Why is an Integrated Agrarian Reform needed in Guatemala?

In the recent months, Agrarian Reform has gained the space that it deserves in the national public debate. In this occasion, the debate has not been promoted only by social organizations. The government, in order to adhere to the final declaration of the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD), celebrated last March in Brasil, has committed the State of Guatemala to contemplate Agrarian Reform as " the principal strategy to permit the rural population without resources to access basic resources such as land and water in a stable and fair manner ", exiting from " hunger and poverty " and " favoring national development ".

In addition to representing a commitment by the state, we demand the implementation of Integrated Agrarian Reform in Guatemala for the following reasons:

• The concentration of 57% of productive land in the hands of less than 2% of all landowners is a serious obstacle to survival and development in rural areas, and is of national consequence. If land, as the government and the commercial agricultural sector says, is left to be a fundamental factor for rural development, how can this concentration continue?

• Agrarian Reform through the market, as promoted by FONTIERRAS, has fallen flat and has not been able to change the unjust land-owning structure, nor improve the condition of life for the most vulnerable populations.

• Integrated Agrarian Reform prioritizes social justice that is recognized in the Constitution. By this logic, it places the defense, guarantee and protection of rights to food, to livelihood, to health, education and work for indigenous communities and farmers ahead of private property rights. This logic is different from that of neo-liberal approaches, oriented toward the restructuring of diverse territories to privilege exclusively the interests of financial capital, both national and international, and linked to the agro-industries, extractive industries and infrastructure mega-projects, in place of the interests of the people.

• Agrarian Reform prioritizes household food security and national food sovereignty, fundamental rights that are in opposition with radical liberalization of food imports, which have increased chronic malnutrition, hunger and the destruction of rural food production systems. In this framework, we call upon the Constitutional Court to declare as unconstitutional the CAFTA agreements which are harmful for the rights of the people of Guatemala .

• Agrarian Reform is " integral " because access to land and natural resources should be complemented with institutions and public policies that are oriented to the protection and promotion of family and smallholder farming, which puts into practice instruments of commercial protection on the borders, and of protection and respect for the variability of prices among agricultural products, to promote the production and storage of national food reserves as well as effective mechanisms for access to credit, technical assistance and commercialization, and the creation of social and productive infrastructure.

It is time to overcome entrenched dialogues and to dedicate our efforts to eradicate at their roots the conditions of injustice, impunity and impoverishment to which indigenous communities and farmers have submitted. It is time for an Integrated Agrarian Reform as a fundamental pillar of the homegrown development of Guatemala , which places at its center a drive for the effective improvement of the conditions and lives for all citizens of this country.