The Genocide of a New Era: Corruption in Public Procurement

Abstract

This article examines the structural relations- hip between public procurement corruption and environmental harm in Colombia, based on the premise that these phenomena are neither exceptional nor peripheral, but rather symptomatic of a deviant institutional rationality. The inquiry extends beyond a strictly legal analysis to offer a substantive critique of how the state contract has been instrumentalized to legitimize dispossession—thereby undermining not only administrative legality but also the material conditions necessary for sustaining life.

Adopting an ecocentric and constitutional perspective, the article analyzes how the diversion of public ends—when carried out through the formal mechanisms of procurement—produces irreversible environmental damage, erodes institutional legitimacy, and entrenches patterns of impunity. Through the study of concrete cases and legal frameworks, it argues that corruption in public contracting constitutes a juridical form of violence—frequently normalized—that transcends criminal law and directly impacts non-recoverable collective goods.

The article advocates for a reconceptualization of the administrative contract as a legally dense and ethically consequential act, whose validity cannot rest solely on formal compliance but must be grounded in its alignment with the principle of sustainability and intergenerational justice. On this basis, it offers doctrinal, institutional, and policy recommendations ai- med at rebuilding the normative foundations of the state’s contracting power, under a logic of ecological precaution and shared public-private responsibility.

Ultimately, the article advances a radical but legally grounded thesis: environmental harm re- sulting from corruption in public procurement is not a collateral effect, but a systemic outcome. The only legitimate legal response, therefore, cannot be one of technical indifference, but rather a juridical reconstitution of the normative matrix from which meaning is derived.