PETROLEUM AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE LLANOS

FRONTIER IN COLOMBIA: 1980 TO THE PRESENT

Jane M. Rausch
University of Massachusetts Amherst

For more than 150 years the Colombian Llanos or tropical plains re-
mained a largely abandoned frontier. Although the region encompassed
250,000 square kilometers, or more that one quarter of nation’s territory,
its isolation from the center of the country due to the barrier posed by
the Eastern Andean Cordillera and its deadly tropical climate discour-
aged all but the most determined whites from settling there. During the
colonial era the principal inhabitants were: nomadic and tropical forest
natives, Catholic missionaries trying to convert them, and a few hundred
white settlers who carved out subsistence farms or established ranches
by rounding up wild cattle. After winning Independence from Spain in
1824 Colombian leaders in Bogotá believed that the Llanos were a po-
tentially rich territory, but their various schemes to develop the region
had little success. By the twentieth century only the town of Villavicencio
and the surrounding area known as Meta, due to the main road connect-
ing it directly with Bogotá, showed substantial progress. The other plains
regions: Casanare, Arauca, and Vichada registered little change despite
the determined efforts of President Alfonso López Pumarejo’s (1934-1938)
“Revolución en Marcha” to encourage their development. Administered
as territories called “Intendancies,” or “Comisarı́as Especiales,” the four
provinces that made up the Llanos frontier continued in a state of tute-
lage under the national government during the first three quarters of the
twentieth century.1
The discovery of large deposits of exploitable oil at Caño Limón, Arauca
in 1983; at Cusiana, Casanare in 1990, and at Chichimene, Castilla la
Nueva, and Apiay, Meta in 1996 converted the piedmont section of these
Llanos provinces into the region with the highest economic and politi-
cal growth of Colombia. The resulting oil boom quickly transformed the
heretofore-neglected frontier into a zone of primary national significance
and stimulated enormous changes within each province. After briefly re-
viewing the development of Colombian oil production, this essay will
summarize some of the most important political, economic and social
changes, both positive and negative, that have occurred in the Llanos since
1980.2

Oil in Colombia: from Consumer to Exporting Nation

Between 1859, the year that marked the drilling of the first oil well
in Pennsylvania, and until the First World War, the United States with


C 2009 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 113
The Latin Americanist, March 2009

Standard Oil in the lead established a dominant position in world

petroleum production. This ascendancy, however, was soon challenged
by exploitation of oil in Russia. In addition, two European companies,
Shell and Royal Dutch Oil, merged in 1907. With renewed incentive, they
began to seek new oil deposits in regions throughout the world.
In 1911 U.S. antitrust laws broke up Standard Oil into a number of con-
stituent parts. Of the newly independent entities, Jersey Standard became
the most involved in Latin America. The outbreak of WWI, a realization
that U.S. petroleum domestic sources would be insufficient for the coun-
try’s growing needs, and a heightened appreciation of potential oil sup-
plies in countries throughout the Western Hemisphere encouraged this
initiative. As a result in the 1920s there was a dramatic expansion of oil
exploration and exploitation in Peru, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela and
Colombia as hundreds of large and small oil companies vied with one
another to find and mine what was emerging as an ever more precious
resource.3
In Colombia oil was discovered as early as 1866 at a site near Barran-
quilla, and ten years later around the Gulf of Urabá, but serious exploita-
tion did not take place until after the ratification of Urrutia-Thomson
Treaty by both Colombia and the United States in 1922. This agreement
finally brought to a close the diplomatic imbroglio caused by U.S. sup-
port of the Panamanian revolt and separation from Colombia in 1903, and
it paved the way for entrance of North American investment in Colom-
bian banana plantations and oil. Soon Tropical Oil (a subsidiary of Jersey
Standard) began production in the central Magdalena Valley and built
a refinery complex at Barrancabermeja. Another company, Colombian
Petroleum (a jointly owned subsidiary of Gulf and Mobil) acquired the
so-called Barco concession in Norte de Santander “which was an extension
of the Venezuela oil fields around Lake Maracaibo.”4 Due to challenges
to the concession rights, production at this second site was delayed until
the 1930s.
Unlike Venezuela, where foreign oil companies, assured of dictator
Juan Vicente Gómez’s strong support, took advantage of a nearly ideal
political climate to exploit the country’s vast resources of oil, Colombia’s
regulation of foreign investment was much tougher and constantly chang-
ing. In addition, strikes broke out against Tropical Oil in 1924 and 1927.
These uncertain conditions eased during the pro-U.S. administration of
Enrique Olaya Herrera (1930-34), so that soon Colombia was producing
enough oil to satisfy its own needs.
In 1948, the concession granted to Tropical Oil expired, and the govern-
ment created a national company, ECOPETROL to take over operations at
Barrancabermeja.5 By this time, entrepreneurs were already searching for
oil in the Llanos, convinced that the vast deposits that had been found in
Venezuela must also extend into the neighboring Colombian plains. In the
1930s Richmond Petroleum leased a tract of two million acres between the
Arauca and Meta Rivers and began exploring potential sites near Trinidad,

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Arauca. Farther to the south, exploratory wells dug by Richmond and Shell
International located some oil deposits but none that appeared to be com-
mercially exploitable. Although these sites were promising, the companies
did not rush to develop them because in the 1940s cheap Middle Eastern
oil began flooding world markets. Since it was obvious that in order to
export oil from the Llanos, it would be necessary to build a pipeline to the
coast, none of the companies were willing to commit to such an expensive
undertaking.6
Between 1950 and the 1960s, Intercol, a subsidiary of Exxon, continued
exploratory drilling producing useful knowledge about the geology of the
plains. Although no strike was made at the time, the results must not have
been entirely discouraging, because there was a veritable rush for drilling
concessions in Meta by the end of the 1960s. C.H. Neff, in an article pub-
lished by The American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, regarded
this renewed interest in the Llanos as the most remarkable development
in the Colombian oil industry in 1968.7
In 1969 congress passed Law 20 that authorized the government to
declare as a “national reserve” any zone potentially rich in oil and to
deliver it to ECOPETROL without subjecting it to ordinary contractual
rule. It further stated that ECOPETROL might explore, exploit, and ad-
minister said “national reserves” directly or in association with other
companies of public or private capital, national or foreign. In contrast
to the situation in the 1940s and 1950s, rising demand in the global econ-
omy, promised lucrative profits if petroleum in the Llanos could be ex-
ported. By 1973 the national government had awarded four companies—
Continental, International Petroleum Colombian, British Petroleum, and
Superior Oil—concessions to explore approximately three hundred ninety
thousand hectares in Meta, while the French multinational company, Elf
Aquitaine stepped up its exploration in Casanare.8
In 1983 tests on wells dug by ECOPETROL and Occidental Petroleum
(known as OXY) at Caño Limón in Cravo Norte, Arauca, indicated that
oil reserves in that location amounted to 500 million barrels. The West
German company of Mannesmann constructed a 186-mile pipeline to the
Rı́o Zulia oil terminal near the Venezuelan border, and Bechtel Engineering
built a 305-mile pipeline connecting Rı́o Zulia with the port of Coveñas
on Colombia’s northern coast.9 In 1986 the long-awaited “black gold” of
the Llanos began pouring through the pipes at the rate of 200,000 barrels
a day. By 1994 the flow was more than a million barrels a day, and the oil
boom on the Llanos frontier was underway.10

