The illegibility effects of state practices: visions and realities of a road project in the

Putumayo region of Colombia1

Simón Uribe
PhD candidate
Department of Geography
London School of Economics
S.Uribe1@lse.ac.uk

Introduction

One of the common views of roads is that which emphasizes their role as technologies of state
power. Regardless of the logics driving these infrastructures, this view largely stems from one of
their most patent effects, namely, that they render territories and populations more visible and
open to surveillance and control.1 That this “legibility effect” is in most cases far from absolute
and in practice roads comprise spaces subjected to multiple subversions, appropriations and
ends different to those envisaged, constitutes another subject. Ethnographical scholarship has
provided compelling evidence on this particular issue, shedding light on the unstable,
ambiguous, and contested nature of such infrastructures.2

This paper seeks to explore this subject of legibility in the context of a road project in the
Colombian province of Putumayo. The project, part of a wider regional transportation scheme
whose main purpose is to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through Brazil and Colombia,
comprises the improvement of the existing road and the construction of a new 45 km section.
The passage of the new road through an area of forests rich in biodiversity has been a point of
contention on environmental and social grounds. The government, meanwhile, has promoted
the road as a pioneer example of sustainable development in the country and countered such
concerns by emphasizing the project’s multiple environmental policies.

Still, the many conflicts and obstacles faced by the project since its beginnings have revealed the
large gap between its goals and actual outcomes. In this paper, I will focus on the project’s
attempts to clarify the land tenure situation in its area of influence, as it constitutes an example
where this gap became particularly evident. These attempts, as it will be described, not only
brought to the surface the state’s deeply rooted or “structural” legibility problems in the
project’s area, but paradoxically ended up aggravating them.

1
Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers. Los Angeles, April 11, 2013.

1
Yet, as I shall argue, these problems cannot be grasped only in relation to the multiple issues the
project raised but those it did not take into account or was unable to recognize, and in
particular the land tenure practices of the peasant communities settled in the area. As will be
described, a significant aspect of those practices is that, as they accentuated the distance and
conflicts between “project” or “state” and “community”, they seemed to project an image of
these spheres as two isolated and diametrically opposite domains. However, the point I want to
stress is quite the opposite, or how those same practices, rather than drawing a neat line
demarcating these domains, evidenced or reflected the multiple encounters, interactions and
relations between them.

The Mocoa River Forest Reserve: from paper to practice

State legibility was implicitly suggested in the road project, most patently in the assumption that
the future road will strengthen “local governance mechanisms” and foster “greater State
presence” in the region.3 For the most part, however, and due to the project’s extensive
safeguard measures and its aim of protecting the environment on its area of influence, legibility
was implied not just as an anticipated effect but mostly a sine qua non precondition for its
successful implementation. Thus, various extensive assessments covering the multiple technical,
social, environmental and economic dimensions and strategies of the project were developed
prior to its final approval.

The most exhaustive of these assessments was the one concerned with the project’s direct area
of influence or the adjacent zone along the 45-kilometer stretch of road, covering an
approximate extension of 70,000 hectares, although it focused primarily on a Forest Reserve to
be dissected by the road.4 The overall study, comprising five thick and dense volumes, was
described as “an unprecedentedly detailed scientific knowledge of the Reserve and its area of
influence”5 and, at least if considered from the amount of data provided, this definition holds
true. Through its numerous maps, charts, synoptic tables and texts, the reader can get a fair
sense –sometimes excessive- of the Reserve’s many aspects and variables, from precipitation
levels, to geologic and topographic analyses, georeferenced native species, and peasant
communities’ cultural traditions, average incomes and mortality rates.

This large inventory of data was deemed not only vital to achieve the project’s various
conservation strategies but, at a more general or abstract level, highly instrumental to its
overarching goal of making a target territory and population governable. In theory, this task
would be facilitated by the sole existence of the Forest Reserve, which in legal terms constitutes
a conservation area aimed exclusively at the rational establishment, preservation or use of
forests. A simulated image from 2008, showing a stretch of road crossing a pristine forest within

2
the Reserve, visibly illustrates this project’s vision of the road as model of environmental
governance.

