A broken promise: an insight into the killings of social leaders and the elites' resistance to the implementation of the Comprehensive Rural Reform in Colombia

Abstract: Four years after the signing of the Final Agreement for the Termination of the Armed Conflict in Colombia, the promises made to achieve a stable and lasting peace have by no means materialized at the expected pace. The implementation of the Agreements has focused on the demobilization of the FARC-EP while structural transformations to reduce the causes for the existence or prolongation of the conflict have been neglected. While the political and economic elites make efforts to halt the implementation –especially the compromises dealing with the rural reform– those who promote such structural changes have been stigmatized and violated in an effort to maintain the status quo. As a result, Colombia has the highest number of killings of social leaders in Latin America. The leaders mobilizing peasant causes have suffered with particular intensity from this violence.  This thesis thus uses a qualitative method of study, developed through data collection, to analyze the relationship between the elite resistance to the implementation of the Comprehensive Rural Reform and the assassinations of social leaders in Colombia. The conceptual basis for the research is the theory of structural violence.