The Petroleum Boom

Between 1980 and the present, petroleum production has steadily in-
creased in three of the four Llanos provinces (exploration in Vichada is still
in early stages), as the discovery of new wells have continually raised gov-
ernment estimates of the amount of deposits lying in the subsoil. Soon after
Occidental Petroleum began operations at Caño Limón, Arauca in 1986,

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efforts headed by Elf Aquitaine and Brazilian Petrobras were consolidated

under British Petroleum (BP) in Casanare. As part of a 28-year contract with
ECOPETROL, BP was allowed six years for exploration and six years for
exploitation. In 1990 oil was discovered in Cusiana and Cupiagua located
in the jurisdiction of the municipios of Aguazul and Cupiagua in Casanare.
In 1994 the government estimated the reserves of these two wells between
2 and 2.2 billion barrels of petroleum. President César Gaviria Trujillo pre-
dicted that Cusiana alone would generate US$13.7 billion which would
provide US $8.2 billion to the central government and to Ecopetrol as well
as US $5.5 billion to departments and municipios in the form of subsidies
and transfer of funds. In relative terms, the annual income from Cusiana
would increase from .5% of GPD in 1994 to 5% in 1997. While this influx of
income might appear to be a providential windfall, such amounts, Gaviria
warned could generate accumulation of international reserves that could
cause undesirable inflationary pressures.”11
In Meta operations at Chichimene, Castilla la Nueva, and Apiay started
pumping oil at the rate of 20,500 b/d (barrels a day) in 1996. All these wells
are located in a thirty-hectare area known as the Distrito Petróleo, which
is in Apiay, thirty minutes from the department’s capital, Villavicencio,
on the road to Puerto López. A refinery constructed in Apiay processes
this crude oil to extract its principal derivatives: asphalt, cocinol (cooking
fuel), benzene, and gasoline. From the Distrito Petróleo, the petroleum
is pumped to the Porvenir station in Casanare, and from there it moves
by pipeline to the Bosconı́a station in César and Barrancabermeja in San-
tander to be shipped to the United States and Europe. Apiay also produces
daily more than sixteen thousand feet of gas for domestic and industrial
consumption in Villavicencio and Bogotá.12 By 2001 Meta was producing
21 million barrels of oil a year or 11 percent of Colombia’s national output.
This amount ranked it as the third largest petroleum-producing depart-
ment, exceeded only by Casanare with 45.1 percent of national output and
Arauca with 17.7 percent.13 (See map at end of paper.)
Since the 1990’s the Colombian government has embarked on a policy
to encourage foreign investment in oil and gas exploration. In July 2002
the government signed a law revising its hydrocarbons royalties scheme,
cutting royalties on recent discoveries of oil fields producing less that
125,000 b/d to between 8% and 20% (depending on daily output) from
the long-standing, flat rate of 20%. The purpose of this change was to
better compensate foreign oil companies for the country’s instability and
risk of violence. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, “The sliding
royalties formula was opposed by provinces with substantial oil reserves
that depend heavily on revenue streams from oil fields. Provinces keep
60% of the royalties with the rest going to Bogotá.”14
It is important to note that early on the government was aware of the
potential environmental hazards of drilling. In 1974 Colombia was one
of the first Latin American countries to implement legislation requiring
environmental impact assessments (EIAs). It also created INDERENA, an

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environmental protection agency responsible for administering the EIA

rules that required developers to prepare impact statements and envi-
ronmental and ecological studies as a step to obtain their licenses. Going
along with the general loosening of state control, however, in 1993 congress
passed Law 99 that phased out INDERENA and replaced it with Ministry
of Environment. Law 99 also required an environmental license for the
execution of projects that might cause natural resource or environmen-
tal damage, however, experience has shown that it has not been strictly
implemented.15
As of January 2002 proven Colombian petroleum reserves stood at
1.75 billion barrels. The government estimated that throughout the coun-
try there were vast untapped potential reserves in eighteen sedimen-
tary basins covering a total of 1,036,400 square kilometers, only seven
of which were currently being exploited commercially. The Cusiana-
Cupiagua fields were the most well developed with a combined reserve of
1.6 billion barrels of oil that represented nearly half of Colombia’s produc-
tion, but Ecopetrol considered the Putumayo basin in the Amazon equally
promising, estimating that it could hold up to 2.4 billion barrels of oil.
By 2002 Colombia had become Latin America’s third leading oil pro-
ducer.16 Oil was its principal export generating about $2 billion per year in
revenue. With the changes in laws, many independent oil companies had
become active in the country, entering into joint ventures with Ecopetrol
with the requirement being that Ecopetrol must hold at least a 30% stake.
“Foreign players include Chevron-Texaco, Braspetro International, Total-
FinaElf, Cepsa, Repsol, Talisman, Sipetrol, Nexen, Hoco, Lukoil, among
others with Britain’s BP and U.S. Occidental having the largest presence.”17
There were, however, clouds on this overall rosy horizon. Due to the con-
stant bombing of the Apiay-Coveñas pipeline by rebels, the county was
incurring an estimated loss of more than $900,000 per day in royalties,
taxes, and state participation. In 1999 the output of Casanare oil fields
reached a peak at 300 million barrels, only to begin a steady decline to
200 million barrels in 2006.18 This natural decline as oil fields matured
posed serious implications for future Colombian oil production.
Impact of Petroleum Development on the Llanos Frontier
If from the national government’s point of view the aggressive devel-
opment of oil deposits in the Llanos and the Amazon can only enhance the
country’s international clout and increase the overall GNP, the impact of
these activities on the plains brought both positive and negative political,
economic and social changes that vary between the three provinces.
Political Change
Even before the advent of the petroleum boom, Bogotá was taking steps
to integrate the Llanos more completely into the national orbit. In 1960
Congress elevated the Intendancy of Meta to the status of a department in
recognition of its population growth and its key role as supplier of agricul-
tural products and meat to the capital. With regard to the other provinces

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that remained territories, Congress passed Decree 1925 of September 12,

