10 años del Observatorio de Tierras - Publicaciones internacionales

¡Seguimos celebrando los 10 años del Observatorio de Tierras! y en este episodio hablamos de las más de 30 publicaciones que tenemos en revistas internacionales e indexadas que han sido, en muchos de los casos, resultados de nuestras investigaciones. También, el equipo del Observatorio, en esta década, ha podido trabajar de la mano de grandes académicoas/as con quienes ha cooperado en dichas publicaciones.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Conflicts over the land of indigenous communitiesoccur in several regions of the country.
One million hectares of forest have beendeforested in Colombia in the last twenty-
eight years as a result of drugtrafficking, illegal mining and the excessive use
of land for livestock. The secondland restitution judge withdrew antioquo threatened to send
a victim to the prosecution for claiminghis rights before his office. How about

(00:25):
this is tired of hearing this foryears. You knew that in Colombia one
percent of the population occupies eighty-one percent of the land, while ninety
- nine percent of the land isblamed by the other nineteen percent of the
population. I knew that only twenty- six percent of the productive units are

(00:48):
headed by women. A Rosario Radioand the Observatorio de Tierras present with the
Feet on Earth a space to expandthe dialogue on Colombian property and countryside.
Or a greeting to everyone and thelisteners of Bogotá, Colombia and the world.

(01:26):
Welcome to our Pies en la Tierraprogram, conducted by the Observatorio de
Tierras en Alianza and broadcast by theinstitutional station of the Universidad del Rosario or
Rosario Radio. My name is CarolinaCrosby and at the working table I was
accompanied by Professor Rocío Peña, academiccoordinator of the Earth Observatory, and Professor
Francisco Gutiérrez, director of the EarthObservatory. Remember listeners that you can listen

(01:49):
to us on our website or radioco rosary, as well as the broadcast
platform such as Spreaker, Spotify,bezer Radio, Gaiden and Apulpot. Where
you can access and download all ourepisodes remember to follow us on our social
networks. In x they find usas a stream to earth observes and on
Facebook we are like Facebook com slashland observed, welcome and welcome with feet

(02:19):
on the earth is produced by theObservatory of Lands. This year we are
celebrating the ten years of the EarthObservatory. In our previous episode we talked
about the achievements we have achieved inlegal matters from the hand of the legal
clinic of Agrarian Property, restitution oflands and victims coordinated by the team of

(02:40):
the Observatory. But today we wantto talk about that story that the Observatory
has had after a period of research. Many of the results of these researches
are reflected in more than thirty publicationsin international and indexed journals that the entire
Observatory team has. I want toask Professor Francis first how this trajectory has

(03:01):
been throughout this leave and let's say what have been the main obstacles
or difficulties they have faced in orderto publish good. The first thing I
want to do, thank you verymuch, Carolina, is to highlight the
importance of this outcome. Yes,we are depending on the criterion, of
course, but if one simply countsthe publications of the Observatory, of researchers

(03:28):
of the Observatory in scaled- upjournals in Cimago, we have quite more
than forty things that is a resultthat I doubt any academic unit in the
Bailis has and many of those publicationsare in the best journals in the world
in their respective areas, such asJordal or Pet Stories and World Development on

(03:55):
baldquarterlygue also, of course, thoseof Ahorita law. Rosio herself will make
us clear, so it' san unusual result. I understand that there
may be a debate on international publication, but I believe that an absolutely essential
function in terms of validation of knowledge, in terms of networking, in terms

(04:17):
of interlocution and also of participating inidentifying nual points in the intellectual debate agenda
in the respective areas. Those forty, in fact, are more about fifty
than forty of the Observatory' spublications have three characteristics that make me very

(04:43):
happy. In fact, four.The first is that they involve researchers from
the different universities of the Observatory.I always remember the Observatory is a network
of researchers in a fairly harmonious wayand different generations of researchers. I want

(05:04):
to put a lot of emphasis onthis. We are producing international publications with
co- authors of people in theirtwenties, in their thirties, that is,
that they are beginning their academic careeror in the middle of their academic
career, and that with that instrumentof a publication, a magazine of very

