The connection between oil wealth and internal armed conflicts: Exploring the mechanisms of the relationship using a subnational lens

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Original article

The connection between oil wealth and internal armed conflicts: Exploring the mechanisms of the relationship using a subnational lens Juan David Gutiérrez Rodríguez Blavatnik School of Government, Institutional affiliation: Oxford University, United Kingdom

A R T I C LE I N FO

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Oil Resource curse Internal armed conflict Armed groups Colombia

Most econometric based studies have found some connection between oil wealth and conflict. But the literature, both quantitative and qualitative-based studies, is less conclusive about the processes that may link the two variables. The main objective of this paper is to contribute to the literature on the oil-conflict relationship through a case study that explores the questions with a subnational lens. The research analyses localised evidence about the channels of transmission by which oil wealth affected the onset and intensity of armed conflict in an oil-producing Colombian municipality, San Vicente de Chucurí. The contribution of the subnational approach is particularly relevant to the literature because civil wars and intra-state armed conflicts, like the current one in Colombia, may present major regional variations that are not attributable to national factors. The central argument of this paper is that San Vicente’s oil wealth and the spill-over effects from the neighbouring oilproducing regions contributes to explain the onset and intensity of the armed conflict in this municipality. Additionally, the paper unveils political processes behind such connection. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data collected in fieldwork, the paper undertakes a process-tracing analysis covering the period from the early 1960s to 2017.

1. Introduction A century ago, Colombia’s oil sector emerged in the municipality of San Vicente de Chucurí. Between 1916 and 1918, the explorations of the De Mares concession that were carried out in San Vicente led to the first major oil discovery in Colombia.1 Since 1921, oil was extracted and in 1926 Colombia became an oil exporting country. Four decades later, when Colombia’s current armed conflict started, this municipality was the epicentre of another major event in the country’s history. In 1963, the founders of the National Liberation Army (ELN) established its first armed unit in the mountainous jungles of San Vicente.2 The ELN is the oldest and strongest guerrilla group that is still fighting the Colombian state. The ELN was followed by other armed groups, both guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries, that also established permanently in San Vicente.3 The level of organised violence generated by these groups in San Vicente, between the late 1980s and mid 2000s, was higher than

the national municipal average. Then, between 2008 and 2016, the intensity of the violence decreased significantly and the conflict faded away almost entirely from the municipality. The main objectives of this paper are: i) to examine whether the onset and intensity of the use of armed force by armed groups against civilians in San Vicente was associated with its oil wealth and ii) to explore the mechanisms that may underlie this relationship. The paper aims to contribute to the literature on the oil-conflict relationship through a case study that explores the topic with a subnational lens. The selection of the Colombian municipality followed an extreme-case selection criterion: a municipality with almost a hundred years of continuous oil production. The central argument of this paper is that San Vicente’s oil wealth and the spill-over effects from the neighbouring oil-producing regions contributes to explain the onset and intensity of the armed conflict in this municipality. The inception of the ELN in an oil-rich region was not a coincidence. Neither the subsequent arrival of another guerrilla

E-mail address: [email protected]. Whenever the paper mentions San Vicente, it refers to San Vicente de Chucurí (there are other Colombian municipalities that have names which start with “San Vicente …”). 2 In Spanish, the acronym ELN stands for Ejército de Liberación Nacional. 3 Whenever the paper uses the terms “armed groups” or “armed actors”, it is referring exclusively to non-state organisations. I follow Arjona (2016, 26) who uses “the term armed group to refer to all non-state armed organisations that are fighting the war. These include rebels who challenge the government and paramilitaries who aim to defend the status quo.” 1

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2018.10.008 Received 31 March 2018; Received in revised form 5 October 2018; Accepted 6 October 2018 2214-790X/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Gutiérrez Rodríguez, J.D., The Extractive Industries and Society, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2018.10.008

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recently published quantitative-based studies questioned the findings of the mainstream literature. These studies reported that oil discoveries did not appear to have an impact on conflict after controlling for country fixed effects (Cotet and Tsui, 2013) and that commodity price shocks (including oil and gas) were not linked with the onset of conflicts (Bazzi and Blattman, 2014). Additionally, since the 1970s, half of oil-rich countries are conflict free, thus the effect is not inevitable (Ross, 2012, 2015). As it occurs with the broader resource curse literature, most of the published works acknowledge that the negative effect appears to be conditional. The literature on the association between oil wealth and the intensity of conflict is less prolific than the one studying conflict outbreak. In a small-N cross-country study, Ross (2004a) found that some resource-related mechanisms appear to increase the number of casualties in conflict, while others seem to generate the opposite effect. Later on, Ross (2012) reported that his large-N cross-country evidence suggested that in oil-rich but relatively poor countries, casualties tended to be higher. Three econometric-based studies that examined subnational variation in Colombia, in different periods of time, reached similar conclusions on the impact of oil wealth on conflict intensity. The studies published by Sánchez and Palau (2006), Dube and Vargas (2013) and Carreri and Dube (2017) present evidence that supports the links between oil and conflict intensity. More recently, Rettberg and Prieto (2018) examined the complex linkages between oil and armed conflict through a comparative case study of three departments (Arauca, Casanare and Meta) and the oil-rich municipality of Barrancabermeja.5 Rettberg and Prieto (2018) concluded that the processes that linked oil and armed conflict varied, across time and spatially, due to the mediation of local institutional contexts. While the literature referenced above presents persuasive evidence about the negative impact of oil on conflict intensity, a recently published large-N cross-country study by Bazzi and Blattman (2014) concluded that rising oil and mineral prices were linked with less intense conflicts. In sum, the literature on the relationship between oil and conflict predominantly reports an association between the two variables, but that such assertion is not unanimous. Additionally, the scholarship on the effect of oil over the intensity conflicts has produced more mixed evidence. The contradictory results of econometric-based studies may not be surprising given that the main variables of interest are very difficult to measure and that most intra-state conflicts are multi-causal. Additionally, it seems that the variables correlate in specific moments in history. For example, Ross (2006) reported that the likelihood of war in oil producing countries increased significantly after the 1970s. Later, in his pivotal book titled “The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations”, Ross (2012) also concluded that oil only had anti-democratic effects after the 1970s because the global wave of nationalisations of oil companies changed the scale of oil revenues, generating unprecedented fiscal windfalls.6 A consensus on the channels that underlie the association between oil and conflict is still elusive. Humphreys (2005), who published the

