The arrival of the mennonite religious community The Colombian Orinoquia has been anything but peaceful for the local community. And it is that, from its first settlements in the 2016peasants and indigenous people have filed complaints for an alleged illegal land grab.
However, after a visit to his more than 33 thousand hectaresthe governor of Meta, Juan Guillermo Zuluagaand the environmental authorities of the department determined that the land was acquired legally and, furthermore, it is an additional source of income.
“They have made absolutely legal purchases. The people of the region have asked us to defend this community, (…) we are helping to develop the altillanura Colombian woman who did nothing before,” he specified in an interview granted to Blue Radio.
Along the same lines, the Mennonite leader in Colombia, class wallclarified for the aforementioned medium: “The first group that bought, there were like 56 peopleAfter we saw that we liked the land, we bought it from the neighbors and invested more money. We are farmers from MexicoMost of them sold everything and bought land here. In all cases, Before buying, we check that all the papers are up to date”.
Although, for the cacique leader of the ancestral territory Tsabilonía, Ramon Estrada, the Mennonites bought lands that have ancestrally belonged to the indigenous community of Meta; since, despite not being in the area at the time of purchase, they usually frequent it:
“We are semi-nomadic, who leave a place to rest and then return, and we have done so with that territory. That is not in abandonment, what happens is that we let them rest.
In the past, the indigenous people of the sikuani community They came and went without problems in the area. According to information published by the UNHCR (UN Refugee Agency), as well forged their nomadic tradition in the Orinoquíauntil, through forced processes, they were forced to settle in the departments of Vichada, Guainia, Meta, Caqueta, Casanare and Arauca.
In mid-December 2022, the Senator Wilson Arias, of the Historical Pact, filed a public complaint against the Mennonite community in Colombia. In his words, this religious community has acquired close to 30,000 hectares of land in the department of Meta, in a period of eight years.
“These are warning patterns about the accumulation of waste and dispossessed land. I have already officially applied to the National Land Agency to investigate how many of those hectares the Mennonites have, how many are vacant and should not have, and if more Mennonite foreigners have land, in addition to those identified by us,” said the senator.
The complaint suggests that most of the properties they have acquired are vacant or belong to the nation and, therefore, could not be marketed. The approximate cost of the land amounts to 43,000 million pesos, but on average each hectare was acquired from 1’700,000 pesos.
It is not the first time that the senator of the Historical Pact pronounce on this phenomenon. Already in 2018, the parliamentarian echoed the complaints about the presence of Mennonites in the country.
Similar accusations have been made in the past, an example of this is the investigation published by the media Conflict Routes in 2021, in which it is stated that this religious community arrived in the country in 2014 and was located on land near the municipality of Puerto Gaitán (Meta). Two years later, approximately 30 families settled in the area and founded the Liviney cologne.
Or that of the media alliance, known as La League Against Silenceabout the presence of this community in the country, to which the responsibility of deforest about 135 hectares of jungle, in order to increase their agricultural colonies, because this community has focused its economy on the production of monocultures of rice, soybeans and corn. To the point where, in recent years, they have modified the soil, built roads to connect their neighborhoods, a church, and also a school for children.
