Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0089/00895.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 28KB | 447 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00895}
$Pretitle{226}
$Title{Colombia
Chapter 2C.   Land Reform and Colonization}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Howard I. Blutstein}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{population
migrants
percent
family
rate
planning
land
years
growth
rural}
$Date{1977}
$Log{Table 3.*0089501.tab
Table 4.*0089502.tab
}
Country:     Colombia
Book:        Colombia, A Country Study
Author:      Howard I. Blutstein
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1977

Chapter 2C.   Land Reform and Colonization

     Land reform in Colombia dates from 1863, when the government expropriated
extensive church-owned lands, which were later sold to private owners. At
several later dates Indian reservations were closed and their lands
subdivided, and in 1936 Congress enacted legislation giving squatters who
occupied farmlands legal rights to properties occupied for five years without
dispossession by the owners. The measure provided a legal basis for peasant
land invasions, which became heavy during the depression years of the 1930s,
when urban migrants displaced from city employment returned in large numbers
to their rural places of origin. Land invasions also made up an element of la
violencia, the rural violence of the late 1940s and 1950s that is believed to
have claimed 100,000 to 300,000 lives.

     The modern era of land reform was inaugurated in 1961 with the enactment
of legislation creating the Colombian Institute of Agrarian Reform (Instituto
Colombiano de Reforma Agraria-INCORA). The 1961 law and 1968 legislation
authorized the government to take land from private owners, pay the assessed
valuation, and divide it into parcels for transfer to needy farmers
(parceloros) on long-term mortgages at low interest rates. In addition a 1973
law prescribed that land not adequately exploited-according to the law's
definition-during a period of three years would be subject to forfeiture to
the government. The legislation applied only to developed land, however, and
the threat of expropriation may have discouraged large property owners from
developing land that might otherwise have been made productive.

     In 1974 a UN agency described as very modest the accomplishments of
INCORA in modifying the country's basic land tenure pattern. INCORA, which is
responsible for the colonization of virgin land and land reclamation projects
as well as rural resettlement, has a record of praise for its accomplishments
coupled with criticisms of its cumbersome administration. Other criticisms
were frequent changes in administrators (four directors between 1971 and 1975)
and an apparent policy of parceling out relatively poor public lands rather
than expropriating better lands in the face of the strenuous opposition of
owners. Less than 5 percent of the funds invested by INCORA by early 1974 had
been for the acquisition of land for resettlement.

     By 1972 about 38,000 farmers had been settled on parceled land, and
INCORA hoped to add another 400,000 during the next twenty years. Some 38,000
had been settled in colonies on unoccupied public lands, and 40,000
spontaneous settlers had been given titles to public lands they had settled as
squatters.

     The bulk of the colonization and spontaneous settlement had taken place
on or near the piedmont of the Cordillera Oriental in eastern Colombia, where
the settlers had tended to displace the indigenous population. In one
colonization project area the number of Indians declined from 3,500 in 1950 to
2,500 in 1975, dispersed in numerous tribes. Some had been assimilated into
the colonial population, but others had moved eastward down the rivers to less
accessible areas. In the early 1970s colonization projects had been
established in eastern Colombia on the Putumayo River near the Ecuadorian
border, in Caqueta near the headquarters of the Caqueta River, in Meta
Department near the fast-growing city of Villavicencio, and on the Arauca
River close to the Venezuelan frontier. There were also small colony projects
in lands of the Cordillera Oriental, in the Magdalena and Cauca river valleys,
and in lowlands around the Gulf of Uraba. Reclamation lands to be opened for
settlement were located principally along the Caribbean coast and in the
Magdalena and Cauca river valleys.

     In the mid-1970s INCORA had embarked on an extensive land reclamation
project aimed at draining a permanently inundated zone in the department of
Cordoba. The project, which was to receive US $21 million in assistance from
the IBRD, was to include the installation of a social infrastructure,
including schools and medical facilities, and was ultimately to provide for
the resettlement of 22,000 people. The most extensive of the colonization
schemes in progress in early 1976 was the Caqueta project, which had been
initiated in 1971 with IBRD assistance to consolidate and expand the
spontaneous colonization that was already in progress in the area. The 1971
IBRD loan had been designed to assist 2,800 new colonists and their families
and 3,500 partially established settlers, most of whom were engaged in cattle
raising. A second IBRD credit was extended in 1975 to provide follow-up
assistance in the form of economic and social services, including roads,
schools, and health posts to benefit the population of the zone, which had
increased to about 12,000 families, or 70,000 people. The number was not
great, but it had a substantial effect on the pattern of settlement in Caqueta
Intendency, which had a total population of no more than 200,000.

The Migrant Population

     Colombian migrants are for the most part young, unencumbered, and
able-bodied. They are also better educated than the national average and,
at the time of leaving the countryside, consider themselves participants
in the mainstream of national life. As in other Latin American states, the
migrants are in search of better living conditions and job opportunities.
Job opportunities are of particular importance to women, who find few
employment opportunities in rural localities and for whom urban job openings
have increased sharply during the 1960s.

     The classic Latin American pattern is one in which motivation is provided
by a combination of "push and pull" elements, in which limited employment
opportunities and other push factors away from the original place of residence
work with the real or expected job opportunities and other pull factors
at the intended destination. In Colombia the rapid population growth, the
large number of submarginal farm plots, and the extreme shortage of social
infrastructure services-such as schooling and medical care-are of primary
significance as push factors. Family ties and friendship rank high in
importance among the pull factors. In one Bogota residential district occupied
largely by migrant, a survey in the late 1960s found three-fourths of the
migrants family heads to have at least one relative in the city at their time
of arrival and one-third to have received some economic assistance from
previously arriving family or friends.

     In many Latin American countries the number of young women leaving the
farm substantially exceeds the number of young men because of the former's
relative lack of job opportunities in agriculture.

     In Colombia there has been little difference in the number of male and
female migrants in terms of point of origin. There has been, however, a sharp
difference by sex in the direction taken. Rural-to-rural migrants have been
predominantly male, and rural-to-urban migrants have been predominantly
female. The 1964 census showed that the coefficient of masculinity (number of
males per 100 females) stood at 141 among recent migrants (migrated within
five years) to rural localities. In Bogota it stood at seventy-nine, and in
other urban localities it was eighty-five.

     The explanation for the sex difference between rural-to-urban and
rural-to-rural migration was readily apparent. Job opportunities in the
countryside were available primarily to men, but in cities and towns