Guest Editorial By Patricia Rodríguez, organizer with Movimientos de Mujeres Solidarity CNY https://www.movimientosdemujeres.org/
The brutality of what has most recently happened in Colombia seems to have been missed in the deluge of news about similarly egregious gendered and racist state and non-state-led violence in Palestine, in Central America, and elsewhere in the Global South (and North). The situation in rural and urban communities in Colombia is increasingly dire. I have been researching and doing Latin American solidarity activism centered on rural social movements and political and economic alternatives in Colombia for fifteen years now, and I am growing increasingly concerned about all of what is transpiring there, under the guise of ‘keeping peace.’ As a Latin American, I am keenly aware that what happens in the collaborations between the U.S. and the Colombian government is often horrendous, and also that it tends to be replicated elsewhere in the region. Police violence has added to the already-experienced life and death daily issues.
In a recent online conversation with the campesina, indigenous and Afro-Colombian women from Cauca who are members of the Movimiento de Mujeres por la Vida de Cajibío (MoMuVic), it suddenly dawned on me that these women (and often their children and families) are (re)living desperately dangerous situations, now also in the context of COVID and old and new armed actors in their territories. Much of Cauca is in deep dispute, with the often-violent and penetrating presence by corporate mining, agribusiness, and forestry, but also of actors profiting from the illicit coca and other violent ‘businesses’.
Facing almost guaranteed displacement from the territories, the women, men and children whose survival depends on cultivating their local small-scale agroecological economy, on organizing for a dignified life, and in some regions, growing coca for access to cash that otherwise is not easy to come about, now turn even more decidedly toward one another. Where possible, they have support from international accompaniment organizations. Grassroots organizations have sometimes endured unimaginable sorrows from being caught literally in the middle of the conflict, and some have kept together during much of the 60+ year conflict. The signing of the peace agreement between the rebel group FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) in 2016 inspired some hope for peace with social justice, but the lack of committed implementation of peace agreements under right wing President Ivan Duque’s government has meant that the conflict still permeates their lives.
During COVID, organized social movements like MoMuVic quickly implemented certain levels of community control in rural areas so that the virus didn’t get to the fincas (small farms), but in parallel they also began to notice a heavier presence of armed actors. To gain access to food and medicine they couldn’t grow, small farmers found themselves needing to interact with armed actors that had maneuvered their way back to armed control of rural roads and territory. The coercive capacity of these armed actors slowly chipped away at their organizing, though the women, especially, have fought back. Despite feeling endangered in their isolation and suffering threats from all sides, they still promoted small and large popular assemblies to further their work in agroecology projects and in continuing to combat domestic and other sexual violence, both of which increased exponentially in the last year. Together, many women-led groups across the country also pushed for state accountability for police and military role in two massacres that happened in the early 2000s. In early 2021, the MoMuVic participated in the Permanent Peoples Tribunal (Session on Genocide, Impunity and Crimes against Peace in Colombia), reigniting their quest for justice for the state and paramilitary killings of dozens of young men from their communities.
Then came the National Strike on April 28th 2021, which included road blocks and mass demonstrations organized by broad sectors of society -including small farmers- and that brought the economy to a near halt. Government response to these mass protests nationwide were extremely violent, with brutal beatings and targeted attacks on social leaders and youth organizers on the part of national police. In cities like Cali, Buenaventura and Popayán, there were also generalized attacks on protesters and bystanders, and long nights of extreme and bloody chaos in the streets. The 28A National Strike in Colombia has now lasted almost two months; the protests (and ensuing brutal repression) of a few weeks ago have receded since June 15th, but the Strike is technically still in effect. It was first called in protest to a tax reform proposed by Duque’s government as a public neoliberal measure to deal with the economic crisis exacerbated by Covid. The reform would have meant a sure increase in prices for food and basic services for the majority of rural and urban Colombians already dealing with deep poverty, inequality, and high rates of unemployment. It is hard to quantify the death and injured toll, but the various news reports describe anywhere between 20-47 deaths and thousands of injured, many of them young adults.
