Revisiting Chicoral: Colombia’s Sandwich Strategy for Land Reform, Then and Now

Luis Baquero

Colombia

Indigenous & Community Land Rights

negotiated land reform

land distribution

land dispute

land dispute resolution

land ownership

landowners

reforms

Image: Poster “For Peace with Social and Environmental Justice — Turning the Chicoral Pact Around" by Luis Baquero

In February 2025, over 5,000 peasant, Indigenous, and Afro-descendant leaders gathered in Chicoral, Tolima – a small town in the plains of an Andean valley in Colombia. Today, it is known as an agricultural production hub, but in 1972, it became infamous as the site where political and landowning elites struck a deal to shut down agrarian reform – entrenching land inequality and silencing the voices of the rural poor for generations.

Now, half a century later, Chicoral is once again at the heart of the land debate, but this time, the aim is to reignite reform, not bury it. I was there as part of the Land Portal team, witnessing the revival of what some call a "sandwich strategy" – linking top-down policy with bottom-up mobilisation. But can this renewed effort break through the same barriers that stalled reform for decades?

In this blog, I reflect on what I saw in Chicoral, and ask: What’s different this time? How are grassroots movements reshaping the fight for land justice as ICARRD+20 draws near? And can old tools drive new change?

Facilitator at the "Gerardo González,Training School" session – focused on the formation of municipal and departmental agrarian reform committees.

The event and the 'Sandwich Strategy' then and now

The two-day summit in February marked a pivotal moment for Colombia's rural agrarian history. With academic panels and 25 dialogue spaces intentionally designed to amplify voices of youth, women, and Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, the event culminated in a historic pact signing between the President, Agriculture Minister, and rural representatives.

What we witnessed was a modern "sandwich strategy" in action – where state institutions and grassroots movements join forces to challenge entrenched interests. This approach isn't new to Colombia; it echoes the ambitious reforms of the 1960s across Latin America.

The idea was simple but powerful: change needed to come from both above and below. While the state pushed policy reforms, peasants would organise, mobilise, and demand enforcement on the ground. This “sandwich strategy” was a bold challenge to the landowning elites and the political clientelism of the Frente Nacional – a power-sharing pact that brought stability after La Violencia, but also sidelined alternative movements and kept rural policy under elite control.

Then President Carlos Lleras Restrepo, a key reformist voice, envisioned a modern Colombia built on small landowners, not hacienda-bound labourers. But he knew laws weren’t enough — peasants needed to be empowered to claim their rights and hold the system accountable.

These efforts led to the creation of ANUC—the Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos (National Association of Peasant Users) — in 1967. Backed by reformist sectors within the state, ANUC quickly grew into Latin America’s largest peasant movement, with over 800,000 members. It aimed to connect rural communities with state institutions and give peasants a voice in shaping agrarian policy, while maintaining a moderate, non-partisan stance in line with the anti-insurgency logic of the Frente Nacional era.

However, ANUC’s rapid rise triggered backlash from Colombia’s traditional elites. Powerful landowners and commercial producer associations viewed the movement as a threat to their economic and political dominance. Following the disputed 1970 election of President Misael Pastrana, the government began to distance itself from ANUC. As official support waned, parts of the movement radicalised — giving elites the pretext to label ANUC as subversive and aligned with guerrilla groups. This narrative justified a wave of state repression that ultimately fractured the alliance between the state and peasant organisations, reaching its highest point with the Pact of Chicoral in 1972, which reversed key aspects of the reform.

The "Chicoral 2025" gathering marks a turning point. But what sets it apart from the original "sandwich strategy" of the 1960s? First, the political landscape has shifted. Progressive sectors of the state are no longer aligned with the traditional landed elites or the bipartisan establishment that dominated during the Frente Nacional and beyond. Instead, they are working more closely with grassroots social movements to bridge a decades-long divide and bring redistributive land policy back into focus.

