Regional Occurrences of Ongoing Violence in Cauca, and One Community’s History of Resistance
by Julia Julstrom-Agoyo
October 28, 2022
A mural outside the center of El Tambo, Cauca seen with ‘FARC-EP’ graffiti written over it.
Before spending the summer in Colombia, I subscribed to several listservs, meant to keep me informed of the security situation while there. In early August, I received a U.S. State Department correspondence advising heightened security awareness countrywide. In mid-August, I received an alert from my University’s International Travel System announcing the raising of the risk rating from medium to high for several departments. Among these was the entire department of Cauca except the capital Popayán (which remains medium risk). I stayed in Popayán while conducting my fieldwork, but had visits to different municipalities in Cauca planned. Several of these visits ended up being canceled or done virtually due to violence.
The morning we were set to head to Suarez from Santander de Quilichao, no taxi driver would agree to take us there. We found out later that day that there had been cross-fire between FARC dissidents and the Colombian military, so people were rightfully afraid to travel there. Suarez is located in between two mountains, used strategically by the aforementioned groups, meaning that shelling from the cross-fire often falls onto people’s homes. This is the reality that I found in some parts of Cauca, Colombia. This is happening across a country that has had violent conflict for over 50 years and is supposed to be in its ‘post-conflict’ era. In this blog, I will share my experiences visiting different municipalities in Cauca and the story of one community leader striving to build peace in her territory.
Many areas of Colombia do seem better off since the Peace Agreement was signed in 2016 and are enjoying a sizable amount of tourism. However, after spending just a few weeks in Cauca, a Department of Southwestern Colombia, it is evident that in some municipalities, especially in the northern region of Cauca, violence is at similar or higher levels than before.
Early in July, I spoke to a colleague’s mother in El Tambo. She told me about the most recent ‘paro armado’ (armed shutdown) last December, initiated by the ELN and the FARC-EP dissidents, when stores and roads were closed for 3 days and people sheltered in their homes. During these ‘paros,’ people that try to transit anyway get killed or their trucks set on fire. The police can’t or don’t do anything to stop them. This ‘paro’ was initiated supposedly to condemn the ‘paramilitary group’ Carlos Patiño of the ‘Comando Coordinador de Occidente’ for setting two cars on fire that were transporting gasoline between the Balboa and Argelia municipalities. Although the armed groups don’t achieve what they’re looking for, it’s about instilling fear in people—“it’s about terror,” my colleague’s mother told me.
When I arrived in Santander de Quilichao in mid-July, I was informed that on the Sunday prior, there had been a massacre that left three dead in the municipality. On Tuesday, there had been 5 people attacked in the nearby village of El Palo in the municipality of Caloto, leaving two dead, two in intensive care, and one injured. In both of these cases, nothing appeared in the news at least initially, to the frustration of the local communities. Though unsure of who killed these residents and why, people speculated that narcotraffickers had paid paramilitaries to kill them because those killed in at least one of the events were peace leaders and Afro-Colombian leaders. One Peace Councilor in Santander de Quilichao told us that a young man had recently been murdered in the village of Mazamorrero—in between the municipalities of Buenos Aires and Santander de Quilichao—in front of other young people simply for being ex-military.
A mural outside the center of El Tambo, Cauca seen with ‘FARC-EP’ graffiti written over it.
With more time than expected in Santander de Quilichao because of our adjusted schedule, I sat down and spoke with a local community leader, activist, and Peace Councilor who we will call Mireya for safety reasons. Mireya has been involved in community activism since she was a teenager. She told me a story of resistance among increasing violence in her community. Our conversation is shared below, edited slightly for clarity.
What are the obstacles the Peace Councils or Peace Councilors face in Cauca?
We as social and community leaders are a target because we’re the ones who use our voices when we’re not in agreement with something that will undermine our integrity or stability in the community—that will affect our ability to live in tranquility in our territory.
What is the path to peace?
The path to peace is to generate dialogue and conceptualization, and to have it based on respect. We must conceptualize so that all the actors who are in the space or territory or community or neighborhood—all the actors who are immersed—can generate dialogue and reach agreements, so that there is a healthy coexistence.
For example in our case, as Black communities, there needs to always be a consultation prior to informing us of something, because what is development for us, is something very different for others. For those who are not Afro-descendants or Afro-Colombians or Black people, the concept of development is very different from the concept that we have. So that’s why we ask them to consult us. We are an ancestral territory with its own autonomy. If they consult us, we can see what is good for us and what is going to affect us negatively. This is where the controversy comes, because they don’t consult us, mega-projects arrive in our territory, other actors arrive who have their own interests, and that balance, that tranquility, is lost.
Can you tell me about the current situation in your territory?
Currently, in our territories, the internal violence here in Colombia is more than 50 years old. In the Santos government, it was arranged for the FARC and the government to sit down to talk. One could see that the error began there because the victimizer sat down with the government, but they didn’t call the victims to sit down and talk as well. That dialogue was only between two parties and not with the most important party who were the victims. They talked among themselves, and the victims managed to get to the table at the end of the process, but the mistake was already made. I have seen that after the signing of the peace agreement, the humanitarian crisis in our territories is getting worse.
