Avances y dificultades en la implementación de la Reforma Rural Integral: una deuda pendiente con el campo colombiano

摘要

The “Colombian Peace Agrement’s”, signed by the National Government and the farc on November the twenty-fourth 2016, acknowledges that the unequalities in land distribution, ownership, and uses as structural cause of conflict in Colombia. For this reason, the objective of the point titled “Toward a New Colombian Countryside: Comprehensive Rural Reform” is to lay the foundations for the transformation of Colombian rural reality by envisioning policies to promote access to land, incentives for small farmers and communitarian producers, and mechanisms to guarantee the effective enjoyment of social, economic, and cultural rights by rural communities. Nevertheless, there is a long way to go before the Comprehensive Rural Reform actually generates social, economic, and institutional changes that allow for the integration of rural communities and the creation of conditions for the social wellbeing of the rural population. This task entails normative and institutional adjustments at State level, as well as changes in the practices of all actors responsible for making them a reality. The article carries out a documentary revision of research carried out on the concepts of rural development with a territorial approach and new rurality , and analyzes the main aspects of point one of the Agreement, the draft bills and decrees deriving from it, the situation of the agricultural sector institutions in charge of their implementation, and the power correlations among the parties, in order to provide an assessment after a year of implementation. Finally, the paper comes to a conclusion by discussing the legal and political difficulties observed. All of these elements make it possible to say that the first stage of implementation of the Comprehensive Rural Reform has moved forward with great difficulties, encountering institutional resistance and normative obstacles. Nevertheless, this is just the beginning.