1975 creating DAINCO (Departamento Administrativo de Intendencias y
Comisarı́as). In 1985 the director of DAINCO was given a cabinet post,
and more money was made available to the individual territories to carry
out economic and social reforms.
In 1986 President Virgilio Barco established the Corpes Orinoquia to
oversee the distribution of royalties from petroleum production (at that
time being generated by Caño Limón in Arauca) throughout the four sec-
tions of the Llanos: Arauca, Casanare, Meta and Vichada plus the three
adjoining Amazonia territories of Guaviare, Vaupés and Guainı́a. The Cor-
pes officials were based first in Arauca City from 1989–1994 and then in
Villavicencio from 1995–2000. They used the oil royalties to fund more than
200 studies to seek solutions to basic problems, to facilitate the construction
of roads, and airports, and to promote improvements in health, education
and electrification. For example, emergency health centers were set up in
Villavicencio, Acacı́as, Yopal, Aguazul, Tame, Saravena, and Arauca, and
during the last twenty years, more than fifteen private and public univer-
sities have been founded.19 In addition, the Universidad de los Llanos, the
oldest higher education institution in the region, has been reorganized and
expanded. By 2007 it had six schools: agronomy, veterinary, engineering,
nursing, pedagogy and economic sciences. It had graduated 5,200 pro-
fessionals and currently enrolled 4,500 undergraduate and post-graduate
degree students.20
The government dismantled DAINCO in 1991, the same year that the
new constitution elevated all the former Llanos territories to the status of
departments. In 2000 it liquidated the Corpes. In the opinion of Leonel
Pérez Bareño, a former director of DAINCO, the relative success of both
DAINCO and the Corpes “demonstrated that Orinoquia had a cultural,
sociological, historical, economic, and geographic homogeneity.” Their ac-
tivities reinforced his argument that a regional government with control
over all the provinces would be more effective that the current indepen-
dent departmental structures in promoting their political and economic
integration into the nation.21
If becoming departments raised the national profiles of Arauca,
Casanare, Meta, and Vichada, the increased bureaucracy did not produce
more capable and honest political leadership. Alfonso Avellaneda C. sug-
gests that in Arauca, local officials soon became the creatures of Occidental
Petroleum, which located its headquarters at Caño Limón, rather than the
departmental capital of Arauca City, the traditional center of power in
Arauca. OXY chartered air flights to provide free transport for politicians
and regional caudillos to bring them to Caño Limon, and in exchange for
bribes and other such favors, these individuals allowed OXY to ignore
environmental legislation, tax obligations, and to seek permission to build
highways and bridges after the work has been completed.22
With reference to Meta and Casanare, Professor Wilson Ladino Orjuela
pointed out in July 2007 that the autonomy granted departmental officials

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by the 1991 Constitution only enhanced the opportunity of local leaders

“to appropriate personal and family resources.” He continued:

They have been able to move from simple houses to great mansions
protected by enormous walls and state security forces, leaving by
the wayside hundreds of thousands of citizens dreaming of better
opportunities for themselves, their children and grandchildren. In-
ternational organizations such as the UN, the European Union and
AID are aware of this situation. Perhaps in the coming years we will
see an important change in the appointment of national leaders to
these local positions who will identify with the strategic value of the
departments in Colombia.23

Cusmano and Preciado paint a still direr picture of the situation in

Casanare. There, they argue, the enormous flow of petroleum revenues
into local and regional coffers have produced a phenomenon of “contrati-
tis” where these funds are allotted to supporters of the local politicians
reinforcing the corruption and clientelismo. Upstart politicians, contrac-
tors, and leaders of guerrilla groups have displaced the traditional land
owning elites. Despite the influx of new income, the traditional infrastruc-
ture of the department remains unchanged. Casanare continues to rely on
an extractive and subsistence economy complicated by the weakening of
traditional culture and values.24
Throughout the history of the Llanos frontier, the Catholic Church
has been an important presence in Orinoquia and often a political force
more important than the state. In July 2004, thirteen years after the re-
gion gained departmental status, Pope John Paul II promoted the Diocese
of Villavicencio to an Archdiocese and appointed Monseñor José Octavio
Ruiz Arenas as the first archbishop. The archdiocese includes a population
of 512,320 people of which 97.2 percent profess the Catholic faith. There
are 117 parishes served by 120 secular and 20 religious priests. In 1999
the Vicariato Apostólico de Ariari became the Diocese of Granada, and
the Prefectura Apostólica de Mitú, the Diocese of San José del Guaviare.
Five Vicariatos Apostólicos of Inı́rida, Leticia, Mitú, Puerto Carreño and
Puerto Gaitán complete the jurisdiction of the archbishop with the Mont-
fort Fathers of the Company of Marı́a remaining in charge of the mission
territories of Puerto Carreño and Puerto Gaitán.
The archdiocese publishes a newspaper, Eco Llanero, and since 1994
it has operated a radio station, Voz del Llano since 1994. Confronting a
strong challenge mounted by competing evangelical protestant groups,
the Church relies on radio broadcasts to propagate the Catholic faith “to
all corners of the Llanos Orientales.”25 It has two seminaries in Restrepo,
Meta and offers distance education in the diocese of San Gil in an effort to
encourage campesinos to remain in the rural areas and not abandon them
for the lure of Villavicencio.26

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Economic Change
Royalties from the petroleum boom revitalized agriculture, ranching,
and other industries in all three departments. In Arauca, previous to the
Caño Limón discovery, ties to neighboring Venezuela had already been
strengthened with the completion of an international bridge during the
government of President Raul Leoni (1964-1968). Although this bridge fa-
cilitates access across the border to the neighboring province of Apure,
trade between the two regions remains negligible. Because of the develop-
ment of oil production, however, Arauca registered an increase in ranch-
ing, rice production and milling, wood processing, and the establishment
of two plants: Empresas Frutas de Saravena and Chocolates de Arauquito.
In addition, there was an expansion of subsistence crops such as plátanos,
yuca, and maiz.27
In Casanare, power generated by the Chivor hydroelectric plant in
Boyacá, combined with improved highways spurred the building of in-
dustries such as Palmar de Oriente and Soceagro, and a reforestation pro-
gram begun by Cervecerrı́a de Colombia. Other investments poured into
rice farming and milling, fruit, fish, and ranching.
Although Meta was the last to experience the impact of massive oil
production, local production of small wells in Castilla la Nueva begin-
ning in the 1950s encouraged the government to build a small refinery
in Apiay with the goal of extracting asphalt, cocinol (cooking oil) and
other petroleum derivatives to respond to local needs. Ready availability
of asphalt permitted the improvement of roads within the department
and helped to make more realistic the scheme to build the Carretera Bo-
livariana, a highway that would unite Bogotá with Caracas by passing
through Villavicencio, Yopal and Arauca. Notable improvements on the
Bogotá—Villavicencio road after 1974 included the construction of two
major tunnels that cut through the most dangerous parts of the thorough-
fare and reduced travel time between the two cities from six to two and
one half hours.
As previously noted, by 1996 the wells at Chichimene, Castilla la Nueva
and Apiay in the Distrito Petroleo, began to produce oil at the rate of
20,500 b/d, and by 2001 Meta was producing 21 million barrels of oil a
year. Even before this surge in petroleum output, improved access to the
huge market in Bogotá had enhanced opportunities for important enter-
prises previously established in Villavicencio such as Sales del Llano and
Aguardiente Llanero. In 1966 the slaughterhouse at Catama was sacrific-
ing 40,000 cattle to produce 120,000 tons of meat while another 110,000
head were trucked up the mountain via the highway.28 In 1974 there were
1.1 million head of cattle in Meta. Annual export of cattle in the 1980s
averaged 18 percent of the entire herd, but it was apparent that problems
lay ahead. The hatos that supplied 80 percent of the cattle were located in
the savanna where production methods were quite backward, and owner
absenteeism was the rule. By the year 2000 cattle hatos in Meta had disap-
peared leaving only pastures for fattening cattle driven in from the outer

