Third World Quarterly

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The Wayúu tragedy: death, water and the

imperatives of global capitalism

William Avilés

To cite this article: William Avilés (2019): The Wayúu tragedy: death, water and the imperatives of
global capitalism, Third World Quarterly, DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2019.1613638

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Third World Quarterly
https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2019.1613638

The Wayúu tragedy: death, water and the imperatives of

global capitalism
William Avilés
Department of Political Science, University of Nebraska at Kearney, Kearney, NE, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Between 20007 and 2017 approximately 5000 children of the Wayúu Received 17 November 2018
tribe in the Guajira state in Colombia died, largely from an inability to Accepted 25 April 2019
gain access to clean water. A severe drought is a proximate factor to
this massive loss of life, but the drought concealed a larger historical,
political and economic context that was fundamental to this humani- KEYWORDS
tarian crisis. A context dominated by the needs of our present epoch Wayuu
of global capitalism and not simply the consequences of regional cor- Colombia
ruption or the weakness of the Colombian state. In the case of Guajira, global capitalism
La Guajira
transnational coal mining interests have for decades worked to dispos- coal
sess indigenous communities from their lands while capturing more of drought
their water resources to facilitate the operation of the largest open-pit
mine in the world. This demand for coal, land and water was facilitated
by factions of Colombia’s political establishment on a national and
regional level that viewed such investments as necessary for develop-
ment and/or as a source of funding for corruption and political
violence.

The Wayúu tragedy: death, water and the imperatives of global capitalism in
Colombia

The global economy is built on the principle that one place can be exploited, even destroyed, for the
sake of another place.

Wendall Berry, 19921

En La Guajira, el hambre mata mas personas que las balas

Jose Antonio Gutierrez, Rebelión

For over a decade the Colombian department of Guajira has been suffering widespread
malnutrition and premature death largely due to poor access to clean water for its poorest,
most marginalised communities. The Wayúu indigenous group, the largest indigenous group
in Colombia with over 200,000 members, have disproportionately suffered the consequences
of this tragedy. Between 2016 and 2018, an average of one indigenous child under five died
every week because of malnutrition.2 In total approximately 5000 children died between

CONTACT William Avilés avilesw1@unk.edu Department of Political Science, University of Nebraska at Kearney,
Kearney, NE 68849, USA
© 2019 Global South Ltd
2 W. AVILÉS

2007 and 2017, more than all the deaths associated with Colombia’s long-running internal
war during the same period. The government declared the situation in Guajira a ‘public
calamity’ in 2014, while the United Nations referred to it as a ‘humanitarian crisis’.3
That this has occurred (and is occurring) in the state of Guajira is not a surprise to
Colombians and scholars who have studied the history and politics of this country. Guajira
is one of the poorest states in Colombia with levels of inequality, poverty and child mortality
well above the national average.4 In Guajira only 16.3% of the rural population has access
to potable water; the rest of this population is obligated to use water that is unsafe for human
consumption leading to illnesses such as diarrhoea, infections and skin ailments.5 At the
same time, 28% of children under five suffer from malnutrition, the basic needs of 92% of
the rural population go unmet and more than 60% of this department’s population lacks
access to a sewage system, electricity or aqueducts.6
Is the tragedy of the Guajira water crisis simply a reflection of the ‘corrupt culture’ embed-
ded in Guajiro society, the historically repressive poverty and/or the uneven state presence?
While issues of corruption have long persisted within Guajira,7 I submit that we cannot
understand this crisis solely through focusing upon the actions of corrupt regional or even
national political leaders. Any explanation of this tragedy requires attention to the global
consequences of capitalist globalisation and the behaviour of neoliberal states structured
to benefit the investment interests of transnational corporations.
Events in the department of Guajira reflect a confluence of factors that highlight how the
contradictions and crises within global capitalism intersect with long-standing national/
regional dynamics. The decisions among Colombia’s political and economic elite, as well as
the structural power of global capitalism, has determined who gets water and who does
not. It does us no good to divide this case into different ‘levels of analysis’; the Wayúu tragedy
reflects the relational and integrative characteristics of our current epoch. Global capitalism
and the interests of transnational capital requires the national policies of states such as
Colombia to facilitate and secure their investments. Within Colombia, this process has his-
torically involved regional right-wing militias (‘paramilitary groups’) and long-established
discrimination against indigenous minorities. These factors were exacerbated by the ultimate
threat to life on earth (climate change) which is not only central to the drought that has
struck this part of Colombia but has been centrally caused by the very investment needs of
transnational corporations around the world. This is most profoundly illustrated by the activ-
ities of the different Transnational Corporations (TNCS) that have owned and operated the
Cerrejón coal mining project in Guajira, one of the largest open-pit mines in the world.

Human rights, corruption and the limits of the national

Internationally, almost a billion people lack access to safe drinking water and 3–4 million
people die of water borne diseases, with water-related deaths representing the leading killer
of infants in the developing world.8 As early as 2002 the environmentalists Barlow and Clarke
asserted that ‘unless we dramatically change our ways, between one-half and two-thirds of
humanity will be living with severe freshwater shortages within the next quarter-century’.9
The positive relationship between economic development, environmental degradation and/
or the prioritisation of profit motives over protecting the environment has long been under-
stood as the ‘ways’ that must be changed. This is especially the case in the current era of
 Third World Quarterly 3

