Document Type: Briefs

Deyis Carmona Tejeda is not an actress. She acted for the first time when she was 43, inspired by displaced women who also suffered the ravages of war.

Behind the microphones, she had to let go of her own story for a moment in order to get into “Somebody Else’s Body”—as the play is called—and give life to Juana, the protagonist of a real-life story that recounts how she was displaced from her land by violent groups, how her son disappeared and was murdered, and how she lived under constant threat in addition to suffering abuse by her husband.

The play is one of the 12 radio dramas from the series Land Rights: Stories Made by Women for Women, directed by Colombian actor Daniel Rocha. The radio dramas are meant to disseminate information about land-related services available to women and victims of the conflict. The strategy is part of a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) program that has been working with the Colombian government since 2014, especially with the entities involved with land administration, like the Superintendence of Notary and Registry, the National Land Agency, and the Land Restitution Unit.

Women and War

Through female voices, these radio dramas guide other women in Colombia on how to formalize their property, file land restitution claims, and acquire funding and technical assistance for agricultural projects.

More than 70 women—including farmers, Afro-descendants, and members of indigenous communities—from 18 municipalities in Cesar, Sucre, Bolívar, Cauca, Meta, and Tolima were part of creating the scripts and storylines. The stories have been broadcast on 36 radio stations in these departments.

“We received training, and our work with USAID strengthened those skills. We think this is important because those same land institutions are being strengthened through this program, and by working with us, the program scored a goal by working with the victims in rural areas,” noted Deyis.

Many of the women who participated in the radio series have been or are currently involved in the land restitution process. Since their release, the radio dramas have reached more than six million listeners in 96 municipalities. In addition to airing on radio stations, the dramas have been disseminated via CD.

Listen to a radio theater show here: https://soundcloud.com/usaidlrdp

War in the Flesh

The drama starring Deyis is not much different from her real-life story. In 1996, when she was just 18 years old, she fled her home in rural El Copey to urban Valledupar out of fear for her life. She had begun to stand out as a leader in the community, and that was dangerous. Deyis returned, but was once again displaced in 2000 by threats from the paramilitaries. In 1998, her mother was kidnapped by guerrillas, and their house in El Copey was burned down.

For 15 years, she lived in Valledupar, where she managed to finish a technical course to become a clerk. “The only good thing about it was that I was able to train and get a proper education,” she said.

Despite personal progress, her experiences with violence and intimidation continued. In 2000, she returned to her plot and found that other family members had also been displaced, including her younger sister, who subsequently disappeared at the hands of paramilitaries. Deyis later learned that her sister’s remains had been buried in a mass grave along with those of 21 others.

“From the moment that she disappeared, I made a point of seeing her disappearance as something that would give rise to constructive behavior and not just painful memories,” says Deyis.

Supporting Other Victims

Displaced women face disproportionate difficulties in proving that they own their land, because women are usually excluded from property titles. For a woman to demonstrate that she is an owner, she must initiate a judicial process in which, if she had been in a civil union, she is forced to provide testimony and witnesses who can prove her relationship with her spouse—and therefore, with the property.

“It is easier for men to prove they are owners of land. In order to claim their rights, they only need to show the records,” said Deyis.

Nowadays, Deyis acts as spokesperson of the El Copey Village Victims Association, an organization that she created five years ago when she realized that nearly the entire village had been a victim of land dispossession. The group, which is made up of 60 families, works to address forced displacement, disappearance, and land dispossession.

“With the radio dramas, we are instruments that help the institutions reach and help women victims. We are very lucky because we have enjoyed the support of other institutions, but there are women who still don’t know that options exist,” asserted Deyis.

One of the objectives of Colombia’s Victims Law is to make women more visible in terms of land administration and the impacts of the conflict, according to Jorge Chávez, territorial director of the Land Restitution Unit in Cesar and Guajira. USAID’s radio dramas contribute to these goals by giving women a roadmap for compensation. Today, 35 out of every 100 requests for land restitution in Cesar are made by women.

“For the LRU, this support is very important. Land informality and the separation of women from their land ends up being a major difficulty in terms of the land restitution process,” explains Chávez. “Together with USAID, we’ve been able to show that not just women but other diverse sectors of society have been uniquely affected by the armed conflict.”

