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An article by Kati Hinman for NACLA (North American Congress on Latin America

On Colombia’s Pacific coast, paramilitary violence has engulfed Afro-communities and their leaders in the wake of the peace accords. But resistance at the grassroots level remains strong.

Photo source: comité paro civico Buenaventura facebook

On April 17, three community leaders from the Naya River, south of the city of Buenaventura on Colombia’s Pacific Coast, were kidnapped by an unnamed armed group. The group was also searching for another leader, Iber Angulo Zamora. On May 5, Angulo Zamora was kidnapped from a boat in the presence of officers from the Human Rights Ombudsmen. The two attacks generated terror along the Naya, trapping people in their villages or displacing them to the city of Buenaventura.

Men claiming to be dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) released a video  in June, claiming responsibility and stating that the leaders were killed because of their involvement in “illegal activities,” most likely referring to drug-trafficking. There has been no evidence  to substantiate the accusations against the leaders, but residents have been reluctant to suggest motives for the attack in fear of repercussions. Paramilitary groups are also present in the zone, and there have been reports of combat between armed groups, adding to the danger and confusion for civilians. 

These attacks are unfortunately only a few examples of the violence that continues to plague the majority Afro-Colombian communities in the city of Buenaventura and the surrounding rural areas, despite the reforms promised in the 2016 Peace Accords between the FARC and the Colombian government. The Peace Accords has been hailed as one of the most progressive and thorough peace agreements in history, promising  rural land reform and development, a comprehensive effort to replace illegal crops such as coca with legal sources of income, reparations to the conflict’s victims—ranging from individual payments to collective land titles and social projects—and truth and justice commissions. However, the first two years of implementation have fallen behind expectations, especially for Colombia’s Afro and Indigenous communities, who are some of the principal victims of the conflict.

The Naya River zone is home to 64 Afro-Colombian and two Indigenous communities. Afro-Colombians have lived on the river for over 300 years, and were first brought there as slaves to work in mines. After the abolition of slavery in Colombia, they created independent settlements in the region. After paramilitaries committed a brutal massacre in 2001, killing more than 70 people, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights implemented a series of precautionary measures to protect these communities. Today, Afro-Colombian communities along the Naya are governed by one democratically elected Community Council. Just three years ago, the Community Council was granted a collective title to the 64 communities’ lands under Law 70, which protects the ancestral territories of Afro-Colombians.

Government response to the recent violence has been slow and mainly focused on further militarizing the zone  by sending in more troops and pushing for additional military bases within the communities. Community leaders advocated  for a thorough criminal investigation into the crimes and respect for their rights as civilians to remain neutral in the conflict. They are concerned that military presence in their public spaces might put them at risk for more attacks.

The Battle for Puente Nayero

The continued violence is not limited to the rural areas around Buenaventura. On July 1st, a group of known paramilitaries entered Puente Nayero, a humanitarian space in the city of Buenaventura, where they remained for several hours as residents hid in their homes. Humanitarian spaces are designed as places where civilians can remain neutral and free from engaging with armed actors. Puente Nayero, created four years ago in response to terror and brutality as successor paramilitary groups were dividing the city, received legal and financial support from the Inter-Church Commission of Peace and Justice, a Colombian human rights organization, and protections from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Elisabeth [last name withheld] was one of the community leaders behind the space. “One thing that pushed me personally [to act] was my son,” she said. “He is very big, people think he is older than he is, and they started looking at him to become part of the [paramilitary] structure [when] he was 13 years old.”

The protections for the space call  on the Colombian government to adapt effective measures to preserve the lives of the 302 families who live in the humanitarian space and to respect their rights as civilians. Elisabeth explained that through the declaration of the humanitarian space and better community organizing, they were able to decrease the violence and remove a “chop-house” from their street, which were houses utilized by paramilitaries to torture and murder.

