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Title Tourists and Territory: Birders and the Prosaic Geographies of Stateness in Post-conflict Colombia

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Author Bott, Travis Aaron

Publication Date 2019

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation

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Tourists and Territory:

Birders and the Prosaic Geographies of Stateness in Post-conflict Colombia

A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction

of the requirements of the degree Master of Arts

in Geography

by

Travis Bott

2019

ã Copyright by

Travis Bott

2019 ABSTRACT OF THESIS

Tourists and Territory:

Birders and the Prosaic Geographies of Stateness in Post-conflict Colombia

By

Travis Bott

Master of Arts in Geography

University of California, Los Angeles, 2019

Professor John Agnew, Chair

This paper probes the role of birders as agents of re-territorialization in post-conflict Colombia.

The 2016 signing of the peace accord between the Colombian government and the FARC ended the longest-running civil conflict in the western hemisphere, and marked the beginning of the state’s territorial re-integration project. An unlikely group has been in the initial wave of this territorial re-taking: birders. Due to Colombia’s position as a hotbed of avian biodiversity, the relative inaccessibility to large swathes of its territory, and the unique drive to add species to their personal lists, birders have been aggressive first-responders to this territorial re-opening.

While questions of re-territorialization often conjure Weberian images of the state, this paper explores the line between the state as the fundamental actor in re-territorialization and the non- state actors that do the work of territorialization for the state. It does so by focusing on birders as agents of state articulation through the ‘prosaic geographies of stateness’ (Painter 2006).

ii The thesis of Travis Bott is approved.

Kelly Kay

Adam Moore

John Agnew, Committee Chair

University of California, Los Angeles

2019

iii Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Ecotourism, State Territory, and 4

The Case: Birders as Agents 10

The Spatialities of Conflict and Post-conflict 12

Birders and Post-conflict Spaces 16

Birders and the Prosaic Geographies of 25 Stateness in Post-conflict Colombia

Conclusion 28

Appendix 29

Bibliography 31

iv List of Figures

Figure 1: FARC extent 12

Figure 2: CTEP regions 14

Figure 3: eBird observations in Colombia, 20 1998 onward, and post-conflict areas

Figure 4: Observations in post-conflict areas 21 only

Figure 5: Trend in unique observers 22

Figure 6: eBird Checklists, Colombia 23

Figure 7: Observers in post-conflict spaces 23 compared to the country at large

Figure 8: Observers by CTEP 24

Figure 9: Checklists by CTEP, 2017 24

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Introduction

On November 24th, 2016, the government of Colombia signed a peace accord with The

Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC, by their Spanish acronym),1 the country’s largest and most entrenched guerilla group, bringing to a close a decades-long chapter of sub- state violence. At their greatest extent the FARC occupied some 16,000 square miles, an area roughly the size of Switzerland. In zones under their control, the FARC was the de facto state presence, assuming the role of local government by managing local economies (licit and illicit), levying taxes, administering justice, and managing infrastructure, services, and security. The demobilization process, per the accord, was scheduled to take mere months, from December

2016 to June 2017. Over the course of ten days, just shy of 7,000 FARC members quite literally came out of the hills to turn in their weapons. The handing over of the last AK-47 on June 27th,

2017, was an exclamatory moment in the re-writing of Colombian space, marking the nominal beginning of the state’s territorial reclamation project.2

An unlikely group has participated in the initial wave of this territorial re-taking: birders.3

Colombia is home to more bird species than any other country, yet has received comparatively

1 Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo (People’s Army). The full acronym, FARC- EP, was established at the Seventh Guerilla Conference in 1982, which intended to mark a shift in the group’s strategic objectives. For the sake of cleanliness—and that the group is more commonly referred to by pronouncing their acronym, as ‘the farc’—I will stick with the original version. In the transformation from guerilla organization to political party, an essential part of the accord, the group kept the same acronym, though it now spells Fuerza Alternativa Revolucionaria del Común.

2 The signing of the Accord (full title: Acuerdo Final para la Terminación del Conflicto y la Construcción de una Paz Estable y Duradera) was a dramatic affair. The result of four years of negotiation, FARC representatives and the Colombian government came to an agreement in September 2016. On October 2nd of that year, the Accord was submitted for approval by vote in a national plebiscite. It failed by a narrow margin (50.2% to 49.8%), with many urban Colombians, ironically the least hard hit by the conflict, voting against it, feeling it allowed too much amnesty for FARC combatants. The agreement was revised slightly, and re-signed no November 24th, 2016. Foregoing another plebiscite for risk of a second failure, the Accord was sent to the legislature, where it was passed unanimously on the 29th of November and was signed by President Juan Manuel Santos the following day. Demobilization began almost immediately.

3 There is a notable distinction between ‘bird-watcher’ and ‘birder’ (see Rosen 2011). While anyone can ‘go birding’ by observing and appreciating avian fauna, ‘birder,’ in this project, refers to a more hardcore set, so-called

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few birding tourists due to pervasive conflict in rural, species-rich areas. A distinctive segment of the eco-tourist population, birders are characterized by their ability to mobilize quickly, their relative affluence, and their voracious appetite for seeing new species, making them uniquely willing and able to blaze trails. They have been rapid first responders to Colombia’s “re- opening,” flocking to areas previously off-limits (Economist 2017a).4 This project examines the role that birders are playing a role in the country’s post-conflict territorialization.5

Territorialization refers to the deepening entanglement of the state—its power, its institutions, and its imaginary—with territory.6 While geographers have worked diligently to the undo the mythological coextension of the state, territory, and sovereignty (Agnew 1994, Taylor

1994, Häkli 2001), including in the Colombian context (Hunt 2006, Ballvé 2013, Serje 2012,

Camargo and Ojeda 2017), the language of territorialization remains focused on the state’s more spectacular manifestations, particularly along the Weberian lines of “monopoly” and “force.”7

“ornithological junkies” (Winthrow 2019). It is intended to encompass those who engage in the practice of bird observation as a focused form of recreation, including setting time aside and traveling for the purpose of the activity. Further, aviturismo, the Spanish phrase to describe the touristic enterprise around birding, is used in this project, as it sounds better than ‘bird-watching tourism’ or anything similarly worded.

4 ‘Flocking.’ Get it?

5 As will be demonstrated below, ‘post-conflict’ is not the most apt term. Numerous other armed groups operate in Colombia’s farther-flung areas, and several dissident FARC members have refused to demobilize. Further, the accord was signed by now ex-president Juan Manuel Santos. His successor, Iván Duque, ran on an anti-accord, anti- FARC campaign, and has undermined various aspects of the agreement (see Economist 2019). However, posconflicto is the more common terminology for the period after the accord as well as spaces relevant to the conflict, and serves a better purposes than ‘post-‘ or ‘ex-FARC.’

