6 - From Despotism to Counter-Hegemony in the Caguán

Summary

This chapter begins with an analysis of the Colombian state’s efforts to transform the Caguán frontier region of Caquetá into a site of land colonization, settlement, and agrarian development in the 1960s. It demonstrates that these state-directed agrarian development initiatives lacked the political and economic support of Colombian elites, which resulted in the transformation of the region into a site of large-scale cattle ranching under the despotic rule of Colombia’s cattle rancher association, Fedegán. It then shows how the movement of the FARC guerrillas into the region, followed by their involvement in taxing and regulating the region’s emerging coca economy, helped generated a counter-hegemonic coca-producing labor regime that was effective in protecting local migrants from the displacement and marginalization they had experienced under the auspices of Fedegán. It ends with a discussion of the similarities and differences between the FARC’s counter-hegemonic regulatory interventions in the coca regime with Fedecafé’s hegemonic interventions in the coffee regime.