The Zero-Sum Game of Early Oil Extraction Relations in Colombia: Workers, Tropical Oil, and the Police State, 1918–1938

Abstract

The history of early oil extraction operations in Colombia resonates with the experiences of other Latin American nations that found themselves in the middle of an imperial struggle for the control of the precious resource. In the early twentieth century, British and US multinational oil corporations, and to a lesser extent Canadian and Dutch companies, came face to face in Mexico, Colombia, Perú, Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, and Chile over the control of oil extraction, export operations, and the development of domestic markets, forcing federal governments to reevaluate nationalist land use policies at the expense of local political interests.