Monday was the 15th anniversary of the struggle and resistance of the National Agrarian Coordination. The CNA proposes “to build an integral development model for the country and for the countryside, by coordinating individual development with collective and grassroots development, as well as the relations between human beings, society and nature so that this model is democratic, popular, sustainable, proportional and according to the reality of the people living in the rural areas”, reads their blog.

The CNA is a member of La Via Campesina Colombia and of the Latin American Coordination of Countryside Organizations (CLOC-VC).

Bedoya claims that nowadays the commodification of common goods, from hydrocarbons to oxigen and water, puts the organizations at a crossroads.

Bedoya told Real World Radio that “the peasants alone will not be able to overcome this model imposed upon us” so they aim to build alliances with other sectors of the countryside, workers and students.

One of the highlights of this struggle according to Bedoya is the Minga de Resistencia (or Convergence of Resistance), the Peoples’ Congress and the recent National Congress on Land, Territory and Sovereignty on which outcomes the communities base their daily work.

The CNA’s anniversary celebrations included a space for a mystica and a moment for the remembrance of the people killed, displaced or disappeared over the past years.

Bedoya said about this that the struggle for truth and justice is an important part of resistance, as well as a political, negotiated solution to the armed conflict that Colombia has undergone for the past six decades.

Produced by Danilo Urrea – CENSAT Agua Viva Colombia