Colombia has been rocked by a bloody armed conflict for more than six decades. The overwhelming majority of the more than nine million victims are poor peasants. So Colombia’s rural areas have always been the principal battlegrounds of the ongoing war. Historically, the political conflict dynamics in the countryside have been closely related to the development and the expansion of capitalism. To find out more about Colombia’s peasants and their struggles under neoliberalism, I spoke with Nazih Richani, Professor of Political Science at Kean University. Prof. Richani has a new book coming out in August titled “Colombian Peasants in the Neoliberal Age”. The book is of particular interest in light of Colombia’s current political context. For the first time, the country has a leftist government. President Gustavo Petro is a former guerilla fighter and his vice president Francia Marquez an Afro-Colombian feminist and environmental activist.

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