Abstract

ABRIL-BONILLA, Natalia; NICHOLLS, María Camila Jiménez  and  LARROTA, Luisa Fernanda Uribe. Let’s Get Formalized!: Peasant Disputes in the Upper Cauca. Antipod. Rev. Antropol. Arqueol. [online]. 2020, n.40, pp.79-102. ISSN 1900-5407.  https://doi.org/10.7440/antipoda40.2020.04.

This article analyzes what we call a third scenario of resistance and adaptation, which can take shape when a public land policy is implemented. In particular, it examines the encounter between the Program for the Formalization of Rural Property (PFPR), designed and structured by the Colombian central government, and the political and identity struggles of the communities of black and/or Afro-descendant peasants organized in the Upper Cauca, one of the areas where the program was implemented. We used a qualitative methodology that included a review of public policy documents, as well as field work conducted over the course of three visits to Santander de Quilichao, Buenos Aires and Jamundí, which comprised interviews, focus groups, and a survey. We concluded that: 1) formalization policies must also be understood from the political and cultural dimensions of the territories they are intended to regulate; 2) public policies are reinterpreted and resignified both by those who implement them and by the communities they are intended for. In this case, the latter contest the normative notions contained in the policy regarding the “peasantry.” and 3) the political stakes of the region's peasantry are related, on the one hand, to territorial identity struggles for access to land and productive resources and, on the other, to the fact that the immeasurable visions of territory do not exist among rural communities, but rather between them and the neoliberal political project. The singularity of this work lies in the fact that it resumes the post-colonial theories on hybridization, to reveal the scenario that emerges in the Upper Cauca and its potential to renew/change the relations and practices concerning the public policy of formalization in the territory.

Keywords : Hybridization; land titling; neoliberalism; peasants; public policy; Upper Cauca.

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