Cocaleros and Guerrillas: The Politics of Illicit Market Regulations in a Cocaine-Producing Colombian Region

Although the debate on ‘criminal rebels’ has given way to more contextualised discussion of ‘rebel governance’, civilian agency remains underexplored within this new framework. To address this deficit, we investigate how taxation and regulation policies of the ‘dissident’ FARC-EP in Cauca, Colombia, are co-created with community leaders. Using key informant interviews, we discuss how civilian-rebel governance of illicit economies reflects both ideological commitments and practical constraints. We examine continuities and divergence from the FARC-EP order prior to the 2016 peace agreement, identifying how the emergence of autonomous organisations of illicit crops’ cultivators has affected, through peasant agency, rebel governance interactions.