How to steal land the size of a small country Part VI: business culture

[Judi Lynn]

by Adriaan Alsema September 8, 2020

Stealing land from displaced farmers became part of the business culture in Medellin and the surrounding Antioquia province during Colombia’s armed conflict, a recent study indicates.

NGO Forjando Futuros, which monitors land restitution, found using that the use of terror to accumulate land that was invented by local landowners in the 1980s at one point became the regional local business culture.

According to the NGO’s database, courts have so far issued more than 21,000 land restitution orders in Antioquia, almost three times as much as in the Cesar province.

Banana plantation owners, particularly the family of suspended Governor Anibal Gaviria, as well as mining companies and companies with agro-industrial projects promoted by President Alvaro Uribe between 2002 and 2010 made terror part of their business plan.

. . .

After Uribe, one of the ranchers from eastern Antioquia, became president in 2002, his promotion of agro-industrial projects spurred even more land dispossession, often through military and paramilitary violence.

More:
https://colombiareports.com/how-to-steal-land-the-size-of-a-small-country-part-vi-business-culture/