group, the FARC, which expanded to San Vicente a few years later. Both guerrillas sought to control the oil rich region. Furthermore, for at least one decade, the guerrillas were able to capture oil rents through different violent and non-violent means. Later on, another type of armed actor, a right wing paramilitary group, also funded its armed struggle by seizing oil rents from San Vicente. All these groups actively disputed the territorial control of the municipality and used their armed force against the population. Additionally, the paper unveils some of the subnational political processes behind such connection. The case of San Vicente supports two mechanisms for conflict onset and intensity that were previously identified by the existing corpus: the feasibility mechanism and resource battles mechanism, respectively. Furthermore, the case offers mixed evidence on a subnational variant of a mechanism termed by the literature state-as-target. The contribution of the subnational approach is particularly relevant to the literature because civil wars and intra-state armed conflicts, like the current one in Colombia, may present major regional variations that are not attributable to national factors. Hence, a crossnational econometric-based study may not detect the effect of oil on conflict, but a subnational analsysis may identify it. In this vein, Cotet and Tsui (2013, 73) argued that this “‘micro-macro paradox’ in the oilconflict relationship may suggest that the determinants of regional violence (measured by the intensity of an ongoing conflict) and largescale violent challenge to the states (measured by the onset of insurgency or violent regime change) are different.” This research is based mostly on qualitative data, but statistics on oil production, oil royalties and violence at the municipal level were also used to measure the variables of interest. The fieldwork was carried out in Bucaramanga city and San Vicente in 2016. The primary data that was analysed includes 35 semi-structured interviews with politicians, public officials (municipal and departmental), community leaders, members of civil society organisations, and local journalists (see Appendix A for the list of interviews).4 Furthermore, I also collected documentary data from newspapers (municipal and national), government reports (municipal and national) and judicial rulings. Drawing on these sources of data, as well as secondary sources, the paper undertakes a process-tracing analysis covering the period from the early 1960s to 2017. This paper has seven sections, including the introduction. The second section briefly reviews the existing literature on the oil-conflict relationship, focusing on the incidence of oil wealth on confict onset and intensity. The third section introduces the context of the case study and explains how San Vicente has been linked with oil for over a century. The fourth section traces why the founders of the ELN decided to organise their first fighting unit in San Vicente in the mid 1960s. The fifth section discusses how other armed groups also competed for the region’s territory between the 1970s and 2000s. Furthermore, this section explores why the struggle among the armed groups contributed to explain the different levels of the conflict’s intensity. The sixth section discusses the main findings of the case study in the context of the existing literature. The paper concludes with a brief account of its argument, the limitations of the study and a proposal on future avenues of research.

5 Pérez Salazar (2011); González et al. (2012), and Duque Daza (2015) also published comparative studies that focus on these three departments of Los Llanos. Their work is mostly based on press and judicial documents that account for the capture of oil revenues by armed groups through coercion and partnerships with local politicians (particularly from governorates, rather than municipalities) 6 These findings suggest that institutional factors, such as the prevalence of state-owned oil companies and its consequences on the size and management of oil rents, may contribute to explain the conditional effects of oil wealth (Ross, 2012).This could be explained by the mediating factors identified by the literature are related with the pre-existing institutional context and historical factors, such as: the state strength (Bell and Wolford, 2015; Humphreys, 2005), precedents of political violence (Lei and Michaels, 2014) and income level (Ross, 2006, 2012, 2015).

2. Overview of the literature How does oil wealth affect internal armed conflicts? Most large-N studies have found some connection between oil wealth and conflict onset. These published works reported that oil wealth was linked with the start of intra-state armed conflicts (Bell and Wolford, 2015; de Soysa and Neumayer, 2007; Humphreys, 2005; Lei and Michaels, 2014; Lujala, 2010; Ross, 2004b, 2006; Ross, 2012, 2015). However, two 4 The duration of the interviews ranged from 45 minutes to two hours, but on average lasted between one and one and a half hours.

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Map 1. San Vicente de Chucurí and neighbouring municipalities. Source: Adapted from CEDE (2018).

lost its main oil wells due to the secession of part of its territory. In April 1922, as a result of TROCO’s lobbying, a portion of San Vicente’s territory was partitioned by the Departmental Assembly of Santander to establish the new municipality of Barrancabermeja (CEDE, 2017; García, 2006). Barrancabermeja included the areas where the TROCO had its main premises, river port and the most important oil field (Las Infantas). After the secession of Barrancabermeja, the TROCO continued exploring and extracting oil from wells located in San Vicente for almost three decades. In August 1951, the TROCO’s activities finalised when the concession and its infrastructure reversed to the Colombian state. The operation of the oil fields in the De Mares concession was taken over by Ecopetrol, an oil company that established by the state nine months before the reversion. By 1951, the De Mares concession was still very important for Colombia’s oil sector: it represented 77% of the country’s active oil wells and over 36% of the national production (Carlos and Parra, 2017, 45–46). Between 1958 and 2017, Ecopetrol found at least seven additional oil fields in San Vicente.9 Although none of the new oil fields discovered in San Vicente by Ecopetrol were as large as Las Infantas, in the last nine decades oil has been continuously extracted from San Vicente’s sub-soil (Fig. 1). Additionally, after the decentralisation reforms of the 1980s, the municipal government of San Vicente started receiving and managing significant oil revenues.10 Between 1986–2015, San Vicente accrued almost ten times more royalties than the average Colombian municipality (Fig. 2).11 In the same time period, San Vicente was moderately dependent on oil royalties, which represented 33% of total municipal

most exhaustive review on the topic, referred to the myriad hypotheses considered by the literature as an “embarrassment of mechanisms”. He identified and reviewed 12 families of mechanisms (and several variants) that could link natural resources with conflict onset and duration. More than two decades later, the debate about the potential channels of transmission is not closed and fine-grained exploration of the microdynamics of armed conflicts in oil producing regions is still pertinent. Instead of attempting to discuss the merits of all the mechanisms previously identified by the scholarship, this paper focuses on three mechanisms that are particularly pertinent for the Colombian internal armed conflict. 3. More than 100 years of links with oil San Vicente de Chucurí is a municipality located in the north-east of Colombia (Map 1 ).7 Its main village was funded in 1887, in the midst of a mountainous tropical jungle, and eight years later it was constituted as a municipality (CEDE, 2017; CGR, 1935; Orduz, 2014). The western side of San Vicente is located in the low lands of the Magdalena river basin, where oil has been extracted since 1921, while its eastern side is situated in the Andean Mountains. The municipality is part of Santander department and it is relatively close to Bucaramanga city, the departmental capital.8 In 1905, the national government granted an oil concession of 512,000 ha in the Magdalena river basin, covering most of San Vicente’s territory, to a local entreprenur (Ordóñez, 2013). Between 1916 and 1918, the exploratory works in the De Mares concession resulted in the discovery of Las Infantas oil field (Ordóñez, 2013). In 1919, a foreign oil company, The Tropical Oil Company (TROCO), acquired the concession and, in the following years, drilled new oil wells, built a refinery and commercialised its produce locally (Carlos and Parra, 2017; Durán, 2017; Ordóñez, 2013; Vásquez C. 2012). Since 1926, the company significantly scaled its production and began exporting oil through a pipeline that reached a port close to Cartagena (Durán, 2017; Ordóñez, 2013; Puyana, 2010; Cote and Guillermo, 2012). However, by that time, San Vicente municipality had

9 For information on the discoveries, refer to Ecopetrol (2017a,b), El Tiempo (2008); Mayorga et al. (2010); Ordóñez (2013); Sáchica (2012) and Vásquez C. (2012). 10 The first direct election of city and municipal mayors took place in 1988. Then, the 1991 Constitution also established the direct election of departmental governors. The first election of departmental governors occurred in 1992. Additionally, the 1991 Constitution increased the administrative responsibilities of municipalities related to the provision of public goods and services. The new constitution also established significant resource transfers from the national government to the subnational governments. 11 Own calculations based on the data on the transfer of royalties to municipalities reported by national government agencies that is available in CEDE (2017).

7 San Vicente has an area of 1,104 km2, more than 60% of its territory is still rural and by 2017 it had almost 35,000 inhabitants (CEDE, 2017; DANE, 2011). 8 The shortest road distance from San Vicente to Bucaramanga city is 87 km.

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Fig. 1. Oil output from the oil fields located in San Vicente.1936–2017. Source: Ecopetrol (2018).

Fig. 2. Royalties per capita of San Vicente and municipal average of royalty transfers per capita, 1986–2015 (constant million pesos 2015). Sources: CEDE (2017) and Ecopetrol (2017a) for royalties, BanRep (2016) for consumer price index, and DANE (2011) for population

revenues.12 During the last commodity cycle boom, the abundance of oil royalties peaked as well as San Vicente’s dependence on royalties.13 The oil wealth of San Vicente and the neighbouring municipalities, particulary Barrancabermeja, not only represented an economic opportunity for the subnational governments and the population. Since 1963, the prospect of controlling an oil-rich region contributed to attract an armed group which attempted to dominate the territory. The next section of the paper traces the inception of the ELN in the mountainous rainforests of San Vicente and discusses why oil wealth was an instrumental factor that contributes to explain the guerilla group’s decision to build their capacity for organised violence in this municipality.

4. Oil: the wealth that attracted the ELN’s founders Between 1962 and 1963, seven of the ELN’s founding leaders received guerrilla instruction in Cuba and then returned to Colombia, in the second half of 1963, to organise their armed group (Harnecker, 1988; Villamizar, 2017). Before establishing in a specific location, they explored rural areas of five departments of Colombia: Bolívar, Boyacá, Caldas, Quindío, and Santander (Harnecker, 1988; Medina Gallego, 1996; Villamizar, 2017). Furthermore, according to the general commander of the ELN, alias Gabino, they also collected information about Tolima department and the Eastern Savannahs (Llanos Orientales) (Medina Gallego, 1996). However, the founders discarded these places and chose San Vicente to settle. Between 1963 and 1964, the ELN’s leaders prepared a small group of peasants in San Vicente’s rainforests and mountains, who became the first combatants of the guerrilla group (Aguilera, 2006; Arenas, 2009; Harnecker, 1988; Madariaga, 2006; Medina Gallego, 1996; Valencia, 2008; Vásquez, 2006; Villamizar, 2017). Why did the ELN’s founders decided to setup their first guerrilla cell in San Vicente? The main difference between San Vicente and the other areas, initially considered by the founders of the ELN, was that San

12

Own calculations based on the data available in CEDE (2017) and Ecopetrol (2017a). 13 The steep decrease in 2012 was associated to problems with the implementation of the legal reforms that created the current management system for oil and mineral royalties. 4

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invasions (Madariaga, 2006; Molano, 2009; Prada, 2006). The guerrillas considered that the peasant social movements were useful for their strategy and in some cases they took advantage of San Vicente’s peasant organisations (Prada, 2006; Vásquez, 2006). In short, the possibility of connecting the guerrilla group’s discourse with the land grievances of the peasants was seen by the ELN’s founders as a favourable condition for setting up the first armed unit in San Vicente. However, by the mid 1960s there were other areas of Colombia where the ELN’s founders could have found such situation. The land speculation linked to the exploration for oil also occurred in other regions of Colombia since the late 19th century (Durán, 2017). Furthermore, many other departments of Colombia had experienced acute peasant conflicts linked to land and colonisation processes.18 Additionally, the region chosen by the ELN’s founders was not peripheral or particiularly backward. In the mid 1960s, San Vicente was close to the departmental capital, its urban areas were reasonably well connected to the rest of the country by roads and the Magdalena river, and the central state made presence due to the oil and agro-industrial activities (Gutiérrez and Omar, 2012). Conceded, when the ELN settled in San Vicente, more than 40% of its population was illiterate and most of the population did not have access to water and electricity. However, the municipality’s socio-economic indicators were similar to the departmental and national averages.19 This section argued that the settlement of the ELN’s first armed unit in the mountains of San Vicente was influenced, among others, by the prospect of controlling a area that was oil-rich. By the early1960s, the region where San Vicente is located was the most oil-abundant area of Colombia. Furthermore, from the outset, the guerrilla group adopted a nationalist discourse with an emphasis on natural resources. However, the group’s initial setup and its first decade of operation was not funded by oil rents. The start-up funding was provided by the government of Cuba and, in the subsequent years, its revenues came from looting banks and extorting wealthy cattle-ranchers and farmers. During its first decade of operation in San Vicente and Santander department, the ELN was not able to control the territory. Furthermore, the military forces forced the group to flee the region and, by 1978, the ELN was almost disbanded. Hence, the availability of oil wealth had attracted the group’s founders but did not contribute to facilitate the ELN’s plans. However, the cycle of organised violence in the region did not finish there. The next section of this paper, examines how other armed groups arrived to San Vicente and effectively used their armed force to compete for the territory and extract oil rents.

Vicente was located in the region of Colombia with the highest oil production. This section argues that the oil wealth of the region where San Vicente is located was an instrumental factor that contributed to explain why the ELN’s founders took the decision of incepting their project in this municipality. Granted, there were other reasons that made San Vicente a reasonable place for the ELN’s first leaders to launch their guerrilla group. The interviews and chronicles of the founding leaders mention some of these reasons: its geography, the precedents of armed insurrections, the fact that other armed groups did not control the area, the intensity of the peasants’ land-related grievances and its proximity to Barrancabermeja city (Arenas, 2009, 24; Harnecker, 1988, 18–19; Vargas Velásquez, 1989, 55; Villamizar, 2017, 237). All these factors could have favoured and facilitated the development of the guerrilla group in San Vicente. However, these features did not distinguish San Vicente from other potential launching sites, whereas oil wealth did single out the region where San Vicente is located. The chronicles of Jaime Arenas (1971: 24), a founding leader of the ELN that deserted from the organisation in 1969, state that one of the main reasons for choosing Santander’s territory was “to control the richest oil producing area of the country” (Arenas, 2009, 24). In this vein, according to a local journalist, the ELN settled in the foothills of San Vicente to overlook the areas where oil was extracted: the lowlands of San Vicente and of Barrancabermeja.14 Additionally, the proximity of San Vicente to Barrancabermeja city could enable the urban oil workers’ union to support the emerging guerrilla group (Harnecker, 1988; Molano, 2009; Prieto, 2016; Vargas Velásquez, 1989). The links of the ELN with oil rich territories, first in Santander and two decades later in Arauca department, also contribute to explain why its main political banner has been the “plundering of natural resources by transnational companies” (Aguilera P. 2006).15 Since its first manifesto, the ELN demanded the nationalisation of the exploitation of subsoil resources (ELN, 1965). In this vein, according to a scholar from a public university of Santander department, “the ELN was born in the fight for the nationalisation of natural resources”.16 The discourse of the ELN with regards to the nationalisation of the oil sector intensified after 1986 due to their presence in Arauca, where the Caño-Limón oil field had been discovered a few years before (Harnecker, 1988). Additionally, the grievances of San Vicente’s peasants, which were linked to the oil sector, also appeared to attract the founders of the ELN. Since the 1920s, the peasant and labour strikes in the Middle Magdalena region, where San Vicente is located, were intense in comparison with other regions of Colombia (Madariaga, 2006; Molano, 2009; Prada, 2006).17 The grievances were associated with the operation of the oil companies, which generated additional barriers for peasants to access land, particularly, by increasing its price. First, the oil-related transport infrastructure that was built (railways and roads), increased the value of land (Molano, 2009). The purchase of land by speculators, who aimed to secure areas where oil could be located, also pressed the demand for land in the Middle Magdalena region (Durán, 2017). In the early 1960s, the peasants from San Vicente once again protested against the acquisition of land by the oil companies. According to FIP (2015), the rallies appeared to be supported by the ELN. In the following two decades, the peasant struggles for the right to access land augmented in San Vicente and the surrounding municipalities. The peasants took over state buildings, blocked roads, and organised land

5. Cycles of violence “No matter what they say now, San Vicente has always been violent”, grunted a pensioned woman who used to work in the mayoralty’s treasury and the municipal hospital.20 Between 1963 and 2006, two guerrilla groups and several paramilitary groups operated in San Vicente (Fig. 3). In the period 1963–1998, the ELN committed selective murders, kidnapped, extorted, attacked civilian assets, and recruited young peasants in San Vicente (GMH, 2013).21 Between 1977 and 1998, the FARC used the same type of armed force against civilians in San Vicente (GMH, 2013).22 Since the early 1980s, at least five small self-defence groups started operating in the municipality. In 1998–2002, there organisations were 18 A thorough account of the dynamics of these land struggles was portrayed by LeGrand’s (2016) celebrated study “Frontier Expansion and Peasant Protest in Colombia, 1870-1950”. 19 The facts mentioned in this paragraph are based on censuses databetween 1938 and 2005 available in CEDE (2017), CGR (1939, 1942), and DANE (1954, 1955, 1957, 1959, 1967, 1968, 1970, 1980, 1986, 1996, 2007, 2008, 2010). 20 Interview No. 143. 21 Interviews No. 133, 137, 144 and 154. 22 Interviews No. 137, 138, 146 and 154.

14

Interview No. 145. Interview No. 136. 16 Interview No. 131. 17 The Middle Magdalena region is comprised of 34 municipalities (of five different departments) that are close to the Magdalena River basin between the western and eastern Andean mountain ranges (Madariaga, 2006). 15

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Fig. 3. Presence of armed groups in San Vicente.1963–2017. Sources: Based on the evidence cited in this paper.

absorbed by the Puerto Boyacá Peasant Self-defences (ACPB).23 The ACPB was part of a national the United Self-Defences of Colombia (AUC) paramilitaries and remained active in San Vicente until its demobilisation in 2006 (TSDJB, 2014b; Verdad Abierta, 2009a).24 These paramilitary groups committed selective murders and gender based violence, carried out massacres, extorted, displaced peasants from their land, and recruited minors (GMH, 2013; TSDJB, 2014b; TSDJC, 2015, 2016). Although it is true that San Vicente endured long periods of organised violence in the last century, it is possible to identify stages with differentiated degrees of violence during the current armed conflict. Furthermore, in the last decade, the incidents and victims linked to organised violence were reduced to minimum levels. Since the onset of the current armed conflict, San Vicente had at least five cycles of violence (Table 1). During these periods, different numbers of armed groups were active and these groups used varied levels of armed force against the population (Figs. 4 and 5). This section discusses whether oil contributed to explain the differentiated intensity of violence in these cycles. The first cycle of violence, between 1963 and early 1980s, was triggered by the appearance of the ELN in San Vicente, as it was explained in the previous section of the paper. The temporary retreat of the ELN from San Vicente and, in general, from Santander department in the late 1970s did not cease the armed struggle in this oil-rich region. When the ELN left, the FARC had already disembarked in San Vicente. According to a social leader from San Vicente, who was recruited by FARC when he was thirteen, the guerilla group arrived to the region in the mid 1970s.25 Since 1977, the FARC started kidnapping and extorting sporadically in San Vicente (GMH, 2013). However, according to the available data, between 1970 and the early 1980s, the attacks against civilians were infrequent (Fig. 4). The second cycle of violence took place during the 1980s when the attacks against civilians and the number of victims grew with respect to the previous period (Figs. 4 and 5).26 Despite of the inauguration, in November 1983, of a military battalion located in the urban area of San Vicente (ENC, 2009), the public forces did not prevent the escalation of violence against civilians in the following years. On one hand, the growth in the intensity of the use of armed force against the population was associated with the pulse between the FARC and the ELN. On the other hand, as transitional justice tribunals recently concluded, militaries from San Vicente’s battalion collaborated with the emerging local self-defence groups and these groups also started to use their organised violence against civilians (TSDJB 2014a; b, 2017). The increase of the FARC’s armed activities after the early 1980s

Table 1 Cycles of armed violence against civilians in San Vicente.1963–2016. Cycle

Period

Number of armed groups

Level of conflict’s intensity

First Second

1963 – early-1980s early-1980s – late1980s late-1980s – mid1990s mid-1990s – 2007 2008 – 2016

2 7

Low Medium (increasing)

7

High

3 0

Medium (decreasing) Very Low

Third Fourth Fifth

Source: Based on evidence cited in this paper.

was part of their effort to control the territory and to exclude other armed groups. After 1982, the FARC settled permanently in San Vicente and consolidated its presence in the region. The settling of the FARC in San Vicente was a result of the central command’s decision of expanding from the peripheries to more developed areas, a key strategy in their plan of overthrowing the national government (Pécaut, 2008; Vásquez, 2006).27 In this vein, according to Pizarro Leongómez (2006, 184), the insurgent groups “made a leap towards regions with economic significance, with the objective of controlling directly the exploitation of natural resources or extorting its producers”.28 During the 1970s the FARC cooperated with the ELN, but in the early 1980s the FARC started competing for the territory and pushed the ELN to marginal areas of the Middle Magdalena region (Molano, 2009).29 Later, after the mid 1980s, the ELN reorganised and returned to San Vicente with a stronger military capacity. According to Vásquez (2006, 329), in the following decade the ELN increased its strength in the region “due to the transfer of oil rents to its military and political apparatus” from other oil-producing areas of the country. Where did the funds come from? From the oil rents seized in Arauca by the ELN’s Domingo Laín front through the extortions to oil companies and the capture of the subnational governments (Gutiérrez and David, 2018). Although the guerrillas appeared to have the initial support of part of San Vicente’s population (Molano, 2009), their abuses against its inhabitants prompted the collective action from civilians who were willing to resist the guerrilla groups.30 There were precedents of selfdefence groups since the onset of the armed conflict, but the first groups that were able to consolidate appeared between 1982 and 1985.31

27

Interviews No. 138 and 141. However, the establishment of the FARC in San Vicente was also a consequence of their defeat in another oil producing area: the municipality of Puerto Boyacá. In the mid 1980s, the self-defence groups that were organised in Puerto Boyacá, with the support of members of the military forces, pushed two of the FARC’s fronts to the north from Boyacá department to Santander department (Madariaga, 2006; Ronderos, 2014; Vásquez, 2006). 29 Interview No. 141. 30 Interviews No. 138, 145 and 155. 31 The ruling of the Tribunal that judged the members of the ACPB group that demobilised in 2005, identified five different paramilitary groups that appeared in San Vicente in the early 1980s (TSDJB, 2014b). 28

23 In Spanish, the acronym ACPB stands for Autodefensas Campesinas de Puerto Boyacá. 24 In Spanish, the acronym AUC stands for Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia. 25 Interview No. 146. 26 While the data of Fig. 4 depicts the trend of violent actions carried out by armed groups against civilians in San Vicente between 1970 – 2012, Fig. 5 illustrates the impact of the armed conflict in terms of the victimisation of the poplation of San Vicente between 1984–2016.

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Fig. 4. Kidnappings (1970–2014), selective homicides (1981–2012), and attacks to civilian assets (1988–2012) in San Vicente. Sources: GMH (2013) and CEDE (2017) for kidnappings in 2011–2012.

Fig. 5. Victims of the armed conflict in San Vicente (per type of harmful deed).1984–2016. Sources: RNI (2018)

These groups were organised with the funding of wealthy landowners32 and built-up their fighting capacity with the support of members of the military force (CIJP, 1992; Madariaga, 2006; Molano, 2009; Vásquez, 2006; TSDJB 2014a, 2014b, 2017).33 The organisation of the self-defence groups was replicated in the neighbouring municipalities and it became known in the region as the “San Vicente model” (TSDJB, 2017). However, one of the main differences between these self-defence groups and the guerrillas, was that the former did not aim to become political actors; the paramilitaries that operated in this period did not appear to have an agenda beyond the counter-insurgency war (Madariaga, 2006; Molano, 2009; Vásquez, 2006). Hence, the emergence of these local groups does not seem to be directly linked with San Vicente’s or the region’s oil wealth. The third cycle of violence occurred between the late 1980s and the mid 1990s, when the struggle between the armed groups reached its peak. This is the period with the highest levels of attacks against

civilians (Fig. 4) and the largest number of victims of threats and murders linked with organised violence (Fig. 5). Three factors may explain the spike of the conflict’s intensity: the escalation of indiscriminate violence carried out by the self-defence groups, the attacks against the oil sector, and the violent interference with local politics. The first factor is linked with the intensification of the use of indiscriminate armed force against the population by the local self-defence groups (CIJP, 1992; Vásquez, 2006). The region became a pilot of a counter-insurgency strategy in which the military and the paramilitaries coordinated their actions and dragged civilians into the armed conflict (CIJP, 1992). Between 1988 and 1995, the local paramilitary groups carried out ten massacres in urban and rural areas of San Vicente, killing a total of 64 people (GMH, 2013). Furthermore, in the period 1985–1995, 23 selective homicides were attributed these groups (GMH, 2013). Additionally, these self-defence groups used forced displacement of peasants as a war strategy in the late 1980s and early 1990s (CIJP, 1992; Molano, 2009; Prada, 2006; Verdad Abierta, 2015).34 A second factor that contributes to explain the increase in the use of

32 According to CIJP (1992); Prada (2006) and Molano (2009), some of these groups were also financed by drug lords who had bought land in the Magdalena Medio region. 33 Interview No. 155.

34

7

Interview No. 153.

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a neighbouring region, absorbed self-defence groups that were active in San Vicente and established the Ramón Danilo Front (TSDJB, 2014b; Verdad Abierta, 2009a).45 Between 2000 and 2005, the ACPB’s Front recruited minors, murdered and disappeared civilians, carried out gender based violence, displaced peasants from their land, and taxed the locals (TSDJB, 2014b; TSDJC, 2015, 2016). Aside from receiving support from the military, at least until the early 2000s, the ACPB also worked together with local and regional politicians (CSJ, 2013; TSDJB, 2014b; Virviescas, 2015a, 2015b).46 The power of the paramilitaries in the municipality was so great that Julio Cesar Prieto, the colonel who commanded the military battalion of San Vicente between 2003 and 2005, claimed that “a leaf would not move without the consent of the paramilitaries” (Virviescas 2015a). Between 1995 and 2004, the paramilitaries also threatened and murdered politicians and social leaders, including two members of the municipal council and the president of a JAC (community action board) (Amaya, 2016; CINEP, 2017; TSDJB, 2014b; TSDJC, 2016; Virviescas, 2015a). Furthermore, according to a municipal councillor, the paramilitaries interfered with the local elections of 2003: “their presence intimidated … just a comment from them became an order for the population”.47 In the same vein, a peasant leader claimed that the paramilitaries “influenced those elections… they said who we should vote for.”48 Colonel Prieto also stated that he received reports about the interference of the paramilitaries in the said election (Virviescas, 2015a). According to a ruling from a transitional justice court, the paramilitaries were able to change the electoral profile of the municipality by attacking left-wing politicians and displacing their constituencies (TSDJB, 2014b). However, there is evidence that the displacement of peasants was also a land-grab strategy. The tribunal found that the paramilitaries forced the displacement of numerous families, who were also forced to sell them their properties at prices that were below the market price (TSDJB 2014b). Was there an association between oil and the expansion of the AUC paramilitary project into San Vicente and the neighbouring municipalities? First, since the late 1990s, the paramilitaries funded their activities in San Vicente by stealing gasoline from the oil pipeline and organising the black market of stolen fuel (TSDJB, 2014b; Verdad Abierta, 2009a).49 Even more, allegedly, there were members of the military who participated in the illegal business. According to former mayor Ernesto Macías, “there was a high-ranking military officer that worked with the paramilitaries and trafficked with fuel”.50 The colonel Prieto also mentioned these links in his testimony before the Supreme Court of Justice and claimed that the people in the municipality referred to San Vicente’s battalion as the “battalion of the gasoline cartel” (CSJ, 2013). Furthermore, colonel Prieto stated that the paramilitaries forced the retailers to distribute their stolen fuel in San Vicente (Virviescas, 2015a). Aside from “bunkering”, the paramilitaries also received forced contributions from the contractors of the oil companies that operated in the area (Verdad Abierta, 2009a).51 Another factor that made San Vicente strategic for the paramilitaries was the possibility of controlling the neighbouring city of Barrancabermeja. According to Madariaga, (2006) since 1997 the paramilitaries used their dominion of San Vicente to promote the