6 Corson (2011: 707) defines territorialization as “location-specific articulations of conflicting or mutually constituting state and civil society practices.” Peluso (2005: 2) has it as “the creation and maintenance of spatialized zones within which certain practices are permitted based on the explicit or implicit allocation of rights, control, and authority” (2). It bears mentioning that this paper focuses explicitly on internal territorialization. Whereas the external variety focuses on the state level, where one state annexes or gains control of another’s territory, internal territorialization refers to the state deepening penetration within its own boundaries (Peluso 2005). This is alternately referred to as ‘state territorialization.’

7 Weber gave his definition of the state as “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a given territory.” This conception has proved remarkably sticky. See Soifer and vom Hau (2008) for more on “Weberianess,” and Häkli (2001) for a review of Weber’s influence on state-centric thinking in the social sciences.

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The Accord itself aims to strengthen the “legitimate monopoly of force and use of weapons by part of the state in the entire country” (Acuerdo de Paz: 79), and suggests that “a central axis of peace is inciting the presence and effective action of the state in the entirety of the national territory” (3). Even analyses of territorialization that think beyond the strict dimensions of security operate on a binary conception of stateness. Popular media and academia alike are replete with references to the missing Colombian state: it is either “weak” (Economist 2017b,

LeGrand 2003), “incomplete” (Daly 2016: 7), “partially collapsed” (Bejarno and Pizarro 2005), or, most dramatically, “failed” (McLean 2002). All of this suggests a view of stateness that, even when moving away from a strict conception of the state-as-security, perpetuates a binary of

Colombian territory as either entirely stateless or contentedly stateful. This binary is insufficient in theoretical terms as well as practical ones, as the add-Leviathan-and-stir method (Staniland

2012) of resolving sub-state conflicts has done little in the Colombian context.

This project asks an admittedly broad question—what does state territorialization look like in post-conflict Colombia?— by examining the less spectacular manifestations of stateness.

In keeping with recent scholarship that questions the taken-for-granted spatial dimensions of power, the state, and territorialization, I focus less on the absolute ‘strength’ or ‘weakness’ of state territoriality in favor of the process by which stateness gets spatialized (Vandergeest 1996,

Ferguson and Gupta 2002). To do so, I examine how birders serve as agents of statization in

Colombia’s post-conflict areas through what Painter (2006) calls “the prosaic geographies of stateness.” By focusing on “the mundane practices through which something we label ‘the state’ becomes present in everyday life” (ibid.: 753, emphasis in original) it becomes possible to

“[disrupt] the binary logic of state/non-state formulations” (754). Examining birders as agents of statization allows us to not only forego A-to-B conceptions of state territorialization, but to see

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how non-state actors can be loci of statization themselves, doing the work of territorialization for the state.

This paper proceeds in four parts. The first section reviews relevant literature on the state, territorialization, and processual thinking. The next section justifies birders as subject, framing them as a unique segment of the (eco-)tourist population worth examining in the Colombian context. Third, I explore the spatialities of the recently-terminated conflict, the resultant demobilization process, and birding in the country. Using data from eBird, a mobile citizen science and personal tracking application, I show how birders are penetrating post-conflict spaces, underscoring their value as subjects in this context. It explores in more detail the potential for future study, and highlights arenas and sites where such work could shed light.

Ecotourism, State Territory, and Process

The nexus of FARC territories and ecotourism has spawned a robust literature, albeit with an ecological bent. Much empirical work has been done to assess the relationships between guerillas, violence, and environmental degradation (Dávalos 2001, Álvarez 2003, Armenteras et al. 2006, Sanchez-Cuervo and Aide 2013, Suarez et al. 2018),8 and environmentalists have been quick to highlight the importance of conservation measures in protecting post-conflict ecologies

8 The authors cited all provide strong overviews of the ecological ramifications of conflict in Colombia. On the one hand, the conflict is estimated to have helped maintain forest cover in guerilla-controlled areas. Both primary guerilla groups, the FARC and the ELN, issued moratoria on hunting, logging, agriculture, and mineral extraction in areas they controlled, as forest canopy was important to remaining hidden. Both groups also, at one time or another, had ecological advocacy organizations under their umbrellas (Dávalos 2001). Other acts of territoriality, such as scattering landmines or violence towards outsiders, had the natural effect of discouraging trespassers (ibid.). Displacement of rural populations had the double effect of removing would-be de-foresters, as well as allowing previously deforested areas to regrow (Sanchez-Cuervo and Aide 2013). On the other hand, many of the damaging activities the guerillas forbade they themselves participated in. Mining, primarily of gold and emeralds, has had perverse effects on watersheds. The cultivation of coca (primarily the purview of the FARC), as well as its fumigation in response, have had drastic effects on forest ecology (Peterson 2002). Further, paramilitary groups often formed at the behest of cattle ranchers to combat guerrillas, and where they dominated deforestation for ranching was rampant (Álvarez 2003).

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(Clerici et al. 2016, Clerici et al. 2018, Baptiste et al. 2017, Negret et al. 2017). Ecotourism—and birding in particular—is celebrated as a win-win means of integrating post-conflict development processes and environmental protection. A popular narrative suggests that demobilized guerillas can play a pivotal role in conservation by serving as park rangers or other types of eco-guides.9

Much of the work on ecotourism and the Colombian context has been critical, framing it as a pretext for green-grabbing (Ojeda 2012, Bocarejo and Ojeda 2016.) or as a banal vehicle for creeping securitization practices (Ojeda 2013).

In the broader literature, considerable work has been done around the connections between the state and ecotourism—which birding activities fall under—but less has been done to explore the role of such tourists as agents in in state processes. Work on “the political ecology of the state” (Harris 2017, Robbins 2003) spans the gamut from green security (Dalby 2009) to a

Foucauldian focus on green governmentality and environmental subjectivities (Agrawal 2005,

West 2006, Goldman 2001, Bierman and Mansfield 2014). Work has been done regarding post- conflict spaces, but large swathes of it have been devoted to questions of resources (Le Billon

2001) or to particular kinds of territorial demarcations, such as peace parks (Duffy 2001, King

2010, Roth 2008). The literature on ecotourism and conflict is often binary, being either celebratory concerning the possibility for sustainable rural development (Fletcher 2009,

Sekercioglu 2002, Biggs et al. 2013), or more critical, in the vein Diana Ojeda’s work, above. In general, the role of ecotourists in post-conflict spaces has been undertheorized. While literature in tourism geographies alludes to tourists as agents of “capital and information embodied by people” (Smith 2005: 74), it belies their roles as vehicles of statization. Focusing on the agentic

9 The thinking being that FARC guerrillas, intimately familiar with certain ‘wild’ areas and adept at enforcing order, would make a natural transition to roles enforcing conservation (see Fieseler 2016). While the numbers are not overwhelming, they have started several eco-travel oriented ventures, including rafting (UN Verification Mission to Colombia 2018) and eco-stays (Zaragovia 2018).

