With USAID support, 7 indigenous Pijao communities in Tolima have applied with the government for communal landholdings to establish indigenous reserves.
The territory of their dreams
The Los Tambillos farm, located in the mountains of Southern Tolima, could become a reservation or a “dream territory” for a Pijao indigenous community in the municipality of Chaparral. People say that this 200 plus hectare farm was once the land of a group of Pijao ancestors called Los Tambillos.
Today, the indigenous council of this community, called Ivanazka Lemanyá de Calarma, has presented the Los Tambillos farm to the Colombian government as an option to establish their reservation.
“We longed to have this land because we are focused on recovering ancestral knowledge, ancestral medicine, and medicinal plants. We want to recover all the species that are in this area to take care of them, preserve them and multiply them.”
With the recent implementation of the Rural Property and Land Administration Plan (POSPR) in Chaparral, the Ivanazka Lemanyá de Calarma community is one of the seven Pijao indigenous groups who are submitting applications to the government to establish reservations. In total, the seven applications encompass 16 parcels covering 1,800 hectares.
POSPRs are an ongoing government strategy to untangle land use and administration issues and comply with the 2016 Peace Accords. The Land for Prosperity Activity, USAID’s biggest land tenure programming, is supporting these schemes to update the rural cadaster, formalize property and strengthen land administration in Colombia.
During the information collection process of the POSPR, the government now requires technical land experts to include indigenous communities with the goal of preserving their identities and protecting their land rights.
Ancestral Guides: Land Protectors
Before working on the applications of the seven reservations, Land for Prosperity carried out Free, Prior, and Informed Consent sessions with 11 communities that represent more than 2,500 people. After giving their consent, each community elected an Ancestral Guide to act as a point of contact for all communication and harmonization between the communities and the team implementing the POSPR, which is backed by Colombia’s National Land Agency (ANT).
The network of Pijao ancestral guides is made up of four women and seven men, including José María Leal. One of the most important responsibilities of the ancestral guides is identifying possible parcels that could be used to request communal land.
The 16 parcels which were identified as ideal to establish indigenous reservations are all privately owned. The ancestral guides then coordinated their possible purchase with the owners.
Some of the factors that they take into account when choosing the parcels are: their proximity to the community, the presence of water sources, the productivity of the land for agriculture, the presence of sacred sites, and the size of the parcel to build their communal and ritual spaces.
“As an ancestral guide I’ve had the opportunity to connect with other guides from other communities of the municipality to share our experiences. It is very gratifying to guarantee the security and protection of our land and to share knowledge with the community.”
– Marco Fidel Cuadro Vargas, governor and ancestral guide of the Matora de Maito indigenous community.
Ancestral guides are responsible for reaffirming and protecting the power and worldview of their communities and play a key role in guaranteeing that the protocols of their territory are respected.
An Opportunity for Indigenous Communities
As part of the implementation of the POSPRs, USAID has worked with 45 indigenous communities and 15 Afro-Colombian groups from six municipalities (Tumaco, Santander de Quilichao, El Carmen de Bolívar, Ataco, Chaparral and Puerto Lleras) to collect information and advance the necessary procedures to request collective land from the ANT.
“I see a great opportunity to make progress on the long-term objective of establishing the Pijao reservations in the municipality of Chaparral.”
– Andrés Mauricio Méndez, member of the Amoyá la Virginia indigenous community in Chaparral.
The sleepy municipality of El Carmen was declared a National Heritage Site in 2005, but tourists did not start streaming in until 2016 when the government signed a Peace Accord with the FARC rebel group. Isolated in the lush mountains of Norte de Santander, the long-lasting conflict paradoxically served as a cushion to conserve its cobblestone streets and colonial houses, making it one of the country’s most authentic pueblos mágicos.
For years, the residents of Guamalito and El Carmen had to travel two hours south to Ocaña to receive professional health care services. Last year, outgoing mayor, Wilfredo Gelvez, purchased a parcel neighboring the current health clinic in Guamalito as the hospital’s new home. But without the Municipal Land Office, administering the new piece of land would not have been so straightforward. In this case, the Municipal Land Office played a key role in managing the two parcels and transferring the land in the name of State-run Regional Noroccidental Abrego, which provides health services in El Carmen.
These stories are indicative of how land tenure issues lie below many investments in essential public services and infrastructure in Colombia’s rural municipalities. In Santander de Quilichao, the largest municipality in Northern Cauca, a region known for land conflicts and violence, land informality rates hover above 50 percent. More than half of all parcels do not have registered land titles.
Recently, Santander de Quilichao’s Land Office and its 5 employees focused efforts on lifting a $3.5 million USD housing project off the ground. The Villa María housing complex, which is already connected to public services, is expected to provide a secure home for over 400 vulnerable families while providing a park and sports field for families. Santander de Quilichao’s Land Office already delivered the first 100 land titles to Villa María residents and expects to deliver the other 300 property titles in coming months.
“At an individual level, I am more confident and certain about the things I want to do with the women’s mentorship project I implement. The training helped me believe in myself and realize that I have the skills to work on women’s empowerment and I can and am learning more every day!” 
