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Student Publications
Roberto Mignone
Title: The Colombian Conflict in Historical
Perspective: The evolution of the Land Issue
Area: Latin American History
Country: Colombia
Program:
Available for Download:
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Introduction
The conflict in Colombia has been
ravaging the country for the last
four decades
but its roots are traceable for a
much longer period.
According to various analysts, the
key issue at the core of the
conflict originally
was, and for many still is, the
extremely unfair distribution of
land.
This paper will analyze how land
distribution has been a very
conflictive issue
within the Colombian society since
the beginning of the colonial era.
It will focus on the
evolution of the problem and how it
remained unsolved and even worsened
in spite of
several attempts of land reform. The
main events characterizing the
development of the
land issue in Colombia contain
certain patterns, discussed in this
paper, which to a large
extent are still valid today.
The relationship between land
distribution and the origin of the
current conflict is
still a controversial issue for some
analysts.
Most of these analysts identify a
clear relationship between land
distribution and
conflict: �The basic antagonism
between peasants and landlords has
nowhere been re-
solved�many contemporary conflicts
represent at once a continuation and
a transformation
of earlier struggles �.
This is � � a crisis whose
underlying causes, specifically the
long standing quest
for land reform by campesinos� �.
Others do not consider the current
conflict as being directly related
to the historical
inequality in the distribution of
land : �� Nor can the uneven
distribution of wealth
and income, so typical of Latin
America, be cited as the primary
cause of the recent violence
� but rather the impact of drug
trafficking and the traditional
fragmentation of
power� �
The current situation of land
distribution will also be focused on
as it can be considered
the result of the historical process
analyzed more in details.
The role of the illegal armed actors
and more recently of the drug lords,
will be
analyzed in order to demonstrate how
the spiral of violence has become a
cycle in which
poor peasants not only fail to
improve their precarious situation,
but in fact end up losing
everything they owned, in particular
the small plots of land, by being
forced into displacement.
Description
Various economic and social
indicators in Colombia express the
serious inequality
of distribution of wealth and other
resources: 1 % of the population
controls 45 % of
the wealth. The top 10 % of the
families owns 56 % of the country
resources. In rural areas
86 % of the population is poor and
rural poverty is actually increasing
in the last
years.
Nevertheless the most impressive
indicators of this inequality relate
directly to the
distribution of land : 3 % of
landowners own more than 70 % of the
arable land; 30 percent
of property owners control about 95
% of the best land. In 1996, 0.13 %
of the landowners
owned 39.23 % of the land, through
estates larger than 1.000 hectares.
As a result of this concentration,
75 % of potential crop land is
currently underutilized
as the land is used mainly for
pasture.
This situation has its roots in the
history of the settlement of the
country from colonial
times : before the arrival of the
Spanish Conquistadors all the
indigenous groups in
the territory which is now Colombia
had a collective ownership of the
land, which was
owned by the community.
In the colonial period ( 1492 � 1810
), when Colombia was known as Nueva
Grenada,
the main use of the land was not for
agriculture but for extracting
minerals and
other resources to ship to
motherland Spain. Indigenous people
and later African slaves
were forced to work in the mines.
Land however was also regarded as a
symbol of political power: one of
the elements
which shaped the distribution of
land in Colombia was the assignation
by the King
of Spain of immense extensions of
land, tens of thousands of hectares
each, to the Conquistadors.
These concessions were made through
a mechanism referred to as � regla
de
morada y labor �, as in theory the
owner was supposed to �live ( morada
) and work ( labor
) � there. In reality it was again
African and indigenous slaves who
were working the
vast extensions of the best land
available.
As of the sixteenth century,
marginalized groups such as escaped
Afro-Colombian
slaves, mulatos, mestizos and other
poor farmers without land began the
migration towards
remote areas where land was
available. In these regions the
State was absent and
basic infrastructure unheard of.
This settlement process often
occurred at the expense of
the local indigenous groups. Fern�n
Gonzalez, a researcher of Colombian
political history,
defines the process as �an escape
route from the tensions created by
highly concentrated
rural land ownership �.
