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CUUK- CUUK/Hilgers ISBN: June , :
REGIONAL VIOLENCE AND CLIENTELISM
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Subnational Authoritarianism in Colombia
Divergent Paths in Cesar and Magdalena
Kent Eaton and Juan Diego Prieto
Colombia’s democracy is often celebrated as one of the oldest and longest-
standing in Latin America (Posada Carbó ; Gutiérrez Sanín ).
The country’s democratic credentials, however, clash with its violent
record, as well as with some less than democratic features – widespread
clientelism, instances of election fraud and coercion, and the frequent use
of emergency powers by the government (Palacios ; Pécaut ).
The partisan bloodshed of La Violencia in the mid-s along with the
contemporary armed conict, which involves the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC), the National Liberation Army (ELN) and
right-wing paramilitary groups, have left approximately , dead
and more than million forcibly displaced. The internal armed con-
ict has exacted a severe toll on the citizenry’s political participation
and overall experience with democratic institutions (García ; Nasi
).
The contrast between formal democracy and undemocratic practices
has been especially stark at the subnational level. As in other parts of Latin
America, as far back as the colonial period there have been large swaths of
Colombian territory with little or no central state presence, or where the
rule of law has limited application, because real political power rests in
the hands of local elites and different types of non-state actors (González
; González, Bolívar, and Vásquez ; Uribe de Hincapié ).
Different subnational regions and localities in Colombia have been ruled
in ways that clash with the ideal of rational, bureaucratic governance
and with the modernization efforts pursued by the central state (Leal
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Eaton and Prieto
and Dávila ; Orjuela ). Such subnational orders have included
regional political hegemonies sustained by coercion or clientelism, as well
as territories controlled politically, economically, and socially by guerrilla
groups, paramilitaries, and drug trafckers. Though the web of subna-
tional violence in Colombia is daunting in its complexity, some clear
patterns are discernible and provide evidence for the arguments about
identity that are developed in the introduction. Violence has had a dispro-
portionate impact on Colombians of African and Indigenous descent, and
it has tended to reinforce class domination through the so-called contra-
reforma agraria (an agrarian counter-reform through which elites have
taken control of lands previously owned by displaced populations at the
bottom of the social hierarchy).
How can we reconcile Colombia’s democratic successes at the national
level with systematic abuses of democratic rights at the subnational level?
Why do authoritarian and violent practices persist at the subnational level
despite the efforts of democratic forces at the national level to eliminate
these practices and deepen local democracy? Perhaps most importantly,
what are the pathways through which subnational authoritarianism gives
way to less violent and more democratic forms of politics?
In the attempt to identify persuasive answers to these questions, we
engage in two distinct but complementary exercises in this chapter. The
rst exercise seeks to integrate Colombia into the literature on regime
juxtaposition, which scholars have developed to explain the persistence
of subnational authoritarian regimes in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico,
but that has so far overlooked Colombia (Gibson , ; Durazo-
Hermann ; Giraudy ). Similar to their peers in the federal
countries that are examined elsewhere in this volume (see chapters by
Durazo-Hermann, Fournier, and Lapegna), subnational authoritarian
elites in Colombia have sought to defend their dominant positions not
just by resisting the intervention of national actors who seek to promote
subnational democratization, but by grasping levers of power in national
institutions as well. Here we argue that, though it was derived from fed-
eral cases, the literature on subnational authoritarianism can shed light
on unitary countries like Colombia as well.
The chapter’s second exercise is to engage in a subnational comparison
of two similarly positioned departments in Colombia’s northern coastal
region: Cesar and Magdalena. These two departments share a striking
number of political, economic, and structural similarities, and both were
deeply affected by paramilitary violence beginning in the s. Our
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purpose here is to account for the divergent paths that these two depart-
ments took in the wake of the parapolítica scandal, which saw scores
of politicians prosecuted and convicted of illicit ties with paramilitary
groups starting in . Specically, whereas politics in Magdalena con-
tinue to be dominated by the same political clan as before the scandal
broke, in Cesar the clan backed by the United Self-Defense Forces of
Colombia (AUC) has essentially disappeared from political life, thereby
opening up space for the emergence of new actors and some degree of
democratization, however limited and unstable. We consider the relative
strength of a number of possible explanations (i.e. economic, societal,
coalitional) for this divergent outcome, and argue for the importance
of subnational party dynamics that predate the parapolítica scandal.
Cesar’s partial democratic opening was made possible in large part by
the presence of a department-level party (the Regional Integration Move-
ment) whose moderate orientation enabled it to strike a difcult bal-
ance, remaining largely independent from paramilitary domination, yet
not so threatening as to provoke a more violent response from the AUC.
Our central (subnational) nding therefore recalls a core insight artic-
ulated in the earlier literature on democratization at the national level
(O’Donnell and Schmitter ): democratic openings may be more likely
to occur through electoral victories for moderate rather than for radical
forces.
By focusing on the relative importance of factors like institutional
design, civil society coalitions, and partisan dynamics, this chapter seeks
to highlight the kinds of insights that political science can bring to the
interdisciplinary study of violence. Rather than beginning with society,
political science tends to study society from its governing structures down-
ward, as Hilgers and Macdonald note in the introduction. At the same
time, thanks to the types of decentralizing changes that happened not just
in Colombia but across the region, the spatial distance between these gov-
erning structures and the societies they govern has noticeably diminished.