“Many women are not aware of their rights. And despite our work as an association, there are still things that we need to learn. The social approach of creating radio dramas has given us an amazing experience,” says Sintya Bedón Murillo, a member of the Esfuérzate Association in Montes de María and one of the participants of the radio drama entitled “The Aroma of Land in a Bowl of Sancocho.”

“I will exercise my rights, and this experience has given me the strength to demand them, even if my name does not appear on the land documents.”
—Deyis Carmona Tejeda.

A visionary information-sharing platform promises to reshape the Colombian government’s approach to land restitution.

The tide is turning. Ten government agencies responsible for Colombia’s land-related issues are meeting regularly, bringing their engineers, their lawyers, and their administrators to do something that Colombia has never done: allow the real-time exchange of information among a group of institutions working on a common issue.

This ambitious endeavor, dubbed the Land Node, is the government’s official response to Colombia’s Victims Law, which requires that certain land-related agencies share information in real time to facilitate the land restitution process for victims of the armed conflict.

“I can’t imagine a future where people have to wait in lines to have their rights recognized, when we have the technology to avoid that,” says Luis Alberto Clavijo, director of technology at the Land Restitution Unit (LRU). “In the commercial and financial worlds, people often don’t even have to leave their houses. Why can’t it be the same for land services? Either we change the way things are being done, or the state isn’t doing its job.”

The “end users” Clavijo is referring to are the thousands of victims of dispossession or displacement who need to fill out their applications in paper at a local land restitution office to initiate the process for getting their land back. This is one of the things the Land Node seeks to change.

But the real headaches are the silent and agonizing ones on the “provider” side: the onerous delays involved in the requesting, mailing, authorizing, and exchanging of information between agencies. This is where the Land Node seeks to be a pioneer.“Right now, when the Land Restitution Unit needs a certain kind of information for a victim’s case, we send a letter to the entity that has that information,” explains Clavijo. “For example, if I need a property registration file, I send a letter to the public registry office asking for the file. The recipient must then search for the file and take whatever other steps are necessary to release the information.” Then, of course, that person needs to mail the information back to the restitution office.

Each restitution case can involve several requests for information needed to build a victim’s case. For instance, the LRU or a restitution judge might need testimony about a victim’s displacement (information housed by the Attorney General’s Office), information on the presence of land mines (housed by Daicma, the agency charged with taking action to eliminate land mines), cartographic information (housed by the Agustin Codazzi Geographic Institute), or copies of property titles (housed by public registry offices).

Colombian law gives these entities ten days to respond to information requests emanating from the LRU or a restitution judge. But when it can take several days simply for a letter to travel from one place to another, deadlines are rarely met. The Land Node will eliminate this barrier by making land information available through a few clicks of the mouse. It will also protect the integrity of land information by making it electronic; when such information is managed only on paper, it is vulnerable to modification by unscrupulous individuals.

What this means for government workers and restitution judges throughout the country is no more letter writing, stamp licking, or endless waiting for information to arrive. What it means for victims is less time spent in limbo; it means rebuilding their lives sooner rather than later.

Behind the Scenes

Bringing together so many government entities to build the Land Node has not been easy. But as Clavijo points out, “It’s a process where everyone is an equal. No one entity has more privileges than the other.”
Because the Node has been framed as a solution to a common need—the need for all government entities to respond rapidly to information requests—its members have put their institutional differences aside to build it. They have also learned from previous mistakes: earlier efforts to overhaul processes related to information management and sharing were unsuccessful in large part because of institutions’ unwillingness to cede control over the information they manage.

In addition, the coordinating role played by USAID has lent an air of neutrality to the project. “USAID has contributed a specialized and comprehensive team that has taken the lead in supporting each member every step of the way,” says Carlos Ernesto Jaramillo, deputy director of the National Information Network, which houses information on victims of the armed conflict. “USAID’s advice and orientation are taking the Node down a path toward the benefit of victims of displacement and forced abandonment.”

To date, USAID has invested approximately US$2.5 million in the Land Node, including software, architecture, and the digitization of paper-based files. Once the software and architecture are complete, they will be transferred to and maintained by the Colombian government. In addition, although the Land Node is being created to respond to a specific and immediate need regarding restitution, after the Victims Law has run its course in 2021, the network will remain available to facilitate interinstitutional information sharing for other purposes related to land administration.

