Forests in the time of peace

ABSTRACT

The signing of Colombia’s peace agreement in 2016 signaled the end of a decades-long war between the government and the FARC (Las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia), but also an emerging assault against the country’s forests. This article aims to understand the interactions between forests and peace. In doing so, it traces landscape transformations of deforestation and possibilities for making landscapes livable in the midst of disturbance. Drawing on field research, including interviews and participant observation carried out in Colombia from 2016 to 2018, it reveals how deforestation is driven by ongoing colonization and land grabbing, mostly dedicated to extensive cattle ranching, coca cultivation, and campesinos’ transition to ‘licit’ agricultural alternatives. The article also shows how emerging coordination among farmers and forests following forest disturbance contributes to an interpretation of peace in which forests are integral. The article concludes with a call to incorporate forests in the construction of peace.

KEYWORDS:

• Colombia
• deforestation
• Putumayo
• peace
• cattle ranching
• coca cultivation

1. Introduction

The signing of Colombia’s peace agreement in 2016 signaled the end of a decades-long war between the government and the FARC (Las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia), but also an emerging assault against forests. Since the signing of the peace agreement, deforestation has increased dramatically, over half of which is concentrated in the Amazon along Colombia’s agricultural frontier (IDEAM, 2017, 2018a). In the transition toward ‘peace,’ forests have fallen to land grabbing, in particular conversion to pastures for cattle ranching as a result of land speculation and the disarmament of the FARC, and also campesinos’ transition from coca cultivation to ‘licit’ agricultural alternatives. Coca cultivation has also increased due to the influence of dissident FARC and residual and emerging paramilitary and narco-trafficking groups, and because agricultural alternatives promised in the peace agreement have not yet been realized. Forests that were inaccessible during the war due to occupation of the FARC and armed conflicts also coincide with agribusiness interests, which are likely to exacerbate land concentration and generate more deforestation (Baptiste et al., 2017).

Attention to the ways in which peace interacts with forests is an urgent priority (Baumann & Kuemmerle, 2016; Müller, 2016), particularly in Colombia where there is high incidence of forests and armed conflicts (Clerici et al., 2018; Salazar et al., 2018). The resolution of armed conflicts often accelerates deforestation (Le Billon, 2000; Ordway, 2015; Salazar et al., 2018). This depends on historical, social, and political contexts (Baumann & Kuemmerle, 2016; Castro-Nunez et al., 2017; Keleman, Goodale, & Dooley, 2010; Thaler, Viana, & Toni, 2019), including the ways in which forests function as financing or cover for armed groups’ operations (Castro-Núñez et al., 2017; Castro-Núñez, Mertz, & Quintero, 2016), and whether the origins of armed conflict prevail (Baumann & Kuemmerle, 2016). Present deforestation in Colombia is part of ongoing agricultural colonization which is historically intertwined with the country’s armed conflicts, involving illegal armed groups such as guerrilla insurgencies, paramilitary forces and drug traffickers, and related conflicts of land distribution and land grabbing which have had important consequences for forests (Castro-Núñez et al., 2017). Since the Cold War, Colombia’s forests were established as theatres of insurgency that provided cover and financing for leftist guerillas linked with illicit coca crop cultivation and narco-trafficking. This legitimized the militarization of forests and their defoliation through insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare as part of the War on Drugs. The fumigation of coca in Colombia in order to weed out guerrilla insurgency and the coca farmers who were depicted as their accomplices resulted in deforestation as displacement forced farmers and coca cultivation deeper into the forest (Rincón-Ruiz & Kallis, 2013). Forest loss also occurred following land grabbing through cattle ranching and agribusiness, which were often connected with paramilitary operations and drug trafficking (Álvarez, 2001, 2003; Chadid, Dávalos, Molina, & Armenteras, 2015; Dávalos et al., 2011; Dávalos, Sanchez, & Armenteras, 2016; Fergusson, Romero, & Vargas, 2014). During the war, forest conversion was also contained as the FARC enforced regulations on forest clearing and limited access to forests where they operated, including with landmines; forest cover even increased on farms following forced displacement and fumigations with glyphosate (a counter-insurgency tactic supported by the War on Drugs) (Álvarez, 2001, 2003; Armenteras, Rodríguez, & Retana, 2013; Castro-Núñez, Mertz, & Sosa, 2017; Salazar et al., 2018; Sánchez-Cuervo & Aide, 2013; Sánchez-Cuervo, Aide, Clark, & Etter, 2012).

In ‘Forests in the Time of Violence’ (2003), Álvarez speculated that the end of warfare will generate ‘full-blown, large-scale unplanned exploitation’ of Colombia’s forests (p. 64). Studies emerging since the peace agreement have further determined that peace is likely to result in forest conversion (Armenteras, Schneider, & Dávalos, 2018; Baptiste et al., 2017; Negret, Allan, Braczkowski, Maron, & Watson, 2017). Forests that were protected during the war have fallen to land grabbing, particularly conversion to cattle ranching as a form of securing land claims as part of land speculation, and increased coca cultivation due to the influence of dissident FARC and other armed groups linked with narco-trafficking (Clerici et al., 2016; Landholm, Pradhan, & Kropp, 2019; Salazar et al., 2018; Suarez, Árias-Arévalo, & Martínez-Mera, 2018). In addition, with the withdrawal of the FARC, forests have become accessible to agricultural development, as farmers return to their lands, and as agribusiness interests as part of rural reforms through the implementation of peace (Baptiste et al., 2017; Negret et al., 2017). The greatest forest loss is occurring along Colombia’s agricultural frontier, which threatens critical Andean-Amazonian ecological connectivity (Clerici et al., 2018).

