Last Saturday we hosted the highly anticipated
VIVA PACIFICO at Rich Mix in East London. It was the latest in a series of
events that we have been putting together with War on Want and Colombia Solidarity
Campaign in order to raise awareness about the on-going humanitarian crisis
that currently devastates the lives of thousands of Afro-Colombians in the port
city of Buenaventura on the pacific coast. This time we joined forces with
Movimientos in a bid to bring new life to what was and is ultimately a celebration
of the lives of Colombians of African decent who find themselves amidst unprecedented levels of
violence.
What we hoped from the event was to duplicate a
key and empowering factor that has been at the basis of local resistance in the
affected communities of Buenaventura. Namely, the use of the word and music as
cultural modes of resistance that act against multiple and systematic forms of
violence. By reiterating the importance of tradition in the affirmation of the
defence of territory – bringer of culture – communities have taken their stance
declaring their beautiful and diverse territory a place of peace, real peace.
The magnificent Rafeef Ziadah together with our own Sebastian Ordoñez animated what was an inspiring array of amazingly talented poets
and spoken word artists from the Spoken Word Educators Program who, together with
the spiritually charged Afro-Colombian sounds of London based Cumbé, drove the
message home to a 300- strong crowd that immersed itself in the sounds of the
Marimbas while letting the feeling of love and solidarity reverberate in the words and
rhymes of the poets as we danced into the night to the sounds of the brilliant Nab'S'Ora.
Buenaventura is in crisis. Crises of this kind
paradoxically tend to invoke silence and denial by states that champion the vilest
forms of predatory neo-liberalism. Such is the case in Colombia. However,
though many, either naively or deliberately accept such forms of domination to
be the norm, what is truly telling in this particular case is that this is a
Colombia that finds itself in the middle of peace negotiations.
Should we be surprised? The Colombian government,
which won its last elections on the back of a promise to bring about an end to
the 50-year old armed conflict, seems to have forgotten the structural causes
that brought about the conflict in the first place – A complete disregard for
the different relational ontologies (cosmovision, ways of life, needs) of
diverse groups at the hand of different forms of capitalist domination that
normally expresses itself in the form of two types of violence.
On one level we can clearly see a case of
structural violence. Unfortunately this is not new to Buenaventura, one of the
most poverty-ridden municipalities in Colombia. With unemployment at 60% and
poverty at a staggering 80% in a city of 370,000 you can’t help but ask
yourself why it is that the port of Buenaventura - which sees about 70% of the total of Colombia’s
imports and exports and has running water and electricity 24 hours a day –
shows such high levels of lack of access to basic living needs. The answer
becomes clear, though daunting, if we take a closer look at the specific
actions the government has taken with regards to Buenaventura.
After complete silence and denial about any
sort of situation let alone a humanitarian crisis in Buenaventura, the Santos
administration publicly recognised the situation in early 2014 denouncing the
crisis as one generated by conflicting drug-gangs seeking to control drug
routes. However such an analysis misses a vital point that is again, naively or
deliberately, but almost always overlooked in Colombia and that is that
‘Displacement isn’t an unwanted result of conflict, rather conflict is
generated so that there can be
displacement.’ And when you look at the statistics for displacement in
Buenaventura – a pattern starts to emerge – 107,000 people have had to leave their
homes in the last 4 years.
A clear question is being formulated here – is
it really just naiveté or is it instead a the deliberate and co-opted use of systemic
violence to simply get rid of as much
as it is humanly possible of the historically discriminated and marginalised
black communities of Buenaventura? In Buenaventura, a climate of fear is being
promoted by different powerful actors much like the one that was installed in
Central America at the behest of democratizing US missions implemented by the
CIA trained Contras in Nicaragua and death-squads in El Salvador.
The coincidences are staggering. Random house
fires are happening in locations where there are plans to develop a massive
Tourist Boulevard. Chophouses, yes chophouses have become the norm where there
are plans to expand the port and its carrying capacity – these chop houses are
the tip of the iceberg in a ring of extortion and direct threats to community
leaders and families who, in fear of repression, tend to stay silent. Where new
coal containers are being thought out – small children are being recruited to
join neo-paramilitary groups that are the result of the failed demobilization
process led by the bloodthirsty ex-president Alvaro Uribe Velez in 2005.
Perhaps the biggest coincidence of all comes in
the pages of the aptly named Master Plan – Buenaventura 2050. A government
development plan that clearly shows what Buenaventura will look like in 2050 –
although it is clearly missing one crucial element: The population of Buenaventura
whose umbilical cords are buried in the soil and sea of their territory appear
no where in the plans and the land which currently holds their houses has been
replaced by the developments mentioned above. Beyond the question of why the
government would invest staggering amounts of money on a development plan while
completely overlooking the need to tackle any of the deplorable social conditions
that people are currently experiencing. Could
it be that the violence perpetrated by the existing neo-paramilitary narco-trafficking
groups is facilitating the development plans? It is unfortunately a common
truth in Colombia.
One thing is clear – the people of Buenaventura
have everything to lose. The spiritual connection they hold to a land, which through
traditional, ancestral and bio-physical consolidation, they have designated as
their territories is what drives resistance. Territory, bringer of culture,
bearer of life. And we recognise that: We are all Buenaventura!