Sur del Bolivar is a region of great agrofuel expansion in the country.

There, in 1997, in view of the need to cultivate land to produce food and to have better living conditions, 123 families occupied an abandoned tract of land known as ’Las Pavas’. The families peacefully appropriated the lands and practiced agriculture there until 2003 when men from the Bloque Central Bolívar of the paramilitary group United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia arrived to the region killing and displacing peasants.

Since 2004 there have been a series of processes around land and legal conflicts over land ownership that have led to new peasant evictions from their lands giving way to another process to return to Las Pavas.

However, the peasants who appropriated the lands have reported “a state of absolute insecurity and nutritional crisis in the country, without having where to produce food, and being forced to resort to food aid from some international organizations, without any state intervention whatsoever”.

There are 191 children in the community, pregnant women and elderly.

The effects of militarization and violence can still be felt, since palm oil companies keep their interests in the land that now hosts these families, says Rafael Eliecer Castro.

Photo: notimundo.blogspot.com