Second, the context itself has transformed. Rural realities have changed, and so has the conversation around land. Today’s push for redistribution is embedded in global agrarian struggles and shaped by new priorities: the climate and biodiversity crises, food sovereignty and the social and environmental concerns around industrialised, global food systems. Land reform is no longer just about distributing land to boost productivity and promote industrialisation; it is now about ensuring a viable and equitable future for both people and the planet.

Of course, the renewed State–Peasant organisation is neither seamless nor entirely coherent — there are tensions, competing visions, and uneven priorities. But what’s emerging is a shared sense of purpose. For the first time in decades, rural movements and progressive actors within the state have come together around a common framework: a bold 12-point agenda that challenges the narrow logic of market-led land reform. This is more than a list of demands — it is a political and territorial vision rooted in justice, sustainability, and inclusion. The twelve-point agenda is outlined below.

Equitable land redistribution and recovery of dispossessed territories
Agrarian justice and historical reparations
Ecological restoration
Inclusive policymaking
Transformation of production for food sovereignty
Protection of hard-won social gains
Institutional strengthening of agrarian State structures
Safety guarantees for rural communities
Recognition of women, youth, and diverse identities
Water protection and territorial governance
Safeguarding Indigenous and community knowledge
A just transition from illicit economies

New priorities, same old tools?

The government of President Gustavo Petro and Vice President Francia Márquez has brought the redistributive and social justice goals of agrarian reform back to the forefront of Colombia’s national agenda. Their programme includes the state purchase of land from large landowners for redistribution, the implementation of progressive land taxes, mass titling of rural properties, and the fulfilment of the first point of the 2016 Peace Agreement: the Comprehensive Rural Reform.

These are not minor moves. They reflect long-standing demands from campesino movements, and Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities who have fought for a more just and inclusive land system. Yet this agenda — despite its progressive framing — remains largely confined within the architecture of Market-Led Agrarian Reform (MLAR), introduced in Colombia during the 1990s under Law 160 and widely critiqued for its redistributive ineffectiveness.

MLAR reflects what has been locally described as “light reformism” — a reformist stance that promises change without challenging deeper power structures. This approach replaced state-led redistribution with market-based mechanisms, aiming to improve efficiency, reduce bureaucratic burdens, and bypass confiscatory approaches. The premise seemed simple: landowners would sell voluntarily, and small farmers would become self-sufficient with access to credit and technical support.

In Colombia, MLAR is embedded in a patchwork of legal instruments that, while broad in scope, have largely failed to deliver meaningful redistribution. These frameworks include tools ranging from expropriation to voluntary land transfers facilitated through state purchases. Although the legal architecture is extensive and includes a multiplicity of instruments, the numerous veto points within the system have produced an approach that heavily favors voluntary market transactions, while the most powerful redistributive tools have rarely been enforced.

Many of the instruments designed to regulate, recover, and redistribute land remain severely underused. Among these are the administrative and judicial Agrarian Processes established under Colombian law, intended to verify the legitimacy of land titles, ensure that public lands have not been illegally appropriated, determine whether land is public or private, establish public boundaries, recover illegally occupied land, and expropriate land in cases of unproductive use or environmental degradation.

A closer look at the limits of MLAR’s promises — and a rethink of approaches to land redistribution — feels more urgent when you see the uneven progress of the Integral Rural Reform (RRI) established in the 2016 Peace Agreement with the FARC. The RRI inherited much of the logic of MLAR, and efforts have mostly focused on formalizing existing land occupations rather than truly redistributing land (a bold pattern but still far from "radical reformism", as some have argued). At times, the line between formalization and redistribution has been blurred, and the two have even been treated as if they were the same (a confusion pointed out by Colombia's Contraloría General back in 2022). Meanwhile, the stronger legal tools included in Agrarian Processes have seen limited use and have consistently encountered barriers, as the available data suggests. Between 2016 and 2022, about 60% of the 1.34 million hectares added to the Land Fund came from public lands that were already occupied — effectively mixing up formalization with redistribution — while only around 22% came from Agrarian Processes (see the Contraloría’s 2022 report — page 57 if you’re curious). Similarly, by April 2025, the current administration had added 553,023 hectares to the Fund, with about 30% coming from Agrarian Processes and 67% from purchases, transfers, and donations (tracked through the Official Agrarian Reform Registry maintained by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development). Thus, as it stands — and despite unprecedented efforts by the current administration — the cumulative land policy outcomes continue to show a greater emphasis on legalizing existing occupations, with a growing number of purchased lands aimed at redistribution, but still falling far short of the intentions set out in the Peace Agreement.

