New Farmers Organization Creates Alternatives to Forced Displacement

8.10.09

By Eric Schwartz – IPO

In the foothills of the Andes south of Bogotá Colombia, the farmers of the Alto Ariari region of the Meta department, have lived through more than two decades of state violence. Through campaigns of selected killings, torture, and threats, the Colombian army and their allies, the right wing paramilitary groups, have attempted to weaken the once powerful social movements of the Alto Ariari. The most stunning example was the extermination of the left-wing Patriotic Union Party from 1985 to 1996, in which hundreds of party activists and elected officials in the Alto Ariari alone were viciously killed(1). In the face of this repression, justified by the Colombian state as a part of the war on the left-wing guerrilla groups, the farmers of the Ariari have refused to abandon their land and have continued to organize for their rights. In July 2009, representatives from 12 village committees formed the Peasants’ Association of the Alto Ariari (Acari), to take up the legacy of struggle of the Patriotic Union Party and resist state violence and neglect.

Acari was formed as a response to the most recent wave of repression, beginning in 2002, in which several thousand farmers were forced to abandon their land. Between 2003 and 2004, more than 100 farmers were murdered in the Alto Ariari (2). By 2004, the paramilitary group Bloque Centauros, with the support of the Colombian army, had transformed thriving rural villages into ghost towns. Although a handful of farmers resisted the paramilitary assault and stayed on their land, most were forced to join the nearly four million people who have been internally displaced in Colombia.

Acari aims for farmers in the Alto Ariari to take back power over their own lives. The organization will work to organize people to help them stay on their land and develop social and economic projects to make up for the lack of government investment in the region. Acari plans to look to the examples of indigenous and other peasant organizations in Colombia, and will work with regional organizations like Sintragrim (Meta Independent Agricultural Workers’ Union), national organizations like Fensuagro, and international networks like Via Campesina.

The founders of Acari are the very people most affected by the problems that plague the region, and therefore also the ones most equipped to propose solutions. Pedro*, president of Acari and a leader of the National Coordination of Internally Displaced People (CND) was one of the displaced people from the Alto Ariari. He found a home for himself in a shanty town on the outskirts of the nearby city of Villavicencio. According to Pedro, “There’s no employment there, no health care, no drinking water. Our neighbors who have always worked the land ended up in a tiny four meter by four meter room.” Some of the other displaced farmers are still living in Villavicencio, organizing to demand that the state assume its responsibility for their displacement and guarantee the security they need to be able to return to their homes. “Displaced people need to have our hand raised in a fist to protest for our rights,” says Pedro, “instead of extending our hand to ask for a handout.”

Other farmers from the Alto Ariari have chosen to return, even without any protection or support from the Colombia government. A few families began to trickle back to their homes in 2005. What finally cleared the way for more farmers to come back, though, was the collective return of twenty-seven displaced families in 2006. With the support of the Inter-Church Justice and Peace Commission, these families bought a small farm in the heart of the Alto Ariari and founded a village there, called the Civilian Community of Life and Peace (Civipaz). By declaring Civipaz a “humanitarian zone”, where no armed group—army, guerrilla, or paramilitaries—could enter, the farmers were able to defy the groups that had forced them off their land. Civipaz’s example paved the way for hundreds of families to return to their villages, among them the founders of Acari.

The conditions that they faced back home were not encouraging. Many families found that in their absence the paramilitaries had sacked or burnt down their homes, and stolen their cattle. Although the Ariari paramilitaries went through a severely flawed demobilization process shortly after the creation of Civipaz, the farmers feared that the state would reactivate paramilitary structures when it needed them— which is exactly what has happened across Colombia since the demobilization (3). Mario*, a peasant leader from the village of La Cima, explains that “we risked our lives when we came back to our farms. We came back because of the situation we faced in the city: unemployment, hunger and poverty.” According to Acari president Pedro, “the state hasn’t created the conditions for us to be here.”

As the farmers had expected, paramilitaries began to reorganize in some parts of the Alto Ariari after their return (4). For the most part, though, the Colombian army took up the task of pressuring the farmers to leave their land. The Colombian Army’s 21 Vargas Battalion threatened the returned farmers, raided their houses, and accused them of supporting the guerrillas. In one case, a group of soldiers told the farmer Aladino Álvarez Calvo that “Now things have changed. We know exactly who didn’t leave the region in the last displacement… A lot of people are going to die here.” (5)

