Dany Barrientos

Over the years, the campesinos of the Bajo Aguan have been made victims of a tragic state of affairs resulting from a number of factors, each of which contributes to the duress of the situation: incomplete agrarian reforms, forced evictions, persecution, intimidation, criminalization, stigmatization, destabilisation of community groups, systemic violation of human rights, structural violence, militarization, corruption, impunity, implementation of the neoliberal model, alliances between the State and agro-industry, internal conflict in campesino movements, the incapacity of public institutions to oversee the agrarian sector, the domination of agro-industrial groups, hurricanes, the effects of the Cold War, and more recently, the economic and social consequences of the expansion of drug trafficking. The poorest campesinos, the most vulnerable sector of society, clearly suffer the greatest consequences, waking up every day to the uncertainty of whether they will have food to eat.

In the past five years, there have been 129 assassinations related to land conflicts in the Bajo Aguan.