Extractive Capital, Imperialism, and the Colombian State

Abstract

Since the turn of the century, Colombia has become increasingly dependent on mining exports to drive economic growth. While the surge in mining investments in Colombia and the problems associated with this form of economic development have received much attention from scholars and policy analysts, the common explanation is that the state has been undermined or eroded by emergent global forces. However, nation-states should be seen not as victims but as authors and enforcers of new processes of capital accumulation. The Colombian state has acted as the principal guarantor of the political and territorial conditions necessary for this form of extractive capitalism by reconstituting property and contract laws, signing free-trade agreements, reconfiguring the internal state apparatus. and expanding military forces. Desde el principio del siglo, Colombia se ha vuelto cada vez más dependiente de las exportaciones mineras para impulsar el crecimiento económico. Si bien el aumento de las inversiones mineras en Colombia y los problemas asociados con esta forma de desarrollo económico han recibido mucha atención por parte de académicos y analistas de políticas, la explicación común es que el estado ha sido socavado o erosionado por las fuerzas globales emergentes. Sin embargo, los Estados-nación deberían ser vistos no como víctimas sino como autores y ejecutores de nuevos procesos de acumulación de capital. El estado colombiano ha actuado como el principal garante de las condiciones políticas y territoriales necesarias para esta forma de capitalismo extractivo mediante la reconstitución de las leyes de propiedad y contratos, la firma de acuerdos de libre comercio, la reconfiguración del aparato estatal interno, y la expansión de fuerzas militares.

Agrarian change through speculation: Rural elites as land brokers for mining in Colombia

“…As global demand for fossil fuels for industrial production and automobility increased, the focus in the commodity sector shifted first from gold to oil and later to coal. In the context of the global commodity boom at the beginning of the 21st century, Colombia converted itself back into a ‘mining country’ (Sankey, 2018, p. 52; see also Unidad de Planeación Minero Energética [UPME], 2006). Between 2010 and 2014, more than 52% of all foreign direct investments (FDI) went into the mining sector.…”

“…Whereas high demand and commodity prices on the world markets provided the global political–economic background for the expansion of mining in Colombia, this alone cannot explain it. Rather, political decisions and institutional reforms by the state turned the most recent commodity super‐cycle into a bonanza for transnational mining companies and created the conditions for diversely used agricultural land to become a speculative asset for mining interests (Sankey, 2018; Vélez‐Torres, 2014). Major institutional changes included the liberalization and opening up of the sector for foreign capital, the slimming down of the government's mining administration, the privatization of national mining companies and the redesign of fiscal policies in order to attract FDI.…”

“…With the enclosure of arable land for mining, land‐based livelihoods and social (re)production patterns have been destroyed. Rural dwellers have lost access to land and other existential resources (including water), have been forcefully displaced or resettled or have had to give up ancestral and communal lands to mining companies (Gill, 2016, 2020; Sankey, 2018; Ulloa, 2020, 2021; Vargas Valencia, 2013). All this has led to an increase in ‘struggles against dispossession’ (Harvey, 2003), a topic that has gained much attention in critical scholarship in recent years in various study fields (including agrarian studies, development studies, social movement studies, political economy and critical geography) (see Bebbington et al, 2008; Bebbington & Bury, 2013; Conde, 2017; Conde & Le Billon, 2017; Dietz & Engels, 2017; Levien, 2011, 2013, 2015; Rodríguez‐Labajos & Özkaynak, 2017; Velasco, 2014).…”

“…This means that given the prospect of mining, in addition to the land they already owned, they also appropriate land (coercively) from others. In this sense, the rural elites act as ‘land brokers’ for coal corporations and thereby help mining capital to overcome a potential barrier to the accumulation of capital, namely, landed property (for a similar argument, see Capps & Mnwana, 2015, p. 610; Gutiérrez‐Sanín & Vargas, 2017, p. 745; Levien, 2011, 2015; Sankey, 2018, p. 62). My second argument is that the expansion of mining generates a reconcentration of landownership and wealth, which leads to what Michael Levien (2011, p. 454) calls an ‘agrarian transformation through land speculation’.…”

Assessing scope and nature of human capital management practised by Zimbabwe’s gold mining sector

“…Mining drives economic development worldwide (Pedro et al, 2017;Sankey, 2018). For Zimbabwe, the mining sector is the centrepiece of the country's economic recovery and growth.…”