Threatened collective territories and the environment

Woman by river
Woman who lives near proposed dam project.
Photo courtesy of David Bacon.

To compliment the FTA, legal reforms are moving rapidly through the Colombian Congress. These law reforms send a signal to corporations that Colombia represents a secure investment environment. They do so by dismantling territory and resource rights granted to Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities in the 1991 constitution. At the same time, these reforms will make it more difficult for displaced communities to reclaim and return to their territories. A new "Rural Development Law" allows land occupied for five years to be titled regardless of how it was obtained and will make it very difficult for displaced communities to get their land back. The trade agreement will codify these reforms into trade rules that supersede Colombia's constitution.

The erosion of collective rights is also taking place outside the legal framework with the help of the paramilitary or military. Zones like northern Choco, for example, are being appropriated by current and supposedly demobilized paramilitaries--despite the fact that the area has been a common landholding of Afro-Colombian communities for some 150 years. The paramilitaries, in tandem with private companies some of which are owned by paramilitary commanders, are clear-cutting these areas and planting oil palms as a biofuel export crop.