My leaflet's ready at last

Since getting back from Colombia, I've been working with people from Espacio-Bristol, Biofuelwatch and Platform to produce a leaflet about the effect that agrofuels and oil have on Colombia. The pages of the leaflet can been seen here, and the text is below. Email your address to verybod [at] hotmail . com and I can post you up to 50 copies.

WHAT AGROFUELS DO TO COLOMBIA

Introduction

Agrofuels or ‘biofuels’ are fuels made primarily from crops grown in large-scale monocultures. Since April 2008, all fuel at UK petrol stations is required by law to be mixed with 2.5% ‘biofuels’.

Agrofuels, far from being climate friendly, accelerate climate change because of deforestation and other ecosystem destruction and because they rely on agrichemicals linked to high greenhouse gas emissions. They also lead to hunger, and to farmers being forced off their land.

Colombia is one of the countries increasing its production of oil palm and sugar cane to meet agrofuel demand. As part of this expansion, trade unionists have been murdered and communities forced off their land at gunpoint by paramilitaries (illegal groups linked to the state).

This leaflet explains some of the social problems agrofuel expansion is causing in Colombia.

Individual

Victor makes £8 for an eight-hour day harvesting palm fruit from the tallest trees. Workers weeding around the palm trees may earn just 80p a day.

Harvesting is difficult and dangerous work. One 18 year-old boy died after working for fifteen days injecting palm trees with monocrotophos (an insecticide illegal in many countries) without any safety equipment.

Workers are forced to form fake cooperatives to work for the company, in which workers pay the costs of tools, social security, crop damage, etc. This means that workers, rather than the company, absorb all the economic risks. This system was first imposed by Colombia’s Indupalma company after a trade union was weakened by the murder of five of its members in 1995.

After meeting all these costs, Victor’s monthly take-home pay is under the minimum wage, but 40% more than he earned prior to a recent strike.

Community

The community of San Cayetano in the Bolivar region is an example of people going hungry because of oil palm.

Forty families had been farming land near their village for 20 years when an agent of a local palm company offered to buy them out. What he offered was under the market value for the land, but he included the threat, “If you do not leave the good way, you will be leaving the bad way”. Given the violent paramilitary presence in the area, people took this seriously and left their land. The last man to leave was seized by paramilitaries, but managed to escape.

That was three years ago. ‘Misery’ is the word they use to describe life since then. Unemployment is especially uncomfortable with eight children to feed and no state benefits. One meal a day has become normal in this community.

National

Currently 350,000 hectares of land in Colombia is used for oil palm production. With the huge rise in demand for agrofuels, the Colombian government is intending to increase the amount of land dedicated to both palm oil and sugar cane monocultures to seven million hectares. These plantations are linked to ecosystem destruction and to exploitative and inhumane working conditions.

As pressure on land intensifies, subsistence farmers are violently displaced. Once landless, the same people may return as poorly-paid workers for oil palm plantations on their former land. Meanwhile, local people are denied control of more and more land for growing food, and ecosystems are destroyed.

People from rural Colombia speak of their sadness and frustration at being surrounded by such fertile land, and yet seeing their food imported into the area. Much of Colombia’s rice, wheat and corn comes from the US and the EU where the agrofuels are exported to, leaving Colombia contributing to the energy needs of others while having less control over their food production.

Global

The EU is promoting the use of agrofuels, both through subsidising them in Europe and by directing foreign aid into the production of agrofuels in the Tropics. This is because the EU’s own agrofuel crops are insufficient to meet its energy needs.

Globally, food prices are going up, partially due to the rise in agrofuel monocultures. Changes in land use and increased demand for crops means that people’s food needs are now in competition with fuelling vehicles.

The violent expulsion of farmers and the destruction of forests to make way for palm plantations is not unique to Colombia. It is a global problem with similar situations occuring in Indonesia and other parts of the world. This has a major impact on climate change as more rainforests are cut down and peatland dried out. Even so-called ‘sustainable’ sources contribute to this effect by increasing the demand for land.

What you can do

A strong grassroots movement against agrofuels is needed. One with the power to stop the policies which are devastating communities and the environment in countries such as Colombia, and which are making climate change worse.

We also need a drastic reduction in our energy use, particularly car travel and aviation, as well as high mandatory fuel efficiency standards.

To organise a public meeting to educate people about agrofuels, contact info@biofuelwatch.org.uk for speakers and videos. Visit www.biofuelwatch.org.uk to sign up to action alerts and campaign news, and to take part in letter-writing campaigns. Discuss what you have learnt with your friends and family.

Espacio also invites volunteers to help with our work supporting communities and social organisations facing violence in the context of agrofuels and other damaging projects in Colombia. See www.espacio.org.uk to find out what you can do to support Colombians.

WHAT OIL DOES TO COLOMBIA

Introduction

Pretty much everything we consume involves the use of oil. As the more accessible oil fields dry up, others are explored with higher environmental and social costs.

Colombia, with its violent civil conflict, is one of the many countries where the social costs of the oil industry are high.

BP has been present in Casanare, Colombia since the 1980s. In 1996, BP was exposed in the British media for funding a Colombian army brigade notorious for human rights abuses and links with paramilitary death squads.

Although in the wake of the scandal BP signed up to non-binding Corporate Social Responsibility guidelines, people living on land strategic for oil exploration and activists protesting against the company’s activities continue to be murdered.

Individual

Oswaldo Vargas was one of the social leaders whose opposition to BP cost him his life. Oswaldo was involved in a demonstration against BP’s failure to comply with agreements made with the community regarding social investment.

