Bogotá, August 31 (teleSUR-RHC)-- Farmers in Colombia are mobilizing throughout the country, especially in Bogota, demanding the government fulfill promises made after massive protests two years ago.    

Rural social movements from August 30th to September 5th at the Agrarian, Farmers, Ethnic and Popular Summit are evaluating the process of negotiations initiated with the state after the 2013 and 2014 massive demonstrations.   

“We still feel outraged, because we consider that the unfulfilled agreements, the regressive policies, the restricted democracy, the stigmatization and discrimination of our struggles and achievements, the political persecution from the part of the state represent unfair and offensive actions against the hope for peace and social justice that the Colombian people aspire to,” said the movements in a statement.    
        
According to the organizing movements, less than 70 percent of the over 200 agreements reached with the government since 2013 have been executed. Worse, the government implemented new policies that contradicted such agreements.

“Why is the State working hard to negotiate with the economic and agro-industrial groups that benefit from the Agrarian Free Trade Agreements, while criminalizing, stigmatizing, persecuting and ignoring rural communities,” it added.        
       
Campesinos movements staged two national strikes on August 19, and in October of 2013, the symptom of a deep crisis in Colombian agriculture that even the United Nations, guarantor of the negotiation process with the government, recognized.  

Under the conservative governments of Alvaro Uribe and Juan Manuel Santos, agriculture in Colombia has been heavily oriented toward exportation and the use of pesticides and fertilizers, forcing farmers into debt to remain competitive on the world market.