I HAVE EDITED PARTS OF THIS ARTICLE
BECAUSE THE LANGUAGE DID NOT CONTRIBUTE TO THE RESPECT REQUIRED AT THIS TIME DURING
THE PEACE TALKS IN HAVANA, or the information has not been updated – nchamah miller
The hard bargaining
starts
Nov 24th 2012 | BOGOTA THE ECONOMIST
Turning guns into machetes
WHEN the
guerrillas of the FARC began their insurgency against the Colombian state in
the mid-1960s, one of their banners was a radical agrarian reform to seize
large landholdings and redistribute land to those who worked it. Arising as
they did shortly after Fidel Castro’s communist revolution in Cuba, the
government felt compelled to respond to the guerrillas with military force
rather than reform. The war has ground on ever since.
[…] Land
and rural development is the first item on the agenda of the peace talks
between the FARC and the government of President Juan Manuel Santos which began
properly in Havana on November 19th. Resolving the land issue is a necessary
condition for ending the conflict but it also true that land disputes can be
settled only if violence ends.
In this section
Land
distribution in Colombia is among the most unequal in the world, with 52% of
farms in the hands of just 1.15% of landowners, according to a study by the
United Nations Development Programme. The agriculture ministry says that only
22% of potential arable land in a vast country is cultivated. Around 6.5m
hectares (16m acres) of land, including some of the most fertile, was stolen,
abandoned or forcibly changed hands in other ways between 1985 and 2008 as a
result of the conflict. That reversed the meagre gains of timid land-reform
efforts in the past. Landowners have filed complaints accusing the FARC itself
of seizing 807,000 hectares, either by forcing them to sell or driving them off
with death threats.
The
government is trying to return much of their land to those who fled, even if
they never held formal title to it, under an ambitious land-restitution scheme
that has received more than 26,600 claims, totalling just under 2m hectares, in
a little over a year. The government has also drafted a new law on agriculture,
which it has not yet sent to Congress partly because it wants to consult
indigenous and black communities, but also so that it can incorporate any
agreements that may be reached in the talks with the FARC.
The two
sides agree on some things, such as improving market access for smallholders,
better technical assistance, and keeping subsidies. But the government bill
also emphasises export agribusiness, with incentives for biofuels, and says
that redistribution to peasant farmers will involve only fallow land. The FARC […[position
of expropriation of large landholdings, while stressing “food security”
(supplying the local market) rather than exports. It also wants land held by
foreigners to be confiscated.
On this
point they have some unexpected allies. Other bills in Congress, from
legislators across the political spectrum, call for curbs on foreign investment
in land. The government rejects this as the product of “unfortunate xenophobia”
as Juan Camilo Restrepo, the agriculture minister, put it. He says the
government will introduce a measure to regulate, but not restrict, foreign
investment in farmland.
The
Colombian Agriculture Society (SAC), which represents agribusiness, calculates
that up to $6 billion in foreign investment is on hold because of the bills,
and also because of a recent ruling by the constitutional court that restricts
the purchase of land from peasants who received it under the land reform.
Neither
peasant farmers nor agribusiness are directly represented at the Havana talks.
An umbrella group of peasant-farmer associations has drafted its own proposals
for rural development. Its leader, Julio Armando Fuentes, says the peace talks
should consider this. The SAC is also drafting proposals to take to the
negotiators.
But that
may be to misunderstand what the peace talks could and should do. What is
required is a broad agreement on the balance between rural development and land
redistribution, with the details to be implemented through the normal
democratic process.
As the
talks in Havana began, the FARC’s chief negotiator, Iván Márquez, announced a
unilateral ceasefire, ordering all guerrilla units to refrain from attacks and
acts of sabotage for two months. He said it was a “show of goodwill”. But it
looked more like a public-relations exercise, and is not necessarily a good
omen for the talks. The FARC has used past ceasefires merely to regroup and
recruit. The defence minister said military operations would continue. […]
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