Abstract
This chapter provides an approach to how the notion of territory as a process can be problematized as current and past benchmarks of modernization, based on two cases in Colombia: specialty coffee in Nariño and steel mill development in Boyacá state. We investigate the senses of ‘territory’ as localized processes, leading to a discussion about these two specific contexts. Coffee and steel have marked narratives in Colombia that allow us to problematize the ways of visualizing ‘national development’ and thus understand territories designated as peripheral underdevelopment narratives, and to interrogate their use and integration into national modernization discourses. By addressing two spatially and temporally distinct contexts—the Colombian centre-east in the Sogamoso Valley in the mid-twentieth century, and the south-west of the Colombian Massif in Nariño’s northern region in the present period—it is possible to analyse two modernization experiences that constitute specific meanings of territorial organization and disputes.
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Notes
- 1.
The notion of terrain as used by Elden refers to control mechanisms associated with military definitions of the space, in Spanish, terreno also refers to control mechanisms by legal means. Elden’s analysis is useful to ours based on the understanding of political technologies for control associated to spatial constructs.
- 2.
Armando Solano, a writer from Boyacá, asserts that ‘in Boyacá, the aspirations (of the peasant) are not towards one’s own inheritance itself to yield an abundant harvest, but for that of the neighbour to be lost … even those who have a deceased relative in their house are envied, because that misfortune gives them momentary notoriety’ (Corredor Castillo in Chaparro Montaña 2013, p.71).
- 3.
An integrated steel mill involves mining processes, the extraction of resources not only of iron, but also of coal (coke) and limestone, and it requires the use of vast quantities of water and electricity.
- 4.
Words of President Alberto Lleras Camargo, (in Camargo 1961, p.429).
- 5.
A type of hemp, Furcraea andina Trel. 1915.
- 6.
Based on a sample of notarial protocols between 1930 and 1965, Notaría Primera of the Sogamoso circuit.
- 7.
The smallest territorial subdivisions of the administrative divisions of the country.
- 8.
Interview with José, peasant from the Municipality of Monguí. Guardapáramos in the Páramo de Ocetá. March 10–13, 2016.
- 9.
Notarial Protocole No. 268. February 24, 1954. 1st Notary’s Office. ‘Predio en la Vereda Las Cintas.’
- 10.
- 11.
Accessed online at https://www.cafeimports.com/north-america/blog/microlots/ On Feb. 02, 2020.
- 12.
Territories are classified according to the ‘the racial signs that naturalized the Eurocentric control of the territories and natural resources’ (Quijano 2014, p.318).
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Rico-Rodríguez, T., Chaparro Montaña, R. (2021). Contested Meanings of Territorial Production: Modern Territories of Coffee and Steel in Colombia. In: McCall, M.K., Boni Noguez, A., Napoletano, B., Rico-Rodríguez, T. (eds) Territorialising Space in Latin America. The Latin American Studies Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82222-4_6
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