(05:28):
high quality, in a magazine let' s say heavyweight that it is is
iconic for the respective Aryan, becausethey are promoting Colombian researchers their trajectories.
Secondly, the bulk of these publicationsare programmatic publications, i e they do
not correspond to secondary or trivial questions. Here I would like to quote the

(05:58):
great researcher in political science ugly sCotchpol, who said better an approximate answer,
a crucial question than a very preciseanswer, a marginal question. These
questions that we are answering in theObservatory' s publications correspond to the programmatic

(06:20):
agenda that we put in and thatis published on the Observatory' s website
when we appear. And thirdly,there is a good balance, even if
social counts are made. Let ussay, for example, in terms of

(06:43):
gender, of those forty- fiftyinternational publications over twenty have women as authors
and in many cases, I thinkat least fifteen ten as first authors.
And finally, many of these publicationsarise from discussions, analyses, discussions with

(07:10):
colleagues in the regions and with socialorganizations, and also come out of help
and questions and problems that have beenexplicitly raised by social organizations. So those
four characteristics, that is, participatein the heavyweight instruments of the instruments that

(07:31):
put the agenda in the international publication, but with a combination of different generations.
That is very, very important,from very young researchers to researchers how
to say it politely more senior.Secondly, programmatic publication through substantive, intellectual
and social questions historically. Thirdly,gender- balanced participation and other approaches.

(08:05):
And fourthly, interaction with colleagues inthe regions and with social organizations to define
these people, to structure questions andanswers. And suddenly I would even add
a fifth that is also very important, is the multidisciplinary, more or less

(08:26):
radical nature of the Observatory. Weare not multidisciplinary in small, but in
large. Then it' s publications. This includes statistics, lawyers, sociologists,
anthropologists, political scientists and polylogists,etc, etc. That is to

(08:50):
say, we have a social communicators, a panoply of disciplines represented in the
publication of the Observatory. This professor, thank you very much and returning a
little as to the question stated whatyou consider to have been like the obstacles,
the difficulties that have been faced asa team to be able to publish,

(09:13):
because there is also much talk,for example, that many of these
magazines, because they have to bein English or as the requirements that Carrerista
asks. I don' t knowif you could tell us a little bit
about that. We never started fromthe fact that the international publication was beautiful,
beautiful and perfect and, in fact, since we appeared we started with

(09:33):
an internal debate that, as Carolinais struggling with today, about the barriers,
the entry, the problems, etcetera, that the international publication has,
because there is a somewhat fanciful version, that, in fact, it is
a space with perfect rules of playand, obviously, neither peer review.

(09:54):
Nor does the international publication have perfectrules of play. They' re very
imperfect. There are biases, thereare inefficiencies, there are absurd common places
and, above all, if youwant to advance an innovative agenda, which
was also one of the Observatory's initial purposes, because that creates greater

(10:15):
difficulties. What we set up ina rather strategic way from the beginning and
that' s why we had anational scientific committee and an international one from
the beginning, is that the betwas big enough to fight those problems and
those inconsistencies. And we have andin many cases we have ended up debating

(10:39):
with magazines, etcetera, etcetera.Then there are many barriers to entry.
There' s the English entry barrier. If you pointed out, there is
the barrier of entry in terms ofacademic training, I think there is also
a serious problem in our academic communityin terms of writing, raising problems in

(11:01):
such a way that they are viable. In those scenarios and this year,
when we turned ten, we aresystematizing that experience of ours, which I
frankly believe is unique in the country. I already doubt that there is any
academic unit social sciences that has thatjourney in as short a time as we

(11:22):
are and we are systematizing it andwe hope to be able to offer some
of its results, even through trainingworkshops to others conegas in the regions,
etc. To discuss this, then, undoubtedly, there are barriers to the
lobby. Undoubtedly there are problems,but the bet is important enough to work

