Immersed in a bizarre scandal involving the nanny of his two top advisers, and with a strong parliamentary opposition bent on blocking his reform agenda, the political situation has become extremely difficult for Colombian President Gustavo Petro.
But in the municipality of Los Palmitos, in the warm Caribbean state of Sucre, praise for Petro is almost unconditional. “He is the only president who has looked at the field; It has been a blessing from God, a hope for us because we had practically lost it,” explains Cristina Martínez, a peasant, still a young mother of two in her thirties, who participates in the new government food production program known as Campo Digno. She is sitting in a meadow surrounded by empty chicken coops with other representatives of the 240 families who meet every Saturday in Los Palmitos to coordinate the plan to grow cassava, corn and onion on 500 hectares of rented land on the outskirts of town. The first sowing is expected for next July 20
If Martínez’s comment seems melodramatic and the praise for the president excessive, consider the not-too-distant story of Los Palmitos, in the Montes de María region of northern Colombia’s so-called fertile plain. Here the big landowners, mainly cattle ranchers, financed a paramilitary war of terror that was waged for more than two decades against the peasant occupations and the guerrillas.
“We lived on a rented plot on a sidewalk in the Montes de María near here; from there we were displaced in 2006 by a group of armed men,” explains Cristina. “A group – the guerrilla – came to us during the day and the paramilitaries at night. The guerrillas were not as fearsome as the paramilitaries”.
Another farmer, who is holding a machete during the meeting, tells of his own experience. “We had a plot of land here, very close to the town, and one day in 1988 the guerrillas arrived and they gave us 72 hours to leave; some went that way, others went there. Later, in 1999, the paramilitaries murdered several of my relatives. They killed my 13-year-old nephew.”
Two days after La Vanguardia’s visit to Los Palmitos, another testimony –this one broadcast throughout the country– corroborated that of the peasants regarding the terror that reigned in Montes de María.
The repentant paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso, currently imprisoned in a Georgia prison, in the United States, for drug trafficking crimes, explained before the Historical Memory Commission how paramilitary groups under his command and with the active collaboration of the Colombian army perpetrated thousands of murders of peasants, students and leaders of social movements. “They cut off heads and dismembered them,” explained Mancuso, whose base of operations was the department of Córdoba, adjacent to Sucre. The corpses “were buried in common graves” and, in some cases, “they were incinerated in brick ovens.”
The report Un poco de verdad para poder respirar, from the Truth Commission, provides more horrifying testimonies about the massacres in Montes de María, with the beheading of dozens of peasants followed by “endless Vallenato partying played with accordion” in nearby towns such as El Salty and Sheep.
Montes de María became ground zero for the massacres, precisely because its lands were so fertile. “It is one of the richest lands that Colombia has,” explains a farmer in the report. “So what did they want? Kill the farmer, remove him, plant a monoculture”. The palm was a very profitable crop for its oil.
The guerrillas, for their part, planted coca, necessary to finance the armed struggle. “The area was a drug trafficking corridor and the paramilitaries entered to clean up and from there there was much more violence,” says César Aponte, one of the directors of Camp Digno.
In many cases, the remains did not even pave the way for monocultures. Many large landowners “do nothing with the land; They have thousands of hectares with four cows, they do not put them to produce and next to them they have families dying of hunger; it is a delay that is inherited from Spanish feudalism,” said Xavier Vendrell, the former Catalan legislator and businessman now settled in Colombia who designed the Campo Digno project. “So people are already saying let them use the land productively with technical support, training, as well as internet connectivity to facilitate marketing; and that is what we want with Campo Digno”.
With an estimated 80% in the hands of 1% of the population, Colombia is one of the most unequal countries in land distribution in the world. It is the historical root of violence. Already in the 1960s and 1970s, the National Association of Peasant Users (ANJUC), whose motto was Land for those who work it, “was singled out even before the guerrilla incursions; they intimidated and selectively murdered leaders of the peasant movement and promoted expulsions”, the Commission report explains. “I have reviewed human rights files from the 1970s and 1980s and it is not true that the guerrillas had hit the region; that was an excuse,” says Julio Montoya, a historian from Medellín.
After the peace agreement signed in Havana in 2015 between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC guerrillas, the displaced have the right to reclaim the lands they lost under the threat of violence. But “it can take between five and 10 years to recover their land, in addition to the cost of trying to prove to the government that it is theirs,” says Aponte.
In addition to this return of land, Gustavo Petro intends to implement an agrarian reform in which he would buy three million hectares of land to distribute among landless peasants, and would take possession of another seven million for small farmers who do not have title to their land.
Campo Digno will be the spearhead of the plan to increase food production through small and medium-scale agriculture. It is also part of the illicit crop substitution plan, which is the Government’s key element against drug trafficking. With financing from the public agricultural bank, each peasant family receives an annual loan of 21 million pesos (5,000 euros) to start the project, in which they have a share as a partner, as well as companies that buy the products, and investment funds. interested in participating. They would also receive the minimum wage.
“In the past it was very difficult to get bank loans; Now, by joining this project we are getting loans at low interest rates”, says Fredis Mercados Franco, 55, another farmer who participates.
“It is not a typical cooperative, but rather each family will be a business partner and thus we will avoid the problem of the resale of land that occurred in the past with the agrarian reforms,” says Álvaro García, one of the organizers of the project in Los Palmitos.
On a national scale, it is intended to launch 70 projects with seven transformation plants in different regions of the country. The goal is to be producing in 2030 more than 60 million tons of food on ten million hectares of land.
The program is considered a key element of the implementation of the peace process, which Petro already qualifies as the total peace plan.
“Total peace is achieved by empowering peasants with their lands, with their productive projects, and helping them to become entrepreneurs so that they can sustain the food sovereignty of the peoples,” says Hugo Sánchez, the spokesman for the peasants, whose brother is kidnapped in these moments… This is essential in part to achieve total peace, he adds, “because precisely the armed actors are dedicated to earning easy money by murdering other people because they have no other source of income to survive.”
Hence the importance of agrarian reform and programs such as Campo Digno. Because although peace is breathed in Montes de María, armed men can return. “Some violent people are still in formed groups,” says Cristina Martínez. We are afraid but we are in the fight”.