A Techie’s Challenge

The Land Node’s technical requirements are intimidating, even for seasoned engineers. It is not as simple as connecting the databases of different institutions. Challenges include determining who has permission to view what information; ensuring the security of data so it doesn’t get intercepted by unauthorized third parties; being able to track the users within each entity who are downloading data; being able to share files while also retaining control over their content; and digitizing millions of paper-based files to make the information electronically accessible in the first place.

And perhaps most challenging of all is making ten data management systems communicate with one another in the same language.

“This particular aspect of the node requires extremely specific technological skills,” explains Oscar Montañez, the Node’s project manager. “At the same time, it requires a great deal of tact—being able to communicate clearly with all of the entities so they can agree on how to implement the network.”

These and other complexities will be resolved by the time the Land Node is launched in 2018. Currently, the Node is over halfway complete, and a pilot project has recently made a small portion of the Land Node operational immediately.

The Land and Rural Development Program (LRDP) is a five-year task order funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the Strengthening Tenure and Resource Rights (STARR) Indefinite Quantity Contract. LRDP is intended to assist the government of Colombia to strengthen its institutional capacity to develop tools, systems, and skills that will enable it to fulfill its mandate to resolve land issues at the heart of Colombia’s decades-long internal conflict.

Program Highlights

136 Families – Can begin cultivation on 300+ ha of land being fed by rehabilitated water districts in Cesar. The infra projects are part of the Program’s work to build capacity in designing and formulating public projects.

92,000 Hectares – Amount of land in the Meta-based Sikuani community’s land restitution claim. The Program, the LRU, and over 600 families worked together to prepare the characterization study that is a critical part of the indigenous community’s case.

24.5 MT of Cacao – Sales volume reported by farmers in Montes de María since signing a PPP with commercial partners like the National Chocolate Company in mid-2016. Sales represent revenue of US$63,000.

Tech Systems – The Program helped launch a new app for ag-information in Meta and rolled out an initial pilot of the Land Node, which will increase the efficiency of two key tasks for the LRU.

The USAID Land and Rural Development Program (LRDP) supports the government of Colombia to build the institutional architecture needed to effectively govern land in rural areas. At the national level, the program troubleshoots institutional policies and procedures that prevent GOC entities from administering land in an efficient and cost-effective manner. At a regional level, the program delivers packages of overlapping land and rural development interventions that increase access to the land and productive assets restituted families need to earn a livelihood.

News from the Program

Cesar’s departmental government in partnership with USAID and municipal leaders, finished the rehabilitation of five small-scale irrigation districts in the municipalities of Agustin Codazzi, Becerril, La Jagua de Ibirico, and Chimichagua. These districts provide irrigation to 314 hectares and involve the investment of about US$480,000. USAID began supporting the improvements in 2014 by financing the studies and design to facilitate execution. 136 families now use the irrigated land to cultivate food crops, fruit and raise cattle. In 2017, USAID will support the Department with the rest of its small-scale irrigation needs through the rehabilitation of an additional eight irrigation districts throughout Cesar, which will deliver irrigation to 878 hectares and benefit 373 families. These projects represent a public investment of about US$2 million, and a large portion of these resources was mobilized through the National Development Agency (ADR). USAID is now doing research on land formalization to determine what type of title support these families need.

604 indigenous Sikuani families approved a characterization study prepared by USAID in partnership with the Land Restitution Unit (LRU) office in Meta. The study represents a major part of the evidentiary material for the community’s land restitution claim to more than 92,000 hectares of ancestral lands. The study is an important piece of evidence that documents the history of infrastructural and environmental damages caused by the conflict and provides data on the location of combat zones, illicit crops, and the loss of natural resources. After the Sikuani families approved the study, the group’s restitution claim was signed by 46 community leaders. A favorable judgment would benefit all 604 of these indigenous families—who represent 2,636 people—and would protect them from future evictions.