This reduction in the space between those who govern and those who
are governed means that interdisciplinary approaches to violence have
become all the more urgent. Finally, while “the subnational is not only
to be dened in terms of the physical boundaries that make up cities and
regions” (Hilgers and Macdonald this volume ), here our main goal is
to derive insights about subnational violence by using the tools of com-
parative politics, namely a “most similar systems design” that explicitly
compares similarly situated subnational jurisdictions.
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Over the past decade new scholarship has emerged on regime juxtapo-
sition in federal countries, which Edward Gibson denes as “situations
where two levels of government with jurisdiction over the same territory
operate under different regimes, understood as the set of norms, rules,
and practices that govern the selection and behavior of state leaders”
(Gibson : ). Gibson explains how authoritarian regimes at the
subnational level can persist for long periods of time – despite democra-
tization of the national political regime – if subnational incumbents are
able to engage successfully in boundary control. According to his three-
part argument (; ), subnational incumbents must: ) prevent the
intrusion of national democratic actors seeking to ally with local demo-
cratic oppositions (i.e. “the parochialization of power”); ) use repre-
sentation in national institutions like legislatures to defend subnational
authoritarian practices (i.e. “the nationalization of inuence”), and )
control the many connections, including revenue and communication
ows, that bind the two levels of government (i.e. “the monopolization of
linkages”).
Though subnational authoritarian elites in unitary countries may not
enjoy the range of prerogatives available to their peers in federal coun-
tries, this institutional difference does not prevent them from engaging
in essentially the same three boundary control strategies identied by
Gibson. The “parochialization of power,” for example, is an apt descrip-
tion of how traditional regional elites in Colombia reacted to the his-
toric democratizing reforms that were adopted at the national level in
the s and s and that were designed to open up the political
system, including decentralization and the shift to a single nation-wide
district to elect Senators. Before the introduction of subnational elec-
tions, regional political elites held their ofces through appointments by
higher-ups. Upward rather than downward accountability meant that
mayors and governors in Colombia could essentially ignore opposition
from local societal organizations seeking to represent the interests of
subaltern classes, including most importantly peasant associations and
trade unions. The introduction of direct elections for mayors () and
governors () threatened to dramatically reduce this imbalance of
power between elite and non-elite class actors within subnational juris-
dictions (Ávila ; López ). Ultimately, many upper class regional
elites – including those in Cesar and Magdalena discussed below –
turned to paramilitary coercion in the attempt to hold onto subnational
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governments and to sideline the local democratic opposition forces that
otherwise would have been empowered by free and fair elections. As
Romero argues, regional elites opted to ally with paramilitary forces not
just to protect themselves from insurgents, but also to protect themselves
from reformers in the national government (Romero ).
In other words, subnational authoritarian elites in Colombia engaged
in the same overarching strategy of parochialization as their peers in
federal countries; they simply used different mechanisms to achieve this
same goal. In federal countries like Argentina and Mexico, the creation
of stable subnational hegemonic parties has operated as the chief mecha-
nism through which subnational authoritarian elites parochialize power.
In Colombia, where this solution was generally not available because
of the country’s unitary political structure, the dominant strategy was
to use paramilitary allies to gut the decentralizing and democratizing
reforms that otherwise threatened to open up subnational politics. This
special reliance on paramilitary structures to parochialize power had
important implications for the scope, incidence, and intensity of subna-
tional violence, much of which has deeply affected and displaced Afro-
Colombian and Indigenous populations. As a result, relative to their peers
in Argentina and Mexico, subnational democratic oppositions in Colom-
bia have faced much more varied, systematic, and lethal forms of sub-
national violence, including extensive kidnappings, recurring massacres,
and forced expulsions on a large scale. While the choice of specic mech-
anisms to parochialize power is thus a non-trivial issue, Gibson’s general
insight holds for Colombia: subnational authoritarians must neutralize
the impact of progressive reforms by democratic elements at the national
level if they are to survive.
Turning to the second strategy, when subnational authoritarian elites
in Colombia have engaged in the “nationalization of inuence,” they
have set their sights on the national legislature, much like their peers in
federal countries. Unlike the Argentine and Mexican (and U.S.) Senates,
the Colombian Senate is not designed to represent subnational jurisdic-
tions; indeed Colombia abandoned the use of departmental districts to
elect Senators in the shift toward a single nationwide district for Sen-
ate elections in the Constitution. Notwithstanding this institutional
difference, the Senate emerged as a critical arena in which subnational
authoritarian elites and their paramilitary allies have managed to exer-
cise signicant leverage. In the elections, for example, over a third
(%) of the country’s Senators were elected with the support of paramil-
itary allies (López ; López and Sevillano ). This successful
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“nationalization of inuence,” however, ultimately produced a backlash
in the form of the parapolítica scandals that erupted in and .
As of July , thirty-eight legislators and ve governors had been con-
victed of using paramilitary intimidation to win election, and more
former legislators face ongoing investigations.In this sense, not only have
subnational authoritarian elites in Colombia mirrored their peers in fed-
eral countries in their attempt to nationalize inuence, but their efforts
at the national level have triggered a much more far-reaching and long-
standing political crisis than anything observed in Argentina or Mexico.
