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Union sows resistance to corporate farming by Jana Silverman
Puerto Brasil--The soils of the rolling hills around this central Colombian village are perfect for growing plantains, yuccas and many other food staples. In this part of Cundinamarca Province, nevertheless, hunger is widespread and most of the population lives on less than $2 a day. The conditions are similar across rural Colombia. In response, the nation's farmer union has launched a project here in Puerto Brasil to train its members for sustainable agriculture, an effort that has encountered government and paramilitary repression. The United National Agricultural Workers Union Federation (Fensuagro) represents farm laborers and small farmers in 22 of Colombia's 32 provinces. The union also fights for farmer credit and pushes for agrarian reform in a country with one of the world's most unequal distributions of land. And the union promotes Colombian food security and food sovereignty. The major threats to this sovereignty date to the early 1990s, when President César Gaviria Trujillo's administration reduced tariffs on U.S. and European food imports, even basics such as corn, rice, potatoes and sorghum. "Without access to credits or modern technology, small farmers can't produce these foods cheaper than the foreign agribusiness corporations can," Fensuagro President Eberto Díaz Montes told Colombia Week. "Many Colombian farmers have gone bankrupt and lost their land over the past decade and a half." Díaz said trade talks between Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and the United States could further disadvantage small-scale farmers: "The United States doesn't just want zero tariffs on its agricultural exports. It also wants the Andean countries to reduce their subsidies to their farmers while not reducing the subsidies that U.S. farmers get." The union decided more than a decade ago to train its members in sustainable agriculture--farming that harmonizes with the environment and helps small-scale growers live off the land. In 1993, Fensuagro bought 40 acres here in Puerto Brasil and began transforming the parcel into an educational center where union leaders and local farmers could learn about organic farming techniques, share native seeds, and discover how to diversify their production. A lack of funds hamstrung the work, but the center finally opened in 1999. Then paramilitaries arrived. In January 2003 they set up a roadblock just down the street from the center's entrance. Over the next few months they detained dozens of area residents and murdered 20. Military helicopters, meanwhile, landed inside the center and blew out the windows of a building that housed a library and classroom. Fensuagro had no choice but to close the center. The attacks continued decades-old repression against the union. Since its 1978 founding, Díaz said, Fensuagro has lost 500 members to assassinations. And the government has arbitrarily detained dozens of the union's leaders, including Human Rights Secretary Luz Perly Córdoba Mosquera, arrested February 18 in the northeastern province of Arauca, and Eliécer Flórez, treasurer of Fensuagro's branch in the Caribbean province of Sucre, held since June 11. The attorney general's office has charged both with rebellion and terrorism. Here in Cundinamarca, the paramilitaries have kept a lower profile lately, so the union wants to reopen the center. To repair last year's damage, Fensuagro has requested funding from union federations in Belgium and Spain. "We'll keep fighting so we can realize our goal of maintaining a sustainable agricultural economy, which is the first step toward building a Colombia without hunger," Díaz said. |