global capitalism that began in the last quarter of the twentieth century and continues to
the present-day. Referred to as neoliberalism, this has been a period where the deregulation
of capital movements and foreign direct investment has been coupled with the weakening
of labour power throughout much of the world. Free trade, reductions in social spending in
order to pay back foreign creditors and efforts to commodify areas previously viewed as
being outside market relations have all been part of a decades-long process. International
financial institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World
Trade Organization as well as policy forums such as the World Economic Forum have all
utilised their influence over debt, trade and/or policymaking to accelerate greater economic
integration. For these institutions, countries such as Colombia must do more to develop
their ‘comparative advantage’ in world trade (primary commodities) so that they can acquire
the necessary hard currencies to import the industrial and technological exports of indus-
trialised nations. However, the positive-sum narrative of this process has been undermined
by the social and environmental costs that much of the developing world has experienced
as a result of their position within the world economy.
Journalistic and academic portrayals of Guajira department and the problems of water
access have stressed the benefits that accrue to Colombia with the export of coal and often
argue that transnational capital cannot be blamed for any of the problems associated with
their investments. These observers consistently stress an embedded culture of corruption
in the region in line with the critiques periodically presented by the International Monetary
Fund and the World Bank that have called for governmental reform and ‘good governance’
as answers to the remaining development challenges facing the developing world. For exam-
ple, authors such as Ochoa Sierra have emphasised the corrupt networks between public
officials and paramilitary groups in threatening the survival of the Wayúu10 while others have
suggested that the relatively high levels of corruption in the department are central to
undermining economic development (El Tiempo, 22 February 2016). The archbishop of
Rioacha (the capital of Guajira) concluded that ‘corruption was killing the Wayúu’ (El Heraldo,
1 February 2016). Better governance on the local level as well as greater transparency by
Cerrejón have also been viewed as important mechanisms to improving human rights and
the survival of indigenous communities in Guajira.11 In addition, the positive relationship
between inequality and corruption has been supported by analyses of different departments
in Colombia, including Guajira.12 There is no doubt that local and regional dynamics have
contributed to undermining access to water for the Wayúu and have facilitated the capture
of these resources by Cerrejón. However, the historical persistence of these corrupt networks
and the existence of similar local dynamics surrounding the extractivist investments of trans-
national capital throughout Latin America suggest that a perspective beyond the local is
necessary. Furthermore, the fact that Cerrejón has long benefitted from the abusive practices
of regional elites demonstrates the extent that the lack of ‘good governance’ has not been
an obstacle to its investment priorities.
Transnational corporations benefit from the establishment of neoliberal states, states
governed by transnational elites actively promoting a neoliberal economic model of reduc-
ing/eliminating taxes and regulations while granting the territorial spaces for their opera-
tions. In addition, state and/or parastate repression is often necessary to address the periodic
challenges that mining and dam projects generate on a local and regional level. These con-
flicts are exacerbated by the capture of land/waters previously viewed as outside the sphere
of capitalist investment and exchange.
4 W. AVILÉS

David Harvey argues in The New Imperialism that global capitalism requires that ‘non-cap-
italist territories should be forced open not only to trade (which could be helpful) but also
to permit capital to invest in profitable ventures using cheaper labour power, raw materials,
low-cost land, and the like. The general thrust of any capitalistic logic of power is not that
territories should be held back from capitalist development, but that they should be con-
tinuously opened up’.13 Harvey goes on to argue that this logic of power requires a process
of dispossession, or accumulation by dispossession, which periodically requires the use of
imperialistic power to incorporate territories previously shielded from capitalist investments.
Liking this process to what Marx refers to as ‘primitive accumulation’, Harvey notes that
‘displacement of peasant populations and the formation of a landless proletariat has accel-
erated in countries such as Mexico and India in the last three decades, as communal property
resources, such as water, have been privatised (often at World Bank insistence) and brought
within the capitalist logic of accumulation, alternative (indigenous and even, in the case of
the US, petty commodity) forms of production and consumption have been suppressed’.14
For Webber and Gordon this accumulation by dispossession has an explicit ecological
logic, with certain natural resources being fundamental to imperialism, transforming and
destroying local and regional ecologies ‘such as by blowing off the side of and clear-cutting
a mountain in order to build an open-pit mine, the toxic waste from which leeches into the
surrounding water system poisoning everything in the area’.15 Christian Parenti likens this
process to an ‘economic disaster’ in his analysis of political violence in Tropic of Chaos. He
suggests that environmental pressures associated with climate change are marked by violent
and social conflicts associated with a ‘catastrophic convergence’ – a collision of political,
economic and environmental disasters that exacerbate long-standing problems often com-
pounding and amplifying each other, one expressing itself through another.16 Stressing the
interaction of environmental and developmental factors with the imposition of class power
is in keeping with the expectations of the radical variants of political ecology which recognise
that to address these problems requires substantive changes to local, national and global
political-economic processes.17
The relationship between on the ground conflicts with larger global economic processes
is also important to the work of Henry Veltmeyer and James Petras. They assert that a form
of imperialism is at work, an ‘extractive imperialism’ with the ‘capitalist state at the center of
the system … paving the way for the operations of extractive capital’.18 For Veltmeyer and
Petras, this represent a continuation of a centuries long process of dispossession for the sake
of precious minerals and valuable agricultural crops. In the modern era this dispossession
is taking place through the vehicle of the foreign direct investments of transnational capital
(as opposed to the colonial states of old) with the governments of peripheral states actively
securing land, water and minerals on behalf of these economic interests.19
The establishment and expansion of one of the largest open-pit mines in the world (El
Cerrejón) is one part of a larger process of extractivism in Latin America. This process has
increasingly become a central driver of capital accumulation and export revenues funda-
mental to the ‘accumulation by dispossession’. During the 2000s, the booming demand for
natural and agricultural resources such as coal, copper or soy from the Chinese and Indian
economies led to the rapid growth of investment in the region dedicated to extracting and
exporting these resources abroad. For example, CEPAL estimates that in 2010, 39% of foreign
direct investment went toward natural resources and 37% to the manufacturing sector with
the ‘orientation of capital entering the region mainly for export’.20 In Latin America between
 Third World Quarterly 5