In practice, however, things turned out to be much less straightforward. The project’s “Legal
assessment”,6 aimed at examining and clarifying the land tenure situation of the Forest Reserve,
did not bring any clarity to the planners. On the contrary, it identified a number of issues
mirroring the state’s deep rooted legibility problems in the area: the available official maps of
the Reserve were of an inadequate scale to allow decision making regarding its management;
the institutional presence in the area was scarce, hence translating into deficient control and
surveillance in the area; and its boundaries, having never being demarcated, remained largely
unknown.7

A related and yet much more complex and difficult problem constituted the peasant land
occupation of the Reserve, a situation resulting in part from and revealing its many serious legal
holes. For instance, and due to the Reserve’s category of “Protected”, private property of any
sort should not exist within its boundaries. Nevertheless, the study revealed that the Reserve
was never officially registered,8 a situation that resulted in the adjudication of several land plots
following the establishment of the Reserve and, even more strikingly, in the issuance of mining
concessions inside the Reserve, as shown in one of the study’s maps.

Both the mining and land titles identified by the Land tenure assessment, though mirroring
some of the material effects of the state’s incongruous legal procedures, were to some extent
readable or at least ‘visible’ to the project. Through their cadastral or land registration numbers,
they could be identified in terms such as location, area, owner or concessionaire, chain of title,
etc. Quite different was the case of the so-called “private documents” or documents aimed at
demonstrating possession or occupation of baldíos9 or lands claimed as vacant. These can be of
different types, yet the most common ones are written contracts formalizing land sales and out-
of-court statements before a public notary declaring possession or occupancy of vacant lands.
Legally speaking, these documents are considered “private” since they do not comply with the
requirements or follow the basic legal or administrative protocols of “public” documents: they
are not inscribed in the Registry Office, do not have cadastral plans and land registration
numbers, and in some cases are not even notarized. This does not mean, however, that they are
‘illegal’ or not recognized by public authorities. In many cases, for instance, they form part of
the ordinary procedures for legal transactions of land such as sales or cessions; in others, such
as land adjudication processes, they may serve as proof of tenure or possession of land.

“Private documents”, despite their extra or semi-legal character, constitute a very common way
to trade lands among peasants and are often used with different purposes such as evidence of

3
tenure or access to government subsidies. Besides, sometimes their use can be associated to
practices such as eluding sale or property taxes or legal controls regarding land use. Moreover,
and most significantly for the argument advanced here, these documents usually originate from
‘real’ practices that do not necessarily take place outside or infringe the law, and yet remain
largely illegible to government functionaries.

The “Legal assessment” identified and examined 259 of such documents associated to lands
within the Reserve or its surrounding areas. The examination in this case consisted basically of a
summary of the type of document and information regularly supplied by each of them. This
information was not homogeneous across documents: some did not register areas or names of
land plots, others lacked notary seals, while others were handwritten papers whose content
was literally illegible. However, this aspect is irrelevant if we consider that no matter how
detailed or partial, fictitious or real, current or outdated, this information –unregistered,
unrecorded and ungeoreferenced- remained largely undecipherable to the project.

***

By the time the land tenure assessment was completed, it was clear that the complex and
largely illegible character of land occupation in the road’s area of influence posed a serious
threat to the project’s goals. Various alternatives to overcome this situation were proposed:
partial subtractions of the Reserve’s lands legally adjudicated or demonstrating legal tenure; re-
categorization of part of the current Reserve to a class with lesser land use restrictions; and
purchase of lands legally owned and removal of tenants “illegally” occupying the Reserve. The
problem, though, was that regardless of the alternative or combination of alternatives to be
applied, in order to be viable, any option required first a clarification of the Reserve’s land
tenure situation.

By 2011, more than three years after the “Legal assessment” had been concluded, the project
had not only been unable to solve this problem, but actually had exacerbated it. With the
expected starting date of the road works approaching, the project officers urged peasants to
provide their land deeds or documents, while repeatedly stressing the prohibition of land
transactions while the Reserve’s legal situation was not clarified. It was evident, however, that
the officers themselves were incapable of providing definite answers to many of the peasants’
uncertainties and concerns about their future: Were their lands going to be expropriated by the
government? Will they receive any compensation? Which lands exactly fell within and outside
the Reserve? What will happen to those with invalid titles or private documents?

