Cajibío Plan for Life

This Plan for Life was written with the participation of 687 leaders from the Cajibío Municipality, Teachers’ Organizations, health workers, women’s groups, cooperative organizations, Catechists, coffee production groups, unrefined sugar cane producers’ organizations, Municipal Administration officials, different elements of the Church, Community Action Boards, community leaders, agricultural production groups, etc. that for four days met to analyze the situation of poverty, abandonment, and exclusion in which the Cajibío communities have always lived and to look ahead to the goals of the small farmer communities; using the reality that they have historically confronted and the their grand dream of dignity as points of departure.

The desire to build this Plan for Life arose out of the necessity to join the different manifestations of organization—community in general—around a common project that brings together the needs and hopes of a better future.

The Plan for Life is an expression of the thoughts of the small farmer and urban communities of the CajibÍo Municipality that, through community organizing, works to obtain a better future and to construct peace. Throughout this process, the men and women from this region of the province of Cauca will be the protagonists of their history and development.

Peace is understood as a end to the social and armed conflict that the country is going through and a resolution of the causes of the conflict. The Plan for Life is an integral proposal of alternative development constructed on the social base of the Small Farmer Movement. It counts on a high level of community participation and draws together experience, analysis of reality, and formulation of their own ideas, from a perspective of historic marginalization. The plan consequently supports the regional and national processes, since it comes out of the communities’ own initiative.

A dignified plan for life conceived of as a contribution to peace must begin by valuing human beings as a fundamental axis of development for the country, for the region, and for the community. People should be able to express through their leaders and through organizational spaces how people should relate with each other, with nature, and with the State.

The Plan for Life is composed of seven (7) axes that ensure that the proposal encourages development which is integral and that addresses the multiple needs that the Cajibío population has. The axes are: Education, Health, Identity and Culture, Agricultural and Environmental Aspects, Territory and Authority, Politico-Organizational, and Infrastructure.

The creation of the Plan for Life began with a diagnosis of each one of the axes that make it up. First the weakest points were defined, and proposals were created around them. Each axis requires a project to be carried out, with a holistic vision that enables the axes to complement each other and to generate interdependence.

Two principal axes for carrying out the Plan for Life came out of the analysis put forward by the communities: Politico-Organizational and the forming of Territory and Authority.

The Politico-Organizational aspect is essential since it guarantees group and community participation in the organizational structure of the Small Farmer Movement. Also it must allow for learning opportunities and leadership training to provide individuals who will be responsible for the development of the remaining axes.

The axis of Territory and Authority, of secondary importance, is conceived of as a place where a community can build a space for local power and democracy. It is a place where they autonomously generate their own development, where all the different interests come into play to establish collective interests and to establish organizational formats that forge routes that lead to a well established future.

1. Territory and Authority

Territory is defined as the natural space where people live and interact with their natural surroundings; transforming it through our organized and collective action into a community that struggles to improve our life conditions.

The point of departure is the home, the farm, the community. Each one of these spaces is small territories over which one must have autonomy and which expands to the extent to which one has authority over it.

When one has territory and exercises autonomy over it, autonomy and self-determination are built. This demands management of the very concept of development, management of natural resources, creating their own forms of organization and work, and the resolution of internal and external conflicts by means of dialog and agreement to achieve the elaboration of their own laws.

In the Plan for Life, Territory is represented as a tree planted in the land whose roots are authority. The territory is outlined by the decision-making capabilities of the community, through its process of reflection, development, and organization.

The community is the one to move toward the construction of the criteria that govern health, education, and the type of production that the community requires. It establishes as well the way the relationships between men and women should be in the community, under principles of harmony and respect.

To carry out this process we have defined certain activities:

• Create spaces for meeting, training, and interchange between indigenous, small farmers, Afro-descendents, and inhabitants of the urban sector of the Municipality.
• Establish local plans in Education, Health, Infrastructure, Agricultural sector, etc.
• Investigate the history of the Cajibio Municipality, which will help to recover identity, history and their own way of thinking.