The agreement was carried out, but then the residual and incidental groups arose. Previously in some of our ancestral territories, we were only the corridors of the armed actors. Now, the armed actors are making their presence in our territories and they have clear political guidelines for us. Where there are suddenly illegal crops and mining, these armed actors arrive to obtain their financing and that is where we begin to see instability in the territories. There is currently an increase in the planting of crops for illicit use, and as the planting of illicit crops increases and streamlines, more actors begin to arrive, and among them, armed actors. That is where the crisis begins to worsen.
In these times, confinement, displacement, disappearances, murders, and clashes between groups are taking place, due to that war for power and for territory, for their permanence where there are illegal mining and crops for illicit use.
I believe what is happening is that we are being re-victimized. We lived through that war and we saw how this armed conflict was experienced in Colombia, but they never told us what post-conflict was going to be like.
I truly consider post-conflict to have been harder. For example, certain municipalities were prioritized for the PNIS program (Comprehensive National Program for the Substitution of Illicit Crops). But in the municipalities where at that time there was no cultivation of crops for illicit use, there are now such crops.
Obviously in these 50 years of conflict there have been many victims and it has been painful, but nobody told us how post-conflict was going to be. Post-conflict has also been very complex. In the case of women, they are one of the most marked victims because they’re abused themselves, they have to see their children and husbands killed, and their children recruited (increasing some at this time), disappearances, confinement and displacement (also increasing now). In one year, the municipality of Santander de Quilichao has been the recipient on two occasions of displaced people who come from the Mazamorrero sector (an area between the municipalities of Buenos Aires and Santander de Quilichao). Caring for the increasing number of victims has been complex.
In the territories, culturally, we have lived with this tranquility, that we all knew each other. We have always been used to having our doors open and sitting in the streets talking, chatting, until dark. Now people feel very anxious; that custom and that tranquility has been lost, and the children cannot play in the park or on the courts that we have in peace. I call the spaces we have parks, but we don’t even have actual parks. Our parks are the spaces in front of houses where children sit down to talk or play. When the children leave school, they would go to play soccer or traditional games in the evenings—now you can no longer do those things. Now, after 6 PM, everyone is inside their house because of that anxiety that something could happen.
There has been a sort of rupture of our social life and customs. For example, here in Santander we have the traditional custom of ‘la fuga de adoración’ (‘the fugue of adoration’). For a time, in some territories, these traditional ancestral festivities could not be held precisely because of the presence of other actors who came to our territories and generated a different dynamic and overwhelmed people’s fear. But aside from that, we try to sustain that culture because those same cultural practices are also what have helped us resist. Those practices, such as ‘la fuga de adoración,’ come as a result of the era of slavery. We have wanted to sustain that culture so that we do not lose our customs because they were practices of resistance that helped Black people resist, despite being enslaved. And they only resisted because they got together around dance, and the dynamic of reciting ‘coplas’ (folk verses). We have wanted to sustain that legacy and that form of resistance of Black people, and precisely for this reason we are so fond of sustaining those dances that are ancestral and are characteristic of us as ‘pueblo negro’ (Black peoples).
Graffiti seen walking around the center of Santander de Quilichao, Cauca
We call ourselves a ‘pueblo’ (a people) because we have our own practices and customs that others do not have and that is what has helped us resist violence and dispossession.
Our territories are rich in flora, fauna, and minerals, which is precisely why there are so many claims made over our territories. It is then when we begin to defend our territorial ethnic rights. We generate strategies for us to resist in our territory because that is our purpose as Black people, to remain in our ancestral territory. Many of us in the territories have had to be displaced to the cities, but we see how when our people go to the cities we have to see them return in coffins, dead in caskets. That is why we say no, our life is here, in our territories, and the idea is to continue resisting, despite all the complications and the consequences that we have experienced.
At this time we have disproportionate mining being practiced. Even though the notices are gone, that mining is still there in an uncontrolled manner, and now there is the appearance of crops for illicit use. In Santander, we were not even designated a PNIS site because there were no crops for illicit use; now there are and this is worsening the crisis. The threats aimed at the social and community leaders are also worsening. I believe that it is very important for us to participate in this project, this program, to sit down, investigate, and see that you help us with these tools for how we can continue generating these dynamics of resistance and dialogue. Sometimes with the central government, things are very complex. We want to use those tools and show that there are processes where the government can really consolidate our territories to help strengthen them, and help generate that dynamic that allows us to not have violence present.
Like I said before, development has a different meaning for us, another connotation. Where mega-projects are development for some, for us they signify negative consequences, eviction, and dispossession. When there are mega-projects, the claims they make on our territories affect us, so we want to generate those tools that help us stop this from happening in our territories. We can have peace of mind and in addition to that, access to the land—which sometimes we have in the projects, but there are families that do not have even half a square where to produce and those who have where to produce, do not have a way to get the agricultural inputs they need. Also, our young people sometimes don’t have those opportunities to have a clear career path. I think that those tools will also help the youth to change the situation in our territories because it really is complex and has intensified in the last year.