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plains on their way to Bogotá.29 On the other hand, Casanare, where before
the advent of petroleum, ranching was the most important economic ac-
tivity, still contains 7.3% of the national cattle herd, with the animals raised
on hatos dispersed throughout the department. Despite relying on ranch-
ing practices that have scarcely changed since colonial times, Casanare
sends between 180,000 and 200,000 animals to the highlands, ranking it
third in production to the output of the Departments of Córdoba and
Antioquia.30
In contrast to the decrease of cattle in Meta, the production of dry
and irrigated rice has boomed, promoted by the construction in 1987 of
Induarroz. Induarroz, an ultramodern mill, is a factory capable of pro-
cessing twelve tons of rice an hour. Within two years Meta was exporting
55,000 tons of dry rice and 70,000 tons of irrigated rice. By 2001 the depart-
ment had become the primary Colombian producer of dry rice and ranked
second in irrigated rice.31 The presence of Induarroz encouraged tradi-
tional mill owners to streamline their own operations to avoid bankruptcy,
but despite these changes, Induarroz continued to process 60 percent of
the rice grown in Meta.32 Rice production has also expanded in Casanare
thanks largely to the influx of cultivators from the departments of Tolima
and Santander. Notwithstanding the less than optimal climate conditions
and fluctuations of prices due to overproduction, rice represented 78% of
Casanare’s agricultural production by 2004.33
The production of African palm oil has undergone a similar expansion.
In this case, a multinational corporation, Unipalma, introduced modern
techniques and mechanization of the harvest in Meta. Having acquired
nine thousand hectares of land, it imported a labor force from the Pacific
coast to cultivate the trees. Other companies, such as Palmar de Oriente
and Manuelita, have also established themselves. With eighty thousand
hectares under cultivation, Meta has become the number one producer of
African palm oil in the country.34 Recently African palm oil is also being
produced around Villanueva in the southern part of Casanare. In both
departments other crops of major importance are all primarily grown in
the piedmont zone. They include coffee, citrus fruit, soy, sorghum, yuca,
and maiz.35
The downside of this rapid modernization is that small farmers and
owners of hatos of 5,000 or 10,000 cattle can no longer compete with the
much larger operations. Small rice cultivators have little power to negotiate
the price of their harvest and must accept the conditions imposed by
the large mills. In addition, many of these people have been unable to
obtain legal title to their land. Especially in Arauca, oil company waste
disposal and the repeated attacks on the pipelines by the guerrillas have
contaminated much of the farm and grazing land. Compelled by these
conditions and continuing violence in the region, campesinos are often
forced to abandon the rural areas to become part of the displaced people
who have flocked to the urban areas.36

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Population Growth, Environmental Impact, and Guerrilla Warfare

The oil boom and the agro-industrial development have converted
the Llanos into departments with the greatest population growth in the
country. In 1973 the Orinoquia regions had scarcely 320,000 inhabitants
with a majority living in the countryside. By 2000 there were over 1,250,000
inhabitants—most of which lived in the urban areas. Between 1973 and
1997 inhabitants in Arauca City increased from 12,500 to 70,000, while the
population of Yopal grew from 10,500 to 84, 200. Villavicencio, the largest
city in the region went from 91,559 people in 1973 to 285,425 in 2003.
While population changes in all three cities are impressive, according to
Avellaneda C., Yopal by 2000 had the highest growth rate relative to other
urban centers in the country because of “forced displacements, the great
movements of money, the significant improvements in roads and public
services and the fact that many entrepreneurs from Arauca and Meta have
moved their households to Yopal.”37
Petroleum has affected this population surge in several unique ways.
First, once an oil company begins serious exploitation of a given deposit, it
creates a distinctive type of oil town. As Avellaneda C. explains, news of the
operation attracts the migration of thousands of campesinos from all parts
of Colombia. Sometimes the newcomers are young people, sometimes they
come as families, but in either case, their regional origin is identifiable
by their skin color, life style, and culture patterns. The migrants tend
to group together so that they form colonies of antioqueñans, costeños,
boyacences, etc. around the oil camp. Even smaller towns in the llanos such
as Aguazaul, Tauramena, Manı́, Orocué, Castilla la Nueva, and Puerto
Gaitán have suffered changes as thousands of migrants descended upon
them enticed by dreams of riches or fleeing from violence and disease.
On December 11, 1991, in the newspaper El Espectador, Alberto Martı́nez
noted that within a few months after the Cusiana discovery, searchers for
oil had altered the Casanare countryside. New people arrived during the
night in towns where there was no housing for them or health services.38
The towns soon become lawless; their authorities overwhelmed by the
unprecedented tempo of migration.
The effect of this onslaught of migrants transformed urban areas, tra-
ditionally composed of ranchers and farmers, into makeshift oil camps.
Luxury hotels, prostitution, banks, and huge oil machinery parked on lots
quickly sprang up. Helmets and oil boots replaced traditional Llanero
hats and sandals; sandwiches and hotdogs supplanted meat and plátano
cooked over an open fire. The overall impact was a loss of a sense of
identity. Mantilla Trejos writes, that the last twenty-five years have dis-
torted the local culture that formerly revolved around cattle raising and
the joropo (a Llanero dance). “There is a tower of Babel in the Colombian
east: for every person born in Meta, Arauca, Casanare and Vichada, there
are three people who are ignorant of who a pollona (a young Indian girl) is
and perhaps will never have the opportunity to hear a “furroco” (a Llanero
percussion instrument.” The traditional Llanero knew how to control his

