The deadly fight for land in Colombia
Armed ConflictVictims, who are reclaiming their land, are being assassinated, tortured, and threatened. Redress is failing and a bloody reversal of land distribution is occurring.
March 17, 2009
With pistol in hand, for almost two decades paramilitaries expelled rural people from their farms, usurped lots and pressured so that they would sell their land at low prices. It all seemed legal. Through violence they wanted to impose a reverse land distribution scheme to launder the assets of the territory, to politically control regions and to substitute the local land-owning elites. They still fight to the death in order to achieve it, and if something is not urgently done, they will prevail.
Over 5.5 million hectares were abandoned, taken over or transferred through spurious business deals, from which 385,000 families were expelled who are today trying to recover what they had lost. But instead of land, many of them have found death. Ten assassinations, 563 threats, rapes of women and children, beatings and flyers from the paramilitary Águilas Negras group in which they announce new massacres, offices of victims organizations that have been burned and looted. The harassment continues.
Just in Urabá four leaders who sought to recover their assets, stolen by paramilitary commanders but in fact are being held by frontmen, have died. In Córdoba many have given up reclaiming their property where today there are illegal crops. In Valle drug traffickers are killing peasants who received seized farms from the government.
How did it all happen?
Five types of plundering used by drug traffickers, paramilitaries and landowners who take advantage of forced displacement have been identified.
The most serious cases are those in which, with a pistol at the head, people had to sell at low prices. This is what happened in areas such as Urabá and in the areas where “Jorge 40” had his empire. Vicente Castaño, Raúl Hasbún and other paramilitary heads in the area used an ample network of frontmen to force the transfer of lands. There victims are reclaiming the return of 30,000 hectares.
Another form of stealing is that people, who although they have deeds for their land, they cannot return to it because it is occupied by armed groups, by frontmen or by squatters. It is the typical case that Salvatore Mancuso used in Córdoba. An example of it is what happened in Costa de Oro, where a farm of 885 hectares was awarded by the government to 59 small land owners in the early 1990s. They could never make use of the land because Fidel Castaño had installed himself there with his men, who let some of them stay as peons or tenants.
Later, Carlos Castaño “sold” the farm to Mancuso, who sent the message to the peasants who held deeds that either they
“sell to me or I will buy it from your widow,” which was his battle cry. Some sold. But those who refused to do so were not able to return.
More:
http://www.semana.com/noticias-print-edition/the-deadly-fight-for-land-in-colombia/121871.aspx