Peace and Justice for Colombia

NATIONAL UNITARIAN FEDERATION OF AGRARIAN UNIONS- FENSUAGRO
***PRESS RELEASE**

The 17th of April is the day of resistance and courage of the peasantry and rural workers of the world. This day has been declared the international day of struggle of the peasantry and rural workers in commemoration of 19 heroic peasants of the Landless Rural Workers Movement of Brazil, killed in the Locality of El Dorado dos Carajas, in the state of Piara.

The National Unitarian Federation of Agrarian Unions,”FENSUAGRO”, faithful to its principles and defence of the peasantry and rural workers, has launched an initiative for the strengthening of Peasants’ Participation in the Construction of a Program of Peace, Socio-Economic and Environmental Development of the Colombian country-side.The program proposes the following:

1. To evaluate the level of participation of the peasantry around the agrarian mandate, as opposed to the agrarian policies of the government and the conflict in Colombia.
2. To contribute to the progressive and participative construction of an economic, social and environmental map of the peasantry in the zones of organizational influence of the Agrarian Mandate and their organizations.
3. To organize, call and conduct a national gathering of the peasantry and rural workers for the construction of a program of peace, economic and social development for the Colombian country side.

The point of reference for this proposal is the AGRARIAN MANDATE – a compendium of 14 points presented to the country in April 2003 by a broad range of organizations of Indigenous and afro-descendent peasants and non-governmental organizations a few months after the commencement of the presidency of Alvaro Uribe Vélez.

The Agrarian Mandate is a compendium of 14 points that combines in essence the most significant key aspects of the situation in the Colombian country side and the struggles of the peasants in the country.

Following the debate that forced the Minister of Agriculture withdraw his plans to give the lands of the experimental property of Carimagua to individuals involved in the African palm agro-industry (lands already earmarked for peasants displaced by the violence), following the extraordinary mobilization of the 6 of March 2008 in tribute to the victims of the violence and the freezing of the Free Trade Agreement in the House of Representatives in the US, seeing the peasants who together with the democratic forces of the country have taken an outstanding role in the struggle for the land, against impunity and in defence of national sovereignty and food security, we believe that the moment has arrived in which the strength of the peasant movement allied to the small and medium producers, the indigenous and afro-descendents should become visible and their participation recognized in the spheres where the decisions on the agricultural policies of the country are taken.

This proposal will be transparent and public and will also open the debate on the necessary role of the Colombian peasantry in the solution to the Colombian conflict, because the peasants are the first victims of the war.

The international day of struggle of the peasantry has been declared by the VIA CAMPESINA – an organization that groups landless peasants, small and medium producers and women peasants of 100 countries – which points out in their call of the 2008 that “world-wide, the food crisis is beginning to show its true image this year. In previous decades hunger was ‘hidden’ in rural areas or marginal zones. Now the number of people affected is increasing and many more people can no longer endure any more.”

Food riots are on the rise as are queues of hungry people in many places of the world. “In the Latin America region … the cultivable land no longer belongs to the rural population and the peasants must work the land of which they were once proprietors as cheap manual labour.”

Some flee to the cities trying to improve their lives, but unfortunately every night they go to sleep with empty stomachs because the government subsidies granted to the TNCs of agribusiness in the north are being directed to industrial agriculture, wiping out farms in the North and the South by means of the dumping. Through the green revolution, the TNCs of agribusiness destroy local wisdom and knowledge of agriculture and impose new technologies and agricultural inputs that the peasants and rural workers must buy, making the peasants to dependent upon them.

The National Unitarian Federation of Agrarian Unions, “FENSUAGRO”

Eberto Díaz– President

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