Santos - Not President of the Peasants
News from Colombia |
on: Tuesday, 21 February 2012
Displaced Shanty Town
The Colombian government has called its efforts to return lands to victims ‘revolutionary’, but the figures show that the government has been engaged in an immense PR exercise glossing over the shortcomings of the Land and Victims’ Law, claims opposition Congressman Jorge Robledo.
So far in 2010 and 2011 the government claims it has handed out 800,000 hectares of land, however, critics have pointed out that only 18,119 hectares (2.2% of the total) of this has been given to victims. Colombia has 6 other pieces of legislation that codify the handing of state lands to peasants and communities, and the government has been using the land allocations from these to beef up its figures. Even in comparison to past governments, the Santos administration is lagging in its land distribution efforts. Since 1990 governments have handed out an annual average of 967,844 hectares of land, putting Santos’ 800,000 in 2 years in the shade.
The Santos government has only returned 2,100 lots of land so far, and envisages handing over another 8,400 lots by the end of 2013. The government had initially promised to hand back 160,345 lots by 2014, and opponents are pointing out that the difference is such that it brings into question the government’s willingness to turn words into action. The shortcomings of the process of handing land out to the victims is also matched by government changes to the Victims law.
For example, the Land and Victims’ Law initially placed the burden of proof on the existing landholder, acknowledging the fact that victims would lack the resources necessary to build their own legal cases. However, Decree 4829 of 2011 has in effect reversed this, placing the burden of proof on the victims, with the Minister of Agriculture stating that the state has an obligation to help the victims build their cases, which is not the same. Furthermore, it assumes the state has the bureaucratic capacity and will to do so. The Minister has also stated that the right to return to lands cannot be confused with the right to restitution. Thus peasants whose stolen lands are deemed to be in productive use, will not have the lands returned to them, but will instead receive some form of rent. Critics denounce that these victims will end up as landless labourers, and legalises their displacement.
Santos’ government has also modified previously existing laws that governed land. For example law 160 which formerly determined that unused state land could not be given to big business or to large landowners contained a land measure known as the Agricultural Family Unit (UAF). This UAF was calculated as an amount of land big enough to allow a peasant family to live and build up savings. The UAF was used as the measure by which unused state lands could be distributed. Santos’ national development plan modifies this law, allowing state lands larger than the UAF to be given to large landowners and agri-business. The aim of this modification is to create huge landholdings, deemed by the government to be more efficient. It will not help resolve land existing land hunger among Colombia’s peasant farmers.
On top of this, the government has signed a free trade agreement with the US, which Congressman Jorge Enrique Robledo states will destroy significant agricultural sectors such as wheat, cotton, corn and will seriously damage others like rice, beans, milk and beef. Once these markets are gone, Congressman Robledo thinks that the peasants will be forced to sell their lands, and migrate to cities. This will further land concentration in the hands of the rich, and will swell the ranks of the destitute that ring the major Colombian cities. Those that remain in rural areas will be converted into rural wage labourers.
Recent reports by the Arco Iris Corporation, a conflict monitoring NGO, suggest that a new ‘anti land restitution army’ is being created in the northern region of Cesar. The reports allege that during meetings in December and January local landowners, ranch-owners and politicians agreed to set up a paramilitary army to protect them from FARC extortion. Many of its members have been recruited from former members of the notorious AUC paramilitary army. The new force is apparently due to begin operations in March, but not against the guerrillas, rather its main aim is to prevent the restitution of lands to victims. According to Ariel Avila, the investigator, the army is being set up “not by drug traffickers, they are the local elite.” The Corporation has called on the government to fully investigate the case.
