Breaking infrastructure
Acts of sabotage against privatization in Colombia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12979181 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Julián Gómez-Delgado (0000-0001-7872-7830, New School, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-12 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Human Geography (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1942-7786 • E-ISSN: 2633-674X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/19427786251400320 |
| OpenAlex | W7114907490 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 28 |
From a state-and-capital-centered perspective, sabotage has often been viewed as a destructive force driven by seditious individuals. However, scholars, such as E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, Timothy Mitchell, and Andreas Malm, have highlighted the political motivations behind sabotage and the efforts to create alternative futures through disruptive actions. This article examines the opposition to the privatization of the state-owned telecommunications company in Colombia during the early 1990s, arguing that sabotage can be a tool to effect change in policymaking. Drawing from critical geography, political economy, and labor history, the article discusses the 1992 attempt to privatize Colombia's Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones (Telecom) and how it prompted a response from below, conceptualized here as a strategy of “collective bargaining by sabotage.” Through a national strike that halted communications for seven days, the labor movement executed a techno-political strategy that successfully delayed the privatization of this state-owned company for a few years. The article delves into this narrative in Colombia through archival research, testimonies from former workers, and secondary sources. Furthermore, it underscores the political implications of sabotage, suggesting that it is not merely a destructive tactic but has radical and tangible effects: it can reshape public policies, politicize society, organize a new labor subject, and raise awareness about state issues. Overall, the article aims to understand the uneven neoliberal transition of recent years and reflect on how workers can, through sabotage, turn infrastructure into “technologies of dissent” to defend public ownership
Futures contract · Narrative · Neoliberalism (international relations · Opposition (politics · Politics · State (computer science · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Labor Movements and Unions · Water Governance and Infrastructure
The Promise of Infrastructure
The Spectre of State Capitalism
Colonialism
Democracy's Infrastructure
Energy infrastructure and the fate of the nation
Bureaucratic land grabbing for infrastructural colonization
Every time, they took more from us”
Beyond the Chokepoint
Infrastructure Sabotage as Future‐Making
Shutting Down the Machines of Destruction
Beyond Obstruction
Brief History of Neoliberalism
Computer Center Sabotage, 1968–1971
Uneven and combined state capitalism
The Machine Breakers
Post-grid Imaginaries
People as Infrastructure
Burning and Rebuilding Bridges
Phatic labor, infrastructure, and the question of empowerment in Cairo
Before (And After) Neoliberalism
Debt entanglements
Speculation
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |