Table Of ContentISSN 1653-2244
INSTITUTIONEN FÖR KULTURANTROPOLOGI OCH
ETNOLOGI DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL
ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY
_____________________________________________________________________________
Resisting abandonment:
An ethnography of oil workers' resistance to political violence and
capital accumulation in rural Colombia
Trade Unionist Rodolfo Vecino in Puerto Triunfo, Meta, 2014. - Photo: Andrés Gómez
By Andrés Gómez T
2016
______________________________________________________________________________
MASTERUPPSATSER I KULTURANTROPOLOGI
Nr 58
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Abstract
Colombia is the worst country to be a trade unionist in the world. Approximately 3,000 workers
have been assassinated in the last 30 years, the state, paramilitary organizations and some
multinationals being responsible for most of the murders. This fact highlights the importance of
researching the mechanisms of mass violence against trade unionists including the mechanisms on
part of the trade unionists that keep trade unionism alive. Because of the importance of studying
power and resistance as part of social change, this thesis presents an ethnography of political
violence against the labourers and the trade unionists that work for Pacific Rubiales Energy in the
department of Meta, with focus on how those trade unionists resist such violence with an open
resistance to both political violence and coercive capital accumulation. I state that the trade
unionists, by adapting their list of demands to the locals' social and environmental needs, overstep
corporatist trade unionism allowing them to break the social and physical death imposed by the
state, the mafias and the multinational. I argue that the trade unionists' open resistance not only
allows them to continue their social struggle and to challenge the violence exerted against them, but
permits them to modernize a country that sustains a semi-feudal structure beneficial for the
multinationals, the mafia barons and the economic and political elites by challenging their corrupt
and murderous relations.
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Este trabajo lo dedico a quienes
destinan su vida a exigir justicia social y
dignidad, y especialmente a quienes les
han arrebatado su vida al hacerlo.
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Table of Contents
Abstract ................................................................................................................................................ 2
Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................. 4
Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................................ 7
List of Abbreviations ........................................................................................................................... 8
I Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 10
Open resistance against open violence ........................................................................................... 10
From slavery to free labour ............................................................................................................ 12
Massacre as a paradigm for multinational-state action .................................................................. 13
Organization of this study .............................................................................................................. 14
II Narratives of political violence ................................................................................................... 17
State violence against trade unionists ............................................................................................ 18
Oil and violence ............................................................................................................................. 20
Violence and neoliberalism ............................................................................................................ 21
Anthropology of political economy and resistance ........................................................................ 23
Political economy ....................................................................................................................... 23
Neoliberalism ............................................................................................................................. 24
Resistance................................................................................................................................... 26
Research question ...................................................................................................................... 27
III Method ......................................................................................................................................... 29
Epistemology ................................................................................................................................. 29
Participant observation ................................................................................................................... 30
Coming back home .................................................................................................................... 32
The field ..................................................................................................................................... 32
Fieldwork in a violent setting..................................................................................................... 34
Techniques ............................................................................................................................. 37
Interviewing unionists ............................................................................................................ 37
IV Oil and power .............................................................................................................................. 39
Puerto Gaitán.................................................................................................................................. 40
Cocaine, guerrillas, paramilitary and oil .................................................................................... 42
Connivance between oil companies and paramilitary ................................................................ 43
Pacific Rubiales Energy, oil and paramilitary ........................................................................... 46
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Power, cheap oil and low capital expenditure................................................................................ 47
Reducing constant capital .......................................................................................................... 49
Reducing variable capital ........................................................................................................... 49
Organizing help for extraction ....................................................................................................... 50
V The “unthinkable” happened ...................................................................................................... 52
The joy of having a job .................................................................................................................. 52
Not everybody was happy .............................................................................................................. 54
The arrival of the USO ................................................................................................................... 56
“A bomb about to explode” ........................................................................................................... 59
Agents, Power and Resistance ....................................................................................................... 60
Sovereign power ........................................................................................................................ 60
Disciplinary power ..................................................................................................................... 61
