From an ecosystem to a socio-ecosystem designed as a territory of an agro-industrial capital and of a modern nation-state in the geographical valley of the Rio Cauca, Colombia

Since the 1950s, the geographical valley of the Rio Cauca has undergone a process of transformation due to the continual expansion of the agricultural frontier, dedicated to sugar cane, that monopolizes this vast territory. The central argument of the present article is that this process of transformation was intentionally directed by the agents of private agro-industrial and land-holding capital, who, interested in promoting this agricultural activity, managed to co-opt the institutions of the state to conduct this territorial project. It is a territory of agro-industrial capital and of the modern nation-state that shows processes of accumulation through dispossession and social and environmental despoliation, both of human communities and of the living system in general. This is territory designed based on a discourse on regional development in which the three fundamental principles of Law 388 of 1997, found in article 2, which concern the social and ecological functions of property, the predominance of general interests over special interests, and the equitable distribution of burdens and benefits, seem not to have been applied. Adapted from the source document.