Anzorc: more than 20 years fighting for peasant dignity

By: Simón Uprimny*

A luminous hopeful green colored the end of 2022 for the Colombian peasantry. On December 30, the National Land Agency (ANT) approved the creation of the peasant reserve zones (ZRC) of Sumapaz (Cundinamarca), Losada-Guayabero, and Güejar-Cafre (both in Meta). Just a few days earlier, another had been approved in La Tuna (Cauca). With these, there are now twelve ZRCs in Colombian territory.

The history of the ZRCs spans almost three eventful decades. In 1994, after years of struggle by the peasant movement, Law 160 created this territorial planning mechanism, which defines a geographic area—usually located on vacant lands, though not necessarily—where a peasant community develops a sustainable development plan to decide how the land will be used. For Ana Jimena Bautista, land inspector at the ANT, this aspect is key, as “the plan is built from the bottom up: it is created by the community and then discussed with state institutions.”

Unlike Indigenous reservations or Afro-Colombian collective territories, ZRCs are not collective land titles—the landowners are the peasant families themselves. However, even though private property exists, peasants living within a ZRC must agree on the management of the territory as a community through the sustainable development plan. There are also legal limits on the maximum amount of land an owner can possess (which vary depending on the region and the soil quality where the ZRC is located), preventing land concentration. For all these reasons, Bautista describes ZRCs as “an invitation from peasants to the State to be present. These are territories where peasant rights flourish.”

In 2001, during one of the most turbulent moments in recent Colombian history, peasant initiatives from different regions came together to found the National Association of Peasant Reserve Zones (Anzorc) with the aim of defending the seven ZRCs that existed at the time and promoting the creation of more. For Anzorc, ZRCs are the most important legal achievement in the history of the peasantry—a claim that seems reasonable, considering that, despite all their benefits, the 1991 Constitution did not recognize the peasantry as a special rights-bearing group, as it did for Indigenous and Afro-Colombian populations.

For Elda Yaneth Martínez, current president of Anzorc, “the ZRCs give us peasants the ability to reflect on who we are, to work on the realities we know because we are the ones who live in and know the territories. But they are also a way to propose new ideas, because peasants are not interested in staying stuck in the discourse of shortages and inequalities—we want to find truly achievable alternatives for change.” In the Cabrera ZRC (Cundinamarca), for example, peasants organized to produce organic coffee, and in the Cimitarra River Valley ZRC, buffalo meat. These products are later exported to cities, which, in addition to supporting the peasant economy, receive healthy food produced in an environmentally responsible way.

Ultimately, ZRCs allow peasants to decide how to live. The peasant demand is not only for land but for territoriality: peasants seek not just more land, but the right to live on that land according to their traditions and cultural practices. This is only fair considering the history of bloodshed and dispossession they have endured—not only because the peasantry has been the first collective victim of the armed conflict (according to the report War Against the Peasantry, between 1958 and 2018 more than 58% of victims of socio-political violence were peasants), but also because Colombia is one of the most unequal countries in the world in terms of land distribution: according to Oxfam, the largest 1% of farms hold 81% of the land.

ZRCs are therefore highly beneficial for Colombian democracy: they protect the environment, prevent land grabbing, promote the peasant economy, and curb the expansion of the agricultural frontier. In the courageous defense of the ZRCs lies the importance of Anzorc, an association that stands out from others because it is an “umbrella” or second-level organization that brings together 79 active peasant organizations from 22 departments of the country. This is why diversity reigns within it—contrary to what many city dwellers believe, the peasantry is not a homogeneous whole. Within Anzorc, there is space for discussion and dissent. And in this, Martínez reflects, lies its strength: “Unity but not uniformity—that is one of our mottos.”

Thanks to that unity, they have been able to resist. The path for Anzorc has been thorny. Less than a year after its founding, in 2002, it was forced into a period of inactivity because under Álvaro Uribe’s government it was heavily stigmatized as being allied with the FARC. The former president even labeled ZRCs as “independent republics” and “terrorism strongholds.” But Anzorc, with the patience and tenacity characteristic of peasants, endured and, in October 2010, was reactivated during Juan Manuel Santos’s term. Then, with the 2013 National Agrarian Strike and the peace process—in which Anzorc pushed to bring ZRCs back into the national discussion—the organization regained significant visibility.

Later, the rise of Iván Duque to power brought a halt to peace efforts and agrarian policies. In Bautista’s words, during the past government “there was no political will to advance the creation of new ZRCs.”

Anzorc and other peasant organizations, supported by Dejusticia, were then forced to file a tutela (constitutional claim) for the approval of three of the four ZRCs decreed at the end of 2022, as the requirements for them had been met years earlier but had been ignored by the ANT.

Now, the landscape has changed: the establishment of these new ZRCs in the first months of Petro’s government brings hope to the peasantry. The context looks favorable for trying to harness the full potential of the figure—something that, according to Bautista, is just beginning: so far, the struggle has focused on the declaration of the ZRCs, but real improvement in the living conditions of peasants within them has yet to be achieved. Anzorc, meanwhile, will not relent in its mission. After all, as Martínez says: “ZRCs are a recognition of peasant knowledge, a form of territorial planning designed by the peasantry for the peasantry.” That is the green reality.

(*) Independent journalist and contributor to Dejusticia (simonuprimny@gmail.com).

(**) This article is part of the #TejidoVivo special, the product of a journalistic alliance between the research center Dejusticia and El Espectador.