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Elisabeth still feels that as a leader, just stepping outside the humanitarian space leaves her feeling vulnerable and scared for her life. She has reason to fear; social leaders in Colombia are being targeted and killed at alarming rates. In January of 2018, Temistocles Machado, an Afro-Colombian activist, was killed in the city. Machado was one of the most prominent leaders of the civil strike that took place in Buenaventura in 2017.

Buenaventura is home to Colombia’s principal port, surrounded by a Free Trade Zone that allows most of the wealth generated by the port to flow directly to international companies. Corruption is rampant in the city, and in 2017 64% of the population lived in poverty, with unemployment at 62%. When the violence between warring paramilitary groups in Buenaventura escalated in 2013-2014, much of it occurred in neighborhoods that were part of development plans for a tourist boardwalk, airport, and other projects that would have to displace residents.

José, a 67-year-old from the humanitarian space, explained that the paramilitaries, with support of corporations, “wanted us to de-occupy this territory [Puente Nayero] so they could take it, so they started doing things to terrify us, to get rid of us.” The residents of Puente Nayero still worry that city development projects might lead to their displacement, and the recent presence of paramilitaries in the neighborhood has elevated these concerns.

The battle over land rights is an ongoing and central concern for Afro-Colombians in Buenaventura and the surrounding rural regions. Colombia has the highest rate of inequality in land ownership in Latin America, with just 0.4% of holdings encompassing two-thirds of agricultural land. Meanwhile, 60% of Colombian farmers have no formal titles to their land. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, over 7.6 million Colombians are internally displaced, forced to leave their homes because of violence or threats from armed groups, many without formal titles to prove their ownership and right to return.

To address this, land restitution was a central tenet of the Peace Accords. But many people remain uncertain that they will recover their ancestral lands. The rural Afro-Colombian community of La Esperanza was displaced to Buenaventura due to paramilitaries in 2004. Although they won collective title to their land under Law 70 in 2008, as well as provisional protective measures from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, their land has been parceled off and sold, and community leaders stated that local politicians were involved and now own some of the plots. Florenina, a community leader, emphasized repeatedly that logging and construction companies were responsible for the damage to their lands since their displacement. “True peace for me is defined as when people can return to their lands, when they are given reparations, beginning with the land because the territory is very damaged.”

Sara, a young woman and teacher on the Naya, is particularly disappointed with programs intended to combat illicit crop substitution, referring to financial support and training for farmers to replace coca with other crops, and the Development Plans with a Territorial Focus (PDETs). The PDETs are rural development plans for the areas hardest hit by the conflict, based in the community’s needs and priorities. These plans are critical for the Naya, as the river is utilized by criminal networks, not only for illegal mining and coca cultivation but also for the production and transit of cocaine directly to international waters. Other community members I spoke with agreed with Sara, adding that the government has not helped to provide needed social services, such as health centers and schools.

There is also concern that the “peace” era will bring extractive development projects that could drive the people of the Naya from their lands. Despite the Community Council’s collective land title, the Colombian government still holds legal rights over anything beneath the earth’s surface. Community leaders worry that their authority might be usurped to move forward with large-scale mining projects, since the area is rich with gold. The natural riches in their territory have become a source of danger for the communities.

As people have become disenchanted with the implementation of the accords, they have continued to build peace in their own ways. In May 2017, the residents of Buenaventura and the surrounding area shut down the city in a civil strike, demanding a recognition of their rights. Despite the assassination of leaders such as Temistocles Machado, the strike committee continues to implement the agreement reached with the government, which includes overseeing the funds to build a hospital and an aqueduct for the city.

Residents have also created local peace-building initiatives. For example, Niridia, a member of a collective of 300 women in the Naya River region, helps run political advocacy workshops and leadership schools, focusing on various themes from globalization and multiculturalism to gender and nature. “We are all family members of disappeared persons,” she said of the collective. “Although we might consider our family members dead, they still give us the possibility to exchange the tears for smiles for new generations.”

