COLOMBIA: Our dream is the land and we’ll fight until the end

Hereby we publish an unofficial translation of an article published by Nueva Democracia.

“What could be more important for a peasant family than land and water? What shall we do if for generations we have seen like the big landlords rob us the common land, they appropriate themselves of the wastelands, privatize and deforest the plane fields, dry out the swamps and humid lands and nobody does anything?” Excerpt of the statement of the families who are retaking the farm la Sonora. Pailitas, Cesar

The land problem, which is the peasant problem, together with our situation of subjugation by imperialism they are the basis of all the other problems of our nation. In fact, one of the most important chapters of our history, which is still being written today, is the chapter of the peasant armed struggle, which has its origin and its basis in the fact that the peasantry has had to struggle against the big landlord power and against imperialist domination, as evidenced by a text written by the newborn peasant guerrilla of the FARC in 1964 and which is known as the Agrarian Program of the Guerrillas:

We have been the first victims of the big landlords furies because here in this part of Colombia the interests of the biglandlords, the most backward interests of clericalism, the chain interests of the most obscurantist reaction of the country predominate. That is why we have had to suffer in the flesh and in the spirit all the brutalities of a rotten regime that is based on the big landlord monopoly of land, mono-production and mono-export under the empire of the United States.

This program, which at the time proposed a revolutionary policy with respect to the peasant struggle for land, has not been carried out to date.

Multiple land seizures in Cesar

Cesar is a department in the Colombian Caribbean. Its poverty rates are high compared to the national average. In 2024, according to DANE, the national poverty average was 33% while Cesar’s was 52.2%. It was in this department of large unproductive latifundiums that three land seizures took place between March and April of this year.

Two of the land seizures took place in the town of Agustín Codazzi, a municipality in Cesar. Agustín Codazzi is known as the agro-energy capital of Colombia. It earned this title because its lands are intensively exploited for coal by the multinational Drummond Ltda. and there are also extensive areas of monoculture oil palm plantations. At least 3,000 hectares related to the Sarmiento Angulo family and others owned by Carlos Murgas, the “Palm Czar”. More than 76 million tons of thermal coal have been extracted from Codazzi’s subsoil, which has generated more than two trillion pesos in royalties for the Colombian State, of which this municipality has received 216 billion pesos. These figures are not reflected in the welfare of the population. Nearly 30% of its inhabitants do not meet their basic needs, their aqueduct is deficient, it has a high rate of school abandonment and a huge number of peasants who never had lands or have been expelled from the small amount of land that they had.

Agribusiness and mining, far from representing development and progress for this municipality, are seen by its inhabitants as a curse. Coal is the “black curse” of Codazzi. Both Drummond and the “palm czar” have been directly linked to paramilitary violence against the peasantry and the dispossession of their plots of land. Drummond is accused of having on its payroll a substantial amount to finance the consolidation of paramilitarism in Cesar.

The mining and energy multinationals, the agribusiness magnates, and a third sector also famous for its links with paramilitarism: the large cattle ranchers, traditional large landlords in Cesar, are the three economic powers that combine and control political power and with it, the life of the peasantry and the rest of the inhabitants of the area. They are the regional expression of the classes that dominate our country: the big bourgeoisie and big landlords in alliance, at the service of imperialism.

Since the beginning of the present government, the peasants of Codazzi, Cesar and the whole country have been excited once again with the promise of agrarian reform and Gustavo Petro’s promise of change. But neither the agrarian reform nor the promised change have materialized. It is in this context that the land seizures have materialized.

Landless peasants occupy land in Agrosavia, in the municipality of Agustín Codazzi, in Cesar department

At the La Motilonia research center of the Colombian Agricultural Research Corporation (Agrosavia), 50 families entered, moved several kilometers inside, with their backpacks and water bottles on their shoulders, in the darkness of the early morning, until they reached land where there were not even grazing animals. These are “some hills” that have not been cultivated for decades. The occupied area is approximately 600 hectares.

