Francisco Gutierrez-Sanín
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 669208 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Francisco Gutierrez-Sanín |
| NOMBRES | Francisco |
| APELLIDO | Gutierrez-Sanín |
| FIRMA | GUTIERREZ-SANÍN F |
| AFILIACIONES | Universidad Nacional de Colombia |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9836-734X |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 55 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 555 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 55 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1995 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 9 |
Democracy, oligarchy and institutionalised violence
Land Property Rights and Redistribution - the Evidence from Colombia
Why do governments that redistribute property on a massive scale so frequently fail to grant property rights to land beneficiaries? A recent contribution answers this important question by suggesting that countries involved in major land reforms suffer from 'property gaps', while those that did not, like Colombia, are in a much better situation. Based on the Colombian case, we challenge this conclusion. We show that, far from having clear propert…
A political economy perspective on alternative development coalitions
This article analyzes alternative development coalitions, their contradictions and complexities, and how they promoted a steeply unequal agrarian change through illicit crop substitution. We zoom into two paramilitary-controlled territories in Colombia. We show that those programs counted with significant support from, and were actually driven by, long coalitions that included regional and national politicians, sectors of the rural rich, paramili…
State, Political Power and Criminality in Civil War
Caring for coca, living with chemicals
In this paper, we show how the materialisation of chemical harms linked to the cultivation of coca and its processing into coca paste reside in a wider politics of structural violence which is also situated ecologically. Drawing on the qualitative interview accounts of coca farmers in Putumayo, Colombia, we attend to practices of care in the field and in the laboratory. We look first at chemicals used in coca's cultivation (herbicides, fertilizer…
Politicians
This article discusses the role of politicians in counterinsurgent governance in Colombia, especially in the period of vigorous paramilitary expansion from the mid-1990s to 2006. Using several archival sources and new data and cases, I show that politicians were a fundamental cog in the machinery of Colombian paramilitary governance, precisely because they did what politicians usually do: aggregate and process their constituents’ demands – includ…
Navigating Chemical Toxicity in Coca Production in the Colombian Borderlands of Putumayo
In Putumayo, a jungle borderland in southern Colombia, thousands of farmers derive their livelihood from the cultivation and processing of coca leaf, exposing themselves to fertilizers, pesticides, and other toxic chemicals on a daily basis. In this article, we show how the coca growers' relationship with chemicals and the health risks to which they are exposed, are politically and institutionally structured. We discuss the specific impact of ant…
Illicit economies and political opportunity. the case of the Colombian paramilitaries (1982-2007)
There is an ambiguous and complex role of narcotrafficking and illicit economies in the growth of the paramilitary political power and influence. As argued in this paper, there are four mechanisms through which criminal involvement politicized paramilitaries: escalation, extension, regulation, and intermediation. These mechanisms gave them the opportunity to decisively broaden their constituencies, legitimize their activity, network with clientel…
Mangling life trajectories
This article discusses the institutionalisation of calamity – in the form of fumigation and exposure to lethal violence – and its consequences over coca peasants and workers in Colombia. I show how institutionalised calamity indelibly marks their life trajectories, through repeated episodes of ‘total loss’. At the same time, it is a major illustration of a process of co-constitution of class, citizenship and state. In effect, institutionalised ca…
Problemas del cobro del impuesto predial y sus efectos sociales en contextos de conflicto armado. Los casos de Carmen de Bolívar y Turbo en Colombia
Objective/Context: This article addresses problems with property tax collection that reflect mechanisms of inequality and generate social effects in conflict-affected contexts. Methodology: We focus on the municipalities of Turbo and El Carmen de Bolívar, Colombia, characterized by a weak structure of rural property rights, dispossession, and violence. Using a thorough and inductive approach, we analyzed tax statutes, and documentary sources and …
Dinero fácil? Moral y cultura en las sociedades agrarias cocaleras
