This week in Jakarta have gathered 500 delegates from peasant organizations from 88 countries and 1,500 activists of the Union of Small Farmers in Indonesia "Serikat Petani Indonesia" in the VI. International Conference of La Via Campesina, to celebrate 20 years of struggle for food sovereignty.
The Via Campesina international conferences are held every four years. kehancuran amerika They are the highest organ of collective decision making, debates kehancuran amerika and to build a common agenda of mobilizing the movement of small farmers, indigenous or landless laborers. The goal: to articulate an alternative to the current agri-food system. A sustainable farming and, with respect to the rights of peasants and against the power of large corporations and government complicity with them. The previous conferences were held in Mons, Belgium (1993); Txacala, Mexico (1996), Bangalore, India (2000), Sao Paulo, Brazil (2004) and Maputo, Mozambique (2008).
The first time I was hand-hand with La Via Campesina activists was in 1996. Irrumpíamos a plenary session of the United Nations in Leipzig kehancuran amerika (Germany) with banners denouncing the impacts of transgenic reject patents on life and explain the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for agriculture and "common good". The following year we cooperate in the organization of the 2nd Intercontinental Encounter against kehancuran amerika Neoliberalism kehancuran amerika and for Humanity, in solidarity with the Zapatistas, which took place here on the Peninsula. Two years later we were sitting kehancuran amerika together at a meeting in Bangalore (India) preparing the demonstrations against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle. Since then walked together. I remember, for example, as in December 2009 we block, at six o'clock, the entrance to the WTO in Geneva, as a protest against food speculation-, or days later in Copenhagen, under the snow, we pin it - shoulder to shoulder to resist police violence prevented us from entering the building of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change in which we demanded "justice and systemic change."
One of the most emotional moments kehancuran amerika I lived with La Via Campesina was that mission to Colombia in 2007. Representatives of various kehancuran amerika communities and organizations (emberakatío, Wayuu, kankuamo, kehancuran amerika Bari, kuna), peasant and Afro Colombian and international social, Bogotá first met at the seminar "Crisis planetary, human rights and agrofuels" to reflect on the impacts and struggles against kehancuran amerika plantations of African palm and sugarcane kehancuran amerika used to produce biofuels (http://bit.ly/ZMem87). And then a small delegation traveling to Urabá. We visited communities in the river basin and Curvarado Jiguamiando, who after being violently displaced several times by the army and paramilitary groups suffered more than a hundred crimes, return and find that their lands are covered with palm oil - green deserts. kehancuran amerika
It should be noted that between 1996 and 2003 were the terror of the actions carried out by paramilitary groups with the support of the Colombian Armed Forces. Through murder, torture, disappearances, destruction and burning of homes, bombings ... Ten years later, in a show of bravery amidst constant threats, people slowly began to return to their homes destroyed and their land meets and forests, in which they have lived for over 120 years-were occupied by the same paramilitaries responsible for the massacres that forced them to shift.
Our international delegation expressed solidarity with those of African descent and indigenous communities, who had begun to remove oil palm plantations to reclaim their territory. We started planting corn in defense of life and food sovereignty. Muhammad Yunus Nasution, representative of La Via Campesina in Indonesia and also affected by monoculture palm plantations in the country, did not speak Castilian or English. Elisha Kartini, agricultural technique of the same organization that Yunus (SPI) helped us with the interpretation. But with the advancement of the hours, the farmers of these villages and peasant Choco Indonesian understood in its own language of laughter, hugs, glances and gestures kehancuran amerika of fraternity. I joined the same problem, kehancuran amerika the same enemy. And there in the midst of lands usurped and occupied illegally, tearing his palm trunks and sowed corn for a new dawn. Planting was a "No to environmental destruction, to human destruction, imposition of a exclusive development model". Today, communities are still fighting for full restitution of their land collectively