Shortly afterwards, several members of ACDAINSO, the community organisation Oswaldo was part of, were threatened, including threats telling them to “stop messing with BP”. Then, on September 2nd 2004, when Oswaldo arrived home from a meeting with BP, two men shot him dead in front of his young son.

After further threats, two murders and one attempted murder of other community activists, members of ACDAINSO decided to close down the organisation.

The previous year Jorge Guzmán, who was responsible for BP’s community relations had stated that he was “tired of ACDAINSO”. This problem had now disappeared.

Community

Other oil companies in Casanare also benefit from the violent suppression of the local population.

The Colombian army’s 16th Brigade arrived in Recetor in December 2002. The following month paramilitaries (illegal groups linked to the state) entered the area and were seen meeting with soldiers.

In February the disappearances started. The paramilitaries collected people ‘for interviews’, but around sixty people never returned home. The climate of fear meant that many of these disappearances have not been reported, but two mass graves have been found.

With the town’s teacher, doctor, various students and community leaders disappeared, the social cohesion of the area was destroyed and it was unlikely that local residents would complain about poor employment and environmental standards.

Shortly afterwards, the Brazilian oil company Petrobras arrived in the area and began to explore for oil. Local paramilitary leader ‘Salomón’ has stated that these acts had the objective of clearing the way for oil exploration.

National

National paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso has stated to the Colombian prosecutor’s office that all the oil companies in Casanare made contributions to his group, the AUC (United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia). Some have been accused of complicity in human rights abuses, such as Occidental Petroleum and the Santo Domingo massacre.

Meanwhile, 47% of Colombia’s population live below the poverty line. Although the country is rich in many natural resources, the involvement of multinational corporations means that local people do not benefit. Instead they watch the wealth of their region being taken out of the country.

The move towards companies signing up to voluntary codes of conduct has been a move away from binding legislation. The oil industry has actively sought and obtained changes in Colombian legislation in order to make more profit with fewer social and environmental ------obligations.

Global

Colombia's case is by no means isolated. Similar abuses happen in other oil-rich countries, maximising company profits while fulfilling our demand for energy.

For example, through its Tangguh gas project, BP is underwriting Indonesia’s military occupation of West Papua - where a sixth of the population has been killed.

BP and other companies have been lobbying hard in Iraq and working with the US and UK forces to break into fields previously held in public ownership. Despite massive opposition and the likelihood of intensifying conflict, BP is in the process of signing a contract for development of the super-giant Rumaila field.

BP’s global operations have an enormous impact on driving climate change. The emissions resulting from the oil and gas the company extracts are equivalent to 5% of global greenhouse gases from fossil fuel consumption – twice that of the UK.

What you can do

Twin with a threatened activist or community member in Casanare through the Pen-Pal Protection Plan that Espacio is coordinating with the Colombian organisation COS-PACC. For more information see www.espacio.org.uk.

Help create safe spaces for sustainable alternatives by volunteering in Colombia. This provides protective accompaniment to those resisting the take over of their lands and resources by multinational corporations. See www.espacio.org.uk.

OTHER CAMPAIGNS:
Free West Papua: UK-based campaign led by exiled West Papuans, campaigning to stop Indonesia’s occupation of their country and BP's part in it. www.freewestpapua.org

Baku Ceyhan Campaign: Campaign highlighting the impacts of BP’s $4 billion pipeline through Azerbaijan, Georgia & Turkey, including escalated local conflict, corrosion and loss of livelihoods. www.baku.org.uk
Hands Off Iraqi Oil is a UK coalition opposing foreign exploitation of Iraq’s oil reserves. It uncovers UK government pressure backing BP’s demands for lucrative contracts.
www.handsoffiraqioil.org

Campaigns on BP involvement in Canadian tar sands - highly polluting fuels that emit 3-5 times the CO2 of crude oil.
www.greenpeace.org.uk/tags/tar-sands
www.oilsandstruth.org

PLATFORM campaigns on BP’s role in Iraq, tar sands, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and elsewhere.
www.carbonweb.org

Indonesian villagers need your support

The village of Suluk Bongkal has just been attacked by the Indonesian state and by a subsidiary of a palm oil plantation company. You can go here to sign a letter and see how to do more. Here's a quote from that website:

The village of Suluk Bongkal was attacked by the police and by over 500 paramilitaries, armed with fire-arms and tear gas. A helicopter dropped incendiary devices which eye witnesses reported contained napalm. Although the nature of the bombs has not yet been confirmed, hundreds of houses immediately went up in flames. Two toddlers were killed, 400 villagers fled into the forest. Others were detained and 58 people remain in the village, under enormous psychological pressure and cut off from the outside. On 20th December, a helicopter dropped stones on tents set up by refugees from the village.

The violence is linked to Sinar Mas, one of the largest pulp and paper and palm oil plantation companies in Indonesia. This particular plantation belongs to Sinar Mas subsidiary Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), which reportedly owns the helicopter used in the attacks.

The story of the land won

The new Colombian constitution in 1991 gave black and indigenous communities a cool new load of rights. They can now claim collective land rights for land their communities had historically inhabited. Plus they have the right to be consulted before any state or private projects which affect them.

Even if they are not on their land, merely nearby, palm monocultures affect the local population due to the environmental degradation they cause. Deforestation means a loss of fauna, and water sources are polluted or dry out from overuse. In this case, the two oil palm companies were indeed setting up on land which afro-colombians were forcibly displaced from.

Therefore they had a strong enough case. Not that that made it particularly easy to win. It took a good few years, and a lot of help from a particularly wonderful civil servant, but eventually they got a resolution giving them the legal rights to all 2900 ha of it.