Montes de María-based cacao farmer associations reported sales of 24.5 metric tons of cacao since signing a public-private partnership in mid-2016. The commercial partner, the National Chocolate Company, paid more than US$63,000, or an average of $3 per kilogram, which represents a 70% increase over the average price of $1.8/kg. A total of 2,586 kg. of cacao purchased—10% of the total—was classified as premium. The associations represent 180 rural families living in Montes de María. In addition, USAID facilitated a commercial agreement between fruit farmers in Northern Cauca and Colombian firm Caja de Compensación Comfandi. The agreement ensures purchasing of two metric tons of lulo fruit per month, at a fair price on average 30% higher than before. Initially, five indigenous families are particpating and others will sign on in the future.

USAID and the Secretariat of Agriculture in Meta launched new app SIGPA (Sistema de Gestion de Proyectos Agroprecuarios), which can be downloaded to smart phones. SIGPA allows users to find ag-related statistics from Meta, like former investments made in the agricultural sector from up to 10 years ago. The app also provides accounting templates for various value chains that can be used by farmers to track financial information, and it houses a database of producers to promote sharing information and networking. At the national level, USAID funded and facilitated the rollout of a pilot for the Land Node, a massive inter-agency network planned for 2018 that allows land agencies to share over 60 types of data in real time. This pilot allows the Land Restitution Unit to request and receive two types of information from the Agustin Codazzi Geographic Institute and the Victims Unit: cadastral certificates and the registry of victims displaced by the armed conflict. Previously, this information was exchanged through mail and took at least six days to reach the LRU. This technology will enable the LRU to process claims at faster speed and move closer to achieving their restitution targets.

The Land and Rural Development Program (LRDP) is a five-year task order funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the Strengthening Tenure and Resource Rights (STARR) Indefinite Quantity Contract. LRDP is intended to assist the government of Colombia to strengthen its institutional capacity to develop tools, systems, and skills that will enable it to fulfill its mandate to resolve land issues at the heart of Colombia’s decades-long internal conflict.

USAID and local government partners created a municipal land office to tackle the titling of more than 4,600 parcels in Santander de Quilichao. By building capacity at local levels of government, rural mayors and their teams are equipped to confront land informality head on.

At the end of 2016, an infrastructure project in rural Santander de Quilichao was on the brink of losing its funding. Local government officials faced the threat of having to return over US$50,000 if the project’s property was not formalized as municipal property. The project, which was already finished and bringing potable water to over 800 users, was being financed under an agreement with Cauca’s departmental government. The municipality did something it had never done before: titled a public property in just nine days.

The municipality’s recently created Land Office produced a property title before New Year’s Day 2017, and the investment was saved. The infrastructure project was the office’s first challenge, and its three-man team responded swimmingly.

“The municipalities of Northern Cauca have a lot of needs in basic sanitation, energy, and infrastructure. They are very rural, and overall there is little money flowing in—so if the municipality can obtain funding and is willing to make the investment, the last thing we need is to miss the opportunity due to our inability to register the property,” explains Jaime Andrés Devia, legal assistant in the Land Office.

Santander de Quilichao’s Land Office, which is the result of a partnership with the USAID-funded Land and Rural Development Program, is already playing a critical role in the municipality’s land administration processes and in promoting awareness on how to formalize land rights among the area’s 100,000 residents.

Perhaps most important, the office acts as a link with Colombia’s National Land Agency at a time when the government is poised to formalize land tenure on a massive scale as part of the commitments made in Colombia’s peace agreement with the FARC. The ongoing decentralization of land administration tasks means that the government is placing a larger responsibility on departmental and municipal governments to support to land formalization, land restitution, and rural development.

“When the Land Agency decides on its strategy and how it will carry out massive formalization throughout Colombia, Santander de Quilichao will have a great deal of the work done, especially thanks to the Municipal Formalization Plan,” says Devia.

The plan, a result of USAID’s institutional strengthening programming, is an official roadmap for the Land Office. In Santander de Quilichao, there are an estimated 4,600 informally owned private parcels. This number represents 62% of all parcels eligible for titling in the municipality, which has over 30,000 parcels. However, many of these are collectively owned by indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities and cannot be titled by the municipal government.

There are also more than 200 untitled publicly owned lands, such as schools and health centers, around the municipality. The new office has made titling 100 of these a top priority in 2017, a necessary step to respond to the needs of citizens who live on untitled urban lots and lack basic services.