armed force against civilians, was that the ELN started targeting the oil infrastructure in the early 1990s (GMH, 2013).35 The attacks were part of ELN’s strategy to extort the oil companies that operated in the region. According to a regional historian and the director of the most important civil society organisation that is present in the region, the ELN extorted Ecopetrol and its contractors, as they did in other oil producing areas of the country like Arauca department.36 The ELN also targeted the municipal governments to seize part of their oil royalties.37 How did the ELN attempted to capture oil royalties in San Vicente? The ELN demanded contributions from the mayors and threatened to use its armed force against them.38 Furthermore, to embezzle the funds, allegedly, some public procurement processes were rigged to simulate the implementation of small public projects or programs. For example, the mayoralty hand-picked a contractor that was previously agreed with the ELN and then granted the contractor a project that – usually – involved immaterial work (e.g. training activities), which was never carried out.39 However, the claim of supposed manipulation of procurement processes with the intervention of armed groups in San Vicente is not supported by judicial rulings, as in other oil-royalty abundant regions of Colombia (Gutiérrez and David, 2018). Thirdly, the escalation of the conflict’s intensity was also linked with the interference of the armed actors with local politics (Table 2). According to Ludwing Otero, former mayor of San Vicente, and a peasant leader from San Vicente, between the 1980s and early 1990s both guerrillas tried to influence the mayoralty’s decisions with the use of armed force against the public administration.40 After the decentralisation process that established the popular election of mayors, the guerrillas started interfering with local politics as well. In those days, some local leaders decided retire from politics due to political violence.41 Additionally, during the late 1980s the guerrillas targeted voters. According to a peasant leader from San Vicente, since the first elections of mayors in March 1988, “both groups intimidated the population to have incidence in the electoral results; more specifically, they demanded that the people voted certain candidates.”42 In the same vein, another peasant leader from San Vicente also claimed that between the late 1980s and mid 1990s, the guerrilla instructed the population who to vote for in local elections.43 In the fourth cycle, between the mid 1990s and 2007, the level of selective attacks against the population decreased substantially while the victims of forced displacement increased (Figs. 3 and 4). By the late 1990s, the military forces and the local self-defence groups had successfully pushed the ELN and the FARC out of San Vicente (TSDJB, 2014b; Vásquez, 2006, 2006).44 While the guerrillas ceased to operate in the municipality, the local self-defence groups transformed into a new type of armed actor with a political and economic agenda. Between 1998 and 2002, the ACPB paramilitary group arrived from

35

Interview No. 142. Interviews No. 133 and 136. 37 According to the director of the most important civil society organisation present in the region, a scholar from a public university of Santander, and a local journalist. Interviews No. 131, 136 and 145. 38 Interviews No. 131 and 136. 39 Interview No. 131. Furthermore, according to an official from the governorship of Santander department, the low concurrence of bidders to procurement processes in areas of Santander department where the armed conflict was intense could be partially a result of the contractors’ reluctance to participate in areas where armed groups influenced these processes (Interview No. 128). 40 Interviews No. 149 and 155. 41 For example, this was the case of a municipal councillor who served during the second half of the 1980s and who claimed that he retired in the early 1990s due to the hostility of the armed groups. Interview No. 139. 42 Interview No. 149. 43 Interview No. 137. 44 Interviews No. 131, 145 and 155. 36

45 The ACPB was funded in 1994 and, in the following, years expanded from the neighboring department of Boyacá into several departments, including Santander (TSDJB, 2014b; Verdad Abierta, 2009a). 46 Interview No. 136. 47 Interview No. 148. 48 Interview No. 149. 49 Interviews No. 138, 149, and 155. 50 Interview No. 138. 51 The paramilitaries also financed from forced contributions from peasants and local businesses (Virviescas, 2015a). Interviews No. 133, 136, 144, and 149.

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Table 2 Incidents of political violence in San Vicente.1988–1994. Sources: Cited in the table. Mayoral period

Description

Sources

1988 – 1990 1990 – 1992 1992 – 1994

Allegedly, the guerrillas intimidated politicians and instructed the population who to vote for. In 1991, the FARC kidnapped San Vicente’s mayor. In 1993, the mayor and municipality officials received death threats from paramilitary groups. The mayoralty’s secretary of finance was murdered.

Three peasant leadersa El Tiempo (1991) AI, 1993; El Tiempo (1993), Prada (2006) and a former municipal ombudsman b

a b

Interviews No. 137, 139 and 149. Interview No. 153.

studies have provided preliminary evidence on the channels of transmission that may explain such relationship. Additionally, the comparative case study published by Rettberg and Prieto (2018) offered convincing evidence on how oil wealth sometimes was the main motivation for the presence of armed groups in a territory but that, in other areas and occasions, it only represented a complementary source of income for these organisations (hence, other factors motivated their presence). This paper aimed to extend the nascent literature that studies the oil-conflict relationship using a subnational lens. More specifically, this paper contributes with the existing scholarship by helping to unveil the mechanisms that linked oil wealth with the onset and intensity of the internal armed conflict in a Colombian municipality, San Vicente de Chucurí. The paper reported three main findings. First, the presence of oil in San Vicente and the neighbouring municipalities contributed to explain the emergence of the first armed group in its territory. The founders of the ELN chose San Vicente, among others, with the objective of controlling its oil wealth. Additionally, the other two main groups, the FARC and the ACPB, expanded years later into the area with the same objective. San Vicente’s territory had other features that made it strategical for armed groups, but the evidence provided in this chapter suggests that the prospect of extracting oil rents was one of the main incentives that these groups had to fight for controlling. In this sense, the empirical evidence of San Vicente supports the socalled “feasibility mechanism”. When this mechanism operates, according to the literature, oil is not a root cause of conflict onset, but a permissive cause because it generates opportunities for rebels to finance their fight. In other words, oil provides a source of income for armed groups, thereby increasing their financial viability (Humphreys, 2005; Lujala 2010). In fact, the main three armed groups that operated in San Vicente appelated to different methods to seize oil rents: extorting oil companies and their contractors, oil bunkering, and controlling the illegal market of stolen oil. Furthermore, as it is discussed below, the oil rents seized by the armed groups in San Vicente funded their operation and expansion. However, there is a caveat about the process that contributed to explain the connection between oil wealth and conflict onset at the municipal level. The evidence does not support the claim that oil enabled the armed groups to finance the start-up of their organisation in San Vicente.54 The initial funds of the armed groups that emerged or expanded to San Vicente were external to the municipality. For example, despite of the ELN’s intention of controlling an oil rich region, in its first decade of operation the group was not able to consolidate its dominion over the area. Between 1965 and 1973, the ELN used guerrilla tactics to attack the state and raise funds by raiding banks and extorting wealthy land owners (Aguilera, 2006; Medina Gallego, 1996).55 But the ELN fighters were ill-equipped and the group was