“The Women’s Leadership and Empowerment training deepened my understanding of factors that keep women out of natural resource management and how to address these challenges and increase impacts of our programs. I am now able to adapt my work and reach out to the vulnerable groups, which is allowing our program to have a broader reach.”
“Through the training, I gained insights into the specific risks and challenges that women face in relation to land ownership and access. This knowledge enabled the National Land Titling Program to design and implement targeted strategies to mitigate these risks, 
“Before I came on the training, my challenge was how to deal with negative social norms. We saw men in uniform abuse power, which in some cases negatively affected our work, but it was difficult to find the entry points. The training was timely. It gave me the skills to engage law enforcement officers and navigate the social norms to bring in more women in our work.” 
USAID’s 
At IGAC we have a legal responsibility to know the current and allowed land uses, we have to know what each piece of land is good for and how we need to protect it. The cadaster is the map of landowners who have secure tenure rights to their property. The cadaster generates knowledge and detailed information about our rural territories and provides us with inputs that are fundamental to administer land and property in a way that is socially responsible and promotes sustainable land use and production.
Before, the community was not actively involved and that was a problem. That is why our logic is that the cadaster is made for the people and with the people. This is advantageous, because we can explain to the public why the cadaster is useful. People say “they update the cadaster and then my taxes increase, so I will have to pay more”, but they forget that they are also supporting land formalization and will receive a property title. And without a title they cannot access loans or subsidies.
In Colombia, the land administration trio of agencies includes IGAC, the National Land Agency (ANT) and the Superintendence of Notaries and Registers (SNR). IGAC is responsible for collecting and managing detailed information, and in areas that have been prioritized by the government, we receive support from the ANT as a cadastral operator. The ANT then administers the land that has been formalized or that will be redistributed and continues with the formalization and title delivery processes. The cycle then finishes with the SNR, which registers and issues the land titles.
I am a Project Management Specialist in USAID’s Democracy, Rights, Governance and Conflict Prevention office in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. I joined USAID in September 2021; however, my commitment to the Agency goes back nearly 10 years. Previously, I was involved as a consultant and later as an awardee under the USAID Office of Transition Initiatives, where I helped rebuild broken intercommunal relations after the 2011 post-electoral crisis. During this time, USAID produced a short 
In the last four years, the Municipal Land Office (MLO) of Santander de Quilichao has facilitated the titling of more than 700 parcels. Several of these are public parcels like parks or health centers, or have to do with improving the municipality’s roads. The land office has become a key tool for land use planning and property formalization, and with it, the administration has mobilized more than COP $50,000 million (USD $13.5 million) in public investments.
According to the latest reports, we can say that thanks to the MLO the municipality has mobilized more than COP $50,000 million (USD $13.5 million). We are talking about impactful projects such as building roads, like the Niza road, and communal spaces such as the Plaza de Toros and the Corona Real park. We also bought the parcels for the Santander de Quilichao Hospital, which has mobilized more than COP $35 million (USD $8,750), and the regional campus for the SENA, which resulted in COP $49 million (USD $12,250). The Villa Maria housing project has mobilized COP $10,000 million (USD $2.5 million) and will provide housing for 400 vulnerable families. For Villa Maria, the MLO helped us with the purchase and division of the parcel. In December we already delivered the first 100 property titles.
We are going to try to obtain as many titles as possible and meet our goal of 500 property titles. In addition, we have goals with two main roads: La Cañera and Calle Séptima. There are properties in the middle that now belong to private owners, and we are in the process of obtaining them and creating two-laned roads to join two large sectors of the municipality. We also have projects like the hospital and the marketplace. The land office also plays a role in the implementation of our municipal Land Management Plan.
Now, with the parcel sweep, land issues are being promoted. The land office has been a source of information for everybody, in terms of providing advice. The MLO is like our guide, and little by little, people understand better the culture of formal land ownership that we are promoting. People are not frustrated anymore with having to contact Bogotá or a lawyer to ask for information on land or property formalization. We have a population with more opportunities and knowledge, and the MLO has given our residents many solutions.
Nobody in Caldono’s Planning Department was surprised to learn that half of City Hall was sitting on a property with no land title. In the municipality of Caldono, six out of 10 parcels are informally owned, and this also applies to schools, health clinics, and municipal assets.
The end of the year brought good news for coffee growers in Northern Cauca. Seven families from Caldono received property titles to their coffee farms. Some of the families had initiated proceedings 10 years ago and had given up hope of ever obtaining a registered land title.
“The most important thing that we can do for our coffee growers is protect their property. My recommendation is to move forward with companies and the government, seeking policies that facilitate land formalization through taxes. Coffee growers pay taxes, with this strategy, we can find several actors that can help.”
In Caldono, 66 percent of parcels are informally owned, indicating that some 1,900 coffee-growing families do not have a property title. Alba Ituyán and Ameiro Mosquera are coffee growers who started the land titling process almost ten years ago. Thanks to USAID and the National Coffee Federation, in 2023, they received a joint land title to their coffee farm.
In each of the nine participating municipalities, USAID has trained public officials to give residents information about land titling and property issues. Jhojan Smith is an engineer working in La Macarena’s municipal administration, and when Meta’s regional team comes to work, he helps them reach the community.
Now that Raúl Moreno is the official owner of his property and has a registered land title backed by the government, he can support his family in other ways.