Here it can be argued that the particular approach to “parochializa-
tion” adopted in Colombia helps us understand the logic of “national-
ization.” In order to parochialize power, as discussed above, subnational
authoritarian elites chose to depend on paramilitary forces, who deployed
their coercive forces against voters to ensure electoral victories for these
elites in both subnational and national races. But in exchange, paramil-
itary leaders demanded that the national legislators who were thereby
elected would use their national inuence to defend paramilitary inter-
ests in Congress. Although paramilitary forces are a quintessentially sub-
national phenomenon – powerful by virtue of their control over local
territory and sponsored chiey by regional elites and subnational mil-
itary divisions – in recent years their leaders have had much greater
cause to worry about national-level dynamics (García Villegas and Rev-
elo Rebolledo ; López ; Romero ).This is because of
two specic developments in the last fteen years that directly threatened
paramilitary leaders and greatly increased their need for national inu-
ence: ) legislative debates over extradition to the U.S. to stand trial for
drug trafcking, and ) the design and implementation of the Peace and
Justice Law that would govern paramilitary demobilization. The attempt
by paramilitary leaders to control these legislative outcomes eventually
triggered a vigorous crackdown on paramilitarism in a dynamic that
provides strong support for Gibson’s (: ) claim that the “nation-
alization of inuence” represents the “Achilles’ heel” of subnational
authoritarianism.
Finally, in discussing the third part of his framework,the “monopoliza-
tion of linkages,”Gibson emphasizes the need to examine the center not as
See: http://colombiareports.co/parapolitics/
According to Duncan (), the goal of warlords is to undermine the state’s monopoly
on the use of force in a given territory, not to exert national power, which makes them
vulnerable vis-à-vis external powers.
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a unitary actor, but as a constellation of “institutional actors with particu-
lar territorial interests and preferences”(: ). This point is critical in
making sense of the national conict between the president and the judi-
ciary that has unfolded over subnational authoritarianism in Colombia.
As in federal countries, one of the great ironies of regime juxtaposition in
Colombia is the signicant political conict it produces within – and not
simply across – levels of government.
On one side of this conict, President Álvaro Uribe (–) used
the powers of his ofce to defend and protect subnational actors impli-
cated in the paramilitary scandals. Salient examples include Uribe’s deci-
sion to appoint the former Governor of Sucre, Salvador Arana, as Ambas-
sador to Chile, and to name Jorge Noguera, Uribe’s regional campaign
manager in the department of Magdalena in the elections, as head
of the Administrative Department of Security (DAS). Noguera then used
DAS resources to protect paramilitary leader Jorge Tovar Pupo, alias
“Jorge ,”the leading paramilitary ally of authoritarian regional elites in
Cesar and Magdalena. More generally, regional elites elected to congress
in the parapolítica scandal formed an essential part of Uribe’s governing
coalition and provided critical support for judicial, electoral, penal, and
agrarian reforms in the years after (Acemoglu, Robinson, and San-
tos ; Ungar and Cardona ).
On the other side of this institutional struggle, the judiciary has
emerged as the main opponent of subnational authoritarianism in Colom-
bia. Specically, the Constitutional Court ruled against elements of the
Peace and Justice Law for doing too little to punish subnational author-
itarian actors, and the Supreme Court and the Attorney-General’s ofce
(Fiscalía) initiated hundreds of legal proceedings against implicated politi-
cians. The idea of undermining Uribe’s subnational authoritarian allies
appealed to the judiciary as a way to check a president intent on con-
centrating power in the executive branch relative to other branches
(Bejarano ). In other words, the judicial branch has targeted subna-
tional autocrats not simply out of a normative commitment to democ-
ratization, but as part of an institutional conict with the executive
branch. That struggles for supremacy between national branches of gov-
ernment can strengthen the push for subnational democratization on
the part of powerful national actors (like the judiciary) is especially
important in a case like Colombia where, as argued above, subna-
tional democratic oppositions have been eviscerated by violence that is
deeper and more extensive than anything seen in Argentina, Brazil, or
Mexico.
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To examine more closely the processes of change or reproduction of sub-
national authoritarianism in Colombia, we now move on to compare the
political trajectories of the departments of Cesar and Magdalena from
until the present. These two departments offer a useful avenue for
comparison in that, despite their considerable similarity in most regards,
they also differ in terms of the continued inuence of political groups
linked to paramilitary control of government. In addition to their eco-
nomic, social, and cultural similarities, they were ruled by the same
paramilitary faction (the Northern Bloc, led by Jorge ), and both expe-
rienced paramilitary intervention in electoral politics and public admin-
istration at its fullest (López : ).
However, after both departments’ paramilitary-backed governors and
many of their legislators were removed from ofce and sentenced to
prison by the national judiciary, their political trajectories have differed
in important ways. In Magdalena, the group of former governor Trino
Luna – sentenced to prison due to his ties to the AUC – has maintained
uninterrupted control of political power in the department. By contrast,
Cesar has experienced some political opening, as the political clan that
ruled the department in collusion with the AUC has been unable to return
to power, and new, independent forces have emerged. There has certainly
not been a total break from clientelism and other undemocratic practices,
and a recongured power bloc of traditional political families has lim-
ited the inuence of these new forces. Yet, in contrast to Magdalena – a
case of almost total continuity with paramilitary-backed political domi-
nation – Cesar experienced meaningful turnover. This divergence makes
these cases suitable for a comparison that can shed light on factors to
which future research on subnational authoritarianism should pay close
attention, both in Colombia and beyond.
Shared Histories: Similar Politics, Economics, and Conict Dynamics
Geographically, historically, and culturally, both departments are part
of Colombia’s Caribbean Coast region, in the north of the country.