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environment. The new Llanero looks to erase and confuse all “in order to
become a part of a small sentence in the book of history.”39
Environmental damage has kept pace with this change in population.
Uprooted from their homes, campesinos are attracted by the high salaries
offered by the petroleum companies. They soon forget how to care for
the land. Instead of using machetes to conserve the fragile environment,
they are hired to open pits along seismic lines, cutting down trees, and
exploding dynamite that destroy water deposits. This situation is most
severe in Arauca, where in 1983 President Belisario Betancur suspended
a decree that proclaimed a large area of the department a Nature Reserve
(Santuario de Fauna y Flora). As a result, Occidental Petroleum and Man-
nesman built their pipeline through once protected forests demolishing
the fincas of small farmers and ecosystems of the most varied wealth for
nearly a thousand kilometers between Arauca and Coveñas. By taking ad-
vantage of institutional weakness and bribing local officials, OXY dumped
tens of thousands of barrels of contaminated water into the flood zones of
Caño Limón and the Arauca River, destroying the vegetation and biolog-
ical resources in the headwaters of the Cinaruco and Capanaparo rivers.
Repeated attacks by guerrillas on the pipeline further compounded the
problem.40
Sustained guerrilla warfare in the Llanos dates back to the beginning
of the Violencia, when Liberal rebels, incensed by the assassination of
populist leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán on April 9, 1948, began a virtually
unwinable struggle against the Conservative administrations in Bogotá
that ruled between 1948 and 1953. On June 13, 1953 army commander
Lt. General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla seized power and immediately initi-
ated a call for an end of civil strife. After he offered amnesty to nearly
all the guerrillas, thousands of rebels in Casanare, Meta, and Arauca
took advantage of the opportunity to surrender their weapons and return
to their former peaceful existence. Unfortunately Rojas Pinilla’s attempts
to aid these individuals by providing them with legal titles to land and
help to restart their farms failed to meet the expectations of the former
guerrillas. In the late 1950 the FARC (Colombian Revolutionary Armed
Forces) and the ELN (National Army of Liberation) reorganized their op-
erations. Soon they came to dominate much of the plains where the central
government had never established a strong presence. New colonos were
vulnerable to guerrilla pressure, because inadequate government support
left them unable to turn a profit on parcels they had cleared and planted.
Often forced to sell their land to large-scale agriculturalists or to ranchers,
some of them formed self-defense groups or paramilitary units while oth-
ers discovered that the FARC’s rural-based strategy designed to gain and
hold territory would offer them a measure of protection.41
The violence in the Llanos took on a new dimension with the introduc-
tion of drug trafficking. Between 1980 and 1986 an understanding emerged
between the newly formed Colombian drug cartels, that promoted the cul-
tivation of coca in the Llanos and transferred technology there to process

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and refine the drug, and the FARC guerrillas, who guaranteed internal
order and levied a tax on cultivators and buyers. At this point the guerril-
las assumed the posture of protecting the cultivators, but the collapse of a
1984 truce between the FARC and the government of Belisario Bentancur
brought down upon them the wrath of both the army and paramilitary
groups hired by the large landowners to protect their persons and prop-
erty. During the 1980s a struggle for control of various sections of the
region degenerated into a confrontation between guerrillas and paramili-
taries who declared a war to the death.42
The exploitation of petroleum in Arauca and Casanare during this
same decade exacerbated the armed conflict. Groups at the margins on
both sides of the law—the extreme left (guerrillas) and the extreme right
(paramilitaries)—fortified themselves economically and militarily. The
FARC and ELN, who had seized leadership after the surrender of Llanero
guerrillas in the 1950s, were quick to capitalize on the opportunities offered
by the presence of multinational corporations (MNCs) exploring for oil. In
Arauca, oil pumped through the Caño Limón-Coveñas pipeline became a
major target for both guerrilla forces. According to a top Occidental exec-
utive, rebels blew up the pipeline 460 times between 1985 and 1997.43 On
August 20, 2004 Isabel Hilton, a reporter for The Guardian newspaper, ob-
served that “a complex mosaic of armed groups—rightwing paramilitaries
and the army, often working closely together, and leftwing guerrillas—
were struggling for control of the lucrative pipeline and cocaine routes.” In
response, President Alvaro Uribe declared a special security zone around
the three northern municipalities of the department where the oil pipeline
is located, and OXY Petroleum and the U.S. Government are funding the
army’s 18th Brigade, the main government force in the zone. Despite this
effort, security in the region has not increased, and civilians who assume
any position of leadership, such as teachers, health workers and union
activists, have been killed in “appalling numbers.”44
In Casanare, once it became public knowledge that huge oil deposits
at Cusiana and Cupiagua represented an immense source of wealth for
the department and its municipios, a veritable avalanche of migrants from
different regions of Colombia converged on the department exacerbating
ongoing problems such as inadequate schools, housing, sanitation, potable
water and employment. Ten percent of the population controlled seventy-
eight percent of the land as entrepreneurs invested in large-scale rice cul-
tivation or extensive cattle. According to former mayor Arcadio Benı́tez,
by 2003 narco-traffickers and emerald dealers had established themselves
in the south of the department. Using their own self-defense groups, they
displaced the guerrillas in order to seize land for cattle ranches and African
palm plantations. Because the Colombian state had signed contracts with
the MNCs, it was obligated to defend them. A new modern military with
more capability and greater radius of action was sent to the Llanos. Flood-
ing the plains was a plethora of legal and illegal arms that were used
not necessarily for combat but to assassinate, intimidate and displace the

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population. The campesino families who had resisted the violence in the
1950s were once again caught in the middle of another war. 45
Thus in 2003 paramilitary groups controlled the south and center of
Casanare and most of the flat land, with the exception of disputed terri-
tory bordering the Casanare River. The guerrillas were ensconced in the
piedmont sections and in the jungles of Vichada and Guaviare where they
could wage attacks against the army and paramilitaries. In the northern
part of the department where the guerrillas can move most easily, con-
frontation is the greatest. Capturing police posts, combating the army,
confronting the paramilitaries, and murdering ranchers and merchants,
the FARC and the ELN continue to sustain a high degree of force and
respect in this zone.46

The Problem of Displaced People

The personal cost of this undeclared war to control territory to grow
coca and extort subsidies from the petroleum companies is the displace-
ment of thousands of people, not to mention violation of human rights,
criminalization of social protests, seizure of property and the fumigation
of illegal crops. The displacement phenomenon is not unique to the Llanos.
IDMC (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre) estimated that between
1985 and 2007 almost four million Colombians have been displaced by
violence with 200,000 of these cases occurring in 2006. CODHES (Consul-
torı́a para los Derechos Humanos y Desplazamientos) a NGO reported
that displacement was especially severe in the southern and eastern areas
of the country: i.e. Orinoquia and Amazonia. The increase in Casanare,
Meta, and Arauca was due especially to the actions of paramilitaries, drug
violence, and fumigation of cropland.47
Although the ratio of displaced individuals to the established popula-
tion in Villavicencio is lower than Yopal, the ruling elite of that city has
been unprepared to deal with the unplanned for stream of migrants. The
refugees arrive traumatized by terror and the tragedy of the failure of their
hopes. Help for such people from the city is minimal. The national Red
Cross and the Centro de Atención Humanitaria Inmediata supply what
is forthcoming, and the United Nations has opened an office to help deal
with the multiple obstacles facing the displaced. The newcomers build
their homes in marginal areas along the banks of rivers that are subject to
flooding, cave-ins, and contamination during the winter months. Accord-
ing to studies carried out by the Secretarı́a de Planeación Municipal, in
1999 there were 151 refugee asentamientos (settlements) in high-risk areas
with an estimated forty-six thousand inhabitants48 . Rather than assist-
ing these people, the municipal authorities have repeatedly tried to evict
them. To cite just one example, Amnesty International reported that on
February 2, 2001, twelve hundred soldiers invaded the La Nohora asen-
tamiento in an effort to force several hundred internal displaced families
to leave the area.49