That was the story I had heard so far. And where were they now? Well, disappointingly, not much further. The legal resolution giving them the land neither spells out the land's boundaries, nor a timeframe for the palm companies to vacate it. They are still there. The oil palm (the proportion not yet killed by bud rot – perhaps half) is at it's most productive stage. They are in no hurry to go.

When the afro-colombian community had lived there, they had no legal title to the land. The state considered it theirs, and were happy enough to let the palm companies in. Now the state has legally handed it back to the afro-colombians, it is taking no responsibility for getting the palm companies to leave. Given that it generally takes power and money to get things moving here, it's not currently clear what the community can do. Granted, evicting squatters is generally a civil matter. It's just that normally the state haven't helped them break in.

Squatting is one of the biggest problems these communities on collective land titles are facing. It may be difficult to evict palm companies with government officials in their pockets and links to paramilitaries. It is equally difficult to ask the coca growing drug-traffickers to leave nicely.

Where palm helped the poor... for a while

[In a few hours I'm off to get on my cargo boat. It's been quite a rush this week, as the boat is leaving three days earlier than the original schedule. (When you sign up for a trip, it is made clear that this might happen.) I'll be writing more on this story when at sea, and I may get to post it if the Dominican Republic stop is in the day and I have enough time to go swimming too. Back in UK around 27th June.]



I have been chasing a story for the comic book my organisation is creating about Colombia. We hope it'll be like the brilliant Joe Sacco's Palestine and will explain the history and issues of this country in a readable and digestible way. Chapters will be about stuff like the murder of Coca Cola worker Isidro Gil, and the social effects of the cocaine trade.

Obviously there is a bit of a bias towards stories about people getting killed by the state and paramilitaries, as that does tend to happen a lot here. So I was hoping to find a feel-good story for a section on agrofuels.


I heard about a case where an afro-colombian community had won 2900 hectares of their land back from two palm companies. The person who first told me about it didn't know what the current situation was: whether the community was going to keep the valuable palm on their land and sell the companies the fruit, or whether they would uproot it. The next person I went to for details didn't know either, and said I would have to ask them.

So I travelled south on a two-day bus journey, to Tumaco in Nariño. It took a little while to warm to the bloke from the community which had won the land. I found it quite difficult to extract information from him, especially the details needed to bring a story to life. He was not a man for detail. When he took us from Tumaco town to a village on his community's land, and I asked him “Who are we seeing next?” he replied, “A colleague.” Really not an ideal interview candidate.

Luckily, all the people who gathered round us in the cafe in that village were easier to engage.


There has been oil palm in that area for the last 25 years so the five farmers we met were second generation palm growers. They are still in debt though, as they had to replace the original palm trees. Palm had been good to them until recently. They were probably the first campensinos I had met who were putting their children through university. I was struck by how much on this trip I heard people talk about how their basic needs are not being met. Drinking water. Healthcare. Education. But for these farmers, the income generated by oil palm had made a big difference to their standard of living and quality of life.

Until recently. But here in Tumaco I saw first hand the way that monocultures are vulnerable to disease. Bud rot is decimating the oil palm population. I saw large areas where affected palm had been felled. I was told the yellow leaves on much of the palm that remained, meant those trees were also dying.


This is devastating to the campesinos who grow palm. All those we met were affected. Mostly with 100% of their palm dead or dying. They will have no income until the first harvest of whatever crop they next plant. In the meantime they will have to take their children out of university. And do lots of worrying about their debts.

When I was in Regidor being taken around the countryside to interview people about palm, I felt good that my guide, president of the Movement of Landless Campesinos, could also use my trips to network and build up his organisation.

My guide this time had just been to a seminar about 'piñon' the next agrofuels monoculture idea which could replace the dead palm. These farmers were desperate to know what they can do next. One is planting a bit of cocoa. Another said it was not worth the hassle as the crop is so easy to steal. Growing food crops is just not profitable enough due to transport costs. Yes, it leads to greater food sovereignty. But as someone told me, you still have to buy salt. (And pay for your children's school fees. And healthcare. Clothes are also useful.)

The new agrofuels idea appears to be one of the few choices they have which will meet their basic needs. The other being a supposedly bud rot resistant new variety of palm which costs three times more than the last variety did.

In Colombia I’ve heard mention of ‘planes de vida’ (‘life plans’) a fair bit. This is distinct from the more familiar term ‘local development plans’ as they reflect the fact that people here are questioning what is meant by ‘development’. ‘Planes de vida’ involve planning with local communities what changes they want which better reflect their values. This afro-colombian community is one of those which use the term, and yet they are stuck within an economic system where choices seem limited and leave them vulnerable to crop diseases and to fluctuations in international commodity prices.

No riot for the nuns

I went to see the cool nuns again. They were even more bright-eyed and sparky talking about the strike in Yarima they are now supporting, than when they had recounted being in a riot with the strikers of Puerto Wilches.

Yarima is a corregimiento [district of a municipality which includes a village of the same name and smaller outlying villages] in San Vicente in the department of Santander. It's fairly near Puerto Wilches, where people were giving their own strike credit for inspiring this new one.

The nuns were liking how the Yarima strike is lots more organised than the Puerto Wilches one. This is easier as it's a much smaller community and people all know each other. They have an evaluation meeting at the end of each day to look at what they could do better. (I really like the sound of that myself.)

There has been a great sense of solidarity from the area. Yarima has a big advantage over Puerto Wilches in that oil palm is newer, and it is not as widespread. This means more countryside left for sympathetic farmers to grow useful stuff, like food. When these farmers pass by,they leave the odd sack of corn or yucca or half a dead cow.

