AfroColombia.org

LA INDIA, Colombia, Apr 17 (UNHCR) – When Hugo had to flee his home in the Colombian department of Santander last month, he did not have to think twice to know where to go. A few hours down the Carare River, the small community of La India has gained a reputation over the years as a safe haven from the violence of the Colombian conflict. Within hours, he and his family had put their few belongings on a small boat and were making their way downstream.

Karen Juanita Carrillo, Black Britain

"They’ve simply thrown out all of the agreements they had come to with Afro Colombian communities about how we wanted to be identified. We want that fact known throughout the world – there was an agreement which DANE has broken..."
-- Hernando Viveros Cabezas, municipal advisor on Afro Colombian youth concerns

Afro Colombians say they fear that their country’s current census will continue their nation’s history of discounting them.

Even as DANE (Departamento Nacional de Estadística/Department of National Statistics) representatives are due to send census takers into the nation’s predominately Afro-Colombian Chocó region in the next few weeks, community activists are continuing a campaign to have more listings added under Colombia’s categories for Blackness.

Chris Kraul
The Los Angeles Times
04-Jan-06

PEREIRA, Colombia - Armando Garces was reluctant to leave his mountain
village even after right-wing militia members had gone door to door telling
residents they had 48 hours to evacuate, or else. He didn't like being

(12/05/05) The jury unanimously decided to award the 2005 National Peace Prize to the Diocese of Quibdó, in Chocó Province.

Amid the conflict, to resist violence, the Diocese of Quibdó accompanies the indigenous and Afro Colombian communities of the region in projects for defense of human rights, cultural strengthening, grassroots organization, and humanitarian intervention. Among its achievements are the joining together of organizational work and the ways these communities have put down roots in their cultural traditions and their land. The church body has tended to more than 4,400 displaced persons, seeking proper conditions for these communities' return to their home territories. Diocese staff serve as accompaniers in solidarity, respecting the autonomy of each community. Special mention must be made of the Noah's Ark boat, which journeys along the Atrato River to take food to communities that are victims of armed blockades. Six years ago, the priest Jorge Luis Mazo and his Spanish coworker Iñigo Eguiluz died by drowning when the motorboat in which they traveled was brutally rammed by a boat operated by paramilitaries.

(Bogotá, Nov 30) Beginning this Wednesday, discotheques will not be allowed to refuse entrance to persons on the basis of their race or socioeconomic condition. Doing so would subject them to fines in the millions of pesos, according to a ruling by the Constitutional Court.

The case that led to the Court's pronouncement took place December 25 of last year, when Johana Acosta and her sister attempted unsuccessfully to enter the establishments "La Carbonera" and "Cucallito" in Cartagena, to enjoy a night of dancing.

On November 25, thousands of women gathered in Quibdó, a region of mostly Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities. The following is their statement. Source: Ruta Pacifica de Mujeres

"It is possible to transform pain into a song, to paint death with blue, so it is no longer pain, to tickle it into laughter, and spread to all those present…"

At 6:30 in the morning of November 25, International Day of NO Violence against Women, the Peaceful Path (Ruta Pacífica) and its majestic caravan of buses entered the city of Quibdó after women from regions all over Colombia traveled by road 40, 50, even 60 hours the various distances from their homes.

Constanza Vieira. Inter Press Service News Agency - BOGOTA, Nov 17 (IPS) - In four open letters addressed to all of the armed actors in Colombia's civil war, 47 organisations of indigenous people, afro-Colombians, peasant farmers, women, local residents and trade unionists from the jungle province of Chocó demand respect for their territory and their neutrality in the armed conflict.

The letters, which were released Monday by the seventh Interethnic Solidarity Forum of Chocó and published Tuesday, were addressed to the leaders of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN), right-wing President Alvaro Uribe, and the heads of the extreme-right paramilitary United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC).

Source: Renacientes.org -- Process of Black Communities

Resisting the cold weather of the capital, 700 people belonging to the black communities’ Southwestern region of Colombia, have, for the past six days, peacefully taken over the San Francisco Church in Bogotá. They came from Tumaco and other neighboring areas to protest against what they see as an attack by the government of Alvaro Uribe to gradually dismantle the rights they have acquired during hundreds of years of resistance in those American lands, rights that were ratified almost in their entirety in a Special Regulation, in the 1991 Constitution.

Congressional Record. US Senate, September 29, 2005

Mr. President, I rise today to call attention to an important step towards progress for Afro-descendants in Colombia, and an important opportunity for Afro-descendants throughout Latin America.

I wish to commend the work of my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus on this issue, as well as the tireless efforts of non-governmental organizations and religious groups both here and in Colombia.

This August, President Uribe of Colombia created a cabinet-level position on Afro-Colombian issues, and appointed an Afro-Colombian to fill the post. The creation of this position is especially significant because it signals both a recognition of the severity of the situation of Afro-descendants in Colombia and a willingness to address these inequalities.

By Eduardo Cue
Source: UN High Commissioner for Refugees

PIEDRA CANDELA, Colombia, August 15 (UNHCR) – Only silence can be heard in the once vibrant town of Piedra Candela on Colombia's Bojaya River. The main street, lined with one- and two-storey wooden houses, is eerily empty. Everywhere, there are signs that the town's residents left in a hurry. A child's shoe lies on the street. Inside one house, records are scattered on the floor along with a small bicycle. If most of the houses are empty of furniture and personal belongings, it is not their owners who removed them but the armed groups, who did not waste any time in taking their booty once the inhabitants had fled.