February 21, 2005

FENSUAGRO: Organic Class-Consciousness in Rural Colombia

by James J. Brittain

Encouraged by the historic counterinsurgency policies of the United States, the Colombian government and military has supported the implementation of a “draining the sea” political counterinsurgent policy within its pseudo-sovereign borders. As historically recognized, the rural populations of Colombia have systematically been the targets of structured class-based violence, state-induced displacement and paramilitary legitimization constructed to expand natural resource monopolization in the hands of private interests. Prior to and during la Violencia much of the violence realized was not solely against the growing urban populace, but was greatly aimed toward the peripheries. It is in this context that an organized formation of campesinos (peasants) arranged themselves in a manner that would ideologically and materially respond to, not only their immediate exploitive conditions of repression, but also create a long-term solution to prolong their defense of rational agriculture. Based on these roots, FENSUAGRO (Federación Nacional Sindical Unitaria Agropecuaria/ The National Federation of Agricultural Farming Unions) was created.

Today, FENSUAGRO is an internationally renowned campesino organization specifically constructed, led and organized by the rural inhabitants of Colombia. The organization’s historic lineage began in 1976 with FENSA (Federación Nacional Sindical Agropecuaria), a movement seeking to organize agrarian reform by way of a solid coalition of rural producers and indigenous peoples within the countryside of Colombia. In 1987, the CUT (Central Unitaria de Trabajadores/United Central Workers) helped to unify the urban-based proletariat in the major urban centers of the country and in conjunction, FENSA recreated itself into a larger and more widespread organization that represented an alternative model of worker cooperation within the rural regions of the country. As a result, a greater body of national workers, in unity of diversity and struggle, conjoined an urban (CUT) and rural (FENSUAGRO) ability to materially and substantially respond to specific ruling-class interests.

The fundamental task of FENSUAGRO is the promotion of a multi-faceted program that seeks coalescence of the Colombian campesino. The method in which the union does this is through an organic unification of a substantial number of participating rural unions, associations and bucolic mobilizations. In such solidarity, the organization fights for a real agrarian reform; defends rural wage laborers; promotes the subjective and objective voice of women, youth and indigenous rural populations; seeks to decentralize the monopolization of large-landownership; and pursues a political solution to the civil war, all in the pursuit of a more just and peaceful Colombia.

One of the instruments in which FENSUAGRO is demonstrating their strategy is through the creation of an alternative experimental farm and educational center in the department of Cundinamarca. Puerto Brasil, located in the municipality of Viotá, is a center that has educated numerous peasants through and by peasant processes and guidance. It has been created through the consolidated efforts of thousands of members of the organization seeking to provide campesinos with credit, education and sustainable practices. The center teaches and implements organic-based farming techniques, the protection and communal sharing of indigenous seeds, environmental resource alteration and sustainability, courses in animal husbandry, diversification of presently existing and future alternative crops, the recovery of food production sovereignty, and the strengthening of the campesino economy as an alternative to neoliberal economic policy.

Since 1995, FENSUAGRO has also been the principal organizers of—or a primary participant in—innumerable actions of protest and national, regional and local mobilizations against the unjust exploits of large landowners, state-induced violence, and fascistic activities against the rural population. FENSUAGRO is now the largest internal rural labor organization within Colombia with representation in 22 of the country’s 32 departments with a consolidation of 37 unions, 7 associations and a membership of over 80,000 campesinos. The organization represents the consequential body of small and medium sized farmers, workers within the agricultural industry (flowers, banana workers, coffee and sugar-cane harvesters, and so on) and other members of the rural populace. However, such a constructive and class-conscious membership, which supports the decentralization of minority power, causes a tremendous threat to the existing political and economic interests of the ruling political elite and the large landowners throughout the country. All these characteristics have led to FENSUAGRO becoming one of the most persecuted social movements/organizations within Colombia.

In the past two years FENSUAGRO, while largely absent from the lens of the corporate-controlled mainstream media, has had numerous members and leaders abducted, detained, arrested and murdered by specific right-wing groups. State and paramilitary forces have murdered over 500 FENSUAGRO members since 1978. Fanime Reyes (general secretary), Rudy Robles, Ney Medrano (a regional human rights director) and Eliecer Flores (a regional treasurer) represent a small example of those detained, threatened and interrogated by the state, while disappearances like Victor Manuel Jimenez Fruto’s have become a monthly reality for members in specific regions. Paramilitary forces have also murdered Pedro Jaime Mosquera (vice-president of FENSUAGRO), Alberto Marquez and Nelson Castiblanco Franco (Marquez’s bodyguard). Gruesomely, Cesar Augusto Fonseca, Jose Rafael Fonseca Cassiani and Ramon Fonseca Cassiani lost their lives through mutilation by chainsaws.

Nevertheless, FENSUAGRO, in the face of extreme violence, intimidation and repression, continues to increase its membership domestically and support globally. It has been involved in getting its voice heard throughout the international sphere generating tremendous support in several countries within the European Union and Canada. In 2004, representatives from their FENSUAGRO’s National Human Rights division went to Canada to discuss the contextual realities and the need for Colombians to struggle for self-determination and social justice.

During the Canadian tour, Liliany Obando (national director of Human Rights for FENSUAGRO, film maker, and academic) visited numerous universities, provincial and national unions and procured tremendous support for the movements’ cause. Since the tour, several Canadian unions have united in solidarity with the organization. The Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF) and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW – Canada) have become two of the most important international supporters for the Colombian organization supplying tremendous amounts of sociopolitical and economic support. Such solidarity is greatly needed because increasing paramilitary attacks have hindered the organization in several avenues.

Since the construction and premiere of the experimental farming and educational center in Cundinamarca, paramilitaries and state military combatants have become a formidable reactionary force that have attacked and materially threatened the alternative peaceful prototype. Several months ago, paramilitaries constructed a roadblock to psychologically threaten supporters entering into Puerto Brasil and outright denied movement into the area. This was coupled by numerous invasions of the center by state forces that physically destroyed sections of the center’s infrastructure.

Supporters inside the community have also been detained or disappeared with over two dozen being killed. All this has increased the need for monetary and sociopolitical solidarity from unionists throughout the global labor movement, like that being offered by the OSSTF and UFCW, so that the center can be repaired and available again for the most exploited people within Colombia, the campesino, to establish their emancipation.

Even though the centre has been interrupted, the struggle continues and FENSUAGRO remains the primary force within rural Colombia organizing class struggle into a formidable instrument. It is to achieve this reality that continued support is needed and sought.

For further information about FENSUAGRO, please contact James J. Brittain at: james.brittain@unb.ca.

James J. Brittain is a Ph.D. candidate and Lecturer at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. His research interests center on revolutionary and social movements throughout Latin America, the relevance of classical Marxism within contemporary geopolitics, and alternative forms of international development and social change.

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