4
Unanswered or given ambiguous responses, these uncertainties ended up causing or increasing
distrust among peasant communities, which in turn ended up aggravating the Reserve’s land
tenure problems. This sort of vicious circle had become evident during 2010 and 2011, when
rumours about people selling or buying lands within the Reserve began to circulate with some
regularity, and land sale signs proliferated along the project corridor. These signs, somewhat
paradoxically, though highly visible to the project, stood for deals that in most cases were
illegible to the project’s officers and hence beyond their control.

The crucial aspect of this ‘illegibility effect’, I suggest, is not the ways in which it exposed the gap
between ‘norm’ and ‘practice’ or ‘project’ and ‘community’, but rather how this gap reflected
the multiple dialectical entanglements between these apparently detached or independent
spheres. In other words, the peasants’ illegible land tenure practices could only be explained in
connection to the government’s normative inconsistencies, just as people’s uncertainties and
distrust could not be isolated from the project’s attempts to ‘clarify’ the land tenure situation in
the Forest Reserve.

However, as I shall describe next, to fully grasp this ‘illegibility effect’, to understand its roots
and how it reproduced in time and space, we have to look not just to what the project ‘saw’ but
also to those elements which from the beginning it ignored or, confined to its conceptual
framework, was unable to perceive.

Becoming illegible

In the first place, we have to look back to the colonization history of the area which today
comprises the Forest Reserve, a story that goes back to the late 1930s. The first settlers were
mostly landless peasants from the neighbouring provinces who came looking for vacant lands.
What made these lands particularly attractive, however, was not only the fact that they
remained unclaimed, but especially its abundance of precious woods, a highly valued product
which for several decades became the main livelihood of the region.

The extraction of timber, an activity that continues to play an important role in the local
economy –even though it constitutes a practice long deemed illegal-, is vital to understand the
complex land tenure system in the region. Part of this complexity has to do with the simple fact
that land, especially back in the 40s and 50s -when vacant lands were still abundant- was valued
not so much in terms of size but the amount of timber it contained, and above all its access. This
aspect is mirrored in the old land deeds and documents, which rarely register areas but instead
emphasize the proximity of the lands to access routes and in some cases mention the existence
of timber. At the same time, most of these lands were not enclosed and its borders were

5
frequently vague and impermanent landmarks largely indecipherable to outsiders such as
trochas or footpaths, creeks, trees, and tones. The following description of a land plot coming
from a private document offers a good example of this situation. The document, a notarized
contract formalizing the sale of a land plot in August 1955, does not register the plot’s area or
name but instead contains the following detailed description of its borders:

To the East, it borders with the bridle path that goes to San Francisco, this side measures eighty
(80) meters; to the North, in West direction, borders with the land of Hermógenes Nupán, a
small creek upwards, until finding a guava tree and a plant of chontaduro,10 this side measures
seventy two meters; from this landmark it goes South, bordering with the same Hermógenes
Nupán, until finding a small ditch, this line measuring fifteen meters (15); from this landmark in
the same West flank, goes back to the East until it finds a barbasco tree,11 this line (sic) twenty
meters (20); from here, forming a set square, it goes South until its finds a ojo de aguas vivas,12
this line measuring thirty (30) meters; from this landmark, in the West flank, heads again to the
East, following the stream of the ojo de agua mentioned above, bordering with lands of
Benedicto Nupán, until it gets again to the above quoted road to San Francisco, point of
departure, shore of the waters above referred.13

According to the seller’s version recorded in the same document, this land plot was a baldío
inherited from his father, and it is highly likely that it would be later granted by the government
to the current or future buyer. In such case –difficult to determine as the document does not
seem to be connected to any land deed included in the study-, it would have eventually become
a property with title deeds, containing more ‘legible’ data such as area, land registration
number, and cadastral plan. However, even considering this to be the case, it is predictable that
this ‘legibility’ would be rather ephemeral, for it is very likely that the same land plot would be
later subjected to partial sales and other transactions with private document which, as has been
noted, is a highly common practice in the area.

This illegibility pattern, on the other hand, only accounts for a small part of the land tenure
practices in the area. Beyond documents and deeds, there is a multitude of the so-called
“arreglos the palabra” or verbal agreements through which lands are regularly appropriated,
traded, inherited, rented, etc. A typical example of these agreements constitutes the tenure of
lands which people in the area call “baldíos”, though in practice are non-adjudicable lands for
different reasons. These lands are regularly the more remote or less accessible ones, for the
most part uninhabited or only sporadically occupied. Still, and even though they lack any kind of
document, they all have “owners”.

