Colombia has three ethnic groups recognized by the state: Amerindians, Afro-Colombians and Roma. Among the Amerindians, there are no less than 87 indigenous groups scattered across the country with different customs, cultures and languages. These ethnic minority groups face racism, the destruction of lands and territories, forced displacement and social exclusion. Today, they are actors in the debates of the Paro Nacional, in particular thanks to the associations which defend them.
My name is Beatriz. I belong to the Semilla Verde Foundation, a subsidiary of ASONAMC (Organization for Women's Rights) which is linked to MADIPAZ. It is the premier monitoring body for peace agreements affecting women and gender. I am also part of the International Democratic Federation of Women (FDIM). We are dedicated to strengthening the organization of communities and their governance. I am a lawyer, defender of human rights, communities, ethnic peoples, territories and biodiversity. I also consider myself a feminist and a communist. I am the advisor to the Ette Ennaka people, the Guardians of the Gaira River and the San Juan de Palos Prieto Victoria Torres Community Council (an organization that represents the interests of black culture). I am also a delegate to the Ethnic Pact of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, poet, storyteller and amateur photographer We are now at a time when all injustices, the mismanagement of power, social and economic inequalities have done their work. The pandemic has only revealed and worsened the deterioration in the quality of life. It increased the social poverty that already existed with corruption, permanent vulnerability and drug trafficking set up as a model by the government. We are tired of hearing bad news. Examples ? The Ranchería river has been diverted and since then children have died, flora and fauna have disappeared. Glyphosate has been used in the countryside to destroy coca fields. By doing this, they have poisoned the cultures of everyone. In Santurbán (Paramo ecosystem) everything is degraded. President Duque decrees absurd tax reforms and pensions.
Photo: Beatriz in blue during a meeting with the Special Roundtable for the Consultation of Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean Peoples (PDET)
We only survive, we only resist.
We are tired of impunity, of the absence of justice. Life is not guaranteed, women are killed and raped for being women and nothing is happening. We are tired of not finding a job, not having the right to a pension, a minimum of stability to plan a family, a future… We are only surviving, we are only resisting. A generation has awakened. She can no longer tolerate a life without a future, without work, without education, without opportunities. The words development and progress do not exist for those below, and there are many: it is the people. The same people in uniform who kill those who protest peacefully for profound transformations of the Colombian state. The government faces the protests in a systematically abusive manner. He behaves aggressively, criminal and violently, he shows excess of authority. Journalists and human rights defenders who accompany these demonstrations as witnesses and who record what is happening are trampled. The private channels paid by the two most powerful families in the country want to hide what is happening. Leaders like Paloma Valencia (member of the Senate) and many other allies of the Democratic Center have declared that they will not respect the peace accords, that they will do whatever is necessary to bring them down. And that's what they do day in and day out. The administration corrupts resources for peace, they exclude communities and people from decisions that affect them. The government annexed the peace.
Only 171 municipalities across the country have been chosen for peace, leaving out entire populations. We have suffered dispossession and displacement, homicides and massacres, the list of deaths that are reported every day in Colombia continues to grow. They concern peace signatories, girls, brothers or sisters. They attack everything from dreams to the hope of rebirth. They kill individuals or groups. Here it is already common to learn that they have killed a leader, a native, an Afro, a defender of the territory, a woman. The justice system is effective only for those who pay and not for those for whom it should be used. Fundamental rights continue to be violated by the patriarchy in an extractivist and neoliberal state structure. The whole system helps to maintain a form of informal warfare, within the country, as part of the state economy.
Photo: Beatriz in Santa Marta. Tribute to Alison, a young woman who committed suicide following a sexual assault by the police during a demonstration in Santa Marta.
It all started with the death of Dylan Cruz in 2019, killed by police during a peaceful protest in Bogota where a lawyer was also beaten to death during an arrest. This resulted in a protest in 2020 in which police killed 11 people with support from the Defense Ministry. Since April 28, 2021, the order to kill the demonstrators has been given in particular by a tweet from Álvaro Uribe who suggested using all force to shoot the "vandals". President Duque also ordered the use of force against the demonstrators. Together with his government, the police, the army and the Mobile Anti-Riot Squadron (ESMAD), they crack down on protests. They are killing us for protesting to defend this country and those who can no longer endure so much abuse. Since then, there are more than 980 people missing, 68 murdered, 24 raped, 45 blinded, 600 illegal prosecutions and more than 1000 arbitrary detentions. Cali is the city most affected by violence, but it is found across the country to varying degrees.
The national order was to shoot, attack and suppress the protests with force.
In Santa Marta, on May 5, the transit police attempted provocative action to disperse the mobilization of more than 12,000 people. Violent acts started and we saw - I was part of the human rights team - that the national order was to shoot, attack and forcefully suppress the protests. There were stone throwing and shooting by the national police. A large part of the demonstrators were minors: an estimated 70% of the young population of Santa Marta came out to march that day. As a result of the shooting, an underage boy and girl were injured. Another was kicked and her cell phone was stolen by one of the ESMAD members as she ran with another terrified group of people fleeing the gas. This is how things are, even in a department with a progressive government like that of Magdalena, where politicians claim to be the guarantors of rights and where mobilization is likely to take place peacefully. However, we have also seen repression, during murals or popular sit-ins. The security forces were aggressive and the harassment was such that the Ombudsman's office had to be called to ask for support and respect for the rights of the participants. Semillas Verdes, the Foundation of which I am a member, has launched a petition to protect the rights of participants and the right to demonstrate.
Photo: Human Rights Representative at the June 9 demonstration in Bucaramanga.
I am an advocate for human rights, but also more specifically for Afro and indigenous communities. We are dedicated to the protection of communities, to the preservation of their traditional models and their autonomy. Our struggles focus on the strength of women, the recognition of our differences, their vision of the world. We want to reaffirm their link with biodiversity, communion with nature, respect for mother earth. We work on understanding indigenous peoples, Afro-Gypsies, peasants, citizens as part of a whole, also part of these different ways in which we recognize ourselves as Colombians. One of our challenges is to protect the indigenous, Afro, Gypsy and peasant populations, the migrant population, the marginalized and their quality of life in the territories. You have to deal with a society that orchestrates the destruction and extraction of all life, the commercialization of everything for everything.
We are the children of a colony that does not end.
We want to put an end to the patriarchal condition which threatens the concession of territorial needs, to affirm a protection which goes further than that of landowners who supposedly commit to respect for resources. We want to do all this through the perspective of women and genders, in the awareness of the plurality of the Colombian and in the recognition of the voices of the people. We need a government that understands interculturality, that respects differences, that knows its history and that protects. Why are these communities a major problem? Because if this country declares itself intercultural and multicultural, it is more a question of the exercise of an instrumentalised discourse rather than in practice, of respect for the rights of expression and the life of the communities. I am against monopoly power, extra-activist economies, political interests, this mafia and corrupt consumer society, we are the children of a colony that does not end. What do I want for Colombia? Structural changes, a society that does not consider it normal to read or see that there have been murders, torture, kidnappings, dispossessions from even one Colombian or Colombian. The earth must stop bleeding and biodiversity, the protection of life and the land, must be a priority.
