The Forum continues the work of the Mission, whose report was submitted on Friday at the University of Bogota.

The peasant said “the presence of this (palm) corporation in the region is predating the fauna and flora, and it is appropriating our land. We feel threatened in our humanitarian zone”.

Humanitarian zones are precisely a survival strategy of the peasants that find themselves surrounded by military and paramilitary groups.

“Right now the threats against our leaders and against the whole community continue”, he said.

A year and a half after the Mission, agrofuel expansion continues, but the work of social organizations in defense of their territory is also noticeable.

In October of 2010, the Daabon group announced it would leave its palm cultivation project in Hacienda Las Pavas, in the Magdalena Medio region, after an intense campaign of the peasant families with the support of regional and national organizations that unmasked how palm oil corporations illegally appropriated peasant lands.

The National Attorney General issued an arrest warrant against 24 palm producers who, in alliance with paramilitary groups, intimidated the Afro-descendent communities of Choco to buy their lands at very low prices.