Land transactions and violent conflict, a review of the cases of Turbo, Antioquia and El Carmen de Bolívar, Bolívar

• Published in: Análisis político (Bogotá, Colombia) Colombia), 2014-12, Vol.27 (82), p.22-44
• Main Authors: García Reyes, Paola, Vargas Reina, Jenniffer
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: POLITICAL SCIENCE
• ISSN: 0121-4705
• DOI: 10.15446/anpol.v27n82.49282

This paper offers an analysis of the links between war, land markets and dispossession based on two case studies: the municipality of Turbo, Antioquia and El Carmen de Bolívar, Bolivar. To this end, firstly, the phenomenon of active paramilitary dispossession is placed in the framework of the general discussion on land grab. Then the general dynamics of the conflict, abandonment and land dispossession in both municipalities is described. Afterwards a broad typology is proposed on land transactions,1 including abandonment and asymmetrical and symmetrical transactions, based on the observed cases. Then the sequences, actors and associated mechanisms are defined for each case. Lastly, we conclude that even though dispossession did not occur in an institutional vacuum, in the cases studied the use of force as a form of appropriation is the result of specific conditions that are closer to the Hobbesian state of nature, where the armed actor can use and make the rules, whereas the transactions that arise from advantages in asymmetries of power and information are closer to market situations in which the appropriating actor uses the rules, but does not make them.