= territorialized associations of peasants seeking to create alternative forms of agricultural production, non-alienated labour and relations to nature; excerpted from a case study on "Territorio campesino Agroalimentario del Macizo del norte de Nariño y sur del Cauca"

Source

(Un)making in sustainability transformation beyond capitalism. By Giuseppe Feola , Olga Vincent, and Danika Moore. Global Environmental Change. Volume 69, July 2021, 102290 [1]

Context

By Giuseppe Feola , Olga Vincent, and Danika Moore:

Peasant struggles and the emergence of re-constitutive processes

"Territorios campesinos agroalimentarios (TCA) have emerged as territorialized associations of peasants seeking to create alternative forms of agricultural production, non-alienated labour and relations to nature. This form of association has taken shape within recent peasant, indigenous and afro-descendant joint mobilizations that struggle against marginalization, lack of access to land, and the degradation of vital ecosystems caused by the expansion of agro-industrial, extractive industries and infrastructural megaprojects. Peasant, indigenous and afro-descendant organizations alike see these processes as stemming from a capitalist neoliberal development model which is based on the pillars of extractivism and displacement, as reflected in the Colombian Government’s quadrennial Plan Nacional de Desarrollo (National Development Plan) (Yie Garzón, 2017, Daza, 2019). These mobilizations have not only contested social exclusion and revendicated political rights and the redistribution of resources but also activated ‘re-constitutive processes’ (Jiménez Martín et al., 2017; also see Cruz, 2014), i.e. processes of political creativity and social bottom-up prefiguration that lead to the construction of a societal project that builds on popular democracy, recognizes the multiplicity of territorial governance forms, constructs a social, solidary and diverse economic model, [and] permits to overcome the capital-nature contradiction, among other elements that express a new worldview (Jiménez Martín et al., 2017:316, authors’ translation).

Launched in 2013, the Cumbre Agraria, Campesina, Etnica y Popular (Agrarian, Peasant, Ethnic and Popular Summit) is one of many interconnected and nested social movement platforms such as the Coordinator Nacional Agrario (CNA, founded in 1995) and the Congreso de los Pueblos (founded in 2010), which bring together social movements at the national level in participatory processes, marches, assemblies and deliberative moments.

As one of the outcomes of these mobilizations, the idea of forming TCAs emerged after the fourth CNA Assembly in 2013 and informed initial attempts to establish them nation-wide. Eager to learn about the experiences of TCA construction, CNA met again for a fifth assembly in February of 2016. The regions of Cauca and Nariño appeared to be more successful than others, and soon became a blueprint for other territories to follow. Encouraged by the positive feedback from the assembly, the peasants of Nariño and Cauca continued their work; local communities from 15 municipalities, encompassing three community meetings in each municipality, various local mayors, and more than 3,000 peasants from the region actively participated in the collective discussion and elaboration of the declaration of TCA (Iguarán, 2018). The first TCA, Territorio Campesino Agroalimentario del Macizo del norte de Nariño y sur del Cauca was officially declared on 25 November 2016.

Local circumstances

The construction of TCA Nariño and Cauca was facilitated by a number of place- and time-specific circumstances. First, a pre-existing strong social fabric among peasant communities and organizations, including the Comité de integración del macizo colombiano, had been reinforced by collaboration during the national agrarian strike in 2013 (see Salcedo et al., 2013, Cruz, 2014; interview, 18.03.19). Furthermore, peasants in Nariño and Cauca could rely on the traditional collective organization of the minga1. In December of 2015, the first Minga por la Soberania y Armonización was held in Nariño with approximately 600 participants. Four more mingas followed, including one in January with more than 1,200 participants. It was at one such minga that mayors promised to reject extractive megaprojects and to support the formation of TCA Nariño and Cauca. The aims of other mingas were to establish the foundational ideas of the Plan de Vida Digna, Agua y Dignidad (more on this below) and construct autonomous governance institutions (Yie Garzón, 2017).

