Chocó's communities

 

The PASC  was founded in 2003 to accompany the Choco communities. In its first years, the accompaniment trips were totally spent in the Bajo Atrato humanitarian zones of the Jiguamiendo and the Curvarado basins.  The first PASC campaign against  agro-fuels is directly linked to its communities’ history. 

 

After around fifteen years of battle, the resisting civilian communities of the Jiguamiando and the Curvarado basins have obtained a judgment from the constitutional court ordering the restitution of their land, illegally occupied by megaplantations of African Palm.  Since their first displacement in 1997 and the recognition of their collective property title in 2001, the communities of the Jiguamiando and Curvarado organized themselves into Humanitarian Zones and Biodiversity Zones and obtained some national and international accompaniment mechanisms.





The communities’ lawyers have succeeded in documenting the links between these « development » projects, financed by the Colombian Government and International Aid Programs, and the paramilitary structures still in place.  The topic of the Palm in the Choco has become, after years of battle, a national issue about the restitution of land to the farming communities, victims of paramilitary crimes.  Remember that the government of President Santos, in an effort to distinguish itself from his predecessor (Uribe), maintains talks in favor of land restitution but his actions speak the contrary.  Despite the court order, the Palm plantations are still there.

In the field, those contradictions between talk and reality are lived every day, between land invasion, death threats and legalization.

Criminalization :

A series of legal arrangements against the recognized leaders of the minor Councils living in the Humanitarian and Biodiversity Zones of the Curvarado and Jiguimiando were organized by the Palm proprietors accusing them of belonging to the FARC-EP.   This legal strategy, on one hand, prevents the representatives from the communities from testifying against them in court and makes it possible to legally question their right to the land.

Paramilitary presence :

Since mid-April 2011, paramilitary troups armed with AK-47 have returned near the villages of the resisting communities.  Their presence was less obvious since the so-called demobilization processes of 2005.  Paramilitaries were always present but their presence was more discreet, sporting civil clothes, guns and radios. 

Recolonization of the territory:

Since mid-December 2010, more than 200 hectares of the collective Curvarado territory are illegally occupied by invaders protected by the paramilitaries.  These invaders are, for the most part, farmers from other regions, not involved in resistance processes and that are ready to accept « development » projects.  The goal of their installation on the territory is to « return » land to the communities open to negotiate with the eindustry.  It is thought that representatives for the Banana companies are behind this new occupation phase of the land.  While an eviction notice has been issued to the illegal occupants, it was not applied because the Uraba region police says it does not have enough people to carry the eviction out.

History of a forced displacement:

In 1997, under the pretext of FARC-EP guerrilla presence in the region, there took place in the department of Chocó a burst of military operations named ‘Operation Genesis’ under the command of General Rito Alejo del Rio Rojas of the 17th Brigade of the National Army. Simultaneously, while Army helicopters bombarded the region, paramilitary groups identified as AUC (United Self-defence of Colombia) made incursions into the villages of the civilian population. They ordered the people to leave their territory and committed massacres while they burned down houses and crops. Communities of the Jiguimiandó, Curvaradó and Cacarica river basins were among the hundreds of communities who were thus forced to flee their villages with hardly the clothes on their backs. Today, almost 10 years later, all the crimes committed at the time of ‘Operation Genesis’ are still in the most complete impunity.

History of a struggle for Life and Land

Since their displacement, the communities were forced to live on the periphery of villages in inhuman conditions, crowded into temporary housing, dependent on frequently insufficient food aid. Without knowledge of each other’s existence, the Afro-Colombian and mestizo communities of Jiguamiandó and Cacarica began to progressively organize in order to achieve a return to their respective lands.

By the end of 1999 and the beginning of the year 2000, in different stages, the communities were finally able to return to their ancestral lands. The communities of Jiguamiandó as well as Cacarica asserted themselves as populations engaging in civil resistance, reclaiming their rights to Life, Land, Self-determination, Freedom, Justice and Dignity. They developed mechanisms of protection enabling them to continue civil resistance amidst the armed conflict: the ´Humanitarian Zones´ were created, two situated in Cacarica and three in Jiguiamandó. Parts of the communities of Curvaradó, living in Jiguamiandó, have since created two new Humanitarian Zones on their territory (April and October 2006). The ‘Humanitarian Zones’ are physically delimited spaces where many communities have regrouped to live together. They serve to distinguish a civilian population living within an armed conflict, so that they are not implicated in the conflict by any of the armed actors. They are opposed to the vicious exploitation of natural resources on their land and to the blood-stained development model imposed from above. The communities of Jiguamiandó, as those of Cacarica, seek to continue living freely on their land, practicing traditional subsistence agriculture.

In the case of the communities in the Community Council of the Jiguamiandó River Basin and the 9 communities of Curvaradó, situated in the department of Chocó, there are currently 1500 hectares of African Palm sown illegally by the Urapalma Company on the communities´ collective territory to which they hold the legal collective title, under law 70 of 1993 which protects ancestral territory of Afro-Colombian communities. In the case of the CAVIDA communities in Cacarica, department of Chocó, the Maderas del Darien Corporation has been for many years illegally cutting immense quantities of high quality lumber on the collective territory of the communities.