Farmer Wilbert Gomez, member of the recently created Front in Defense of the Territory, said to Henry Picado, Real World Radio’s correspondent, that the Institute of Agrarian Development is aiming to annul all ownership titles of the families who have been living in the area for over 15 years. These families are mainly focused on the production of bananas for export.

The communities explain that the President of the Institute of Agrarian Development has told them several times that the lands they inhabit belong to the State because they are border lands. However, many peasant families have ownership titles since 1990s. In 2002, they stopped receiving these titles, when the government realized these lands were interesting for agricultural transnational corporations.

Several peasant communities who live in the border with Panama decided to create the Front in Defense of the Territory. In a statement published on April 8th, they state that the harassment they are facing by the government is “ridiculous, because we have ownership titles from over 15 years ago, and now they are telling us that they aren’t valid, despite we paid all registration fees.”

In addition, the peasants living in the Sixaola valley denounce being blackmailed by the government “because those who don’t let their lands won’t receive the support of the Institute of Agrarian Development for the production of basic grains.”

The communities also point out that the large banana fields are not treated in this way, despite also being located on the border. This is the case of Chiquita Brands, a subsidiary of US Dole. “They continue working as usual on their fields for export, and we are being directly affected,” said Gomez in the interview with Real World Radio.

The Front in Defense of the Territory adds in their communiqué that the Institute of Agrarian Development is a “questionable” institution because “they granted us the titles and now they want to take them away, taking the right to land and leaving us in extremely poor conditions.”

The farmers also make reference to Bill 17.218, currently under discussion at the Costa Rican Parliament. This bill aims to turn the Institute of Agrarian Development into the Institute of Rural Development. The rural workers denounce that the proposal goes beyond a simple name change, but that it is a total transformation of the agrarian space, with a flexibilization of the right to land that will particularly affect them.

UNAG-Via Campesina Costa Rica warns that this bill includes mechanisms that will strengthen land grabbing in the country and the production of monoculture plantations by big transnational companies.

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