Interestingly even today in the most
remote regions of Colombia one can
find the
descendants of the same actors,
indigenous people, Afro-Colombians,
and poor subsistence
farmers, with similar dynamics
(absence of the State and of most
infrastructure and
widespread violence). Where the best
land and infrastructure is
available, often it is the
traditional elite families who own
today even larger concentrations of
land ( along with
the more recent ownership by drug
lords ).
In the following historical phase,
the struggle for independence from
Spain
( obtained in 1810 ) contributed to
the increasing in the unequal
distribution of
land, as vast extensions of public
land were assigned by the new
government to militaries
who had fought the independence war.
In certain cases, the land was
formally property of the State (
bald�o ) but had in
fact already been colonized by poor
peasants who had no formal legal
title for it. The
Liberal Party member Alejandro Lopez
I.C. described this situation as �la
lucha entre el
hacha y el papel sellado � ( the
struggle between the hoax and the
stamped legal papers ).
Several attempts at redressing the
inbalance in ownership of land
through land
distribution were made throughout
the nineteenth century. These
attempts were never
successful and often even worsened
the situation.
For instance in the period from 1851
to 1881, 1.301.122 hectares of State
land
( bald�os ) were adjudicated to
companies, private landowners and
farmers. However,
only 6.066 hectares ( or 0.46 % )
were assigned to small farmers who
would cultivate
it directly.
Another important process relating
to land in Colombia in this period
was the so-
called �colonization �: in 1850,
approximately 75 % of the land was
still public land and
open to large migrations and
settlement by peasants in frontier
lowlands. They created
small family farms but normally
failed to obtain any legal title.
When, at a later stage,
investors acquired the title from
the state, the settlers were turned
into tenants.
At the beginning of the twentieth
century, the high concentration of
land and the
conditions of extreme poverty of
most peasants led to the creation of
organized movements
of protest : the first agrarian
trade union was founded in Colombia
in 1913 in Colos�,
Bolivar department, by a school
teacher.
Then in the 1920s more political
movements were created or
consolidated to give
voice to the landless peasants who
called for land redistribution. Some
of these movements
were socialist �currents� which
later turned in the Communist Party
of Colombia.
Others were sectors of the Liberal
Party, like the one led by Jorge
Eliecer Gait�n.
Violent confrontations between these
movements and the state forces took
place
in many regions, particularly in
Magdalena, Cundinamarca, Tolima and
around the Atlantic
Coast.
During the period 1930 to 1946
Liberal Party-run administrations
made various
attempts at land reform .
For instance in 1936 during the
government of Alfonso L�pez Pumarejo,
legislation
on the land reform was approved (
Ley 200 de 1936 ). The objective of
this legislation
was to regularize land titles and to
implement the principle that those
who really
work the land should be the
legitimate owners. Squatters and
tenants could apply for free
grants of land they were living and
working on, if the landlords could
not prove legal
ownership.
The landowners, backed by the
Conservative Party, reacted by
forcing the expulsion
of many peasants from the land that
they owned. Landless peasants, again
as a cycle,
were forced towards the colonization
of unclaimed frontier in remote
regions.
These attempts of social, economic
and political modernizing reforms by
the Liberal
Party and the absolute and fierce
opposition by the Conservative Party
created a climate
of extreme polarization which
exploded in widespread political
violence.
In the late 1940s, Liberal leader
Jorge Eli�cer Gait�n, who had
emerged from the
Liberal and communist led agrarian
reform movements, was a popular
presidential candidate.
On April 9, 1948 he was
assassinated. His murder provoked a
popular uprising and
explosions of violence throughout
the country
( in the capital, the city looting
which took place is remembered as
the Bogotazo:
much of the city was destroyed and
2.000 people were killed ).
This event is regarded by many
analysts as an important turning
point in Colombian
history: the Conservative Party
started a wave of terror to repress
the popular insurgence,
as well as took the occasion to
legitimize the systematic repression
against various
kind of social movements.
The next decade is known as �La
Violencia �( the Violence ) and
claimed the life
of between 200.000 to 300.000
Colombians. Rural violence spread in
the country, especially
in rural departments as around
20.000 combatants were fighting in
the name of the
Liberals and the Conservatives.
