Transnational Corporate Counterinsurgency in Latin America

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Join us for an afternoon and evening focused on the role of companies in conflicts, how CSR can be used as counterinsurgency measures and recent efforts to combat corporate impunity!

In this event researchers will share findings on how companies collaborate with public and private security forces, paramilitaries and armed ground in extractive spaces in Latin America. Based on long-term field work and engagement, the researchers have followed several sites and investigated hard and soft forms of corporate security. Often, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is being used to mask corporate complicity in human rights violations.

There will be two presentations as well as time set aside for questions, comments and responses. The first talk is by the activist-researchers Daniel Marín-López and Line Jespersgaard Jakobsen who have investigated and documented how transnational extractive corporations have fueled Colombia's conflict through violent and deceptive practices. Drawing examples from the coal, oil and palm oil sectors, Line and Daniel’s studies document how these actions have led to severe human rights abuses and environmental destruction. Despite the 2016 peace agreement, which developed a design for justice, truth, reparations and guarantees of non-recurrence, corporate impunity persists, undermining justice and peace efforts.

Activist-researcher Michael Wilson Becerril will discuss corporate counterinsurgency and violence in Peruvian mining conflicts, drawing from his book "Resisting Extractivism." Shedding light on the subtle and routine forms of violence in gold-mining conflicts in Peru, Michael will discuss how meaning-making practices highlight certain types of damage while concealing others. By comparing four case studies and drawing on extensive ethnographic research, Michael shows how similar conflicts can lead to different outcomes and offer strategies for preventing and transforming violence over resource extraction.

José Ernesto Fuentes Cabrera will share insights from his recent field study on similar issues in the palm oil sector in Guatemala.

Understanding these dynamics is crucial for the international solidarity movement to hold corporations accountable and combat impunity. By exposing practices of hard and soft security and different forms of violence, activists can support local communities and civil society groups in their fight for justice and sustainable peace. This knowledge is also relevant in the light of the ongoing negotiations for a UN Legally Binding Treaty on Transnational Corporations and Human Rights. We look forward to be sharing our work with you, and exchange experiences and perspectives.

Program

17:00: Welcome and introduction (NOAH/Colombia Solidarity)
17:10: Transnational corporate counterinsurgency in the Colombian conflict and its legacies today (Daniel Marín-López and Line Jespersgaard Jakobsen)
17:30: Michael Wilson Becerril
17:50: Break
18:00: Jose Ernesto Fuentes Cabrera
18:20: Q&A
19:00: Community dinner

Language of presentations: English

Hosts: NOAH - Friends of the Earth Denmark & Colombia Solidarity Denmark

Bios of speakers

Daniel Marín-López is co-creator of Enramada Collective and a transdisciplinary PhD researcher in Human and Social Sciences at the National University of Colombia. His research focuses on the interplay between corporate accountability, the war-to-peace transition, and the political economy of armed conflict. He also lectures on Human Rights, Development, and Business at Universidad de los Andes. He was a Fellow at Harvard Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, an Expert Advisor on corporate complicity at the Colombian Truth Commission, a Principal Researcher at Dejusticia, and a Legal Aid for the “Transitional Justice in Colombia - ProFis” program of the German Cooperation Agency (GIZ). He studied Political Science (B.A.) and Law (LL.B.) at Universidad de Los Andes (Colombia) and was an International Human Rights Fellow at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, where he earned an LL.M (honors).

Michael Wilson-Becerril is an activist-scholar specialized in the political ecologies of violence, resistance, and justice, with a focus on Latin America. He is the author of Resisting Extractivism: Peruvian Gold, Everyday Violence, and the Politics of Attention (Vanderbilt University Press, 2021). He has conducted extensive fieldwork on environmental justice in Peru, on everyday violence in Mexico, and on Indigenous rights in Costa Rica and Guyana. His work integrates policy advocacy and activism as well as public engagement. Outside of academia, he has served as a nonprofit advocacy writer, policy consultant, campaign organizer, and elected union representative (UC Student Workers Union). https://linktr.ee/mwilsonbecerril and @mwilsonbecerril.

José Ernesto Fuentes Cabrera is a Guatemalan lawyer and a recent graduate from Global Studies, Roskilde University.

Line Jespersgaard Jakobsen is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University. She has done ethnographic research on corporate security practices in sites of natural extraction and specifically the case of coal mining in Colombia. Currently, as part of the research project ‘Standardization of Transitional Justice’, she studies the Colombian transition towards peace, which includes the question of corporate accountability in dealing with past violence and violations of human rights.She holds an M.A and Ph.D in Global Studies from Roskilde University, in association with the Danish Institute for International Studies.