“The municipality’s public properties are widely dispersed, and we have never had a clear overview of how many or which ones are titled. With USAID and now the Land Office, we can start inventorying our assets, meet the comptroller’s requirements, and invest in our public goods,” explains Santander de Quilichao’s mayor, Álvaro Mendoza Bermúdez.

Under the partnership, USAID equipped the office with computers and a land surveying kit, and funded the salaries of three experts in land and property administration for six months. The team—capable of carrying out formalization of urban properties from start to finish—brings a new degree of technical capacity to the municipality.

To get the office up and running, the team first had to review existing land files to determine which properties had been incorrectly adjudicated or measured, as well as which ones were missing critical property data.

“We found files that had very ambiguous information about where properties are located. Some say that a property ends where the tall tree meets the river or extends to the ridge on the other side of the field,” explains Álvaro Corda, the office topographer.

They also expect to play a significant role in supporting the National Land Agency to carry out massive formalization in rural areas. When USAID funding ends in June 2017, a municipality-funded team will take over, incorporating the skills and knowledge of the experts.

Settling the Settlers

In the peri-urban hills just outside Santander de Quilichao, more than 60 families settled an area of seven hectares. The families live in makeshift houses with dirt floors and mud walls, and they have no sewage system or access to potable water. Most of them were displaced by the conflict as many as ten years ago, losing their connection with the agrarian economy and, as a result, their livelihoods. Though they live relatively close to the urban center, they work mostly as day laborers in nearby sugarcane fields.

Equipped with land surveying tools and legal expertise, the Land Office is working to turn these families into property owners, which will enable the municipality to offer them basic services and access to government subsidies. In addition, by organizing the unplanned neighborhood, the municipality will be able to resolve residents’ request for a community center and a soccer field.

“We want a house with dignity and a future for our children. We hope this will let us all have houses made of bricks and the chance for a better reality,” says Luz Angel Muñoz, president of the Vida Nueva neighborhood association.

Since 2015, USAID has partnered with three municipalities in the departments of Cauca, Meta, and Sucre to establish land offices. These one-stop shops for land administration facilitate rural development initiatives and allow the municipalities to deliver on state-led land titling strategies that take the onus off land owners. Local land offices can help the government more effectively meet its responsibility to address land informality in Colombia.

By 2018, the USAID program will support the formalization of more than 1,100 parcels that are home to public entities—including over 600 public schools—in 57 municipalities.

“We have a multicultural population, and land formalization will help us avoid conflict among neighbors who are not sure where their property ends. Better land administration will increase social harmony. It’s not just about having a title, it’s about supporting peace.”
— Álvaro Mendoza Bermúdez, mayor of Santander de Quilichao

Research from around the world shows that when women have access to land, property, and productive assets, a cascade of benefits accrue. The USAID Land and Rural Development Program (LRDP) increases women’s access to land and property.

Efforts to clarify and secure the property rights of artisanal miners are often hampered by a lack of accurate geologic information. Results have shown that miners are reluctant to purchase, lease, or register parcels if they do not know how many diamonds each plot is likely to yield. Linking information on parcels to geological data showing the probable presence of alluvial diamonds can create powerful incentives for miners to enter the formal legal system. But geologic surveys can be expensive and difficult to conduct, especially in remote areas.

In Forécariah, Guinea, the PRADD project is employing an innovative approach to solve this problem. The PRADD team is working with the Government of Guinea and the local community to conduct terrain analysis and produce maps of the most likely locations of diamond deposits using a remote-controlled mini-helicopter. The mini-helicopter uses GPS and a camera to collect high-resolution aerial photos and videos through a process developed by USGS to map the elevation and terrain, which can lead to a better understanding of where diamonds may be found.

Release Date: Thursday, September 18, 2014

Ethnic restitution claims require manpower and time to properly document the history of large communities. LRDP partners with regional land restitution offices to expedite the process for vulnerable indigenous groups who are victims of the conflict.

The spiritual equilibrium essential to the Yukpa community is off balance. Ancestral burial grounds have been desecrated by invaders; the trees that house the spirits are being cut down; and the wild game that Yukpa men once hunted with zeal is no longer available. The same limitations preventing the community from practicing its culture are preventing Yukpa parents from passing these activities, words, and stories down to new generations.