Overall, these figures reveal a heavy emphasis on titling public lands, the relatively modest role of land purchases in advancing redistribution, and the even more marginal contribution of Agrarian Processes.

Further complicating matters is the territorial selectivity of implementation. The agrarian component of the Peace Agreement has largely focused on municipalities most affected by the armed conflict — specifically, the PDET (Territorially Focused Development Program) zones, which account for 15% of the total municipalities in Colombia. While this focus is necessary, it is far from sufficient. Rural movements have consistently pointed out that land concentration extends well beyond conflict zones or agricultural frontier areas in the Amazon — commonly referred to as zonas de colonización.

All these factors point to a broader conclusion: Colombia’s current land reform framework is not equipped to deliver meaningful redistribution. The legal system is full of veto points that allow elites to delay or block structural change in a country marked by political violence and mass dispossession. These barriers have been worsened by the dismantling of Colombia’s agrarian institutions, especially the closure of INCORA (the Colombian Institute for Agrarian Reform) in 2003 and INCODER (the Colombian Institute for Rural Development) in 2015. Since the Chicoral Pact of 1972, INCORA’s main responsibilities — land titling, the provision of productive assets, and rural planning — have been split across multiple agencies. These agencies remain highly centralized and lack the territorial presence and operational capacity to drive land reform where it is most needed.

Academic panel: “The Agrarian Reform Today — Achievements and Challenges for Land Redistribution.” Jonathan Fox presents to the plenary the key challenges of advancing the sandwich strategy

From Chicoral to ICARRD+20

The 12-point agenda builds upon and deepens the goals of the Peace Agreement, reframing land not merely as a legal or economic asset, but as the foundation for justice, autonomy, and ecological integrity. Yet the terrain remains highly contested. Congress has become a battleground over the scope and pace of reform — debating the division of powers between the executive and judicial branches and the relevance of vetoes in expropriation processes. Meanwhile, the institutions responsible for implementation remain constrained by the logic embedded in Law 160.

As Colombia prepares to host ICARRD+20 — two decades after the first global dialogue on agrarian reform — the country stands at a critical crossroads. This is not merely a moment to revisit past policies, but to fundamentally rethink the assumptions that have shaped land reform for generations. In the lead-up to this landmark event, the government is convening a series of national and regional encounters, including a key meeting of researchers engaged in scholar-activism and action research. These efforts aim to reinforce the 12-point agenda and to provide robust, evidence-based support for a renewed vision of agrarian justice.

Importantly, as recently announced by the Ministry, five regional meetings will create spaces for Colombia’s diverse agrarian movements to articulate their visions and demands, grounded in their lived experiences. At the heart of these dialogues is a clear message: it is time to move beyond market-led approaches and to reclaim the political, social, and ecological dimensions of land reform. ICARRD+20 offers a rare opportunity not only to reshape national land policy but also to contribute to the global conversation on land and justice.

Luis Baquero is a data management consultant and researcher for the Land Portal. He is based in Colombia.

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The event and the 'Sandwich Strategy' then and now

New priorities, same old tools?

From Chicoral to ICARRD+20

Recommended Reading and Resources

The event and the 'Sandwich Strategy' then and now

New priorities, same old tools?

From Chicoral to ICARRD+20

Recommended Reading and Resources

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