Plan Colombia or development as security

• Main Author: Juan Pablo Guevara Latorre
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidad Nacional de Colombia 2015-01-01
• Series: Revista Colombiana de Sociología
• Subjects: desarrollo; gobernanza; narcotráfico; Plan Colombia; seguridad; sociedad civil.
• Online Access: https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/recs/article/view/53264

Plan Colombia was designed as an international “aid” package for peace-seeking and the achievement of a new model of local public administration, within a framework of multilateral collaboration. However, in a second and definitive version, the goals of the plan were concentrated on the struggle against drug trafficking. This study intends to deconstruct and analyze the conceptual assumptions behind the objectives of the policy of the plan in its two versions and to describe the significance of the changes it underwent. For this purpose, the study conducts an analysis of the content of the two texts: the National Development Plan of 1998 and the definitive Plan Colombia, entitled Plan Colombia: plan for peace, prosperity, and the strengthening of the state, published by the Presidency of the Republic in 2000. This article suggests that the policy shifted from its initial emphasis on the harmonization of social relations at a micro level in the regions most affected by violence and the absence of the State, hence a development perspective, to a new security perspective. Whereas the former approach sought the generation of alternative development projects and international support, the latter concentrated its objectives on the struggle against illegal drugs, with an ample component of military investment principally provided by the United States. This study suggests a framework of analysis for understanding the origin of Plan Colombia, its transformations, and the content of the most relevant policy for the construction of the State in 21st-century Colombia from a critical standpoint. The document makes it possible to show that Plan Colombia is a privatized form of development, interpreted in terms of security based on an incomplete understanding of the Colombian conflict that prevails into our present