Paramilitarism and Neoliberalism ─ Violent Systems of Capital Accumulation in Colombia and Beyond

The people of Colombia have, for the last fifty years, been subject to a specific form of violence: paramilitarism. An embodiment of the underbelly of global capitalist accumulation, this form of pervasive violence expresses the exacerbation of social inequalities and class formation under capitalism. In Paramilitarism and Neoliberalism, Jasmin Hristov theorises this extreme expression in light of forced displacement, labour repression, subjugation of social movements, decentralisation of violence, drug trafficking and the emergence of a variety of para-institutional armed actors across Latin America.

The activities of paramilitary groups in the post-demobilisation era, their involvement in human rights violations, and their multi-level support networks inside major state institutions are documented, with a particular emphasis on violent dispossession and illegal land appropriation that has benefited agroindustries and mining enterprises. Hristov engages in a Marxist political economy approach, combined with a global sociological perspective, allowing for an expansive and deep-reaching understanding of paramilitarism as a phenomenon with many faces, ultimately illustrating how it is increasingly becoming the coercive counterpart of global capital.

Jasmin Hristov is Assistant Professor in Sociology at McMaster University and Sessional Lecturer at University of Toronto and York University. Hristov is author of Blood and Capital: The Paramilitarisation of Colombia (2009) and has had her work featured in the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, the Journal of Peasant Studies, Social Justice, Latin American Perspectives, and Labour, Capital and Society.