The strikers said they are actually eating better now than they did when they were working. Now the wonderful generosity of the local farmers mean they get three hot meals a day, and there has even been food left over. When they were working in the fields, their food would be cold, less frequent, and less of it.

Being well-fed is great, but the cash they are lacking after forty days of striking certainly does not mean their lives are now easier. They have no money to pay for their rent, for any medicines their family need, or for their children's schooling. Many can no longer make the down payments on their motorbikes, which will leave them without transport.

According to the nuns, the strikers' policy has been to block the roads to any vehicles connected with coal, palm, oil or rubber, and letting all other vehicles pass. The idea of targeting other industries was to put pressure on the government to help move on the negotiations.

The strike hit the national news early on, as the president of the oil workers' union (USO) Jorge Gamboa Cabellero suffered an assassination attempt while visiting the strikers. That's how it was reported in the press anyway. The nuns made it sound less certain. Whether the two armed infiltrators who had been taking photos of the crowd were actually intending to kill USO's president as they moved towards him, I'm sure we will never know. The crowd at the time were fairly convinced, swiftly surrounding the men and disarming them. Jorge Gamboa says he owes them his life.

The palm workers were originally striking to demand better working conditions, similar to the situation in Puerto Wilches. Their main demands were for:
1) the system of employment through cooperatives to be abolished and the companies to employ their workers directly, complying with their legal responsibilities such as social security payments
2) a rise in pay which has been frozen for years.

Below Google & I have translated part of the background information they gave with their list of demands. [I recommended Google translator if you interested in reading any of these Spanish links in English.]

Because the palm companies had still not responded to the workers' demands, three days ago the local community called a civic strike in solidarity. This has widened out the issues, making links to other local problems, such as the degradation of both the environment and infrastructure (eg roads) caused by the companies taking natural resources from the area. The health centre is in a state of utter disrepair, and the community notes how wealth is being extracted from their territory while their circumstances are getting worse.

The Governor of Santander visited yesterday. He made some agreements with regard to social investment, but nothing relating to improving the palm workers' conditions.

When I started writing this, I named it 'No riot for the nuns', but since then I've learnt that the riot police turned up this morning and there was a confrontation. Tear gas. Rubber bullets. Two thousand people. Fifteen injuries. People seeking refuge in the church (pictured). But let's presume the violence was all one sided and it wasn't a 'riot'. And I don't think the nuns were necessarily there. So please excuse me for not thinking up another title.


If anyone would like to email me a message of solidarity (by posting a comment), I can send it on to the nuns and they can take it to the strikers. If it's in English, make it shortish and I'll translate. I'm sure it would mean a lot to the strikers to know people are thinking of them.


Workers' List of Demands: Background

[The first paragraph deals with the change of land use since palm arrived in the area in 1985 and how this led to land theft, forced displacement, and people's conversion from farmers to palm labourers, working on the same land previously belonging to their families. Then it discusses how labour rights have degenerated over time, especially with the formation of workers' cooperatives.]

Today, the outlook for our community and our workers is dark. We watch as the environment deteriorates from the aggressiveness of crops that do not respect the rivers, streams or gullies. The indiscriminate felling of forests has brought us serious problems of erosion and the destruction of water sources, with disastrous consequences for the extinction of flora and fauna. Autonomy and food security have been lost as we have gone from being the food pantry of Magdalena Medio to consumers of traditional products brought in from other regions such as yucca, corn, plantain, fruit, and meat and milk derivatives that we previously produced. These are required for our nourishment and that of our children. In addition, we now have to pay the extra costs for transporting these foods.

The cultivation of palm throughout these 20 years has only generated the unbridled exploitation of our workforce and our land, without any compensation apart from the miserable wages we earn. The long hours of work only serve to line the pockets of the executives at the expense of the suffering of our people. We watch as our men and women hand over their youth, health and even life in this work, without seeing any improvement in their quality of life as was promised at the start of this project. The technical and technological training did not happen, the social investment did not happen, and neither did the decent work with fair working conditions which we inhabitants of this region deserve, as the owners and generators of so much wealth.

Solidarity raises your wages

When I spoke to the nuns just after the palmworkers strike in Puerto Wilches ended in February, they were upbeat about having been in a riot, but they painted a pretty dismal picture of what the 30 day strike had achieved. Despite the fact that it got so much solidarity and support from locals, nationals and internationals.

I have been staying in Puerto Wilches for the last two weeks, with intention of finding out what had happened since. It's horribly hot here, which made me ill and then took away my motivation to do anything that isn't sleeping.

So I've given myself a deadline to get the interviews done so that I can leave and go live somewhere cooler, with a better mattress less overrun by biting ants, and which I don't have to share with an 8 year old boy when more family come to stay, who's in the habit of kicking me in the face throughout the night.

After an eleven hour sleep, (which seems a lot even for me), I got myself up this morning with some determination to go find some people to interview.

Since then, things have been going surprisingly smoothly. We asked around for the bloke who was one of the leaders of the strike. Shortly after, he turned up where I was staying. And rather than listening to the tale of woe I had been expecting about the strike achieving nothing but an increase in repression, the word 'triumph' was repeatedly used.

Before the strike, those working indirectly for the palm company Monterrey through cooperatives (set up and controlled by the company so they can avoid various legal requirements such as paying for social security) got fined like this:

• 6000 pesos (£1.70) for each seed bunch they cut down which had less than five seeds fallen loose – ie was not considered ripe enough.
  
