Presentation short abstract

Colombia’s state-led capitalist expansion relies on (para)state violence to incorporate internal territories, as seen in Hidroituango and Nasa lands. These cases show how state capitalism functions, but also that is met with strong resistance to the process of centralisatiion by peripheralization.

Presentation long abstract

Recent debates on state capitalism, especially those developed by Alami and Dixon (2024), have become central in critical theory. Yet these accounts often overlook the conjunctural tensions that structure capitalist states, treating the state as a unified capitalist actor and leaving aside the struggles among competing social forces. A similar limitation appears in analyses of internal colonialism. De Coss-Corzo (2023), highlights how racialised labour sustains developmentist projects, but offers little insight into the state as a contradictory social relation. The state remains under-conceptualised or assumed as a pre-given entity.

My paper seeks to bridge these frameworks—state capitalism and internal colonialism—through contemporary processes of peripheralisation by centralisation in Colombia. The Colombian state is undergoing accelerated capitalist transformation in which new enclosures and resource extraction are enabled by (para)legal and (para)state violence. I examine two cases where dispossession and territorial control confront organised local resistance. First, the Hidroituango dam on the Cauca River, preceded by decades of violence, illustrates how megaprojects continue to generate coercive dynamics even after completion. Second, the territory of the Nasa people suffers ongoing paramilitary incursions aimed at converting their lands into zones of extraction and strategic corridors for post–Peace Agreement drug trafficking.

These cases reveal how internal territories are incoroporated into capitalist development to enable economic concentration. These dynamics persist under progressive governments, underscoring the need to analyse the state conjuncturally as a key apparatus of capital accumulation and a central site of political struggle. Ultimately, Colombian experiences illuminate how contemporary capitalist development relies on (para)state apparatuses.