migration of their sympathisers to Barrancabermeja city, which was under the control of the ELN and the FARC, to facilitate their entrance.52 In 1998, the paramilitaries started making public appearances in Barrancabermeja and, by the year 2000, they had taken over the city through massacres and selective murders (Madariaga, 2006). Why was Barrancabermeja important for the AUC? For the same reason considered by the ELN’s founders four decades before: oil. In an interview, the AUC’s commander that led the incursion into this city answered the question straightforwardly: “Why did Barrancabermeja matter? This municipality is the most important oil port of Colombia; the country’s carburettor” (Aranguren, 2002). And how did the paramilitaries finance their militias? The same AUC commander replied in a separate interview that their main funding was the theft of gasoline from the oil pipeline: “when I arrived to Santander, I financed with gasoline, if I needed to buy three rifles, I told my boys to tap into the pipeline because I knew there was money in there” (Verdad Abierta, 2009b). In sum, this section discussed evidence that suggests that oil wealth partially contributes to explain the intensity of violence agasinst civilians in San Vicente. First, the level of intensity was affected by the number of armed groups that struggled for controlling the territory. One of the main objectives pursued by three of these groups (ELN, FARC and ACPB) that disembarked in San Vicente was to control the oil-rich region and extract economic rents to finance their organised violence. Each group used different strategies to capture oil rents but all of them extorted and/or requested forced contributions from oil companies and their contractors. Furthermore, although it has not been confirmed by the judicial authorities, it seems plausible that the guerrillas were able to seize part of the oil royalties between the late 1980s and mid 1990s. Finally, the ACPB siphoned off oil and refined products, by tapping the pipelines, and sold the product on a black market that they controlled, financing their operation and expansion. 6. Discussion Internal civil conflicts are almost always multi-causal (Blattman and Miguel, 2010; Ross, 2004a, 2012), and the Colombian case is not an exception.53 At most, oil is one of several variables that may contribute to explain armed conflicts. This is also the case in the oil-rich region examined in this paper, where other factors also influenced the arrival and emergence of armed groups. As Ross (2012, 145) rightly asserted, “When oil-producing states fall prey to civil war, oil is never the only factor; it is sometimes not even the most important factor.” However, the literature has presented persuasive evidence on the incidence of oil wealth in the colombian armed conflict, particularly in oil-porducing regions (Carreri and Dube, 2017; Dube and Vargas, 2013; Sánchez and Palau, 2006). Futhermore, these econometric-based 52 Also, in the early 2000s, the AUC’s block that fought in Barrancabermeja recruited minors in San Vicente (TSDJB, 2017). 53 According to the literature review of Blattman and Miguel (2010, 22), the correlates of war have been established by cross-country econometric-based studies: “Civil war is more likely to occur in countries that are poor, are subject to negative income shocks, have weak state institutions, have sparsely populated peripheral regions, and possess mountainous terrain.”

54

In a similar vein, Ross’s (2004a) comparative case study of thirteen resource-based civil wars (including Colombia) did not find that rebel groups financed the setup of their organisations directly or indirectly with natural resources. 55 Interview No. 133. 9

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diverse illegal markets, but its rank and file members did not receive material incentives (e.g. a salary), nor were allowed to benefit personally from looting, and their members had no expectation of leaving the group (lifetime militancy was enforced). Hence, the guerrillas’ members had low economic incentives to join, their expected life-long commitment to the group ruled out considering the labour opportunity costs of joining, and the risks of participating were very high. Despite of the latter, FARC became the biggest armed group in Colombia and its fighters were disciplined. Furthermore, the AUC paramilitaries did pay a salary to its members, but the intensity of the armed conflict in San Vicente during the period time they operated was lower than in the previous cycles. Also, as Gutiérrez Sanín (2008, 227) rightly pointed, "Contrary to the standard story of the political economy of war, in Colombia the only organisation that offered selective incentives to its warriors - the paramilitaries - fell apart; it lasted five years.” Finally, the third finding reported in this paper is that the case of San Vicente offered mixed evidence on the operation of the mechanism termed by the literature “state as target”. The literature contends that this mechanism occurs when natural resource wealth increases the value of controlling or capturing the state (Fearon and Laitin, 2003; Humphreys, 2005; Le Billon, 2001; Ross, 2004b). For example, a fiscal windfall generated by the oil exploitation may increase the value of the state as a target for armed groups (Ross, 2012). Hence, this mechanism could partially explain the increased intensity of the conflict at the municipal level. With respect to Colombia, the econometric based studies published by Sánchez and Palau (2006); Dube and Vargas (2013)58 and Carreri and Dube (2017) provide preliminary evidence supporting the operation of the state-as-target mechanism at the subnational level. These three studies reported that a specific type of violence that appeared to be more intense in oil producing regions: the use of armed force against politicians. This may suggest that oil revenues accrued by subnational governments were also targeted by armed groups and, therefore, the use of armed force against politicians was functional to their objective of seizing public funds. In the case of San Vicente, this paper argued that the decentralisation reforms (since the 1980s) and the subsequent windfall accrued by the municipal government could contribute to explain the violent interference of armed groups with local democracy. The case study suggests that the attacks against politicians and public officials by armed groups and their interference with elections started after the 1980s. In other words, the availability of oil revenues could have had an incidence in the war strategies pursued by the incumbent armed groups. The violent pursuit of oil royalties by armed groups appeared to diversify the type of victims of the armed conflict. Additionally, the use of armed force against civilians with the objective of seizing oil royalties was not circumscribed to a specific armed group. The case offers evidence that the ELN, the FARC and AUC’s branch in San Vicente attempted different strategies to divert oil revenues to their coffers. However, the biggest windfall of oil royalties accrued by the mayoralty of San Vicente occurred between the mid 2000s and early 2010s due to the increased prices of oil and the growth in the oil output. Despite of the wealth controlled by the municipal government, the level of violence during that period of time decreased and after 2007 no armed group has permanently settled in San Vicente. Hence, there is no correlation between oil revenues and the intensity of armed conflict in the case study. An alternative interpretation of the evidence is that extracting oil revenues is costlier than deriving income from oil exclusively through coercion, such as extorting oil companies. Targeting the subnational

poorly endowed (Aguilera, 2006; Arenas, 2009; Medina Gallego, 1996). Moreover, I did not find evidence that the ELN was able to raise funds from extorting the oil sector during the 1960s.56 Hence, the availability of oil wealth could have contributed to attract the ELN’s founders to San Vicente, but oil did not finance the initial organisation’s plans. Hence, while oil wealth may contribute to stimulate armed groups to assemble or enter into oil areas, it did not appear to finance the initial stages of these groups in the case study. Oil wealth may be an attractive source of income for armed groups, but its availability in a territory does not generate automatic opportunities to reap economic rents. There are different means that an armed group may use to extract income from oil, but the case study suggests that the extraction requires an installed capacity for organised violence. The second finding reported in this paper is that oil had an indirect incidence over the intensity of the armed conflict in San Vicente and that this influence may be partially explained by the mechanism termed by the literature “resource battles”. This mechanism occurs when two or more armed groups contest oil wealth and battle for controlling the territory, thereby increasing conflict severity (Ross, 2004a). Although there was a short period of time when the ELN and FARC co-existed, during most of the period of study the guerrillas fought among each other with the objective of gaining exclusive control of the area. Futhermore, the ACPB also aimed at expelling its competitors and, since the early 2000s, the paramilitary group became the exclusive dominant of San Vicente. The highest levels of violence, measured in terms of civilian victims of diverse forms of abuses by armed groups, occurred during the time when three different armed groups contested simultaneously the territory. Granted, the direct cause of heightened intensity of the armed conflict would not be oil but the presence of multiple armed groups competing for controlling the territory. This is consistent with the quantitative-based studies of Cunningham (2011), who found that multi-party civil wars where armed groups have separate preferences over the outcome of the conflict tended to last longer and to be more deadly. However, if San Vicente’s terrtitory had a strategical value for armed groups due to its oil wealth and this characteristic explains the attraction of multiple contenders, then at least indirectly oil had an incidence over the conflict’s intensity. An alternative explanation for the incidence of oil wealth over the intensity of armed conflict in San Vicente could be that resource-based groups attract (opportunistic) fighters that will tend to commit high levels of indiscriminate violence. According to Weintsein (2007), the armed groups that rely on providing selective incentives for recruitment purposes (e.g. material benefits), tend to attract opportunistic fighters that are less disciplined and prone to attack civilians more indiscriminately (e.g. expectation of rewards may drive combatants to loot). In other words, the behaviour of these type of groups is a consequence of their recruitment profile, because they attract fighters that are interested in short term benefits rather than combatants that are committed to long term benefits.57 However, Weinstein’s (2007) theory does not appear to stand for the Colombian armed conflict nor for the specific case of San Vicente. For example, the FARC and ELN guerrillas were able to seize funds from

