Ground Fictions

This chapter analyzes a context where the material fixity of land has been repeatedly called into question, examining how stories about soil's materiality become key factors in bringing new forms of property into being in post-conflict Colombia. The chapter demonstrates how soil's actual fluidity makes what it calls “ground fictions” central to many land claims. Building on long-term fieldwork in both rural Urabá and urban Medellín, it reveals that legal moves, such as land titling and the establishment of protected land reserves, are only part of market making. Surface water flows expand and dry up seasonally, making fictions of soil's dryness via alluvial accession central to encroaching claims to “new land” on Urabá's floodplains. Similarly, fictions about land's physical instability and landslide risk first became central to squatters' ability to access peripheral, nonmarket land in Medellín but subsequently undermined their ownership claims once the state sought to protect these long-neglected urban residents from their own risky soils. Ultimately, the juxtaposition of these two sites in the chapter sheds light on the ways that the soil becomes a crucial player in war and peace through its foundational role in the property rules that come to redefine both rural and urban land markets in the unfolding of the conflict and attempts to bring it to a close.