Land grabbing, legal contention and institutional change in Colombia

The entanglement of violence and legal institutions in Colombia has led some scholars to argue that this country is characterized by a ‘law without state’, or that the law has a mere ‘symbolic function’. This would explain an apparent paradox: high-intensity violence has been accompanied by the preservation of legal institutions and a common belief in their social importance. Yet the mobilization of the legal repertoire against violent land grabbing by peasant movements shows their belief in the legitimacy of legal institutions. Instead of measuring the efficiency of these actions, this paper will analyse the interaction between local orders and national legal institutions. This study argues that legal arenas have served to address land conflict, in a context of egregious violence. With their own dynamics and rules, they have not completely disrupted the logics of violent dispossession, yet they have defined land not only as an object of business transactions but also as an issue of human rights and collective identities.