The struggle of the Colombian peasantry is relevant for international debates, both because of the injustices and violence peasants have faced and because of the progress this group has made in recent years in defending its rights.

The report that the main Colombian peasant organizations prepared for the Truth Commission showed that the peasantry has been the main victim of the Colombian armed conflict. This is not only in quantitative terms but also because the armed conflict reinforced their conditions of exclusion and discrimination, increasing the deficits of recognition, redistribution and representation they face. This veritable “war against the peasantry” (as the report calls it) has undermined the group’s democratic participation and reduced its possibilities for social and political inclusion, despite its resilience and capacity for reinvention in the face of violence and adversity. This explains why even in the progressive Constitution of 1991 the specific rights of the peasantry were barely recognized.  

This has changed in recent years. At the international level, as is well known, peasant mobilization, especially by organizations such as “Via Campesina”, led to the adoption in 2018 by the United Nations General Assembly of the “Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas“. Internally, the Colombian peasantry in recent years progressively pushed the Constitutional Court to develop a jurisprudence favorable to their rights, as we documented in our book “The Constitution of the peasantry“. In turn, supported by this constitutional jurisprudence and the possibilities offered by a progressive government, the peasant mobilization achieved the approval in 2023 of an important constitutional reform to Article 64 of the Charter, which robustly constitutionalized peasant rights and overcame the deficit of constitutional recognition that they previously suffered. 

This edition of the Newsletter includes texts that demonstrate these struggles and advances of the peasantry, but also the old and new challenges it now faces. The interview conducted by researcher Sindy Castro with Elsa Nury Martínez, president of the National Agricultural Trade Union Federation (FENSUAGRO) and secretary of the Americas region of La Via Campesina, not only shows the admirable trajectory of this leader and the advances of women in occupying very important positions in social movements, but also the articulation of local and international struggles of the peasantry. 

Mariluz Barragán and Sindy Castro, researchers at Dejusticia, in their blog, address a mixed balance of peasant struggles: they show that peasant leaders, especially in Colombia, still face intense violence and threats but that, at the same time, there have been significant legal advances for the protection of these leaders, thanks to jurisprudential developments on the “right to defend rights”, both nationally and internationally. 

For their part, researchers Carlos Quesada and Allison Angarita, analyze a novel aspect of last year’s reform to Article 64 of the Constitution: the recognition of the environmental dimension of the peasantry, overcoming the prejudice that peasants are environmental predators. This reform aims to turn the peasantry, with the appropriate state regulations, into a strategic ally in environmental protection and the fight against climate change. 

Finally, the text by Carlos Quesada and Juan Pablo Guerrero, based on the specific case of the so-called Galilee Forest, addresses a new challenge for the peasant movement: the possibility that the fight against climate change, and especially the so-called carbon credits market, could lead to a form of green hoarding. This is an issue to which we must pay particular attention.