2. Identity and Culture

It is essential to develop a process of recognizing our own cultural values as small farmers—to recognize and raise up our history and origin. The collective work that is achieved through diverse expressions that exist in the communities is important in order to build a shared work dynamic for alternative cultural development.

That is why we define certain elements:

• Rescue, strengthen, and foment traditional artistic expressions of the small farmer culture.
• Unify criteria within different religious expressions to save collective values, to strengthen and to foment faith in the community.
• Promote spaces for dialog and coexistence in the family and the community.
• Work for the construction of unity amongst people, families, organizations, and communities at the municipal, departmental, and national levels.
• Achieve recognition, support, and respect for artisans, artists, historians, etc.
• Create and utilize spaces for mobilizations and permanent resistance.
• Strengthen collective values in the community.

3. Agriculture and the Environment

Cajibio is recognized as a primarily rural and agricultural municipality. Therefore, we must move toward building proposals that visualize the relationship and the importance of an adequate agricultural production and the protection and recuperation of the environment. This will bring about conservation of life.

Therefore we have made the following definitions:

1. Carry out a study about the current situation of small farmer families.
2. The defense of all-encompassing agrarian policies developed by the organizations.
1. Demand that the Colombian Government respect life and the human rights of small farmers.
2. Demand the the Colombian Government forgive debts acquired by small farmers.
3. Demand the provision of land to small farmers who currently do not own land and resources for production.
4. Stop the purchasing of lands by multinationals.
3. Create a small farmer reservation in Cajibio Municipality
4. Production
1. Subsistence production
2. Guarantee food security and sovereignty
3. Appropriate management of natural resources
4. Organic Agricultural Production
5. Training
1. Technical training for the development of organic agriculture
2. Recuperation of traditional techniques of production that guarantee the protection of the environment and healthy produce.
3. Create mechanisms of coordination between entities and organizations to define mechanisms and themes for training.
6. Technical assistance
1. Create a technical assistance unit with local technical concepts that is set up in agreement between the communities and the State.
2. Make sure that technical assistance be coordinated amongst the organizations and the institutions.
3. Access appropriate technologies in accord with nature and with human beings.
7. Create a seed bank for local seeds.
8. Commercializing
1. Train leaders and the community in marketing and business management.
2. Unify weights and measures in the products which are commercialized.
3. Carry out a process of direct commercialization, without intermediaries.
4. Achieve well-planned agriculture.
5. Build meeting centers  for unrefined cane sugar, coffe, and other products.
6. Establish agreements between organizations for the commercialization amongs the communities and sister organizations from other regions.
7. Look for cooperative forms of credit, production, and commercialization

4. Health

Health care has been based on a lack of recognition of the thinking and of the cultural customs that the community has in attending to health, such as traditional medicine. There is no appropriate agricultural production that guarantees good nutrition and sufficient food.

There is a tendency toward excessive consumption of medicines without taking into account the side effects that they may bring for one’s health. Health promotion and prevention are often not rocognized—both of which are valid for building healthy communities.

To develop this aspect, the assembly defined the following:

1.                  Education in health for people in the community.

2.                  The point of departure for health care must be health promotion and disease prevention.

3.                  Encourage organizing around health.

4.                  Recuperation of traditional medicine.

5.                  Demand from health institutions health care with dignity.

6.                  Elaboration of a local plan for health.

5. Education

The educational system does not correspond to the desires of the community but rather to the educational projects imposed by the State and copied from other countries without concern for our problematic. Add to this that educators have lost their charisma and commitment. Education has been utilized as an idealogical instrument of domination and submission against the population and a way of keeping small farmers in exclusion and exploitation.

Also the distancing amongst parents, children, and teachers has affected the holistic development of education.

It was decided that the educationalsytem must correspond to our Plan for Life and at the same time must develop programs that train people with a small farmer identity and cultural rootedness, with a clear option for community work and defense of the rights of small farmers.

To achieve this aspect we have put forward the following:

1.                  Include fathers and mothers of families and the community in the elaboration process of educational plans.

2.                  Foment meetings between parents of families, teachers, and students.

3.                  Strengthen the commitment of the educator inside and outside of the classroom to their students and to community organizing processes.

