Campesino territoriality: absent in political projects in Eastern Antioquia

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between territorial intervention projects, rurality, and campesinos (peasants and small farmers) in Eastern Antioquia, based on a theoretical and methodological approach from the field of territorial studies. In order to do this, we will look into the political projects developed in the last 20 years on a supra-municipal scale - their approaches, and the functions assigned to each fragment of this geographical space-, so as to finally highlight the changes and tensions produced by these projects. In this subregion, highly affected by armed conflict in the 1980s and 1990s, a number of projects with a long-term perspective are currently being implemented. They weave several forms of cutting up the territory, of dividing it, but such forms do not recognize campesino territoriality or their ties to the territory. As a result, the end of the armed conflict has meant a more pronounced move towards agro-industry, energy extractivism, ecosystem services, and the subregion's own offer, which has led to a fragmentation of its economic functionality that denies, directly or indirectly the campesino subject, his practices and his knowledge, as well as his ways of intervening in the territory.