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capital accumulation that benefits an increasingly narrow segment of the world population” (Escobar, 2004: 20).29 THE HISTORIC INTERCONNECTIONS BETWEEN LAND, THE NARCOBOURGEOISIE, AND THE AUC One of the most important resources in Colombia, as with most regions of the world, is land. Land has long been concentrated in the hands of a relative few in Colombia. Unlike past decades, however, this concentration has now surpassed the mere desire for capital accumulation. In years past, urban-based rural landholders utilized land for acquisitions, agricultural production, cattle ranching, or profits through speculation on future returns. While such activities continue, other sociocultural and political-economic benefits are derived for those holding legal title. Owning land has provided capitalists with the ability to derive profits without having to engage their own labor power. Holding title to land has enabled the owner to retain an income from peons and later peasants who would work the land and subsequently hand over goods or rents based on semi-proletarian conditions. Nevertheless, apart from its purely productive merit through surplus profits and use value, land has ironically carried worth in the absence of its usage. The Colombian state has routinely voiced that “significant property holdings, such as rural land” are to “remain immune to taxation” (Sweig and McCarthy, 2005: 22). Resulting from this, land, apart from being a marker of one’s socioeconomic and political stature, can be utilized by the wealthiest sectors of the country to reduce or eliminate personal taxation. It is not, however, formal tax exemptions alone that can secure capital for an owner but rather the state’s approach toward stagnant land. In 2001, the Colombian state enacted directives that not only exempted the urban-based rural landowners from formal property levies but enabled these elites paradoxically to make money from “fallow” lands. Through Law 685 Chapter XXIII, Article 256, large landowners have been afforded the ability to borrow from the state’s public coffers on the basis of proposed projects and/or projected earnings. In turn, the large landowners purposely declare a loss on the expected profits, return to the state lender, affirm the shortcoming, and subsequently obtain a repayment of the loss from the Colombian government’s loan guarantee fund. Some have even used the repayments by the large landholders to cover costs related to AUC services (Ramírez, 2005: 60, 101n.37). This analysis helps to explain why large land areas remain underutilized and why the Uribe administration, while paying lip service to its prospects, objectively sustained a hostile position toward a real land reform strategy (see Sweig and McCarthy, 2005: 32–3). Apart from monetary wealth, non-utilized land also provides sociocultural prestige, as centralized ownership over extensive tracts of land brings status (Dudley, 2004: 147; Richani, 2000: 41). Land is a symbolic representation of political-economic superiority. The Colombian bourgeoisie have an obsession