(11:46):
on that and to dialogue about thatinternal, internal. One hotels follow with
your feet on the ground here andthank you. I think the professor mentioned

(12:11):
something about the interdisciplinary team and thedifferent topics we dealt with, because the
whole observatory team. I wanted toask the teacher dew what these investigations are
about, how to dig deeper intowhat is written. Well, what Francis
says seems very important to me,and our programmatic agenda gives us the road

(12:37):
map in front of what we publish. In that sense. Our research is
basically about the conflict, about landownership, about conflicts over land ownership,
and about social movements on land.Political conflict dispossessed a lot. It'

(13:07):
s a little bit of land accumulation, but a lot of dispossession and say.
That leads us to something that isstill unsolved, which is serious reform.
I believe that through the way wesay with these courses is that we

(13:31):
have built research projects that seek toexplain the social phenomena from the words of
Prof Gutiérrez, from different edges,and what has allowed us to research is
that we arrive at the construction ofthese articles with a previous work in the

(13:56):
research. In other words, wedo not investigate each one, we do
not cosume alone, but the teamis an interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary team in which
in some way, we are allinvolved in the problem of research, in

(14:16):
the recovery of information, in thesystematization and analysis of it and in some
way we have discussions or we havehad excusions that have allowed us, at
the time of the construction of thearticles, as we are co- authors,

(14:37):
really where, as Profectuérrez, theseniors would say, we put at
the disposal of the younger ones asour expertise, ours all the barriers that
we have had to get to writein an articulated way the results of the

(15:00):
investigations that we have done in thelast ten years. In the case of
the Observatory and there is one thingthat is very important that I want to
highlight from what the professor said isthat this interaction with researchers from different disciplines
not only, because it is notjust disciplines in social sciences. We exchange

(15:26):
basic consciences, as well as mathematics. We also get into earth consciousness,
as we have had agronomists in ourteams, which allow us to see the
world in a different way and withoutgetting into jargon, which makes us only

(15:50):
talk to one type of subjects andwe can' t talk to many academic
subjects, and I think that alsomakes it possible for us to work and
build these research results. There aretwo things there. From what it says

(16:11):
dew I would like to highlight oneother absolutely central issues. Colombian societies pardon,
peasant societies articulated to illicit crops,These penalized peasants have been a strong
focus of research over the years andhave produced several important results there, also

(16:34):
important projects. And secondly, whatdew said about co- authorships, that
has been absolutely key. We haveall kinds of authorship. In fact,
the majority of the Observatory' spublications, of these international publications to which

(16:56):
we are referring, are co-authors or s ries among members of the
Observatory. Passing disciplinary barriers, movingto institutional barriers, people from different universities,
from different disciplines. For example,here I see the article by Monica

(17:23):
Stop Professor, but at that timerecently graduated from the lawyer of the University
of Rosario and Margarita Marín, PhDin statistics from the National University, a
super fat result on the advancement ofwomen in the coca growers world and so

(17:44):
on. And there are also manyco- authors of members of the Observatory
col people who say they do notbelong organic among the Observatory, but who
work in networks with us, whetherthey are researchers ns or researchers here in
the country. I would like toteach that your worship deepens into one thing

(18:11):
that seems very important to me andthat the example is this article between Margarita
and Monica, and that is whatwe say the mixed methodologies that are used
not only in research, but inthe presentation of research results. How has

(18:32):
that work been at the observatory andlet' s say what articles one can
look at to show those mixed methodologies. It is, for example, in
the case of Monica and Margarita.Monica did a very strong field work,
especially in fucking May, with cocafarmers, and realized that the status of

(18:55):
women in societies in agrarian societies ofgrowers in little attention was not so much
the agricultural day laborers as the so- called raspaccines, but the small owners.
He had undergone many transformations that inmany cases were even pushed back.