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qualities of birders helps address this gap, but requires a closer investigation of ‘the state’ they are intertwined with.

To quote Michael Mann, “the state is an undeniably messy concept” (1984: 187). Much work has been done in attempts to define, break down, and re-work ‘the state,’ as well as the foundational concepts that undergird it, such as ‘territory’/‘territoriality’ and ‘sovereignty.’ It is now well-established that the state as the foundational unit of spatial organization has been taken for granted in social science research, and such “embedded statism” has hindered our ability to understand the spatialities of power (Häkli 2001: 403).10 Efforts to avoid the “territorial trap”

(Agnew 1994) and “methodological nationalism” (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2003) have launched a proliferation of research into challenges to the “territorial ideal” (Murphy 1991): from without, as economic flows cross borders and international regimes exert untoward control over state processes (Sassen 2013, Agnew 2005, Agnew 2009), as well as from within, as armed groups and illicit activities undermine state authority (Meehan 2011, Lund 2011, Su 2018). Such research has been generative of alternative metaphors of state power. Sovereignty can be graduated (Ong 2000), fragmented (Davis 2010, Gazit 2010, Lund 2011), or otherwise incomplete (Daly 2015). Territorialities can be overlapping (Agnew and Oslender 2013) or be divided into “islands of governmentality” (Gregory and Vaccaro 2015). The state may be reproduced through individual discipline (Foucault 2012) or collective imagination (Toal 1996,

Dalby 1991); it may exist within—and be inseparable from—‘the rest’ of society (Migdal 2001) or it may be extended outward, beyond its territorial borders (Mountz 2013).

10 The list of relevant authors is long, and this one does not pretend to be comprehensive. For works that question the primacy of ‘the state’ —spanning scholarship from dissident IR to geography to anthropology—see Ashley (1987), Murphy (1991), Ruggie (1993), Walker (1993), Taylor (1994), Agnew (1994), Brenner (1999), Ferguson and Gupta (2002), Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2003), Das and Poole (2004). For work on ‘territory’ and ‘territoriality’ see Sack (1986), Elden (2010), Elden (2013), Delaney (2008), Murphy (2013), Sassen (2013). For ‘sovereignty,’ see Krasner (1999), Agnew (2005), Elden (2006). See also works in critical geopolitics, e.g. Toal (1996), Dalby (1991).

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While each of these (as well as the many more not cited here) have been empirically generative, they are also fundamentally derivative of Mann’s (1984: 189) concept of infrastructural power, or “the capacity of the state to actually penetrate society” (Soifer and vom

Hau 2008). 11 Allen (2011), while not heavy-handed in his critique, suggests Mann’s conception has been perhaps too sticky, and has “[clouded] the whole issue by creating the impression that power as well as resources actually flows or circulates over tracts of space and time” (63). While considerable scholarship has shown the many ways state power is un-whole, much of it remains stuck in frameworks dependent on “center-out” power geometries (Allen 2016).12 Coleman and

Agnew (2018) seem to agree, as they suggest that geographers, in particular, have been too interested in “hunting down and isolating causal ‘smoking gun’ accounts of the geography of power which…are too committed to seeing the space/power couplet in singular ways, and moreover with determinate, model-like properties” (12). Indeed, following Staniland (2012),

“states are not engaged in an all-consuming quest for territorial authority, but instead are intertwined with other social and political forces that shape authority across space and time”

(244). Acknowledging this interweaving suggests we forego the “forensic analysis of political process that make up [the] state, legitimacy, and authority” (Sikor and Lund 2009: 3) and instead focus on the process by which that authority comes about.

Processual-relational analysis vis-à-vis state projects implores us to ignore the “generic set of instructions for ‘stateness,’” and instead focus on how “particular activities contribute to the ongoing production of the ‘stateness’ of the state” (Jackson and Nexon 1999: 316, emphasis

11 In contemplating state authority, Mann distinguishes between despotic power, or “the ability of all these Red Queens to shout ‘off with his head’ and have their whim gratified without further ado—provided the person is at hand” (189), and infrastructural power, quoted above (ibid.).

12 Mann refers to the state’s “unique ability to provide a territorially centralized form of organization” (1984: 185, italics in original), whose power radiates outward (201).

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mine).13 Processual thinking is key to understanding post-conflict territorialization. As Peluso

(2005: 2) suggests, “state territorializations do not just happen.” Instead, by staying attuned to the way states become, we see how “territorial processes, such as civil administration, land use planning [etc.] help constitute and consolidate state power” (ibid.). Much of the territorialization literature focuses on the contestation between state and civil society groups regarding land-use planning as a catalyst of territorialization.14 Corson (2011), in her study of forest designation in

Madagascar, highlights the intertwining of state and non-state actors in territorialization processes. However, whereas Corson sees ‘the state’ as a vehicle for non-state interests in territorialization process, I aim to reverse the focus and show how non-state actors—birders, in this case—are instead vehicles for stateness, dragging with them a net of state effects (Mitchell

1991) and thereby acting as unintended agents of territorialization.

The state “net” I propose is made manifest in what Painter (2006) calls the prosaic geographies of stateness, the “ordinary practices through which…state effects are actualized in daily life” (770). These form the often-invisible mesh of the state that orders and shapes one’s world, through things like taxes, regulatory structures, or other bureaucratic means of “ruling at a distance.” According to Painter, focusing on the “effectivity of the mundane” (761) offers a number of advantages that are important here. First, it allows us to continue the recent trends in breaking down the reified state by dispelling the notion that ‘the state’ and ‘society’ are separate spheres, and by acknowledging that the state itself is not some mythic, unitary actor. Second, it allows us to get at the processual and spatially uneven nature of statization and territorialization:

“by emphasizing the role of practices, the concept of prosaic stateness reveals the geographies of

13 See also Emirbayer (1997) and Abbot (2016).

14 See Sikor and Lund (2009), Peluso (2005), Peluso and Lund (2011), and Vandergeest and Peluso (1995).

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state power with greater complexity and subtlety than more reified approaches. The idea that social life is suffused with state practices not only extends the apparent spatial reach of state power, but also reveals its geographical unevenness” (755). This is advantageous in a country that has come to be defined by the unevenness of the state’s reach.

To illustrate his point, Painter discusses the state effectivit of beer drinking and Russian literary criticism. For the former, he shows the way the state is deeply present in often over- looked ways, through things like the zoning laws that determine where a bar can be located, noise ordinances that limit whether or not that bar can have live music, or the amount of tax charged on your beer. In this way, the everyday act of meeting a friend for a pint is actually dripping with effects of the state. For the latter, he borrows the concept of prosaics from literary theory—relying on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin as conveyed through Morson and Emerson

(1990)—to highlight the importance of everyday micro changes over time. These changes when viewed in isolation may not amount to much, but when viewed lengthwise can mark seismic shifts.15 So too can we see this in the processes of territorialization. In foregoing the spectacular manifestations of the state and instead focusing on the subtle creeping of ‘statization’ on the backs of birders, we can escape the stateless/stateful binary in a way that keeps stateness view.