1994 and 2004, energy exports increased by 200%, minerals by 400%, agricultural/forest by
75% and agro-industrial exports by 100%.21 Webber and Gordon note that ‘the region con-
tains 85% of all known reserves of lithium, and a third of copper, bauxite, and silver. Latin
America and the Caribbean are similarly rich in coal, oil, gas, and uranium, with 27, 25, 8, and
5% respectively of all discovered deposits in the world currently being exploited’.22 Colombia
is the largest producer of coal in Latin America and the tenth largest in the world.23 The
intersection of intensifying extractivism with neoliberal globalisation has exacerbated the
negative consequences of these processes.
Authors such as Emiliano Lopez and Francisco Vértiz stress that neoliberal globalisation
represents a particular threat to the environment, exacerbating the pre-existing threat cap-
italism as a system has long posed to the air, water and natural resources on the planet. They
write that ‘global capital unifies and at the same time fragments and differentiates geograph-
ical spaces’ asserting that ‘neoliberal globalization is the production of spaces for capital. In
this historical process, space is a construct that, in the context of neoliberal project’s expan-
sion is based on a strategy of the dominant classes of key countries – in response to the
exhaustion of postwar national development models’.24 Lucero Radonic asserts that the
‘neoliberal policy framework’ prioritises individual rights and property rights over the col-
lective rights of indigenous communities.25 Relatedly, William Robinson argues that indig-
enous movements represent a ‘threat to transnational capital because indigenous
communities block access to land and natural resources under indigenous custodianship
… transnational capital seeks to integrate indigenous into the global market as dependent
workers and consumers, to convert their lands into private property, and to make the natural
resources in their territories available for transnational corporate exploitation’.26 As will be
demonstrated below, this tendency has been experienced by the Wayúu who have repre-
sented the most important political force in Guajira seeking to slow or even stop the con-
tinuing encroachment of Cerrejón into their territories. As applied to extractivism, this policy
framework has been aggressively applied by different governments in Colombia for decades
and even more specifically in La Guajira department for the benefit of the Cerrejón project.

Historical context: the Wayuu, extractivism and EL Cerrejón

The Cerrejón mining project is jointly owned by the transnational corporations Glencore/
Xstrata (Switzerland), BHP Billiton (UK/Australia) and Anglo American (UK/South Africa). The
extension and integration of transnational capital investment in the Cerrejón mining project
since the 1970s and its continuous attempts to capture more territory and water resources
central to human survival in La Guajira are in keeping with the expansion of capitalism on
a global level. La Guajira had long been viewed as an isolated corner of Colombian territory,
but with the late twentieth century transition into the epoch of global capitalism, La Guajira
has been increasingly brought into a capital accumulating dynamic. This process has not
been possible without the direct violence of the Colombian state/para-state as well as the
structural violence against indigenous communities who have died due to malnutrition and
the lack of access to water. The struggle over resources and control of territory in La Guajira
has been a long one for the Wayúu people.
The Wayúu people have lived for thousands of years in what is today La Guajira and rep-
resent the largest indigenous group in Colombia with over 270,413 (2005 estimate by the
National Administrative Department of Statistics) members. They represent approximately
6 W. AVILÉS

45% of the department’s population.27 The Wayúu represent 19.42% of the total indigenous
population of Colombia and 98% of the Wayúu people live in La Guajira, with 85% of the
population speaking their native language and only 32% being bi-lingual.28 Historically, they
were one of the last indigenous communities in Colombia to successfully resist Spanish
colonisation, a resistance that was aided by an extensive contraband trade that allowed
them access to food and arms.29 To this day the contrabandista in La Guajira is someone that
is generally respected among the Wayúu, who gradually obtained his wealth over time.
However, the speed of wealth creation through the contraband trade rapidly accelerated
during the marijuana boom of the 1970s and continued into the 1980s and 1990s with the
profitable cocaine trade. Wayúus and non-Wayúus benefitted from this trade, but this trade
attracted (and continues to attract) the involvement of non-Wayúu drug traffickers and their
armed allies in the form of sicarios and paramilitary groups as well as different guerrilla
groups.30 This was the criminalised and para-state context that the Cerrejón mining project
entered.
From the very beginning of the mining project, foreign capital would play a central role
in its development and expansion, one that broke ground in 1983 as a joint venture between
the Colombian state and Exxon. According to Colombian Senator Jorge Robledo, ‘the original
contract benefitted the transnational company from the very start’.31 The mine represented
Colombia’s first experience with the exploration of coal at this level of production and
through the means of an enormous open-pit in indigenous territory.32 Its operations and
the infrastructure necessary to extract and export the coal to European and North American
markets has affected all parts of the department. In 2010 it exported 33.4 million tons of
coal to international markets and in the almost 40 years that it has been in operation it has
produced more than 500 million tons of coal, representing approximately 40% of Colombia’s
exports during that period.33 By 2000, the government sold its shares to a transnational
consortium of Glencore/Xstrata (Switzerland), BHP Billiton (UK/Australia) and Anglo American
(UK/South Africa) which would later establish complete ownership of the project in 2002.34
The state companies Carbones de Colombia (Carbocol) and Empresa Nacional Minera were
liquidated in 2003 and 2007 respectively, with Carbocol selling its stakes in El Cerrejón to a
foreign consortium at far below its estimated value.35 The steady decline in state involvement
and ownership of the Cerrejón project has coincided with the continuing displacement of
many of Guajira’s inhabitants.
Since 1976, 15 out of 21 indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities have been dis-
placed, largely due to the expansion of the mine, with over 7000 Wayúu resettled due to the
mine’s activities.36 One member of the Wayúu community referred to the mine’s creation
and expansion, with the support of the Colombian state, as making residents feel that ‘both
the members of the Public Force and the security personnel of the mining companies restrict
the right of free movement of people through the territory of the communities and prevent
us from physically accessing the water sources’.37 Another Guajira resident, Wilman Palmezano,
stated that ‘here, the government is the Cerrejón company’.38
The mine’s need for land and water to access the coal placed them in direct conflict with
the Wayúu from the very beginning of its operations. The company periodically negotiated
the purchase and resettlement of Wayúu communities, one clan at a time given the lack of
centralised authority among the Wayúu people. This resettlement, as well as the negotiations
allowing for the investment and expansion of the Cerrejón project, was facilitated through
various irregularities by a national government desperate for greater foreign direct
 Third World Quarterly 7

