86
REVOLUTIONARY SOCIAL CHANGE IN COLOMBIA
socioeconomic and cultural situation. Historically, times of negative politicaleconomic circumstances have seen peasants leave for urban centers in hopes of a better life. The peasant is not bound to the land to the same extent as his counterparts in certain other Latin American countries. The limitation is almost solely economic; in general, and increasingly during the last twenty years, the farm worker and smallholder readily abandons the land whenever opportunity presents itself of transferring to an urban activity. (Galbraith, 1953: 88) There clearly was a significant out-migration of peasants from the countryside throughout the 1950s to 1970s, which continues to this day, but it has been argued that there were also growing numbers of small producers. Mike Davis’s important work in Planet of Slums (2007) contextualizes the ever-increasing rates of peasant immigration to urban centers, but some sectors of Colombia’s countryside have witnessed an increase in their peasant population. Labor organizers, social movements, and human rights organizations have detailed that campesinos have remained and raised families in the countryside even when their situation there was dire (Díaz Montes, 2005). Mondragón (2006) found that alongside a very real exodus from the countryside there has been an influx in the number of rural producers in Colombia. While not a new phenomenon, this marks an important distinction in the context of rural production and socioeconomic identity throughout Latin America. The most evident impact of capitalism, both rural and urban, has been the high rate of farm-to-city migration that has taken pace in Colombia since the 1950s. Pushed out by worsening conditions in the rural economy and attracted by the possibility of high-wage industrial jobs in the urban centers, rural migrants contributed to urban growth rates that were on the order of 6 percent per year by the 1960s. Notwithstanding these high rates of Table 4.5 The declining importance of conventional agriculture in the Colombian economy A: Drop in agriculture’s proportion of in GDP since the implementation of neoliberalism Industry
1980
1990
1999
Average decade reduction percentage
Agriculture
22%
19%
13%
5
B: Decline in annual growth of the rural economy per decade Industry Agricultural
1980–89 2.9%
1990–99 -2.6%
Decade reduction percentage 5.5%
Sources: Adapted from Avilés, 2006: 58, 118; Richani, 2005a: 117-118; 2002a: 141; Decker and Duran, 1982: 29.