Sara, the teacher, said that keeping up the traditions that communities on the Naya have practiced for 300 years is an important part of peace-building. As an educator, she works to ensure an emphasis on protecting the environment. They use practical lessons to teach the children how to take care of their water and natural resources. In Puente Nayero, leaders continue to organize around their principles of dialogue and fair treatment.

President-elect Iván Duque has been critical of the Peace Accords and seems committed to obstructing their implementation, generating further doubt that there will be reparations and justice for Afro-Colombian victims on the national level. This has not deterred grassroots commitment to local peace-building processes, giving people hope and strength while they continue to resist violence and advocate for their rights and their lands.

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An article and video from Deutsche Welle

In an exclusive interview on DW’s Conflict Zone, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos denied his low level of public approval would jeopardize the peace he negotiated for over four years and said the process was already underway. “Peace is irreversible. There is no way back,” he said.

Video of interview

Asked whether history might suggest otherwise, Santos told Conflict Zone host Tim Sebastian: “The agreements have been ratified by Congress, by the constitutional court. And the people will not allow the peace process to go back. Some people would like to bring war back, but that is something which will not happen.”

Rising violence

But violence has spiked in Colombia following the peace agreement, with dissident rebels and drug gangs seeking to take over in areas formerly under the control of FARC guerrillas, who waged an insurgency in the country for more than half a century and have largely been demobilized under Santos’s peace deal.

Human rights defenders, activists and protesters have also been targeted with 441 attacks recorded in 2017, including 121 murders.

Santos won a Nobel Prize in 2016 for his peace agreement, but his international plaudits have not translated into popularity at home. In March, his approval rating was 14 percent, with just 17 percent expressing support for his amended peace deal. 

He narrowly lost a referendum on his original peace plan in October 2016, when 50.2 percent voted against it, on a turnout of less than 38 percent of voters.

Santos told Tim Sebastian he had underestimated the opposition to the deal, which he signed along with FARC leader Rodrigo Londono, known as Timochenko. “I was wrong … Referendums are answered for reasons different from the particular question,” Santos said.

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After the failed referendum, an amended deal was passed by Congress without going back to voters. It includes a guarantee of five seats for the FARC in Colombia’s Chamber of Representatives and Senate. 

False positives

Of the recent violence, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in March voiced its concern over accusations that the army and police had contributed by committing 11 extrajudicial murders in 2017.

However, Santos challenged the commissioner’s account: “The High Commissioner has not signaled any member of the armed forces as being responsible, right now, for extrajudicial assassinations. They were before. … I made a stop to that when I was minister of defense.”

Thousands of innocent civilians were systematically killed by the military in the early 2000s and presented as rebels to inflate statistics and gain promotions or bonuses.

Santos told Conflict Zone the “false positives” policy was “shameful” and one he ended when he was defense minister from 2006 and 2009 when the killing reached its peak. “I stopped those false positives. …

And those responsible for false positives, they have to go to the transitional justice and be judged and condemned,” Santos said.

In May, a former police colonel said approximately 10,000 may be have been murdered as “false positives” between 2002 and 2010, a figure which Santos disputed on Conflict Zone.

Drug trade

On the ongoing war on drugs, Santos said the world has a “wrong approach to the drug problem,” costing Colombia dearly and keeping it the world’s biggest exporter of cocaine.

In June, a US government report said cocaine production in Colombia had increased by 19 percent, prompting a warning from Donald Trump to reduce it.

“And I said to him,” Santos told Conflict Zone, “that 81 percent increase in coca consumption in the US is also unacceptable. This is a problem that the world has and it’s a problem that the world has to address in a different way.”

When Tim Sebastian confronted the outgoing president about blaming consumers when Colombia’s drug market makes huge sums of money for many people in the country, Santos said it was “a co-responsibility” and that he wanted more support from countries consuming cocaine.
 

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An article from Eje 21

130 teachers of public educational institutions, cultural managers, librarians, social leaders, police, members of the Red Cross and members of the municipal councils in the Department of Caldas, including Samaná, Chinchiná, Pennsylvania, Riosucio, Salamina and surrounding areas, have become peace promoters through the diploma “Rural education as a scenario in peace building.”

