Afro-Colombian Women Lead Search for Disappeared

A motorboat’s wooden benches were filled with 18 Afro-descendant women in white T-shirts. A woman held a white flag around her neck and held a thin stick. Its edges fluttered in the wind above her head as they sped down the Yurumanguí River in Buenaventura, on Colombia’s Pacific coast. More women followed closely behind, their motorboat tilting on its sides as it turned at river’s mouth. They were all silent, their faces serene.

It was early December 2021 — just days after Abencio Caicedo, 38, and Édinson Valencia García, 46, were kidnapped and disappeared. In the hopes of finding them, the Yurumanguí Women’s Collective was traveling to neighboring communities along the rivers that serve as rural Buenaventura’s transport arteries.

Caicedo and García held leadership roles in the Yurumanguí River Basin’s Community Council. Community councils can be found here recognizedadministrative units of autonomous government on Afro-Colombian territories. The Yurumanguí territory includes 13 Afro-descendant rural settlements dispersed along the river. Residents traceTheir ancestry was to enslave Africans who were brought in chains by Spaniards in 1600. Official authorities representing the territory, Caicedo and García have been pivotal in efforts to halt criminal and commercial mining and the planting of coca crops. They were loved. teachersThey were also active in the national organization for human rights. Black Communities Process (PCN).

Both were subject to great personal risk because of their work. Colombia has Latin America’s highest rateof murders of human rights defenders and those defending the environment or collective territories are most targeted. The two of them set off on a trip to organize the community on November 28. That was the lastThey were never heard of by their children, spouses, or community.

A videoThis draws attention to the disappearances features activists encouraging their communities protect their collective territories. “There is no rural development policy,” Caicedo declares, standing before a community meeting during a humanitarian mission in Yurumanguí. “There are extractive regulations — of course — so that our resources can strengthen those in the big cities. But there is no countervailing policy to strengthen us internally to prevent our displacement, to avoid the misuse of natural resources.” He asks, “Are we waiting for a catastrophe before we do something? No.… We are leading a struggle in Yurumanguí.”

García, a PCN founder and key activist in the struggle to pass Colombia’s Law 70 of 1993 which grants Afro-descendants collective rights to territory and other protections, says in an interview, “The issue of security, in the framework of human rights … should grant us the internal tranquility to remain and live in our territory.” Given the government’s history of undermining Afro-descendant and Indigenous P collective territorial rights, he says, “What the law does is simply recognize a right. But we have to work together as a community to continue demanding that the laws be implemented.”

The 2016 peace accordThe Colombian government was supposed to make Buenaventura peaceful by partnering with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Rural reform provisions would address inequal land distribution and provide much-needed infrastructure. Security would be guaranteed to human rights defenders, criminal groups and those targeted by paramilitaries. Under the accord’s “Ethnic Chapter,” the government would coordinate with Afro-descendant and Indigenous authorities to implement the accord’s provisions, including its security guarantees. Five years after the accord was passed, its rural reform initiatives as well as security guarantees remain among its most important features. least implementedThese provisions include those that promote Indigenous and Afro-descendant collective and gender rights.

This has had particularly negative consequences for Buenaventura. The majority-Black region has long sufferedState abandonment and high rates of poverty and unemployment. Residents are overwhelming lackaccess to quality health care and education as well as constant water supply. Buenaventura is home to almost all victims of gender violence. nowhereTo turnProtection or justice. Youth are the answer to poverty. vulnerableto be pushed into armed organizations that fight to control narcotrafficking and illegal miner.

The national government’s failureTo address these inequalities and ensure a holistic institution presence after 2016. strengthenedThe foothold of armed actors in Buenaventuraand other conflict-affected regions. A variety of armed groups thrivedIn the absence FARC causingMultiple waves of forced displacement and other violations of human rights in Buenaventura have occurred over the last five-years. These include paramilitaries as well as National Liberation Army (ELN guerillas) and criminal gangs. disidenciasSeveral groups were led by former FARC fighters. Many of these groups were re-mobilized to face persistent opposition. assassinationsList of ex-combatants.

Manuel*, an Afro-descendant human rights defender who has advocated with Buenaventura’s communities, said that in many cases, residents are too terrified to report the violence. These armed groups occupy Yurumanguí’s communities, and commit threats, killings, sexual violence and forced labor, including making women and girls cook and clean for them. On October 30, armed men shot to death an Afro-descendant authority in rural Buenaventura who served as sports and culture coordinator and board member for the Community Council of Río Raposo. Less than a month later, Caicedo and García were disappeared.

