Colombia’s Gasoline Price Hike Reflects Global Oil Dependency & Fiscal Coloniality: Systemic Fuel Subsidy Erosion Amid Structural Debt

Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities in regions like La Guajira and the Pacific Coast have long resisted fossil fuel extraction, advocating for territorial autonomy and renewable energy projects that align with ancestral knowledge of wind and solar potential. Their resistance is framed as 'anti-development' in mainstream narratives, but their models—such as community solar microgrids—offer scalable alternatives to state and corporate energy monopolies. The erasure of these perspectives in the gasoline price debate reflects a broader pattern of epistemic violence where Indigenous knowledge is dismissed as 'unscientific' despite its proven efficacy in decentralized energy systems.

Colombia’s energy policy has been shaped by a century of extractivist cycles, from the 1920s oil boom under U.S. corporate control to the 1990s IMF-mandated privatization of Ecopetrol, which dismantled state capacity in favor of foreign investment. The 2003 'Law 142' reforms, pushed by the World Bank, further liberalized fuel markets, making domestic prices vulnerable to global volatility—a pattern repeated across Latin America under 'Washington Consensus' policies. The current crisis is not an anomaly but the culmination of decades of policy choices that prioritized short-term fiscal gains over long-term resilience.

Across the Global South, nations like Ecuador and Bolivia have attempted to break free from oil dependency through constitutional reforms (e.g., Ecuador’s 2008 'Rights of Nature' clause) and nationalization policies, though these efforts are often undermined by global financial pressures. In India, state-owned oil companies like ONGC have been used to subsidize rural fuel access, contrasting with Colombia’s market-driven approach. Meanwhile, indigenous Maori communities in Aotearoa (New Zealand) have successfully lobbied for renewable energy projects that return profits to local governance, demonstrating how energy transitions can be tied to decolonial justice.

Empirical studies show that fossil fuel subsidies disproportionately benefit higher-income households, while price hikes exacerbate poverty and inequality—contradicting the neoliberal claim that market-based pricing is 'efficient.' Research from the International Monetary Fund (2023) indicates that removing fuel subsidies without reinvesting in public transit or renewable energy leads to a net loss in welfare, particularly for low-income groups. Colombia’s own energy ministry data reveals that 70% of rural households lack access to reliable electricity, highlighting the need for decentralized, off-grid solutions rather than reliance on volatile oil markets.

Artists and spiritual leaders in Colombia’s Pacific region have framed the gasoline price hike as a 'spiritual drought,' linking the crisis to the severing of ancestral ties to land and water, which are seen as sacred in Afro-Colombian and Indigenous cosmologies. The poet and activist Hugo Jamioy has written that 'the price of gasoline is the price of forgetting,' critiquing how extractivism erodes cultural memory and intergenerational knowledge. Murals in Bogotá’s working-class neighborhoods depict oil derricks as 'monsters' consuming the earth, reflecting a collective moral reckoning with fossil capitalism.

Scenario modeling by the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggests that Colombia could achieve 60% renewable energy share by 2040 with targeted investments in solar and wind, but this requires redirecting IMF debt payments toward green transitions rather than austerity. A just transition pathway would include community-owned microgrids, retraining programs for oil workers, and constitutional reforms recognizing energy as a public good. Without these measures, Colombia risks replicating the 'resource curse' seen in Nigeria and Venezuela, where oil wealth led to corruption and economic collapse.

Rural campesino and Indigenous leaders, such as those in the *Cumbre Agraria* coalition, have long demanded energy sovereignty as part of broader agrarian reform, but their proposals are sidelined in favor of IMF-backed austerity. Women-led cooperatives in Cauca, such as *Asomujer*, have piloted biogas projects from agricultural waste, offering gender-just alternatives to fossil fuel dependency. The erasure of these voices in mainstream discourse reflects how neoliberal policies depoliticize energy, treating it as a technical issue rather than a site of struggle for racial, gender, and class justice.