memorias de la esclavitud y justicia reparativa para negros, afrocolombianos y raizales. Colección Ces, Universidad Nacional De Colombia. National Colombian Government (2010), “Toward the Democratic Prosperity. Bases for the National Development Plan (2010-2014)“, Annexes. Ng´weno, Bettina (2007), Turf Wars: Territory and Citizenship in the Contemporary State. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Oslender, Ulrich (2010), “La búsqueda de un contra-espacio: ¿hacia territorialidades alternativas o co-optación por el poder dominante?”, Geopolítica(s): Revista de Estudios sobre Espacio y Poder, v.1 (1), 95-114. Oslender, Ulrich (2008), “Las políticas de etnicidad en América Latina: comunidades indígenas y afrodescendientes como nuevos sujetos políticos y el desafío descolonial”, in: Cairo Carou, Heriberto and Walter Mignolo (2008), Las vertientes americanas del pensamiento y el proyecto des-colonial. Trama Ed. Madrid, pp.101-124. Oslender, U. 2006. Des-territorialización y desplazamiento forzado en el Pacífico colombiano: la construcción de geografías de terror, In D. Herrera & C.E. Piazzini (eds), (Des)territorialidades y (no)lugares: procesos de configuración y transformación social del espacio, Medellín (Colombia): La Carreta Editores / INER, Universidad de Antioquia, pp.155-172. Oslender, Ulrich (2002), “The logic of the river: a spatial approach to ethnic-territorial mobilization in the Colombian Pacific region”. Journal of Latin American Anthropology 7 (2). Polanyi, K. (1997), La gran transformación. Crítica del liberalismo económico, Ediciones de La Piqueta, Madrid.

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Presidencia de la República (2004a), Discurso del Presidente Álvaro Uribe Vélez en el Congreso Nacional de Fedepalma, Santa Marta, Junio, 2004. In: http://www.presidencia.gov.co/prensa_new/discursos/archivogen.htm. Consulted in November 20, 2011. Presidencia de la República (2004b), „Palabras del Presidente Uribe al entregar proyecto de palma africana para el Magdalena Medio“, Sabana de Torres, 22 September, 2004. In: http://www.presidencia.gov.co/prensa_new/discursos/archivogen.htm. Consulted in November 20, 2011. Quijano, Aníbal (2000), “Colonialidad del Poder, Eurocentrismo y América Latina”, in Lander, E. (comp), Colonialidad del Saber, Eurocentrismo y Ciencias sociales. Perspectivas latinoamericanas. Buenos Aires, CLACSO, pp.201-246. Red Informativa Virtin (2007), “un alto dirigente de Uribe beneficiado de los paramilitares”, in: http://www.colectivodeabogados.org/UN-ALTO-DIRIGENTE-DE-URIBE (consulted: Mayo 8, 2012) Restrepo, Eduardo and Axel Rojas (2010), La inflexión decolonial: fuentes, conceptos y cuestionamientos, Ed. Universidad del Cauca, Popayán. Restrepo, Eduardo (2004), “Biopolítica y alteridad: Dilemas de la etnización de las colombias negras”. En: Eduardo Restrepo y Axel Rojas (eds.), Conflicto e (in)visibilidad: retos de los estudios de la gente negra en Colombia. pp. 269-298. Popayán: Editorial Universidad del Cauca. Sánchez, Enrique, Roque Roldán (2002), Titulación de los territorios comunales afrocolombianos e indígenas en la costa pacífica de Colombia. Banco Mundial. In: http://www.landnetamericas.org/browser.asp?c=49&CatID=480. Serje, Margarita (2005), El revés de la nación. Territorios salvajes, fronteras y tierras de nadie, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Departamento de Antropología y centro de Estudios Socioculturales e Internacionales CESO. Therborn, Göran (2011), “Inequalities and Latin America. From the Enlightenment to the 21st Century“, desiguALdades.net Working Paper Series, No. 1, Berlin; desiguALdades.net Research Network on Interdependent Inequalities in Latin America. Tribunal Permanente de los pueblos (2007), “Acusación a Compañía Pizano S.A. y su filial Maderas del Darién S.A.”. Audiencia sobre Biodiversidad – Sesión Empresas Transnacionales y Derechos de los Pueblos en Colombia. UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE ON TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT (2006), Challenges and opportunities for developing countries in producing biofuels, November 27, 2006. P. 3, 25. UNODC-Colombia (2011), Cultivos de coca, Estadísticas Municipales, Censo 31 de Diciembre de 2010, Bogotá. Uribe de Hincapié, Maria Teresa (1992), Urabá: ¿Región o Territorio?, Corpourabá and INER-Universidad de Antioquia. Van Cott, Donna Lee (2000), “Latin America: constitutional reform and ethnic right”. Parliamentary Affairs 53 (1):41-54. Vega Cantor, Renán (2012) “Colombia: capitalismo gangsteril y despojo territorial”, 17 febrero 2012 (http://www.biodiversidadla.org/index.php/Portada_Principal/Documentos/Colombia_capital ismo_gangsteril_y_despojo_territorial)

