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.In addition to corruption and the siphoning of resources to armedactors, an economic bottleneck disrupts resource flows when a suddeninflux of oil revenues reaches a department with a weak existing resourcebase.This is because current account expenditure increases at a greaterpace than the total resources or existing savings.Increased revenues fromroyalties ironically led to greater indebtedness at the municipal anddepartmental level, and an inability to generate savings which mightreduce the ever greater dependency on royalties.Any major downwardshift in oil prices could create a major problem of short-term insolvency,which in the climate of Casanare could be very dangerous.The 1998 Plan for Casanare produced by the departmental PlanningAdministration acknowledged the profound institutional weakness inthe department: The department currently lacks a functioning andaccountable structure which would enable it to provide the decision-making processes for planning and management (DepartamentoAdministrativo de Planeación 1998:27).Yet while this was acknowl-edged in 1998, that year marked an escalation in the levels of violenceand extortion.Interviews in 2001 and 2002 with the main institutionscharged with introducing accountability and legality into Casanarefound them all under tremendous pressure from the volume of casesand from the threats they received from armed groups.59 The Defensorhad to go into exile in October 2000 after a bomb was placed under hiscar.In May 2001, the paramilitaries ordered two fiscales , or prosecu-tors, to present themselves in Tauramena.After they failed to do this atthe second demand, they were told that one of the fiscales would beshot.60 The Procurator General was in despair at his inability to investi-gate all the cases that came to him, and even when he did carry outinvestigations he could not take the cases to court, due to threats onhim and the Fiscal.Civilian authority had been greatly undermined in Casanare by thelate 1990s.Nevertheless, there were still voices and organisations that[ 244 ] COLOMBIAwere trying to keep the civilian space open.This chapter has arguedthat there were contingent moments when institutional and socialdecomposition might have been avoided or at least mitigated.Toachieve this, it would have been vital to support those voices andorganisations from the very moment oil was discovered.By the late 1980s there was a generation of young professionals whowere concerned with the development of the region.They wereprepared to act independently of the traditional élite political familiesand challenge their clientelist political culture.Some founded NGOs,such as Cemilla in Yopal and the Fundación para el Desarrollo de Upíain Villanueva.The latter had proposed a participatory regionalapproach to the development of Casanare in the early 1990s to over-come disarticulation and fragmentation.A space for participation fromdifferent social sectors and organisations would, it was argued at thetime, offer a strong local interlocutor to the oil industry as the weakerthe community, the worse is the impact of oil. 61 The Barco govern-ment s Programme Nacional de Rehabilitación (National RehabilitationProgramme, or PNR), which targeted the conflictive areas of Colombia,had been applied in Yopal in 1991 and had been supportive of partici-patory approaches.The governor at the time supported the idea andConsejos de Participación (Participation Councils) were set up between1992 and 1994.However, the councils were closed by the next governorof the department, and the PNR was abandoned by a later nationaladministration.Many of this generation of professionals have come to occupy keyroles in the institutions of government as well as in the private sectorand the Chamber of Commerce.They have remained committed to thedepartment despite the war and could, they argue, have been the coreof an alliance to construct a more sustainable institutionality based ona region-wide development strategy.Many feel that the national stateundermines rather than strengthens such capacity.The Contraloría(auditor) in charge of investigating corruption finds that rather thangiving greater support for him to exercise his investigative role, thegovernment cuts his budget and seeks to establish a new outside bodyto audit the departmental Contralorías. Strengthen us! he entreated inan interview.62 A strategic national plan of institutional strengthening inCasanare would have also prioritised the judiciary and included regu-lar support from national teams when local people are threatened.Impunity positively fosters violence.A serious pre-emptive plan for Casanare should have involved arecognition of the importance of the grassroots, developmental, women sand environmental groups to the democratic process in the department.This would have required effective security for citizens and measures toensure that the security forces, in particular the armed forces, were them-selves accountable to the rule of law and not above it.The widespread[ 245 ] OIL WARSbelief and considerable evidence that the army has colluded with theparamilitaries in cruel actions against social activists, and prioritised thedefence of the oil industry over the civilian population, has created agreat deal of cynicism towards the security forces of the state.Civiliansecurity is guaranteed for no one, and those who try to keep an inde-pendent voice frequently risk their lives.Nevertheless, there are stillsocial activists in Casanare who dare to speak out
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