To better illustrate this point, let me briefly describe an archetypical peasant farm within the
Forest Reserve. Originally a baldío, this farm was granted in 1982 to José Perez –its current
owner-,14 after having occupied the land for more than ten years. In paper, the farm has an

6
extension of 25 ha, somewhat above the average size for the area. In practice, nevertheless, it
extends far beyond this area, the main reason being that the farm’s southern boundary borders
with an extensive area of forests, whose main access is through the same farm. It is from this
forest, whose area the owner estimates at about 100 ha, that he extracted cedar, cumin and
other precious woods for more than three decades.

Even nowadays, when José no longer logs timber, his farm continues to be the main “gate” to
the forest and anyone wishing to enter it needs his permission. Yet, it would be erroneous to
think that his “ownership” of this forest is based solely on the fact that he controls its access.
Actually, what ultimately defines “ownership” here, as in many other informal land tenure
arrangements, is the fact that -despite lacking any written proof of property or possession- it is
acknowledged and respected by the other inhabitants of the area. In other words, “ownership”
based on “access” constitutes here one of the many different consuetudinary norms that
together sustain and regulate the life of the community.

Conclusion

There is no space here to describe in detail the multiple informal or semi-legal land tenure
arrangements that can be found in the Forest Reserve. However, as noted at the beginning, a
common element to these arrangements is that, as they accentuate the conflicts and distance
between ‘state’ and ‘society’ or ‘project’ and ‘community’, they seem to project a dual image of
these realms as two totally detached and dichotomic orders. In other words, a “state space”
governed by panoptic transparency and control, and a “nonstate space” dominated by messy
and intricate practices hampering, subverting and evading such transparency and control.

James Scott, who has extensively explored the subject of legibility in the context of state
formation and state-society relations, has stressed the crucial importance of such spatial
dualisms to understand dynamics of domination and resistance in the colonial and postcolonial
world. Particularly, he has provided a rich and detailed description of the multiple elements and
practices facilitating the existence and survival of large “nonstate” spaces, ranging from
topography to agricultural practices, and to the strength of oral traditions.15

Scott’s contribution to what he denominates a “global history of state avoidance” is significant,

especially as it seeks to challenge hegemonic narratives that conceive state-making processes as
the inexorable expansion of ‘civilized’ centres over ‘savage’ frontiers. This is in many ways the
case of Putumayo, where the pervasiveness and persistence of tropes of savagery and
barbarism cast important light on the ways in which this region has long since been assimilated
into the nation state.

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Yet, the line of argument I have pursued in this paper different. For, if Putumayo may at times
have resembled or conformed to Scott’s portrayal of marginal peripheries lying beyond state
control or authority, it could hardly be described as a “nonstate space”. On the contrary, I have
attempted to describe some of the daily entanglements, encounters and interactions that
mirror the ways in which both spaces are mutually constructed. This is, for instance, the case of
the Forest Reserve peasants’ tenure arrangements described above. As it was argued, a crucial
aspect of these arrangements is that while remaining legible in the eyes of the community, they
largely escape the panoptic gaze of the state. Still, they do not exist outside the state, let alone
mirror a “nonstate” space. In other words, whether they respond to surveillance or coercive
policies, reflect strategies or manoeuvres to take advantage of government schemes or result
from people’s uncertainties and distrust, the fact is that they are not “external” to the state.
Rather, they resemble de Certeau’s “tactics”, or those innumerable procedures which defy or
subvert disciplinary power and yet are carried out by “groups or individuals already caught in
the nets of “discipline””.16 Put in a somewhat different way and departing from Scott’s rigid
divide between domination and resistance, these everyday arrangements and customary
practices, though informal or extralegal in nature, not so much embody “the art of not being
governed” as “the art of being governed”. If we manage to grasp this subtle yet significant
distinction, then we might be able to approach categories such as ‘state’ and ‘society’, ‘centre’
and ‘periphery’ or ‘government’ and ‘community’ not as dichotomous social and spatial orders
but part of a same dialectical structure or ensemble.

