The challenge is to unite and build the global struggle
Interview with Diego Montón, who is part of the National Indigenous Movement of Argentina, Cloc – Via Campesina and the International Collective of Peasant Rights of La Via Campesina. He talks about the scope of the Declaration of the Rights of Peasants in Peasants’ Struggles, at an event held in Colombia.
What is the importance of participating in the Peasants’ Rights Forum?
DM: Since the declaration was approved and adopted by the UN General Assembly in December. We are entering a stage of how we are appropriating this instrument in all the territories to dynamize and strengthen the struggles and also to establish bridges of dialogue for the construction of public policies for peasant agriculture. In this forum and yesterday’s where there was strong peasant participation based on experiences, and struggles with proposals that address this new process, that we are promoting all over the world so that the declaration has new life, a new validity.
How could the peasant peoples take advantage of it to strengthen their struggles for recognition?
DM: On the one hand, it is a tool that helps us energize the work of grassroots territories, raising awareness of the fact that the UN recognizes the rights of peasants and even instrumentalizes agrarian reform as a necessary policy for states to implement. Secondly, this declaration contains a compendium of obligations of States to guarantee these rights and these obligations become an orientation towards where public policy and State policies must go. Therefore, it also allows us to dialogue with States from the struggle but also from these international instruments.
What is needed for it to be binding on the part of the countries involved?
DM: In principle, it is already an instrument and it can and should be taken into account by the States, I believe that there are two elements, the political one that has to do with force and social unity around this to translate it into political force, and another element that has to do with international jurisprudence, and that is the construction of an international convention on peasant rights that will make this instrument legally binding, which means that we will be able to denounce States for non-compliance. But we believe that in order to arrive at this convention we have a long way to go before we give the declaration a full life and validity in each municipality, in each province in each country, seeking to articulate resolutions, legislation, policies around the declaration and working with allies such as city unions, students, and other sectors that understand the importance of this declaration not only for the peasants, but for the peoples as a whole because this is where their food comes from.
Is the declaration politically complete, or did it lack some Vía Campesina themes?
DM: No, I think that to be a UN declaration, it is complete, it is advanced, it incorporates many pluricultural elements that makes international law more pluricultural than the previous one. It oxygenates the human rights system. Of course, when it comes to looking at all of the different groups of Vía Campesina’s flags, struggles and proposals, it is a different kind of instrument, because it does not include all of Vía Campesina’s struggles. But I believe that at this historic moment it is a declaration that is complete.
From Our America, what is being promoted to continue positioning the declaration and for countries to include it in their public policies?
DM: Well, we are incorporating the declaration into all our axes of struggle.
This April 17 – International Day of Peasant Struggle, the declaration and peasant rights are going to be a substantive part of mobilizations all over the world, also associated with the urgency of agrarian reform and against the criminalization of the struggle and impunity. We are also resuming the entire process of political formation including the declaration as one more instrument for the development and political formation of our leaders.
We are attending such forums and seminars, and there is one at the end of the month in Honduras. We are promoting the interaction of university – academy – peasant movement – officials all over the world to discuss the declaration, so that we can put it into effect.
What have been the contributions of the academy with respect to this declaration?
DM: Well, there have been many intellectuals who have been joining and accompanying us, documenting also through scientific methods the violations we are denouncing, the nature and effects of the peasant economy on the global economy and food supply. There are independent groups, and I would highlight the Geneva academy, that accompanied the process closely with experts who provided complementarity to the peasant struggle from the academic and scientific world and that no one was able to refute within the Human Rights Council.
Do you think that the peasant struggle in Our America can be a contribution to academia?
DM: Well, I think that any scientist or academic who considers himself as such, claims that this theory serves to transform reality towards a better life for humanity. That’s what the social movement is all about, it is the force that provides input to the theory and then allows the theory to become praxis for transformation.
What are the remaining challenges for the global peasant movement to consolidate its recognition as a political entity with rights?
DM: We have a serious challenge in the context of the grave decomposition of financial capitalism, with a major crisis that has worsened on all fronts and with the major counteroffensive of capital throughout the world and especially on our continent. One of the main challenges we have is the uniting around a grassroots counteroffensive that will allow us to reclaim the continent, that will reorganize us in struggles at the regional level. Let us not forget that CELAC and UNASUR have been completely scrapped because they were important elements with many deficits, but that allowed us to revitalize a vision of unity and integration. Fundamentally, then, we must deepen the struggles, deepen political formation and alliances and unity around socialism throughout the world.
Interview conducted by the National Agrarian Training Coordinator.
Translation by Internationalist 360°