Analizamos en el presente artículo la plausibilidad de la “hipótesis estándar” sobre las transformaciones sociales y culturales que ha traído la economía de los cultivos ilícitos a los sectores campesinos que par- ticipan en ella. Según dicha hipótesis, el cultivo de la coca, asimilado a una actividad narcotraficante, conduce a la búsqueda del “dinero fácil”, el derroche y el consumismo, el individualismo y la cultura de la ilegalidad. Con base e…
Critical policy frontiers
Tough Tradeoffs
Ecologies of drug war and more-than-human health
Drugs, conflict and development
Introduction
Over the last decade, changes in the nature of conflict have generated profound operational challenges for international humanitarian organizations. The number of non-international armed conflicts doubled between 2001 and 2016, rising from fewer than 30 to more than 70. The number of armed groups fighting in them has also multiplied: more armed groups emerged in the last decade than in the previous century. Humanitarian organizations struggle to …
Eradication in the time of Covid
The politics of peace
The paper discusses the political dynamics underlying the agrarian dimensions of the peace agreement between the government and the Colombian main guerrilla (FARC). Such agreements were both sensible and progressive, but seriously limited in their distributional aspirations under the assumption that acautious approach would allay the fears of economic elites and prevent apolitical backlash. Experience has shown that the assumption was wrong. The …
Tensiones y dilemas de la producción cocalera
Los retos asociados al cultivo de la coca han sido objeto de debate más o menos permanente desde su inserción en el país. Este artículo se orienta a caracterizarlos, apoyándose en material empírico nuevo –una encuesta entre usuarios del Programa Nacional Integral de Sustitución de Cultivos de Uso Ilícito (PNIS) en Puerto Asís y Tumaco, trabajo de campo en esos dos municipios, bases de datos de afiliados al PNIS en otros territorios y trabajo de a…
Obsolescencia programada? La implementación de la sustitución y sus inconsistencias
El acuerdo de paz colombiano da un papel explícito y una gran centralidad a una compleja política pública de sustitución (con el nombre de Programa Nacional Integral de Sustitución de Cultivos de uso Ilícito, PNIS). Sostendremos que el Estado ha incumplido desde el principio, sistemática y masivamente, la implementación del programa. Con el arribo al poder del presidente Duque, en algunos sentidos cruciales se ha procedido a su desmonte. Argument…
A Peace Not to be Forgotten
Karl’s core objective is retrieving and analyzing the experience of the “creole peace” put in motion in Colombia since the creation of the National Front (1958–1974) by a set of politicians, intell
Tierras en El Posconflicto
Este artículo analiza los problemas relacionados con el Fondo de Tierras cuya creación contempla el acuerdo del Teatro Colón entre el Estado colombiano y las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). El Fondo está en el corazón de la Reforma Rural Integral (RRI) planteada por el acuerdo y en la política de acceso sin redistribución, que tiene como uno de sus aspectos centrales quitarles a los criminales para darles a los campesinos. Est…
The Farc's militaristic blueprint
This article intends to explain the outstanding sequence of success and failure exhibited by the FARC, the main Colombian guerrilla since the 1980s. It claims that such sequence is unintelligible unless the adoption by the FARC of a militaristic organizational blueprint at its 1982 7th Conference is taken into account. By building itself like an army, the FARC could boost its combat capacity, maintain its structural integrity, and develop powerfu…
Organizing Minors
What Should We Mean by “Pattern of Political Violence”? Repertoire, Targeting, Frequency, and Technique
To leverage the full range of observed variation in patterns of violence toward the development and testing of theories of political violence, scholars need adequate conceptual foundations: what should we mean by apattern of violenceon the part of an armed organization? Scholars often distinguish degrees or levels or types of violence across organizations and conflicts, but definitions and measures vary sharply. We argue that patterns of violence…
What Should We Mean by “Pattern of Political Violence”? Repertoire, Targeting, Frequency, and Technique
To leverage the full range of observed variation in patterns of violence toward the development and testing of theories of political violence, scholars need adequate conceptual foundations: what should we mean by apattern of violenceon the part of an armed organization? Scholars often distinguish degrees or levels or types of violence across organizations and conflicts, but definitions and measures vary sharply. We argue that patterns of violence…
Ideology in civil war
