Disciplining Development: The Caja Agraria and the Politics of Rural Identity in Mid-Century Colombia

During the 1930s and 1940s, as rural development took center stage in Colombia's political and social life, the Caja Agraria, Colombia state-owned development bank, emerged as a crucial site for negotiating relationships between Indigeneity, citizenship, and market participation. Agricultural credit became a powerful tool for the state to reach the countryside, control political mobilization, and expand on economic development initiatives. However, the everyday operations of the Caja Agraria reveal a tension between idealized notions of debtors and political identities taking shape in the decades following the Great Depression. In their everyday operations, bank officials routinely characterized borrowers as "indios inconscientes" (unconscious Indians), revealing how colonial frameworks persisted within rural development projects even as the state attempted to reshape rural inhabitants into ideal economic subjects. The Caja Agraria's lending practices exemplified how development institutions sought to "civilize" rural populations through financial inclusion—a process that unfolded precisely as "campesino" was crystallizing into a powerful political identity in Colombia. By analyzing how Indigenous identities were simultaneously erased and invoked in development discourse, this paper illuminates how racial categories fundamentally shaped economic citizenship and campesino mobilization in twentieth-century Latin America.