As
with Afro-descendants in the United States, Afro-descendant
communities in Colombia have been losing their lands at
an unprecedented rate over the last decade and a half.
In the United States, the number of African-American farmers
has declined by 98 percent since 1920. By 2001, African-Americans
were losing 1000 acres of land per day, with only 29,000
black farmers left in the United States currently, compared
with close to a million in the 1920s. In both historical
cases, racist governmental policies, private sector criminality
and the failure to protect the fundamental human rights
of Black people and communities resulted in massive alienation
of people from their land. Unfortunately, in Colombia,
this process of land alienation will be exacerbated with
the passage of the US-Colombia �Free Trade Agreement.�
[2]
In
Colombia, Afro-Colombian
farmers face unlawful and violent dispossession, internal
displacement, targeted violence and pauperization - all
the effects of mercenary policies and interests over their
ancestral territories and natural resources, now viewed
as some of the most valuable in the country. According
to census data collected in 2005 (the first official data
collected that is specified by race), 69 percent of Afro-descendants
had lost their wealth, represented mostly by land. Today,
79 percent of Afro-Colombian internal displacement comes
from Afro-Colombian collectively-owned territories. One-third
of the 5.2 million internally displaced persons (IDP)
are Afro-Colombians and 79 percent of those internally
displaced live below the poverty line.
Violence
and bloodshed has been at the center of Black land loss
in both the US and Colombia, but in Colombia violence
has proved to be the preferred practice by many forces
to remove Black communities from their land. This includes
situations such as the widely-known case of the Chiquita
Banana company, which allegedly paid $1.7 million to fund
paramilitary groups that massacred community leaders,
trade unionists, children, and women; the case of palm
oil companies in Curvarado and Jiguamiando (Choco), and
Tumaco (Nari�o), whose actions have cost the lives and
caused the internal displacement of hundreds of Afro-descendant
men, women and children; the illegal mining concessions
granted by the Colombian government to multinationals
such as Anglo-Gold Ashanti, Cosigo Resort, Kedhada and
Drumond, resulting in death threats to Afro-Colombian
leaders, organizations and whole communities in Choco
and the Northern Cauca Region; illegal mining in Zaragosa
(Valle) that resulted in more than 2,000 death in two
years; the horrendous case of the Port of Buenaventura,
where women are savagely raped and dismembered by armed
groups and state police, and where five neighborhoods
are facing displacement to give way to a large-scale expansion
of the Port and large-scale tourist projects.
The
US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) was formulated
and passed in Colombia in an environment of deliberate
and targeted violence against small farmers, most of them
Afro-descendants. The implementation of such a perverse
plan of dispossession will be consolidated with the US
passage of the US-Colombia FTA, pushed by the Executive
Branch of the Obama administration. While this agreement
is being debated in the halls of congress and assurances
given to trade unionists and Afro-Colombian farmers that
their rights will be protected, Afro-Colombian leaders
and trade unionists are still losing their lives - Afro-Colombian
leaders like Ana Fabricia Cordoba, was murdered by right-wing
paramilitary forces on June 7, 2011. [3]
Any
benefit US or Colombian investors gain from this agreement
will be at the cost of the blood and suffering of black,
indigenous and campesino peoples. We must not let
this agreement go forward behind the backs of the American
people. Opposing this agreement should be the goal of
all people who believe in human rights and fair trade
policies that put the rights of people at the center.
BlackCommentator.com
Guest Commentator, Charo Mina Rojas, is the National Advocacy
and Outreach Coordinator of the Black Communities� Process
(PCN, by its acronym in Spanish), International Working
Group, and member of the Afro-Colombian Solidarity Network
(ACSN). Click here
to contact Charo.
Also
visit: www.afrocolombians.com