• 6000 pesos for each seed bunch left uncut with more than five seeds which have fallen loose – ie too ripe, although it may have ripened in the time between the worker passing the palm and the supervisor checking it.
  
• 3000 pesos for each kilo of seeds found on the ground below the palm trees.
  
• 6000 pesos for each seed bunch cut down by one worker, but left behind by another instead of loaded onto the cart.
  
• 2000 pesos for each seed bunch stalk cut more than 2 cm long.
  

So basically there were four or five things you can get wrong every time you cut down a seed bunch from 2 metres above your head.

These fines ate into the wages of the workers, along with having to pay for overpriced tools, transport, raw materials and social security payments. A healthy-looking 700 000 pesos (£200) monthly wage therefore shrunk to 250 000 (£70) take-home pay: just over half the legal minimum wage.

To give you some idea of the purchasing power of 250 000 per month, consider that's just over 8000 pesos (£2.30) a day. Consider the palm worker may well be the only wage earner in the family. Consider people here tend to have a lot of children (5 or 6 is the average number).

Some common costs
Lunch: 4000 pesos.
An exercise book (and each schoolchild needs about 15 in a year) 1000 pesos.
A pen: 700 pesos.
School uniform: 50 000 pesos.
School sports uniform: 34 000 pesos.
School annual enrolment (eighth grade): 80 000 pesos.
Rent: 150 000 pesos per month for a two-bedroom house.

ie, A pen or an exercise book is an hour's wage. Lunch is half a day's work.

Food costs
Due to the 47 000 ha of oil palm here in the municipality of Puerto Wilches (about a third of the rural land) not leaving much space for food crops, bananas which used to be given away to neighbours for free are now imported from Venezuela or Ecuador.

Transport costs make fruit and veg prices high, which is a source of frustration for people given they live in such a fertile area.

A pound of potatoes: 1200 pesos (35p) in Puerto Wilches, 400 pesos in the nearby city of Bucaramanga.
A pound of tomatoes: 1500 pesos (43p) in Puerto Wilches, 400 in Bucaramanga.
A pound of plantain: 600 pesos (17p) in Puerto Wilches, 250 in Bucaramanga.

The Threats
As for the repression experienced due to the strike, well, it's not as bad as it could have been. Blokey I spoke to was verbally threatened by the police during the strike. He had a fairly exciting story about being shot at and a load of them involving themselves in a motorbike chase where they followed the assailants back to their base at the police-station. They reported it but the police have somehow chosen not to follow it up. There was also a young guy who left town for a month when him and his mum were threatened after his active involvement in the strike. He's back now though.

The Triumphs

For the Monterrey workers:

• The fine system has changed so the 6000 fines have been reduced to 2500 pesos, half paid by the company and half by the cooperative. The other fines are now 500, also half paid by the company.
  
• Workers now are allowed a 3% margin of error before the fines start. Supervisors give you the opportunity to cut the stalk to the right length before a fine is imposed.
  
• The tools that had to be bought from the company are now sold much nearer to cost price: roughly half the cost they were.
  
• Wages have increased by 28%.
  
• There is a review committee of workers and company reps who meet monthly to look at how the fine system is running.
  
• The company pays for a full-time consultant to lend expertise to the cooperatives.
  

All this means that the strike has lead to an increase in income of about 40% for workers in this sector. Up to around minimum wage levels. I think that's quite an impressive triumph.

Plus positive results breed others. This strike has inspired other nearby, which is now on its thirtieth day.

And there are less tangible consequences of over 3000 striking workers coming together every day for a month. A new organisation has started up with a focus on encouraging the cultivation of staple foods. People have a sense of success and unity that's nice to see. Right perked me up it has.

Snapshots of Regidorian lives

Alberto had been farming some land with no legal protection, so when asked to leave by the landowner, he had no choice but to become yet another landless campesino in the municipality of Regidor, Southern Bolivar.

He has spent the last two weeks clearing some land next to a road. He intends to plant food crops such as corn and yucca. It is owned by an oil company as it has a pipeline beneath it, and although he could be told to leave it at any point, given that this oil company have tolerated all the others doing the same thing, he is hopeful he might be able to stay there for a few years.

The next time he is moved on, perhaps he will be able to find another disused corner somewhere near enough to walk to. Although in a few years time his food crops will have even more Oil Palm to compete with.




Nicolas paid 7 million pesos (1300 pounds) for some land. Unfortunately, he’d been tricked and the person he had paid wasn't the owner. So he continued in his landless state.

Unlike many I've met in his situation, he was an exceptionally cheery fellow. The disused corner of land he's been farming for the last two years is on a small island. I asked if the owner minded. It turned out the land belonged to the family of the person who had brought me there to meet him. So we can presume he’s safe there for a good while.




This is one of the many, many bits of land I've been shown which now floods in the winter. Two years ago, the water would drain away. Now that a palm company has blocked up the drainage stream so that their own land remains dry, these four hectares owned by Davíd can no longer be used to grow corn. He receives no compensation for the lost harvests which used to bring in around six million pesos (1500 pounds) a year. Like many others have done, he explains to me how the power of the palm companies means no one wants to make a fuss. (Nearby a couple of weeks ago, the army took a man away. People don't know why, but it adds to their general desire to keep quiet.)




This is one of the fifty displaced families living in Regidor. They came two years ago, fleeing paramilitary violence in another area. The husband works for a palm company, earning between 10 000 and 16 000 pesos (2.80-4.50 pounds) for a ten hour day. The wife tells me that palm is the only work he could find, and his social security is not paid so he would like to move to another firm who do pay benefits. His earnings do not cover their costs, and they have a debt of over 200 000 pesos (55 pounds) for food.