investment. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, much of Latin America would be
competing with Colombia for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) specifically dedicated to
greater mining and drilling for precious minerals and resources.

Extractivism and neoliberalism in Colombia

The entry and expansion of the Cerrejón project was in line with the overall neoliberal eco-
nomic objectives that began haltingly in the 1970s and were fully embraced by the late
1980s and early 1990s in Colombia. After decades in which governments had maintained
relatively protectionist import-substitution programmes, Colombia would join the rest of
Latin America in adopting the market fundamentalism promoted by international financial
institutions, the US and increasingly by Colombia’s own political and technocratic elite ideo-
logically committed to this model of development. In the first decade of the twenty-first
century, the Colombian state granted mining titles or contracts to over 5.13% of the nation’s
territory. Between 2010 and 2014, FDI in mining equalled 52% of all FDI annually – it was
only 6% annually between 1990 and 1995. During the first decade of the twenty-first century,
foreign direct investment in mining and energy would increase from 42 to 67% of all FDI,
and coal production increased by 80%.39
As Leila Celis demonstrates ‘administrative restructuring in the mining and hydrocarbons
sector, which began in 1992 (Decree 2119), aimed to dismantle and privatise state enterprises
and create institutions suited to the new economic model’ and that ‘since the 1990s public
policy on mining has followed a single course of action based on two principles: the guarantee
of foreign investment based, among other things, on legal stability contracts and bilateral
agreements and permissiveness toward extractivism’.40 This administrative restructuring has
been reinforced by different governments. For decades different administrations have sacrificed
environmental regulations over water access, greater royalties and tax revenues for increasing
levels of foreign direct investment. This was especially the case in the Alvaro Uribe administra-
tions (2002–2010) and the Juan Manuel Santos41 administrations (2010–2018) which coincided
with the extractivist boom of the 2000s. For example, while over 1800 mining licenses were
awarded between 1990s and 2001, by 2010 almost 9000 licenses had been awarded.42 This is
starkly illustrated in the case of Guajira with mining largely displacing the role of agriculture
in its economy. In 1960, agriculture represented 40% of the department’s GDP, but less than
5% in 2010, with mining representing 60% of the department’s GDP in 2015.43 Mining interests
were also fundamental to the country’s political embrace of extractivism.
For example, the 2001 mining code (Law 685) was drafted with the advice of a law firm
that represented half of the mining companies found in the national mining registry and
led to the Colombian state classifying mining as ‘activity for public utility and social interest’.44
The World Bank and the Canadian International Development Agency were also instrumental
in developing the new mining code.45 The code removed the Colombian state’s role as a
direct investor in mining operations, limiting the state as a regulator and collector of royalties/
fees – as recommended by the World Bank.46 The tax benefits that have been granted were
also substantial, with Mario Valencia of the Colombian mining advocacy organisation
RECLAME, asserting that ‘The “government take” in Colombia is 22% but if we figure in tax
exemptions, that number drops to 10%, and if we subtract environmental and social liabilities
the result is negative, which is another way of saying that we are paying money to them so
they come to mine coal, oil, gold, etc’.47
8 W. AVILÉS

These various fiscal and tax policies have been complemented by formal and informal
mechanisms of displacement of the Wayúu people. One strategy utilised by the government
was the creation of special reservations to reduce the sense of threat and fear that Wayúu
communities viewed the expanding and encroaching project. However, these reservations
were often poorly located in lands not as amenable to farming and/or surrounded by the
dirt, dust and noise of the mine.48 The Wayúu were typically pressured to sell their lands
below market value to the state or to El Cerrejón, often with the threat that the government
would simply expropriate their lands without paying anything.49
Furthermore, coal mining in the region has polluted water supplies, the air and the soil.50
Doctor Ricardo José Romero, who works in a small medical clinic in the Wayuu community
of Barrancas, states that the ‘illnesses we diagnose most in this hospital are acute respiratory
problems, asthma, and COPD [Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease]. These symptoms
occur with people living in the vicinity of the mine, and employees of El Cerrejón … also, we
see many patients with skin problems, and cancer … the government allows this multina-
tional to exploit our environment, but doesn´t care about the consequences for its inhabitants.
In more than 30 years that the mine has been here, not a single study has been done about
the impacts on the health of people affected by their operation’.51 The control and access to
water has been fundamental to the health and well-being of the people of La Guajira.