Brisa*, an Afro-descendant feminist organizer for collective territorial rights in the region, often met with Caicedo to discuss their work. She said his and Garcia’s disappearances have deeply impacted the movement for Afro-descendant collective rights.

“This was a very direct hit for us. It has been very difficult,” she said in late December, her eyes filling with tears. Caicedo had previously told Brisa he felt at danger. Brisa shared with him some of her coping strategies that she had learned to survive and work under constant threat.

Given the region’s conflict dynamics, Brisa worries Caicedo and García may not be alive, “which would be an irreparable harm for the Afro-descendant people.” If Caicedo and García are found, Brisa wants them to witness the community mobilization that has risen to call for their return. “And if they don’t return,” she said, “we cannot let their struggle be in vain.”

Buenaventura’s activists and community members are working diligently to ensure that Caicedo, Garcia and their struggle for Afro-descendant collective territorial rights are not forgotten. “We have been searching for them, putting our own lives at risk,” said Brisa. Led by the Women’s Collective of Yurumanguí, dozens of women participated in the search caravans through Buenaventura’s rivers in December. The women embarked at communities carrying white banners that matched the color of their shirts. This was part search mission, part political demonstration, and a symbol of their desire for peace. They marched together through the villages, calling out for their missing officials.

Many residents were afraid of the consequences for supporting the women, as armed groups are a common feature in their communities. Sometimes the Women’s Collective arrived at seeming ghost towns where a few hundred residents sheltered soundlessly inside wooden homes. They marched, sang and chanted, but no one dare to meet them.

The women were also the ones who led Permanent Assemblies in Yurumanguí for weeks, calling for their authorities to be returned alive and for the government to address the region’s humanitarian crisis. Children from Yurumanguí participatedIn events that call for the return of their elder members. Across ColombiaAfro-descendant groups have led candlelight vigilsFor the leaders who have disappeared.

These grassroots actions contrast with what appears to be a sluggish response on the Colombian government’s part. A December 31 resolutionInter-American Commission on Human Rights calls for the government’s action to find the missing leaders.IACHR), the Organization of American States’ autonomous human rights monitoring body, questioned the government’s celerity. In response to a PCN-led petition NOMADESC Association, a Colombian human rights and peace organization, the resolution noted the government’s failure to directly report on whether and when it initiated a search. It also documented repeated warnings from civil society and from international and government rights monitors about imminent threats to the region’s Afro-descendant leaders and human rights defenders.

The Colombian government’s initial response to the petition, sent late December, failed to provide details on the status of any official search for the activists. Instead, it reported that the government had requested information from its attorney general about whether or not it activated an Urgent Search Mechanism. The mechanism requiresThe relevant authorities will initiate a coordinated search within 24hrs of receiving a valid request for a missing person.

Advocates had requested the attorney general and other entities operationalize the mechanism for Caicedo and García as early as December 2. The government told the IACHR that after it received no response on the status of any Urgent Search Mechanism, its information request was shifted to a different entity within the attorney general’s office. The IACHR was not impressed. notes, nearly a month after the disappearances, the government provided “no details on whether the Urgent Search Mechanism ha[d] been effectively activated.”

In a move that reeks of victim-blaming, the government also centered much of its response on its National Protection Unit’s (UNP) attempt to reevaluate its individualized protection scheme for Caicedo earlier in the year. It stated that Caicedo had asked the government to establish collective protection measures for Yurumanguí’s many threatened leaders instead of just evaluating his individual case. The government declined, claiming that its risk assessment was not collective but individual. The government claimed that it didn’t hear back from Caicedo regarding its individual review.

Caicedo’s apparent request for collective protection measures aligns with a long-standing demand from rural Buenaventura’s human rights defenders — one that was bolstered by a 2017 court order as well as alerts by Colombian government human rights monitors. Afro-descendant advocates are aware of the situation. criticizedUNP protection measures are not appropriate for each individual because they fail to account for their unique geographical and social contexts. Also, threats against them are framed as individual anomalies and not as acts directed at whole communities that work together to defend collective territories. In Buenaventura, the UNP has provided bulletproof vests, cellphones and guards to individual activists — measures laughableThreatened leaders in a context without cellphone signal and armed groups with powerful arms occupy whole communities.