By charting the process by which the state becomes we can highlight not only the uneven geographies of state presence, but also the means by which this thing we call ‘the state’ actually

‘shows up.’

15 Using the work of Leo Tolstoy, the authors show how tiny, subtle changes occur almost imperceptibly, until a moment of stunning realization when it becomes clear that everything has changed. In describing Tolstoy’s work: “One of the reasons Tolstoy’s novels are so long is precisely that his art is centered on the depiction of minute changes in consciousness, on the tiny alterations that ultimately determine everything. [.] The many ‘irrelevant’ details to which the critics so strongly objected derive from Tolstoy’s sense that it is precisely the irrelevant that is most relevant, and the undramatic that is really most dramatic. Tolstoy is the poet of prosaics of the infinitesimal, of the accidental, of the trifling incidents on which everything ultimately depends” (Morson 1987: 221 cf. Painter 2006: 760).

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The Case: Birders as Agents

What do birders have to do with post-conflict territorialization? As a particular kind of actor, birders are a unique bunch. 16 They have group-specific habits, such as maintaining lifelong species lists, as well as high levels of commitment, mobility, and relative affluence, that make them a distinctive actor. Post-conflict Colombia is a unique context, home to more bird species than any other country on the planet, and demobilization has signaled a new availability of areas to explore. This section highlights birders as singular actors in Colombia’s post-conflict context, setting the stage for their analysis as agents of statization.

Birders are compulsive note-takers. Most serious birders maintain lifelong species lists, cataloging every species they encounter.17 Organizations, such as the American Birding

Association, encourage members to submit stories of their milestones, generally “those birds whose numbers end in -00, the ones that tick over the old life list odometer” (American Birding

Association 2013). Birding competitions, which range from local club outings to the World

Series of Birding, are based entirely on the number of species documented in a given timeframe.18 This list-oriented mentality means the possibility of seeing a new or rare species, no matter the context, is a strong motivator (Harbison 2016).

16 For the unfamiliar, the 2011 film The Big Year is a good (though of course fictional), representation of just how fanatical birder culture can be.

17 Birders known to travel long distances just to add a particular unique or rare species are sometimes called ‘listers’ (Boothe et al. 2011).

18 While particular iterations can vary, the World Series of Birding, hosted by The Audubon Society, is a 24-hour marathon where teams attempt to tick as many bird species off their lists as possible in a given locality. Big Year competitions, which are generally informal but still prestigious, count how many species are observed in a calendar year, also within a given locality, such as a continent or country. The world big year record is 6,833 species (out of an estimated 10,500 named species), set in 2016 by Arjan Dwarshuis. That’s an average of 18.7 unique species per day, for those that don’t enjoy math.

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Birders are also mobile. This is a natural prerequisite for an activity predicated on tracking, finding, and documenting creatures that fly. But mobility, in this sense, covers several dimensions. First, birders are both willing and able to mobilize quickly. Fallout events, where large numbers of migrating birds are forced to ground (usually due to foul weather) are catalysts for birder flash-mobs. Many serious birders subscribe to a variety of “rare bird alerts,” where one is notified if a seldom-seen bird—either in general or for the locality—is spotted nearby. And

‘nearby’ can mean hundreds of miles for the dedicated birder, willing to call in sick for a chance to glimpse an elusive species. Second, because so much of birding is viewing wild animals in their native habitats, birders tend to be comfortable at the margins of infrastructure. While the activity in its most general sense requires only eyes and an interest, our list-oriented types will put days and weeks into planning and executing excursions into far-flung, liminal areas. Finally, and related to the above two points, birders tend to be affluent (Sekercioglu 2002, Maldonado et al. 2017, Ocampo-Peñuela and Winton 2017). Such dedication requires the ability to take time off from work, to pay for travel, and to often make significant investments in equipment and guiding services.

Birders have been quick to react to the FARC’s demobilization. Colombia is tops in avian biodiversity, home to some 1,900 species (approximately 20 percent of the world’s avian biodiversity), 300 of which are endemic. 19 The sudden opening of species-rich terrain, much of which had been effectively off-limits for decades, coupled with a group that is motivated and capable of getting there, has meant birders have been some of the first actors to make inroads in post-conflict zones (Economist 2017a). What is more interesting is that this process is not

19 With more species continuing to be discovered. Organized initiatives, such as the ColombiaBIO program (see Palmer 2017), are playing a large part in on-going species discovery.

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entirely new. According to one interlocutor, a birding guide with several decades of experience in western South America, birders were among the first groups to show up in post-conflict territories after the Shining Path guerrilla group gave way in Peru in the 1990s.20 Biggs et al.

(2011) report a similar trend in South Africa, where birders began arriving in increasing numbers as the stigma and instability of apartheid ebbed.

The Spatialities of Conflict and Post-Conflict

Understanding the overlap between birding and post-conflict spaces requires some contextualization of those spaces themselves. This section begins with a brief description of the

FARC’s spatial extent. It then provides a look at the spatial dimensions of the Accord, including those of de-mobilization and post-conflict investment promoting aviturismo. Finally, using data from eBird, a mobile tracking and citizen science app popular in the birding community, I work to get a quantitative handle on post-conflict birding activity in Colombia. Not only does this set the stage for discussing birders as agents of statization, but it highlights potential field for further inquiry.

As alluded to above, the FARC was no small organization. They occupied a vast swathe of Colombian territory (see Figure 1), and, at their greatest extent, operated on 63 separate

‘fronts’ with some 20,000 active members (LeGrand 2003).21 The FARC were born out of rural

20 Interview conducted 11 November 2017

21 FARC enrollment reached its peak in the late 1980s and early 1990’s, as failed peace negotiations and assassinations against their political wing the Unión Patriótica led to an explosion in numbers. In counting, LeGrande (2003) differentiates between those actually implicated in combat, the “fighters in arms,” which she estimates numbered 17,00, and ‘support staff’ (my phrase) that still form a part of the group’s territorial presence but primarily participate through camp-oriented functions. LeGrand further suggests that, between the FARC and the ELN, Colombia’s second-largest guerilla group, there was significant guerilla presence in approximately 700 of the country’s 1,085 municipalities (around 65 percent).