Among the people who undertook this action were a good percentage of older adults. Several stated that they had never owned land in their lives and had decided to participate in the seizure in the hope of at least owning land at the end of their lives. Another good percentage did own land at some point in their lives, but they suffered violence from big landlords and paramilitaries and were dispossessed of the little they had. Such examples abound in Codazzi and its surroundings. One by one, land claimants are dying of old age without ever getting back what once belonged to them.

There was also a good percentage of single mothers and some young people. The single mothers clung to the hope of conquering the land as they clung to their love for their children. If there was one thing that prevailed in their decision to occupy the land, it was the illusion of another future for those children who were growing up. The young people who took part in the occupation professed a love of the countryside. One of these young people said that he had belonged to more than 14 associations, each of which he joined in an effort to obtain land, but there was no other way but to take it through de facto actions.

The peasants who took part in this action declared that “We are land-recovering peasants and we are doing it by de facto means on government land (…) we are doing it with the objective that the government notices that there are peasants who want to have a piece of land (…) we are doing it de facto, because if we wait for ANT to have everything for a little piece of land (…) one dies of old age waiting for a little piece of land and never gets it”.

Peasants of Cesar occupy land of a big landlord in Casacará, in the department of Cesar

“Las Carmelas” and the “María Victoria” farm in the Begonia district of the municipality of Codazzi were occupied at the end of March. These two properties total about 1,600 hectares. These properties are owned by Olga Dangond de Dávila. Although it is a latifundium dedicated to cattle, its owner has a strong relationship with the palm plantations in the same sector. In fact, her eldest daughter, María Victoría Dangond, who has also dedicated her life to cattle raising on lands of more than 1,000 hectares, is the wife of the aforementioned “Palm Czar”.

Contexto Ganadero, FEDEGAN’s network, i.e., the big landlords’ propaganda organ, says that about 80 people “invaded” the land on Saturday, March 29. On the other hand, the land-recover peasants claim that there were 150 families who occupied the land and that it was occupied on Tuesday, March 25.

The reasons for initiating this action can be summarized in one: the need for land to work.

There are many similarities between the land-recover peasants of La Motilonia and the Las Carmelas farm: the large percentage of displaced people, the fact that many have never had land even though they have worked all their lives in the fields (there are people over 80 years old).

The participants in this takeover, and probably the majority of the inhabitants of Codazzi, each took their share of violence at the time of the paramilitary onslaught. Some say that they had to flee through the mountains for days with nothing but the clothes on their backs and that in these situations they had to drink water that was almost mud. The women said they had lost their husbands; some also saw their fathers and brothers killed. Many suffered sexual violence.

Despite this hard history of pain, tears and blood, despite suffering landlord violence, those who participated in this recovery did so with happiness and renewed hope. One of the land-recover peasants, a man over 60 years old, said: “This is the first time I feel alive!

Perhaps this story that touched them in their lives had prepared them, because although the hardships of land reclamation are many, they do not compare to the reality of living all your life without having a place to work.

In their communiqués, the land-recover peasants of the Las Carmelas farm stated: “We peasants have the right to land (…) we have the right to food and to an adequate standard of living. The national government and the National Land Agency have not responded to the commitments they have made to us peasants, for all of the above reasons we are forced to take this route. We are open to dialogue, but we will not give up our rights”.

Peasants of Pailitas occupy land in La Sonora in Cesar

As well as in Codazzi, 150 landless peasant families decided to initiate the process of recovery of the “La Sonora” farm in Pailitas. They denounce that many of the lands of this property were illegally appropriated by the current owner of the farm. On the other hand, illegal mining is being carried out on this property, which is contaminating a stream called “La Floresta”. The contamination of this stream has negative effects on other nearby bodies of water. These effects on multiple water sources are a major problem for the farmers in the region, as they need the water to irrigate their crops and to fish.

In one of their communiqués, the recovering families of the La Sonora farm explain the process as follows:

“The peasant struggle in La Sonora is very simple to understand: the property, located in Pailitas Cesar, has vacant land, which means that whoever claims to be the owner appropriated the land that by law should be designated so that the landless peasants can work in dignity, producing food. In addition, in the Floresta stream they have been irregularly extracting dredging material for years, without any care for nature, putting at risk the water and the life of all the communities in the area”.

