Colombia – Peasant leader: “We recovered what is ours, the invader is someone else”
We hereby share an unofficial translation of an article published by the newspaper Nueva Democracia.
On past 24th of April, a seminar called “Seeds of peasant and people’s struggle” was carried out in the Antioquia University, on occasion of the commemoration of the Peasant Struggle Day. In the event participated peasants from several areas of the country, as well as international guests who shared their experiences of struggle through a video call.
In the event the necessity of struggle for the dignity of the peasantry was raised, and the first element of such dignity is the ownership of land, access to it and entitlement, as well as the technification of the crops, education which combines technology with traditional knowledge for the relation with the land. Each speaker presented important reflections on the current necessities of the peasantry, the importance of the land and the peasant production for the country, the struggle for the rights of the workers of the countryside. Some also presented the importance of the environmental approaches and the role of the peasantry in the protection of the environment.
From Nueva Democracia, we want to highlight two interventions. One of them was the intervention of a peasant leader from Cesar, who broadly outlined the recent struggle experience in that area of the country:
“In 2015, we made the first recovery in San Martín de Cesar. The first recovery took place, and in less than three months, there were three recoveries. […] We suffered a very hard blow in 2022 when four leaders were murdered, but from that point onwards, they say that behind the pain there is hope, and we rebuilt ourselves and now we recovered around 7,000 hectares. The Commission has 17 processes of recovering peasantry or landless peasantry, and we are implementing a strategy that combines two approaches”: the institutional dispute and the peasant path.
Regarding the institutional dispute, he referred to the use of institutional channels to both achieve the allocation of recovered lands from previous governments and to take advantage of the fact that the Petro government talks about ‘agrarian reform’ to recover lands together with him. For example, properties in the process of extinction of domain, which are supposed to belong to the Special Assets Society (SAE), but in practice, they still belong to the gangs, who ‘have never lost them.’ Therefore, the government should buy those lands from the SAE, legalize them, and hand them over to the peasant communities, with organized peasantry being the ones to defend those lands.
“The other approach is the peasant path, the one we learned in the 1970s, which we need to rethink in 2025. The autonomous approach, recovering wetlands, savannas, and riverbanks.” So he refers to the recoveries of land, through which peasants enter the properties of big landlords, take possession of them, and struggle to conquer a piece of land. He explained that in that region of the country, it is very likely that any farm with more than 500 hectares contains empty lands and stolen lands, so ‘we recover what is ours; the invader is someone else. We are combining the institutional approach with the peasant path. We look at who stole and recover. If the government has difficulty recovering, the peasant movement gives it a push. That is what we believe needs to be done”.
We also highlight the intervention of a comrade, who, in homage to the exemplary struggle for land in Brazil, carried a cap from the League of Poor Peasants (Brazil) and expressed that ‘the main problem in our country is the land. It is concentrated in the hands of a few, in the hands of big landlords who have gamonal power, who are very well connected, co-opt organizations and institutions, and have their armed power. The peasantry has a historical task in our country, which is to recover the land. […] The peasant loves the land, the countryside; he does not conceive to live in the city. What is proposed in our country, to see the true transformation of society, is to sweep away the latifundium; an Agrarian Revolution is needed as the first stage of a democratic revolution.”
He also made a call to the students, who were the attendees to this event: “It is important that the young students show solidarity. Have you heard about the solidarity fronts of the cattleman? They sell as if it is pacific, but they come armed with their bodyguards, they attack verbally and physically the peasants, make gunshots. […] Let’s share in the city the actions by the peasantry that needs land to work. Do not wait until they murder a peasant. Let’s make feel solidarity with word and action in the cities, the importance of the peasantry is significant because it is through them that foods like cassava and arracacia arrive in the city, providing various ingredients to make soup. We have to recover this value of the peasantry”. The event ended with great optimism towards the peasant struggle and with high spirit from the attendees to support the peasant actions in their historical struggle for the land. We hereby share some pictures of the day.