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peasant struggle, initially forming in so-called ‘independent republics’ to protect against rural capitalist expansion during the National Front epoch (Frente Nacional), the power-sharing agreement that ended the Violencia.22 According to Palacios (2006: 167), an overlay of National

Front-era public land concessions and FARC territory lines up disturbingly well. Until demobilization, the group remained most active in areas associated with high-rent agricultural or extractive industries, including the Coca-producing areas of Guaviare, Caquetá, and Putumayo, cattle ranching zones of the Magdalena Valley and Atlantic coast, the banana zone of Urubá, and gold and emerald mines (LeGrand 2003).23 While their grip was not universally tight, in much of their territory the FARC operated as an “alter-state within the state” (Agnew and Oslender 2013).

The guerrillas controlled local economies, imposed taxes (as well as moral codes), provided security, public services, as well as solutions to everyday issues, such as dispute resolution

(ibid.). While the FARC’s extent had ebbed somewhat by the signing of the accord, its footprint remained extensive.24

22 A detailed history of the FARC, and the tangled story that led to their rise, is beyond the scope of this paper. For a closer look at the Violencia epoch, see Karl (2017); for a thorough discussion on agrarian colonization in Colombia, see LeGrand (1989); and for contextualization of the FARC’s rise, see Palacios (2006).

23 There are, of course, numerous other actors and events that influenced and affected the FARC’s spatial extent, which are too numerous to explore in much detail (see chart in appendix for a relevant timeline). Other leftist guerillas, including the ELN, EPL, and M-19, have had their own trajectories, whose activities, territories, and demobilizations affected the FARC. Paramilitaries, legitimated by state law and operating at the behest of rural landowners, were effective at expelling the FARC from various regions. Narcos, ironically tired of being extorted by guerillas, banded together to combat them, forming MAS (Muerte a Secuestradores—Death to Kidnappers). Indigenous groups, caught between guerillas, paramilitaries, and narcos, themselves militarized. Political events, including failed demobilization negotiations (most notably during the 1980’s with the Betancourt administration), the paramilitary demobilization in 2003, and the expansion of U.S. involvement in coca fumigation through Plan Colombia, all factor into the ebb and flow of FARC territorial extent.

24 The group’s financial reach was equally impressive. The FARC is estimated to be have netted anywhere between $200 million and $3.5 billion annually (Economist 2016) through a diverse portfolio of illicit activities—including the coca and cocaine trades, mineral extraction (such as gold and emeralds), various extortion rackets and rent- seeking, and arms sales—as well nominally more legitimate investments, such as land speculation and ranching, though the line tends to blur when money laundering is considered.

13

Figure 1: FARC Extent (Mignorance 2018)

The Accord and subsequent demobilization present their own spatialities. As mentioned above, the process was relatively quick, with nearly 7,000 FARC fighters demobilizing over ten days, congregating at various meeting points across the country (final numbers were between

13,000 and 14,000 individuals). FARC fighters, escorted by government security forces, gathered at one of 31 transition zones, UN-monitored temporary camps that received the fighters and their weapons, and served as the starting point for their “transition to legality” (Alto

Comisionado para la Paz 2019). 25 After UN inspectors verified that all weapons had been

25 The demobilization process is at times a confusing labyrinth of acronyms. There were 23 Zonas Veredales Transitorias de Normalización (ZVTN) and eight Puntos Transitorios de Normalización (PTN). They served the same basic functions—FARC members were to gather, turn in their weapons, and receive documentation—but the latter were much smaller and more rural (Defensoría del Pueblo 2017). The ‘transition to legality’ is done primarily through the aforementioned documentation functions, including the issuing of government I.D. cards (cedulación) and having fingerprints taken.

14

turned in, these transition zones themselves transitioned, taking on more permanence as Espacios

Territoriales de Capacitación y Reincorporación (ETCR). Unlike the transition zones, which were under strict protocols that sequestered FARC fighters, ETCR focus on capacity-building and re-integration through educational programs, vocational training, and linkages with nearby communities. Other jurisdictions or territorially specific programs were created as part of the

Accord as well. Circunscripciones Transitorias Especiales de Paz (CTEP) are special trans- departmental administrative zones created to provide additional political representation to conflict-affected areas, though they double as the basic designation of post conflict territories.26

Other post-conflict programs, such as those focused on agrarian reform or crop substitution, are administered on the basis of CTEP municipalities (Figure 2). 27

It should be noted that demobilization has not been entirely clean. Several FARC dissidents refused to demobilize, leaving between 1,000 and 1,500 fighters in the field (Isacson

2018). The ELN also remains active, with peace talks stalling. Other groups, including bandas criminales (BACRIM—organized criminal gangs), narcos, and resurgent paramilitaries continue operating over much of the country. Venezuelan groups also operate across the border in

Colombian territory. Finally, the Accord suffers from dangers of poor implementation and undermining, with discontent in ETCRs leading to a handful FARC members abandoning them after waiting too long for resources (Brown 2018). While these issues must be kept in mind—and fantasies of total peace must be tempered—the rapid demobilization of a highly territorialized

26 There are 16 CTEP comprised of 170 municipalities. CTEP cross departmento (the primary sub-state political unit) lines, and are intended to “guarantee the improved [political] integration of zones acutely affected by conflict, abandonment, and weak state presence…as well as a means of repairing and constructing peace” (Acuerdo de Paz 2016: 54). CTEP zones send additional representatives to national legislative bodies (one each for two legislative cycles), and are the jurisdictional basis for the administration of other post-conflict programs.

27 Examples include Programas de Desarrollo Agrario Integral con Enfoque Territorial (PDET) and Programa Nacional Integral de Sustitución de Cultivos Ilícitos (PNIS).

15

armed group amounts to a spectacular shift in territoriality, and a dramatic re-writing of

Colombian space.

Figure 2: CTEP Regions

There are 16 total CTEP regions, identified only through their numbers, each one sending additional representatives to the country’s legislature. CTEP 6 is broken separated by design.

Birders and Post-Conflict Spaces

How are birders—and the industries tied to them—overlapping with Colombia’s post- conflict spaces? This section first details how the Colombian government has supported and encouraged post-conflict aviturismo before attempting to get a handle on the extent of their penetration through eBird data.

Most significantly, the Colombian government is actively supporting birding in post- conflict areas. Various studies that highlight the economic potential of birding have caught the

16

government’s attention, and are cited in government literature (PTP 2019). Ocampo-Peñuela and

Winton (2017) highlight the overlap of ‘high value birds’ — species that are endemic, rare, or would otherwise provoke exceptional excitement in birding enthusiasts—with post-conflict areas, and find that many such areas are ‘under-birded,’ and have high potential for growth.

Maldonado et al. (2017) conducted a willingness-to-pay survey of Audubon Society members and found that society members would be willing to shell out an additional $310 per person per day (compared to similar trips in other countries) for the chance to see Colombia’s unique bird species. The Audubon Society itself estimates that an additional 150,000 people will visit

Colombia for birding per year, generating up to $46 million annually and creating up to 7,500 new jobs (Ocampo-Peñuela and Winton 2017).