None of the displaced families are doing well economically. Due to Oil Palm, land is expensive and there is little available to grow food crops.




Diana and Omaira share our back yard. Diana has physical and learning difficulties and Omaira has a degenerative disease. Neither of them find walking easy. They spend pretty much all day every day sitting in the shade. Diana has her lunch brought to her by her sister's family. Omaira's comes from a niece.

There should be state support for people such as them who need it. But local politics rarely works like that. Here the families of those who actively supported the current Mayor's campaign, get the support they are entitled to. Those who didn't, don't.

Decree 2007 remains intact

In 2001 the last mayor of Regidor passed Decree 2007 which meant that land here can only be sold from campesino to campesino. This was specifically to make it harder for the palm companies to obtain land.

The current mayor, with family ties to the palm industry, unsurprisingly wants this to change. A meeting was set up of the committee which has the power to undo the decree.

It was an open meeting. A friend of mine spent time going round various communities informing them of the importance of their attendance at this meeting, to show their support for keeping this decree. Over sixty of them turned up, including almost thirty from San Cayatano, a community who have already lost their land to a palm company.

To start with, we heard the mayor explain why we should get rid of this decree which is against the interests of campesinos. The two people who then spoke in favour of it got interrupted, shouted at, and personally insulted by her. My friend was told he had manipulated people by encouraging their attendance.

To his great disappointment, not a single one of the sixty people who had travelled in from the surrounding area to attend the meeting, spoke out in support of the decree. Which was quite some testament to how scared people are. As I've mentioned before, the mayor's family does have a reputation for its paramilitary connections. The small community of San Cayatano has lost seven people to the conflict in the last ten years. Five killed by guerrillas around ten years ago, and two killed more recently by paramilitaries. So people perceive the risks as very real. My friend who did speak out, was directly confronting the very people who had arranged the three threatening phone calls he has received. The next day he told me how nervous he was feeling.

Fortunately, with all the shouting and the poor facilitation and the tendancy of meetings to involve lots of talking and opinions and little decision-making and action points, Decree 2007 remains intact.

There are good guys and bad guys

I’ve run in to both the defensoría (Public Defender who collects human rights complaints) and the fiscal (Public prosecutor who processes legal complaints) from Rio Viejo on a number of occasions now. They both seemed pretty friendly, and I hadn’t formed much of an opinion on either of them.

I made an appointment to talk to the defensoría about the complaints he’d received about palm companies.

He started with an analysis of the problem of palm, which included the fact that the wealth is not owned by the community. When corn is grown, those harvesting it get paid in kind in addition to their wage. After a corn harvest, the leftovers are available to whoever wants to go collect them. Birds eat corn and form part of the ecosystem.

Nothing eats palm. It does not contribute to region’s biodiversity. Workers are paid the same ‘going rate’ (12 -15 000 pesos), but without a bag of corn cobs or whatever food stuff they were harvesting, they are significantly poorer.

Because for the first two to four years no seeds are produced, and full production does not start for another five years after that, oil palm is only a business for those with significant capital to invest.
Wealth and the power that goes with it, are further concentrated in the hands of the few. Who don’t always use it fairly. Most of the palm companies do not make the social security payments they are meant to, making their employees vulnerable. One company which often pays late, points its workers to the loanshark at the gate on pay day. He charges 10% interest, and is suspected of being mates with the management, and of using the same money the workers should have got directly.

Sharing his analysis it was already clear the defensoría was a good ‘un.

Then he told me about a particular case of a farmer whose land is completely surrounded by palm company land. They had blocked his rights of way to his land with ditches and fences. They unilaterally cut down the trees dividing the land (which would normally happen only by mutual agreement), which fell onto and damaged the farmer’s fence. His cows got out, and some were killed while others received machete wounds.

He made a complaint to the defensoría. A counter-complaint was made, concerning the fact that he had opened up the fence that was blocking his right of way (see photo).


The fiscal, whose office is next door to the defensoría, is apparently not one of the good guys. He is prosecuting the farmer for damage to the fence, but not the palm company for any of its infractions. “This is how Colombian justice works” the defensoría tells me. Bribes being a staple of the criminal justice system, and palm companies being in a far better position to afford them.

It struck me how enormously frustrating being one of the good guys must be. He spends his time receiving complaints about injustices, but has no power to get them processed. His neighbour the fiscal came in while we were talking, was all friendly and jovial with the defensoría, who gritted his teeth and was friendly enough back. All the times I’d seen such friendliness between them before, I had no idea what lay beneath it.

The Tale of Two Landless Villages

The villagers of El Piñal, like many rural communities, do not have it so easy. There may be a health centre building, but it has no staff or medicines. There may be a primary school with two out of three of the teachers needed, but for a secondary education, students have to walk an hour to get the bus. In the winter they need a canoe to cross the 300 metres which is under water. They leave the house at 5am, returning by 3pm having not eaten in that time. This year there are 58 primary school pupils, but no one is travelling to the secondary school in Regidor.

Drinking water has to be transported by hand or donkey for 1 1/2 kilometres.

The man bitten by 'Doguidoca' snake (who was very lucky to get the antidote in time, as that's a very poisonous snake) now has problems with his sight. He paid to see a specialist once, but can't afford to again.



Many things are difficult, but for the moment they have somewhere to farm.

Twenty years ago, when FARC controlled the area, the owner of the 500 ha farm next to the village abandoned it to flee the conflict. The first villagers to start farming his land asked for and were given permission.