Clashes also occurred between
Liberal and Communist
guerrillas and the violence
strengthened the traditional parties
�as the collective identities
derived from membership were all
that gave violence a meaning �.
Fernan Gonzalez describes
the phenomenon as �atomization of
campesinos �.
Meanwhile in 1953 General Gustavo
Rojas Pinilla took power and this
was the
only period of military rule in
Colombia in the twentieth century.
In order to end the conflict and the
dictatorship, Conservatives and
Liberals in
1958 concluded a pact known as the
�National Front�: for the next
sixteen years they divided
the positions of state power between
them. This became a shared monopoly
of
power which prevented the political
expression of other parties,
increased corruption and
impeded the adequate addressing of
unresolved key issues, such as the
structure of land
ownership and its distribution.
In the meantime, towards the end of
the period of �la Violencia �, many
Liberal
and Communist peasants had survived
the military offensives undertaking
long marches
and then establishing themselves in
remote new lands, particularly in
Meta and Caqueta�
departments. There they declared
�Independent Republics �, but new
military attacks
forced the peasants deeper into the
jungles.
These armed peasants movements
dispersed to various regions of the
country establishing
several fronts of confrontation with
the state army. In particular the
�Independent
Republics � of Marulanda and of
Arenas were attacked in 1964 with
16.000 soldiers
by land and by air. Some 43
guerrillas, including Marulanda, who
is to this day the leader
of FARC ( known as Tirofijo,
Sureshot ), fled to the mountains of
Cauca department.
On 20 July 1964, the various fronts
issued a joint agrarian reform
program. In
1966, they officially became the
FARC, Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarias de Colombia
(Colombia�s Revolutionary Armed
Forces).
Other guerrillas groups, such the
ELN ( Ejercito de Liberaci�n
Nacional , National
Liberation Army ), of Cuban
inspiration, and the EPL ( Ejercito
Popular de Liberaci�n
Popular, Popular Liberation Army ),
of Maoist tendencies also emerged in
the
mid sixties.
These groups are still active today
and are among the main actors of the
four decade
- long civil conflict in Colombia.
The other main actor of the current
conflict emerged as a reaction to
the advances
of the FARC: the paramilitary
groups, also known as Self Defence
Groups ( AUC, Autodefensas
Unidas de Colombia ) since the early
nineties are the fastest growing
illegal
armed actor in Colombia. Among the
main promoters and financiers of
these groups are
rich landowners that feel threatened
by FARC.
General Analysis and Discussion
The situation described above
through the main events
characterizing the evolution
of the land issue in Colombia
contains certain patterns which to a
large extent are
still valid today, after more than
five hundred years.
Certain groups of people have been
marginalized since the dawn of the
colonial
times: for instance indigenous
peoples whose land, owned
collectively, was confiscated
first by authorities of Nueva
Grenada, the colony, then by the
government arising out of
independence. Their land was
assigned by these authorities to
rich landowners in certain
regions.
In other more remote areas, the
colonization process above described
as an indirect
effect ( �escape route for poor
farmers� ) of the vast concentration
of the best land in
the hands of few elite families,
also victimized the indigenous
peoples who originally
lived on those �colonized � land.
Similarly the black slaves and their
descendents, when escaping from the
plantations
in coffee growing regions, hid and
then settled in indigenous areas,
such as Choc�
department, which today has a
predominance of Afro-colombians.
These traditional inequalities and
conflicts were aggravated, as
described above,
during the period known as �La
Violencia �. Some analysts have
interpreted these events
as violence deliberately intended by
large landowners to force peasants
to abandon their
lands thereby creating a cheap land
market.
Others regard the phenomenon as an
effort by the political and social
elite to reinforce
the control over the campesinos in
order to eliminate land reform
movements.
One of the masterpieces of Colombian
literature, �Siervo sin Tierra � (
Siervo
without land ), composed by Eduardo
Caballero Calder�n, describes the
odyssey of a
family of poor peasants in the
Boyac� department during this
period. The deep aspiration
of this family for a piece of land;
the polarization between the two
parties, Conservatives
and Liberals at the local level; and
the disorientation of Siervo the
peasant, dragged into
the spiral of violence with the hope
( then completely frustrated, as he
ends up loosing the
little he owned ) of finally
obtaining a small plot of land on
his own, are the main themes
of this powerful book, which is
still studied in Colombian schools.