This study examines the relation between forests and peace as it unfolds within a context of increasing deforestation as part of enduring legacies of land conflict and ongoing agricultural colonization linked with land grabbing, cattle ranching, and narco-trafficking. It complements previous research focused on the impacts of armed conflicts and their resolution on forests in Colombia (Castro- Núñez et al., 2017; Clerici et al., 2018; Hoffmann, García Márquez, & Krueger, 2018; Salazar et al., 2018; Suarez et al., 2018) with specific on-the-ground information obtained during fieldwork carried out along the country’s agricultural frontier in the Andean-Amazonian Department of Putumayo, Colombia from 2016 to 2018, a deforestation ‘hotspot’ that has been prioritized for the implementation of the peace agreement (IDEAM, 2015). In doing so, it provides a detailed, context-rich account drawn from interviews and participant observation of forest loss during Colombia’s transition toward peace and presents opportunities for the construction of peace that integrates forests. In our exploration of the interactions between forests and peace, this article thinks through the ongoing ruination of landscapes and their transformation (Stoler, 2013; Tsing, 2015a), engaging with Tsing’s (2017) concept of ‘weedy landscapes.’ ‘Weedy landscapes’ describe transformations of forests and the generative coordination among humans and more-than-humans in the midst disturbance (Tsing, 2017). Coordination is a term Tsing (2015b) uses to refer to symbiosis, or interspecies relations. The landscape itself is an enactment of such coordinations. Taking up Tsing’s (2017) notion of ‘weedy landscapes,’ this article traces forest disturbance along the intertwined human and more-than-human histories of colonization and war, and the ways in which relations among farmers, cattle, coca, and forests give form to the present landscape during the transition toward peace. The article turns toward the ‘weedy growth’ that emerges in disturbed forest patches, referred to as rastrojo (Tsing, 2017). Rastrojo is forest growth often found growing in idle cattle pasture, or on farms from which campesinos were displaced during the war. It indicates deforestation and the possibilities of livability in the midst of disturbance (Tsing, 2005, 2015a, 2017).

The next section describes introduces the notion of ‘ruination’ (Stoler, 2013) and the ‘weedy landscapes’ that emerge (Tsing, 2017; see also Gan, Tsing, & Sullivan, 2018). This is followed with an introduction to Putumayo drawing on literature review and the first author’s experience living in Putumayo. The later sections contribute to furthering our understanding of the interactions among forests and peace, and present research results on deforestation in the transition toward ‘peace,’ as well as the generative coordination among farmers and forests in rastrojo. This article concludes with a call for attending to the potential of these coordinations as a way of addressing forest loss in Colombia’s transition toward peace.

2. Ruination and weedy landscapes

‘Frontiers aren’t just discovered at the edge,’ writes Tsing (2005, pp. 28–29). Frontiers are landscapes transformed through notions of conquest and progress as part of ongoing ruination (Stoler, 2013; Tsing, 2005). Tsing (2005) describes how during the twentieth century, Cold War militarization of forests gave way to ‘resource frontiers’ that designated forests for production or protection in a way that renders the landscape ‘inert’ and ‘ready to be dismembered and packaged for export’ (Tsing, 2005, p. 29). Frontiers disengage forests from local ecologies, ordering the landscape according to investment and production and obscuring and interrupting the relations among humans and more-than-humans in which the division of field and forest is less clear (Tsing, 2005, 2015a). Stoler (2013) describes this as ‘ruination,’ a condition that ‘takes resources and planning that may involve forced removal of populations and new zones of uninhabitable space, reassigning inhabitable space, and dictating how people are supposed to live in them. As such, these ruin-making endeavors are typically state projects, ones that are often strategic, nation-building, and politically charged’ (p. 201). ‘What’s left’ are the ‘corroded hollows of landscapes’ (Stoler, 2013, p. 194), or the ‘ruptured multiplicity that is constitutive of [landscapes] as they are produced, destroyed, and remade’ (Gordillo, 2015, p. 2). Landscape ruins condense alternative histories, with ruination constituting an ongoing corrosive condition that ‘connects a violent past to a violent present’, giving form to landscape presents and futures (Ybarra, 2012, p. 482; see also Stoler, 2013). Thinking with ruination, allows for exploring landscapes as ‘ecologies of remains,’ revealing ‘what is left’ following colonization and war (Stoler, 2013, p. 22, p. 26). Indeed, in Colombia, depictions of the Amazon as a ‘wild’ ‘no man’s land’ governed by ‘law of the jungle’ have been integral to the production of its frontier, as well as the normalization of violence associated with trajectories of agricultural colonization, the commodification of forests, and war (Taussig, 1987). Attention to ruination exposes the persistent traces of frontier violence that remain sedimented in landscapes, while enlivening the possibilities for living in the midst of destruction that open to differential futures (Tsing, 2015a; Stoler, 2013).

As Tsing (2015a) and others (Stoler, 2013) have pointed out, it is important to go beyond destruction and situate analysis in the forging of connections and possibilities that ruins animate. Tsing writes that frontiers are unstable, and accordingly, ‘landscapes should have a role in forging new frontier conceptions’ (2005, p. 32). Tsing provokes us to investigate how the frontier might look ‘without assuming progress’ (2015a, p. 5): ‘[t]o know the world that progress has left to us, we must track shifting patches of ruination’ in landscapes (Tsing, 2015a, p. 206). In this article, we extend thinking of ruination to include the human and more-than-human relations that comprise the landscape. Ruination, we suggest, can serve as a guide to explore the human and more-than-human lives that arise in the midst of disturbance. Drawing on Tsing (2015a), we take landscapes as gatherings of human and more-than-human relations. Landscapes are performed through histories of ‘coordination,’ a term Tsing (2015b) uses to refer to symbiotic human and more-than-human relations, and ‘disturbance.’ Thinking with ruined landscapes, we explore how campesinos, soils, plants, and forests connect and get entangled in ongoing agricultural colonization and deforestation during the construction of peace in Colombia.