The politics of the dam and the Rancheria river

The profitability of the Cerrejón project not only requires a neoliberal state focused upon creating
the fiscal and security conditions for foreign direct investment, but also assuring that TNCs have
profitable and ready access to the natural resources they require for capital accumulation. In the
case of coal mining, water is a central resource and El Cerrejón has long had a deleterious impact
on its quality and availability. The extraction of coal is highly dependent on water given its use in
extracting and washing coal as well as in controlling the vast amount of dust created by open air
pits.52 Cerrejón claims that its water use practices are fully in line with Colombian law and verified
by CORPOGUAJIRA, the department’s central environmental authority with responsibility over
renewable resources and the development of sustainable development. In 2006 the executive
director of Cerrejón, Leon Teicher, stated that ‘if the human rights of the inhabitants near the mine
are being violated, this is the responsibility of the Colombian government, which is the one that
must protect its citizens … if El Cerrejón has any responsibility, it is with its shareholders’.53
The Cerrejón mine uses 17 million litres of water daily, while the average person in La Guajira
has access to 0.7 litres of water a day.54 According to the coordinator at Friends of the Earth
Colombia, Danilo Urrea, ‘In the region where Cerrejón operates, there have been huge envi-
ronmental changes over the past couple of decades. Many water sources have dried out after
the mine entered the area … [and] many water sources formerly available to the communities,
are now located within the boundaries of the mine’.55 The impact upon the Rancheria River,
the most important source of freshwater in Guajira, cannot be overstated. The mine has been
built in the medial basin of the river and its expansion has given little attention to the effect
of the mine on water quality or access in the region.56 For example, the Colombian NGO CINEP
conducted various studies of the effect of the mine upon the quality of the water in the river
and its tributaries, finding high levels of cadmium, lead and heavy metals in these waters.57
The poor quality of drinking water is one of the many challenges facing the Wayúu. They
also have faced a long and destructive drought (2012–2018) that has exacerbated their
 Third World Quarterly 9

plight. Multiple El Niῇo/La Niῇa58 systems as well as ongoing climate change have been
central to the drought, but not all actors are suffering the consequences of this drought in
the same way. Major rice plantations and the Cerrejón company continue to enjoy the water
they require for their operations. Their success is in part the result of their access to the waters
of the Rancheria river and the building of El Cercado dam. The Rancheria river runs from the
Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains to the capital of La Guajira (Riohacha) and access
to this river was radically affected with the construction of El Cercado.
The contract for the construction of the El Cercado dam was signed by INCODER (Instituto
Colombiano de Desarrollo Rural) in 2001, with its actual construction beginning in 2006 and
ending on 30 November 2010.59 The project proceeded with little consultation with an indig-
enous group that lived near the dam’s construction, the Wiwa.60 In 2005, the environmental
license was approved by INCODER to complete the construction of the dam.61 The granting
of the license for the dam project was in line with the Uribe administration’s National Plan
of Development (2006–2010) which stated that the dam would ‘not only advance the agri-
cultural policy of the government but contribute to improving the conditions of life in a
zone that is considered depressed with a high potential for productivity’.62
The need for the Cercado dam was also justified as the solution for Guajira’s constant
struggle for reliable sources of water, specifically in times of drought.63 This is declared at
the entrance of the dam where a huge billboard promises that ‘From here will flow the water
that will be the future to the Guajira’.64 In fact, the large rice producers control a majority of
the water being released from the river, with rice production expanding from 800 hectares
of production before the construction of the dam to 5500 hectares since the dam’s construc-
tion just in the region around the dam.65
The second phase of the project, which began in 2010, was to ensure that pipes brought
water from the dam’s reservoir to aqueducts in nine different municipalities in the northern
and central parts of Guajira. However, this phase was still an incomplete by 2018, with larger
agricultural plantations and El Cerrejón enjoying access to this water.66 Colombia’s Attorney
General concluded, ‘The Ranchería River, in spite of being a good of public use, its water can
be found in a dam to which the Wayúu community would not have access’67 and determined
that only one of the dam’s four objectives was achieved (improving irrigation within the
districts of Rancheria).68 Corruption has played a big role in the incompleteness of the project
with Colombia’s Contraloria concluding that the dam has been riddled with corruption, with
43 different instances of administrative corruption associated with the project.69 In 2015,
the dam’s reservoir was at 40% capacity with local governmental officials controlling the
flow of the river past the dam to ensure supply, but ‘the flow hardly makes it past the rice
fields, cattle ranches and the world’s largest open-pit coalmine that tap into the river below
the dam. By the time it reaches the middle Guajira, where the population is mostly Wayúu,
the Ranchería is barely even a trickle’.70 The humanitarian consequences of Cerrejón’s invest-
ments coupled with the facilitation and support of these investments by the Colombian
state have been compounded by the persistent use of state and para-state violence.

