OE Watch Commentary: In 2016 a Colombian High Court emited an opinion that has changed the political dynamic in Colombia to a degree unexpected by many. The court ruled that local (county-level) communities, through means of a popular vote, could prohibit certain natural resource exploration and extraction. One of the first communities to take such a step was Cajamarca, Tolima, a county that was the home of a large gold mining operation run by a foreign firm. The locals there voted 97 percent to 3 percent to shut down the operations. Operations indeed ended as the accompanying excerpted article from Vanguardia Liberal demonstrates, which emboldened activists to attempt the same in other communities, some of which are listed in the article from Semana.
Recently, for instance, in El Peñón County in Santander Department, the local government held a popular consult, which voted to disallow a full range of exploration and extraction operations. The intention, ostensibly at least, was to favor an economy of agriculture and tourism. El Peñón (which translates to ‘crag’) is a beautiful mountainous place, so the preference of a pastoral, touristic future is not an unreasonable fantasy. The article from Semana (which also enjoyed wide publication), however, argues that the locally determined, total prohibition of resource extraction activities is unconstitutional. It further argues that some of the consults were promoted on the basis of false arguments. Regardless, El Peñón may present a case-study of a security challenge created by an admixture of related, not so innocent phenomena.
Some communities, perhaps El Peñón, are near, contiguous with, or perhaps home to smuggling routes. Such intimacy with smuggling routes exposes a community to smuggling gangs, including powerful guerrilla hybrids such as the ELN and FARC, or to some of the lesser-known criminal smuggling organizations. These gangs tend strongly to be in some kind of mutually beneficial association with the regions’s Bolivarian hierarchy, that is to say, with the inter- and trans-national political-governmental movement of the Marxist left. As is perhaps the case in El Peñón county (and several of the other counties noted in the Semana article), the local consults and attendant marches have been organized by pro-Bolivarians. The exact voting result in El Peñón is unknown, but the 97% vote in Cajamarca was itself suspect as a bit too perfect.
In spite of protestations to the contrary, it appears that after a community nixes legal extraction enterprises, the gangs then encourage artisanal or informal mining operations, organizing the miners. The gangs control the claims, assaying and movement of the product. The result can be continued environmental deprivation, loss of government income, violation of safety and labor law preferences, and myriad other ills, not the least of which is the overall fiscal and strategic strengthening of the Bolivarian hierarchy.
The article from Los Benjamins, for instance, is typical of reports that smuggling into and out of Venezuela is controlled in part by armed elements associated with the Bolivarian government in Venezuela, in this case its Bolivarian National Guard. A similar article was posted on Dolar Today at https://dolartoday.com/el-grannegocio-de-la-gnb-asi-es-el-contrabando-de-alimentos-efectivo-yoro-hacia-colombia/. End OE Watch Commentary (Demarest)
“The Constitutional Court never wanted to authorize unilater powers of prohibition to territorial entities. It is an openly unconstitutional interpretation and without legal support.
At the date of the writing of this article [Early September 2017] popular consults have been conducted against mining, petroleum and electric projects in counties such as Arbeláez, Cabrera, Cajamarca, Cumaral, Pijao, and Paujil, and about forty other consults are in the works.
Likewise, to date, counties such as Jericó, Támesis, Ibagué, Urrao, Pitalito, Timaná, Oporapa, Altamira, and El Agrado among others, have furthered agreements by way of their county consults that in a unilateral manner have decided to prohibit mining activities of hidrocarbons or of electric infrastructure in their territories.”