Territorial Configuration and Territorialities in Dispute in two Subregions of Southern Tolima, Colombia

Abstract

Through the analysis of collected information during the field work, this article studies the processes that have affected two subregions of southern Tolima in central Colombia. The cases of Planadas and the Tolima Triangle are studied as scenarios of the violence of the armed conflict since the mid-20th century, involving guerrillas, the state and paramilitaries. Its inhabitants are peasants and indigenous people hit by poverty and marginality. From a perspective on disputed territorialities, several processes are analyzed. First, the territorialities of the armed actors and the processes related to the armed conflict are studied, in territories under the control of the FARC guerrillas and some where the paramilitary challenge has arisen. Second, the territorialities of the regional and local authorities are studied, including the point of view of the department's elites, who have sought political control of the region seen as potential to promote "development" projects. Third, the territorialities of local communities are analyzed, which in Planadas includes the creation of coffee associations, and in the Tolima Triangle they involve agroecological projects from mainly indigenous communities, which resist the expansion of the rice agribusiness. In the region there are interactions between marginality, violence, logics of development, in the midst of differentiated levels of peace building.