4.                  Exchange ideas with the community to know situations that affect the quality of education.

5.                  Foment Father and Mother Schools

6.                  Train teachers.

Teachers recognize the need to make changes in education and propose the following:

1.                  Innovation and adaptation of pedagogical models in accord with the context of community life.

2.                  Adapt curricula to reality and foment the training of community leaders.

3.                  Create study plans that complement different areas of knowledge.

4.                  Build a municipal education plan in which the entire educational community participates.

5.                  Defend public education

We put forward the communities’ need to organize and demand of the teachers that they fulfill their duties to the educational community. In order to do so it is also necessary that educators be organized in the following way.

1.                  Set up a pedagogical committee by Microcenter (a group of educational centers) to establish communication and coordination.

2.                  Implement meetings between teachers to exchange experiences and unify criteria.

3.                  Implement visits to communities of institutions responsible for education.

6. Infrastructure

The community requires the following works to reach its integral development.

1.                  Elaboration of a diagnosis for the infrastructure works that the Cajibio Municipality has and the ones it needs.

2.                  Each leader must know the municipal budget and the manner of distribution.

3.                  Prioritize strategic lines of work such as:

·        Roads

·        Installation of electrical networks

·        Aquaduct construction

·        Construction of community centers for events coordinated by organzations.

·        Obtain adequate infrastructure for health care, such as health centers, hospitals and vehicles.

7. Politico-Organizational

Our point of departure is the recognition of the reality of poverty and exclusion that historically we have lived through and the need to transform this reality from the scope of the community and toward a construction of a new society based on our local, regional, and national reality. In this sense we defined the following actions:

International Realm

1.                  Reject the foreign cultural imposition and value our own culture.

2.                  Reject the imposition of agricultural methods, technological packets, agro-chemicals, and merciless methods of land exploitation, imposed by the Empire.

3.                  We refuse to accept the importation of agricultural crops that destroy the small farmer economy.

4.                  We reject foreign policies like Plan Colombia, FTAA, and measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization.

5.                  We do not accept the military, political, economic, and cultural intervention to which our homeland is being submitted, and that damage national sovereignty.

6.                  We support the methods of organization and resistance that sister organizations from other countries have developed in the defense of sovereignty and liberty of people.

7.                  We share and we support the actions of solidarity in defense of life and against war.

National Realm

1.                  We protest against a ruling class tied to the State, enriching themselves with our taxes, corrupt and sold out to the interests of the most powerful in this country and in the Empire.

2.                  We reject the plan for development approved by the Colombian Senate which lead to total privatization of all public services. Services must be guaranteed by the State, including health care, education, potable water, mobility, credit, and subsidies for production, housing, etc.

3.                  We denounce the small farmer (with little land) can not count on the State. The strategic alliances that they put forward only serve the interests of agro-industrials to lower costs of production and destroy the economy and autonomy of the small farmer.

4.                  We reject the media that dazzles and tricks us and imposes surreal forms of life that make us forget our culture and our customs.

We propose:

1.                  Implement a training school for leaders

2.                  Strengthen community organizations

3.                  Support and recognize the role of women in community organizing.

4.                  Coordinate with indigenous groups to get to know their experience with respect to authority, autonomy, and territory.

It is necessary to work toward the construction of a solid, unified, and autonomous organizational method. Therefore the organizing structure of the Small Farmer Movement is the following:

1.                  General Assembly: It will be made up of delegates from all the towns, villages, and organizations that belong to the Small Farmer Movement.

2.                  Leadership Council: Made up of delegates from towns elected in the Assembly where one representative will participate from each village.

3.                  Town Organization: Each town must distribute work equipment. Each community must have seven work groups made up of various people who will be responsible for the development of the seven axis of the Plan for Life.

·        Politico-Organizational

·        Cultural

·        Agrarian and Environmental

·        Educational

·        Health

·        Infrastructure

·        Territory and Authority

Written in Cajibio by the men and women of the Small Farmer Movement,

May it be made known and constructed.