The origins of the two main parties
which have dominated the political
landscape
in Colombia for many decades, show
that the Liberal Party started as a
heterogeneous
coalition of golgotas ( merchants
supporting free trade ), draconianos
( artisans and
manufacturers supporting
protectionism ) and smaller
landowners.
The Conservative Party on the other
hand expressed the interests of
large landowners
and of the Catholic clergy ( the
Church has traditionally been a very
large landowner
itself in most of Latin America).
Interestingly, peasants
traditionally tended to support the
party for which their
landowners ( patr�ns ) sympathized,
rather than the one which may have
expressed more
closely their interests. The above
mentioned book, �Siervo sin Tierra
�, describes impressively
this phenomenon, which helps to
explain the intensity of rural
political conflict.
Following the pattern mentioned
above, the same marginalized groups
today remain
vulnerable, are manipulated by
different actors or are caught in
rural conflicts. Most
of their plight appears to be still
related to the issue of land.
For instance indigenous peoples, in
spite of the legal protection given
by the Colombian
Constitution of 1991 and by
international human rights
instruments, remain a
proportionally high number among the
groups most affected by forced
displacement. So
today, their land is still
threatened as some analysts estimate
that nearly 80 % of the mineral
and energy resources of the country
are located in the 27 % of the
territory which is
collectively and inalienably owned
by indigenous communities.
Similar considerations are valid
also for Afro-Colombians and other
poor farmers,
who to this day live in remote
regions where the state is absent,
where infrastructure is
lacking or is inadequate, and where
they have no access to the markets
for outputs and no
access to credit .
In these regions the illegal actors
of the armed conflict have de facto
control of
the territory. Peasants are often
displaced by the violence of these
actors, who often are (
in particular the paramilitaries )
interested in their lands.
The origins of these illegal actors
involved in the current internal
conflict appear
to be rooted directly in ( FARC ),
or are indirectly ( AUC ) related
to, the unresolved issue
of land distribution.
While some analysts regard the
origins of ELN and EPL in movements
led by urban
intellectuals, in contrast the
peasants� roots of FARC are
generally acknowledged.
Alfredo Molano considers that FARC
�is deeply rooted in a legacy of
class conflict �
seeing that it would be impossible
to break through the rigid political
and agrarian structures
using legal means, the opposition
declared an armed rebellion �.
The subsequent evolution of the FARC
during these last decades, including
its
more recent links with narco-traffic
and its violent actions in disregard
of basic principles
of International Humanitarian Law,
have led many analysts, both
Colombians and foreigners,
to question FARC�s current real
objectives, priorities and
strategies.
AUC, like their mortal enemy FARC,
have also shown a total disregard
for International
Humanitarian Law and are considered
the main actor provoking internal
forced
displacement, which in fact results
in an even higher concentration of
land ( defined by
some as �contrareforma agraria�,
agrarian counter-reform ). They also
have clear links
with narco-traffic.
These are legitimate questions
regarding both groups, however their
modus operandi
or current real main objectives are
not the focus of this paper.
Actualization
It may be interesting to have a
closer look at the current situation
of land distribution
in Colombia as the result of the
historical process the paper has
focused on.
The agriculture sector today is not
as important as it was in the past.
Nevertheless
it still accounts for 21 percent of
national income, 20 percent of
employment and 36 percent
of merchandise export revenues ,
especially through coffee.
The State organization currently in
charge of redistribution of land is
INCORA,
Instituto Colombiano de Reforma
Agraria ( Colombian Agrarian Reform
Institute).
INCORA was created in 1961 through
Law 135. Some regarded its creation
and
its potential role in land
redistribution as an effective
counterinsurgency tool , as it may
have contributed to defuse social
and political tensions related to
the inequality in land
ownership.
Although INCORA�s resources were
significant ( for instance 140
million USD
was the average annual budget in the
late 80s ), most was spent on
bureaucracy ( the administrative
cost of transferring land was about
50 % of the total land reform budget
in
the early 90s ) and it had very
little impact on the ground.