Possibilities emerge through coordinations in the midst of ruination in what Tsing (2017) calls ‘weedy landscapes.’ Weeds refer to the successive plant growth that follows forest disturbance (Tsing, 2015a, 2017). ‘Weedy landscapes’ indicate forest loss, and guide us to generative coordinations among humans and more-than-humans, as well as the possibilities of livability in the midst of such disturbance (Tsing, 2017). Tsing’s study of the relations among forests, plants and peasant communities ‘turns us from a quick dismissal of weedy edges to explore species-rich landscapes in which human livelihood maintains forests … through the switch we can see the richness and complexity of the history of weediness’ (Tsing, 2005, p. 175–176). Tsing explores ‘weedy possibilities’ in ‘peasant forests,’ characterized by secondary forest growth following war, colonization, and the organization of land toward commodity markets that have dominated communities and forests. The ‘peasant forests’ that Tsing describes ‘recuperate large-scale destructive projects, bringing life to damaged landscapes’ through coordination among peasants and ‘the force of the life of the forest’ (Tsing, 2015a, p. 179, 181). These secondary forests, notes Tsing (2005), signal not only species richness but also the possibility for ‘regrowing the future’ (p. 189). In dialogue with Tsing’s (2012, p. 96) work on ‘weedy landscapes’ in ruins, the perspective of ‘ecologies of remains’ (Stoler, 2013) accounts for the ways in which human and more-than-human life and strategies of survival are situated within histories of disturbance, but also how these generate livability in the midst of disturbance.

Taking up Tsing’s (2017) notion of ‘weedy landscapes,’ this article describes forest transformations during Colombia’s transition toward ‘peace,’ and the generative coordinations among campesinos and forests that emerge in the midst of disturbance (Tsing, 2017). As Tsing (2017) suggests, we let ‘the weeds guide us’ to disturbance and coordination at the edges of fields and forests in order to analyze landscape change and to further our understanding of the interactions of forests and peace in Colombia. This article explores histories and trajectories of disturbance and the coordinations among humans and more-than-humans in Putumayo’s ‘weedy landscape.’ In doing so, it traces deforestation along the intertwined human and more-than-human histories of ongoing agricultural colonization and armed conflict, and relations among campesinos, cattle, coca, and forests that give form to the present landscape during the transition toward peace. Attention to human and more-than-human coordinations and disturbance allows for ‘noticing landscape change’ (Tsing, 2015a, p. 158) and at the same time ‘open[s] us to the possibility of a different kind of livability’ (Gan, Tsing, Swanon, & Bubandt, 2014). The article turns toward the ‘weedy growth’ that emerges in following forest loss, referred to as rastrojo (Tsing, 2017). Rastrojo is successive weedy growth that in disturbed forest patches, often on farms from which farmers were forcibly displaced during armed conflicts and fumigations. Weeds have taken on different forms in the history of war and agricultural colonization in Colombia: through the introduction of cattle grass which prevented forest growth as part of government supported settlement of the Amazon, the eradication of coca and consequent defoliation of forests through fumigations of glyphosate to eradicate FARC guerillas and degradation of soils on which campesinos depend, and ongoing assassinations of campesinos thought of as auxiliaries of the FARC and narco-traffickers through coca production. In Colombia’s ‘fight against drugs,’ which has translated into the ‘fight against deforestation,’ and through ongoing colonization, campesinos criminalized for forest destruction and dissident FARC and narco-trafficking groups remain the targets of policies that invite agribusiness investment in forests. In this article, attention to weeds indicates human and more-than-human histories of forest destruction through war and colonization, and the transformative coordination among farmers and forests in rastrojo towards the construction of peace together with forests.

3. Methodology

Tsing (2015a) proposes ‘taking notice’ as a method for noticing landscape change: ‘[t]o notice such patterns means watching the interplay of temporal rhythms and scales in the divergent lifeways that gather’ (p. 23). The ethnographic fieldwork carried out for this study allows for ‘taking notice’ of landscapes as they transform and coalesce through human and more-than-human histories and trajectories (Tsing, 2015a). This article draws on 18 months of fieldwork carried out from 2016 and 2018 in Putumayo, Colombia. Situated in the transition between the Andean foothills to the Amazon lowlands in southwestern Colombia along the country’s agricultural frontier, Putumayo is considered a ‘hotspot’ of deforestation, and prioritized for the implementation of the peace agreement (Instituto de Hidrología, Meteorología y Estudios Ambientales (IDEAM), 2015). Research involved conducting in-depth and semi-structured interviews, participant observation, document analysis, and a literature review. During this period, the first author lived in Putumayo, collecting 146 interviews from campesinos, coca growers, cattle ranchers, community social leaders, guerillas, government officials, rural social organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and agricultural associations, including information related to agricultural activities, land conflicts, deforestation, and the broader historical and sociopolitical contexts of colonization, armed conflict, and peacebuilding. Forty-four interviews were conducted as ‘walking interviews’ through forests and across farms, which involved observation of disturbance and forest generation in order to understand the entangled relationships among farmers and forests following campesinos’ daily farming routines (Ingold, 2011; Ingold & Vergunst, 2008; Matthews, 2017). In order to ensure that relevant actors in the context of deforestation were included in our analysis we used purposive sampling. The identification of suitable informants included the following criteria (1) local engagement in agricultural land use, (2) engagement in administrative activities that influence or concern agricultural land use, and (3) engagement in scientific studies or projects on agricultural land use or deforestation, in Putumayo. All quotes throughout are from interviews carried out in Putumayo by the first author. When permission was granted interviews were recorded. The interviewer took notes during the interviews in addition to recording. All quotes throughout are from interviews carried out in Putumayo by the first author. These interviews were conducted in Spanish and later transcribed into English by the first author. Interview transcripts and notes were coded in the TAMS Analyzer database according to categories developed on recurring themes and issues mentioned by respondents: deforestation, cattle ranching, coca, land grabbing, rastrojo, and forest-based agriculture. These coded data were analyzed for overlapping, contradicting or complementary responses, taking into account the differing backgrounds and contexts of the interviewees. Themes that emerged from interviews were analyzed in conjunction with notes from participant observation and review of literature and relevant legal and policy documents. Participant observation involved attending 46 events, including community meetings related to implementation of the peace agreement, agricultural production, deforestation, and land and agrarian conflicts in Putumayo and in Bogotá.

