The role of the State: The Colombian Extractive Mining in Context

Abstract

This article makes an analysis of the course followed by the colombian labor and mining policy in the context of broad development experienced by the extractive mining sector during the first decade of the 21st century. These policies reveal the existence of a two-way power correspondence between the State and the national/foreign corporate groups that try to monopolize the global mining markets, putting pressure on countries with agicultural commodity export seals, such as colombia, so that they implement social and legal regulations that open the way for the exploitation of the labor force and the strategic resources, in order to ensure a growing capital accumulation by the major mining companies. This article has a particular interest in analyzing the maneuvers that have been adopted by the State, particularly over periods of capital stagnation, because State-mediated capital accumulation patterns go through transformations that depend on the magnitude of the crises of capitalism, and end up being reflected in labor organizations, the investing sectors, and the privatization of the common goods. In this sense, the article makes a detailed analysis of the colombian State within a context of emergency and expansion of the new raw materials export pattern, responsible for the reprimarization of the national economy.