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Abstract

The present paper explores what the ongoing peace talks between the Colombian government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército Popular (FARC-EP) may mean to Colombia's growing extractive economy. Militarization during the decades-long conflict and the spike in rural, state and paramilitary violence under former President Alvaro Uribe Vélez's (2000-2008) have left an unequal land structure favorable to resource extraction by foreign multinational corporations. Concessions for mining and oil exploration now cover a large percentage of Colombian territory, and the policy environment has become ever more welcoming to foreign capital. While armed conflict has opened new territories for resource exploitation, the instability it has created could deter long-term foreign investment. This paper hypothesizes that current President Juan Manuel Santos's pursuit of peace with the FARC-EP aims to enhance conditions for intensified resource extraction in Colombia in consonance with the regional trend toward a recolonization of Latin America's natural commons.

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The New Imperialism

David Harvey (2003)

People around the world are confused and concerned. Is it a sign of strength or of weakness that the US has suddenly shifted from a politics of consensus to one of coercion on the world stage? What was really at stake in the war on Iraq? Was it all about oil and, if not, what else was involved? What role has a sagging economy played in pushing the US into foreign adventurism? What exactly is the relationship between US militarism abroad and domestic politics? These are the questions taken up in this compelling and original book. In this closely argued and clearly written book, David Harvey, one of the leading social theorists of his generation, builds a conceptual framework to expose the underlying forces at work behind these momentous shifts in US policies and politics. The compulsions behind the projection of US power on the world as a "new imperialism" are here, for the first time, laid bare for all to see.