By Mayra Moreno, October 2007

Looking Back: In 1997 and 1998, 38 families were forced to leave the vereda (settlement) of Promisión, which is a three to four hour walk from the municipality of Angelópolis in the southeast part of Antioquia Province. These families share an experience with the millions of Colombians who have been forced to displace due to the violence carried out by illegal armed groups across the country. In this case, the armed entities are said to have been paramilitaries, who were systematically causing fear in the population, depopulating the region and gaining control of what was believed to have been guerrilla territory. The civilian population faced death threats and was ordered to evacuate their homes with no hope of ever returning. Without any form of protection from the State or any means to safely demand their right to live in peace, the 38 families painfully left behind their property and the majority of their belongings. What had been their home for years - the place they had invested so much work in order to have profitable coffee trees, sugarcane crops, and fish tanks - suddenly was snatched from them.

ACA has released a new video clip on YouTube entitled Memories against Silence and Impunity: No More State-Sponsored Crimes.

"Land and Life" is ACA's quarterly newsletter which analyzes current conditions in Colombia's agrarian struggles.

Edition #2, October 2006: Food Sovereignty, Confronting the Voraciousness of Capital

With the desire to continue generating spaces of reflection on different subjects that are part of the challenges that the agrarian sector faces in our country, we present this bulletin, in which we make an analysis of the significance of food sovereignty, a subject that generates so much controversy at the moment.

"Land and Life" is ACA's quarterly newsletter which analyzes current conditions in Colombia's agrarian struggles. Translated by FOR staff

Edition #2: May, 2006
THE CAMPESINOS AND OTHER VICTIMS OF THE FREE TRADE AGREEMENT

The lies the Colombian Government uses to sell us the FTA

In order to speak publicly about the theme of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA), the Uribe administration used its best strategy to say one thing and to do another. All the time they assured the public that they would not sign the agreements if they did not obtain a negotiation favourable to all sectors of our economy, but in the end, they have signed the FTA almost under the same terms that were proposed by the North American negotiators, which has now paved the way for loss, not only for companies but for entire sectors of the national economy.

"Land and Life" is ACA's quarterly newsletter which analyzes current conditions in Colombia's agrarian struggles.

Edition #1, February 2006: "The Illusions and Realities of the Confrontation between Indigenous and Campesino Communities"

A publication of the Asociación Campesina de Antioquia – Edition 1- February 2006

In the final months of 2005 the indigenous communities of the North of Cauca, led by the CRIC – the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca- carried out an aggressive campaign of land seizures in which their prime objective was to demand that the State follow through on a series of political agreements which have accumulated in the last 80 years and which successive governments, during their time in power, have systematically failed to carry out. This initiative of the indigenous communities also aimed to put back in the public arena the debate about agrarian reform.