On 16 August Miguel Briceño,
a community leader of El Porvenir,
Puerto Gaitán Municipality, Meta Department, received a threatening phone call
from a man who identified himself as a commander of the paramilitary “Los Urabeños”.
The caller told Miguel Briceño: “when I have you tied up or I have one of your
relatives, tears of blood will be spilt…”. This is only the latest of a series
of threats against Miguel Briceño. He has reported this threat to the
authorities. Currently, the only physical
security measure the authorities have provided him is a mobile phone.
The peasant farmers of El Porvenir have been grazing their cattle on
this savannah for about half a century. In the 1990s the state institution
charged with allocating state-owned land to landless peasant farmers illegally
adjudicated the land to Víctor Carranza, who until his death in 2013 was one of
the country’s most powerful emerald entrepreneurs, and who was long suspected
of having strong links to paramilitary groups. In July 2014, following requests
from Colombian human rights organizations, the Colombian Institute for Rural
Development (Instituto Colombiano de Desarrollo Rural, INCODER) issued a
resolution revoking the illegal land titles. President Juan Manuel Santos
stated in April 2015 that Carranza’s heirs had returned the land to the state,
but the community is yet to receive legal ownership over it, while the threats
against them continue.
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