“The loss of culture is very real. Our children won’t know anything about the Yukpa if we aren’t rescued from extinction. If we don’t have space to preserve our culture, I guarantee that in thirty years, our culture will disappear,” says Andrés Vence, council leader of a Yukpa community consisting of 120 families living on 300 hectares in the Sierra Perijá on the border of Venezuela and Colombia.
“Culture’s longevity depends on territory.”

There are an estimated 6,000 Yukpa remaining in Colombia, and the majority live on autonomous lands known as resguardos. Over the past thirty years, the Yukpa community living in La Laguna has been victim to abuse and intimidation as a result of the armed conflict and has seen its ancestral lands being increasingly occupied by “outsiders,” whom they refer to as colonists. Today, the community is pushing back by launching an ethnic restitution claim that seeks to recover 964 hectares of land and allow the community the space it needs to flourish.

Humiliation and Abuse

In 1982, the guerrilla group known as the FARC came to Yukpa territory to recruit. Andrés Vence was abducted for eight days to be indoctrinated. But he and the Yukpa resisted, and another guerrilla group known as ELN arrived the following year and abducted several young men. Armed with just bows and arrows, Vence and his men marched into the guerrilla camp and took their children back, saying the Yukpa would not participate in any war.

When the Colombian military entered the scene in the mid-1990s, things got even worse. Yukpa families could no longer move freely from house to house, leading to the systematic abandonment of more than 900 hectares of land. For years, military checkpoints restricted the flow of food between families. To make matters worse, paramilitary groups—who were often the same members of the military—came to the Yukpa villages at night to terrorize the community.

“They abused and humiliated us,” says Vence. “I think it was all in the hopes that we would open our mouths and say something that gave them the right to murder us.”

Documented History

In 2015, LRDP stepped in to partner with the regional Land Restitution Unit (LRU) in Cesar to expedite “characterization studies,” an essential piece of evidentiary material that documents the background, victimization, and suffering of indigenous communities who wish to reclaim their land. Characterization a critical step in substantiating an ethnic restitution claim.

Over the course of six months, researchers visited the Yukpas, where they interviewed individual members and held focus groups. They also collected materials from the government, nongovernmental organizations, academic texts, and the media. The end result is nearly 200 pages of history, mapping, experience, and evidence presenting how the armed conflict contributed to the decimation of the Yukpa’s culture, livelihood, and overall prosperity.

In addition to carrying out the characterization study, LRDP has helped regional restitution offices improve coordination with partner members of the Victims Assistance and Comprehensive Reparations System and municipal officials.

The document will be filed as part of the Yukpa community’s land restitution claim, which will go before a restitution judge before the end of the year. By law, judges must issue a ruling within six months after a restitution claim is filed in the court. In Cesar, the Yukpa case will be the third ethnic restitution case to reach the courts, making the department an important player in the nationwide effort to heal the historic rift between the government and indigenous groups.

There are currently over 24 ethnic restitution cases in the characterization phase that stand to affect over 10,000 families. In addition to the Yukpa case, LRDP is supporting the LRU with evidentiary studies in another complicated case involving over 600 ethnic Sikuani families in Meta.

“All over the country, there are ethnic restitution cases reaching judges. The LRU is in its fifth year and these cases are becoming more and more important to resolve. This particular case is very important because the Yukpa are losing their cultural identity, and we recognize that,” according to Chávez.

In its five years, restitution judges have issued three ethnic restitution sentences, delivering over 124,000 hectares of land back to indigenous communities.

As the Yukpa wait on the judge’s ruling, the case’s progress has emboldened Vence to mobilize the community—including the older citizens known as Yimayjas—to transmit the collective memory and cultural skills like weaving mochilas, practicing spiritual rites, and crafting shields to fend off malignant spirits.

A favorable ruling will be key to restoring Yukpa faith in the Colombian government. “We’ve put pressure on the government for many years to do this, so our hope is temporary. We watch television, and indigenous culture is never part of the conversation. Indigenous communities are the most vulnerable,” explains Vence.

