On November 1st, 2019, Indupalma, one of the pioneer companies in the Colombian palm oil industry, announced its voluntary dissolution. This company is not bankrupt and owns 10,000 hectares of productive oil palm crops. Why does a productive and financially-viable company decide to enter a voluntary dissolution process? In Colombia, palm oil corporations have implemented,…
Author: Ángela Serrano
Angela Serrano is a Colombian sociologist with a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research builds dialogues between the political economy of global value chains, political ecology, and critical agrarian studies. Through these dialogues, Angela studies how different global industries shape life and workopportunities for rural communities in Latin America. Her research has been published by Environment and Planning E and the Journal of Political Ecology. Angela’s dissertation is titled “The Power of Oil Palm: Violence, Inequality, and Small-Scale Farmers’ Search for Alternatives”. It explores (i) how oil palm crops have become destructive for peoples and landscapes around tropical regions and (ii) who and through which practices can change this situation. Continuing with this project, Angela works as a scholar-activist supporting a palm oil workers’ union in Colombia. She holds an M.A. in Geography from King's College London and undergraduate degrees in Economics and Political Science from Universidad de los Andes in Bogota. Email: serranozapat@wisc.edu, serranoang@gmail.com