Biopower .................................................................................................................................... 62
VI Pacific Rubiales strikes back ..................................................................................................... 64
Confidence and deception .............................................................................................................. 67
Countermeasures ............................................................................................................................ 69
The expulsion of the USO and the arrival of the UTEN ............................................................ 69
Persecution and prosecutions ..................................................................................................... 71
The silencing and prosecuting of the protests ............................................................................ 75
Levels of assault ............................................................................................................................. 78
VII Resisting the 'monster' .............................................................................................................. 81
The insider(s) ................................................................................................................................. 81
Demonstrating social and environmental agendas ......................................................................... 85
“No water for oil” ...................................................................................................................... 85
Breaking down open exclusion .................................................................................................. 87
Grass roots resistance ..................................................................................................................... 89
Visiting Puerto Gaitán and El Porvenir with Héctor .................................................................. 89
“Let's go to a brothel” ............................................................................................................ 89
El Porvenir ............................................................................................................................. 91
Challenging material and social exclusion..................................................................................... 96
Bulletproofing life ...................................................................................................................... 96
Private life tensions .................................................................................................................... 97
International accompaniment ..................................................................................................... 99
The exile ................................................................................................................................... 100
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Articulation at grassroots levels ................................................................................................... 101
VIII Resisting abandonment ......................................................................................................... 103
Resisting the semi-feudal sovereign ............................................................................................ 105
Resisting abandonment ................................................................................................................ 106
References ....................................................................................................................................... 110
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Acknowledgments
This research was funded by the Hugo Valentin Centrum through the Master course in Holocaust
and Genocide Studies in 2014 and the Swedish trade union ST in 2015. Special gratitude is owed to
all the trade unionists and social leaders I met during my research in Colombia, their words and
company are lessons on determination and solidarity. I thank Oscar Jansson for his patience and
invaluable insights as my supervisor, Alexandra Iriarte for always pushing me forward and Liesl
Drew for my peer review.
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List of Abbreviations
ACMV Self-Defence Forces of Meta and Vichada
AUC United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia
CAF Colombian Armed Forces
CAJAR Lawyers' Office José Alvear Restrepo
CEPAL Economic Commission for Latin America
CINEP Centre for Communal Research and Education
COP Colombian currency, pesos
COPLEX Coplex Petroleo do Brasil
DAS Administrative Department of Security
ECOPETROL Colombian Petrol Company
ESMAD Mobil Anti-riot Squad
ENS National School of Unionism
EPL Popular Liberation Army
FCSPP Committee for Political Prisoners
JAC Communitarian councils
M19 19 of April Movement
th
NPU National Protection Unit
OAS Organization of American States
PASO Project for International Accompaniment and Solidarity in Colombia
PNUD United Nations Development Programme
PRE Pacific Rubiales Energy
PRT Workers Revolutionary Party
REDHER Network of Brotherhood and Solidarity with Colombia
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UP Patriotic Union party, political party
SIJIN Judicial Police
TROCO Tropical Oil Company
USO Oil Industry Union
UTEN Union of Workers in the Energy Industry
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I
Introduction
This thesis is an exploration of resistance on the part of trade unionists against both neoliberal
accumulation and political violence. Here is presented the people's and worker's actions of
resistance, meaning their agency in the midst of neoliberal trade and political violence against trade
unionists and social movements in rural Colombia. Here, I address how collective action
encourages social change and creates spaces and situations that foster social movements and propel
their agendas. In this aspect this thesis differs from James Scott’s (2008) analysis of resistance. The
author states that:
In the long run, and in certain circumstances, the peasantry and the working class do have "the
means to change" fundamentally their situation. But in the short run- today, tomorrow, and the day
after- they face a situation that very sharply restricts their real options (ibid: 247).
Scott's analysis takes as point of departure his work in the 1970s in Kedah, Malaysia, where
despite the resistance enacted in the form of strikes and revolts, land was not in the hands of the
peasants. “The few opportunities for land and work remaining to Sedaka's poor depend today, as
always, on the sufferance of the wealthy” (ibid), concludes Scott who affirms that strikes and
revolts obtained concessions but it is the “stubborn” and concealed resistance in everyday life, “the
truly durable weapons of the weak” (ibid: 303). In this thesis, resistance is not an action where
resisters change “fundamentally their situation” in the long run, fighting hegemony, questioning the
superstructure and concealing their actions. Here, resistance is not a symbolic but rather an active
action performed by trade unionists in rural Colombia, people that have openly challenged an oil
multinational within a context of violence against trade unions. For instance, I reflect on how
inhabitants and workers have challenged the attempt on part of the multinational of eliminating
trade unionists -revealing fundamental changes in workers’ lives in the short run.
Open resistance against open violence
The approach to active and open resistance is presented in the following story of one of the
participants of this work, a person that saved his life within a process of resistance. The story also
serves as an introduction to the nature of the problem: the oppression and the subversion of orders
on the part of people's collective action.
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Description:multinationals being responsible for most of the murders. This fact highlights the importance of researching the mechanisms of mass violence against
