In the coffee valleys, a return to fear as land disputes turn violent

The first stones came through the windows of the cooperative office in El Rocío on a Tuesday evening in early October. By Wednesday morning, word had spread through the coffee valleys that the dispute over the Morales family's land—a boundary question that should have been settled by the Cooperative Council six months ago—had turned dangerous.

What began as a property registration backlog has become a pattern of intimidation affecting at least thirty smallholder families across three municipalities. Disputes that should be resolved through the Federal Office for Cooperative Affairs in Meridian are instead playing out on rural roads, where groups of men in unmarked vehicles have confronted farmers and threatened their harvest operations.

The violence has shaken confidence in the cooperative system itself. Smallholders who joined the movement in the 1990s because it promised protection from outside pressure now find themselves isolated, waiting for a federal bureaucracy that seems indifferent to their safety.