(19:21):
These positive transformations in restitution contexts,and we had the possibility to do both
an exercise, an opinion poll amongcampesitos who participated in the substitution in the
so- called PENICE Comprehensive National Planfor the substitution of illicit crops, when

(19:44):
the peace agreement began to be implementedin Putumayo and Tumaco, as well as
with other quantitative tools, and wesaw if they corroborated these initial hypotheses of
Monica and indeed corroborated it very strongly. Then we began to think about what

(20:06):
that said in general about the legalsector and the illegal sector in the Colombian
countryside, which said that about thepossibilities of women to advance women in one
and the other, and they releasedthat very strong article in the International Journal
of Drop Policy. We have useda lot of quantitative sources, we have

(20:33):
used a lot of massive textual repositoriesof e g, judgments, etc restitution,
etc, etc. And we havedeveloped our own exercises with him and
key strategic ally that is this companyof costadora Metis, and from there we

(20:53):
have managed to coordinate and corroborate indouble way quantitative and qualitative results, and
that triangulation gives a lot of strengthto the results. So, sometimes the
quantitative exercise produces a hypothesis that islater developed and, as understood much better

(21:18):
through qualitative work, that allows tosee the mechanisms, etc, generates the
result or allow to see what doubtfulresults. And, on the other hand,
sometimes we have a very rich hypothesisto work in the field with all
the mechanisms, but we do notknow very well if it can be generalized
and through quantitative instruments and we evaluatethe possibility of generalizing it and to where.

(21:42):
So that double track, in fact, runs through it because that'
s where the law comes in,et cetera. Through the analysis of institutional
mechanisms, it has served us agreat deal and has enabled us to produce
quite solid results. And thanks Profe, because we have also seen how in
these international magazines he chooses some specialtheme of the magazine, in which also

(22:07):
there are contributions from different countries ofEurope, the United States, Latin America.
I would like to ask you howwe say these topics that were also
mentioned earlier in the publications from theobservation of how these themes dialogue with global
debates. So let' s say, the problem of land use and tenure

(22:33):
is a global problem, let's say, that there are land tenure
and use problems in Latin America,but also in Africa and Asia. Suddenly
I don' t know if inNorth America and in Europe too, but
at least on these three continents,yes, and there' s one thing.

(22:56):
Let us say from that point ofview, the problems, although they
are not equal, if they canhave characteristics that allow one to make comparisons,
that better understand the problem from differentedges and, in the case of

(23:19):
the dispossession of the Onda, aforced one of land, because the wars
on these different continents show some tendenciesthat are worth comparing, studying and highlighting
in the case of agrarian reform,because definitely, the studies on agrarian reform

(23:45):
and the impact that it has hadon the visions of agrarian reform that have
had the multilateral bands and the governmentsof the global north, to put it
in some way, because they allowus to understand the problems proper to our

(24:11):
own, of our own, ofour own say, of our reality,
that is, that we have different, that we have similar, and we
can, moreover, answer those theoriesof so to say, of the global
north, with empirical evidence, andI believe, with very much work at

(24:37):
the level of First World, inwhich you can not only answer, but
that you can theorize on the issuesthat we work, such as agrarian reform,
as the allocation of rural assets,like the partisan politics and the land,
and one thing that for me isvery important, on the land,

(25:08):
of land, in which you are, of the land, you are,
of the land, of the landthat you are in which you can not
only, of the land, youcan, you can, of the land,
of the land, of the land, of us, of us.
So yes, indeed, let ussay one of the great issues of international
publication is that it kills the illusionthat Colombia is a unique country, incomparable,

(25:33):
etcetera, etcetera. Obviously, asI said, all this and all
unhappy families are different and all happyfamilies look alike, but today there are
very few genuinely happy families in theworld. So let' s say everyone
goes their way, but at thesame time, many of the phenomena we

(25:56):
study are global. The concentration ofland and, in fact, the increase
in the world’ s wickedness is, for example, a global phenomenon,
the impact of neoliberalism, the problemof criminalized economies, etc. These are
all global phenomena that are expressed herein a different way. So, what

(26:18):
that has allowed us is to dialoguewith the global agenda, to dialogue critically,
to feed on that global agenda inorder to find some of its fundamental
gaps and to begin to suggest waysof seeing problems in a way that is,