Until its ofcial founding as a department in , Cesar was part of
Magdalena. Political life in both departments has been marked by clien-
telism and traditional party politics. The Liberal Party was traditionally
majoritarian, though Conservative minorities retained some inuence.
Leftist forces have been comparatively weak. Historically, power has been
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concentrated in the hands of a small number of family-based political
clans, such as the Araújo, Gnecco, and Cuello families in Cesar, and the
Díazgranados, Pinedo, and Vives families in Magdalena (Acevedo and
Arias a, b). In a striking example of the role of political fami-
lies in subnational authoritarianism (Behrend ), electoral outcomes
have been largely determined by shifting alliances among these families.
Armed conict dynamics have also been similar. Sustained guerrilla
presence began in both departments in the early s, but was mostly
concentrated away from the capitals (Manosalva and Quintero ;
Observatorio del Programa Presidencial de Derechos Humanos y DIH
a, b). Although their inuence remained mostly rural, attacks
against state security forces as well as extortions against landowners and
cattle ranchers by the FARC, the ELN, and the EPL were frequent until
the early s. As of today, however, guerrilla groups have all but dis-
appeared, largely as a result of paramilitary domination.
In Magdalena, paramilitary groups began to arise in the early
s, with links to illegal marijuana producers, cattle ranchers, and
banana companies (Observatorio del Programa Presidencial de Dere-
chos Humanos y DIH b; Zúñiga ). In Cesar, so-called self-
defense squads were rst created in the early s in the south of the
department by landowners and cattle ranchers (Observatorio del Pro-
grama Presidencial de Derechos Humanos y DIH a). In both regions,
these groups offered armed protection to drug trafckers and rural elites,
partly in response to attacks and extortions by guerrilla groups but also
through offensive campaigns against civilian social organizations. Start-
ing in the mid-s, paramilitaries in both departments became increas-
ingly linked to groups from other parts of the country, and between
and they all became part of the AUC’s Northern Bloc (Bloque
Norte), which by then was operating throughout the Caribbean Coast
region.
Under the command of Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias Jorge , the AUC’s
Northern Bloc became the dominant military force in Cesar and Mag-
dalena. Jorge and the majority of the region’s political elites forged
a tight alliance, forcing others to abandon political life and using sys-
tematic violence against those who did not accept paramilitary control
(García Villegas and Revelo Rebolledo ; Pedraza and Olaya ;
Zúñiga ). Their strategy consisted in selecting which candidates
could run for municipal and departmental ofce, setting up informal elec-
toral districts for national legislative elections (so as to maximize the
number of seats in Congress that would be obtained), and using violent
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coercion to ensure voters’ compliance. In , the candidates for gov-
ernor backed by the AUC, Hernando Molina Araújo in Cesar and
Trino Luna Correa in Magdalena, ran unopposed after other candidates
dropped out of the race due to paramilitary threats.Once in power,
paramilitaries and their allies systematically looted public resources, espe-
cially healthcare funds, natural resource royalties, and proceeds from
department-owned businesses, such as liquor companies and gambling
operations, and packed local ofces – including the judicial and electoral
systems – with sympathizers (Romero, Olaya, and Pedraza ; Pedraza
and Olaya ). In short, Cesar and Magdalena became what Camacho
() called “paracracies,”in which both access to and exercise of power
were controlled by paramilitaries and their civilian allies.
Divergent Post-AUC Trajectories
The parapolítica judicial processes had a considerable impact on Cesar
and Magdalena. Both of the governors who ran unopposed in were
removed from ofce and sentenced to prison in . Almost all their
members of Congress were removed from ofce or resigned, including the
most emblematic gures of both departments’ political elites, including
Senators Álvaro Araújo Castro (cousin of governor Molina) in Cesar, and
Dieb Maloof and Miguel Pinedo Vidal of Magdalena.
It was in , in the rst mayoral and gubernatorial election after
the parapolítica shock, that the trajectories of Cesar and Magdalena rst
diverged. In Magdalena, the new governor was Omar Diazgranados, a
former private secretary to the governor under Trino Luna. According to
press and NGO reports, Diazgranados’ candidacy was promoted from
prison by Luna and other parapolíticos from the region.He was later
removed from ofce on corruption charges.
By contrast, Cesar’s new governor, Cristian Moreno Panezo, was an
outsider to the department’s political elites. Moreno, of Afro-Colombian
origin and a former member of the departmental assembly, ran as the can-
didate of the Partido Verde–Opción Centro,a small independent party run
by former members of the M- guerrilla movement, in partnership with
In some municipalities, candidates without paramilitary support who did not withdraw
their candidacies in time to be removed from ballots were forced to run campaigns to
persuade voters not to support them (Zúñiga ).
“Omar Díazgranados Velásquez,” VoteBien.com, , http://www.terra.com.co/
elecciones_/articulo/html/vbe.htm.
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Divergent Paths in Cesar and Magdalena
the leftist Polo Democrático Alternativo.He defeated the Araújos’ can-
didate, Arturo Calderón Rivadeneira. Moreno was one of the candidates
who had attempted to run for governor in but dropped out due to
paramilitary intimidation, and he went on to testify against the Araújos
before the Colombian Supreme Court and denounce the paramilitary
takeover of Cesar’s political scene.His campaign was marked by a
discourse of peace, human rights, participatory politics, and accountabil-
ity in government.While in ofce, Moreno created the Ofce of the Peace
Advisor, tasked with providing services to victims of forced displacement
and other conict-related crimes, supporting local victims organizations,
and promoting human rights education, with support from the United
Nations Development Program (UNDP), which published a report with
high praise for Moreno (PNUD ).
