Las tierras profundas de la "lucha contra las drogas" en Colombia: la Ley y la violencia estatal en la vida de los pobladores rurales del Caquetá

Previous research projects have focused the life of men and women living in the ghettos of the United States, in the context of the illicit drug economy. Now it is necessary to inquire into the configuration of this economy from the other end of the chain, that is, the production side, particularly in Colombian coca-growing territories. Through the study of the experiences of violence over rural men and women in Caquetá, the article seeks to characterise those rural spaces in which the Colombian State exercised a specific type of violence in the context of the “war on drugs”. It also shows the way in which these experiences determine the relationship between the rural population and the Colombian State. The article suggests that the “war on drugs” builds “hinterlands”, understood as spaces where State violence and social policy are exercised in a peculiar manner, in an environment of abandonment by and absence of the State. Thus, the way war is shaped, beyond regular and guerrilla warfare, creates a scenario of hostility, surveillance, stigmatization, and generalized poverty that affects the rural populations of Caquetá and diminishes the legitimacy of the State in that region. [author]