How important is ideology for the analysis of civil war? In contrast to literature that neglects ideology in its emphasis on structural variables or situational incentives, this article argues for the recognition of its essential role in the functioning of armed groups if they are to explain observed variation in armed group behavior. For example, sidelining ideology leaves major phenomena unexplained, including both mass killing and restraint in…
Telling the Difference
The effort to build a political economy of war without politics is finding its limits. The question now is what comes next. How to put politics back in? This article compares systematically two non-state armed groups that participate in the Colombian conflict, the main guerrilla (FARC) and the paramilitary. It shows that despite their similar financial bases, they appear to exhibit systematic differences- regarding both their social composition a…
Criminal Rebels? A Discussion of Civil War and Criminality from the Colombian Experience
The Colombian conflict seems a typical instantiation of a “greedy war”and exhibits very strong links between criminal economic activities and rebel organizations. On the contrary, the author suggests that not even in Colombia does the “criminal rebels” thesis hold. On the other hand, the Colombian case shows that criminality and war mix in ways that escape a strictly economic interpretation of war
Agrarian elite participation in Colombia's civil war
Direct elite participation in civil wars remains unexplored terrain. It should be analytically telling, because it involves taking major risks and costs. Here, we consider the direct participation of one rural elite-big cattle ranchers-in the Colombian paramilitary saga. We claim that it was massive, locally specific, regulated by institutions, and riddled by permanent collective action issues. We focus on two important forms of direct participat…
Crime, (counter-)insurgency and the privatization of security – the case of Medellín, Colombia
Propiedad, seguridad y despojo
estud.socio-juríd., bogotá (colombia), 16(1) ResumenEn este texto hago un análisis del despojo activo paramilitar.Entiendo por este término la transferencia planeada y coercitiva de la tierra de algún agente a otro.Sugiero que se puede entender teniendo en cuenta dos grandes dimensiones.Primero, diseños institucionales que dan a la propiedad (sobre todo a la gran propiedad) de la tierra importantes usos militares/ ilegales, en segundo lugar, cara…
Organizing women for combat
The FARC, which used to be Colombia's main guerrilla force and is now in the midst of a peace process, was to a great extent a feminized group. This paper discusses why it recruited so many women, and why it recruited them as combatants. We suggest that only when the FARC adopted a highly hierarchical, self-contained, and militaristic organizational blueprint did it get involved in the massive recruitment of women as combatants. We discuss the wa…
Networks and Armies
Until recently, the importance of organizational factors in the understanding of the variance of the behavior of state challengers had not been recognized. New studies and theories have underscored its crucial character. This article contends that challengers can be placed in a continuum constituted by two opposed polar types, army like and network associations, and compare the Afghan Taliban's and the Colombian Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de…
Introduction
Over the last decade, changes in the nature of conflict have generated profound operational challenges for international humanitarian organizations. The number of non-international armed conflicts doubled between 2001 and 2016, rising from fewer than 30 to more than 70. The number of armed groups fighting in them has also multiplied: more armed groups emerged in the last decade than in the previous century. Humanitarian organizations struggle to …
Acceso a la tierra y derechos de propiedad campesinos
Based on the study of cases in Chivolo and Montes de María in the Colombian Atlantic coast, in this article we analyze two different modes of peasant land property rights ́ weakness and fluidity: dispossession and land transactions among peasants. To this end, we discuss the key lines of relevant literature, particularly in regard to inclusive and redistributive land reforms; describe the history of the struggle for land in the region in general …
Crime, (counter-)insurgency and the privatization of security - the case of Medellín, Colombia
This paper describes and explains the very high and sustained levels of violence in Medellín, Colombia, over the last 20 years. Even within the turbulent context of Colombia, Medellín has experienced unusually severe violence, and several peace processes undertaken within the city have failed to provide more than temporary relief. The paper argues that this state of affairs has been the product of a “politicization of crime” in the city, a phenom…
Crimen e impunidad
