Shared Sovereignties and Criminal Governance: Cooperative Networks Among State and Non-State Actors in Buenaventura, Colombia

The Colombian state has achieved forms of stability that rest on its capacity to share sovereignty with both legal and illegal subnational actors. Based on graph theory, this work examines the logic of cooperation that underpins the state’s presence in the port of Buenaventura. To do so, a documentary investigation of judicial sources and academic studies is undertaken, and relationship networks are constructed. Graph reconstruction sheds light on the presence of shared sovereignties in Buenaventura, as forms of collaborative control are not the exclusive domain of the Colombian state. In Buenaventura, these rules come from interactions between political leaders, the military, and criminals.