Colombian Farmers Return to Their Land with International Support

A Union Student's Journey in the Humanitarian Zones of Camelias

by Drew Hendrickson, MDiv Candidate

Just after the visit from the US Embassy, Uriel, one of the leaders in Camelias, a small peace community in the Curvaradó Basin in northwestern Colombia, approached Father Alberto with a question.

“When I was in the US giving testimony, people said that they knew there was a conflict in Colombia between the guerrilla and the military, but I told them no, in Colombia, it’s the military along with the paramilitaries that are waging war against the farmers.”
Enrique Petro

In recent weeks, not only the US Embassy had visited Camelias, which is home to about 15 families, but so had the Swiss Embassy, the Inter-American Court for Human Rights, and the World Council of Churches. Given these high-level visits, Father Alberto, who has accompanied the organization of this community for several years, was ready for a question with potentially serious political consequences.

“Padre Alberto,” Uriel said, “you know this is our first New Year’s back on our own farms after 12 years of enduring hunger in displacement. You know all about the paramilitaries killing our families and forcing us out of here. So we’ve been talking in the community and some suggested, and I agree, that it would be nice if, well, if…you see, we want a pig. We want a pig and we’re hoping that you and the Justice and Peace Commission could help us out.”

A pig?

After all of these international visits, after the helicopters, the military escorts, the reporters, and the human rights activists, the serious question the community had was whether or not to get a pig for New Year’s.

Uriel went on, “We’ve collected 100,000 pesos, but a pig, not a little one, but a big fat one, costs 300,000. So we’re wondering if you or the commission could support us.”

Father Alberto had to laugh a little bit, but he agreed, and beginning at 6 a.m. on December 31st, the small peace community of Camelias started roasting the big fat pig with which they would celebrate the New Year.

I spent the last two weeks of 2008 visiting these communities and learning about how they have struggled to recover the land from which they were violently displaced in 1997. I arrived in Camelias through a contact with the Inter-Ecclesial Commission for a Justice and Peace (ICJP) Colombian organization that supports and advocates for the victims of Colombia’s ongoing civil war.

When I volunteered to accompany the peace communities during Christmas and New Year’s, ICJP found a place for me to help. International presence and observation greatly improves security for the people in communities like Camelias because any violence that takes place immediately becomes an international issue. This is one way the international community plays a significant role in even far off places like the northwest corner of Colombia.

In this corner of Colombia, 2008 was a remarkable year. Camelias, as well as several other peace communities, were steadily growing in the region, and their legal rights to the land became a national and even international issue.

Despite threats of violence and the murder of one community leader, Ualberto Hoyos, more and more formerly displaced farmers are returning to the farms they rightfully own. All of these farmers are of Afro-Colombian or indigenous descent and Colombian law recognizes their ancestral claim these lands and states that these communities are the only ones legally able to inhabit them.

“Humanitarian Zone, Camelias is Treasure, Protected by provisional measures of the Inter-American Court for Human Rights, No armed actors are permitted to enter.”

These farmers have also found improved security in the humanitarian zones which the Inter-American Court of Human Rights supports. This international support has required the Colombian government to respect these humanitarian zones and grant them special protection.

For many years, however, wealthy business people and large farm owners (locally known as empresarios) controlled the region through the extensive use of paramilitary violence. These paramilitaries claimed to protect the civil population against the threat of left-wing guerrillas, but they are responsible for the vast majority of human rights violations in the area, including dozens of massacres, public and brutal murders, and innumerable death threats and intimidations.

This strategy of violence began in 1997, officially known as Colombian military operation ‘Genesis’, but many consider paramilitary cooperation to have been crucial to the operation. Operation ‘Genesis’ was not used to eradicate guerrillas so much as it was to vacate the lands of the Curvaradó and Jiguamiandó Basins, one of the world’s most productive and fertile agricultural areas. 7,000 people were displaced during this operation.

