A8 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22 , 2021
PHOTOS BY FERNANDA PINEDA FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Efrén Bocanegra, w ife Atenais Mendez and their family share a home in Bogotá t hey received from the government after being displaced.ABOVE: Members
of the Indigenous
community are
fighting to curb
deforestation, but
farmers say cutting
down trees is
necessary for them
to make a living out
of livestock.
LEFT: Margie
Palacio, secretary
of the board of
Morichal, a
community near
Montebello, holds
a parrot on her
arm.agrarian jurisdiction to resolve
land conflicts, but congress has not
approved the law to establish it.
The Duque administration says
it has put more than 1.2 million
hectares in the land fund. But only
2 percent has been confirmed to be
unoccupied, Colombia’s inspector
general’s office reported in August.
The U.S. Agency for Internation-
al Development has spent at least
$160 million to support land for-
malization, delivering 11,000 titles
so far.
Meanwhile, violence has contin-
ued to grow. FARC dissident
groups, led by rebels who have
rejected the peace deal, and para-
military groups are terrorizing and
displacing communities. From
January to July, internal displace-
ment increased by 167 percent over
the same period a year earlier, ac-
cording to U.N. monitors. More
than 400,000 people have been
displaced since the accords were
signed.
When Tijaro purchased the land
from a relative of his wife, he was
told the property was outside the
Indigenous reservation, the Llanos
del Yarí-Yaguara II. He signed a
contract but was given no land title.
Now he was hearing rumors that
the government could force farm-
ers like him to leave.
“Where would we go?” asked his
wife, Yorledi.‘The false peace’
Hundreds of miles away in Bo-
gotá, Efrén Bocanegra looked out
the window of his cramped apart-
ment at the next building over. He
heard the sounds of traffic, music
blasting next door, a man with a
megaphone selling corn.
His family returned to this brick
complex in August, after leaving
the Yaguara II reservation in the
wake of what Bocanegra describes
as “la paz falsa,” the false peace.
The 56-year-old grandfather
was 8 when his family settled in the
untouched land as part of a group
of Indigenous colonizers displaced
from other parts of the country. In
1995, the Colombian government
declared the more than 360,
acres a protected Indigenous reser-
vation. It’s believed to be the only
case of Indigenous colonization
formalized by the Colombian state.
But Colombia was also in the
middle of its bloody internal con-
flict. Bocanegra was 15 when his
father, a community leader, disap-
peared. Then, in 2004, a differentBocanegra leader also went miss-
ing. The family believe both men
were killed by the FARC. FARC
members warned Bocanegra’s ex-
tended family to leave within 48
hours, or they would be killed.
The Bocanegras fled to different
cities across the country. Efrén and
his family arrived in Bogotá with
no money and no experience of
urban life. They went from growing
all their food to paying rent and
water bills for the first time. They
lived on leftovers from the city’s
largest market until Bocanegra
found work as a high school janitor.
The government eventually pro-
vided them with a house in a resi-
dential complex for victims of the
conflict. But after the peace deal,
they filed a lawsuit demanding thestate guarantee their safe return to
their land.
A judge ordered the government
to define the reservation’s borders,
to protect it from armed criminal
groups and to work with the mili-
tary to eradicate illegal crops in the
area.
The judge also pointed out the
“dramatic” increase in deforesta-
tion, driven by the cattle ranching,
and ordered government agencies
to come up with a strategy to stop
it.
But as four years passed, farmers
continued to move into the reser-
vation, the trees continued to fall
and new criminal groups — FARC
dissidents — began to gain control.
The Indigenous families that
had returned to the reservation, ledby Bocanegra’s son, Alexander, and
sister, Yerley, pleaded with local
farmer leaders and the govern-
ment to stop the deforestation.
When that didn’t work, they asked
for a meeting with the people who
had the most authority in the re-
gion: the FARC dissidents.
“Who gave you permission to
come back?” asked the local com-
mander, known by the alias Cipria-
no González. He accused the Bo-
canegras of being informants for
the Colombian military.
Then, in August, a messenger
delivered orders: The Bocanegras
would have to stop working with
the government to preserve their
land. It was clear to the family that
they would have to leave.
They returned to Bogotá. Thefor cattle and crops. After the rebel
Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC) left the jungle
and signed a peace deal with the
government, Indigenous families
launched a legal fight to protect
their land.
Now Tijaro and his family feared
they would be forced to leave their
home yet again.
“We’d have to start over from
zero,” Tijaro said.
Half a decade after Colombia’s
historic peace accords, an essential
source of stability — land — contin-
ues to drive conflict here.
The country’s long-running fail-
ure to define who owns what land
and to record the limits of protect-
ed areas has left an opening for
desperate farmers such as Tijaro to
buy up property they’re not sup-
posed to own.
In the peace deal, signed five
years ago Wednesday, the govern-
ment agreed to distribute land ti-
tles, in part to prevent such dis-
putes. But delays in fulfilling that
promise are pitting vulnerable
populations against each other.