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In Casanare, according to the Red de Solidaridad Social, a Colombian

institution, the unofficial number of displaced people in 2003 was about
6,000 or about 2.6% of the population of the department. The Red attributed
most of the displacements to violence in the rural areas perpetrated by the
paramilitary groups rather than the guerrillas, but there are also people
from the highlands coming out to the Llanos in search of new opportuni-
ties. Sixty-five percent of these migrants were living in Yopal. This group is
comprised of 49% men and 51% women who are for the most part illiterate
campesinos. They arrive in the city hoping to sell food, but soon find that
the only jobs available are in construction for men and domestic service
for women. As with the case of Villavicencio, the elites of Casanare are
reluctant to deal with this challenge. On October 30, 2001 the department
created the Comité Departamental de Atención Integral a la Población De-
splazada. Presided over by the Secretarı́a de Gobierno Departamental, this
committee tries to make the situation of the displaced more supportable by
giving aid in the first months. The refugees themselves have established
networks of solidarity and organization in order to win recognition of their
plight. In spite of the difficult conditions in which they are forced to live,
they do not want to return to the insecurity of countryside.50
In Arauca a new struggle that broke out between the FARC and the
ELN in 2007 for unknown reasons has increased the stream of people ar-
riving in the town of Arauquita seeking safety from the killings in the
countryside. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UN-
HCR) estimated that approximately 1,000 people fled their rural homes in
the past eighteen months, reflecting a departmental trend: between 2005
and 2006 displacement figures in Arauca increased by eighty-eight per-
cent. The one thousand refugees in Arauquita have boosted the town’s
population of 6,000 by almost 20 percent. As in Yopal and Villavicen-
cio, local officials had no plan for dealing with the massive influx of
people and are relying on the efforts of the Catholic Church and La
Defensoria del Pueblo, Colombia’s human right network to protect the
displaced.

Native Americans
According to the División de Asuntos Indı́genas del Ministerio de Go-
bierno, in Colombia there are 84 Amerindian ethnic groups totaling some
600,000 individuals. Several of these groups lived in the Llanos in semi-
isolation until petroleum exploration began to invade their traditional
homelands. The Colombian Constitution of 1991 recognized native Amer-
icans permitting them to retain their identities and giving them consulta-
tive rights over oil and mining exploitation in nearby territories, but when
opposed by MNCs determined to explore for oil in wilderness areas, the
government has been inconsistent in enforcing these laws.
Perhaps the most notorious case occurred in the decade of the 1990s
when Occidental Petroleum, fearing the depletion of oil in its highly lucra-
tive Caño Limón operation, signed an agreement with the semi-nomadic

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U’wa tribe to explore for oil in 400,000 acres just outside their reserva-
tion. Known as the Samore region, the land was on the border between
Arauca and Norte de Santander and lay along OXY’s 485 mile pipeline
to Coveñas. After signing the agreement, the leaders of the tribe of ap-
proximately five thousand people, had a change of heart, and called on
the Colombian government to repudiate the pact. They alleged that they
had been tricked into signing a document which the company said was
an agreement to permit oil operations, but which the U’wa thought was
simply a record of their presence at a meeting. Oxy officials asserted that
guerrilla pressure on the natives was the reason for this reversal, but the
U’wa leaders, supported by the Colombian National Indigenous Organi-
zation, stated that they opposed any drilling on their land in the Llanos,
because the extraction of petroleum would harm their culture and beliefs
and even cause their physical world to implode.51
The U’wa took their case to the Colombian courts arguing that although
the land in question was outside their reservation, it was still theirs be-
cause it lay in their migratory path. When in March 1997 the Colombian
Supreme court decided the issue in Oxy’s favor, the U’wa resorted to the
extreme measure of threatening to commit mass suicide by leaping from
a cliff if Oxy proceeded with its exploratory drilling. This ploy, which
caught the attention of international humanitarian organizations, turned
into a publicity nightmare for Occidental Petroleum. By the end of 1998 it
declared that it would temporarily withdraw its claim to U’wa territory. In
May 2002 OXY announced at its annual shareholder meeting in Los Angles
that it was relinquishing its oil exploration in the U’wa territory citing eco-
nomic reasons including a negative result from its first exploratory drill.52
Despite this announcement, Shannon Write, Amazon Campaign Coordi-
nator for the San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network, cautioned
that the U’wa struggle with Oxy had opened up their previously isolated
territory to outsiders: She continued:

The U’wa now live under constant threat of violence, caught be-
tween Colombia’s brutal military, paramilitary groups, and guer-
rilla armies. . .Whether it is through the pollution of their sacred
land, the increased violence the project will bring them or by their
own hand, allowing the oil exploration to go forward means the
death of the U’wa.”53

As Write anticipated, the U’wa’s victory in 2002 proved temporary.

On December 15, 2006 Colombia’s Interior Ministry cleared the way for
Ecopetrol to begin new exploration in the same territory—this time on
behalf of the Spanish firm, Repsol. The ministry justified this decision by
stating that the U’wa had refused to participate in consultation meeting it
had organized to discuss the question. In response, Luis Tegrı́a, president
of the Assembly of the U’wa Indigenous Community, said that the ques-
tion of oil development was not negotiable. Protesting that the ministry’s

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decision was made public before the U’wa were officially notified, he
pledged that his people would continue to defend their ancestral lands.54
In June 2003 the Association of Cabildos and Traditional Indigenous
Authorities of the Department of Arauca (ASCATIDAR) was founded
to promote the local autonomy of the U’wa and Guahibo Indians. The
nomadic Guahibo had once roamed throughout the Llanos, but by the
twentieth century they had been pushed back to the northwestern corner
of Arauca near the town of Saravena. The Guahibos had made adjustments
to live with the campesino settlers, but with the arrival of oil exploration,
the region became a target for armed guerrillas and paramilitaries as well
as oil company employees. A decline of legitimate government in the city
led to military rule. Waste from the Caño Limón oil field has contaminated
the rivers and the land, and both the guerrillas and the para-militaries have
carried out atrocities against the Indians.55
In Casanare a nomadic tribe called the Nukak-makú faced a similar
fate in the early 1990s. As hunters and gatherers, the Nukak rarely culti-
vated food, preferring to roam over a large portion of Casanare, Vichada,
and the Amazon jungle of Guaviare. It was to help protect the Nukak
that the national government created the Reserva Forestal de la Amazonas
in 1959. Some years later Ecopetrol signed a contract with Fronteras de
Exploración Colombiana Incorporated (FECI) to explore some 800 kilome-
ters of seismic lines. Included in the project known as Programas Sı́smicos
Vichada-92 were six seismic lines, the most important being line VI-91–
1100 that stretched from northeast to southeast for 370 kilometers, cross-
ing the Guaviare River to penetrate the forests of Guaviare and end in
the Reserva Forestal de la Amazonas. FECI dug a three-meter wide trench
65 kilometers long, using explosives to dig perforations of fifteen feet every
80 meters and constructing heliports every 800 meters. This exploratory
trench threatened the integrity of the Nukak, who having only recently
been discovered, were especially vulnerable to the impact of petroleum
exploration. Fortunately, thanks to the adoption of the Constitution of
1991, the territorial judge of San José del Guaviare ordered immediate sus-
pension of road and trench construction in Nukak territory. When FECI
appealed the order, an inspection of the impact on the Nukak by social sci-
entists and judicial authorities produced enough evidence of the damage
that was being caused that the circuit judge in Villavicencio agreed that
the work could not continue—a ruling that brought about the dissolution
of FECI and represented a significant victory for the Nukak.56

