Years of government indifference to the needs of the countryside and rural development has steadily given rise to a sense of mistrust and abandonment among Colombia’s peasant communities.

Responding to this long-standing neglect, over 100,000 peasant farmers - mainly in the departments of Boyacá, Cauca, Caldas, Putumayo, Cundinamarca, Nariño, Huila and Risarlda - joined a nationwide strike on 19 August.

The protestors took to the streets, blocking roads and disrupting food supplies to towns and cities across the country.

In addition to airing economic grievances such as the inability to compete with agricultural imports or poor access to markets and credit, the peasants, grouped in new movements, also raised social issues, calling for the right to a decent life, employment and respect for their rights as citizens.

The neoliberal model that has dominated Latin America since the 1990s has led to the dismantling of a regulatory state capable of dealing with the risks linked to agricultural production, with particularly damaging repercussions for rural Colombia.

Development strategies have since been based on deregulation, leading to the privatisation of technical and credit services and ever more precarious employment.

These policies have given rise to a countryside – home to 32 per cent of the Colombian population – characterised by intensive farming, land controlled by multinational corporations, increasing poverty and migration to the cities.

In an interview given to ElTiempo.com, César Pachón Achury, head of the peasant protest movement in Boyacá, appealed to the rest of the rural population to mobilise without violence. He identified the free trade agreements with the United States and the European Union, and the problems they are creating, as the key issue.

It is cheaper in today’s Colombia to import food and agricultural goods from other economic blocs – Andean Community, Pacific Alliance and Mercosur – than to produce them in the country itself.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos attempted to neutralise the strike, ordering the dismantling of the road blocks, claiming that the peasant movements had been infiltrated by the guerrilla and then trying to play down the significance of the nationwide protest.

He failed, however, to crush the peasants’ resolve, and the protests continued with the backing of the wider population, under the banner "We are all peasants!"

After a three week battle, with marches in cities across Colombia supported by indigenous communities, truck drivers, students and miners, the government finally agreed to sit down and negotiate the ’National Pact for Agricultural and Rural Development’.

The findings of a study on the identity of peasants in present-day Colombia, “¿Quiénes son los campesinos colombianos hoy?”, conducted by researchers from the Colombian Anthropology and History Institute (ICANH) and the Universities of Rosario and Cauca, underline that despite organisational changes in the peasant population, their concerns remain the same: land distribution and rural development policies.

One way of tackling these issues, further complicated by armed conflict, would be to improve access to land and ensure more efficient use of it.

Germán Zarama, a lawyer working for the Unidad de restitución de tierras (Land Restitution Unit) told Equal Times: "This government body, since its foundation in 2011, has delivered 233 rulings returning 529 plots of land that had been seized by groups operating outside the law, including the guerrilla, paramilitaries and drug traffickers."

Zarama also insisted, "It is not with aid policies that the government is going to resolve the peasants’ problems; a long-term strategy is required, based on policies geared towards land restitution, income redistribution, rural employment, credit facilities and penalising unproductive properties."

In a bid to settle its debt with rural Colombia, the government has promised to protect Colombian products by reviewing imports, establishing lines of credit and reducing the tariff on agrochemicals.

The peasants are now calling on the government to fully comply with the agreements signed and to take concrete measures, or face the prospect of renewed protest.

A short film about the protests was recently released. You can watch it in full below.

OVEJAS TOREADAS from Balaclava Films / IriartePhoto on Vimeo.