Second, local peasant communities and organizations also shared a history of struggle against environmental injustices caused by the capitalist development model. When in 2011 the Canadian company Gran Colombia Gold launched the so-called Mazamorras project, which included plans for exploration and extraction of gold over an area of nearly six thousand hectares, peasant communities mobilized to collectively oppose what they considered an intrusion in their territory. Feeling threatened in the absence of the right of prior consultation, many felt they were being denied a say in the exploitation of the local ecosystem on which their livelihoods depended. At the time of the events, the Colombian state granted the right of prior consultation (consulta previa) to indigenous and afro-Colombian but not peasant communities. The mobilization was met by death threats to peasant leaders and an escalation of social mobilization, which culminated in the occupation of two of Gran Colombia Gold’s encampments. The local authorities did not initially take a position on the issue; however, the local mayors eventually issued an open letter that asserted their opposition to mining operations in their municipalities based on the grounds that the lands have traditionally been used for agriculture. The strong opposition of local communities and administrations forced Gran Colombia Gold to cease exploration in October 2011 (Muñoz, 2017).

Third, local peasant communities share a deep-rooted cultural identity defined in relation to territory (interview, 18.03.19). Due to this strong connection between land and identity, the idea of a territorio campesino (peasant territory), although as yet unformalized, was an old aspiration of local peasants (interview, 24.03.19; Muñoz, 2017). The threat of mining in the region made those cultural connections explicit in collective discussions.

Finally, fourth, the construction of TCA Nariño and Cauca was facilitated by the history of direct action at community level to respond to the national government’s neglect in this region. While the state has historically been unable to consistently provide adequate basic social, health and educational services, personal security and rule of law, infrastructure, and technical support to the local communities, peasants have long adopted what Muñoz (2017) has called de facto actions: local peasant communities autonomously solving concrete issues through the ‘sovereign decision of the campesinos and campesinas’ (Grupo Kavilando, 2017), as endowed with ‘the legitimacy that is entitled by being the people who have historically lived in this territory’ (interview, 24.03.19). Nevertheless, de facto political action is not merely a ‘fallback’ option when de jure pathways are absent but rather a conscientious parallel strategy. Official TCA documents insist that ‘TCAs will be constructed de facto by the communities that inhabit them and their foundation will be found in the legitimacy and strength of its organizational expressions’ (Coordinador Nacional Agrario (CNA), 2015: 17). The grassroots approach and idea of ‘working with the impossible’ are critical characteristics of de facto political action. For TCA leaders, thinking about and discussing ‘the impossible’ constructively expands the limits of the possible, thereby motivating them to conceive of solutions beyond the limits of current legislation (Muñoz, personal communication, 15.03.19). Decisions on de facto actions were legitimized through hundreds of regular community meetings leading up to the declaration of the TCA Nariño and Cauca.

Sustainability transformation beyond capitalism in Territorio campesino Agroalimentario

TCAs are simultaneously a collective vision for an alternative future, a physical geographic area, and a political tool for institutionalization. They are distinguished from other territorial figures such as zonas de reserva campesina (peasant reserve areas) by the participation of campesinos (peasants) as autonomous agents capable of determining in their own terms how the territory and community will develop (Muñoz, 2017).

A TCA is also a discursive space where the peasantry can put forward their visions for a just and dignified future and assert a proud identity that stands against alienation:

- The construction of territories connects us directly to the culture of those who inhabit them and this implies that we are dealing with history, socially constructed social relations, with a transformed landscape, with struggles that have already started. To recognize ourselves as peasant men and women is fundamental for the appropriation [of our identity], for our [cultural] differentiation, for making our words express what we are and what we feel (Coordinador Nacional Agrario (CNA), 2017, authors’ translation).

The physical area of a TCA is demarcated by common agreement of the campesino communities that inhabit it and have decided to unite and self-organize. A ground rule for this demarcation is that the majority population must be campesino and it cannot overlap with land already established under a different territorial arrangement, such as resguardos (reservations, in indigenous communities) or consejos comunitarios (community councils, in afro-descendant communities). Furthermore, the TCA’s role as a political tool is fulfilled by translating the collective norms, values and visions of the peasantry into concrete institutions to give it legitimacy and power and prefigure an alternative development pathway.