4. Putumayo: coca, cattle, and Colombia’s ‘arc of deforestation’

Putumayo is situated in the transition between the Andean foothills to the Amazon lowlands in southwestern Colombia. This ecological corridor contains high species diversity and endemism (Decaëns et al., 2018; Etter, McAlpine, Wilson, Phinn, & Possingham, 2006). It is also part of Colmbia’s ‘arc of deforestation’ (IDEAM, 2018b), which constitutes a growing threat to forest connectivity (Clerici et al., 2018; Daceäns et al., 2018). Putumayo is a ‘weedy landscape’ (Tsing, 2017) consisting of old-growth tropical rainforest, secondary forest regrowth due to abandoned fields and agricultural plots following traditional indigenous farming in the Amazon, and increasingly, cattle pasture (Murcia et al., 2014).

Cattle ranching is tied to historical and ongoing agricultural colonization and related armed conflicts in the Colombian Amazon (Van Ausdal, 2009). Brachiaria (also commonly known as dallis), a species of cattle grass introduced during the colonial era, is noted for out-competing weeds and preventing forest growth in disturbed patches (Van Ausdal, 2009). This characteristic enabled colonization of forests during the twentieth century when landless campesinos were displaced to the agricultural frontier. Cattle ranching was originally introduced to Putumayo in the late nineteenth century when the church was granted control of the frontier to support consolidation of the nascent Colombian state. The church colonized productive systems and indigenous lands through cattle ranching, including through the invention of a saint for cattle (San Isidro).

In the twentieth century, cattle ranching was sponsored through government-supported colonization of the country’s agricultural frontier following violent land conflicts among campesinos and large landowners in the country’s Andean highlands (Dávalos et al., 2016; Serje, 2005). The origins of Colombia’s war can be traced to these conflicts in which large landowners sought to defend landholdings against landless campesinos and repress risings that called for agrarian reform. It was within this context that the FARC formed. Large landowners’ domination of campesinos ensured their political influence over the state, which in turn protected their landholdings through legal provisions for large-scale production, in particular cattle ranching. In this context, cattle ranching served as a pretense for land productivity in order to forfend incursions from campesinos (Díaz Callejas, 2002; Reyes Posada, 2009; Richani, 2012; Van Ausdal, 2009).^1,2 Campesinos were displaced to the Amazonian frontier through government-sponsored settlement which included technical assistance, credit, and land titling in baldios or ‘empty’ forests conditioned on ‘land productivity’ which was most efficiently demonstrated converting forests to pasture (Dávalos et al., 2016; Zamosc, 1986).

These colonization fronts turned into ‘hotspots’ for coca which provided subsistence to campesinos and a source of financing for armed groups and intensifying armed conflict (Ramírez, 2001; Dávalos et al., 2011; Dávalos, 2018).³ At the end of the twentieth century Colombia was the leading coca producer in the world, more than 40 percent of which was cultivated in Putumayo (UNODC, 2005). Putumayo was portrayed as a zona roja, or hotspot characterized by insurgent FARC and narco-trafficking groups and ‘criminal’ coca growers, which legitimized military interventions as part of counterinsurgency campaigns to recover guerilla-controlled forests (Serje, 2005). Putumayo became the target of the US-funded ‘Plan Colombia,’ an antidrug and counterinsurgency campaign against the FARC (Messina & Delamater, 2006).⁴ Plan Colombia provided billions of dollars in military support for the recovery of state control in the country’s frontiers from the FARC, designated as narco-terrorists. It focused on illicit crops and narco-trafficking as a national security problem in which coca cultivation was presented as a source of war financing for insurgent guerillas while the conditions which forced growers to turn to coca were presented as a consequence of the ‘absence of the state’ (Ramírez, 2001). This legitimized the militarized response to recover FARC controlled forests, which notably coincided with agribusiness interests (Ramírez, 2019). The fight against narco-terrorism intensified with Plan Colombia’s aerial fumigations of coca crops with Monsanto-produced glyphosate-based Roundup designed to eradicate weeds. This resulted in the destruction of subsistence crops and the degradation of already tenuous soil ecologies, displacement, and deforestation, as coca cultivation spread further into the forest (Rincón-Ruiz & Kallis, 2013; Rincón-Ruiz, Pascual, & Flantua, 2013; Dávalos et al., 2011; Messina & Delamater, 2006; Ramírez, 2001; Chaves-Agudelo, Batterbury, & Beilin, 2015; Dion & Russler, 2008). Still, coca remained a critical source of income for Putumayan farmers, which was partly a consequence of inappropriate agricultural development interventions introduced through Plan Colombia (Ramírez, 2001). The portrayal of Putumayo as a ‘no man’s land’ operating by the ‘rule of the jungle’ legitimized repressive measures and violence against campesino cocaleros (campesino coca growers) who were represented as accomplices or sympathizers of the guerrillas (Ramírez, 2001). The 1996 cocalero movement in Putumayo emerged in response to this stigmatization and to the violence of fumigations and armed conflicts (Ramírez, 2001). Understanding Putumayo in terms of ‘ruination’ registers the ways in which war and ongoing colonization have transformed the landscape, and also the mobilizations of campesino cocaleros who demanded, as Arendt (2004) put it, ‘the right to have rights.’