Mauricio Rubio Imprecisiones sobre la violencia El debate academico, se ha repetido una y mil veces, es demasiado infrecuente en nuestro medio. Hay que agradecer, pues, a esos economistas que, desde varias opticas, han intentado poner en cuestion algunas de las conclusiones y perspectivas del area de estudios conocida en Colombia como violentologia. En lo que sigue de este texto, analizare criticamente la ultima, hasta donde conozco, de tales pro…
Mangling life trajectories
This article discusses the institutionalisation of calamity – in the form of fumigation and exposure to lethal violence – and its consequences over coca peasants and workers in Colombia. I show how institutionalised calamity indelibly marks their life trajectories, through repeated episodes of ‘total loss’. At the same time, it is a major illustration of a process of co-constitution of class, citizenship and state. In effect, institutionalised ca…
Conexiones Coactivas
El presente artículo está dirigido a describir y entender los mecanismos a partir de los cuales se desarrolló la parapolítica local en el país. Por parapolítica local entiendo las diversas formas de colaboración no exclusivamente coercitiva entre paramilitares y candidatos y/o funcionarios elegidos a nombre de fuerzas políticas legales para cargos municipales o por debajo de ese nivel territorial. Me concentro en los alcaldes por el papel que jue…
Aggregating Political Dimensions
Fragile Democracy and Schizophrenic Liberalism
In the 1980s, the Andean region appeared to be implementing the recipe for success: market reforms plus democratic opening. However, the dream unraveled. This article describes the malaise regarding democracy that has enveloped the region and connects it with neoliberal adjustments. On the one hand, it claims that the expectation that economic and political liberalism buttress each other naturally is wrong. On the other, it shows that there is no…
Paleontólogos o politologos
Augusto Monterroso Si alguien se animara a intentar una evaluación general del estado de las ciencias sociales en Colombia (¿pero: es esto posible?, ¿tiene todavía sentido?), llegaría probablemente a la conclusión de que una de las áreas que salen mejor libradas es el estudio del dientelismo. En primer lugar, contamos con una producción sólida, sostenida, entre la que se cuentan algunos de los títulos más leídos -y logrados- de la sociología polí…
A political economy perspective on alternative development coalitions
This article analyzes alternative development coalitions, their contradictions and complexities, and how they promoted a steeply unequal agrarian change through illicit crop substitution. We zoom into two paramilitary-controlled territories in Colombia. We show that those programs counted with significant support from, and were actually driven by, long coalitions that included regional and national politicians, sectors of the rural rich, paramili…
Tensiones y dilemas de la producción cocalera
Los retos asociados al cultivo de la coca han sido objeto de debate más o menos permanente desde su inserción en el país. Este artículo se orienta a caracterizarlos, apoyándose en material empírico nuevo –una encuesta entre usuarios del Programa Nacional Integral de Sustitución de Cultivos de Uso Ilícito (PNIS) en Puerto Asís y Tumaco, trabajo de campo en esos dos municipios, bases de datos de afiliados al PNIS en otros territorios y trabajo de a…
The Farc's militaristic blueprint
This article intends to explain the outstanding sequence of success and failure exhibited by the FARC, the main Colombian guerrilla since the 1980s. It claims that such sequence is unintelligible unless the adoption by the FARC of a militaristic organizational blueprint at its 1982 7th Conference is taken into account. By building itself like an army, the FARC could boost its combat capacity, maintain its structural integrity, and develop powerfu…
Estructura Organizacional De Los Paramilitares Y Derechos De Propiedad en El Campo (1982-2007)
Este artículo propone explorar la forma en que los grupos paramilitares afectaron, es decir, minaron y transformaron, los derechos de propiedad en el campo colombiano. El texto se circunscribe al período 1982-2007, que corresponde a la existencia formal de tales grupos. El artículo no pretende llevar a cabo un análisis empírico sistemático, sino más bien presentar y desarrollar algunos conceptos básicos que resultan relevantes para interpretar la…
Evaluating State Performance
Órdenes subsidiarios. Coca, esmeraldas
This article explains how the emerald and coca economies are ingrained in the Colombian conflict. We interpret the mechanisms that generate conflict or peace, order or disorder. Our analysis is supported on Richard Snyder’s model which offers analytical elements to understand how violent reaction and raw products exports correlate with each other. We conclude that the described economies have had very violent courses but have also opened up speci…
La ciudad representada
Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín Hay libros que llenan vacíos en el conocimiento de algún tema o problema específico. Hay libros que sugieren nuevas miradas sobre viejos problemas y, en ese camino, descubren que hay, también, nuevos problemas que sería deseable mirar. Y hay libros que intentan, con mayor o menor éxito, aplicar teorías, esquemas analíticos, modelos conceptuales y metodologías sobre realidades concretas que en principio no parecerían adec…
Elite Perceptions of Workers, Conflict and Socialism
It is difficult, if not impossible, to give a comprehensive explanation of East European real socialism's demise without an adequate knowledge of the evolution of opinion of its elites. However, until now, almost all questions about this subject have remained unexplored. In the present article, the dynamics of Polish elites' notions about workers, conflict and socialism are studied. It is found that, as Gramsci (following Marx) claimed, social gr…
Class and Elites
La ciudad representada
Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín Hay libros que llenan vacíos en el conocimiento de algún tema o problema específico. Hay libros que sugieren nuevas miradas sobre viejos problemas y, en ese camino, descubren que hay, también, nuevos problemas que sería deseable mirar. Y hay libros que intentan, con mayor o menor éxito, aplicar teorías, esquemas analíticos, modelos conceptuales y metodologías sobre realidades concretas que en principio no parecerían adec…
Crimen e impunidad
Mauricio Rubio Imprecisiones sobre la violencia El debate academico, se ha repetido una y mil veces, es demasiado infrecuente en nuestro medio. Hay que agradecer, pues, a esos economistas que, desde varias opticas, han intentado poner en cuestion algunas de las conclusiones y perspectivas del area de estudios conocida en Colombia como violentologia. En lo que sigue de este texto, analizare criticamente la ultima, hasta donde conozco, de tales pro…
Instituciones democráticas en América Latina
Iberoamericana – Revista Nórdica de Estudios de Latinoamérica y el Caribe, es una revista académica arbitrada, interdisciplinaria y bilingüe. Es administrada por el Instituto de Estudios Latinoamericanos de la Universidad de Estocolmo en colaboración con otras universidades nórdicas con el objetivo de presentar investigación de alta calidad sobre América Latina.La revista publica artículos originales enfocados en temas relacionados con las cienci…
Politicians and Criminals
Paleontólogos o politologos
Augusto Monterroso Si alguien se animara a intentar una evaluación general del estado de las ciencias sociales en Colombia (¿pero: es esto posible?, ¿tiene todavía sentido?), llegaría probablemente a la conclusión de que una de las áreas que salen mejor libradas es el estudio del dientelismo. En primer lugar, contamos con una producción sólida, sostenida, entre la que se cuentan algunos de los títulos más leídos -y logrados- de la sociología polí…
The Courtroom and the Bivouac
Familias, Redes Y Facciones
Sin perder de vista unas investigaciones en las que se recogieron diversostestimonios de decenas de líderes de los partidos tradicionales, esteartículo busca indagar las razones por las que la familia se constituye enun agente importante en la fuerte cohesión de los partidos políticostradicionales en Colombia. De la misma forma, se pretende definir lasacciones fundamentales que caracterizan y resumen la integración de lafamilia con el ejercicio d…
Crime, (counter-)insurgency and the privatization of security – the case of Medellín, Colombia
Crime, (counter-)insurgency and the privatization of security - the case of Medellín, Colombia
This paper describes and explains the very high and sustained levels of violence in Medellín, Colombia, over the last 20 years. Even within the turbulent context of Colombia, Medellín has experienced unusually severe violence, and several peace processes undertaken within the city have failed to provide more than temporary relief. The paper argues that this state of affairs has been the product of a “politicization of crime” in the city, a phenom…
Criminal Rebels? A Discussion of Civil War and Criminality from the Colombian Experience
The Colombian conflict seems a typical instantiation of a “greedy war”and exhibits very strong links between criminal economic activities and rebel organizations. On the contrary, the author suggests that not even in Colombia does the “criminal rebels” thesis hold. On the other hand, the Colombian case shows that criminality and war mix in ways that escape a strictly economic interpretation of war
Fragile Democracy and Schizophrenic Liberalism
In the 1980s, the Andean region appeared to be implementing the recipe for success: market reforms plus democratic opening. However, the dream unraveled. This article describes the malaise regarding democracy that has enveloped the region and connects it with neoliberal adjustments. On the one hand, it claims that the expectation that economic and political liberalism buttress each other naturally is wrong. On the other, it shows that there is no…
