Peace and Rural Development in Colombia presents a fascinating window into an incredible moment for potential social change: the peace accord that drew Colombia's brutal half-century civil war to a close. Garcia Trujillo presents readers a front-row seat to the critical decisions behind rural development policy change and why peacebuilding has foundered. The resulting account is a must-read for students of conflict resolution, rural politics, bureaucracy, and post-war politics.
Michael Albertus, University of Chicago
Andres Garcia Trujillo's brilliant, richly documented new book provides an insider account of the recent failed critical juncture for rural change in Colombia. In doing so, it offers a major new theory of the conditions under which pro-poor rural reform is possible. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in unlocking the puzzle of promoting land reform and rural empowerment in Latin America.
James Mahoney, Northwestern University
No-one is better qualified to explain why rural development is the bedrock on which non-repetition of the conflict and peace are founded, as well as how the peace process in turn opened an enormous window of opportunity for rural development, than Andres Garcia Trujillo. As a key advisor in my team, he helped shape the negotiations in Havana, and subsequently as a doctoral student brought the relevant theoretical apparatus to bear on that vision and experience. The result is a lucid and compelling account of why the transformation of conditions in rural areas is part and parcel of any serious conception of peace in Colombia. In Havana, we were in effect aiming to redefine the relation between state and society in the peripheral and violence-afflicted regions of the country, through what we called territorial peace. At the same time, the book illustrates the fierce political opposition of entrenched interests against any change to the status quo and therefore against peace. For anyone who cares about these issues, not just in Colombia, Peace and Rural Development in Colombia should be a standard work.
Sergio Jaramillo, former High Commissioner for Peace of Colombia
...this book is an outstanding contribution given that it was written in the midst of an unfolding process. For researchers trying to go beyond superficial reports and policy briefs on the progression of the rural development agenda after the signing of the 2016 Peace Agreement in Colombia, Garcia Trujillo's book is an essential companion. More broadly, for an audience trying to reconcile the process of economic development with the persistence of violent conflict in a large economy like Colombia's, this book provides a crucial insight into the competing agendas that have enabled these processes to develop alongside and interact with each other.
Alexandra Bate, Journal of Agrarian Change
Peace and Rural Development in Colombia presents a fascinating window into an incredible moment for potential social change: the peace accord that drew Colombia's brutal half-century civil war to a close. Garcia Trujillo presents readers a front-row seat to the critical decisions behind rural development policy change and why peacebuilding has foundered. The resulting account is a must-read for students of conflict resolution, rural politics, bureaucracy, and post-war politics.
Michael Albertus, University of Chicago
Andres Garcia Trujillo's brilliant, richly documented new book provides an insider account of the recent failed critical juncture for rural change in Colombia. In doing so, it offers a major new theory of the conditions under which pro-poor rural reform is possible. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in unlocking the puzzle of promoting land reform and rural empowerment in Latin America.
James Mahoney, Northwestern University
No-one is better qualified to explain why rural development is the bedrock on which non-repetition of the conflict and peace are founded, as well as how the peace process in turn opened an enormous window of opportunity for rural development, than Andres Garcia Trujillo. As a key advisor in my team, he helped shape the negotiations in Havana, and subsequently as a doctoral student brought the relevant theoretical apparatus to bear on that vision and experience. The result is a lucid and compelling account of why the transformation of conditions in rural areas is part and parcel of any serious conception of peace in Colombia. In Havana, we were in effect aiming to redefine the relation between state and society in the peripheral and violence-afflicted regions of the country, through what we called territorial peace. At the same time, the book illustrates the fierce political opposition of entrenched interests against any change to the status quo and therefore against peace. For anyone who cares about these issues, not just in Colombia, Peace and Rural Development in Colombia should be a standard work.
Sergio Jaramillo, former High Commissioner for Peace of Colombia
Three of the book's contributions ... are worthy of special mention. First is the analysis of the conditions, mechanisms, and trajectories that make peace processes an exceptional opportunity for agrarian change and rural redistribution. Second is Garcia's impressive ability to articulate approaches as diverse as institutional change, political economy, and peacebuilding to analyse the factors that enable and constrain redistribution during peacetime transitions. Third is the way in which the book addresses the outcomes of redistributive policies in reality: as the unanticipated and disorderly by-product of complex political dynamics and economies that must be unravelled empirically.
Jenniffer Vargas Reina, Peacebuilding