As the results of the congressional election later made clear,
Moreno’s victory did not mark a total break from the past in Cesar’s
politics. Nor was his government without blemishes, including corruption
charges (for which he was exonerated) and his ties to Miguel Ángel Durán
Gelvis (discussed below). In addition, most of those elected to Congress
from this department continued to be part of the traditional political class:
one was arrested and two others have been investigated for paramilitary
links, and another has been tied to regional maas that control gambling
operations throughout the Caribbean Coast. Still, new space opened up
for outsiders, including Félix Valera, an ally of Moreno who won a Sen-
ate seat with the support of the newly formed Green Party.Meanwhile,
turnout for the Araújos’ ALAS Party was so low that ALAS lost its of-
cial recognition as a political party.No such improvements, however
“Acuerdo político a la Gobernación del Cesar entre el PDA y Cristian Moreno,”
Polo Democrático, September , , http://www.polodemocratico.net/Acuerdo-
politico-a-la-Gobernacion.
Corte Suprema de Justicia, Sala de Casación Penal, “Única Instancia .: Álvaro
Araújo Castro y otros,” February , .
“Programa de gobierno –. Una gobernación al alcance de todos.”Gobernación
del Cesar. Mimeo.
In addition to his vocal attacks against Cesar’s traditional elites, Valera also distanced
himself from new economic powers by criticizing mining companies in that depart-
ment for their labor and environmental practices. “Senador Félix Valera deende la
lucha de los mineros de La Jagua y Electricaribe,” Senado de la República,Novem-
ber , , http://www.senado.gov.co/sala-de-prensa/noticias/item/-senador-felix-
valero-deende-la-lucha-de-los-mineros-de-la-jagua-y-electricaribe.
A reform established a percent election threshold that parties would have to reach
in Senate elections in order to keep their party credentials. ALAS won less than . percent
of the national Senate vote.
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limited, can be cited for Magdalena. Its two senators were later removed
from ofce (one of them because of past AUC ties), two of its representa-
tives are still under investigation by the Supreme Court, and the rest have
been removed from ofce for other reasons.
The results of the and local elections and the congres-
sional elections also corroborated the continued power of parapolíticos in
Magdalena. In , both of the top candidates for governor were sup-
ported by political groups with paramilitary ties, but the winner, Luis
Miguel Cotes, symbolized even further the uninterrupted inuence of
Trino Luna. In addition to running with the support of Luna’s politi-
cal group, Cotes’ victory was marked by suspicions of neo-paramilitary
coercion because of the unusually high voter turnout and high winning
margins in areas that used to be under the AUC’s control. Subsequently,
in , all but one of Magdalena’s ve seats in the Chamber of Repre-
sentatives were won by politicians accused of having ties to parapolíticos
(Valencia and Ávila ). Then, in , Cotes was replaced as gover-
nor by his aunt, Rosa Cotes, whose husband, José Francisco Zúñiga, was
sentenced to prison in for his alliance with the AUC when he won
the mayoral elections in Santa Marta (the capital of Magdalena).
As for Cesar, later developments call for not overstating the extent of
its democratization and highlight the uncertainty and instability of its
transition away from subnational authoritarianism. Gearing up for the
local election, the incipient citizens’ movement that had supported
Moreno in lacked a strong candidate to face the department’s tradi-
tional elites. The winner was Luis Alberto Monsalvo Gnecco,nephew of
the Gnecco brothers, the family that alternated in power with the Araújos
throughout the s and s. Monsalvo defeated second-time can-
didate Arturo Calderón Rivadeneira, who was allegedly still backed by
the Araújos. During his tenure, Monsalvo was accused of failing to
act against illegal gasoline trafcking maas and neo-paramilitary struc-
tures operating in the region. His victory was seen as a disappoint-
ment by national media and NGOs, as several members of his family had
“Las cuatro sospechas alrededor de la elección del Mello Cotes,” La Silla Vacía,
November , , http://lasillavacia.com/historia/las-cuatro-sospechas-alrededor-de-
la-eleccion-del-mello-cotes-.
“La Rosa espinada de los pobres,” La Silla Vacía, May , , http://lasillavacia.com/
historia/la-rosa-espinada-de-los-pobres-.
Interview with Tulio Villa, community activist, Valledupar, November , .
“¿Quién es el diablo en el Cesar?” La Silla Vacía.
“El fantasma de un sueño maoso acosa al Cesar,” La Silla Vacía, August ,
, http://lasillavacia.com/historia/historia- valledupar- . Connections with these
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Divergent Paths in Cesar and Magdalena
been investigated (and some convicted) for their paramilitary connections
(Valencia and Ávila ).
To what extent does Monsalvo’s election represent a reversal to the
same old authoritarian order? Regarding his family ties, Monsalvo’s
paramilitary-linked uncles actually supported the Araújos’ candidate in
the and elections. Further, despite the links of the Gnecco
family to paramilitary squads in the s and s, they were actively
excluded from the AUC’s power bloc in the s and were not assigned
any of the AUC’s “voting districts.” In , Governor Monsalvo was
backed by an alliance between President Juan Manuel Santos’ Partido de
la U and the Green Party, including Senator Valera and, allegedly, gov-
ernor Moreno as well. As of this writing, there are no ongoing judi-
cial investigations against him. Arguably, then, Cesar continues to differ
from Magdalena in that the old authoritarian power bloc remains out of
power. The Araújos’ latest attempt to regain regional power in the
elections also failed despite running under the banner of former President
Álvaro Uribe’s Centro Democrático party. Their candidate for governor,
Calderón Rivadeneira, lost for the third time, and Sergio Araújo Castro
(brother of former senator Álvaro Araújo), who ran for mayor of Valledu-
par (the department’s capital), nished in fourth place, with less than
percent of the vote (Registraduría Nacional del Estado Civil ).
