AfroColombia.org

Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent for The Guardian

May 12, 2008 -- Britain's passion for chocolate, cakes and crisps is fuelling a violent campaign to force Colombian peasants off their land to make way for oil palm plantations, a report claims today.

British consumers have become the biggest export market for the controversial crop which is used in margarine and pastries as well as toothpaste, soap and detergents and cosmetics.

The surge in demand has sustained a ruthless landgrab by rightwing paramilitary groups in Colombia's rural areas, War on Want, a London-based advocacy group, says in its report.

Keynote Presentation, Conference “Afro-Latinos: Global Spaces/Local Struggles” University of California at Los Angeles, March 6-7, 2008

Agustin Lao-Montes

Last week there were two conferences in U.S. universities concerned with people we call Afro-Latinos. The counterpoint between a conference at Howard University titled Times of Change and Opportunities for the Afro Colombian Population organized by the Colombian embassy, and a conference The African Diaspora in the Americas: Political and Cultural Resistance at the University of Minnesota, exemplify poles within the contested terrain of Black politics in the Americas. The fact that we are today closing a third conference in less than two weeks is not only a demonstration de que los negros estamos de moda como dice mi amiga Claudia Mosquera (that we Afro-Latinos are in fashion) but more so that Afro-Latin American politics is now a key arena, not only in local and national but also in hemispheric and global politics.

By Dr. Keith Jennings, January 28, 2008 -- The Colombia “free trade” deal currently being promoted by the Bush Administration should be opposed by all those who seek justice and those who want the United States to regain some of its lost respect at the international level.

The human rights situation in Colombia—Latin Americas’ third largest country—is appalling and should be clearly and unequivocally condemned by all members of Congress, but especially the Congressional Black Caucus given the abuses faced by the Afro-Colombians.

The free trade agreement, as proposed, is not about fair trade and in effect would further exacerbate human rights violations and environmental degradation in Colombia. This agreement would continue the marginalization and social exclusion of Afro-Colombians, Indigenous Peoples and the poor. Furthermore, the consequential exporting of manufacturing jobs from the United States will continue to have a disproportionately destructive and detrimental impact on Black workers.

By David Parker

MONTREAL, January 12, 2008 -- In August of 2007, Paola, a mother, university student and teacher, received a written death threat. She is a member of the Committee for Solidarity for Political Prisoners, a group that struggles for the rights of political prisoners in Colombia. It is a country where state repression has broken the social fabric, where being a human rights defender can have dangerous consequences; since 2002, there have been 955 assassinations committed by the Armed Forces, the highest level of politically motivated homicide in the Western hemisphere.

TUMACO, Colombia, December 10 (UNHCR) – Life in Tumaco was never easy for Jorge*, who arrived in the Pacific port city after fleeing violence in another part of Colombia a few years ago.

It may be dubbed the "Pearl of the Pacific" by locals, but the truth is that Tumaco has become a tough and unattractive place to settle in – even for the desperate. The population is largely Afro-Colombian and most of them live in dire poverty, but Jorge never thought life would get so bad that he would have to leave.

"I am not going to run away; they won't make me do it, not this time," he told UNHCR last month. Only days later, Jorge changed his mind and went into hiding after he found a handwritten death threat on his kitchen table.

By Zilia Castrillón

CHOCÓ, Colombia, Jun 23 (IPS/IFEJ) - Indigenous and black communities of Colombia's northwestern department of Chocó are trying to recover their lands and food sources, lost to the decades-long civil war that has taken its toll on this area of vast biological diversity.

Alirio Mosquera, legal representative of the community councils that unite the 3,000 inhabitants of the Cacarica River basin on the Bajo Atrato (lower Atrato River), is working to combine community production projects with the peaceful resistance to the Colombian internal conflict that has lasted a half-century.

By César Rodríguez

NACLA, April 16, 2007 -- How unexpected: Colombia’s northwest department (province) of Chocó is suddenly in vogue. After the scandalous death of 49 children from hunger in the last three months—adding to countless others we’ve never heard about—everyone seems to have an opinion about Chocó. Some say the department is simply unviable and that it should be absorbed and divided up between neighboring departments. Others say the problem is not a lack of funds, but rather that politicians steal all the money. Still others say the issue is about management, and that the government is just too distracted with things elsewhere.

By Marie-Hélène Verney

SAN MIGUEL, Colombia, February 20, 2007 (UNHCR) – Two years ago, San Miguel was a ghost town on the banks of the San Juan River in Colombia's Pacific rainforest. Today, it is slowly coming back to life.

The wooden huts are freshly painted in bright pink and blue; a small store sells soft drinks and a few tins of canned food; and at midday, children in dark blue uniforms come running out of the tin-roofed school.

But its renaissance could be shortlived –- like dozens of other settlements of Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities along the river, it is again threatened by violence. Fighting between rival groups has flared and is spreading north along the river into the Choco region.

David Bacon (American Prospect, January 16, 2007)

A U.S. trade deal with Colombia may just have been signed, but foreign investment projects have already cost Afro-Colombians their land and their lives.

Development projects anywhere in the world often have a high human cost. In Colombia, the price is often measured in human lives and blood.

Esperanza (she would risk her life, she says, if her real name appeared in print) saw her neighbors pay that price in 2001. Her house sits on the bank of the Rio Salvajina, in the Afro-Colombian municipality of Buenos Aires in Cauca province. 'I saw armed men arrive in cars,' she remembers, 'with two, three, four, even five people tied up. They dragged them onto the bridge, shot them two or three times and threw their bodies into the river.' When the paramilitaries came to her own home, she was so frightened she lost the baby she'd been carrying for five months.

By Toby Muse, Buenaventura, Colombia (AP) -- In a slum church fortified by steel doors, the Rev. Ricardo Londono teaches children music, hoping to steer them away from becoming killers.

"We are convinced that every child that picks up an instrument is less likely to pick up a gun," he says as children joyfully raise a cacophony with drums, recorders and cellos.

The Catholic priest is well aware of the dangers on the streets of this impoverished neighborhood called Antonio Lleras: The day before, two men were shot just blocks from the church. A day later, two more men would be gunned down nearby.