Land recovery, territorial autonomy and care under pressure

Disputes in the indigenous territory of Paletara, Colombia

Abstract

In the headwaters of the River Cauca, in the Paletara reserve, inhabited by the Yanacona and Kokonuko people, as well as several peasant families, the community defends its proposals for territorial autonomy and care. Both are rooted in the process of recovering their communal lands amid territorial and relational disputes with Irish multinational Smurfit Westrock, which receives funding through a CO² offset program. In Paletara these carbon credit markets are presented as strategies that aim to mitigate the impacts of the climate crisis, but in practice are another form of extractivism that demands large quantities of water and land, pushing for the transformation of existing relationships in Paletara in the logic of market economics and the creation of dependency relationships that seek to undermine the territorial autonomy of the community.