Extractive Violence The Global Political Economy of Sexual and Environmental Violence in Colombia

Abstract

Despite the formalization of the 2016 peace agreement in Colombia, sexual violence and environmental degradation persist as structural conditions that disproportionately affect marginalized populations and the territories in which they live. This paper theorizes these interwoven forms of violence as systematically produced by extractive capitalism that articulates through colonial and gendered socio-ecological relations of power. Drawing on the concept of the “coloniality of violence” (Sachseder 2023), the analysis demonstrates how economic, socio-ecological, and symbolic ‘gains’ function as structural drivers for both sexual and environmental violence. These gains—whether material or immaterial, social or ecological—sustain conditions in which violence is not only normalized but also intensified as a means of reproducing power asymmetries.
Rather than constituting incidental or residual phenomena, sexual and environmental violence operate as mutually reinforcing mechanisms that consolidate a broader architecture of socio-ecological, political, and economic inequality. These forms of violence are not extraneous to extractive capitalism but foundational to its operation and simultaneously facilitate capital accumulation while stabilizing (post)colonial hierarchies of power. By positioning sexual and environmental violence as an intrinsic logic of extractivist economies—rather than an aberration, by-product, or temporary rupture—this paper argues that extractive capitalism represents a fundamental, yet frequently overlooked, impediment to peace for both humans and non-humans in Colombia.