The Three-Headed Serpent. Capital, People and Nature: The Transformation of the Putumayo Space Through the Opposition Between the Spatialities of Capital and People

Abstract

The paper addresses the changes in spatiality of capital and of popular movements in the Department of Putumayo, Colombia, through comparative analysis of the trajectories of collective action in the face of the development and transformation of spatiality to analyze the relationship between environment, society and nature over the past twenty years. We resort to political ecology, critical geography and the theories of modernity/coloniality, as well as environmental history, to explain the social conict generated by the discourses of development by the governments, social movements and some business approaches. The core research question seeks to answer how space is conceived in the logic of contemporary accumulation in the area, controverting the central place that the focus of accumulation by dispossession has favored by the elision of subordinate sectors. On the methodological plane, the central approach is based on critical discourse analysis and on the use of semi-structured interviews to nd local theories about the most relevant development in the area. Finally, the article reects on the opposition of the logic of the capital and the people, structured from the contradictory discourses of development between the Colombian government and local populations.