Wayúu resistance and state/para state violence

While transnational capital will often seek strategies to facilitate profitable displacement
without violence, this in no way precludes the need to resort to such violence when ‘peaceful’
mechanisms are no longer an option.71 Cerrejón has enjoyed the direct protection of the
10 W. AVILÉS

Colombian Army for much of its history. Nationally, the military and its allied militias have
been instrumental in the displacement of millions of Colombians, with 2 million being dis-
placed from mining regions in the first two decades of the twenty-first century.72 In addition,
80% of human rights violations between 2001 and 2011 were committed in mining and
energy producing regions.73
Within Guajira, paramilitary groups have played crucial roles in intimidating, repressing and
displacing Wayúu communities and social leaders critical of extractivist economic strategies
or the illegal contraband trade that they sought to dominate.74 Right-wing paramilitary groups
have long been a central ally in Colombia’s decades-long counterinsurgency war, engaging in
massacres and selective assassinations against civilian communities and social leaders viewed
as supportive of leftist guerrillas that have been fighting in one form or another since the 1960s.
Despite the weakening of guerrilla forces as of 2019, paramilitaries continue to eliminate social
leaders viewed as resistant to foreign direct investment or land concentration.
For example, the very first kidnappings by paramilitary groups in La Guajira was in the
same region where walls would later be built dividing the community from the Rancheria
River, with paramilitary attacks leading to the displacement of 1500 people from these com-
munities.75 These groups were also effective in developing alliances with regional governors
(in the departments of Guajira, Cesar and Magdalena) in the early 2000s as well as placing
people from a leading paramilitary group (‘Bloque Norte’) in the direction of the Corporaciones
Regionales Autonomas (like CORPOGUAJIRA).76 In 2010, CORPOGUAJIRA gave permission
to the water in Cercado’s reservoir to a select group of large landowners, including the former
governor of Guajira (Juan Francisco Gómez) who enjoyed extensive links with the Bloque
Norte.77 Between 2014 and 2018, Colombia’s national justice system jailed multiple regional
politicians (including the former governor of Guajira) for crimes ranging from fraud, coop-
erating with paramilitary militias and specific homicides.78
The Interamerican Court on Human Rights (CIDH) would conclude that important leaders
of the Wayúu received direct threats for resisting the activities of Cerrejón and/or for demand-
ing greater governmental responsiveness to the humanitarian crisis in Guajira. One jailed
paramilitary leader testified that he and some of his colleagues met with a mine official to
discuss the assassination of Cerrejón union members whereas other leaders testified that
they ‘watched over El Cerrejón’.79 A leading Wayúu activist, Javier Rojas Uriana, was specifically
warned to stay away from certain parts of Guajira by paramilitary groups in April 2015 or
face death, a threat that other Wayúu leaders faced during the same time.80 Two leaders
would be assassinated by the end of 2016. Increasingly, in 2018 and 2019 social justice
leaders in Guajira dedicated to environmentalism and alternative energy have been assas-
sinated by paramilitary groups.81 These were all individuals who had been quite open in
their opposition to the expansion of Cerrejón.82 The Fuerza de Mujeres Wayús (FMW) docu-
mented 128 assassinations of Wayúus between 1995 and 2010, the vast majority murdered
by paramilitary groups.83 The most recent individual, the teacher and Wayúu activist José
Victor Ceballos Epinayu, was assassinated outside of his home in Rioacha (the capital of
Guajira). He joined the list of 18 social activists killed in Colombia in the first two months of
2019 and the 172 social leaders killed in 2018.84
Despite the continuing threat and use of political violence against environmental and
indigenous activists, the Wayúu have pursued multiple strategies to resist the destruction
of their land and water resources. The Wayúu have held a relatively weak to nonexistent role
in the formal process involved in the resettlement of Wayúu communities, or in the decisions
 Third World Quarterly 11

to expand the operations of Cerrejón or in the determination of their compensation. However,

they (along with mestizo and Afro-Colombian small farmers) have organised politically within
civil society and within the courts. For decades, organisations such as Yanama and Fuerzas
Mujeres Wayúu have been at the forefront in seeking to advance their constitutional rights
within Colombia and their international human rights in regional forums such as the Inter-
American Court of Human Rights (Spanish acronym, CIDH).
The CIDH is an InterAmerican judicial body centred in the Organization of American States
that is dedicated to protecting human rights in the region, especially in cases of grave urgency
where evidence exists of a lack of state response.85 The Wayúu, and specifically the community
leader Javier Rojas, turned to the CIDH after years of frustrating efforts to bring attention to
the Wayúu’s plight within Colombia’s political and judicial institutions.86 This included actively
being dissuaded by a US funded Cerrejón foundation project from pursuing legal charges
against the mine.87 The petitioners representing the Wayuu community in La Guajira (Javier
Rojas and the attorney Carolina Sáchica Moreno) requested on 9 February 2015 that precau-
tionary measures be taken to recover the Rancheria River for the Wayuu people, given the
failure of the government to establish the infrastructure necessary to bring the water from
the reservoir of the Cercado Dam to their communities, and for their need of water to be
prioritised over the economic needs of the region.88 Sáchica Moreno asked the CIDH ‘to order
the floodgates of the dam to be opened, and that the Wayúu should be given priority in the
use of the water. Any surplus can then be used for economic activities’.89 In December 2015
the Commission rendered its decision, agreeing with the petitioners that the Colombian state
needed to take precautionary measures to safeguard the Wayúu whose ‘lives and personal
integrity were at risk’ and that the malnutrition and illnesses of infants be prioritised.90
Furthermore, the Commission called for the state to ‘take immediate measures so that the
beneficiary communities can have, as soon as possible, access to safe drinking water, in a
sustainable manner and sufficient for the subsistence of children and adolescents’.91 Three
years after this decision, the Colombian Supreme Court of Justice concluded that the
Colombian state continued to fail in addressing the humanitarian crisis in Guajira.92 However,
the Wayúu have not simply relied upon Colombian or InterAmerican courts to obtain redress
for its humanitarian crisis; social protests have represented another important tool of resistance.
In La Guajira, the eruptions of political mobilisations and protests frequently were centred
in opposition to different projects related to the mine whether in opposition to its encroach-
ments upon indigenous reserves, the shifting of the direction of the Rancheria River or in
raising awareness to the effect of the mine on air quality in the region.93 For example, in 2008
the Fuerza de Mujeres Wayúu launched a caravan across different parts of La Guajira to
inform the public of the various human rights violations that the Wayúu people had expe-
rienced at that time.94 The political activities of the Wayúu have been part of a larger wave
of social mobilisations against extractivism that has increased in Colombia since 2005.95