Nor were these resources allocated
in an equitable way to really target
rural poverty:
the World Bank reports that in 1994
the lowest quintile and the highest
quintile of
the rural population benefited to
the same extent from these programs.
In this period, an estimated 200.000
families had no farm land, while
750.000
families did not have enough land
for an adequate living.
The structure of the land ownership
remains highly concentrated and as a
result
also underutilized : low
productivity livestock production
covers 35 % of land in Colombia
( while only 13 % is considered
suitable for this use ). By
contrast, crop farming, with
higher productivity rates only takes
place in 4 % of land ( while 16 % of
Colombian land
would be suitable ).
Small land is also often of poor
quality and peasants have
difficulties getting access
to credit and as a consequence to
seeds, fertilizers and other assets
which could improve
the production. Most peasants are
caught in a poverty trap, a cycle
where the small
size of the land limits profits, but
they cannot buy more land because of
the same too limited
profits.
Other more recent phenomena have
contributed to an even higher
concentration
of land: on the one side the use of
land to launder money that was
acquired by drug lords;
on the other the massive forced
displacement of peasants due to the
conflict. Moreover
the two processes are often related.
According to some estimates, drug
lords have purchased more than a
million hectares
of the best land , but most of it is
underutilized as pasture or are not
utilized at all.
On the other hand, reports show that
70 % of the forcibly displaced
people ( more
than three millions persons in total
, over 1.000 per day in 2002 ) have
lost their land,
which is often occupied or bought
cheaply by drug traffickers or other
estate land owners.
Displacement is also significantly
more pronounced in areas where
political violence
coincides with violence associated
with land ownership.
So the conflict has its roots in the
unequal distribution of the land,
and in turn the
conflict itself, through the
displacement of peasants,
contributes to the aggravation of
such a phenomenon.
General recommendations
When analyzing the current conflict,
and when trying to prevent one of
its worse
manifestations, which is internal
displacement , it is important to
keep the historical perspective
into account.
This paper focuses on some of the
main events characterizing Colombian
history
since the colonization period and it
highlights how the issue of the land
has very often
been the main reason for tensions
and conflicts.
Even today, some illegal armed
groups, such as the guerillas, claim
to fight
mainly for a more equal distribution
of land while others, such as the
paramilitaries, do in
turn mainly protect the interest of
landowners.
The conflicts at the local level
which produce displacement may not
always be directly
related to strategic military
reasons, but more often to an
economic interest in
evicting by force peasants from the
land.
Understanding these dynamics can
help predict the strategic moves of
the illegal
armed actors and therefore design a
more effective prevention and
protection strategy.
The main recommendation of this
paper is that all the actors
involved in Colombia
in preventing or mitigating the
impact of the armed conflict ( be
them state actors or
non governmental organizations ;
national or international ), must be
constantly aware of
the root causes of the conflict and
of how these can influence its
current dynamics and
prospects for solutions.
Conclusion
The Colombian conflict has deep and
complex roots which are mainly
related to
the land issue. Since the time when
the system of collective property of
land by indigenous
peoples was destroyed by the
colonization process, the phenomenon
of concentration
of land in the hands of a limited
number of elite families has only
increased.
Most attempts to address the issue,
either by the authorities through
limited land
reforms, or by peasants movements
through political and social
pressure, have generally
backlashed through the reaction of
landowners which often generated in
turn an even
stronger concentration of land.
In the current context, the
situation of land concentration has
been further complicated
and worsened by the role played by
drug lords, who purchase vast
extension of
land, in many cases land which had
to be abandoned by peasants forcibly
displaced
through the violence of the illegal
armed groups involved in the
conflict.
The spiral of violence has become a
cycle in which poor peasants not
only do not
improve their precarious situation,
but in fact end up losing everything
they owned, in
particular the small plots of land,
by being forced into displacement.
The odyssey of the poor farmer
Siervo, described in the masterpiece
of Colombian
literature �Siervo sin Tierra � , is
still reproduced daily in today�s
rural Colombia�
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