PBI-Colombia has posted:
“We accompanied the Peace Community @sanjoapartado, touring the villages of Mulatos, Resbalosa and Calzón Rojo in #Urabá.
Their community work strengthens the defense of the territory from food sovereignty. We recognize this political project, which persists in search of peace and respect for life. #WeArePBI”
Moira Birss, formerly the U.S. rep for PBI-Colombia, has recently written this feature articleabout the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó for the NACLA Report. Key excerpts from her article include:
“The day before the murders [of community members Nalleli Sepúlveda, 30, and Edinson David, 14, on March 19], President Gustavo Petro and members of his cabinet made a stopover in Apartadó…
In a large public meeting, the president honored the Peace Community’s years of nonviolent resistance and asked the regional military commander to apologize for the army’s past collaboration in paramilitary attacks against the community.
He also issued an ultimatum to the Gulf Clan, successor to the country’s most notorious paramilitaries: either abandon drug trafficking and accept his invitation to negotiate, or the government will ‘wage war’ to ‘destroy’ the group.
Petro’s attention was not enough to stop the murders of Nalleli and Edinson. Amid slow progress toward the current president’s promise of ‘total peace,’ the killings shed light on the key ways in which Colombia’s first leftist government has changed [from previous governments that insinuated community members were guerillas] and has also been unable to change both the tone and practice of safeguarding land rights defenders and the territories they themselves seek to protect.
Colombian history shows that one of the main causes of political violence in recent decades is the struggle for control of territory and the resources it contains.
Part of what makes Apartadó and the Urabá region so attractive to armed groups (and the economic interests that often drive them) is the area’s strategic location near the Gulf of Urabá. The gulf flows into the Caribbean Sea, connecting to the Panama Canal and all its commodity export opportunities. On the other side of the gulf is the Darien Gap, which in recent years has become an important migratory route and where transit is controlled by the Gulf Clan. The Peace Community believes that the transit of goods and people through this area is central to the motivation behind the murders of Nalleli and Edinson.
Land grabbing for activities such as large-scale cattle ranching cleared around 1,600 hectares in Apartadó between 2019 and 2023.
Coal deposits
The area is also reported to contain significant coal deposits, for which the state issued an exploratory license more than 15 years ago. The Peace Community has sought to protect its collective agricultural lands from unwanted development projects and rapid deforestation, declaring water reserves and forests and practicing sustainable small-scale agriculture, but its efforts have faced major obstacles.
In the months and weeks leading up to the killings, tensions had been building in La Esperanza over widening a pedestrian and horse path to become a car-sized road that would go deep into the hills, presumably to facilitate commodity exports.
The route runs through the Las Delicias estate [where Nalleli and Edinson were killed]. As it is not authorized by the regional authorities, the construction of the road is illegal. The Peace Community has opposed the project and has denounced the involvement of the Gulf Clan and the support of the Army in the process.
Community opposition was met with a series of escalating attacks on Las Delicias [including fences being cut down and a gate chainsawed]. In response to these attacks, Nalleli, Edinson and other members of the Peace Community rebuilt, over and over again, the fences and gates and promised to protect the territory.
Photo: Nalleli Sepúlveda paints a wooden gate that the Peace Community rebuilt after it was destroyed. It reads: “Mining kills the land. We have the right to protect nature.” Photo by the Peace Community.
In the following days, the government sent a delegation of high-level officials led by the director of human rights of the Ministry of the Interior, Franklin Castañeda, to visit Las Delicias. During the delegation, Castañeda and other officials made a number of commitments related to the revision of the coal mining license and road construction approvals (or lack thereof), as well as streamlining land restitution procedures and protecting existing titles. They also proposed a comprehensive review of the Armed Forces’ compliance (or lack of compliance) with the judgments in favor of the community by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Constitutional Court of Colombia.
The violence and inequalities derived from the territorial power of armed groups such as the Clan del Golfo and the economic interests that try to snatch land from peasants and Black and Indigenous communities are not problems that can be solved in a single year or from offices in Bogotá. Real change will require years of work on the ground, as well as accountability from the other actors — from the U.S. government to the coal companies to the Colombian Department of Justice — who participate in and perpetuate a system that supports this kind of political violence.”
The full article by Moira Birss can be read at “No nos callaremos ante nuestros verdugos” (NACLA, June 25, 2024).
The Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project has accompanied the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó since 1999.
Published by Brent Patterson on