Based on four fundamental principles, namely autonomy, coexistence, participation and profound respect for life and nature (see electronic supplementary material), the construction of peasant territoriality (territorialidad campesina) encapsulates the essence of the sustainability transformation pursued by TCAs. Through the construction of territory, a TCA constitutes novel, inclusive and dignifying social and political relations as well as a deeply felt human-nature connection: We are the water from the mountains, the water from the mountains is in our bodies, because we, our grandparents, great-grandparents, we all have this water and the minerals it contains in our body. We are the land because we eat the products and minerals that the land gives; they are in our bodies […] The relationship that exists between us as campesinos, it is not relationship of use, of utilization of land to produce, instead it is a much stronger connection and it is that which we are defending and have to continue defending (Daza, 2017, authors’ translation).

One of the fundamental motivations behind TCAs is the defence of peasant identity, culture and ways of life, of peasant men and women’s bodies, and of ecosystems and the commons from capitalist appropriation and exploitation. Nevertheless, TCAs cannot be reduced to a mere resistance movement or a backward-looking defence of a putatively primordial peasant culture. TCAs entail the construction of peasant territoriality in forms that have never before existed: a forward-looking constitution of human–human and human-nature relations in ways that grow from the roots of traditional culture but significantly move beyond them as well as beyond capitalist modernity to the extent to which elements of both traditional culture and capitalist modernity are incompatible with the desired vision of a sustainable future.

The construction of territory in TCA entails an ecological and social re-embedding of economic practices in ways that improve the wellbeing of the local population and ensure ecological sustainability. The notion of economia propia is a pivotal axis of the TCA sustainability transformation2; it is an economic alternative to capitalist development that responds to the ‘potentials, necessities, and values of the campesinado and to the life that surrounds it’ (TCA, 2016a). The Plan de Vida Digna (discussed below) lays the foundations of economia propia as a set of situated economic relations that function on the principle of sufficiency, which entails a guarantee of forms of production and exchange that are just, pursue food sovereignty, and the protection of the environment and human relations (TCA, 2016a, Yie Garzón, 2017). Strategies of economia propria include crop diversification to increase community resilience and self-sufficiency, prioritization of subsistence production with any surpluses going first to the local market before entering national or international markets, and public ownership of common goods such as water (La Direkta, 2014). This model opposes capitalist development; it challenges, among others, the understanding of efficiency (productivity), self-interest, violence domination and homogeneity as an organizing principle of agricultural production and human and non-human life (Coordinador Nacional Agrario (CNA), 2017, Cardona-López, 2020)."

(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378021000698)

Characteristics

The construction of peasant territoriality

The construction of peasant territoriality, including an economia propia, has proceeded through the creation (making) of new institutions, namely autonomous governance institutions, the Guardia Campesina (peasant guard), knowledge commons institutions, and the Plan de Vida Digna (Fig. 1). We discuss them in turn.

Autonomous governance institutions

The political system within TCA Nariño and Cauca, referred to as the gobierno campesino (peasant government), is decentralized and constructed from the bottom-up with the idea ‘that the communities start from the local to create processes of resistance, of organization, of self-governance, towards a conformation of a popular resistance in all of the nation that can counteract the power of the imperial regime.’ (TCA, 2016b). The gobierno campesino is meant to be inclusive and representative, with authority and legitimacy stemming from the territory. The gobierno campesino does not aim to replace but rather to work in parallel and in collaboration with state government.

The role of elected members of the gobierno campesino is mandatar, to mandate, which means to reach collective agreements and transform them into norms while guaranteeing that they express the values, interests, and needs of the people living in the territory. The mandate is the primary tool used to legitimize collective action and serves a mechanism to ensure that ‘all of the activities that we are doing have to be talked about and converted into an instrument that will guide our declaration of rights, our proposals, our projects’ (Daza, 2019).