“The partnership gave us operating capacity. Without this support, we would have taken another one or two years to get to this case.”
— Jorge Chávez, Director of the Land Restitution Unit in Cesar.

A commercial agreement for fruit farmers and institutional strengthening interventions have allowed indigenous Nasa leaders in the municipal government to improve delivery on rural development initiatives while building trust among citizens.

Every day, as Mayor Flor Ilva Trochez walks to her office, she passes the portrait of one of the most important heroes of the Nasa indigenous community in the municipality of Jambaló. Marden Betancur Conda was halfway through his four-year mandate when he was gunned down in 1996 by a leftist guerrilla group. The community’s first indigenous mayor had been pushing forth Jambaló’s Municipal Development Plan, which set out to strengthen indigenous land rights and give the community a larger say in local government.

Jambaló is unlike other Colombian municipalities: its population is nearly 100 percent indigenous, and for the past 25 years, political leadership has been intertwined with Nasa tribal leadership.

“Our most important weapon is community mobilization. After our mayor was assassinated, we never stopped carrying out development plans,” explains Trochez, Colombia’s first indigenous woman to become mayor.

Today, Trochez—who stepped into her role in January 2016—is building on nearly 30 years of Nasa collective memory to bring better infrastructure, agricultural projects, and culture and identity to the more than 17,000 people living in Jambaló. As she sees it, thanks to the ongoing peace process, Jambaló finally has the opportunity to improve the lives of its residents without fear of reprisal from the guerrilla and paramilitary groups that once patrolled the region’s hinterlands.

“After our mayor was assassinated, there was a 15-year period in which Jambaló was stagnant. We received no visitors. We were disconnected,” explains Trochez. “The conflict got deeper and deeper into our society. Children were recruited, and people were disappearing.”

Today, the community’s overall objectives remain unchanged: unite Nasa tribal lands and ensure the people living on them are at the forefront of shaping the community’s future. To do this, community mobilization is critical. And nothing better reflects the community’s priorities than the Municipal Development Plan. Every four years, the mayor and her staff work with the community to revise the plan, which always reflects a broader 20-year indigenous “Life Plan” that spells out the community’s values and overall development vision.

The problem is that without technical expertise in development planning, the municipal government has seen its work double in size every four years as unfinished tasks accumulate from previous administrations.

In 2016, the USAID-funded Land and Rural Development Program began partnering with Trochez and her administration to restructure the Municipal Development Plan and carve out realistic goals based on the administration’s capacity. An important aspect of those goals include connecting Jambaló’s farmers to new markets.

In February 2017, the program facilitated a commercial agreement between Jambaló fruit farmers and Colombian firm Comfandi to market highland fruit. Under the agreement, the commercial partner guarantees the purchase of one metric ton of lulo fruit every two weeks while guaranteeing the same price one month at a time. In return for a steady supply of quality fruit, the company will increase the purchasing price by an average of 30%, from US$700 to US$900 per ton.

In addition, USAID and the municipality worked together to create the municipality’s Agricultural Development Plan, which outlines products and value chains in need of investment and technical assistance. Trochez and her team have earmarked US$300,000 for agriculture development over the next four years and are putting a weighty focus on the production of coffee, fruits, and a multipurpose agave fiber known as fique.

As part of USAID’s institutional strengthening package, the program also trained municipal leaders to formulate projects that embrace the same principles and characteristics as those typically funded by the national government.

“Municipalities like Jambaló are now ready to start mobilizing resources from the national government. For example, when the Ministry of Agriculture issues requests for proposals, these municipalities already have a general plan outlining what kind of technical assistance they need, as well as a municipal-wide registry of farmers,” explains Cielo Ordoñez, the Land and Rural Development Program’s regional manager in Northern Cauca.

Under the new agricultural plan, USAID set up a producers’ forum to bring leaders together and help define the direction of Jambaló’s agricultural products. In late 2016, USAID sponsored an inter-regional exchange forum at an agribusiness vocational center in Risaralda, where farmers and municipal leaders acquired skills and knowledge for creating and managing successful agricultural associations.

“With these skills and knowledge, we can strengthen our associations,” explains Vicente Quimboa, Jambaló’s secretary of agriculture. “We know that we have to market our products and create a brand and put them out there in front of potential buyers and consumers.”