Cultural Developments
The establishment of new universities has already been noted. Besides
the Universidad de los Llanos in Villavicencio, the most important ones are
located in Yopal where there is a division of the Universidad Autónoma de
Bucaramanga, and in January 2007 the Universidad Nacional de Colombia
announced that an affiliated branch in Arauca City would become perma-
nent.57 All three departments have established academies of history, and a

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modern public library in Villavicencio, the Biblioteca Germán Arciniegas,

promotes cultural activities. Llanero authors produced some 700 books
between 1975 and 1998, with Meta in the lead, followed by Arauca and
Casanare. In all three departments composers and poets abound and see
as their mission the perpetuation of traditional Llanero themes, customs,
and music.58
Despite this cultural florescence, one of the biggest problems in each of
the departments is the loss of a communal identity that has been exacer-
bated by the arrival of thousands of displaced people from other Colom-
bian departments. In their paper Cusmano and Preciado point out that
a sense of anonomie is a characteristic typical of a boom economy, “a
phenomenon that is accompanied by cultural, economic and institutional
disconnection that signifies the loss of those shared human, juridical, so-
cial and cultural values.”59 The concern of Mantilla Trejos who laments
the disappearance of traditional Llanero values developed over centuries
and based on cattle raising is a legitimate one.60 Given this situation, other
scholars have emphasized the need to develop a new kind of shared iden-
tity. For example, Marı́a Eugenia Herrán de Novoa envisions an image of
Villavicencio as an urban axis commanding the surrounding plains while
Pérez Barreño suggests the elimination of the three separate departments
and their replacement by a regional government including all of Orino-
quia.61 But whether this evolving identity be micro or macro, it is clear
that in the coming decades one of the principal challenges raised by the
petroleum boom facing the increasingly multi-cultural nature of the peo-
ple living in the Llanos, is to work out exactly what their common destiny
is to be.

Conclusion
In summary, this paper has shown that the oil boom and agro-industrial
development has converted the piedmont part of the Llanos Frontier into
a region of the highest economic and population growth in the country.
It has elevated the political status of the departments, created new urban
centers, expanded roads, and improved communication networks. But it
has also contributed to the corruption of local politicians, strengthened
the ideology and finances of the ELN and the FARC, with the consequent
growth of the paramilitaries, displaced thousands of people, raised havoc
with the environment, brought ruin to some native tribes, and destroyed
the traditional sense of Llanero identity.
In reviewing this thirty-year period, perhaps the most important point
is that despite the changes prompted by the exploitation of petroleum, the
Llanos remain a frontier, peripheral to the Colombian highland heartland
and subject to an extractive and dependent economy. As Cusmano and
Preciado suggest, the asymmetrical changes occurring in the Colombian
Oriente is another example of “growth without development,” that oc-
curs when MNCs descend on under-developed regions which are victim-
ized despite the best intentions of government regulations to control their

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activities. They argue that the only way to change this situation is to create
local economic and political mechanisms that will favor over the long haul,
not the MNCs or highland investors, but the Llaneros themselves. To be
specific “reforms designed to promote alternative developments can not
be imposed by decree or simply by planning from above.” The evolution
of institutions favorable to development can only result from incremental
changes at the local level that are understood and shared in a process of
social interaction. The energizing of civil society, the creation of space for
discussion and debate over the use of petroleum income, and the develop-
ment of economic initiatives by local actors is vital if the dependent status
of the Llanos frontier vis-à-vis the highlands is ever to be overcome.62

Notes
1
Casanare was ruled as a province of the Department of Boyacá until 1975
when it became an Intendancy.
2
The inspiration for this essay and much of the data has been gathered
from papers presented by 38 scholars at the VIII Simposio Internacional
de Historia de los Llanos Colombo-Venezolanos held in Villavavicencio,
June 16-20, 2003. The theme of the conference was “Los Últimos 25 Años del
Siglo XX”. The Memorias were published in Villavicencio by the Academia
de Historia del Meta in 2004 and will hereafter be cited as Memorias 2003.
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual Conference
of the South Eastern Council on Latin American Studies, Tampa, Florida,
April 18, 2008.
3
George Philip, Oil and Politics in Latin America: Nationalist Movements and
State Companies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 7-10.
4
David Bushnell, Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1993), p. 177.
5
ECOPETROL (Empresa Colombiana de Petróleos) is attached to the Min-
istry of Mines and Energy and possesses legal existence, administrative
and decision-making autonomy, and its own independent capital. Since
the 1990s it has been responsible for exploring, extracting, processing,
transporting and marketing Colombia’s hydrocarbon resources.” U.S. De-
partment of Energy, “An Energy Overview of Colombia,” (February 6,
2003), p. 3.
6
René de la Pedraja Tomán, Energy Politics in Colombia (Boulder: Westview
Press, 1989), pp. 49–50.
7
C. H. Neff, “Review of 1968 Petroleum Developments in south America,
Central America, and Caribbean Area, The American Association of Petroleum
Geologists Bulletin, 1969 (53: 1578-1648) cited by Dieter Brunnschweiler, The
Llanos Frontier (East Lansing, MI: 1972), p. 49.
8
Departamento del Meta, Monografı́a, folclor, cultura y turismo (Villavicen-
cio: Imprenta Departamental, 1972), p. 17. Elf Aquitaine is a multinational
company and one of the 25 most important enterprises in the world. It
began activities in Colombia in 1972 in the Lower Magdalena and later
participated with other private companies in Casanare where it conducted

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explorations in Trinidad, Santiago de las Atalayas, Rı́o Pauto, Cusiana. See

