Don José Manuel Suarez has seen some things. Father of seven and grandfather of 15, his 80 years have been spent farming a patch of land that has also been a battleground in the longest civil war in modern history. At an outdoor meeting of a co-operative of banana farmers in Ciénaga, near the northern Caribbean coast of Colombia, Don José Manuel sits in one shady corner of a clearing, patiently waiting his turn to speak. The other men and women are his old friends and neighbours. The question I’ve asked them is this: what have been the worst of times, and what the best?
In the hot morning sun, among the creaking plants hung with clenched hands of green bananas, the answers to the first part of that question have come thick and fast.
The farmers have seen regular hurricanes that have flattened their crop (some are just recovering from Maria); they have seen guerrilla fighters use their land and their homes as if they were their own, taking their chickens, sleeping in their beds, cooking with their pots; they have paid escalating protection money – vacuna – to paramilitaries to avoid being kicked out or worse.
These successive waves of disaster and humiliation and threat seem all to have been intended to make the smallholders sell up their patches of land to the big landowners producing palm oil and to move to Bogotá or Medellín and take their chances. Others have gone, but each one of the farmers gathered here has stayed. The one or two hectares that support each of their extended families have been passed from father to son or daughter – some for four or five generations.
Source :- theguardian
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