The unequal distribution of land in Colombia is the root cause of that nation’s violent history. Multiple policy initiatives spanning decades have failed to resolve the problem. The first agrarian reform law was promulgated in 1936, but it only motivated landowners to protect their assets by converting tenant farmers into contract labour. A backlash to land reform eventually led to a civil war between 1948 and 1958 when the two major political parties battled for power during a period referred to as La Violencia. Subsequently, a coalition government pursued a renewed effort at agrarian reform with the creation of the Instituto Colombiano de la Reforma Agraria (INCORA) in 1961. This initiative established clear criteria for the expropriation of land and instituted mechanisms to indemnify landowners. As in other countries, it had the support of the Alliance for Progress and promoted colonization programmes within the Amazon. This effort also failed and contributed to the formation of the guerilla armies and decades of violent conflict. A third agrarian reform in 1994 was based on a market-based approach for redistributing land by providing subsidies so peasant farmers could purchase land from large estates. This followed the precepts of the Constitutional reform of 1991 and coincided with the legal decrees in 1995 that recognized the rights of Indigenous and traditional people. INCORA was replaced in 2003 by Instituto Nacional de Desarrollo Rural y Reforma Agraria (INDECORA), which diversified its mission by sponsoring the sustainable development of campesino, Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities. These initiatives also…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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