Coca plantations were often consolidated into cattle pasture following land abandonment linked to coca eradication and the forcible displacement and land dispossession of coca growers as part of paramilitaries’ counterinsurgency warfare operations (often carried out in complicity with the military) (Álvarez, 2001, 2003; Armenteras et al., 2013; Dávalos et al., 2011; Dávalos, Holmes, Rodríguez, & Armenteras, 2014; Tate, 2015). The expansion of cattle ranching in Colombia is associated with its function as a pretense to legalize spurious landholdings and the implied connection with the laundering of drug profits from coca cultivation, or what Ballvé (2012) describes as ‘narco-land grabbing’ (see also Grajales, 2011, 2013; Richani, 2012). Elsewhere this is referred to as ‘narcoganaderia’ (narco-cattle ranching), which describes how rural lands and agribusiness become conduits for the laundering of drug profits (Devine, Wrathall, Currit, Tellman, & Langarica, 2018). Narco-cattle ranching explains patterns of deforestation from Putumayo up through other Latin American countries along the narco-supply chain (Devine et al., 2018; McSweeney et al., 2014; Sesnie et al., 2017).

5. Coca, cattle, and the countryside with progress

Tracing ruination and forest disturbance in Putumayo’s weedy landscape, we explore how cattle ranching is driving forest loss as a form of land grabbing, linked speculation following expectations for rural development, road construction and land titles, the demobilization of the FARC, and farmers’ shift from coca to ‘licit’ agricultural alternatives.

Colombia’s program for the substitution of illicit crops (Programa Nacional Integral de Sustitución de Cultivos de Uso Ilícito, PNIS), created within the framework of the peace agreement, is designed to compensate participating farmers and provide technical assistance for the transition to ‘licit’ agricultural production. Some farmers are investing payments received for coca eradication in cattle ranching—a transition which started following aerial fumigations during Plan Colombia and that resulted in degraded soils that ‘still do not support life.’ In the context of Putumayo’s historically low accessibility and the lack of support for campesino agriculture and its commercialization—conditions that also contributed to farmers’ dependency on coca—‘cattle ranching was the only thing that people found at hand to survive.’ A campesino described how this transition from coca to cattle has impacted forests and soils on which farmers depend:

‘Farmers here got tired from the coca, and then they started with a vaquita [cow] and a ternerito [calf]. Cattle ranching is a boom that we have right now, we are coming out of a transition, those of us who have coca crops. Farmers lived from the coca, and now they live from cattle. Like coca gave them everything, now cattle give them everything. You go around here and there are farms where you cannot find anything to eat, just milk. The farmers here do not know how to sow the land. We are in a transition, from coca to cattle, but this requires knocking down forests and now it is unstoppable. Cattle ranching is destroying more forest than the coca. The soils that are used for cattle are also impacted and to recuperate them is difficult.’⁵

Cattle ranching is often the only viable alternative among those transitioning from coca to ‘licit’ agriculture, but as a famer put it ‘to earn money, it is necessary to have many cows and this can only be achieved at the expense of the forest.’ There is also the common precedent, rooted in historical agricultural colonization and land conflicts, which maintains one cow per hectare of pasture. A farmer explains how this practice of cattle ranching is strongly entrenched in life on the agricultural frontier:

‘[Cattle ranching] is a tradition here; an ideology. Here the belief of the people is that for a cow you have to have one hectare of paddock. If I have a hundred cows, I have to have a hundred paddocks. The paddocks have to be cleaned, without trees. There are those who have lots of cattle, lots of land, but some of us are just surviving. We have to live on something, and to live we have to knock down forest.’

This shift from coca to cattle is contributing to a growing problem of disturbance including forest loss and the degradation of soils on which these famers depend. The national program for the substitution of illicit crops proposes that agricultural alternatives should contribute to reducing forest loss and restoring degraded soils, still it remains unclear the extent to which ‘licit’ agricultural alternatives will consider forests. At the same time, support for agricultural alternatives has also been slow to reach to rural communities who depend on coca for subsistence. Given these circumstances, some farmers continue to cultivate coca until a practical alternative is realized. In defense of coca cultivation, a campesino exposes the reality that many coca growers encounter in Putumayo:

‘Recently I left the coca, and before and now there are many people who survive the coca and thinking about leaving it, but I have my hands tied. I have pasture for about 60 to 80 cattle but I do not have the means to buy them nor anybody to get them to me, and there is the grass in the pasture is being taken over by forest. What happens if let the weeds grow is that I lose the grass I planted in the pasture, but cleaning the farm requires more cutting, more work. Another problem is the distance. There is no way to get the products to the village. For example, I have plantains on the farm, I have yucca, and a few other products, and when I bring them to the village they arrive black. I take them out on a horse they get even more spoiled. That’s why coca is more viable. You make yourself a kilo of coca in a little bag and you’re done. And you earn more with that kilo.’

In Putumayo, communities have long demanded road construction to improve access and support for agricultural production. A road was eventually constructed that connected this farmer with the village and was acclaimed among local government officials as an important development for improving cattle ranching in the region.

Cattle ranching is increasing among campesinos who lack other viable alternatives for subsistence, however more destructive is large-scale cattle ranching linked to land grabbing, speculation, and narco-trafficking. Since the demobilization of the FARC, who regulated how much forest could be cleared on farms and restricted expansion and access into forests, land grabbing (mostly through forest conversion to cattle ranching) has become the cause of almost 65 percent of deforestation in the Colombian Amazon (IDEAM, 2018). Land grabbing is often linked to cattle ranching, which reinforces land claims and are often used as financial collateral. It occurs as campesinos seek to expand cattle ranching in forests previously occupied by the FARC. However, the clearing and burning of large tracts of forests and planting of pasture requires investment which most campesinos who are ‘just surviving’ do not have access to. The majority of land grabbing is reportedly linked to investments from landowners in large-scale land acquisitions through legal and illegal means, including providing financing to campesinos to clear forests for cattle ranching. Land grabbing is related land speculation following expectations for land titling, rural development, road construction, and with dissident and residual structures of the demobilized FARC, paramilitary groups, and narco-traffickers that coordinate the chain of coca production in the Colombian Amazon and who are reportedly ‘taxing’ transactions related to cattle production. A social leader offered a succinct account of the land grabbing occurring in Putumayo:

‘There are baldíos beyond the settlements. Before, the FARC would not permit anyone to enter those forests. They intervened and said ‘so many hectares are for agriculture and no more’. But the guerrilla left and people do not have the pressure from them to control what they do with the land, and the government is not here either. Campesinos are entering the forest to make farms. People are knocking down hundreds of hectares of forest, and planting pasture for cattle ranching. They are clearing baldíos to formalize land. People are afraid to denounce the cattle ranchers. A cattle rancher will offer someone one or two million pesos to shut them up. Sometimes cattle ranchers will threaten to kill someone, and the state does not come after them. People here keep their mouth shut and they keep doing what they’re doing.’

