The Frontier Effect by Teo Ballvé

Author:Teo Ballvé [Ballvé, Teo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781501747540
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2020-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Forests Make the State Arrive

Shortly into his first term President Uribe released an elaborate four-year plan for his administration. Titled “Towards a Communitarian State,” the three-hundred-page manifesto laid out a path designed to make the state more participatory, austere, managerial, responsible, transparent, efficient, and decentralized—the first paragraph of the text contains all of these words. Besides making assurances about “recovering state authority,” the document promised that the implementation of the plan would help Colombians “recover the feeling of the State’s presence in las regiones.”46

Uribe’s manifesto for a “communitarian state” bears chilling resemblances to the book by the paramilitary ideologue Ernesto Báez about “achieving peace through the construction of regions.” In fact, the written sentence of the court that convicted Báez pointed out these similarities, noting quite diplomatically that Uribe’s manifesto “contains some concepts and narratives that share a certain likeness” to those in Báez’s book.47 The judge then devoted four pages of the sentence to illustrate the word-for-word similarities with side-by-side comparisons of the two texts. Indeed, the regionalist politics of paramilitary populism squared perfectly with Uribe’s carefully crafted political persona as a hardworking paisa and a man of the people. Despite being born and raised in Medellín, his family’s extensive rural landholdings in Antioquia and Córdoba allowed him to present himself as a straight-talking “man of the regions” with a soft spot for the countryside. Uribe’s style of populism, a mix of authoritarian militarism and paternalistic pastoralism, was perfectly summed up in his campaign slogan: Mano firme, corazón grande, meaning an iron fist against the FARC but a big heart for the common folk, especially those in the regions.

Uribe put USAID’s alternative development programs at the center of his plans for stirring up the “feeling of the State’s presence in las regiones.” His manifesto explained, “Our Development strategy in conflict zones draws on elements from Plan Colombia … but incorporates a novel aspect by articulating the concept of alternative development with an emphasis on regional development based on increased productivity and the strengthening of institutions and communities as well as the improvement of physical and social infrastructures.”48 Alternative development was thus conceived as an elaborate, multiscalar process of state formation and “regional development” that would not only foster “physical and social infrastructures” but also link nationally directed state policies and programs with newly formed local- and community-scale organizations in las regiones.

One concrete policy proposal for accomplishing this elaborate model of state building was an “illicit crop-substitution program through forestry development projects and environmental services supported by conditional [cash] subsidies.”49 The idea evolved into the still-active Programa Familias Guardabosques (the Family Forest Rangers Program). Guardabosques, as it is known for short, is a conditional cash-transfer initiative that tries to turn farmers away from growing drug-related crops. During the Uribe administration the program was run by the now-defunct social welfare agency called Acción Social (Social Action) with assistance and money from the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Campesinos joined Guardabosques by signing contracts with Acción Social in which they promised

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