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Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the symbiotic and contradictory relations between the “planned” and “unplanned” consequences of state-directed colonization projects In the Catatumbo, a Colombian region in the border with Venezuela,

Paper long abstract:

One of the main concerns of Latin American agrarian reforms in the age of development was how to “rationalize” the expansion of the agricultural frontier. In Colombia, the expansion occurred towards the amazon piedmont, the Magdalena River Valley, and the border with Venezuela. There, state planning was immersed in symbiotic and often contradictory relationships with spontaneous colonization, and the long histories of human occupation of geographical spaces historically regarded as “empty frontiers”.

Through the case of Catatumbo Region, near Venezuela, this paper explores how colonization planning was expressed in a comprehensive rural development project of land titling, training, infrastructure and territorial planning. But this project, planned on an “archetypical” frontier space, had to deal with and assimilate to the biophysical reality of the region, and at the same time, face the ancestral presence of the Motilón-Barí people. In this context, INCORA tried to achieve a balance between infrastructures for agricultural development and conservation, on one hand, and indigenous and colono land titling, on the other.

Through the use of official sources from Colombia and Venezuela, historical newspapers, and indigenous and peasant land reclamations, I argue that Catatumbo’s planned colonization produced a set of infrastructures that materially and symbolically reshaped the region. In doing so, I want to inquire in the limits and contradictions of state-planned colonization projects in Latin America’s agricultural frontier.