International Day of Peasant Struggle: Peasant Rights and COVID-19

Pramesh Pokharel Today, April 17, is the International Day of Peasant Struggle. Millions of peasants around the world celebrate this day since 1996. Faced with the COVID-19 pandemic, La Via Campesina has issued the slogan, ‘stay home but not silent – in the times of pandemic, peasants are united to feed the people.’ Our 180…

Declaration of the International Solidarity Mission of La Via Campesina in Venezuela

(Caracas, Friday 31 January 2020) The delegation of La Via Campesina composed of representatives from Europe, North America, South America and Central America together with popular journalists from Africa and South America, announce to the national and international community that we have concluded the First International Solidarity Mission in Venezuela, carried out from 20 to…

La Via Campesina in New York: “it is Now Urgent to Put Human Rights and Nature Above Profit”

During the UN – United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in New York, La Via Campesina made a presentation today to declare peasant agriculture as a real solution to the food and climate crisis facing the planet. Paula Gioia, on behalf of La Via Campesina, said, “It is now urgent to put humanity and nature before…

Criminalization and Judicialization of the Peasant People

Ketsy Medina Sifontes On August 22 of this year, around eight in the morning, Paula Guillermina Lovera, 42 years old, and her grandson, 8 years old, were in their house located in Las Ventanas, in the municipality of San Gerónimo de Guayabal, Guárico state, when people dressed in civilian clothes, verbally identifying themselves as police…

Bolivia: Land in the Hands of Those Who Work It

Nara Romero Rams Eighty percent of Bolivia’s arable land is in the hands of peasants, a policy implemented by the government of President Evo Morales since 2006 that benefited 48,634 farming families. The distribution of three million 366,589 hectares to date for the production of vegetables, tubers, fruit trees and other products for the family…

Venezuela: “Landowners Persecute and Murder the Yukpa with Impunity.”

Alex Anfruns The French journalist Angèle Savino lived in Venezuela for thirteen years, during which time she followed closely the conflict between the Yukpa and the major landowners. “After Chavez decided to hand over the land to the Yukpa, the assassinations ensued” – he confides. Convinced that in Venezuela, the indigenous struggle for land is…

UN Decade of Family Farming: Peasants Voice Their Hopes and Concerns

In December 2017, the UN General Assembly declared 2019-2028 as the “United Nations Decade of Family Farming” and mandated the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) to implement the Decade. The resolution of the General Assembly also called on governments, international organizations and civil society organizations to…

Massacre in Barinas Against Revolutionary Militants. Communiqué of La Corriente

The Revolutionary Current Bolívar and Zamora and the Hugo Chávez Popular Defense Brigades want to denounce before the country and the world the murder of six comrades of our movements by an armed group not yet determined, presumably mercenaries paid by sectors of the landowning right in the area. The comrades murdered were: José Geraldo…

Comuna Lomas Unidas: Recovering its Territory

The Comuna Lomas Unidas (United Lomas Commune) is a space encompassing 14 years of struggle and communal organization in the southern region. But this time, it has had to face threats and an attempt of illegal occupation by the former owner, who has mobilized a group of local inhabitants, with promises of land, financing and…

Honduras: Who Would Destroy a Community’s Food Crops?

Zoe PC On July 16, members of the Lenca community woke up to find that their corn crops had been destroyed. Members of the Lenca community in Río Blanco in the northwestern region of Honduras woke up on July 16 to find that 15 sections of their corn crops had been destroyed during the night….

There is An Urgent Need for a National Debate on the Land Problem. Analysis of the ANP and La Corriente

For more than 20 days, the compañeros and compañeras of the Platform of Peasant Struggle have been carrying out a peaceful takeover, a vigil, at the headquarters of the National Land Institute, as a mechanism of pressure to achieve their demands. The National Productive Alliance and La Corriente express our solidarity and commitment with this…

Plataforma de Lucha Campesina Maintains Vigil at INTI Headquarters in Caracas

The open fire, discipline when it comes to eating, arranging the space, the hammocks, the mats and mattresses, planning the sowing, the arrival of companions from different states, other are going back and forth, and telephone calls explaining the situation. The night that is spent in a hammock is felt in the morning, but it…

The Political Declaration of the VII Congress of the CLOC LVC

Havana, 30 June 2019 Revolution is a sense of the historical moment, it is to change everything that must be changed, it is full equality and freedom, it is to be treated and to treat others as human beings, it is to emancipate ourselves and with our own efforts, it is to challenge powerful dominant…

Solidarity Communiqué from La Corriente: Cerro La Vieja Must Be Respected!

For some weeks now, the denunciation of organized producers and peasants from the Simón Planas municipality in Lara State has been disseminated through different alternative media with respect to the threat that mining projects represent for the conservation and ecological stability of Cerro La Vieja, the natural heritage of the municipality, as well as the…

Venezuela: Demanding Answers, Peasants Gather at the Headquarters of INTi in Caracus

More than 100 peasant men and women gathered at the headquarters of the National Land Institute (INTi) in Caracas to demand that President Nicolás Maduro’s instructions regarding the situation in the countryside be complied with. During the action, spokespersons attended and listened including Luis Soteldo, president of INTi, together with other members of INTi’s technical…

Peasants from Guárico are Evicted by FAES When They Try to Reclaim Their Lands

Producers of the state of Guárico, organized in the Peasant Council Ezequiel Zamora, tried to recover Los Tramojos, 4800 hectares of land that were granted by the national government to this group of peasants in 2010 and then delivered in 2016, by the National Land Institute (INTi), to a landowner named José Elias Chirimelli. The…

Agrarian Mafias vs. the Campesino People: Revolutionary Institutions Have the Say

“Tierras, mujeres y hombres libres” (Lands, free women and men) is named after the Campesino Council in which the families that inhabit the Montecarlo estate are organized. Nearly 200 hectares have been recovered for food production. The name of the council is a tribute to Ezequiel Zamora and his uprising that began in September 1846…

Venezuela: El Cerro La Vieja’s People Demand that Their Sacred Territory be Respected and Protected

For the Defense of the Hill The Vieja is Respected In Lara, Municipality Simon Planas, there is La Vieja. The believers pray to her, she provides the water with which the peasants irrigate their crops, in addition, she protects a remarkable biodiversity. Municipal park and ecological heart of the municipality, La Vieja is a hill…