The Junta de Gobierno Campesino is the political body of the gobierno campesino and is entrusted with leading the process of constructing and managing the territory into the future (TCA, 2016b) (see electronic supplementary material). The Junta’s representatives are elected in municipal meetings to ensure representation from all regions. Each municipality must elect three people, ideally a woman, a man, and a member of the youth in order to guarantee inclusiveness and diversity (TCA, 2016a).

Guardia Campesina

The Guardia Campesina (peasant guard), is an unarmed group of people who are elected in the number of three per municipality and is subordinate to the Junta de Gobierno (TCA, 2016c). Its members are required to participate in a special training and establish a communication system to spread alerts quickly throughout the territory (TCA, 2016b). In case of a threat (e.g. intrusion of mining companies), the Guardia Campesina informs everybody in the territory to facilitate and lead a mass mobilization: We, the campesinos, through our way of living and farming, have historically carried out the role of ‘guardians of life’. Today the territories which we inhabit are subjected to multiple threats, among which is mining. Because of this, it is necessary to form a Guardia Campesina which can ensure the protection of both the territory and its people. (TCA, 2016c).

Institutions of knowledge commons

Peasants participate in distributed knowledge production and circulation, such as the campesino-a-campesino (peasant-to-peasant) model, which is centred around the idea of a distributed network of municipal agrarian committees united through a common agrarian agenda (Daza, 2017). Relevant knowledge is spread through personal communication, schools, conferences, and community meetings. This method has empowered peasant communities to construct their own land ordinances and has made it possible to activate collective participatory processes around the Plan de Vida Digna (Forero, 2018).

Plan de Vida Digna

Emerging from the experiences of some indigenous, afro-descendant and peasant communities from the 1980 s, the Plan de Vida Digna (also Plan de Vida Comunitario or Plan de Vida Digna, Agua y Dignidad) is a form of participatory community-led planning that aims at conducting collective processes of constructing visions of possible futures and empowering communities to inhabit, govern, make decisions, and legislate over their territory, ways of living, economy, and culture (Coordinador Nacional Agrario (CNA), 2015). Plan de Vida Digna is informed by principles of solidarity, justice, dignity, a holistic view of human and non-human life, collective participation, autonomy, and sovereignty (Coordinador Nacional Agrario (CNA), 2015).

The Plan de Vida Digna stands in contrast to capitalist development because we want life, we want agriculture, we want alimentación, we want vital goods like water. Neoliberalism does not desire these things, it only wants profits, to extract minerals for export, while we, on the contrary, defend life. Our Plan de Vida Digna is a form of countering the neoliberal model (Iguarán, 2018).

Furthermore, in contrast with the National Development Plans of the national government, which assume a four-year timeframe, the Plan de Vida Digna assumes a long timeframe ranging from twenty to thirty years. This temporal dimension of the Plan de Vida Digna is a key form of opposition to the ‘short term mentality of capitalist accumulation as a criterion for development’ (Iguarán, 2018).

Like other institutions for autonomous governance in TCA Nariño and Cauca, the Plan de Vida Digna responds to calls for advancing ‘a territoriality free of patriarchy’ (interview, 24.03.19). This is in contrast to the machoistic and patriarchal culture remains widespread in rural Colombia. The fact that women still have to demand basic rights—‘rights to be, to know, to learn, to speak, to decide’ (interview, 24.03.19)—is understood as a serious problem in TCA Nariño and Cauca and is therefore as much an object of transformation as capitalist development.

In summary

In summary, autonomous governance institutions, the Guardia Campesina, knowledge commons institutions and the Plan de Vida Digna are foundational institutions that prefigure and to an extent already realize the construction of an autonomous society, including an economia propia. TCA Nariño and Cauca is set against-and-beyond even while still a part of and therefore inevitably within a capitalist society. However, this construction is made possible by the unmaking of the socially and ecologically destructive presence of capitalism as embodied in the extractive industries and agribusiness (Fig. 1; Table 2). TCA Nariño and Cauca’s vision and practice of autonomous society is founded on agroecological agriculture that is ‘kind to the ecosystem, that produces produce free of chemicals, that takes care of people, that takes care of the water and the environment’, which is supplemented by plans to reforest and collectively manage water resources (interview, 24.03.19)"