The killing which (momentarily) shocked the nation…

The horrible rawness of the video shatters the distance between the viewer and the topic at hand. One cannot fail to be stirred by the sight and sound of a nine year old boy wailing out at helplessly at the tragedy of his mother, whose lifeless and bloodied body lays a few feet away, being shot dead in front of his eyes. He screams. He wails. He thrashes about. He kicks a fence. And the viewer gets a glimpse of the violence which looms over large swathes of Colombia, and perhaps more pertinently, the pain and despair it leaves in its wake. The video of course made an impact in this age of social media content. Shared. Commented upon. Suitable emojis assigned. The public, across multiple demographics, were indignant. Rightly so. The point that people need to remember is that cases like these, with families and lives destroyed, and trauma and grief inflicted, are depressingly prevalent in the marginalized sectors of this country. Our indifference to this situation makes us complicit. If we are to change this status, a better understanding of the issue is required. The victims of the violence since the signing of the peace agreement in 2016 can still speak to us, and it is our responsibility to listen. Maria Del Pilar Hurtado Montaño, the 34 year old mother of four, who provided for her family as an informal recycling collector, has become yet another of these victims. One more statistic. We glimpsed the pain of her loss in the video of her young son. It should be our duty to him, and as citizens, to learn and reflect on her story, and how it fits into this terrible thread of tragedy and trauma.

Like countless other cases, it seems Maria´s murder is a chronicle of a death foretold. A pamphlet, reportedly from the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia, a neo paramilitary group associated with the Clan del Golfo drug trafficking organisation, was circulated in Tierralta (the town in the south of Córdoba where Maria lived) at the beginning of June threatening the lives of NGO workers, social leaders and four other individuals referred to in derogatory terms. Among these, was a threat against la gorda hpta mujer del chatarrero (the fat son of a bitch scrap waste woman), believed to be a reference to Maria. Maria was shot dead on Friday morning (June 21st) as she walked towards her home in Tierralta. In the days since, as the emotional impact of the footage of her distraught son sent ripples across social media in Colombia and beyond, more information regarding Maria has come to light. Like many victims in this current wave of violence, it appears that Maria had been involved in victim´s organisations in her home town of Puerto Tejada, in the department of Cauca. It is reported that Maria, her partner and their four children had arrived to the south of Córdoba in recent years having been forced to flee their home in Cauca due to threats against their lives. Such a factor would certainly seem to correlate with other victims of this recent wave of violence; victims of displacement and representatives of victims rights in one area being murdered in the area they settled. However, information coming out of Córdobexia, an NGO which deals with rights issues in Córdoba, suggests that the murder of Maria may not be directly linked with her previous work with victims organisations in Cauca. The organisation claims that Maria and her family are among several dwellers to build homes in an invasión (unregulated building of informal homes on land without legal permission) of land belonging to the father of the mayor of Tierralta, Fabio Otero. Córdobexia claim their own president, Albeiro Begambre, is among those threatened over the situation, and that two others have supposedly been killed. Such a suggestion of course raises grave concerns given the toxic links between politics and paramilitary violence in the region and country in the not too distant past. Leaving aside the dark motives behind this latest addition to a national tragedy, the murder of Maria highlights the precarious position in which marginalised sectors of society currently find themselves in the south of Córdoba.

Maria Del Pilar Hurtado escaped one region rife with violence when she was forced to flee Cauca only to end up in another. Tierralta may have been the furthest possible destination for a young family of limited means, but it would not represent safety for Maria. The municipal town, like various others in the south of Córdoba, has seen a surge in violence since the signing of peace accords between the government and the FARC in 2016. This agreement and the movement of guerrilla soldiers to demobilisation camps created a power vacuum (likewise in numerous other regions throughout the country) in a region of high strategic importance for drug trafficking. The previously mentioned Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia (AGC) have been involved in a violent struggle with the organisation known as the Caparrapos (a splinter group from the AGC, reportedly funded by Mexican drug cartels). Clashes between these neo paramilitary groups have displaced thousands from rural communities in a region with high levels of poverty. Cases of displacement have occurred as a direct consequence of fighting between rival groups, but also as a result of threats against anyone unfortunate enough to be identified as an obstacle by the illegal powers that be. More than ten social leaders, including one mayoral candidate and several supporting substitution of illicit crops programs, have been murdered in the region since the peace agreement. The loved ones left behind by these killings have in some cases packed up their belongings and sought safety wherever they thought it could be found. In addition to this mass displacement, reminiscent of the worst decades of violence in Colombian history, marginalized rural communities in regions like the south of Córdoba continue to face the plight of poverty. When impoverished rural dwellers are forced to flee their homes, the only viable option tends to be the nearest urban or municipal centers. Once there, they must get by however possible, meaning building homes in informal neighborhoods, and making a living in the informal economy, perhaps as an informal recycling collector; sifting through the discarded waste of others to find enough plastic, glass or cardboard to exchange in order to provide for their family.