State’s and big landlords’ response

Not surprisingly, the response in all three cases was the same: repression of the peasantry. All the seizures suffered evictions by the State in the service of the big landlord power.

In the case of the recovery of the “Las Carmelas” farm, the land-recover peasants denounced that:

“the self-styled cattle security brigades arrived in the morning hours of Sunday, March 30. They deployed the army since the night before and arrived with approximately 100 pick-up trucks and armed civilians. We did not go to meet them. They declared that we have voluntarily vacated the land. We do not know with what intention they make these statements, but they are totally false. We (remain) in a state of struggle here on the land and we will remain here.”

Furthermore, in another of their communiqués they stated:

“We hold President Gustavo Petro, Minister of Defense Pedro Sánchez, the commanders of the La Popa Battalion and the police commander of Codazzi responsible for whatever may happen to these peasant communities. We demand respect for the life and personal integrity of each one of the men and women who are recovering the land for life”.

The Livestock Solidarity Brigades, a group that aims to become a re-edition of the famous “co-living” and which consists of armed civilians organized in a structure at the service of the cattle ranchers and with the support of the Colombian army, acted as repressive forces in the three cases mentioned above. FEDEGAN and its president Jose Felix Lafourie (a big landlord who has been denounced several times for his links with paramilitarism) are very concerned about the direction that the peasant movement is currently taking, and in its magazine Contexto Ganadero they are shouting against the land recovers. The following are some excerpts from one of their columns:

Three factors are repeated in the latest invasions in different places, but especially in Cesar:

First: the support of some NGOs that bring together rural communities under the banner of the “recovery of the land”, such as the so-called “National Agrarian Coordinator”, CNA (…)

Second: the presence of professional agitators sent to spread communist slogans (class struggle, anti-capitalism, the land for those who work it, etc.), in order to exacerbate hatred against the legitimate owners and, in this way, induce the invasions.

Third: the Peasant Guards which, like the indigenous, behind their peaceful appearance hide uniformed, trained, ideologized organizations and, in fact, responsible for blockades, invasions, urban violence, and kidnapping of members of the Public Forces”.

While the government of Gustavo Petro has tried to wash the face of the landlords and show them as possible friends of the peasant people, Lafaurie, head of the cattle ranchers, clearly shows that his interests and those of the peasantry are antagonistic and even prepares the ground in public opinion to treat the land recuperators as “kidnappers”, that is, to treat the peasants as enemies of war.

The struggle for land and therefore the antagonism between the big landlords and the peasantry, will last until the latifundium is put to an end. This historical struggle has been a war to the death. The State has used all its repressive force, legal and illegal, to defend the landlords. In addition, through deceit, it has tried to make the struggling people believe that there is an opportunity to conquer change through a State that in truth only serves the ruling classes. These two aspects show themselves in a very palpable and acute way today. On the one hand, Petro continues to command a counterinsurgent war against the peasantry and on the other hand, a part of the popular organizations are raising Petro’s reforms or his popular consultation as the only possible way for the longed-for change and want to submerge the entire popular movement in this way.

The valuable thing about the examples of the aforementioned land seizures is that they demonstrate that for the people no change is really taking place and that despite all the fear that has been sown, the peasants are still willing to fight. Faced with this panorama, the task of revolutionaries and true progressives is to work so that the peasants become more and more organized and learn these truths in the struggle: the only force in which the people can trust is in their own organized force and there is no greater power than the power of the people’s classes when they raise their organization to the highest heights.

We end with an excerpt of one of the communiques of the land-recover peasants of the La Sonora land.

“Today we say It’s enough! We will stay in La Sonora until the State decides to recover the land and take care of the water of our creek and we call on all the peasants of Cesar to recover what has been stolen from us, to fight for the dignity of our families and the future of our children. Let’s stop fighting among organizations for crumbs, let’s not allow the politicians in office to use us: let’s unite in the common struggle for the land.

We expect all the solidarity of the peasant organizations of the region and of the country (…) and of every citizen whose conscience moves him to be on the side of justice”.