Support has come in a variety of forms, including direct funding for exploration as well as other incentives. FONTOUR (Fondo Nacional de Turismo) operates as a purse for funding exploratory ventures, collecting taxes from hotel and other tourist revenues, which can then be applied for by guides or guiding agencies. Several guides and guiding companies I contacted have taken part in similarly funded ‘exploratory trips’ that allow them to document new areas and plan areas for future operations.28 ProColombia, a national development and investment bank, has organized familiarization trips to so-called “peace destinations,”29 high-priority post- conflict areas, to entice foreign guides to operate within the country. The state has sponsored representatives to promote the country at BIRDFAIR, the largest annual meeting of birding enthusiasts, held in the UK. The Commerce Ministry provided grants totaling up to $1 billion for

28 Interviews conducted 11 November 2017 and 27 November 2017

29 The definition of a ‘peace destination’ (destino de paz) remains elusive. Though ProColombia’s tourism materials use the term heavily, no concrete definition or map could be found. It is possible that these overlap another government designation: ZOMAC (Zonas mas Afectadas por el Conflicto), which are areas designated for special investment incentives through the National Development Plan (Plan Nacional de Desarrollo).

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initiatives to further rural tourism in Colombia, citing birding, specifically (MinCIT 2017). The

Posadas Turísticas program provides funds to convert rural family dwellings into habitable tourist facilities. A similar grant program, Programa Colegios Amigos del Turismo, is aimed at educational universities, providing funds for institutions that offer vocational and linguistic training for those working in the tourism sector. There is further support in the form of tax holidays, with incentives for those building tourist facilities in areas formerly affected by conflict. The tax holiday consists of a twenty-year window of reduced rates for any construction project built to house one hundred people or more.30

While the state is working hard to promote birding in post-conflict zones, it is important to get a finer sense of how this phenomenon is playing out on the ground. Data from eBird, a personal list-tracking and citizen science application popular in the birding community, can be used to understand the spatial extent of birding in post-conflict areas.

eBird is a mobile application and citizen science project created and managed by the

Cornell Lab of Ornithology. For individual users it serves as a personal birding diary. It helps users maintain digital life lists, species goals for outings, as well as follow trends in bird observations elsewhere through hotspots and rare bird siting alerts. For researchers, species observation data is verified and aggregated on a global level, then made available for dissemination through eBird Observational Datasets (EOD). The numbers of observations on the platform have increased substantially since its debut as a database in 2003, between 30 and 40 percent a year (Sullivan et al. 2014). EOD are considered reliable, and are used in large-scale projects funded by the National Science Foundation and the United States Geological Survey

(Sullivan et al. 2014). All data is coded geographically and temporally, making it ideal for

30 This came to my attention through an interlocutor who benefited from the tax holiday. Interview conducted 27 November 2017

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charting observations over time. While the data is used primarily for tracking particular bird species, each observation is coded with a unique anonymous user ID, which also allows the interested researcher to track the individuals making these observations. In this way, EOD give unique insight into where birders are going in Colombia, the trends in their presence over time, and how those trends overlap with post-FARC geographies.31

These datasets have limitations. First, not all birders use eBird, so there is inevitably birding activity that occurs that is not captured by the application. Second, eBird has only been in increasing use since 2005 (Sullivan et al. 2014), so there are limits in temporal depth to the study. Finally, there are ancillary trends in technology uptake that may exert uncaptured influence on the data. Increases in numbers of observers may be due to growing popularity of the app, expanded access to mobile devices or other factors. However, the application and the datasets it produces are robust enough to provide a proxy view of birder penetration in post- conflict Colombia. With some 3.1 million observations recorded in Colombia since 1998 by over

5,000 users, EOD are more than sufficient to get a sense birders’ penetration of post-conflict spaces.

Analysis was performed with open-source GIS and statistical software. QGIS was used upon for cartographic visualizations, spatial data joins, and geoprocessing operations, while R was utilized for data processing, management, analysis, and non-cartographic visualizations.

Observation data for all of Colombia was downloaded from eBird in fall 2018 (fall 2018 data update).32 While the dataset contained observations from decades prior (as users can backdate

31 As an exercise in voyeurism, I was able to track the most prolific eBird observer in Colombia. obsr693372 made 44,017 observations over the course of their eight-year career, and it was possible to animate their observations as they flitted about the country.

32 eBird publishes updated EOD on a quarterly basis.

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observations for their own purposes), I limited the data set to those made from 1998 onward, where there was an observable increase in documentation. In defining post-conflict zones, I relied on the CTEP created in the Accord. While the UN highlights 125 municipalities for post- conflict development (Ocampo-Peñuela and Winton 2017), CTEP are comprised of 170 municipalities. Their higher level of aggregation allows for easier visualization, though selection of individual field sites would be best done at the municipal level, a scale already contained within the EOD. Observations were then overlaid onto CTEP data and joined (figures 3 and 4), allowing for comparisons between post-conflict and non-post-conflict areas, as well as between post-conflict areas themselves.

Figure 3: eBird Observations in Colombia, 1998-onward, and post-conflict areas

2.9 million observations were recorded on the eBird platform since 1998. While the majority are made in non-conflict areas, we still see significant numbers of observations in post-conflict zones, highlighted in green.

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Figure 4: Observations in post-conflict areas only

This map isolates only those observations made in post-conflict areas. With over half a million observations, these represent 1/6th of all bird eBird observations made in the country since 1998.

To assess birder penetration I examine trends in both ‘unique observers’ and checklists.

‘Unique observers’ refers only to individual birders who have never been present in a particular locality, which allows us to observe trends in the sheer number of birders. While unique observers are important for assessing the increasing volume of birders, checklists were used to assess relative birding traffic. A checklist essentially represents a ‘birding event,’ making a useful proxy for birding penetration.33 Trends in checklists mark changes in birding activity, not just users. For assessing these trendlines observations were limited to those made from 2010 on.

33 For example, a single group could go through a particular locality in an afternoon, and therefore show up in the data as an increase in unique observers. However, if the group stays in that locality for an extended period of time

21

In the country as a whole, both the numbers of unique observers and checklists have increased dramatically since the peace process came to a close (see figures 5 and 6). And while the number of unique observers showing up in post-conflict CTEP have increased at a slightly slower rate than the country as whole (figure 7), numbers are still on the rise. This is not unexpected; as the country as a whole becomes a more attractive birding destination, it makes sense that more observers show up in areas that represent lower-hanging fruit. However, when disaggregating by individual CTEP, it becomes clear that they should not be treated equally

(figures 8 and 9). Certain zones, such as 11, 12, and 16, have seen much sharper increases. This provides the opportunity to pursue fieldwork more tactically, and sets up meaningful comparisons between zones that have seen more birders for longer as compared to nascent destinations, ultimately providing leverage to disentangle the process of statization I intend to examine.