Conclusion
The politics, conflicts and tragedies associated with the Cerrejón project represent more
than simply the consequences of ‘weak governance’ and Guajira’s corrupt traditions. To limit
one’s analysis to these factors is to lose sight of how the power/influence of Cerrejón illus-
trates a larger global capitalist context in which neoliberal states work to facilitate greater
foreign direct investment in extractivism generating conflicts and resistance throughout
12 W. AVILÉS

the world. In other words, the multiple years of conflict over the nature and consequences
of extractivism by transnational corporations in Guajira is manifested in countries with dif-
fering levels of corruption and state capacity. The Wayúu people have not and are not alone
in their struggle. Furthermore, the prioritisation and protection of such investments in the
case of Colombia has not only led to little effort by national authorities to reign in Guajira’s
trenchant corruption, but has been prioritised over the needs of the Wayúu population.
Clearly, the short-term and intermediate solutions to the Colombian crisis involve allowing
indigenous communities greater autonomy and control over their lands, resisting paramil-
itary power and promoting nationalist models of development in response to the neoliberal
pressures to deregulate, privatise and adapt to the interests of transnational capital. In 2018
and 2019, there were numerous signs on the national and regional level that such a response
was on the agenda of different political actors within Colombia. Unfortunately, these efforts
continue to face difficult odds given the power of interests within and outside of Colombia
seeking to defend the status quo.
In the 2018 presidential election the socialist Gustavo Petro made it to the second round
against the right-wing candidate Ivan Duque. This was the first time in Colombia’s history that
a genuinely left candidate reached this stage of the process, with prior left candidates either
being gunned down during their respective campaigns and/or marginalised by Colombia’s
elite media. Petro ran on a platform of social and environmental justice with a specific focus
of moving away from the fossil fuel industry as a strategy of economic development. The
dangers of climate change were at the forefront of his message.96 While Petro’s message was
successful in bringing him to the second round, he would ultimately be defeated by Duque
for the presidency. Despite this loss, his candidacy represented progress for an environmental/
social justice critique that had long been crushed by reactionary repression in Colombia.
Outside of electoral politics, periodic waves of rural and indigenous protest have contin-
ued to manifest themselves in and outside of Guajira. In October 2018, a gathering of various
leaders of different social movements came together in Bogotá to construct a proposal of
unity and an agenda for further mobilisation against the Colombian right in 2019. The event
led to the development of a joint declaration that included calls for an anti-capitalist struggle
tied to the development of ‘mining and energy that is not subject to the capitalist market
and is in harmony with nature’. From the October event various protests were organised for
the first months of 2019 by student, rural, indigenous and human rights groups in opposition
of the neoliberal policies of the Duque administration. These protests were due to culminate
in a general strike on 25 April 2019.97 The re-emergence of rural and indigenous social move-
ments in Colombia, the progress98 achieved by parties wedded to a critique of neoliberalism
as well as a demand for environmental justice offers a promising future for the next stage
of struggle facing the Wayúu people of Guajira.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
William Avilés is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nebraska at
Kearney, USA. His research explores the relationship between capitalist globalisation and range of
different issues associated with civil–military relations, political violence and water wars. His works
 Third World Quarterly 13

also involves attention to US drug war policies in Latin America. His books include Military Power and
Globalization in the Andes (2011) and The Drug War in Latin America: Hegemony and Global
Capitalism (2017).

Notes
1. Snell, “The Art of Place.”
2. Pappier, “OECD.”
3. Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos Resolución, “Resolucion 60/2015,” 1; McKenzie
and Cohen, “Death and Displacement,” 128.
4. Antonio Gutierrez, “Violencia structural e infanticidio.”
5. CELEAM, “Pueblo Wayúu,” 4.
6. Antonio Gutierrez, “Violencia structural e infanticidio.”
7. McKenzie and Cohen, “Death and Displacement,” 129.
8. .Sultana and Loftus, “The Right to Water,” 1; Berman, “WHO.”
9. Barlow and Clark, “Who Owns Water?” 11.
10. Ochoa Sierra, Horror Sin Nombre.
11. Guaqueta, “Transparency at the Local Level,” 72.
12. Saénz-Castro and García-González, “The Relationship Between Corruption and Inequality in
Colombia,” 2.
13. Harvey, The New Imperialism, 139 (emphasis mine).
14. Ibid., 145–6.
15. Gordon and Webber, Blood of Extraction, 9.
16. Parenti, Tropic of Chaos.
17. Bryant and Bailey, Third World Political Ecology, 3.
18. Veltmeyer and Petras, “A New Model or Extractive Imperialism?” 2.
19. Ibid., 4–5.
20. Lopez and Vertiz, “Extractivism, Transnational Capital,” 157.
21. Ibid., 157.
22. Gordon and Webber, Blood of Extraction, 9.
23. PBI Colombia, Mining in Colombia, 5.
24. Ibid., 154.
25. Radonic, “Environmental Violence, Water Rights,” 28.
26. Robinson, Latin America and Global Capitalism, 303–4.
27. Ochoa Sierra, Horror Sin Nombre, 11.
28. CINEP, “Informe Especial,” 13; Archila, “Introducción,” 26.
29. Ochoa Sierra, Horror Sin Nombre, 12.
30. Ibid., 37.
31. Las Huellas del Guajira.
32. Fajardo Gomez, “The Systematic Violation,” 18.
33. Brogeland Laache, “Life by Latin America’s Largest”; CINEP, “Informe Especial,” 11.
34. Chomsky et al., “Cronologia,” 12.
35. Celis, “Economic Extractivism and Agrarian Social Movements,” 150.
36. Brogeland Laache, “Life by Latin America’s Largest”; Cabrera Leal and Fierro Morales,
“Implicaciones Ambientales y Sociales,” 96.
37. Arboleda and Cuenca, “Transformaciones Territoriales y Conflictos,” 364 (emphasis mine).
38. McKenzie and Cohen, “Death and Displacement,” 130.
39. Sankey, “Colombia,” 115, 130.
40. Celis, “Economic Extractivism and Agrarian Social Movements.”
41. The Santos administration was not only ideologically committed to continuing the extractivist
project, but also enjoyed familial connections to the mining sector including President Santos’
cousin who represented the Canadian mining company Medoro Resources in Colombia;
Sankey, “Colombia,” 119.
42. PBI, Mining in Colombia, 4.
43. Las Huellas del Guajira.
14 W. AVILÉS

