Territorio, colonización y diversidad cultural en el Alto Putumayo

Abstract

The processes of territorial occupation in regions where the forest is still a wealth source, have been historically the origin of conflicts in Colombia. The region named Putumayo is rich on natural ecosystems, is at the moment a territory where the conflict armed and the interests of the social actors differ in damage of the loss of resources valuable to generate development alternatives in a sustainable frame. The colonists have occupied vast territories where under a conception of opening of the agricultural border, they have excluded other actors who ancestrally have been coexisting with the surroundings in a model of subsistence with a frame of values and cosmogony diametrically opposed the market economy. The paradoxical thing is that this colono in its great majority is the result of processes of social exclusion, in a country that has still at the moment, not made a true pluralist and participative agrarian reform, obstinate on precapitalist models and with very low productive levels in the primary sector. Under a forest perspective, the environmental conflict is quite dramatic, since these actors integrate the scene of the Forest Reserve of the Mocoa River, in which the illegality in the extraction of the resources is something traditional, more than a model of environmental ordering of the territory. As well, the indigenous territories that the ColombianState has granted are more and more threatened by a forced colonization, in a conflict frame where the drug trafficking and the political violence have been the factors that have determined the regional isoration and delay.