Still, the and elections indicate that Monsalvo’s governor-
ship has led to the formation of a new, increasingly undemocratic politi-
cal structure in Cesar. In the congressional elections, Félix Valera
lost his seat and was replaced in the Senate by José Alfredo Gnecco, the
governor’s cousin. According to NGO reports, a new informal system of
electoral districts was created in order to divide the department among
this new coalition’s four candidates to the Chamber of Representatives.
maas, among other accusations, led to the imprisonment of the governor of the neigh-
boring department of La Guajira in October .
See also “Luis Alberto Monsalvo: El Gnecco inexperto,” VoteBien.com,Novem-
ber , , http://terra.com.co/elecciones_/votebien/html/vbn-luis-alberto
-monsalvo-el-gnecco-inexperto.htm.
“El fantasma de un sueño maoso acosa al Cesar,” La Silla Vacía.
This has been attributed to personal conicts with Jorge , who admitted to killing one
of the brothers in and kidnapping another in .
“¿Quién es el diablo en el Cesar?” La Silla Vacía.
“ candidatos cuestionados obtuvieron curul en las elecciones,” Fundación Paz y
Reconciliación.
Among them was Christian José Moreno Villamizar, Cristian Moreno’s half-brother.
The former governor was said to have left his brother’s campaign as a result of the
latter’s alliance with the Gneccos. “Mientras Kiko cae, los Gnecco buscan el cielo,”
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Three of them, along with another candidate accused of having ties to
drug trafckers, were elected. Then, in , governor Monsalvo was suc-
ceeded by Francisco Ovalle, the Gnecco family’s candidate. Monsalvo’s
administration was accused of illegally backing Ovalle’s campaign by
diverting public funds and pressuring government employees and con-
tractors to campaign for him.
As scholarship on national-level democratic transitions has high-
lighted, the fall of an authoritarian government is not necessarily fol-
lowed by democratization, but often by an “uncertain ‘something else’”
(O’Donnell and Schmitter : ). The rise of Cesar’s new power
bloc underscores the highly limited and fragile character of subnational
democratization, especially in a context marked by the explosive com-
bination of widespread clientelism and high incentives for cooptation of
government by illegal political actors (Duncan ). Still, as Duncan
also notes, the recurring cycles whereby illegal organizations are disman-
tled only to be replaced by new or revamped ones are also marked by
signicant transformations and learning processes both for illegal actors
and for democratic forces. Thus, an account of subnational authoritari-
anism in Colombia would be incomplete without a closer look at what
such change – however limited – looks like and what explains different –
arguably less authoritarian – outcomes, even if they are short-lived.
Explaining Turnover in Cesar and Continuity in Magdalena
Why has the same political clan with paramilitary ties succeeded in retain-
ing control of Magdalena’s politics, whereas Cesar’s AUC-allied clan has
been practically eliminated from political life, allowing for new political
forces – both democratic and authoritarian – to emerge?
The similarities between the cases, as noted earlier, allow us to dis-
count explanations related solely to the internal armed conict. It cannot
be maintained, for example, that the degree of paramilitary penetration
of high government institutions was higher in Magdalena than it was in
Cesar: the Northern Bloc’s dominion was generally even in both.It is also
not the case that different levels of guerrilla violence are resulting in con-
tinued pro-paramilitary sympathies in Magdalena but not in Cesar. After
La Silla Vacía, January , , http://lasillavacia.com/queridodiario/mientras-kiko-
cae-los-gnecco -buscan-el-cielo-.
“La Fiscalía allanó a la Gobernación del Cesar”, El Pilón, October , , http://
elpilon.com.co/scalia-se-metio-a-la-gobernacion. No formal investigations on the
matter had been announced as of this writing, however.
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Divergent Paths in Cesar and Magdalena
considering a variety of possible explanations, including economic fac-
tors, the role of civil society, national political coalitions, and electoral
and partisan dynamics, we conclude that the most crucial factor was the
existence in Cesar of a moderate political party that was able to survive
the AUC’s dominion without being part of it. This preexisting political
structure made it possible for an outsider to take advantage of the uncer-
tainty brought about by the collapse of the AUC’s control of government
and wrest power from Cesar’s traditional elites.
