Extractive Capital, Imperialism, and the Colombian State

• Date: 01 September 2018
• Published date: 01 September 2018
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18782982
• Author: Kyla Sankey
• Subject Matter: Articles

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 222, Vol. 45 No. 5, September 2018, 52–70

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18782982

© 2018 Latin American Perspectives

52

Extractive Capital, Imperialism, and the Colombian State

by

Kyla Sankey

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 colom-

biano 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.

Keywords: Extractivism, Imperialism, Globalization theory, Colombia, Socio-

environmental conflicts

In the past 15 years, tectonic shifts in the global economy have resulted in the

conversion of Colombia into a mining country. The administrations of

Presidents Álvaro Uribe (2002–2010) and Juan Manuel Santos (2010–) have

played a key role in facilitating this process by orienting national development

policy toward natural resource extraction as the chief “locomotive” of eco-

nomic growth. The goal laid out in Santos’s “National Plan for Mining and

Energy Policy: Vision 2019” was to turn Colombia into the most important

mining country in Latin America by attracting foreign direct investment, par-

Kyla Sankey is a doctoral candidate in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen

Mary, University of London. Her research focuses on mining and natural resource extraction,

development, peasant livelihoods, and social movements in Colombia and Latin America. Her

dissertation explores the dynamics of agrarian transformations and new peasant movements in

Colombia.

782982LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X18782982Latin American PerspectivesSankey / Extractive Capital, Imperialism, And The Colombian State

research-article2018

Sankey / EXTRACTIVE CAPITAL, IMPERIALISM, AND THE COLOMBIAN STATE 53

ticularly in oil, coal, gold, and other minerals (UPME, 2006). The results have

been dramatic: between 2010 and 2014, foreign direct investment in mining

amounted to about US$7 billion (52 percent of total foreign investment) annu-

ally, up from 6 percent between 1995 and 1999 (Banco de la República, 2015).

Thanks particularly to investment in oil, coal, and gold mining, Colombia over-

took Mexico as the third-highest recipient of foreign direct investment in natu-

ral resources in Latin America. The mining boom pulled the country from the

brink of economic collapse in the late 1990s, quickly turning it into one of the

region’s fastest-expanding economies, with growth rates averaging 5.6 percent

between 2010 and 2014 (ECLAC, 2015).

The mining boom is also a manifestation of epoch-defining shifts in the

global economy and geopolitical power relations. On the international level it

has been driven by three processes: the rise of China as an economic force with

a growing demand for natural resources, a commodities boom in the first

decade of the 2000s that was then propelled by the 2008 global crisis, and a

surge of “resource-seeking” foreign investment in fossil fuels and minerals.

This sudden influx of foreign direct investment in natural resources abruptly

reversed the trend in world capital flows that had been dominant throughout

the twentieth century: until 2000, Latin America had never received more than

10 percent of worldwide foreign investment, but in 2012 this figure rose to 22

percent (ECLAC, 2015). Surprisingly, it rose even further in the wake of the

financial crisis. In 2008, against the background of a 15 percent decline in for-

eign direct investment worldwide, capital flows toward the extractives sector

of Latin America reached an all-time high, with foreign direct investment at

US$128 billion (ECLAC, 2015). While these changes are reflective of growing

interdependence in the world economy, they have also deepened uneven geo-

graphical development with the incorporation of Colombia into the global

division of labor as a primary commodities exporter.

While the mining boom is a worldwide phenomenon, in Colombia it has

been particularly extensive and particularly violent. The influx of investment

in mining precipitated a land and resource grab driven by multinational cor-

porations, which saw 40 percent of the national territory licensed or in explo-

ration for mining (Garay, 2013). Dispossession, political violence, and

corruption played a central role in facilitating this land grab. One UN investi-

gation reported that “a pattern of displacement has also appeared in relation

to the exploration and exploitation of natural resources and the implementa-

tion of large-scale development projects, in some cases involving multina-

tional corporations” (ABColombia, 2011). Between 1995 and 2002, 74 percent

of human rights violations in Colombia took place in mining districts, includ-

ing 828 assassinations, 433 massacres, and 142 disappearances (Ramirez, 2015).

Various reports have linked the paramilitary forces to mining companies

through a range of activities including providing protection from guerrilla

forces, forcibly dispossessing local communities from their lands, repressing

labor unions, enforcing flexibilized labor contracts, and extortion (ABColombia,

2011; Pax, 2014).

The emergence of mining as a driving force behind economic growth in

Colombia has a number of implications for contemporary debates on globaliza-

tion, imperialism, and the role of the state in the global political economy.