The coca enclosure: Autonomy against accumulation in Colombia

Anthony Dest

World Development, 2021, vol. 137, issue C

Abstract: This article analyzes a relatively new phenomenon in northern Cauca: the massive expansion of coca cultivations. After decades of intense forced eradication campaigns promoted by the U.S. government, the so-called “War on Drugs” failed at achieving its stated aim. Instead, these militaristic policies pushed coca growers to find more remote places to cultivate coca in different parts of the county. In northern Cauca, coca cultivations are strongly associated with a wave of “colonization” (colonización) by coca growers displaced by Plan Colombia. In addition to the crops, these settlers also brought what some local inhabitants call the “anti-culture of coca,” which is associated with new forms of consumerism, violence, and an extractive relationship to the land. This ethnography explores coca’s power to transform social and economic relations, and it reveals how the structural inequalities in Colombian society are reproduced in regions where it is cultivated.

Keywords: Latin America; Colombia; Enclosure; Drug trafficking; Racism; Neoliberalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X2030293X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:137:y:2021:i:c:s0305750x2030293x

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105166

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().