Now more than fifty families depend on this land for survival. Mostly they have smallholdings of 5 ha, some with up to 10 ha. They grow palm trees for roofing, and staple foods such as corn, yucca and plantain.

I've heard the figure a few times, that there are 8 million people dying of hunger in Colombia. It seems difficult to believe in a country with so much fertile land, but this is a result of the displacements caused by the conflict, and the lack of food sovereignty. In El Piñal, while access to healthcare, education, drinking water or a decent road are a problem, I think we can assume that hunger is not so much.



But this village lives with a great sense of insecurity. Five years ago an Oil Palm company approached the owner. The community strongly asked him not to sell, and he did not.

He has not visited the area for twenty years, so most of the community do not know him. They had no idea if he would say 'no' again. They do know that losing that land would be the end of their village. Resulting in a future of displacement for those fifty families. Meaning the choice between urban or rural poverty, and with most families joining the 8 million hungry.

Meanwhile, San Cayatano is already some way down that road.

When Señor Numa, the owner of a 900 ha farm died 23 years ago, the villagers waited five years for his relatives to claim the land before they started to farm it. They were there for fourteen years: around forty families, again growing staple foods.

It is still unclear whether the men who arrived claiming to have bought the land from Señor Numa's sons actually ever did. (A lawyer from the EU-funded Program for Peace and Development is providing a ray of hope by investigating this.) What was clear were the threats behind the request for these families to leave the land. People were offered some money (although 2800 000 pesos (775 pounds) for 5 ha is not much) and were told that if they didn't leave the good way, they would be leaving the bad way. Given the paramilitary presence in the area, people took this pretty seriously. The last man left was taken by the AUC (paramilitary organisation linked to the state) to be killed, but managed to escape.

That was three years ago. 'Misery' was the word used to describe life for them since. Unemployment is especially uncomfortable when there are eight children to feed. One meal a day becomes normal. Hunger universal.

It is understood that the land was acquired for growing Oil Palm, though it is currently being used for cattle.

Other than their lack of land and their geographical proximity, these two villages have some other links. Six years ago, the father of Regidor's Mayor is alleged to have blocked a water inlet, to drain his own farm. This dried out both the shallow lake by El Piñal and the canal by San Cayatano. The members of both communities who had made a good living from fishing were no longer able to.

It's this same man, believed to have drug-trafficking and paramilitary links, who is allegedly behind the acquisition of Sr Numa's land, and who is thought to be trying to buy the land by El Piñal. The current owner may well be a nice man who does not want to leave his previous neighbours hungry, but a request to sell from someone believed to have ordered the killing of two business associates, may not be so easy to refuse.

The Smallholder Palm Growers of Villa Elvira

In a country where so many people have lost their land, the winners of a state lottery to divide up the airstrip formally owned by a drugs trafficker were pretty lucky. Two hundred had put their names forward back in 1991. Thirty nine people got 10 hectares each.

I met one of the unlucky ones. He had lost his land 20 years ago when he had to sell it as the conflict meant it was not safe to stay. Ever since he's hired himself and his machete out for manual labour. He said working for the palm companies is good work. The only difference between them and the smallholders is that he gets paid monthly rather than weekly.

It was one of the first interviews I'd done. Not having such a stock of questions up my sleeve, I simply asked "Anything else?" He told me that we're put on this earth to suffer, until the day God chooses to end it. Until then we suffer like the Lord suffered. We work to get our daily bread. And we suffer.

So, as I say, those that won the land are the lucky ones.

However, I worry how long this may be the case for the 22 smallholders who have chosen to plant Oil Palm in the last few years. (The Afro-Colombian community has asked that we don't call it 'African Palm' anymore, as Africa already has enough negative connotations.)

I spoke to a number of them. Many used to grow corn, but the price was so low that it didn't cover the costs. The land is on a floodplain, and some farmers had lost their harvests due to flooding.

So the promise of a crop with a higher commercial value drew them in.

For the first three years, while the palms are growing, they get paid 400 000 pesos (106 pounds) per month to cover the upkeep of the 10 hectares. It actually doesn't cover much. At least two people are needed every day for keeping the area weed free. (If you are reported for having livestock on the land, the payment stops.) If the workers are not family, they need to paid 40 000 pesos per day. If they are, they need feeding.

Some use herbicides. I asked how much they cost, and was worryingly told that the farmer didn't know. The company gave it on credit.

At the time, I got the impression that the monthly 400 000 was a payment from the company. Actually it will also need to be paid back when repayments start after 5 years.

Most farmers currently have a loan of around 25 million pesos (6600 pounds). I asked one if he was worried about losing his land. He wasn't. But others I am working with are not so calm and see it as a real danger. When their trees start bearing fruit, they will be at the mercy of global prices and the amount that their company San Lucas chooses to pass on to them.

It is not a company that has so far inspired much confidence. Three years ago they made an agreement with the local community to sort out the local road (which is impassible in the winter. Children struggle to school knee deep in mud and arrive 2 hours late according to the teacher), and to put in a drainage system to help against flooding. None of this has been done, and in fact the problem with flooding has been far worse as the drainage system from the company's own land directs more water onto the old airstrip, and another palm oil company at the other end has blocked where it used to drain away.

The palm trees which are under water for the winter do not grow as fast, and are unlikely to be as productive, if they manage to survive.

I was told that the meeting we were going to, called by the Corporación Ambiental (Environment Agency equivalent), was to address issues such as this with the Palm companies. It was very well attended. The EU-funded Program for Peace and Development paid expenses for the campesinos to attend. They generally sat at the back. At the front sat those representing local government, the palm companies, the Program for Peace and Development, and a few different state agencies such as the Public Defender's Office (Human Rights lawyers employed by the state) and the Personaría (Local ombudsman’s office, first port of call for complaints).