In spite of this continuing repression, most of the villages in the Alto Ariari managed to reorganize their village Community Action Committees when they returned to their homes, laying the groundwork for the future creation of Acari. The democratically run Community Action Committees provide farmers with a space to organize for their rights in the Alto Ariari, as well as in other regions where International Peace Observatory accompanies. Community Action Committee leaders throughout Colombia have been frequently targeted by military and paramilitary attacks. (6)

Alba Nelly Murillo was the 34 year old president of the Community Action Committee in La Esmeralda, one of many villages that suffered from army intimidations. As president of the Community Action Committee, Alba Nelly took a leading role in denouncing human rights abuses during community events, including in front of a high profile humanitarian mission, accompanied by International Peace Observatory in 2008. Her participation in such events did not go unnoticed by the army. Also in 2008, Colombian Army Major Baquero showed up in La Esmeralda asking for Alba Nelly, saying that he wanted to talk to her because she had denounced the army (7). Another time, villagers in La Esmeralda were enjoying a sports festival when a group of soldiers pulled up in a car, filmed the participants, and drove off, without any explanation. (8)

On February15th, 2009, Alba Nelly visited her brother in the village of Miravalles, before setting out on foot to visit another nearby village. Residents saw her leave Miravalles, and she was never seen again. Just after leaving town, Alba Nelly would have passed by a military encampment. Farmers living further along the road she would have taken never saw her go by. The following day, when her neighbors went out to look for her, the army encampment was gone, and the soldiers were nowhere to be found. (9)

Alba Nelly is assumed to be dead, although her body has not been found. When Juan*, a family member, was asked who was behind her forced disappearance, he didn’t hesitate. “The army.” He also had no doubts about why. “This war isn’t against the guerrilla groups, it’s against us. The paramilitary state claims that we support the guerrillas because we’re communists, because we’re unionists, because we’re members of leftist organizations. The government wants to get us off of … our land.” Juan argues that the abuses in the Alto Ariari aren’t committed “by any illegal armed group. It’s the military itself that is doing this, the 21 Vargas Battalion and the FUDRA [army unit].”

Threats and killings of leaders like Alba Nelly have failed to intimidate farmers into abandoning their Community Action Committees. Only a few months after Alba Nelly’s disappearance, Acari “was formed by Community Action Committees, to be managed autonomously by the Committees,” explains Rubi Castaño, a community leader from the Alto Ariari.

With Acari, the communities of the region are beginning to organize, not just against state violence, but to respond to the Colombian government’s long-time neglect of the region. “In this region, anything that we plant will grow. But there’s no roads to take what we produce (to be sold), says Mario. Pedro agrees. “The state isn’t giving us any support now. It’s just giving credit to large farmers.” Acari, he explains, plans for “the Community Action Committees to develop our own projects for food sovereignty and to demand land reform.”

In practice, more food sovereignty will mean shifting away from the cattle-based economy that has emerged in recent years, in which the farmers raise cattle “on contract” for rich ranchers. Instead, the farmers will try to grow more of the crops that they eat, like corn, yucca, rice, and plantain. “We need to be storing corn [in our villages], like before, because we don’t know what will happen in the future,” argues Rubi Castaño. Acari will also promote projects like community-based drinking water systems, to meet the farmers’ Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights where the state has failed to.

There are powerful economic actors, from multinational oil companies to large-scale cattle ranchers to agro-business, who are eager to get their hands on the natural wealth of the Alto Ariari (10). With so much money at stake, peasant leaders expect that the state will keep doing whatever it can to clear out small farmers from the region. Acari is organizing to resist these future efforts to force them off their land. The next time, says Pedro, “we’ll either all leave together or all stay together.”

*Some names have been changed for security.

(1)El Alto Ariari, otro laboratorio paramilitar. Hernando López. September 2004. http://colombia.indymedia.org/news/2004/09/17161.php
(2) DeVer 103. Comisión Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz. October 13, 2004. http://justiciaypazcolombia.com/LA-COMUNIDAD-CIVIL-DE-VIDA-Y-PAZ (3) http://www.colectivodeabogados.org/SE-INCREMENTAN-AMENAZAS-QUE (4) http://colombia.indymedia.org/news/2008/05/87495.php (5) http://colombia.indymedia.org/news/2009/05/101719.php (6) http://www.prensarural.org/spip/spip.php?article2235. http://www.prensarural.org/spip/spip.php?article2374 http://www.prensarural.org/spip/spip.php?article2221. (7) http://colombia.indymedia.org/news/2008/05/87495.php (8) http://colombia.indymedia.org/news/2009/05/101719.php (9) http://colombia.indymedia.org/news/2009/02/98874.php
(10) http://justiciaypazcolombia.com/LA-COMUNIDAD-CIVIL-DE-VIDA-Y-PAZ

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