Economics – Could the different trajectories be attributed to factors
such as economic growth, dynamism, or inequality? The latter of these
can be easily discarded, as inequality levels were virtually the same in
Cesar and Magdalena through the s (DANE a).Following mod-
ernization theory, one might expect better democratic outcomes in richer
contexts that are more industrialized or economically diversied. This
factor could be seen as playing a role in our cases: gross departmental
product per capita in Cesar is more than . times as high as it is in
Magdalena. Yet it remains necessary to specify the mechanisms by which
higher income might foster democratization. Duncan (: ) argues
that “the degree of modernization of a city or region determines the role
of drug trafcking in the denition of political power.” But Cesar does
not have a more diversied economy or a more modern social order than
Magdalena. Both departments are predominantly rural and dependent
on agriculture, especially cattle ranching and African oil palm planta-
tions, and levels of industrialization are similarly low. The only regard
in which Cesar’s economy is more diversied than Magdalena’s is that it
has a large mining sector. However, extractive economies are rarely asso-
ciated with democracy (Ross ). Rentier theory would predict gov-
ernments that receive more resource revenues to be less accountable and
less democratic than ones that depend more on tax revenues – yet Cesar
received between . and . times more coal royalties than Magdalena
between and (SIMCO ). There is also no indication that
parapolíticos in Cesar lost control over local economic assets or oppor-
tunities to a greater extent than their counterparts in Magdalena. In fact,
the Araújos’ loss of political power was not accompanied by economic
losses.
Civil society – Cristian Moreno’s victory in the gubernatorial
election in Cesar was supported by a small movement of community
associations. Might the different outcomes be explained by differences
Interview with Tulio Villa.
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in the strength of societal opposition to paramilitarism? This is an unlikely
explanation. Societal opposition in both departments was similarly per-
secuted and attened by paramilitaries and their allies. Denunciations of
paramilitary crimes and political activity in both departments originated
mostly from national-level media and NGOs. Moreover, Magdalena has
a much more robust history of social mobilization than Cesar, and even
today victims of paramilitary violence from Magdalena are far more
organized and inuential than those from Cesar (see Grupo de Memo-
ria Histórica ).
National political coalitions – Could the different outcomes be
explained by differences in subnational authoritarians’ relationships with
the central executive through their national-level allies in Congress?
Specically, did the national political representatives of Magdalena’s
undemocratic government serve “the democratic center in tasks vital to
national political governance” to a greater extent than Cesar’s? (Gibson
: –; see also Giraudy ). This explanation also seems
unlikely. First, the central executive did not play any meaningful role in
subnational democratization in Colombia: it was not Uribe’s administra-
tion but the national judiciary that brought about the end of parapolítico
rule. There is also no indication that Uribe relied more on Magdalena’s
parapolíticos than those from Cesar to pass national legislation or deliver
votes for his reelection, or that his administration protected them
more than their counterparts in Cesar.
Electoral and partisan dynamics – Acemoglu, Robinson, and Santos
() focus on parties other than the Liberal or Conservative parties as
a measure of paramilitary inuence on electoral politics in the leg-
islative election. Were paramilitary-allied “third parties” weaker in Cesar
than in Magdalena? Were they more weakened by parapolítica prosecu-
tions? The main objection to this hypothesis is that parapolitician power
groups have never mapped on to party lines in either department. In
Cesar, Senator Álvaro Araújo Castro led the Alas Equipo Colombia party,
while governor Hernando Molina Araújo – his cousin and political ally –
belonged to the Liberal Party. Magdalena’s Trino Luna also ran as a Lib-
eral in , but his allies in Congress belonged to other parties. Judicial
prosecutions also did not focus on parties as much as they did on individ-
ual politicians.
What, then, made it possible for an outsider force to emerge in Cesar
but not in Magdalena? Was it simply a random, one-time occurrence
that happened to open up the political eld? As the transitions literature
has noted, democratization in the short term is almost always marked
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Divergent Paths in Cesar and Magdalena
by seemingly random conditions and unexpected events (O’Donnell and
Schmitter ). This may appear to have been the case at rst sight:
in both departments, two parapolitician factions faced each other in the
gubernatorial election, but only in Cesar was there a third candidate,
Moreno, capable of taking advantage of the split. In Magdalena, the third-
place candidate, Vilbrun Edward Tovar of the leftist Polo Democrático,
only won . percent of the vote (Registraduría Nacional del Estado
Civil ).
Still, this raises the question of whether there was something unique
about Cesar that made it possible for an outsider like Moreno to mount
a viable electoral challenge. Where did Moreno come from in the rst
place? Although Moreno was an outsider to department-level elites and
ran with the backing of a party with no history in the region, he was by
no means an unknown in Cesar’s political scene (unlike Tovar in Mag-
dalena). Moreno had been a member of the departmental assembly and
a rising gure in the Regional Integration Movement–IR (Movimiento
de Integración Regional–IR), a small, local, conservative-leaning political
party. The IR movement was founded in the s by Moreno’s father,
Cristian Moreno Pallares (killed by the FARC in ), and it was espe-
cially strong in the Morenos’ hometown of Curumaní, in central Cesar.
IR politician Miguel Ángel Durán Gelvis was accused of participating in
the AUC’s informal districting scheme for the elections, in which
he won a seat in the Chamber of Representatives. He was prosecuted
in the same investigation that led to the conviction of senators Álvaro
Araújo and Mauricio Pimiento but was exonerated. After , the IR
movement was excluded from Jorge ’s ruling coalition, as evidenced
by the AUC’s threats against Moreno’s campaign for governor. By
contrast, all of Magdalena’s local parties – Dieb Maloof’s Popular Integra-
tion Movement (MIPOL) and Miguel Pinedo Vidal’s Liberal Renovation
Movement (MORAL) – remained part of Jorge ’s power structure.
While the IR movement was not part of Jorge ’s ruling coalition,
it was also never persecuted by the AUC. In , it was allowed to
“Movimiento de Integración Regional cambia tradiciones políticas en Cesar,” El Tiempo,
November , .