Instead of the Corporación encouraging the campesinos to inform us what the issues were, or tackling the points raised by the Public Defender, and then coming to some agreement involving some sort of action, there was much talk that didn't lead to anything concrete.

Mostly those at the front talked, and most of what was said had no relation to the problems the campesinos face. We did hear how brilliant one palm company has been in driving up environmental standards. We heard some local politics squabbles being aired. And we heard from one palm company how much common ground it believed it had with the EU Program. Obviously most campesinos were too intimidated to speak out. Those that did had good points that were promptly ignored. Disappointing.

Nuns in a riot

I met some very cool nuns. The bloke who’d set up the meeting for me had told me in advance that “son chevéres” (They're cool), and he was dead right.

There’s been a strike of palm oil workers happening in Puerto Wilches, and I was meeting with the nuns to hear about how they had been supporting the workers, and how I might be able to help.

They told me about the background to the strike. It started on January 30th by workers from the Monterey company. Monterey subcontracts the majority of its work to cooperatives. Which might sound like a good thing, but it really, really is not. It is done simply as a tactic to get over labour laws.

As Norma The Nun began to tell me about the workers’ conditions, my jaw started falling floorward. Seeing this, she commented how it had had the same effect on her.
Collecting palm oil seeds is not easy work. The men spend the day craning their necks, pulling bunches of seeds down from the trees. It's very hot. There are commonly spinal problems from looking up all day, and injuries from falling branches.

The job of injecting the trees with the pesticide monocrotophos (illegal in many countries) is often done with little protective gear. Last year 18 year old Emilio Sabas died after only two weeks at the job. He only had a flimsy face mask. No protective clothes or gloves. Blame of who should have been responsible for his gear bounced between the Monterey and his cooperative.
Given how most workers can hardly afford the food they need on their wages, extra clothes are not their priority. So they go home in the same clothes, hug their kids, have their clothes washed along with everyone else’s. And studies have shown levels of pesticide contamination in workers’ families.

The sorts of things the Monterey strikers were protesting against when they started, included how

- The many ways in which they get fined. For bunches with fewer than 8 branches, for bunches left in the trees, for bunches cut without leaves, for stems which are too long, and when bunches are too ripe and seeds fall out.

- Wages had not risen in five years

- Workers have to pay 100% of the transport costs of getting to the fields

- If they buy their tools from the factory shop (where they can get credit, which they need when they're paid late), they are 60% above market value.

- Workers have to pay for the transport of the seeds from the fields, and are fined for any damage to the carts, including wear and tear.

- The cooperatives are meant to pay 100% of the social security payments. Given that Monterey is often late paying the cooperatives, there are gaps in payment which leaves people with a big problem if they have an accident during one of the gaps. It’s risky work, so people do.

- Workers are fined for the seeds that fall loose on to the floor. Women collect them off the ground. They are paid, and the men are fined, according to their weight. That’s the bit that really made my jaw drop.

So the Monterey workers started the strike on January 30th. They were joined on February 13th by workers from many other companies. They set up a blockade on February 18th. Two groups of nuns were there, supporting two different sites, meeting up at 4am.

The nuns had gleaming eyes as they related the story. Riot cops arrived at 5.25am, threw in some tear gas, and there was a pitched battle til 8 or 9. The crowd grew from 300 to 5000 when the tear gas started. The police singled out people to beat up. They threw tear gas into houses with pregnant women and children in. One woman later miscarried. The nuns treated tear gas victims and told off lots of cops. People got wise to throwing water over tear gas canisters to neutralize them. The police then ran out of gas, were surrounded, and had to get rescued. They left the scene at 12pm.

The blockade lasted another week or so. There were some negotiation meetings, but the companies did not give an inch. Gutting. It’s common after agreements are reached for community leaders to be assassinated afterwards. I imagine they might be even more vulnerable when the power balance is such that they didn’t even win anything. Bit of a worry.

The mission is in question

Well, when we formulated the plan that I'd come here particularly to work on agrofuel related human rights abuses, it was so that I could feed into campaigning in the UK against the EU target of 2.5% of fuel from petrol pumps as biofuels from April this year.

When we formulated the plan, there seemed to be not such a widespread awareness of the problems biofuels were creating in the tropics, or the fact that, (especially where peat is being drained in Indonesia), they might well be contributing to climate change more than decreasing greenhouse gas emissions.

However, it seems that while I was on the boat on my way here, things have kind of kicked off in a way that may mean there's less of a need for me to be banging on about agrofuels to you all. Dr. Hartmut Michel, 1998 Nobel Prize winner for chemistry, has said they're quite a rubbish source of energy and there are far better things to focus on, like wind power. The Royal Society released a report saying that the UK's Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) does not necessarily encourage the use of the types of biofuels with the best greenhouse gas savings. And EU Environment Commissioner Dimas has said that given the social and environmental impacts of biofuels, maybe it's best we don't try too hard to meet the EU targets right now.

Still lots of work to be done, especially given that there are plenty of driving factors pushing agrofuels (eg fuel security & profit) other than whether Europeans think it's an environmentally good idea. And the EU targets are still in place. But perhaps as there are now so many other voices shouting loudly, mine is not as needed.

In any case, it maybe that people here would prefer me to be working on BP's involvement in human rights abuses where it's pumping oil out of the rainforest. So perhaps the title of my blog may become a bit irrelevant. We´ll see.