narcobourgeoisie, and the AUC

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

about land titles that is almost a fetish. A great deal of power is attributed to those who have excessive amounts of land and leave it to stagnate. This is not because the land is unusable – Colombia has some of the most fertile soil in the world – but because keeping land underutilized is a sign of wealth. The owner does not use the land because he does not need to. A small producer from Cauca shared his thoughts on what this means to the impoverished rural poor.

Those who own land around here do not even use it! They use the unused land as a sign of their wealth and power. As we starve trying to eke out an existence on what little poor land we have, for those of us who have some, they drink wine and laugh about their excess riches. This is the irony of the countryside. The rich are so rich they do not have to use their land.

Pragmatically, this practice had a particular appeal for the growing narcobourgeoisie, as it facilitated “respect” while enabling them to launder large sums of money. In an effort to legitimize themselves as productive members of society, they set up a system to “cleanse” their income from the drug trade (Holmes, Amin Gutiérrez de Piñeres and Curtin, 2006: 167; Decker and Duran, 1982: 46–7). With profits extending into the billions, the cartels had to find outlets for their earnings (Bowden, 2001).30 From as far back as the mid to late 1970s, they purchased and/or funded “legal” investments in service and commercial sectors, and used offshore sales, overbilling, and international trade to launder capital (Decker and Duran, 1982: 46–7). Schulte-Bockholt (2006: 97) argued that such practices enabled Colombia to adopt a model of socioeconomic progress through what he calls “narcodevelopment.” Industrialists provided a venue for economic stability during the rise of neoliberal economic policies while recirculating overwhelming flows of surplus capital into legitimate domestic enterprise (Thoumi, 1995: 199; Arango-Jaramillo, 1988: 126; see Table 6.1). This enabled those who were once criminals to associate with Colombia’s traditional ruling class. In SchulteBockholt’s words, “it seems clear that this wealth provides trafficking groups with the resources to infiltrate the nation’s power structure” (2006: 97; see also Bagley, 1988: 85). Some have gone so far as to suggest the traffickers, specifically the AUC, were an economic partner assisting the Colombian economy to maintain structural macroeconomic constancy and growth through their input of narcodollars.

Although economists disagree on the drug economy’s impact on Colombia’s macroeconomic stability, there is little disagreement that drug money provided a boon to the Colombian economy, helped establish fiscal stability in the 1990s, and continues to buttress the nation’s balance of accounts. (Sweig and McCarthy, 2005: 28)31

The drug economy temporarily circumvented some of the economic trials that