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This document analyzes active dispossession by paramilitaries, understood as the planned and forceful transfer of land from one agent to another. This may be understood taking into account two main dimensions: Firstly, institutional designs that make land ownership (particularly large landholdings) highly instrumental for military/illegal purposes, and secondly, key organizational features of the paramilitary phenomenon. The combination of such designs and features a) generates a typology of dispossession, b) may explain the manner in which active dispossession took place, and c) also reveals the social dynamics and collective action issues that underlie it. All this has certain implications for analysis and public policy.