by Chris Knestrick

The desire of North Americans to decrease their ecological footprint has increased the demand for eco-products such as palm oil-fed bio-fuel cars, organic palm oil cosmetic products and processed foods using palm oil that corporations like Kraft and Nestle tout as a "healthier" substitute for partially-hydrogenated oils.  The global north's craving for palm oil has driven Colombia to become the world's largest producer of that crop.  But this "green revolution" turns the color of blood and fire in Colombia. 

Much like the Spanish colonialists searched for gold using military might during the sixteenth century, the United States is searching for green fuel.  Under Plan Colombia, the US has invested six billion dollars in military aid to Colombia, and according to The Nation, "Since 2003, USAID's alternative development contracts have provided nearly twenty million to oil palm agribusiness projects across the country."  By the year 2020, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe hopes to turn Colombia into the world's main producer of palm oil, creating six million hectares of palm plantations to feed the green consumerism in the global north. 

To make room for more plantations, Colombian authorities, in collusion with paramilitaries, have displaced hundreds of small communities and murdered their leaders.  Afro-Colombian communities, in particular, have suffered from this political violence.  Moreover, after the so-called demobilization of paramilitary groups in 2005, former paramilitaries received many of these palm plantations as a way to reincorporate the armed actors back into society.  The Magdalena Medio region, where CPT does its primary work, is one of the principle areas designated for palm plantations.  Right now, 100,000 hectares of palm are planted there.  Uribe's plan will increase that amount to 250,000 hectares.  At what price?

One campesino community in this region, Las Pavas, has recently experienced the devastating effects of this agri-business.  On 14 July 2009, the Colombian National Police entered the community and evicted the 123 families, destroying their houses and burning their farms-thus adding their number to the four million displaced people in Colombia.

This community of campesinos has occupied and worked the land in Las Pavas since 1993.  Under Colombian law, after occupying and working land for a period of five years or more, communities have the right to receive titles to their holdings.  In this case, the original title-holder, an uncle of drug lord Pablo Escobar, "sold" the land to a huge palm oil plantation, as if the campesinos of Las Pavas had no legitimate claim to it.  The organic palm oil company, Daabon, which supplies oil to the cosmetics company, The Body Shop, got an eviction order against the campesinos.  Although the National Institute for Rural Development has not yet granted the campesinos titles, legally, they have a right to stay on their land because the land cannot be formally transferred to a third party until this issue is resolved.  Yet the Daabon Company successfully urged the judge and the police to perform the illegal eviction and has since started to cut down the forest, build a road and plant palm on the farms of the community.

The Southern Bolivar Agricultural-Mining Federation, a coalition of campesinos and small miners who have organized in defense of the land and livelihood of the Southern Bolivar communities, is non-violently resisting the consumption of their land by palm oil agribusiness.  Their leaders have been jailed and assassinated.  Most recently, on 22 April, Federation leader Edgar Martinez was assassinated in the city of San Pablo in the Magdalena Medio.  However, the Federation continues to struggle for human rights.  On 20-21 August, after the government failed to show up for a scheduled meeting while the Federation waited three days, they declared a permanent assembly and a mass mobilization in conjunction with a mobilization of indigenous Colombians called "the Minga."  (See 25 November 2008 CPTnet release, "COLOMBIA: Indigenous peoples join "La Minga" and march on Bogota."

Because palm oil seeds are renewable, consume carbon, and give more oil per seed than other products, some people believe palm oil can allow citizens of the global north to continue their over-consumption and avoid the ecological crisis. But environmental organizations have documented the deforestation and the destruction of peat land associated with palm oil plantations, thus putting into question palm oil's ecologically friendly aspects.  Even if these plantations were not harmful to such ecosystems, however, wealthy nations need to consider whether owning multiple cars, having access to cheap, processed food, and cultivating beautiful skin are worth more than the lives and livelihoods of Colombian communities for whom palm oil has brought only death, destruction and displacement.