“Today, we have set annual goals for each of the next four years. By creating a realistic development plan, we also win credibility with our community and no longer suffer the anxiety of not being able to complete our plans.”
— Flor Ilva Trochez, Mayor of Jambaló and Colombia’s first indigenous female mayor

A public-private partnership in the honey value chain, facilitated by USAID, stimulates public investment in Cesar’s rural development.

For Oswaldo Ramos Chaparro, beekeeping is a legacy passed down the generations from his ancestors, who used honey mainly for medicinal purposes. Now Oswaldo—a young indigenous Arhuaco leader in the department of Cesar—wishes to share his beekeeping knowledge with others in order to preserve the tradition and turn it into a productive commercial activity for his community.

Over the last twenty years, Oswaldo and his community have endured droughts, robberies, and poisoned bees. They struggled to maintain the tradition when the community came to this part of the Sierra de Santa Marta mountain range. The land, more arid and used for cattle, does not seem ideal for beekeeping.

The hardest years were 2000–2005, when the community was forced to move further up the mountains after being threatened by the armed actors of Colombia’s drawn out conflict. These groups took away the community’s freedom to move throughout the territory and even placed them at risk of starvation.

“We had to leave our farms, leave everything in order to stay alive and maintain a balance with mother nature. For a long time, our leaders have focused on spiritual healing to mitigate those impacts,” explains Oswaldo.

The community has since found peace in the village of Jimain, located on near Pueblo Bello (Cesar), where Arhuaco beekeepers started again from scratch. Oswaldo and the community’s spiritual leaders have spent hours and days meditating on the floral diversity in the forest to provide for the bees, an essential part of their goal to preserve a healthy balance with their natural surroundings.

A Beekeeping Revival

In 2016, the Arhuaco community obtained 100 new hives as participants in a public-private partnership (PPP) facilitated by USAID’s Land and Rural Development Program. The PPP—largely funded by Cesar’s Secretariat of Agriculture and the Ministry of Agriculture—benefits 80 beekeepers from three producer associations from the municipalities of Manaure and Pueblo Bello, and four commercial partners. The PPP is valued at US$5.3 million, and 93 percent of its funding comes from public sources.

In the context of improving livelihoods for rural citizens, the partnership represents a positive step in the departmental government’s strategy to link land use in protected areas—where extensive cattle ranching and large-scale agriculture are prohibited—to the needs of local residents.

“As an indigenous population, we are often forgotten, and it can be hard to access programs sponsored by the municipal and departmental governments. This project gives us a chance to access those programs and bring a message back to the community. It feels like we have a brother standing by our side.
— Oswaldo Ramos Chaparro, Arhuaco beekeeper

Under the partnership, the government of Cesar delivered 500 hives, beekeeping equipment and honey processing material to 80 beekeepers, including 15 families from the Arhuaco community. The government then leveraged this support and created the region’s first beekeeping school, which provides technical assistance to beekeepers on genetic improvements, queen bee management, floral timetables, honey extraction, and production best practices.

“Before, we would squeeze the honeycombs with our hands. We don’t do that anymore, which is more hygienic and allows to reuse the combs,” says Witman Martínez, a beneficiary of the PPP from Manaure, who has eight years of experience as a beekeeper and continued to improve his knowledge through the beekeeping school.

With the better techniques and processing, each producer is expected to increase production from 10 kg to 30 kg per hive each year and sell 70% of their supply to commercial partners.

Each One, Teach One

In November, Oswaldo, Witman and the rest of the first round of the partnership’s beekeepers graduated. Next step: teaching. A handful of the most successful beekeepers were selected and will deliver practical training to 100 new beekeepers from their municipalities. During the next three years, the PPP aims to train 500 beekeepers and secure 15,000 extra hives for residents in municipalities with beekeeping activities.

“We’re carrying out an agricultural and rural development policy with a vision towards the future. Beekeeping has served as a concrete example for applying the same methodology to other value chains, like mango. And thanks to USAID, each one benefits from increase effectiveness and efficiency from our part. We are able to better attend to requests, not just in terms of response times but also in terms of quality,” explains Carlos Campo Soto, Cesar’s secretary of agriculture.