Death and Displacement: A USAID Export

Corporate security technologies: Managing life and death along a Colombian coal railway

“…Nationally 282 social leaders were killed in 2018, a figure that has increased since the peace agreement in 2016 (ibid.). Some of the threats that occurred in La Guajira during my stay explicitly state that these so-called "guerrilla fighters will be killed for attacking the company with their stupid claims" (Aguilas Negras 2019; see also McKenzie and Cohen 2018). In true Mbembean style, Lara Coleman (2018), who has studied CSR practices in the Colombian oil industry, argues that "it is those conceived as obstacles to capitalist imperatives of development and growth who are prone to being targeted by exceptional measures" (p. 6), such as paramilitary threats.…”