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Bastard Rentier Capitalism The Political Economy of Organized Crime in Colombia Sicarios and Caudillos 223 “. . . there is no cattle rancher or an owner of [a] banana plantation in the rural areas that did not have relationship with the auto–defenses” —Raul Hasbun, AUC Commander of the Bloque Bananero Private armies and militias have existed in Colombia for most of its twentieth century history, and into the time of this writing in 2012. However, from the so-called pajaros of the 1950s, who were assassins hired to carry out military operations at the behest of the large landowners and the army, to currently active groups such as Urabeños, Rastrojos, and Paisas, significant functional changes have occurred in the role of violence in social conflict. One includes the paramilitaries of the 1950s, assassins or sicarios hired to doing the bidding of local caudillos, against a competing caudillo or political opponent. In sharp contrast, the ACCU (Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba and Urabá) Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Córdoba and Urabá leadership (1980–1997) and the AUC (1997–2006), with the latter immense capacity to extract rents from narcotrafficking and other illegal and legal economic activities, became the ruling caudillos of most regions under their hegemony from Urabá to La Guajira—that is, most of the departments of the Atlantic. The AUC became a political clearinghouse that created caudillos by influencing local elections and electing representatives to the national congress from these areas.1 With the demobilization of the AUC, the extradition of some of its prominent leaders to the United States to face narcotrafficking charges, and the deaths of its founding leaders, the three Castaños brothers, did not end the phenomena. But an offshoot was created, which this section analyzes within the framework of the political economy of the war system. The epigraph quoting Raul Hasbun, a wealthy banana plantation owner from Urabá who joined the AUC and commanded the bloc that operated in Urabá, reveals the power that the paramilitary wielded and its capacity. Political economies that favor the bourgeois factions mostly integrated –10 – 224 SYSTEMS OF VIOLENCE into global capital in the forms of finance and service sector.2 All of which depended on the AUC to protect them against the guerrillas’ extortions and to act as a counterrevolutionary force preventing any meaningful land reform. More important, however, the AUC acted as an enforcer of a model of economic development that favors the class interests of these groups, which explains why no cattle rancher or banana plantation owner dared not support the organization. Hasbun stated that 4,000 agribusinesses in Urabá regularly rendered financial support, which included 270 banana plantations owners and 400 cattle ranchers.3 Hasbun claims that the agribusiness sector gave them approximately $3 million per month just in Urabá, adding that in ten years he received more than $36 million. The AUC’s total gross income may have reached between $300 million and $500 million in the early 2000s.4 By deploying violence the AUC and the paramilitary organizations accelerated a process of rentier economic development that increased the concentration of land properties in the areas of their operations, increasing trends in speculative pricing of lands, thereby increasing the number of hectares dedicated to extensive cattle ranching, protecting the mining companies, and finally accelerating the expansion of biofuel crops such African palm oil.5 Massacres, intimidations, and forceful expulsion propelled this rentier process, which resulted in almost 4 million people being internally displaced from the mid-1980s until 2012 and approximately 6 million hectares of lands appropriated by illegal and violent means. This illegal and violent process defines “bastard rentier capitalism.”6 Violence deployed by the landed elite, including the narcobourgeoisie, prolonged its political life in a changing and adverse international and national political economy. These political economies favored the bourgeois faction integrated with global capital in the forms of finance and services more than those tied with fixed land assets. WHY DID THE AUC DEMOBILIZE? The AUC demobilization was precipitated with the confluence of three factors. First, and most important, was the approval of Plan Colombia by the U.S. Congress in 2000, which brought with it unforeseen consequences, particularly after the U.S. Congress introduced in 1997 the Leahy human rights provision for foreign assistance, which was attached in 2001 to the defense appropriations. With the Leahy’s human right provision against the backdrop of the AUC atrocious human rights abuses, including thousands of extrajudicial executions, massacres, and the forceful displacement of...

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