Once the small farmers were displaced, large-scale agribusiness had free reign. The emergence of huge African Palm plantations is one example of how the newly vacated lands have been used. African Palm trees produce African Palm oil which is used in many processed foods, cosmetics and, more recently, bio-combustible fuel. Colombia has emerged as the world’s fifth-leading producer of palm oil.

These farmers, however, did not give up.

According to Law 70, passed in 1993, Afro-Colombians and indigenous communities are the true ancestral owners of the land. The law states that “the preferential right to occupy or acquire the land can only fall to other members of the [Afro] community, and, in their absence, to other members of the ethnic group, for the purpose of preserving the integrity of the lands and the cultural identity of the Black Communities.”

These collective titles were granted to the Curvaradó Basin in 2001, but for several years the land remained in the hands of wealthy business men. It was not until 2006 that Enrique Petro, despite frequent threats, was among the first farmers to return permanently to his land.

I met Enrique Petro on his farm and over sweet, black coffee, he explained how dangerous the situation was at that time.

“I was receiving threats all the time, and once they came and destroyed my house,” he said, “they stole my animals; my chickens and my cows, but also my machetes, my tools, everything I had. And they spray painted my house with skeletons. They accused me of being a guerrilla, that I was part of the FARC, but that’s not true. They wanted to kill me, but I had gone to the market in town on Friday instead of Saturday, so when they came I wasn’t here.”

I wondered how he stayed here with that kind of danger.

“I couldn’t live in displacement. I know how to farm, not live in a city. I had a job, but I couldn’t make enough to eat or to feed my family. I resolved to come back here even though they might kill me because in the city, I was starving to death.”

He went on, “But I knew I couldn’t do it alone. I needed other people if I was going to survive.”

Enrique Petro invited several families to borrow some of his land so they could live and work near him.

The Inter-Ecclesial Commission for Justice and Peace had been accompanying this movement for several years and through various forms of advocacy gained the attention of many national and international entities.

Enrique Petro said, “We returned in 2006, but this time they couldn’t get us out. We had the support of the [Inter-Ecclesial Commission for] Justice and Peace, we had international observers, we had people from the church and political leaders. With all those people, the army and the paras couldn’t get us out of here.”

2nd Year M.Div student Drew Hendrickson and Sister Cecilia of ICPJ in Camelias. As the dead palms in the background show, Camelias has been built on what was once an African Palm plantation.

So little by little, families began returning to the humanitarian zone that Enrique Petro and many other supporters made possible. And as more people came back, more zones were born.

Camelias is one of one of those new humanitarian zones. Most of this community’s families moved back in 2008. They harvested their first crops this year. They are building sturdier houses and they are replacing the African Palm agri-business with the small farms that have traditionally existed in the Curvaradó Basin.

These farmers’ resistance to violence and the peace communities they have created has garnered more and more international attention and is part of the larger problem of human rights violations in Colombia that Barack Obama mentioned in the second presidential debate.

While threats and human rights violations continue and empresarios still illegally occupy vast swathes of land, Uriel and the people of Camelias celebrated 2008 as a year of great progress. They had returned home. They were working their lands again. And they had built a community of peace.

So with so much to celebrate, one can understand the gravity with which Uriel asked Father Alberto about the pig.

This pig became a wonderful symbol of the important strides made in 2008 and the hope for a 2009 of abundance. Meat is rarely consumed in this community—it’s all rice, plantains, cassava, the occasional fish, and lentils. But on that December 31st, we enjoyed the pig all day.

As we celebrated the New Year in a small, open air hut lit by one naked bulb that was powered by a borrowed generator (Camelias has no electricity), people danced and drank aguardiente and rum. And at midnight, as the music continued to play and the single bulb continued to shine, we ate the best cuts of pork that giant pig had to offer, believing that the hardest times had past and a future of peace, justice, and abundant life was waiting in 2009.

Learn more through the following news sources:

ColomPBIa Peace Brigades Internation magazine, September 2008

"Afro-Colombians fight biodiesel producers" BBC News, December 21, 2008

"Humanitarian zones resist violence in Colombia" World Council of Churches, December 22, 2008

For more information, contact Drew Hendrickson at dh2368@columbia.edu