56 The only register of an attack carried out by the ELN against an oil company during the 1960s that I could find did not occur in San Vicente nor Barrancabermeja. In August 1965, the ELN bombed the premises of the Texas Petroleum Company that were located close to Bucaramanga city (Villamizar, 2017). 57 The so-called “recruitment profile bias mechanism” posits that when armed groups “emerge in environments rich in natural resources” they attract opportunistic combatants that “tend to commit high levels of indiscriminate violence” (Weinstein, 2007, 9). Furthermore, (Weinstein, 2007, 308–9) argued that these “opportunistic groups tend to use violence in such a way (indiscriminate, brutal) that it generates resistance from civilian populations, leading to a cycle of repression and resistance.”

58 However, Dube and Vargas (2013, 1406) acknowledged that their evidence about the mechanisms that connect oil and conflict was indirect, since they did not have measures of rebel recruitment (to test a labour opportunity cost effect) or of the looting of public funds (to test the rapacity effect).

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supplemented with process tracing analysis (Gerring, 2017). Hence, the results presented in this paper help us advance in the study of the subnational effects of oil wealth, but it is not a finished endeavour. There are at least two future avenues of research on the subnational study of the incidence of oil in the Colombian internal armed conflict. First, it would pertinent to further examine the three mechanisms described in this paper, especially the subnational-government-as-target, in other oil-rich municipalities of Colombia. In fact, this paper is part of a larger research project, where the oil-conflict relationship is being explored in other regions of Colombia. For example, the comparative case study of Rettberg and Prieto (2018) reported that in municipalities of three departments (Arauca, Casanare and Meta) the guerrilla and paramilitary groups captured the subnational governments, in partnership with local politicians, and pillaged oil royalties. Second, there is a key dimension of armed conflicts that was not approached in this paper: how oil may influence their duration. The case of San Vicente may be particularly illuminating because its oil wealth did not prevent the cesseation of the armed conflict in the municipality. It further supports the idea that the oil curse is not inevitable nor deterministic. Despite of the strategic value of this territory for armed groups, San Vicente became one of the few municipalities in Colombia that has lived almost a decade in post-conflict conditions. The termination of the conflict in San Vicente, despite of its oil wealth, makes the case particularly interesting in a country where the state is still fighting left-wing and right-wing armed groups and where these groups continue to extract revenues, directly and indirectly, from oil and minerals.

government demands the development of political abilities in addition to military capacity. For example, the political capture requires that armed groups associate with key decision makers, such as local politicians and subnational public officials, to interfere with the local democracy. In sum, the seizure of oil revenues through the political capture appears to be costlier and more complex than the operations required for mere racketeering. 7. Conclusions This paper argued that San Vicente’s oil wealth and the spill-over effects from the neighbouring oil-producing regions contributes to explain the outbreak and severity of the armed conflict. Additionally, the paper reveals subnational political processes behind such connection. The empirical evidence presented in the paper supports two mechanisms that may contribute to explain conflict onset and intensity: the feasibility mechanism and the resource battles mechanism, respectively. Additionally, the paper offers mixed evidence on the operation of a variant of a mechanism termed by the literature state-as-target mechanism (termed by Gutiérrez and David, 2018 the subnational-government-as-target mechanism). This paper aimed at increasing our understanding on the causal pathways linking oil and internal armed conflicts. However, a case study approach has a limited capacity to definitely prove a hypothesis (or to definitely reject it). Instead, this methodology has an exploratory advantage (e.g. generating hypotheses) and allows understanding how the independent, mediating and dependent variables interact when it is Appendix A List of interviewees

No.

Description of interviewee

Category

Date

125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155

Former Santander governorship senior advisor Santander governorship official Professor at UIS Santander governorship official Regional journalist at La Silla Vacía (La Silla Santandereana) Former Santander governorship secretary of planning Professor of a public university in Bucaramanga Regional journalist Regional historian Bucaramanga townhall official Former Governor of Santander Head of a civil society organisation Peasant leader from San Vicente de Chucurí Former mayor of San Vicente de Chucurí Peasant leader from San Vicente de Chucurí Peasant leader from San Vicente de Chucurí Local journalist Member of the council of San Vicente de Chucurí Civic leader from San Vicente de Chucurí Member of the board of directors of Fedecacao at San Vicente de Chucurí Local radio journalist Civic leader from San Vicente de Chucurí. Recruited by FARC when he was thirteen years old. San Vicente de Chucurí mayoralty official Member of the council of San Vicente de Chucurí Peasant leader from San Vicente de Chucurí San Vicente de Chucurí mayoralty official Communitarian TV director Worker at the Programa de Desarrollo y Paz del Magdalena Medio Former Ombudsman at San Vicente de Chucurí Civic leader from San Vicente de Chucurí Former mayor of San Vicente de Chucurí

Subnational government Subnational government Scholar Subnational government Journalist Subnational government Scholar Journalist Scholar Subnational government Subnational government Civil society Civil society Subnational government Civil society Civil society Journalist Subnational government Civil society Civil society Journalist Civil society Subnational government Subnational government Civil society Subnational government Journalist Civil society Subnational government Civil society Subnational government

16/02/2016 17/02/2016 17/02/2016 18/02/2016 18/02/2016 18/02/2016 18/02/2016 19/02/2016 19/02/2016 19/02/2016 19/02/2016 21/02/2016 21/02/2016 22/02/2016 22/02/2016 22/02/2016 22/02/2016 22/02/2016 23/02/2016 23/02/2016 24/02/2016 24/02/2016 24/02/2016 25/02/2016 26/02/2016 26/02/2016 26/02/2016 26/02/2016 27/02/2016 27/02/2016 27/02/2016

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156 157 158 159

Member of the Transparency Committee at the Chamber of Commerce of Bucaramanga DNP regional royalties senior official DNP regional royalt ies official Former San Vicente de Chucurí mayoralty official

Civil society Central government Central government

29/02/2016 29/02/2016 29/02/2016

Subnational government

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