Colombia: Popular Organizations Show Solidarity with the Peasant Struggle in Aguas Blancas
We hereby share an unofficial translation of an article by Nueva Democracia from Colombia on the 13th of May.
Various student, peasant, and popular organizations have expressed their support for the land seizure carried out by peasants in Aguas Blancas and the area surrounding the Caja de Ahorros No. 1 property through videos, rallies, banners, and graffiti. This struggle began on May 5 and has continued despite threats and eviction attempts by the police and pressure from lawyers representing the Inversiones Rodríguez S.A.S. company, which was convicted of land grabbing and is linked to the paramilitary big landlord Hugues Rodríguez.
Peasants participating in a land seizure process in Casacará produced a video in which they express solidarity and state that seizure is the path for peasants to obtain the land they need to produce and lift the country out of backwardness, as well as to make an agrarian reform, noting that the only way for peasants to gain access to land is through land seizure.
The Association of Artisanal Fishermen of the Middle Sinú in the Corralito Marsh expressed its solidarity with the seizure of Aguas Blancas, stating that peasant, fishing, and popular communities have historically had to fight and organize to defend their right to land and a dignified life.
The student movement at the Popular University of Cesar issued a statement expressing solidarity with the land land seizers in Aguas Blancas and asserting that students should not be isolated from the people’s struggles, and that it is the resistance and organization of the peasantry that have historically conquered the land and their rights.
Residents of the Granizal village, who lead a major organization and campaign for water, decent housing, better roads, and other demands and rights that have been taken away from them, produced a video in which they expressed their solidarity with and sent their greetings to the peasant struggle for land in Aguas Blancas, and denounced the oppression and dispossession perpetrated by the big landlords.
At the University of Antioquia, student activists and popular fighters carried out a rally to inform students about the peasant struggle in Aguas Blancas, and a video was shown expressing support and solidarity with the land seizure in Aguas Blancas.
In addition, revolutionary students unfurled a banner and made several graffiti inside the UdeA, supporting land seizures across the country and calling for the destruction of latifundia as the only way to carry out an Agrarian Revolution.
To conclude, we share a public statement in support of the peasant struggle in Aguas Blancas, which was signed by various democratic and revolutionary organizations and individuals. The slogan “Land, land, land for those who work it; struggle, struggle, struggle to recover it!” was present in all of the aforementioned expressions of solidarity.