As a result of years of community organizing in which Caicedo and García played key roles, says Manuel, Yurumanguí’s residents signedA commitment to reject illicit coca crop cultivation, mechanized mining, or other destructive mega-projects within the territory. As in other gold-rich swathes of western Colombia, Yurumanguí has confronted corporate mining interests that seek to undermine Afro-descendant collective territorial claims, as well as armed groupsInvolved in narcotrafficking and illegal mine.

Despite enduringAssassinations, displacement, and other violence have been experienced by community members. manuallyCoca plants were destroyed and illicit mining machinery was decommissioned themselves. Although their active stance helped to protect their territory they have also faced constant threats.

The Colombian government’s often hostileThe attitude towards Indigenous collective territorial rights and Afrodescendant has not been helpful. In 2009, Colombia’s Constitutional Court linked increased armed group violence in Afro-descendants’ communities to the state’s weak institutional backing for their rights. It recognized three factors driving Afro-descendants’ disproportionately high rates of forced displacement: extreme poverty and exclusion, large-scale mining and agricultural interests, and deficient institutional and legal protection for their collective territorial rights. Paramilitary and guerrilla organizations were encouraged to threaten Afrodescendant populations to try to get them to leave their territories. The court dissolved in late 2017, one year after the peace agreement was signed. foundThese conditions have only gotten worse.

That same year, a court specialized in land restitution and formalization ruled in favor of the Yurumanguí Community Council’s collective territorial rights in opposition to private mining concession claims. The court found that the community, as victims of conflict, had rights to restitution and for its displaced members, to return to their homes. The court outlined the history of violence in the community and the ongoing risks it faced. It ordered the UNP’s representative entities and autonomous authorities to provide collective protection.

In response to a reporter’s questions about why it hadn’t implemented collective protection measures in Yurumanguí a year after the 2017 court order, UNP spokespeople claimedThey would start the process of defining the measures together with the community in 2019. However, by the start of 2022, “in terms of implementation of the measures, nothing has been done,” said Manuel. “There’s always a process of delay — even to implement one small part of the measures.”

Manuel pointed out that most of the government officials responsible for implementing the 2017 decision were short-term contractors with limited decision making power. Many community members found themselves in a constant cycle of futile discussions with different government consultants, each conversation separated from the next by months of inaction.

Moreover, Manuel said, “We have submitted mechanisms for implementing the protection measures to them, but they won’t accept decisions made by the community.” The UNP appears to be stuck in its ways, and “if they implement their style of measures, they are not going to be effective.” Nor, he said, would they meet the requirement of a differentiated approach required by law to meet Afro-descendant territories’ security needs.

In addition to calling for the government to center collective territorial rights enforcement in its protection strategies, advocates in Yurumanguí have requested basic measures tailored to their geography — a dedicated boatFor example, to enable them to travel through Buenaventura during an emergency. The UNP’s “In Territory” (En territorio) strategy launched in October 2020 has ledto provide tailored protection resources in certain territories of Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples. However, the inability to consult with community authorities and avoid unreasonable delays in establishing adequate collective protection measures is overwhelming persists.

Both Brisa and Manuel stressed that while the disappeared leaders’ communities are calling for state institutions to enhance the search and to enact collective protection measures, including for the Women’s Collective, they do not seek militarization of their territories. “We don’t want the community to be caught in the cross-fire,” said Manuel.

Government armed forces have a history of violating Buenaventura’s residents’ rights, including contributing to home confinement, goods blockades and forced displacements. In some instances, they have smeared civilians as “guerillas” and committed extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions and sexual violence. Afro-descendant, Indigenous, or other civil society organizations have called repeatedly forThe government requested that it engage in humanitarian dialogue both with armed groups in the area and nationally, but this request was ignored by the government.

“Hopefully a new government arrives to address our screwed-up humanitarian situation,” Brisa said. Current presidential administration has consistentlyKey provisions of 2016 Peace Accord have been neglected or slow-walked. Election season violenceAlready at a steady rate and the next president administration not to take over until AugustThe coming months look dark.

The Women’s Collective and other Yurumanguí residents plan to continue advocating for their collective rights. For their protection, the Colombian government will have to effectively enforce their rights.

* Name has been changed to protect the interviewee’s safety.

The author would like to thank Laura Barón Mendoza for research assistance on this piece.