7 - An Uncertain Future in the Caguán and Beyond

Summary

This chapter begins by analyzing how the adoption of neoliberal agrarian policies in the 1990s intensified land struggles in the region by generating new waves of displaced migrants who became incorporated into the coca economy of the FARC while also transforming the cattle industry from a domestic meat and hide supplier into an exporter of dairy products for the world market.It shows how FARC control of the region remained strong until the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the region became a geographic focal point of the state’s new neoliberal development strategies. I then demonstrate how and why previous efforts to dislodge the guerrilla threat through US-backed Cold War containment strategies failed, but that the balance of power shifted to the Colombian military in the late 1990s and early 2000s, following a massive influx of US military aid that was appropriated under the aegis of the US War on Drugs and War on Terror.I conclude this chapter with a discussion of the future economic prospects of the region’s cocalero farmers and workers in the absence of FARC protection or a developmental alternative to capitalist accumulation through dispossession.