Figure 5: Trend in unique observers

and engages in multiple outings (thereby creating numerous checklists), I argue that that represents a qualitatively different type of penetration, and one more relevant to the questions at hand.

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Figure 6: eBird checklists, Colombia

Figure 7: Observers in post-conflict spaces compared to the country at large

While this is two plots morphed into one, they show essentially the same thing: the share of observations between the country as a whole and post-conflict areas. While the country as a whole has increased at a slightly faster rate, this is not unexpected, as non-post-conflict areas represent low-hanging fruit for inbound tourists. What interests us is the still-significant increase in observers in post-conflict areas.

23

Figure 8: Observers by CTEP

This figure highlights trendlines for each CTEP region. While all show increased traffic beginning in 2016, some do so much more dramatically than others. CTEPs 12, 11, and 9 are of note.

Figure 9: Checklists by CTEP, 2017

Total numbers for 2017 only. This plot, combined with the one above, help highlight areas of potential fieldwork, and aids in setting up a comparative case between a more developed birding zone and a more nascent one. As the below plot shows checklists, a proxy for birding traffic, we can cross-check it with the plot above, which highlights the penetration of new birders. CTEP 12 jumps out as a developed case, where 16 and 9 would represent developing destinations.

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Birders and the Prosaic Geographies of Stateness in Post-Conflict Colombia

How may this process be unfolding? This section explores how birders may be dragging prosaic manifestations of stateness into post-conflict areas with them.

As noted above, the Colombian government has been diligently supporting birding and aviturismo through promotion, grants, and other programs. Increased contact with those programs—by making oneself legible to them, bureaucratic entanglement, etc—in post-conflict areas expands the spatiality of the “mundane effectivity” of the state and its institutions. Turismo,

Paz y Convivencia, run through MinCIT, 34 is a post-Accord program designed to link tourism efforts and post-conflict areas with the objective of formalizing tourism and “promoting the construction of social fabric” (MinCIT 2019). It is the formalization process that interests us, and is particularly illustrative by the fact that it is so thoroughly taken for granted in places where state effects penetrate deeper. In this context, formalization, and the creeping practices of stateness it entails, fall into two categories. First, economic legibility, and the ways that birding- related transactions are seen, processed and taxed. This both deepens the symbolic presence of the state as well as provides the fuel upon which it depends. Second, the state’s symbolic presence is registered through the intertwining of non-state actors and state institutions. The latter in the form of government certification programs and hitherto uncontacted bureaucratic elements.

The formalization process begins with economic legibility. In the Accord’s text, under the “Guiding Principles” section (2016: 79), right after the above-mentioned bullet point aspiring to a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, another aspiration is to maintain a monopoly on

34 Tourism, Peace, and Coexistence, generally shortened to just ‘Turismo y Paz.’ MinCIT is the Ministerio de Comercio, Industria, y Turismo—the Ministry of Commerce, Industry, and Tourism.

25

taxation.35 In the context of the Accord this is written primarily with illicit activity, such as money laundering, drug cultivation, in mind. Nonetheless, it is indicative of the aspiration to make economies legible and bring post-conflict transactions under the auspices of the state (or, at the very least, make sure they pass through or are channeled by various pieces of the state net.

Further, the average birder spends $3000 per visit to Colombia, and aviturismo in general is expected to bring in tens of millions of dollars annually, and create upwards of 7,000 new jobs

(Ocampo-Peñuela and Winton 2017, Maldonado et al. 2017, cited above). Every transaction that, through taxes, is taken up by and used to re-produce the state, deepens its spatial entanglement.

The other way birders contribute to deepening state effects in post conflict zones is by pushing these areas and their actors closer to state institutions. This is intimately related to economic legibility, as much of the institutional contact has an underlying economic component, intended to capture birding dollars. Things like registering a business with the state, gaining accreditation as a particular kind of enterprise, recording a recently-retrofitted home as a touristic dwelling—all of the rules and regulations that must be complied with to receive such declarations—are key elements that make up the prosaic state fabric.

For example, accessing the aforementioned grant money requires increased entanglement with state institutions. Refugios, small, private dwellings retrofitted as eco-tourist destinations, are an important birder infrastructure that has proliferated since the Accord.36 While one can still technically just hang a shingle and maintain a less-than-legible business, the state has made

35 Which I interpret as a general aspiration toward economic legibility. “Asegurar el monopolio de los tributos por la Hacienda Pública.” The Hacienda Pública is the agency charged with economic management and taxation in Colombia.

36 Refugios can vary in size, from larger, more formalized eco-hotels to small, private dwellings that have hung a shingle for business. The latter often becomes attractive if there are specific, rare species nearby. Birders will flock to certain refugios if the sighting of a unique species is practically guaranteed.

26

available money for retrofitting private dwellings through the Posadas Turísticas program. As such funds—or the registration as a refugio—require meeting government-mandated standards

(Normas Tecnicas Sectoriales), the proliferation of such birding infrastructure ensnares local peoples in the mesh of the state regulatory apparatus. Related activities, such refugio-owners making themselves legible to the state through (through their address, finances, or other means of identification) in order to apply for these funds, the expansion of state-supported infrastructure services, such as electricity or internet connectivity, as well as increased bureaucratic foot traffic for dwelling certification, are all avenues by which the state’s symbolic presence is increased.

The regulatory apparatus extends to bodies as well, as guiding requires certification in a national registry.37 My interviews suggest that birding guides, particularly if doing smaller trips in rural areas, will take the risk and forego the national certification, but the more formalized the touristic enterprise is the more important it becomes to have certification. As the birding industry grows and becomes more visible, so will contact with state-bureaucratic elements. SENA

(Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje), a government vocational education agency, is aggressively promoting institutionalized careers in tourism in the wake of de-mobilization (SENA 2019).38

The Colegios Amigos del Turismo program, run through MinCIT, provides funding for educational institutions that offer training in touristic enterprises, including language skills and cultural patrimony. The program recently expanded to include 236 institutions and some 230,000 students (Reportur 2018). As part of the Northern Colombia Birding Trail, a project in the Santa

Marta mountains in the country’s northeast, the Audubon Society trained 40 Wayuu indigenous

37 Registro Nacional del Turismo. While there are multiple accreditation services (all of which must be government- approved), most of the process is funneled through through SENA, the Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje.

38 The Director General of SENA, María Andrea Nieto, in a public interview speaks directly to the opportunities afforded in tourism in the wake of de-mobilization.

27

people and local farmers as birding guides.39 There is a similar trail, the Central Andes Birding trail, under development in the cordillera. Every guide that enters into formalized training, or every small-holder that complies with regulatory or bureaucratic logic in an attempt to capture birding dollars, deepens the state’s symbolic presence in those zones.

