'Let's go for coffee': coffee, armed conflict, and crime in Colombia
| Autor | Angelika Rettberg |
| Páginas | 45-79 |
“Let’s go for coee”: Coee, armed
conict, and crime in Colombia*
A R**
Introduction
A made in by Jairo Leguizamón, commander of
the Seventh Brigade of the Colombian Army, based in Armenia, “we do not have
any information which indicates the presence of armed st ructures in any of the
three depart ments” of the Coee Zone (Eje Cafetero). Likewise, a captain of t he
National Police declared in November that the Coee Zone is representative
of a “post-conict region” (author’s interview, ), referring to the fact t hat his
institution did not have any knowledge of the active presence of illega l armed ac-
tors there and that existing cr ime is detached from the logic of the historic clash
between the FARC, ELN and other guerri lla groups, and the Colombian state.
ese statements are surprising considering that ocia l gures in in-
dicated that armed activ ities had tripled in the region in comparison with the
s (Observatory of the Presidential Program of Human Rig hts and Interna-
tional Humanitaria n Law, ). Since then, only drug-tracking, the sel ling
of drugs in small a mounts (narcomenudeo) and criminal gangs constitute i m-
portant threats to secu rity in the coee-growing zone (Cadena ; Merchán
: ; Pérez ; Policía Nacional ; Vargas ; Valencia ), but
armed conict seems to have waned.
* To cite this chapter: http://dx.doi.org /./..
** I would like to thank Brend a Ardila, Sebastiá n Bitar, Carolina Franco, Juan Diego Pr ieto
and Camilo Vargas for t heir contributions to t his research. I wou ld also like to t hank Juan Diego
Prieto for his tra nslation of some part s originally w ritten in Engl ish, and Enrique Chau x, Ralf J.
Leiteritz and C arlo Nasi for their comments.
“En el Eje Cafetero s e terminó el conic to armado” (In the coe e region the armed con ict is
over), in Crónica del Quindío, Ju ly , , http://cronicadelquindio.com /noticia-completa-titu lo-
en_el_eje_cafetero_se_termino_el_conicto_ armado-seccion--nota-.htm.
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,
Map 2. Historical development of Colombian coee-g rowing regions
Source: Map drawn by Paola Lu na, Cartogr aphy Laboratory, Universidad de lo s Andes,
based on inform ation from the authors
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“’ ”: , ,
In line with the work of historians, economists and political scientists who
have pointed out how natural resources are linked to socia l processes in the world
economy and detailed the way in which the soc ial, economic and political con-
sequences of the extraction or production and the d istribution of such resources
vary in accordance w ith the characteristics of each product (Topik, Marichal and
Frank ), this chapter seeks to answer the followi ng questions: What has been
the relationship between coee and the armed c onict in the coee-growing re-
gion? In what ways has the armed conict mutated towards new forms of crime
and how are those changes related to the economy and the coee-growing s ociety?
In many ways, the coee-growing reg ion — mainly the departments of Cal-
das, Risar alda and Quindío — il lustrates Colombia’s post-conict challenges (see
map ). On the one hand, the case of coee shows the importance of institutiona l
capacity as a protective factor in the face of outbreaks of v iolence. Even though
the region was an importa nt scenario in the period known as “the Violence” (La
Violencia) (see Bergquist, ; Ortiz, ; Palacios, ), the consolidation of
a sui generis national institution — the National C oee-Growers Federation —
and the many services it oered enabled the coee-grow ing region to remain on
the margin of the intensicat ion and degradation of the Colombian armed con-
ict for many years (for more context, see the introductory chapter of this book).
On the other hand, the case of coee a lso shows the vulnerabilities of in-
stitutional models focused on specic resou rces, especial ly when they depend
on the international market. With t he restructuring of the world coee market
— specically due to the abrupt nalization of the International Coee Pact at
the start of the s — a large par t of the institutional framework of the coee
economy collapsed (Rettberg ). e weakening of the Coee-Growers Fed-
eration, in turn, le an inst itutional gap which opened a window of opportunity
for armed-groups penetration of the strategic lands where coee is g rown, where
they recruited young men and fought for territorial control with the aim of
promoting illicit crops and insert ing the capital from drug-tracki ng into the
legal economy (see, for example: Dube and Vargas ; Holmes, Gutiérrez de
Piñeres and Curtin ; orp ; orp and Dur and, ). e combina-
tion of these factors was reected in an i ncrease in the number of kidnappings
and killi ngs in the region (see gures , and ).
It was surprising, however, that the diculties un leashed by the coee crisis
in the s were not worse. e Federation’s ability to reinvent itself and also,
the changes undertaken in the structure of the production and commercial-
ization of coee seem to have played an important role in preventing a more
acute deterioration. At the same time, some of the criminal phenomena that
initiated in the s and now maintain nat ional and international networks,
like drug-track ing and criminal bands, a re a reection of the legacies of the
coee crisis in the ki nd of criminal organizat ions which are present in the region
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