Turf Wars in Colombia’s Red Corner

Abstract

This chapter shows how, in the 1970s and 1980s, the Cold War drew Urabá's economies of violence into the vortex of insurgency and counterinsurgency, reinforcing the region's reputation as a stateless frontier. The political violence wracking Urabá had clinched its position in the minds of locals and outsiders alike as a lawless, stateless frontier zone. While critical of these discourses of statelessness, the chapter demonstrates how they had a powerful effect on local political struggles. The frontier effect enabled the proliferation of competing state projects, turning the region into an even more fractious social space—a jagged mosaic of rival territorialities. But the violent clashes between insurgency and counterinsurgency that made Urabá into the “red corner” of Colombia were not caused by the absence of the state; they were conflicts over the form and content of statehood itself. None of these struggles played out in the absence of governmental structures and practices.