Bonilla-Godoy, J; (2000) Crisis of accumulation and regional change in Colombia during the 1990s: Case studies on the regional dynamics of the agricultural sector. Masters thesis (M.Phil), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

In 1991 the Colombian economy initiated the apertura process, a comprehensive reform aimed at overcoming the technical and economic constraints inherited from the ISI strategy and restructuring the country's accumulation conditions. This has become the central strategy to set the market forces in full command of the economy, mainly the localisation of productive activities and the allocation of resources, income and investment through sectors and regions. Reversing the accumulation regime set around the Import Substitution industrialisation (ISI), the 1990s apertura restructuring inaugurated a period of socio-economic and territorial transformations. From the standpoint of regional analysis and concentrating on the evolution of the modern agricultural sector, this research examines the nature, extent, character and trends affecting the geography of agricultural production resulting from the apertura restructuring and, more generally, from the transformations taking place in the world economy. The research acknowledges that the dynamics underlying the current economic and regional structure is the combined result of distinctive processes. These range from the historical particularities of the Colombian socio-economic formation, to the impacts of the 1980s crisis; and from the exhaustion of the Import Substituting Industrialisation (ISI) model to the recurrent crises in the world economy. The research, nevertheless, concentrates on enquiring whether the current world-wide accumulation imperatives and the globalisation process are the main factors in reshaping the Colombian regional configuration during the 1990s. Like the ISI strategy, the new accumulation model comprises its own set of spatial determinations and dynamics which involve decisive transformations in the country's economic geography and rapid mutations in the country's spatial division of labour. The research's central assumption is that the current re-organisation of the accumulation conditions in Colombia is mainly determined by the dynamics of globalisation and capitalist restructuring world-wide, a major process articulating the interests of the Colombian intermediary bourgeoisie and land-owning class with the needs and imperatives of international capital. This interplay between the local elite's economic interests and international accumulation imperatives is the main factor determining the nature of the changes taking place throughout Colombian society in the 1990s. Following the evolution of two modern agriculture sectors (the floriculture enclaves in Sabana de Bogota and the cotton producing region in the Atlantic Coast), the research identifies the main spatial trends and examines the extent to which this global-local accumulation interplay conveys the intensification of spatial inequalities and the exacerbation of regional differences and divides.

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