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VerdadAbierta.com (without year), “Bloque Elmer Cárdenas de Urabá”, in: http://www.verdadabierta.com/la-historia/416-bloque-elmer-cardenas-de-urabaVerdadAbierta.com, (2011), “La telaraña de los Paras”, Martes, 14 de Junio de 2011. In: http://www.verdadabierta.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=3330 Villa, William (2011), Colonización y conflicto territorial en el Bajo Atrato. El poblamiento de las cuencas de la margen oriental, FUCLA-OXFAM (Versión preliminar). Wade, Peter (2006), Etnicidad, multiculturalismo y políticas sociales en Latinoamérica: Poblaciones afrolatinas (e indígenas), Tabula Rasa. Bogotá - Colombia, No.4: 59-81, enerojunio. Wallerstein, Immanuel (1979), The Capitalist World Economy, Cambridge University Press. Walsh, Catherine (2002), “(De)construir la interculturalidad. Consideraciones críti8cas desde la política, la colonialidad y los movimientos indígenas y negros en el Ecuador”. In: Fuller, N. (ed.), Interculturalidad y Política. Desafíos y posibilidades. Lima, Red para el Desarrollo de las Ciencias Sociales en el Perú, pp.115-142. West, Robert (2000), Las tierras bajas del Pacífico colombiano, Instituto colombiano de Antropología e Historia, Bogotá. World Bank (2010), Rising Global Interest in Farmland. Can it Yield Sustainable and Equitable Benefits? Washington, DC: World Bank.

Legal documents • Republic of Colombia. Political Constitution of 1991. In: http://www.banrep.gov.co/regimen/resoluciones/cp91.pdf • República de Colombia (1993), Ley 70 de 1993. Congreso de la República. Agosto 27 de 1993. • República de Colombia (1995), Decreto Numero 1745 de 1995, Octubre 12 de 1995. • Corte Constitucional. “Sentencia C-169 de 2001 sobre circunscripción nacional especial de grupos étnicos”. In: http://www.etnoterritorios.org/documentacion.shtml?apc=c1-1--&x=473. • Constitutional Court of Colombia. Sentencia T-955/03. Press articles • Semana (2005), “Habla Vicente Castaño”, 5 de Junio de 2005. • El Universal (2012), “Rodolfo Campo Soto, exgerente del Incoder fue enviado a La Picota”, In: http://www.eluniversal.com.co/cartagena/nacional/rodolfo-campo-soto-exgerente-delincoder-fue-enviado-la-picota-66885. (Consulted: 7 May, 2012). • Molano, Alfredo (2010), “El proceso penal contra empresarios palmicultores aliados con paramilitares. El Chocó que desconocemos”, El Espectador, 06/10/2010. • El Espectador (2012), “Denuncian nuevo ejército “anti-restitución” de tierras”, 22 February 2012. • Agencia de Prensa IPC (2009), “Proyecto “Mande Norte” genera tensión en pueblos indígenas de Antioquia”, in: http://www.ipc.org.co/agenciadeprensa/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1 73:proyecto-mande-norte-genera-tension-en-pueblos-indigenas-deantioquia&catid=37:general&Itemid=150 (Consulted, May 2012).

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APPENDIX 1

Map 1a Municipalities of Lower Atrato and Darién, Department of Chocó, Colombia

Map 1b Location of Department of Chocó, Colombia, and the Lower Atrato region

Source: Elaborated by the author

Source: Elaborated by the author, based on OCHA-UN

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APPENDIX 2

Map 2 Colombia - Collective Territories of Black Communities

Source: IGAC