1
See, among others: Wilson, F. 2004, “Towards a Political Economy of Roads: Experiences from Peru”,
Development and Change 35(3):525-546; Masquelier, A. 2002, “Road mythographies: space, mobility, and the
historical imagination in postcolonial Niger”, American Ethnologist, vol.29 (4), pp.829-856; Selwyn, T 2001,
“Landscapes of separation: reflections in the symbolism of by-pass roads in Palestine”, in Bender B, Winer M (eds.),
Contested Landscapes. Movement, exile and place, Berg, Oxford & New York, pp.225-240; Fairhead. J. 1992, “Paths
of Authority: Roads, the State and the Market in Eastern Zaire”, The European Journal of Development Research,
vol.4 (2), pp.17-35.
2
See, among others: Harvey, P 2005, “The Materiality of State-effects: An ethnography of a road in the Peruvian
Andes”, in Krohn-Hansen, C. and Nustad, K., State formation. Anthropological perspectives, Pluto Press, London,
pp.123-141; Harvey, P. and H. Knox, 2008, “‘Otherwise engaged’ Culture, deviance and the quest for connectivity
through road construction”, Journal of Cultural Economy 1 (1), pp.79-92; Porath, N. 2002, “A river, a road, an
indigenous people and an entangled landscape in Riau, Indonesia”, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en Vokenkunde
158(4), pp.769-797; Giles-Vernick, T. 1996, “‘Na lege ti guiriri’ (On the Road of History): Mapping out the past and
present in M’Bres Region, Central African Republic”, Ethnohistory 35(2), pp.525-546; Kirskey, S. and K. van Bilsen
2002, “A road to freedom. Mee articulations and the Trans-Papua Highway”, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en
Vokenkunde 158(4), pp.837-854; Lye, T. 2005, “The road to equality? Landscape transformation and the Batek of
Pahang, Malaysia”, in Widlok, T and W. Tadesse, Property and Equality, Encapsulation, Commercialization,
Discrimination, Berghahn Books, Oxord, pp.90-103.
3
“San Francisco-Mocoa alternate road construction project-Phase I. Loan Proposal”, IADB, December 17, 2009, p.3
Retrieved from: http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getdocument.aspx?docnum=35025319 (2010, March 10).

8
4
“Plan Básico de Manejo Ambiental y Social (PBMAS) de la Reserva Forestal Protectora de la Cuenca Alta del Río
Mocoa. Documento Resumen”, BID, Corpoamazonia, Invias, Incoplan. July, 2008. Retrieved from:
http://www.iadb.org/es/proyectos/project-information-page,1303.html?id=co-l1019#doc (2010, November 15).
5
“Informe de Gestión Ambiental y Social (IGAS). Corredor vial Pasto-Mocoa. Variante San Francisco-Mocoa (CO-
L1019)”, October 2009, p.97. Retrieved from:
http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getdocument.aspx?docnum=2222785 (2010, August 3).
6
“Elaboración del Plan Básico de Manejo Ambiental y Social (PBMAS) de la Reserva Forestal Protectora de la
Cuenca Alta del Río Mocoa. Tomo IV. ‘Componente de diagnostico jurídico e insitucional’”, BID, Corpoamazonia,
Invias, Incoplan. July, 2008. Retrieved from:
http://www.iadb.org/es/proyectos/project-information-page,1303.html?id=co-l1019#doc (2010, November 15).
7
“Elaboración del Plan Básico de Manejo Ambiental y Social (PBMAS) de la Reserva Forestal Protectora de la
Cuenca Alta del Río Mocoa. Tomo IV. ‘Componente de diagnostico jurídico e insitucional’”, BID, Corpoamazonia,
Invias, Incoplan. July, 2008. Retrieved from:
http://www.iadb.org/es/proyectos/project-information-page,1303.html?id=co-l1019#doc (2010, November 15).
8
The registration is a legal requirement essential to make public to third parties any “limitation of domain” or land
use restrictions
9
In legal terms, baldíos are lands owned by the state with the purpose of awarding them to individuals who comply
with certain requirements established by the law.
10
Bactris gasipaes, local palm.
11
Generic name for plants containing poisonous chemical compounds commonly used for fishing.
12
Natural water source (emphasis mine).
13
“Elaboración del Plan Básico de Manejo Ambiental y Social (PBMAS), Tomo IV”, Anexo predial Vereda
Campucana, Op.cit., n.p.
14
Name changed upon request.
15
See: Scott, J. 2009, The art of not being governed. An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia, Yale University
Press, New Haven & London.
16
De Certeau, M. 1988, The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press, Los Angeles, pp.xiv-xv.