Dissident FARC and residual and emerging paramilitary and narco-trafficking structures are also linked with forest clearing for coca production. This is reflected in the continuous increase in coca cultivation in Putumayo, which registers among the highest production in the country (UNOCD, 2018). While implementation of agricultural alternatives is slow, campesinos and social leaders involved in coca substitution are regularly targeted with violent threats and assassinations. A social leader reported that armed groups ‘have come to control coca crops for drug trafficking. They are interested in controlling the cultivation of coca and they are threatening and assassinating social leaders who support alternatives to coca cultivation and forest protection. Right now, if a leader were to say “don’t knock down the forest”, that is dangerous, eso le da bala a uno [this will get you shot].’

At the expense of crop substitution, and despite evidence of deforestation and displacement (Rincón-Ruiz & Kallis, 2013), the government has escalated coca eradication with the return of fumigations with glyphosate as part of its ‘Future Path,’ which is focused on the fight against drugs which is now central to the country’s military offense against deforestation. The government instated military operations to oversee the transition to coca crops and to combat narco-trafficking linked to deforestation ‘crimes.’ The government’s diagnosis of deforestation implicates dissenting and residual structures of the demobilized FARC and narco-trafficking groups with land grabbing, speculation, cattle ranching, and illicit crop cultivation. It describes deforestation as a ‘national security problem,’ and through its campaign Artemisa, the government initiated military operations to recover FARC and narco-trafficking controlled forests which it defines as ‘strategic assets of the nation’ (PND, 2018). Artemisa has targeted campesinos for forest clearing without regard to the fact that these farmers are often financed by landowners or drug traffickers.

At the same time, the country’s National Development Plan (PND) 2018–2022 permits 220,000 hectares of forest loss per year, which contradicts Colombia’s deforestation goals and the 2018 ruling by the Supreme Court of Justice that granted rights to the Amazon and ordered the state to ensure its protection (Plan Nacional de Desarrollo (2018–2022), 2018). The National Development Plan promotes the countryside with progress (campo con progreso), which links campesinos with agribusiness supply chains in order to close off the agricultural frontier. The agricultural frontier, which was defined as part of the peace agreement, constitutes the basis investments in agricultural land use, including the definition of land rights, and ‘strengthening the productivity and competitiveness of agricultural activities’ in coordination with efforts to control deforestation (UPRA, 2018). The vision for agricultural development is oriented toward agribusiness which some contend contradicts support for agricultural production and land access among campesinos promised in the peace agreement (Acuerdo Final, 2016). Specifically, rural reforms implemented following the peace agreement promote a model of progress through agricultural development that is likely to exacerbate land conflicts and accelerate forest loss (Baptiste et al., 2017). For instance, the country’s updated Land Law promotes a model of agricultural production that requires significant investment to develop baldíos or vacant forest lands originally intended for landless campesinos thus privileging land access for agribusiness (Ley de Tierras, 2018). There’s also the Law of Agricultural Innovation, which establishes alliances between agricultural associations and large-scale supply chains to consolidate production overseen by government agencies and agribusiness entities (Ley de Innovación Agropecuaria, 2017). Some view this model of agricultural development as inappropriate, further subjugating farmers and forests; according to a campesino:

‘The problem of strategic alliances is that they promote monoculture crops and regulated seeds, and that the farmers are not partners of the project, the partner is the one who buys, that is the owner. Then the farmers have to produce the raw material but the partner buys it at the price they have agreed with the government, which leaves the farmer with basically nothing; the campesino is amarrado [tied]. The government supports the farmer with that alliance while sowing the crop, but what the government has not realized that this is the Amazon and that here, this crop requires agro-chemicals to produce and the farmer does not have enough to pay to fertilize the crop and stops fertilizing, the crop begins to get sick, there in are huge areas of abandoned projects like this.’

The orientation of agricultural development toward agribusiness also has some farmers in Putumayo concerned that the peace agreement will replicate the same failed alternative development of Plan Colombia; as a social leader insisted:

‘The government wants to do things their own way by implementing the old things and does not present a proposal that actually solves the underlying problems of the countryside, of the campesino. The government wants to send agronomists who have not lived and worked the land to provide technical assistance. Substitution is important, but we want to see a plan that allows farmers to subsist in the countryside without the coca. Otherwise it will be another Plan Colombia. We want a proposal that guarantees campesino agriculture and its commercialization. We cannot risk monocultures because the land does not support this model.

Oriented toward progress, the rural reforms promoted through the peace agreement obviate the entanglements of farmers and forest ecologies such that forests become ‘assets and everything else becomes weeds’ (Tsing, 2015a, pp. 5–6).

6. Rastrojo

Across Putumayo, are farms that have been abandoned due to displacement and armed conflict and that have been reclaimed by the forest. Referred to as ‘rastrojo'’, this forest growth indicates transformative coordination among forests and farmers. Rastrojo is the forest’s own colonization of disturbed patches, contributing to the restoration of degraded soils and ecological conditions for forest generation. Cultivation in rastrojo is a long tradition among indigenous communities of Putumayo in plots called chagras. This involves cultivation of crops over a period of several years in cleared forest plots, after which cultivated land is left fallow, permitting forest regeneration and the recycling of soil nutrients through plant decomposition. In Putumayo, some campesinos have turned toward the cultivation of rastrojo rather than coca, cattle ranching, and agribusiness-oriented development.

