“Given the reports of excessive force used against indigenous protesters in the past 10 days, we have very serious concerns about the safety of the indigenous leaders and members of the organizations named in the paramilitary death threat,” said Amnesty International’s Marcelo Pollack.
Ricardo Esquivia helped establish the Commission for Restoration, Life, and Peace of the Colombian Council of Evangelical Churches (CEDECOL), where he facilitated the development of five regional commissions of pastors and lay leaders to help Protestant churches provide emergency assistance to the displaced, to develop small-scale economic projects, and to work with local leaders to build a grassroots movement for peace. He has participated in national and regional dialogues with legal and illegal armed groups in Colombia.
Colombian Armed Forces have brutally attacked members of the “Paro Agrario” National Farmers and Popular Strike, with at least four to five persons dead and reports of hundreds wounded. Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos, dismissing strikers as vandals, has ordered the militarization of the capital city of Bogotá and places throughout the country, vowing to deploy 50,000 soldiers.
People in a farming town in central Colombia voted overwhelmingly against global corporation AngloGold Ashanti’s La Colosa gold mine.
The Colombian army killed Marta Díaz’s son Douglas in 2006, dressed him in combat fatigues and reported him as a FARC guerrilla killed in a shootout. Díaz searched for him everywhere, in prisons, hospitals and morgues, until she finally managed to track down his remains in 2008.
Cargill, the world’s largest food company, has been secretly amassing land from small farmers in eastern Colombia, despite a law prohibiting the practice. When the two countries signed a free trade agreement last year, Cargill emerged as the owner of 52,574 hectares where it grows corn and soybeans. […]
The farmers are demanding cheaper inputs, a better price for their crop, and that payment be based on the quality of the product, rewarding growers for a higher quality product. “All we have is our land,” says a young woman named Senída. “And at these rates, we are losing it fast.”
A sea of people from all across Colombia marched in Bogotá with a common desire for an end to the country’s armed conflict. They lined the streets in a lively procession, including dancing, music and performance. Countless people waving flags, holding banners, and wearing symbolic T-shirts marched to the city’s famous Plaza de Bolívar, united by a common desire for peace.
The conversation on care in US social movements has had me thinking about how we draw lines around what is and is not considered “movement,” or “care,” or “practice.” My own perspective around this was expanded through interactions with Colombian activists who, in their struggles for fundamental rights – land, gender justice, environmental, and others – weave together strategies of resilience promotion to strengthen a community’s ability to withstand physical and psychological strain, together with base-building, advocacy, direct action, and other strategies.
The community of San Josecito in northern Colombia is an idyllic collection of wooden houses linked by dirt streets where the only traffic is the free-roaming livestock. Yet it is a community where every man, woman and child has a tragedy to tell. It is also a community that, since its inception, has lived with the ever-present threat of violence and the knowledge that to leave its wire-fenced perimeter is to put your life at risk.
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