Maria may not have arrived in Tierralta as a result of the violent confrontations terrorising rural communities in the south of Córdoba, but she would have felt empathy with the tales she no doubt heard from neighbors in the ramshackle sector of the town where she lived and died. She would likely find herself thinking that there are few possibilities for the forgotten rural poor in this Colombia. Poverty and an absence of state support often puts people at the mercy of illegal groups. One false move, or tentative step towards independence (in act or thought), may result in death. If not, they must run. But when they run, they find themselves often unwelcome and without any support in the towns, or outskirts of towns, where they settle. Once there, another cycle of exploitation begins. It seems that in some cases, victims must suffer death by a thousand cuts, a thousand indignations, before the finality of the act is confirmed with bullets from a sicario, paid for by whichever nefarious interest group felt sufficiently motivated to dispose of them. Most of these killings pass without much commotion. There will be some information in the local news, the case will be referred to in a statistical manner in the national press, and life will carry on. In most of these cases, we are not privy to how the family of the victim, be they a social leader, a community activist, a former guerrilla fighter, or a scrap waste collector, reacts to their sudden and violent demise. But the sight of that 9 year old boy wailing at the unjustness of it all provided a window into a world of pain which is an everyday occurrence for many in this Colombia; each victim a beloved mother, father, brother, sister, caregiver, provider. If we are to be emotionally moved by such footage, we should possess the moral courage to demand better from our country.

*Information and image for this post was taken from the following sources:

https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/nacional/asesinan-mujer-que-fue-amenazada-en-panfleto-de-las-agc-en-cordoba-articulo-867127

https://lasillavacia.com/silla-llena/red-caribe/historia/el-conflicto-invisible-del-caribe-70059?fbclid=IwAR2–01VKbhixJaoipzTsjMgtFpHwG6EX_Y0DEnNWCTD2g3sceuc3Xty628

There are things worse than death

I am Soraya Bayuelo, daughter of Blanca Castellar, and I was born in Carmen de Bolívar. However, my name and my circumstances are those of any woman from Montes de Maria, or one of the many from this blessed land. We grew up among poverty and the abandonment of the state, and we learned to pose the question: why? We sow the land which was taken from us by the lords of violence, those who appear in their formal attire during election season, and we learn to ask: why? We collect our dead and cry in silence when they prohibit us from living, from singing, from talking, from thinking, from sowing, from walking our streets of soil and thirst, and we ask again: why?

We have learned that the answers to these questions come and go until they become justifications so that others may impose upon us more silence, more lies, more deaths. Then we remember that the only way to make our land similar to what we had envisioned, when we were not afraid, was to work together. They do not understand that by leaving us at the margins of decision making about our own future, we learned to observe, to listen and to decide, and when our thoughts, words and ideas returned, they would be stronger than their shouts and their bullets, and that nobody would ever again be able to silence us.

For the past thirty years, we have worked to recover the voice which was taken from us because we believe in the power of words with the same conviction and fortitude with which we reject violence, in any of its forms and from any of its promoters. We are builders because we have discovered that questions break the silence when transformed into collective action, and this strength converts us into one body, a territory that feels, that believes, that remembers, and one which is capable of opening up space for life even though our own lives often end up as blood drenched statistics. We carry on because we are not willing to relinquish what they could never take from us: our dignity.

In Colombia, like in no other place on earth, they kill us for civic engagement, for caring for our land, our water, for protecting and guaranteeing the rights of our communities; they kill us for being citizens, and doing what any citizen in an authentic democracy would do. But there are things worse than death, and in Montes de Maria, we know this well. One of those is the pain produced by seeing our country once more submersed in silence and death.

It is for this reason we continue to ask why, and we will not give up because our job is to remind each inhabitant of our country and of the world that we have every right to live in peace.

*This article was originally published in Spanish in Semana magazine. The original article can be found at the following link: https://www.semana.com/opinion/articulo/lideres-sociales-en-los-montes-de-maria-columna-de-soraya-bayuelo/616408?fbclid=iwar0sz9nmlun2sngbw_is5e1bxwybru2ckzcctfikwq4ljyyt97j-ainamuu

*Image from La Silla Vacía

Statement from the Nasa Indigenous groups of Norte del Cauca on the current protests in the southwest of Colombia

La Libertad Sublime wanted to share this translation of a statement from the Nasa indigenous leadership in relation to the current protests across various departments in Colombia. It is vital that the indigenous voice is heard in Colombia.