For some campesinos displaced from fumigations, narco-land grabbing and agricultural development, cultivating in rastrojo is described as a ‘life plan’ founded on the notion of convivir, or living and flourishing together with the forest. As one campesino who has set aside over 20 hectares of cattle pasture to regenerate forest explains, ‘there is no peace without the forest, the forest is life. It’s about learning to live from rastrojo.’ This campesino explains that plants commonly dismissed as malezas, or weeds that emerge following forest disturbance, contribute to the restoration of degraded soils which in turn generate conditions for forest growth and life for the forest and farmers alike. Farmers collect seeds and soils from the forest to restore forest ecologies and microbial communities of soils that have been degraded from agro-chemicals, coca monocultures, and cattle ranching, participating in what a campesino calls “recolonizing the farm with the forest.” Through coordination, campesinos ‘give back to the forest, who in turn nurtures the campesino.’ Coordination among farmers and forests in rastrojo opens to a differential peace that emerges through relationality, or convivir. This notion of relationality in which campesinos depend on forests to support agricultural production is essential to the construction of peace. Nonetheless, conventional peace promotes agribusiness development, with little attention to forests. Most of these farmers have taken on cultivation in rastrojo on their own.

7. Discussion

Attention to the ways in which peace interacts with forests is an urgent priority for Colombia (Cleric et al., 2018; Salazar et al., 2018). The resolution of armed conflicts often results in the acceleration of forest loss (Grimma & Singh, 2019; Ordway, 2015; Suarez et al., 2018). During times of peace, forests that were previously inaccessible are typically exposed to development (Baumann & Kuemmerle, 2016, 2016; Butsic et al., 2015). As Baumann and Kuemmerle (2016) suggest, the impacts of warfare on forests typically reverse during the transition to peace, however the legacies of armed conflicts often endure, particularly if the root causes prevail, determining effects on forests into the future. Impacts on forests also depend on specific historical, social, and political factors (Baumann & Kuemmerle, 2016; Gaynor et al., 2016; Ordway, 2015; Sanchez-Cuervo & Aide, 2013), including the ways in which forests function as financing or cover for armed groups’ operations (Castro-Núñez et al., 2017; Castro-Nunez et al., 2016). In Colombia, there is high incidence of armed conflicts and forests, which are also linked to agricultural colonization and related factors of illicit crop production, unequal land distribution, and displacement, which persist during the transition toward peace (Castro-Núñez et al., 2017). In the transition toward peace, forests that were protected during the war have fallen to land grabbing, particularly conversion to cattle ranching as a form of securing land claims as part of land speculation, and increased coca cultivation due to the influence of dissident FARC and other armed groups linked with narco-trafficking (Clerici et al., 2016; Landholm et al., 2019; Salazar et al., 2018; Suarez. Árias-Arévalo, Martínez-Mera, 2018; Suarez, Árias-Arévalo, Martínez-Mera, 2018). In addition, with the withdrawal of the FARC, forests have become accessible to agricultural development, as farmers return to their lands, and as agribusiness interests as part of rural reforms through the implementation of peace are implemented (Baptiste et al., 2017; Negret et al., 2017).

Complementing exiting research on the impacts of armed conflicts and their resolution on forests in Colombia (Suarez et al., 2018; Castro-Núñez et al., 2017; Salazar et al., 2018; Hoffmann et al., 2018), this article draws on fieldwork carried out in Putumayo during 2016–2018, including interviews and participant observation, to explore the interactions of forests and peace as it unfolds within a context of increasing deforestation as part of enduring legacies of ruination linked with armed conflicts and ongoing agricultural colonization (Stoler, 2013). Our research provides a detailed, context-rich account of how with the disarmament of the FARC, forests that were previously inaccessible have been opened to land grabbing, particularly conversion to cattle pastures as a result of land speculation and expectations for road construction and land titles. In the present transition toward peace, cattle ranching is expanding as a means of land grabbing and also as campesinos’ transition toward ‘licit’ agricultural alternatives. The expansion of cattle ranching in Colombia is historically associated with its function as a pretense to legalize spurious landholdings and the implied connection with the laundering of drug profits from coca cultivation (Castro-Núñez et al., 2016; Davalos et al., 2014). Land grabbing constitutes the greatest driver of forest loss, while related cattle ranching and coca production contribute to forest loss in interlinked ways. Farmers clear forests to produce coca and invest in cattle ranching, which is often a means to secure land claims, and linked to land speculation, as opposed to revenues associated with cattle ranching (Castro-Núñez et al., 2016; Dávalos et al., 2014). Coca cultivation has also increased as agricultural alternatives promised in the peace agreement have not yet been realized and also due to the influence of dissident FARC and residual (and emerging) paramilitary and narco-trafficking groups. Deforestation rates are increasing along with the assassinations of social leaders and campesinos committed to forest protection and the eradication of illicit coca. Colombia’s ‘fight against drugs’ has translated into the ‘fight against deforestation,’ and in order to close off the expanding agricultural frontier the state declared deforestation a ‘crime’ and inaugurated a military offensive against forest loss. These forests, which were inaccessible during the war, also coincide with agribusiness interests, which are likely to exacerbate land concentration and generate more deforestation (Baptiste et al., 2017). Present deforestation in Colombia is part of ongoing agricultural colonization which is historically intertwined with the country’s armed conflicts, involving armed groups such as the FARC, paramilitary, and drug trafficking groups, and related conflicts of land distribution and land grabbing.

Going beyond forest destruction, we situate our analysis in the forging of connections and possibilities that ruins animate (Stoler, 2013; Tsing, 2015a). In tracking the ‘shifting patches of ruination’ (Tsing, 2015a, p. 206), this article explores landscape histories of ‘coordination’ among human and more-than-human relations and their generative possibilities for livability and peace. In thinking with the ‘weedy landscapes’ that emerge in ruins (Tsing, 2015a), we attend to the coordinations among campesinos, soils, plants, and forests that arise amidst ongoing agricultural colonization and deforestation within the construction of peace in Colombia. Turning toward the ‘weedy growth’ that emerges in disturbed forest patches (Tsing, 2017), we show how coordination among farmers and forests in rastrojo opens to a differential peace that emerges through relationality, or convivir. This notion of relationality, in which campesinos depend on forests to support agricultural production, is essential for the construction of peace. These initiatives indicate possibilities to transform productive systems from coca and cattle toward opportunities that consider forests as part of the construction of peace.

