Dr Charles Beach is a social anthropologist specialising in the Colombia–Venezuela borderlands of Norte de Santander and Táchira. His doctoral research at UCL, based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in the border city of Cúcuta and the rural border municipality of Ragonvalia, examined illegalised cross-border economies, the collective organising of gasoline smugglers, and the relationships between non-state armed actors, state institutions and border communities.
His areas of knowledge include armed-actor control of formal and informal border crossings; the treatment of trade unionists and social leaders and the operation of Colombia's National Protection Unit; extortion and informal taxation at the border; the legacies of paramilitary violence and enforced disappearance in Norte de Santander; and Venezuelan migration into Colombia. He worked as an ethnographic consultant to the Inter-American Development Bank on a qualitative study of Venezuelan migrants' access to healthcare in Colombian and Peruvian cities during the COVID-19 pandemic, published in the Journal of Migration and Health. He co-edited Contraband Cultures: Reframing Smuggling across Latin America and the Caribbean (UCL Press, 2024) and has published further peer-reviewed work on Colombian border economies. He is a member of the Laboratory for the Anthropology of the State in Colombia and works in Spanish to C2 level.
Colombia. Approximately three combined years' residence in Colombia since 2015, in Bogotá, Bucaramanga, and Cúcuta, initially as an English language instructor in a vocational college and subsequently as a doctoral researcher. Fluent Spanish, with a working ear for regional accent, register and idiom. Travelled widely across the country and with a broad familiarity for Colombian society and everyday life: family and household structure, class and regional hierarchies, religious practice, work and money.
Colombian regional depth - Cúcuta, Norte de Santander and Táchira border corridor. Territorial control of formal and informal crossings (trochas) by the ELN, paramilitary successor groups and criminal gangs, and the informal taxation and extortion of people and goods crossing. Fieldwork conducted in Cúcuta, the border neighbourhood of La Parada, and the rural border municipalities between 2017 and 2019.
Venezuelan migration and onward movement. Barriers to healthcare access and service provision for Venezuelan migrants in Colombian and Peruvian cities, researched as an ethnographic consultant to the Inter-American Development Bank during the COVID-19 pandemic through remote interviews with migrants and with development and humanitarian NGOs. Also: the effects of the 2015 border closures and the collapse of Venezuelan oil production on border livelihoods; dual nationality and blurred national identity in border municipalities; and conditions for Venezuelans in regional countries of first reception, relevant to questions of onward migration and internal or third-country relocation.
Trade unionism and social leadership. Organising among illegalised workers; the constitutional "right to dignified work" as a basis for claims on the state; risks faced by unionised and non-unionised leaders; and how threats are communicated and understood locally through euphemism and silence.
State protection in practice. The operation of the National Protection Unit (UNP): how risk assessments are made, renewed and withdrawn, the bureaucratic burden placed on protected individuals, and the gap between formal entitlement to protection and its actual delivery. Observed directly over an extended period in the case of a protected trade union leader.
Informal and illegalised livelihoods. Smuggling and the informal economy; cycles of decriminalisation and re-criminalisation; state-funded programmes to remove people from illegal trades.
Legacies of paramilitary and guerrilla violence. Disappearance and body disposal in Norte de Santander during the early 2000s period of paramilitary violence, and the effects of that period on local social memory, testimony and willingness to speak.
New to expert witness work. No expert reports produced to date. Expertise rests on two years of doctoral ethnographic fieldwork in Norte de Santander (2017–2019), a peer-reviewed publication record on Colombian border economies and Venezuelan migration, and continuing contact with research networks at the Universidad Francisco de Paula Santander in Cúcuta and with the Laboratory for the Anthropology of the State in Colombia. Applied research experience outside the academy includes commissioned qualitative work for the Inter-American Development Bank and for the London School of Economics Latin America and Caribbean Centre.
Reports are prepared in accordance with the Upper Tribunal Practice Direction on expert evidence. Spanish-language documentary material can be reviewed and translated as part of the instruction.
Cearns, J. and Beach, C. (eds) (2024) Contraband Cultures: Reframing Smuggling across Latin America and the Caribbean. London: UCL Press.
Beach, C. (2024) 'Emprendedores forzados: ex-smugglers of Venezuelan petrol turned unwilling entrepreneurs in the Colombian border city of Cúcuta', in Contraband Cultures. London: UCL Press.
Cearns, J. and Beach, C. (2024) 'Contraband as culture, culture as contraband', introduction to Contraband Cultures. London: UCL Press.
[co-authors] and Beach, C. (2021) 'The impact of COVID-19 on Venezuelan migrants' access to health: a qualitative study in Colombian and Peruvian cities', Journal of Migration and Health, 3.
Beach, C. (2018) 'Frontera Combustible: conceptualising the state through the experiences of petrol smugglers in the Colombian/Venezuelan borderlands', Journal of Extreme Anthropology, 2(2).
Beach, C. (2024) 'We don't call it smuggling, we call it commerce': trade unions for gasoline smugglers and the pimpineros of Norte de Santander, Colombia. PhD thesis, University College London.