Pronouncement of Clarification for the National Press.

Since the 10th of March, different sectors of society have been mobilized in protest across various parts of Colombia, a situation which has been portrayed in a distorted manner, as ever, by the national media. This leaves the regional, national and international community misinformed regarding the causes and pertinent details of this struggle.

Media reports are focusing on the presentation of details and figures related to the economic losses as a result of blockades, and with information on what has supposedly been invested in the indigenous communities of Cauca in terms of health, education, territories and production. What they have not reported are the political matters and rights claims which are spurring this great minga (Indigenous tradition of cooperative and voluntary work for the common good) in defense of life, land, democracy, justice and peace.

We want to declare that this minga does not only involve indigenous groups belonging to the CRIC (Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca), but also from the CRIDEC (Regional Indigenous Council of Caldas), CRIHU (Regional Indigenous Council of Huila), more than 10 indigenous townships from the department of Valle de Cauca, and sectors of the rural community associated with PUPSOC (Process of Popular Unity of Southwest Colombia), as well as the National Agrarian Coordinator (CNA). In addition to this, we are also united with the cause of truckers, workers, students and teachers who have recently marched in defense of the JEP (Transitional Justice Process related to the 2016 Peace Agreement with the FARC), and the peace agreements which run the risk of being “torn to pieces”.

We are all representative of organisations and sectors of society which have been affected by Human Rights violations since the victory of the “No” vote in the plebiscite (on the peace agreement in 2016). We have suffered persecution and killing, a blood bath which has gone from a drop to a steady stream; a situation against which the Colombian government has not shown a will to act in a meaningful manner. It is certain that we are demanding guarantees, and the inclusion of the four year plan realized by the joint commission on the decree 1811 of the national development plan (PND). However, we are also motivated by the disgraceful fact that the ethnic chapter only appears as an annex to the PND, which today is associated with a finance law (tributary reform) that favours the most wealthy to the detriment of true equity.

Furthermore, the reform of the law 160 (related to the formalisation of ownership over uncultivated lands), the ZIDRES law (Zones of Interest for Rural, Economic and Social Development), the use of glysophates, and the extractive mining and energy models which have today opened the door to fracking constitute mortal measures which go against our right of prior informed consent and our duty to care for mother earth. These themes go hand in hand with the recognition of rural communities to enjoy rights based on their anthropological differences in terms of territory, use and customs. For the purpose of dialogue, there is now a commission assigned, and an agenda which is awaiting response from President Duque.

Such a deluge of mass, systematic and media fueled misinformation is an attempt to break, obscure, taint, and erode our protests, in order to justify a violent crackdown. We wish to demonstrate that our brave minga is not only on a conflictive level, but also involves political and structural themes which positions it at odds with the capitalist, corrupt and rent based model of the elites who have run this country for the past 200 years. Such a model is contrary to notions of living well, exemplary government, care for mother nature and the territory which our authorities and organisations, in defense of collective and community based power, carry in their hearts. It is this feeling which drives the participants who today feel the need to protest.

“Things in life unite us every day and make up siblings in the struggle for liberty”

*This blog post is a translation of statement in Spanish which can be found at https://nasaacin.org/pronunciamiento-aclaratorio-frente-a-los-medios-de-comunicacion/

Maritza Quiroz: The Tireless Champion of Victim´s Rights in the Sierra Nevada

On Saturday January 5th 2019, Maritza Isabel Quiroz Leiva became the year´s first victim in the Caribbean region of the ongoing wave of violence directed towards local leaders and activists in Colombia. On January 3rd, Maritza had been with her close friend and co-founder of the Rural Women´s Platform, Marcela Rodriguez Perez, at a meeting with government representatives (from the Presidential Council on Equality for Women, as well as consultants for the vice president of Colombia, Marta Lucia Ramirez) at the Gobernación de Magdalena buildings in the bustling tourist city of Santa Marta . Maritza had stated at the meeting the necessity of training local leaders to serve as conciliators in equity in the region. It was also agreed that the Presidential Council would keep the leaders informed of any upcoming projects for women in the region. Whereas the government representatives were likely driven to the airport and were back in Bogotá within a couple of hours, Maritza and Marcela headed off back to the other Colombia, the one with poor transport infrastructure and little state presence. Maritza´s journey would have taken a couple of hours by local bus and then on the back of a motorbike to arrive at her tierrita in the village of San Isidro, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. There, she shared some land with other women who had been victims of the displacement caused by the armed conflict in Magdalena. The house had been awarded by Incoder (Colombian Institute of Rural Development). The following day, she chatted with Marcela via WhatsApp and had told her friend of her plans to organize seaming workshops, which she reasoned would ensure she always had money in her pocket. At 9pm on the Saturday evening, there came a heavy knock on the front door. Upon opening the door, Maritza was shot dead by two gunshots. Her youngest son ran barefoot into the night in search of assistance. And so another family tragedy. Another social leader killed. Another statistic for the national media. The fact that the great majority of these victims (over four hundred reported cases since the signing of the peace accords with the FARC in 2016) hail from isolated and marginalized sectors of the country means that information is often scarce regarding who these leaders were and what they represented. This scarcity of information, coupled with a lack of government action, and (often) superficial media coverage leads to indifference. Indifference ensures that these killings go unpunished. Maritza, for her part, led a remarkable life and her story not only represents the great tragedy of the conflict in Colombia, but also the necessity to promote, support and defend the work done by victims and survivors. Hers is a story worth telling. A story worth knowing.

