Pontificia Universidad Javeriana

Basic english II
Karoll Silvana González Hernández

The allotment of land in Colombia

Thirty years ago, Israel set out to Bogotá (as many farmworkers of his village),
looking for economic stability for him and his wife. Unlike most of the people that he
grew up with and due to a wide knowledge that was transmitted through generations,
he found a job as an administrator in a farm on Suba when it wasn’t a part of the city
and where he has worked for all those years. His job focused on livestock, but he
knew about the soil and the weather like the palm of his hand; however, since the
farm’s owner decided to allocate his field for livestock, the only thing that Israel has
been able to grow are aromatic herbs. During his life, he has seen how those to
whom no land belongs, cannot approach it and how those who could conserve it
don’t know how to approach it. Currently, he has sixty heads of livestock which he
transports, feeds, vaccinates and inseminates with discipline: his remuneration is a
minimum salary and a home for his family. Although he doesn’t complain because
the land has fed him, he worries about those who devalue Colombian agriculture. He
worries about the government who provides fewer benefits to the farmworkers and
about multinationals and builders that today almost reach his door eradicating the
field that once he dreamt of growing.