The brutality has been tremendous, mostly enacted by the National Mobile Anti-Riot Squad (ESMAD, in Spanish), whose stated role is “to contain and control disturbances and crowds, unblock roads, and support evictions in public and private spaces in urban and rural areas’ from Police” (Olarte-Olarte 2019, ). Social protest has been criminalized and hundreds of young people who are part of social movements have been disappeared or judicialized, as is the case with six activists who were arrested on May 25th and are now in the San Isidro Maximum Security prison in the city of Popayán. There are dozens of other young activists in other jails. On June 19th, and thus after the temporary ceasing of the protests, Santiago Ochoa, 23 years old and a member of the Primera Linea de Defensa (First Line of Defense) was found decapitated not far from his home. He was among the many youth who took up the role of being up front in marches, and thus the first ones to get tear gas and shot by police and right wing armed civilians. They protect the protesters; he disappeared the morning of June 19th after leaving his home on a bike. In Popayán, a 17-year old woman killed herself after decrying sexual harassment and rape suffered in the hands of police when she was detained in mid-May. There were also attacks on indigenous and Afrodescendant organizers of mobilizations in Cali at the beginning of May, and more. The repression has continued, and on June 26th the police continued to show up heavily armed in front of the medics at one of the points of resistance in Cali, or to announce the dismantling of the Monument to Resistance that was erected in at yet another point of resistance in Cali. The group Union de Resistencias Cali called everyone to come defend the monument: “To allow its destruction is to allow the military boots to once again step on our dignity, and to erase the hurtful history they have written with their weapons.”
Protests have continued since mid-June at a smaller scale, and communities have turned to local and regional popular assemblies to continue to map out their demands. One core understanding for them is that ESMAD needs to be dismantled, and police removed from their assigned role in prohibiting and dispersing protestors who are deemed a threat by rich domestic and foreign owners of large-scale corporations and by a state that promotes austerity and mega-projects as the only possible ‘engine of growth.’ These actors push, as if their life depends on it, for protests to be quelled at any cost, for a new local governance that they can control, and for communities to acknowledge that land is to be used, not protected. This is territorial pacification, not peace.
Meanwhile, movements come together in urban and rural areas to analyze conjunctures and further propose. In Cajibío, Cauca, an even stronger commitment emerges around their self-protection and territorial and local economy projects (territorios agro-alimentares) that will secure their autonomy, food security and sovereignty. They want simply to live peacefully in their lands and communities. In Cali, movements turned to the local government to begin mapping out a Plan de Inclusión Social de Emergencia (Social Inclusion Emergency Plan) for the most vulnerable (indigenous, Afrodescendants, poor small farmers, women, and youth) that includes food security, affordable public education and availability of jobs, health, mental health, and addiction recovery programs.
Diaspora and solidarity movements in the U.S. have organized more collaboratively, and are pressing U.S. legislators to adhere to the Leahy Law that demands the suspension of military assistance to countries known to be committing human rights violations. On May 14th, 55 members of congress signed a letter to the Secretary of State calling for the suspension of U.S. assistance, the freezing of arms sale, and for ensuring de-escalation is part of ESMAD response on the ground, among other things. The Colombian government has recently pledged that it will ‘modernize’ the National Defense Ministry, and restructure the National Police so that strict protocols be followed. But these superficial measures are not an adequate response, nor are they what the popular sectors have asked for.
More pressure is needed on our representatives and our bureaucrats to demand real transformations from the Colombian government, accountability for crimes committed, and a stop to U.S. promotion of militarization in Colombia and elsewhere. ESMAD needs to be dismantled, because it is serving only the purposes of deepening the horrors committed against women, Black, indigenous, and poor communities in Colombia. Please write and/or call your representatives during this Week of Nationwide Action, and help call for the end to militarism as a global strategy of dominance. Here is a list of contacts for your Senators, and House Representatives. Feel free to share this article or the one page summary found here, if you deem it important. Thank you!