Maritza was 60 years old at the time of her killing. Like many others, she had experienced first hand the violence which reigned in the rural areas of the department of Magdalena. From the seventies onwards, much of the department was engulfed in bloodletting due mainly to its strategic location regarding the narcotrafficking trade. The marimbera bonanza (a period of extensive marijuana exportation to the U.S.) saw the area dominated by criminal groups from the department of La Guajira. The end of this boom time coincided with the rise in cocaine trafficking and the former drug networks assumed a more paramilitarised structure under the guise of the Rojas and Giraldo clans. These would later evolve into AUC paramilitaries. The arrival of guerrilla fighters from the FARC (1980s) and the ELN (1990s) to the area would complete this dangerous cocktail of violence. Towards the end of the 90s, the threat posed by such competing armed groups arrived at Maritza´s doorstep when her husband was killed, reportedly by guerrilla fighters, at the family farm in Palmor, Magdalena. There the family had cultivated coffee and had generally lived well off the land. However, the murder of her husband shattered this life, and Maritza fled with her five children to Santa Marta, with little more than the clothes they were wearing. Urban centers such as Santa Marta were ill prepared for the influx of displaced families among which Maritza now found herself. As such, there was nothing in the way of government support, and Maritza and her family had to rely on the charity of other residents in the city. During this period, Maritza came into contact with representatives from NGOs and other international organizations. This contact would prove to be crucial in Maritza´s formation as a social leader, and champion for the rights of displaced people.

Having gone through the anguish of losing her husband, fleeing to Santa Marta, and experiencing first hand the struggles caused by displacement, Maritza was keen to explore the assistance being offered by the handful of organisations working with displaced communities in Santa Marta at that time. She received assistance and training in the rights of victims via the Asociación Tierra de Esperanza (Land of Hope Association). The organisation showed Maritza the avenues which were available to her in terms of gaining access to programs promoting health, education, housing, food and generation of income. Those who knew her have described Maritza as having an insatiable appetite for learning and in turn for sharing her lessons with others. She may not have been from an “academic background”, but was described by one human rights worker as being “like a sponge” when it came to learning new concepts. Never one to miss out on any available workshops or events, Maritza was committed to incorporating her learning into her family and community life. By 2002, she had begun sharing this knowledge with those most in need, and spent the next sixteen years visiting Santa Marta´s most marginalized neighborhoods, informing displaced families of their rights, and how they too could gain access to assistance. In 2006, Maritza helped start the Displaced People´s Representative Association (Asovoceras), with whom she later reported on the impracticality and impossibility of national government subsidies to displaced communities, and later filed a successful lawsuit over the issue of education fees for displaced victims of the conflict. Two years later, Maritza was among 600 signatories to a statute, received by the high courts in 2008, demanding that the state introduce measures to protect female victims of the displacement caused by the internal conflict in Colombia. In addition to her work in the field of victim and women’s rights, Maritza was also involved in agrarian projects for rural development to help the displaced rural families find a place for themselves once more in the countryside. She was a staunch supporter of the peace process with the FARC and championed the ultimately unsuccessful Yes vote in the plebiscite over the terms of the agreement. One of the most notable chapters in this remarkable woman´s life came in November 2017 when Maritza addressed the Colombian Senate and spoke on the need for formalization of rural labour and social security for women. Former president Alvaro Uribe may have looked a disinterested observer in the front row during the four minute address (a video of the speech can be found at this link), but this humble woman from the Sierra Nevada received a rapturous ovation upon finishing a speech she had been reluctant to give. She later confided how nervous she had felt speaking in front of so many. The final year of her life included involvement on the victims board in Santa Marta, as well as being part of projects to promote rural development throughout the region (projects which were implementing key reforms agreed in the 2016 peace deal). Whilst her work for the benefit of several marginalized communities throughout the region was the central cause for much of her life, Maritza craved the peace of the countryside, and would always be drawn back to the life she had once known.