The training is received from the Academic Working Group Culture of Quality in Education at National University of Colombia with headquarters in Manizales. It offers tools for daily work in the construction of peace and for the recovery of the emotional, psychological and social fabric of the society that was devastated by the years of armed conflict.

Professor Germán Albeiro Castaño Duque, director of the Group, recalled that the post-agreement does not mean that there is a definitive and lasting peace, especially in the Colombian municipalities affected by the conflict.

“With training, we seek to make these people more proactive, so that they become peace educators both in schools and in other areas. In this way, coexistence can be achieved and violence can be ended in their communities”, said the teacher Castaño Duque.

Aspects of the diploma include: education and the University Peace Program; human rights and international humanitarian law; the 1991 Constitution and its contribution to peace; construction of citizenship in the post-agreement period; Art, culture in the post-agreement; the Law of Victims; and application of the agreement between the Government and the FARC.

Peace in daily life

The teacher Luz Mary Zuluaga Salazar, of the Educational Institution José María Carbonell, in Palestina (Caldas), affirmed that “more than thinking about peace as a university program, one must think about it as the experience of daily life. As classroom teachers, we must make the links with other topics such as the arts, culture and the post-conflict period.” She added that in these areas it is unknown what should be done after 52 years of war.

“What we are learning with the National University has helped us to go beyond the traditional classroom mentality. Violence destroys communities and we must ensure that students do not attack or intimidate people, not only in the classroom, but in the broader community,” said the teacher.

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(Click here for the original Spanish version of this article.)

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Professor Julio Alexander Argoti Álvarez, of the Naranjal Educational Institution, in Chinchiná, pointed out that “we are not sufficently disturbed by the death of someone or by the suffering of an entire community. We need to be more connected with empathy to the population. The more training and vision tools we have, the more it will be possible to achieve changes”.

In this regard, Professor Emanuel Márquez, one of those responsible for conducting the training of the graduates, said that with this the students have not only been able to analyze the history of the armed conflict, but also to overcome their fears and contribute in their daily lives to the peace of the country.

“Teachers in rural areas, fearful and displaced from their leadership, are vulnerable to groups that may come to intimidate them and the communities. It is precisely with the tools that they have gained with the diploma that they can reunify and reconstruct the social fabric in the areas where they are teaching,” he said.

Experience

The National University of Colombia with headquarters in Manizales includes in its curricular and pedagogical program projects related to the construction of peace, the analysis of the variables of the Agreement between the Government and the FARC, and the history of the armed conflict.

One of the most important contributions is the University Chair of Peace, in which 120 students from the 11 undergraduate courses from the Headquarters participate every six months, and the project “Peace Building: the role of the United Nations in the post-agreement”, with extension programs such as the diploma “History, peace building and post-agreement in Colombia”, attended by teachers, officials of the judicial branch, uniformed members of the armed forces and the National Police, social leaders, members of the Red Cross and professionals from different areas.

In addition, extension training programs are carried out with different sectors, in workshops, seminars and other academic and pedagogical activities that seek a greater contribution and closer relationship with the communities.

The Ministry of National Education has relied on the National University to carry out the diploma course “Rural education as a scenario in peace building”, which aims to allow citizens, from the regions, the classroom and the scenarios of coexistence, through an open, dynamic and respectful dialogue to take on the challenge of overcoming the ideological and political differences that affected the country for the 54 years of the armed confrontation.

The training is free and takes place over 120 hours. It aims to strengthen the pedagogical and didactic strategies of teachers of social sciences and other areas in the implementation of the University Chair of Peace in educational institutions, as provided by Law 1732 of 2014. Issues include the history of the armed conflict , the peace agreement between the Government and the FARC, and what country should be like in the post-agreement.

The diploma will be certified by the National University of Colombia with headquarters in Manizales, with the endorsement of the Ministry of National Education.