(26:40):
on the one hand, more systematicand, on the other hand,
less, more sophisticated, more careful. With the evidence. Then we are.
We have been specialists in toppling somesocial generalizations, some spurious theoretical swans,

(27:03):
but also from there, that hasforced us to propose alternatives of explanation
and, therefore, to theorize Andseveral of the most cited articles Among these
deferences of articles go precisely in thatdirection of trying to offer an understanding that
at the same time is global,but inspired by the Colombian experience. I

(27:27):
would like to talk about the experiencewe had with a text we published on
the tournel of fact Gritian Change.Being a lawyer makes our discipline very local

(27:48):
and trying to talk to other latitudesis more, is difficult or not,
I say it is more accurate.No, because every discipline has its specificity
as a localist, locale spice,but let' s say that lawyers were
studying to manage legal problems within thenational framework. However, Professor Gutierrez opened

(28:15):
this possibility to us and at thatmoment we are talking about two thousand sixteen.
It was in us that we wereinvestigating dispossession and forced abandonment, and
there was a collective imagination that talkedabout more than fifty ways of legally stripping

(28:38):
the land in Colombia. Remember thatbecause we also had the book by Katherine
neg Le Grand that showed how Lawhad helped a lot in the decade,
in the first half of the 20thcentury to make the landlords more land by
legally removing them from the colors.So what we did there was from one

(29:03):
of a documentary investigation into the landrestitution sentences. What were the victimizing facts
and how those victimizing facts could beseen from the right to look at what

(29:25):
were the forms of legal dispossession thatexisted at that time or that could be
traced into that mirage. I thinkthat was a very interesting experience in the
sense that while those we wrote atthe time, that article of all were
lawyers, we were faced with thereading of Prof Gutierrez and the committee,

(29:45):
that the committee that we had there, that showed us the common place,
the inconsistency of what we were presenting. That' s one of the articles
that I think cost us the mostwork. It cost me personally, but

(30:10):
it was certainly the one that welearned most and in which we understood many
of us and that has allowed usduring the subsequent years to show that specific.
How that specificity of Colombian law hasto do with the management of land
use and tenure. It' sLet' s say the research on that

(30:41):
can have a voice in the bigones, in the big magazines and have
let' s say as an exchangeof knowledge is that I think it'
s the most important thing and let' s say of this quality, of

(31:02):
that as regularity that at the Observatorywe are permanently discussing our Russian, our
texts, and that' s beena learning, a learning process for all
authors. So, these, thesedozens of articles in front- line magazines
represent not only a result, say, cognitive materialized in those publications, but

(31:25):
also processes of formation and learning processesby the members of the Observatory. And

(32:00):
well, thank you very much toProfessor Rocío and Professor Francisco for accompanying us
in this episode duarte from master controland a radio rosary for making this space
possible. We also thank those whotune our signal and invite you to read
our publications. All our material isavailable on our websitew Earth Observatory Org.

(32:22):
The articles we talked about in thisepisode are found following our path in the
menu, reports and publications in thedrop- down. Articles don' t
forget to follow us on our socialnetworks as well. On Twitter they find
us as Earth Watch and on Facebookas facebook com slash Earth Observas. Until
the next, conflicts over the landof indigenous communities in several regions of the

(32:58):
country have been deforested in the lasttwenty- eight years in Colombia as a
result of drug trafficking, illegal miningand the excessive use of land for livestock.
The second judge of the restitution ofland withdrew, who threatened to send
a victim to the prosecution for claiminghis rights before his office. He'

(33:19):
s tired of hearing this for years. You knew that in Colombia one percent
of the population occupies eighty- onepercent of the land, while ninety-
nine percent of the land is blamedby the other nineteen percent of the population.
I knew that only twenty- sixpercent of the productive units are headed

(33:43):
by women. A radio rosary andthe Earth Observatory presented with their feet on
the ground, a space to expandthe dialogue on Colombian property and countryside.