Those dreams of a return to her life in the countryside moved a step closer in 2011 when the Colombian Institute of Rural Development (the now defunct Incoder) awarded a plot of land in San Isidro to Maritza, eight other women, and their families. All had been victims of forced displacement as a result of the violence in the region. That same year, the government had begun the process of returning lands which had been expropriated throughout the conflict to their rightful owners. Maritza, however, felt that the process for claiming land restitution would take too long, and as such abandoned her claims to the farm in Palmor in favour of accepting the land in San Isidro. It seems that by the time of her killing, Maritza had re-established her life in the countryside, as days before her killing she had been urging her friend Marcela to come and see the farm in order to show her the organic fertilizer she had made. She had also been involved in a co-operative program (with the assistance of the mayor´s office in Santa Marta) called La Sierra Vuelve a Sembrar through which she had obtained seeds to plant and grow avocados and other crops. Maritza had not reported any threats against her to the authorities, nor had she confided anything to her close circle of friends. However, it seems the farm was not the bastion of peace Maritza deserved, with one report indicating that she was the only one of the victims awarded the land to have actually started cultivating there. The same report mentioned that there may have been acts of sabotage against the property, but that Maritza had persevered out of economic necessity. While it seems that Maritza had received no threats and had no enemies, there had been a warning issued by the Ombudsman’s Office (Defensoría del Pueblo) in May 2018 about the dangers faced by representatives of victims, leaders of displaced families and land claimants in the area due to the presence and increased activity of illegal armed groups there. The warning cited the presence of the Rojas Clan, Autodefensas Gaitanistas (also referred to as the Gulf Clan) and the ELN. The main threat in the area was identified as Los Pachencas (inheritors of the Giraldo Clan and Bloque Tayrona of the paramilitaries) who are said to have a vice like grip on many of the areas surrounding Santa Marta. This last group in particular is opposed to the process of land restitution and are thought to have been behind threats made against the Victims Board in Santa Marta, on which Maritza had participated. The brutal killing of Maritza would indicate that history is repeating itself in this picturesque corner of Colombia.

Learning about Maritza´s life leads one to marvel at what a unique woman she was. Sadly, there is nothing unique about her murder. In a co-authored report (funded by the Netherlands and the Spanish embassy) into the concerted killing of social leaders in Colombia since the signing of the peace accords, seven common themes were identified as being prevalent across the cases. The killing of Maritza can be linked to six of these. First, the Sierra Nevada is again increasing in coca cultivation and the presence of illegal crops is one principal denominator. Moving on, the region is also beginning its post agreement regional development programs (PDET), a process Maritza had been involved with. This sector of the Sierra Nevada is rife with para-militarism, another common theme. Maritza is yet another example of a proponent of the Yes vote in the plebiscite being slain. This slaying too occurred in an area where the Ombudsman’s office had warned there would be blood. Finally, and perhaps most tragically, the killing of Maritza took place in an area which had suffered the trauma of forced displacement. The suffering continues. History repeats itself. And another social leader killed. Another statistic. Another source of energy and hope extinguished. Finding another Maritza is no easy task. She had six decades of life experience, much of it tragic, none of it easy. She had suffered its true tolls and faced its toughest challenges. Being a mother of five is daunting enough, let alone without a husband nor home. Yet Maritza endured. The woman with an insatiable appetite for learning explored every avenue available to her to ensure those five children had access to the public education system. Those children are now engineers and nurses. Her colleagues and comrades in struggle spoke of a serene woman who inspired respect and tranquility; she was softly spoken but her words carried weight. Maritza, they said, was tolerant, conciliatory and determined. Not content with doing her best for the sake of her own family, Maritza wished to help all the others who had suffered like her. She was a woman keen to help build this country. And it was decided that she should be shot. Finding another Maritza is no easy task. The fact victims of displacement are treated as shabbily as they are is a stain on Colombia. That leaders like Maritza are left to be slaughtered is a disgrace.

*The information included in this article was sourced from the following sites:

https://colombia2020.elespectador.com/territorio/defensoria-habia-advertido-riesgos-en-zona-donde-fue-asesinada-maritza-quiroz

https://www.elheraldo.co/magdalena/en-video-el-dia-en-que-maritza-conmovio-al-senado-587731

https://lasillavacia.com/silla-llena/red-caribe/historia/una-breve-aproximacion-la-violencia-reciente-en-el-magdalena-62630