Órdenes subsidiarios. Coca, esmeraldas
This article explains how the emerald and coca economies are ingrained in the Colombian conflict. We interpret the mechanisms that generate conflict or peace, order or disorder. Our analysis is supported on Richard Snyder’s model which offers analytical elements to understand how violent reaction and raw products exports correlate with each other. We conclude that the described economies have had very violent courses but have also opened up speci…
Rediscovering Europe? The aid dilemmas during and after the Plan Colombia
This paper discusses a complex process of aid oriented towards taming the Colombian conflict. We show that, despite the grand declarations provided generously by all actors involved, there has been much strategic manoeuvring and inconsistency. We describe how Colombian decision makers made a transition from the intent of establishing peace as a nationalist programme to the effort of internationalising war. However, the transition interacted with—…
Telling the Difference
The effort to build a political economy of war without politics is finding its limits. The question now is what comes next. How to put politics back in? This article compares systematically two non-state armed groups that participate in the Colombian conflict, the main guerrilla (FARC) and the paramilitary. It shows that despite their similar financial bases, they appear to exhibit systematic differences- regarding both their social composition a…
Se ha abierto el sistema político colombiano? Una evaluación de los procesos de cambio (1970-1998)
A pesar de la continuidad democrática colombiana, existe una prolongada crisis de su sistema político que se refleja en varias dimensiones. Esta crisis se ha atribuido tradicionalmente a los efectos que se derivan del «cierre» del sistema político colombiano. A través del análisis de las diferentes dimensiones del «cierre político», indicando qué tipo de implicaciones tiene cada una de ellas para el sistema y cómo han evolucionado, se trata de ve…
Networks and Armies
Until recently, the importance of organizational factors in the understanding of the variance of the behavior of state challengers had not been recognized. New studies and theories have underscored its crucial character. This article contends that challengers can be placed in a continuum constituted by two opposed polar types, army like and network associations, and compare the Afghan Taliban's and the Colombian Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de…
Evaluating State Performance
Estados fallidos o conceptos fallidos? La clasificación de las fallas estatales y sus problemas
The problem of "State Failiures" is currently one of the main challenges faced by the international policy led by the United States. In general, First World countries consider that crisis and state failure are the primary source of terrorism, violence, internal conflict, and civil war and promote migration waves, destabilize neighboring nations, and have the tendency of disturbing economic relations. The need to neutralize this foreseen risk has …
Land and Property Rights in Colombia – Change and Continuity
Aggregating Political Dimensions
Estructura Organizacional De Los Paramilitares Y Derechos De Propiedad en El Campo (1982-2007)
Este artículo propone explorar la forma en que los grupos paramilitares afectaron, es decir, minaron y transformaron, los derechos de propiedad en el campo colombiano. El texto se circunscribe al período 1982-2007, que corresponde a la existencia formal de tales grupos. El artículo no pretende llevar a cabo un análisis empírico sistemático, sino más bien presentar y desarrollar algunos conceptos básicos que resultan relevantes para interpretar la…
Propiedad, seguridad y despojo
estud.socio-juríd., bogotá (colombia), 16(1) ResumenEn este texto hago un análisis del despojo activo paramilitar.Entiendo por este término la transferencia planeada y coercitiva de la tierra de algún agente a otro.Sugiero que se puede entender teniendo en cuenta dos grandes dimensiones.Primero, diseños institucionales que dan a la propiedad (sobre todo a la gran propiedad) de la tierra importantes usos militares/ ilegales, en segundo lugar, cara…
Ideology in civil war
How important is ideology for the analysis of civil war? In contrast to literature that neglects ideology in its emphasis on structural variables or situational incentives, this article argues for the recognition of its essential role in the functioning of armed groups if they are to explain observed variation in armed group behavior. For example, sidelining ideology leaves major phenomena unexplained, including both mass killing and restraint in…
Political science (43 obras) · Law (29 obras) · Sociology (26 obras) · History and Politics in Latin America (24 obras) · Politics (23 obras) · Conflict, Peace, and Violence in Colombia (22 obras) · Law (20 obras) · Economics (19 obras) · Political economy (18 obras) · Geography (16 obras)