CASAS’ member Sammy Sánchez Garavito has published this article in Spanish with Sebastián Gómez Zúñiga, Daniela Mosquera-Camacho & Daniel Ortiz Gallego in the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

Abstract: This article analyzes land grabbing and deforestation in the Colombian Amazon from a political economy perspective, focusing on the changes that occurred after the signing of the 2016 Peace Agreement between the Colombian state and the FARC-EP. The reconfiguration of the FARC-EP, which had exercised extensive territorial control in the region, coincided with an increase in deforestation, land grabbing, and processes associated with rent-seeking through cattle ranching and coca cultivation. However, we argue that the primary interest of actors involved in deforestation lies not only in the acquisition of land, but also in the appropriation of other common natural resources, and is manifested through capital investment and the use of peasant labor to clear the forest. These elements are intertwined, generating new processes of land grabbing that do not always result in the direct dispossession of peasant communities.

Read their article in Spanish here: https://doi.org/10.1080/08263663.2026.2676937

CASAS

The Collective of Agrarian Scholar-Activists from the Global South (CASAS) is a community of Scholar-Activists working in critical agrarian studies.