44. PBI, Mining in Colombia, 9.

45. Sankey, “Colombia,” 123.
46. PBI Colombia, Mining in Colombia, 10.
47. Ibid., 9.
48. Dover et al., “Impacto de la Explotacion Minera,” 62.
49. CINEP, “Informe Especial,” 15, 18.
50. Dover et al., “Impacto de la Explotacion Minera,” 63.
51. Boersma, “Living in the Shadow.”
52. Ocampo Kohn, “Cerrejón y el Agua.”
53. Reiter, “La Etica de El Cerrejón,” 32.
54. Brogeland Laache, “Life by Latin America’s Largest.”
55. Ibid.
56. Arboleda and Cuenca, “Transformaciones Territoriales y Conflictos,” 365; Pulido, “El Carbon y sus
Efectos,” 85.
57. CINEP, “Informe Especial,” 28.
58. According NASA’s Earth Observatory, ‘El Niño and La Niña reflect the two end points of an os-
cillation in the Pacific Ocean. The cycle is not fully understood, but the times series illustrates
that the cycle swings back and forth every 3–7 years’. La Niña’s typically follow El Niño’s and is
associated with the atmosphere cooling in response to a colder ocean surface causing less
water evaporation contributing to less rain fall.
59. Valencia et al., “Presa El Cercado, Guajira Colombia.”
60. María Cuevas, “El Río.”
61. Organización Wiwa Yucumaiun Bunkuanarua Tairona,“El Cercado que interrumpe.”
62. Ibid.
63. Comision Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, “Resolucion 60/2015, 6; Sáchica Moreno, “El
único ‘estado’ que conocen”; Brodzinsky, “Colombia’s Pipes to Nowhere.”
64. Brodzinsky, “Colombia’s Pipes to Nowhere.”
65. Ibid.
66. Environmental Justice Atlas, “Represa El Cercado en el Río Ranchería.”
67. Procuraduría general de la nación, “LA GUAJIRA,” 27.
68. María Cuevas, “El Río.”
69. López Zuleta, “Wayú, una Etnia en vías.”
70. Brodzinsky, “Colombia’s Pipes to Nowhere.”
71. Veltmeyer and Petras, “A New Model,” 44.
72. Gordon and Webber, Blood of Extraction, 153; McKenzie and Cohen, “Death and Displacement,” 131.
73. Gordon and Webber, Blood of Extraction.
74. CINEP, “Informe Especial,” 21.
75. CINEP, “Minería, conflictos sociales”; María Cuevas, “El Río.”
76. Ochoa Sierra, Horror Sin Nombre, 50.
77. In 2013, Gomez was arrested at a Festival of Coal celebration and was charged, not only for his
connections to paramilitary networks, but in the murder of at least three individuals; López
Zuleta, “Wayú, una etnia en vías”; Redacción Judicial, “El prontuario del gobernadora.”
78. López Zuleta, “Wayú, una Etnia en vías.”
79. McKenzie and Cohen, “Death and Displacement,” 131.
80. Comision Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, “Resolucion 60/2015.”
81. Redacción La Guajira Hoy.com, “Sicarios Acaban con la vida.”
82. Ibid.
83. Ochoa Sierra, Horror Sin Nombre, 54.
84. Telesur, “Asesina a professor y líder.”
85. OAS, “Basic Documents in the Inter-American System.”
86. Sáchica Moreno, “Cómo llegó el caso.”
87. McKenzie and Cohen, “Death and Displacement,” 129.
88. Sáchica Moreno, “Cómo llegó el caso.”
89. Brodzinsky, “Colombia’s Pipes to Nowhere.”
 Third World Quarterly 15

90. Comision Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, “Resolucion 60/2015,” 1.

91. Ibid., 1.
92. Redacción Judicial, “Corte Suprema pide Garantizar.”
93. Archila Neira, “Introducción,” 31.
94. Ramirez Boscan, “La Caravana de las Mujeres Wayúu.”
95. CINEP, “Minería, conflictos sociales.”
96. Salazar, “Colombia’s Presidential Hopeful.”
97. Durango, “El Paro Nacional en Colombia.”
98. Coordinador Nacional Agrario-CAN, “Declaración política de la Asamblea.”

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