“It’s not up to us or the farmers to
resolve this conflict. It is up to the
state,” said Alexander Bocanegra,
an Indigenous leader here. “If not,
our territory will be wasted. And if
we return, people could die.”
Restoring land
Land lies at the core of conflict in
Colombia.
The South American nation has
one of the most unequal distribu-
tions of land in the world. The top
1 percent of landowners own near-
ly 43 percent of rural land. The
country’s small-hold farmers, who
produce half of the food consumed
in Colombia, own just 4.8 percent
of productive land.
About half of rural parcels in
Colombia lack a title, making it
difficult for farmers to access loans,
invest in land, pass property on to
their children, or defend territory
stolen by armed groups.
Land was a key reason the FARC
took up arms in the 1960s, igniting
the 52-year civil war. And yet the
conflict only made matters worse:
More than 16 million acres were
stolen by armed groups on all sides.
Millions of families were forced off
their land, creating one of the larg-
est internally displaced popula-
tions in the world.
The first point in the accords
focuses on land: formalizing titles
for 7 million hectares, creating a
fund for landless farmers and set-
ting up a registry to record the
ownership and use of all property.
“This would take care of many of
the problems we have had for dec-
ades in the rural areas,” said Juan
Manuel Santos, president of Co-
lombia during the peace negotia-
tions. “It was the easiest and the
fastest point in the agenda that we
agreed upon with the FARC.”
But it’s been one of the slowest
for the government to implement.
President Iván Duque said his
administration has demonstrated
a “clear commitment” to land re-
form. In an interview with The
Washington Post editorial board,
he said he aimed to register 50,00 0
land titles by December, and has
created a road map to update rec-
ords for 50 percent of Colombia’s
land, the “essence of any rural re-
forms.”
But critics are doubtful he will
reach those goals, and say his ad-
ministration has exaggerated its
progress. As of August, only 15 per-
cent of the national territory had
been included in the land registry,
according to the Kroc Institute at
the University of Notre Dame, an
official monitor of the peace accord
implementation. The peace deal
called for the creation of a special
COLUMBIA FROM A1 next day, news broke: The army
had killed González. Word spread
that his brothers blamed the Bo-
canegras and wanted revenge.
The Bocanegras didn’t know
when it would be safe to return.
“It’s a complete abandonment
by the state toward the farmers,
toward the Indigenous,” Yerley Bo-
canegra said. “It’s a war without
end.”
No alternatives
For years, the farmers in the
Montebello community lived in
harmony with their Indigenous
neighbors, the few families who
stayed behind on the reservation.
They played soccer in the field by
the community store, across from
the Pentecostal church. Their chil-
dren attended the same school.
In 2017, everything changed.
That was the year government offi-
cials started showing up to take
measurements on the outside of
the Yaguara II reservation. When
they started telling farmers their
properties were on the protected
land.
It was a debate about invisible
lines, borders never made clear to
the farmers or the Indigenous fam-
ilies. Caught in the middle were
about 90 families, most of them
farmers, many of whom arrived in
the past five years.
Fanny Barreto, who lives with
the Indigenous community in the
Yaguara II reservation, didn’t want
the farmers to have to leave their
homes. But she wanted them to
stop clearing the trees.
After farmers failed to heed re-
peated warnings to stop deforesta-
tion, local Indigenous leaders con-
fiscated their chain saws. But that
led only to threats. One farmer said
if the Indigenous families tried to
kick him out of his home, someone
would end up dead.
The Indigenous families and the
government say they have no plans
to forcibly remove the farmers. But
the farmers’ fears have a basis. The
Duque administration has milita-
rized the fight against deforesta-
tion through a strategy called “Op-
eration Artemisa.” It has been ac-
cused of excessive force against
small-hold farmers.
The farmers here say they have
no choice but to cut down trees.
“The economy revolves around
livestock here,” local leader Elver
Ortíz told Barreto as a group of
farmers and Indigenous families
debated the issue in the communi-
ty gathering space. Other crops,
such as plantains and yucca, would
require fewer acres of deforesta-
tion than cattle and cause less
harm to the environment. But
they’re not as profitable, Ortíz said,
“because we don’t have roads.”
If the government paved roads
— another promise of the accords
— Ortíz might be able to cover the
costs of transporting plantains to
La Macarena, the closest town. But
the only way to town now is a
muddy trail that becomes nearly
impassable when it rains.
“Why cattle?” he said. “Because
the cattle we can take by foot.”
Tijaro sees livestock as his only
option. It has allowed him to pro-
vide a comfortable life for his chil-
dren — a life better than he had.
In his small wooden home, steps
from the community gathering
place, Tijaro’s youngest son rushed
in, taking off his backpack. His
mother asked about his home-
work.
The 7-year-old helped his moth-
er feed the family’s baby chickens.
He grabbed one tight: “This one is
my favorite!”
Tijaro watched through the win-
dow, looking out at his pasture, as
his older son ran in circles in the
falling rain.
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[email protected]Colombia slow to issue land titles, a key part of p eace deal
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