“We can see that there are a large number of social conflicts round about in the country, many of them about land. And the government puts them down harshly.” says Israel Macario.
The peace agreements from 1996, that ended the 36 year-long conflict in Guatemala, though, mention specifically redistribution of land.
“The dream was just that we could get a little piece of land we could farm, and then we could support the family. But we haven’t seen much change in the last 15 years.”
That’s what Victoriano Monzón says. He’s a small farmer in western Guatemala. And he has come in to the capital, Guatemala City, together with several other small farmers.
They all come from departments in the country where thousands of families have joined together in cooperatives, or “mikroimpreses” – small companies – in order to be eligible for a share in the national land institute Frontierra’s redistribution of land.
Land – but no money
Frontierra was set up as part of the peace agreements from 1996. The institute was intended to carry out the program “Access to land.”
The access to land program was to be responsible for redistribution of land for the benefit of the poorest, the landless and small farmers by letting them buy the land on credit from Frontierra.
“The dream was just that we could get a little piece of land we could farm.” But, in view of the fact that Frontierra was under-financed from the start, many small farmers have been forced to go on the free or private loan market, where they pay 18 to 36 per cent in interest a year. Many have had to borrow to buy seed and other essentials for cultivating the land. Or else they have had to sell their land to escape from debt.
Exhausted and poor land for the poor
“A lot of the land that Frontierra has bought from the big landowners and sold to us on credit is exhausted and broken down. Several places it was formerly plantation land.”
We feel that we have been caught in a trap of debt and lack of support, and we haven’t had any training in how to run a cooperative or a “mikroimpresa” either, such as Frontierra requires us to organise. Many cooperatives run out of money,” says Victotiano Monzón.
Concrete suggestions to solve acute crisis
Plataforma Agraria is a network of 23 local and national peasant organisations that is supported by DanChurchAid. The network promotes changes in the structure of agriculture and it also works both nationally and internationally on advocacy for the rights of the poor to land.
The farmers’ organisations are part of the Plataforma Agriarias network, and they have agreed to meet at the network’s head office in the capital, because they are going to discuss which strategy Plataforma Agraria should adopt to start a dialogue with the Guatemalan government.
What we do
Plataforma Agraria is a network of 23 local and national peasant organisations that is supported by DanChurchAid. The network promotes changes in the structure of agriculture and it also works both nationally and internationally on advocacy for the rights of the poor to land. Plataforma Agraria has received support from the EU to help peasant organisations in Guatemala with capacity building, so that the farmers are better able to promote their own cause toward the authorities and the government.
From 1997-2010, Frontierra has redistributed four per cent of the productive land to less than five per cent of the landless or families that have so little land that they cannot survive on it.
“It is a matter of debts in the millions that thousands of poor farmers have built up and that they will never be able to pay off. Frontierra has known that from the beginning. But we suggest that every family pays a symbolic amount and is thus cleared of indebtedness” says Victoriano Monzón.
Plataforma Agraria and the peasant organisations have sent a concrete proposal to the government that will solve the current acute economic crisis that several thousand families are trapped by.
The suggestion from the peasant organisations includes, among other things, that the government establishes a fund that will provide support for the local communities’ social development and infrastructure, that the farmers repay a symbolic amount of the debt that many have run up to Frontierra, and that the peasants get clear title showing that they own the land.