“Representante Miguel Ángel Durán Gelvis,” Congreso Visible, http://www
.congresovisible.org/congresistas/perl/miguel-angel-duran-gelvis/. However, Durán
and another IR politician are also under investigation for the killing by paramilitaries
of a councilwoman from Curumaní. “Libran orden de captura contra Alcalde de Curu-
maní y excongresista,” El Pilón, July , , http://elpilon.com.co/inicio/libran-orden
-de-captura-contra-alcalde-de-curumani-y-excongresista.
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compete in four municipal elections, and its candidates won in three
of them (Registraduría Nacional del Estado Civil ). Unlike forces
such as the Community Action Movement (Movimiento de Acción
Comunitaria) – a left-leaning party from southern Cesar that was deci-
mated by paramilitaries in the s – or organized labor, campesino
movements, and human rights defenders, the IR movement was able to
escape the AUC’s systematic violence against all forms of opposition. Its
platform was not socially or economically radical, and its inuence was
mostly local, so it did not pose a threat to the AUC’s dominion. Outside
of Moreno’s denunciation of threats against his campaign, IR was
never vocally anti-paramilitary.
Thus, the key explanatory factor behind the different political trajec-
tories of Cesar and Magdalena appears to have been the survival in the
former of this relatively strong and ideologically moderate force that was
also independent from Jorge ’s power bloc. IR’s trajectory gave Moreno
a political structure – with members in the departmental assembly, munic-
ipal councils, and some mayoral ofces as of the elections – that
allowed him to rise as a viable candidate at a time of indeterminacy after
the collapse of traditional political structures due to the parapolítica scan-
dal. Unlike Magdalena’s outsiders, Moreno did not have to start from
scratch in his attempt to challenge Cesar’s AUC-backed elites.
In addition to posing one of the most signicant obstacles to the deepening
of democracy in Latin America, the persistence of violent and authoritar-
ian practices at the subnational level also poses signicant research chal-
lenges. This is because we need to better understand not only how prac-
tices of subnational violence and authoritarianism differ across national
contexts in Latin America, which calls for cross-national research, but
also how they differ within national contexts, which calls for the subna-
tional comparative method. Our chapter responds to these challenges by
engaging simultaneously in both types of comparisons.
First, we nd that subnational autocrats in Colombia have adopted
the same strategies as their peers in federal countries, and that the exam-
ination of these strategies brings into focus some of the central dynamics
of Colombia’s version of subnational authoritarianism. For example, in
“El exterminio de un sueño,” El Espectador, June , , http://www.elespectador
.com/noticias/judicial/el-exterminio-de-un-sueno- articulo-.
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attempting to “parochialize power,” subnational autocrats in Colombia
have depended heavily on paramilitary allies, with particularly dire conse-
quences for the forms of subnational violence faced by democratic oppo-
sitions, including class-based organizations like peasant federations and
trade unions. Not only did subnational autocrats attempt to “nationalize
inuence,”but their aggressive pursuit of this strategy provoked one of the
country’s greatest political crises of recent decades: the parapolítica scan-
dal. Like their peers in federal countries, Colombian subnational auto-
crats have sought to “monopolize linkages” with the national govern-
ment, a strategy made more difcult by the sharp institutional rivalry that
has developed between the executive and judicial branches at the national
level.
Second, moving from cross-national comparisons to comparisons
across subnational units within Colombia, our “most similar systems”
analysis of Cesar and Magdalena further demonstrates the promise of
the subnational research designs that have proliferated in the literature
on regime juxtaposition. Cesar and Magdalena share a whole host of eco-
nomic, organizational, and structural similarities – as one would expect
when comparing two departments that were previously merged into a
single department. The continuation in power of the dominant AUC-
afliated political clan in Magdalena and its displacement from power in
Cesar thus represents an intriguing puzzle worthy of analysis. We nd that
subnational party dynamics matter. Cesar’s political opening, which cul-
minated in the election of political outsider Cristian Moreno as governor
in , was made possible by the existence of a departmental party that
was able to walk a very ne line. Whereas the moderation of Moreno’s
IR movement likely saved it from repression at the hands of the AUC,
its relative independence from paramilitary domination was sufcient to
produce a meaningful rupture with parapolitics, and therefore with sub-
national authoritarianism.
Our ndings suggest that moderate actors inside the existing politi-
cal system may have an important role in bringing about change, but
they also point to the relative indeterminacy of democratizing events in
the aftermath of subnational authoritarian collapse. Democratic advances
are quite fragile, and their consolidation may depend signicantly on
more structural factors. As political life returned to normalcy over the
course of Moreno’s term in ofce, and as traditional families like the
Gneccos regrouped, the former IR movement’s platform was not suf-
cient to support further democratic consolidation. Still, attention to
structural factors should not obscure the importance of more contingent
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variables such as local party politics. Partial democratization is far from
being unimportant without concomitant structural change. When com-
pared to the path followed by Magdalena, where parapoliticians have
retained full control of the government, Cesar’s limited change is still
meaningful, considering that both departments operate under very similar
structural conditions.
This consideration leads us to call attention to the political space
between subnational authoritarianism and subnational democracy. As
Teorell (: ) argues in relation to country-level democratization,
adopting a graded approach can lead to a better understanding of regime
change. Capturing differences in degree does not preclude noting differ-
ences in kind, whereas using an exclusively dichotomous approach can
obscure subtle but crucial variation between cases. Our analysis indicates
that subnational democratization is likely to be a process of becoming less
authoritarian and more democratic, with constant setbacks and reversals
along the way.