Fumigations, Breaches, Coalitions and Resistance

This article aims to explain how the Colombian state addresses coca demands and
mobilizations: negotiating and then defaulting --the noncompliance cycle. Despite how
apparently counterproductive it is, the cycle is persistent and, perhaps the main form
of the state's response to those mobilizations. I argue that part of the noncompliance
cycle is due to the nature of the coalitions that support the drug war in Colombia.
Furthermore, these coalitions, typically long, range from global to purely local, so they
can charge peasants with prohibitive costs without being affected by the new policies.
In addition, these have not always been smoothly articulated to the country's greater
waged global war, the war against subversion. Both circumstances generate permanent
blockages, instabilities, and problems of collective action.