8. Conclusion

In the spirit of Tsing’s (2015a) anti-ending (a commitment to open-ended possibilities), this article proposes that looking to the weedy possibilities amidst forest disturbance might guide us toward a more integral peace. In the midst of disturbance, this article turns toward rastrojo and to coordination among farmers in forests that express the concept of convivir, or forests and farmers living together. Forest are integral to peace, as campesinos dependent on coca cultivation are also directly reliant on soils, which in turn depend on forest ecologies (Álvarez, 2001). The cultivation of rastrojo indicates that opportunities other than coca and cattle do exist in which forests are integral to the construction of peace. Still, farmers stress the importance of support in order to transition to productive systems that would allow them to live from and together with the forest. Notwithstanding evidence of increased forest conversion to cattle ranching, and illicit coca cultivation, forests are not considered central to the implementation of peace. It is evident that the path of peace is oriented toward a form of agricultural development that is aligned with agribusiness interests and that also fails to recognize campesinos’ interventions that may contribute toward forest protection. This article poses that the depredation of forests cannot be overcome with agricultural development that will, incidentally, generate more forest loss. The identification and implementation of opportunities to protect forests is crucial for the construction of peace in Colombia (Castro-Núñez et al., 2017; Castro-Nunez, Mertz, & Quintero, 2016; Hoffmann et al., 2018; Mansourian et al., 2019; Van Dexter & Visseren-Hamakers, 2018). Here we propose that there is a tremendous opportunity to learn from farmers’ experiments in rastrojo as a path for the construction of peace. In particular, we call for support for the promotion and exchange of knowledge among farmers and to link initiatives with rural development within the framework of the peace agreement. This is particularly important as conventional peace continues to promote agribusiness development, and given the fact that cattle ranching remains deeply entrenched in the agricultural frontier. Finally, attention to rastrojo also presents an important opportunity for addressing deforestation-linked climate change (Chazdon et al., 2016).

Acknowledgments

This research is indebted to the campesinos of Putumayo who share their stories and knowledge. It was made possible by a Fulbright U.S. Student Grant. This article belongs to the forthcoming Special Issue on ‘Transdisciplinary perspectives on current transformations at extractive and agrarian, frontiers in Latin America’, edited by Anne Cristina de la Vega-Leinert and Regine Schönenberg.

Disclosure statement

The authors do not declare any conflicts of interest.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Land reforms in 1936, 1961 and 1994, were defeated by large landowners. Law 200 of 1936 aimed at clarifying property rights and disincentivizing the large holdings of idle land with the threat of expropriation. This was rejected by large landowners who responded with evictions of campesinos working on these lands, exacerbating land conflicts and provoking a national escalation of political violence known as ‘La Violencia.’ In 1961 another attempt to resolve land inequality focused on the distribution of ‘baldíos’ and was accompanied by efforts to empower campesinos’ mobilizations. These efforts however were put down by a new conservative administration in coalition with agribusiness within the context of concerns of a growing communist movement. In 1972, an agreement was signed which included agribusiness representatives and lobbying from large landowners, especially cattle ranchers. Known as the ‘Chicoral Pact,’ this agreement averted land reform efforts and chose large-scale agricultural production, in particular cattle ranching, as the rural development trajectory for the country. Land reform did not come up again until 1994 when another reform (Law 160) was approved which promoted market mechanisms (subsidies) as a means to achieve land distribution. However, negotiations between campesinos and landowners, required by the law, were stalled in the midst of a growing armed conflict (see Trujillo Cueto, 2014).

2. The emergence of paramilitary groups in Colombia can be traced to militias contracted by large landowners to protect against incursions by campesinos and incipient insurgency (Machado & Meertens, 2010). During the 1980s, the military supported autodefensas or civilian defense groups to fight guerrillas and protect contested lands outside of state control from illicit taxation and extortion. These paramilitary groups began to contest FARC’s control of land where illegal crops were grown and which provided a source of financing for the intensifying armed conflict.

3. From 1996 to 2005, violence increased as paramilitaries and guerrillas fought over control of these lands and the production of coca, resulting in massacres, forced displacement, and land dispossession (Ramírez, 2001).

4. The defoliant used during Plan Colombia (as part of the War on Drugs) for coca eradication, glyphosate, was patented by Monsanto under the trade name Roundup in 1974. At that time, the US government was considering herbicides for drug-eradication. The US government declared a War on Drugs in 1971, a counter-narcotics operation dictated by a counterinsurgency campaign that sought to abolish communism under the Cold War paradigm. The association of leftist guerrillas with drug trafficking represents the continuity of the Cold War anti-communism sentiment that has been used since the 1960s, legitimizing not only repressive anti-drug policies on the part of the state and the armed forces, but also paramilitarism in order to eliminate guerrillas in Colombia. After 2001, the US Congress authorized that resources dedicated to the thus referred to as a fight against drugs in which guerrillas came to be known as narco-terrorists and coca growers were criminalized (see consolidated works on this topic published by MamaCoca, available at: http://www.mamacoca.org/Coca_cocaina_historia/MamaCoca_English/How_Prohibition_Conditioned_the_Course_of_Colombian_History.html).

5. Many small cattle ranchers depend on the production of milk and cheese for income. Milk and cheese is transported daily via the Caquetá River to Curillo, in the neighboring Department of Caquetá, which is an important market for farmers in Puerto Guzmán, Putumayo. The conditions that resulted in farmers’ dependence on coca—the lack of road infrastructure and markets for other agricultural products—also contribute to the adoption of cattle ranching as an alternative.