1 Construction and contestation of Criminal Identities: The case of the Cocaleros in the Putumayo and Baja Bota of Cauca1

Peasants who settled in the Colombian Amazon region as a result of different waves of migration and who today grow coca, have been stigmatized as criminals with no regional identity. The central state does not accord them a place within national society except as guerrilla auxiliaries or narcotraffickers and as such, they can be object of state violence. I argue that collective identities in the Amazon region are shaped by the sense of exclusion and abandonment from the central state, and that politicized identities emerge as a protest against exclusion and misrecognition. In 1996, the United States decertified the Colombian government from receiving further U.S. aid because their counter-narcotic efforts did not meet American parameters. As a response, the Colombian government increased the aerial spraying of coca plantations in the Amazon region, as well as the control of the sale of gray cement and gasoline, used for processing coca into coca paste. This increased enforcement of laws against illicit drug cultivation and processing sparked an uprising among coca growers and harvesters (cocaleros) in the departments of Putumayo, Caquetá, Guaviare, and the Baja Bota r gion of the Cauca department in the Colombian Amazon. During the months of July, August, and September of 1996, more than 200,000 peasants, including women, children and indigenous people, marched from their farms to the nearest towns and departme tal capitals to protest this increased threat to their principal source of income. The cocaler