La paz navega entre la gobernanza territorial y la gobernanza criminal: reflexiones estratégicas para la región de llanura Amazónica del Putumayo

Abstract

This article is framed within a critical analysis of territorial consolidation in contexts where communities have historically been forced to assume burdens derived from state absence, armed violence, and the imposition of illegal orders. The municipality of Valle del Guamuez, in the department of Putumayo, represents one of the most complex scenarios of peacebuilding in Colombia. Since the signing of the 2016 Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP, this region has experienced a structural paradox: while the state has attempted to strengthen institutional presence through programs for the substitution of illicit crops, comprehensive victim reparation, and public service provision, the presence of illegal economies and armed actors imposing their own norms, social control, and economic regulations has simultaneously deepened. This duality constitutes a form of hybrid governance, in which state territorial governance coexists and competes with criminal governance that, in practice, shapes local social and economic relations (Mampilly, 2011; Abrahamsen & Williams, 2009). Putumayo is a territory of high ethnic and cultural diversity, home to at least fifteen Indigenous peoples, including the Inga, Kichwa, Awá, Siona, Cofán, and Nasa, who sustain a plurality of norms and community practices that interact with the dynamics of armed conflict (CIDH, 2018). In Valle del Guamuez, these communities coexist with peasant populations, conflict victims, and urban residents amid an intense struggle for territorial control. The expansion of illicit crops since 2016 has reinforced the power of illegal armed groups, turning municipalities such as Valle del Guamuez, Puerto Asís, and Orito into strategic nodes of the coca economy and drug trafficking, thus prolonging patterns of violence and illegal economies that have characterized Putumayo for decades (UNODC, 2022). The settlements of El Tigre and El Placer clearly illustrate this tension between competing orders of power. These communities have historically been spaces of social regulation by illegal armed structures, where curfews, rules of coexistence, and mechanisms of parallel justice have been imposed. Although the state maintains an institutional presence, its real capacity to govern is limited by the economic and coercive power generated by illicit economies — an attribute that some studies identify as a defining feature of criminal governance, when alternative armed actors assume functions the state fails to consolidate (Muggah & Aguirre, 2018; Felbab-Brown, 2010). Since 2016, the area cultivated with coca in Putumayo has increased steadily, surpassing 50,000 hectares in some recent years, which has strengthened the capacity of armed groups to finance their territorial control (UNODC, 2022). At the same time, more than 20,000 families in the department have joined voluntary crop substitution programs, reflecting that the territory is also a space of social resistance and the search for legal alternatives. This aligns with findings in rural development studies, which show that substitution programs can generate positive social effects when they are linked to institutional strengthening and effective guarantees of access to legal markets (Thoumi, 2013; Rueda & Mesa, 2021). This coexistence of legality and illegality, of institutional presence and armed control, constitutes a hybrid governance in which peace cannot be understood merely as the silence of guns, but as a struggle over who governs the territory, who defines the rules, and who guarantees rights — a concept advanced by scholars of territorial peace in post-agreement contexts (Richani, 2013; Aguilera et al., 2020). In Valle del Guamuez, and particularly in El Tigre and El Placer, peace navigates between two logics: one oriented toward development, participation, and legality, and another sustained by illicit economies, armed coercion, and social control. Understanding this tension is key to designing strategies for reconciliation, coexistence, and territorial governance that respond to the real complexity of the territory.