Alfonso Avellaneda C. Petróleo: Colonización y Medio ambiente en Colombia:
de la Tora a Cusiana (Bogotá: Ecoe, 1998), p. 49.
9
According to Eduardo Mantilla Trejos, in order to build the pipeline
Manessman paid a “multimillion dollar sum to the ELN guerrillas that
was coordinated through the officials in Norte de Santander with the
full knowledge of the national government.” See Mantilla Trejos, Simposio
2003, p. 16.
10
Avellaneda C., Petróleo, p. 54; “Petroleum Exploration and Development
in Colombia,” Colombia Today (20, no. 8, 1985).
11
César Gavirı́a Trujillo, “El impacto de los nuevos ingresos petroleros,”
pp. 2-8 in Departamento Nacional de Planeación, “Cusiana: Un reto de
polı́tica Económica: Documentos presentados en el Semanrio: “Cusiana y la
Economı́a Colombiana en los Años Noventa.” Julio 7-8, 1993. (Santafé de Bo-
gotá, Colombia: Tercer Mundo, 1994) (hereafter cited as Cusiana).
12
Ojeda Ojeda, Tomás, Villavicencio entre la documentalidad y la oralidad
(Villavicencio: Oscar Giraldo Durán Ediciones, 2000), p. 143.
13
Ministerio de Comercio, Industria y Turismo, “Estructura Productiva y
de Comercio Exterior del Meta,” (Bogotá, April 2004), pp. 13-14. (Hereafter
cited as “Estructura Productiva); Jane M. Rausch, From Frontier Town to
Metropolis: A History of Villavicencio, Colombia, since 1842 (Lanham: Rowman
& Littlefield, 2007), p. 188.
14
U.S. Department of Energy, An Energy Overview, p. 3.
15
U.S. Department of Energy, An Energy Overview, p. 21.
16
Although Colombia ranked in third place as an exporting country in
Latin America, its reserves lagged far behind those of Venezuela and Mex-
ico. In 1992 Venezuelan reserves were sixteen times those of Colombia
and Mexico’s were fourteen times as large. With regard to production,
Venezuela and Mexico each produced some 2,3000.000 b/d, while Colom-
bia’s production averaged 1,000,000 b/d during the five years between
1997 and 2002. See Guido Nulle, “Perspectivas de Cusiana y Alternatives
de Manejo” in Cusiana: un reto de polı́tico económico, p. 293.
17
U.S. Department of Energy, An Energy Overview, p. 5.
18
Lucia Cusmano and Fredy Preciado, “Institucionalidad para el desarrollo
endógeno en una región de frontera: Casanare, Colombia,” Unpublished
paper. Yopal, Casanare, January 2008, pp. 9-10.
19
Wilson Ladino Orjuela, “La Gran Transformación,” email blog, June 8,
2007.
20
For a brief summary of the historical evolution of the Universidad de
los Llanos, see Arturo Arango Mutis, “Haciendo Camino: 25 Años de la
Universidad de los Llanos 1975-2000,” in Memorias 2003, pp. 362-368.
21
Leonel Pérez Bareño, “Experiencias de Integración Regional en la Orino-
quia Colombia,” Memorias, 2003, pp. 356-369.
22
Avellaneda C., Petróleo, pp. 51-54.
23
Wilson Landino Orjuela, “El poder de los departamentos,” email blog,
August 8, 2007.

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24
Cusmano and Preciado, “Institucionalidad”, p. 21.
25
Gregorio Garavito Jimenez, Historia de la iglesia en los llanos: 1616-1994
(Villavicencio: Imprenta Departamental del Meta, 1994), p. 47.
26
Garavito Jimenez, Historia de la iglesia, p. 46.
27
Mantilla Trejos, “Luz y Sombra,” p. 15.
28
Mantilla Trejo, “Luz y sombra,” 15.
29
Alberto Baquero Nariño, El caso Llanero: Villavicencio. (Villavicencio: Ed-
itorial Siglo XX, 1990), pp. 67-70.
30
Cusmano and Preciado, “Institucionalidad,” p. 14.
31
“Estructura Productiva,”p. 7.
32
Rausch, From Frontier Town to Metropolis, p. 187.
33
Cusmano and Preciado, “Institucionalidad,” p. 15.
34
Rausch, From Frontier Town to Metropolis, p. 187.
35
Cusman and Preciado, “Institutcionalidad,” p. 16.
36
Avellaneda C. Petróleo, p. 93; Wilson Ladino Orjuela, “La Gran Transfor-
mación,” email blog, July 8, 2007.
37
Gloria Evelyn Martı́nez Sala, “Crecimiento Urbano Accelerado y
Marginalidad Reciente de la Ciudad de Villavicencio,” in Por los Caminos
del Llanos. 4 vols. (Arauca: Academia de Historia de Arauca, 1992),
pp. 200-3; Avellaneda C. Petróleo, p. 19.
38
Cited by Avellaneda C., p. 85.
39
Mantillo Trejos, “Luz y Sombra”, p. 19.
40
Avellaneda C. Petróleo, pp. 51-54.
41
Renaldo Barbosa Estepa, “Para Estados y Crisis Institucional en la Ori-
noquia Colombiana,” in Iglesia, movimientos y partidos: polı́tica y violencia
en la historia de Colombia, ed. Javier Guerrero Baron (Tunja: Asociación
Colombiana de Historiadores, 1997), p. 149.
42
Elisender Adan Ovalle, “La Violencia Polı́tica y la Acción Guerrillera en
los Llanos Orientales en la Década de los años Ochenta” in Por los Caminos
del Llanos, 3:314.
43
Cited by Chris Kraul, “Colombian Tribe has OXY over a Barrel,” Los
Angeles Times, April 25, 1997.
44
Isabel Hilton, “Colombia’s Oil Pipeline is Paid for in Blood and Dollars,”
The Guardian (August 20, 2004).
45
Arcadio Benı́tez, “Violencia y Desplazamiento en Casanare, “ Memorias
2003, p. 98.
46
Arcadio Benı́tez, “Violencia y Desplazamiento en Casanare, p. 99.
47
IDMC, “Almost 4 million Colombians displaced by violence between
1985 and 2007,” http://www.internal-displacement.org/idmc/website/ accessed
August 28, 2007.
48
Ojeda Ojeda, Villavicencio entre la documentalidad y la oralidad (Villavicen-
cio: Oscar Giraldo Durán Ediciones, 2000), p. 67.
49
AMR 23/009/2001, “Fear for safety, internally displaced people at the La
Nohora camp, city of Villavicencio, Meta Department,” web.amnesty.org
(accessed June 14, 2004).

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50
Arcadio Benı́tez, “Violencia and Desplazamiento en Casanare,” pp. 103-
104.
51
Kraul, “Colombian Tribe has Oxy over a Barrel.”
52
Dennis Grammenos, “Occidental Petroleum in Colombia, ” MULTI-
NATIONAL MONITOR, December 1997, http://www.essential.org/honitor/
hyper/mm1297.00.html accessed April 1, 1998.
53
Shannon Write cited by Grammenos, “Occidental Petroleum.”
54
Bill Weinberg, “Oil expansion threatens Colombia’s indigenous,” In-
dian Country Today, February 5, 2007. http:///www.indiancountry.com/content.
cfm?id=1096414449 accessed September 3, 2007.
55
Bill Weinberg, “Arauca: The attack in Colombia’s Oil Zone,”
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