Conclusion

In contemplating state territorialization in post-conflict Colombia we have a difficult line to thread. We do not want to be trapped in binary conceptions of the state that reproduce imaginaries of territory as either completely stateless or contentedly stateful, yet no Colombia- watcher can deny that, however the state is defined, large swathes of the country’s territory have historically lacked it. Considering the depth of territorialization practiced by the FARC, their rapid demobilization marks the beginning of a massive territorialization project. To examine such a project, we must stay attuned, not just to the highly-visible, spectacular manifestations of the state, but to the processes by which the state becomes entrenched in everyday lives. Attention to the prosaic geographies of stateness allows us to keep the state in view without reifying it

(White 2013). It de-privileges substantialist interpretations that view territorialization as a state- led, A-to-B process, promoting in its place a de-centered understanding of the state that allows us focus instead on its effects. By examining birders as vehicles of statization we—rather than reproducing the fantasy of state-forward progressivist history—stay attuned to the often clunky ways in which the state’s symbolic presence is actually ‘brought back in.’

39 The North Colombian Birding Trail covers some 50,000 acres in northeastern Colombia, passing through the Santa Marta mountains. It is executed by the Audubon Society with in-country partner Calidris, and is funded by USAID and Patrimonio Natural, a Colombian fund that finances conservation initiatives.

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Appendix

A brief history of violence in Colombia since the Mid-twentieth Century. Adapted from Daly (2015).

April The assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, liberal presidential candidate, sparks a ten-year civil war 1948 between Liberals and Conservatives known as “La Violencia.” 1948-58 La Violencia partisan violence and land conflicts cause approximately 220,000 fatalities. 1949-55 Mobilization of Conservative armed civilian groups with links to police forces. In response, liberal and communist guerrilla armed groups emerge in self-defense. 1953 General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla mounts a successful coup d’état to resotr order, aided in part by politicians, both Liberal and Conservative. 1953-54 Rojas Pinilla offers amnesty to the liberal guerrillas for political crimes. Some accept the offer and surrender their arms. 1955-57 Some liberal guerrillas, having rejected the offer of amnesty, continue to fight, and consolidate their power in parts of Colombia. 1957 The Liberal and Conservative Parties broker a negotiated settlement to the political violence called the National Front, which stipulates parity in government offices and bipartisan alternation in the presidency for sixteen years. Rojas Pinilla is forced to resign. 1958 Additional amnesty is offered to armed groups; rehabilitation (disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration, DDR), reconstruction, and truth commission programs are created. 1958-74 The National Front agreement holds for over a decade and a half, but its administrations declare war on communism and implement repressive measures against the remnants of the left-wing self-defense groups 1964 President Guillermo León Valencia orders an attack on a group of peasants who organized around self-defense and land distribution. In response, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) emerges as a revolutionary guerilla organization aimed at state takeover. 1965 Influenced by the Cuban Revolution, the Marxist Ejército de Libearación Nacional (ELN) guerrilla group forms, recruiting radicalized Catholic clergy, urban students, and peasant movements. 1967 The Ejército Popular de Liberación guerrilla group is created in the departments of Córdoba and Sucre as an independent armed faction of the Marxist-Leninist Colombian Communist Party. 1968 With the objective of countering insurgent threats, Decree 3398 of 1965 and Law 48 of 1968 provide legal grounds for the creation of civilian “self-defense” (military/paramilitary) forces. 1970 Creation of the Movimiento 19 de Abril (M-19) guerrilla group in response to alleged electoral fraud by Conservative Party candidate Misael Pastrana Borrero against General Rojas Pinilla’s National Popular Alliance (ANAPO) 1970-90 Drug-trafficking expands as a result of the marijuana boom and later a growing global demand for cocaine. The Medellín and Cali Cartels gain prominence in the international cocaine markets and actively oppose the State’s attempt to extradite cartel members to the United States on trafficking charges. 1974 The National Front comes to an end with Misael Pastrana’s administration amidst accusations of electoral fraud and a general atmosphere of corruption and clientelism. Liberal candidate Alfonso López Michelsen is elected president. 1981 Creation of Muerte a Secuestradores (MAS) militia group financed by narcotraffickers. 1982 President Belisario Betancur, breaking with his predecessors’ more aggressive approach toward the insurgency, initiates peace negotiations with the major left-wing guerrilla groups FARC, EPL, ELN, and M-19. 1984 Creation of the Quintín Lame guerrilla group by indigenous communities in Cauca as a response to FARC and state violence. 1985-90 As part of the peace negotiations, the FARC creates a political party, Unión Patriótica (UP), in 1985. During the next five years, 3,000 members of the UP (including its presidential candidates) are murdered by narcotraffickers, militias, and state security forces. Peace negotiations with the FARC and ELN guerrillas break down. Militia groups with ties tot the military, large landowners, and the emerald trade emerge in regions across Colombia.

29

1989 Law 48 of 1968, which legalized “self-defense” (military/paramilitary) groups, is overturned by presidential decree 815 in 1989 during Virgilio Barco’s administration. 1990 The M-19 signs a peace accord and forms a political party. A militia group led by Fidel Castaño, active in Córdoba and Antioquia, demobilizes. 1991: Quintín Lame and the EPL both sign peace accords and form political parties. However, the EPL brigade in Norte de Santander remilitarizes. 1990- Militia/paramilitary groups proliferate and expand across nearly all of Colombia’s territory, supported 2002 by drug-traffickers and landowners. Guerrilla groups expand across the country and increasingly rely on extortion, kidnapping, and drug-trafficking. FARC becomes the largest insurgent group, followed by the ELN. 1992 Peace negotiations with the FARC in Tlaxcala, Mexico, are a failure. 1993 Death of Pablo Escobar and fall of the Medellín drug cartel. 1994-95 Under the administration of Ernesto Samper, private security groups (known as Convivir) are legalized with the purpose of helping state armed forces gather information and counter insurgent violence. Several Convivir groups later join militia forces. 1996 Arrest of key leaders and dissolution of the Cali drug cartel, which is succeeded by Norte del Valle cartel. 1997 Dissolution of Convivir by Colombia’s Constitutional Court. A confederation of most militia groups, the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), is created, but its constituent bloques retain considerable autonomy. 1999- Peace process between Andrés Pastrana’s administration and the FARC fails. 2002 2002 Álvaro Uribe elected president. Peace negotiations with militias begin. 2003-06 Thirty-seven militia bloques sign separate peace accords and demobilize. 2005- Some demobilized militia groups remilitarize, others demilitarize 2015 End of Peace accord between the FARC and the government of Juan Manuel Santos is signed in Havana, 2016 Cuba, and later ratified by Colombian legislature. 2016-17 Demobilization begins, though several dissident FARC fighters refuse, and remain active. 2018 Ivan Duque wins presidency on anti-FARC, anti-Accord platform. While he suggests he still wants peace, his administration has taken several steps toward undermining the accord.

30

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