Colombian government and guerrilla delegates have announced an agreement on the question of land reform – an important step in the peace talks that began six months ago in Havana.
“This first document…is the ‘golden gate’ for the continuation of talks on the rest of the issues,” FARC negotiator Andrés París commented to IPS shortly after Sunday’s announcement.
“This is a firm step towards a final agreement to end the conflict,” he said, adding that the peace process “is being strengthened as the government’s spirit of change and reform grows stronger and as Colombians begin to see a future of peace in these talks, as well as changes that benefit them and improve their living conditions.”
A Latin American diplomat close to the talks told IPS that it was important that the positions of the government of conservative President Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) insurgents had come closer together on the question of rural development, and that the talks could now move forward on other issues on the agenda.
Land reform is the first item on the agenda for the peace talks aimed at putting an end to the conflict that began in 1964, when the FARC emerged on the scene.
The importance of the government and the FARC have finding common ground on issues of land reform cannot be overstated. When the civil war (now in its 49th year) began, land reform was at the core of FARC demands. Indeed, inequalities and a lack of land reform have been a major source of social unrest and political mobilization since at least the 1920s, and the FARC, one of the largest guerrilla groups of the civil war, had its roots in peasant activism and mobilization. That they and the Santos government seem to have come to some agreement is truly staggering. To be clear, that is not to say that peace is all but inevitable, that such an agreement can be fulfilled, or that either party cannot back out of the talks and of the peace process. Nonetheless, land reform is one of the centerpieces of the FARC’s goals, and no agreement on the issue of land reform would undo all other prospects for peace; that such an agreement has taken place on the biggest issue for the FARC and can now proceed to other matters is cause for real hope for an end to the conflict.
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