next August 7, Gustavo Petroa former guerrilla member of the M-19 group, and Francia Márquez, a social leader, will take office as president and vice president of Colombia.
Great peacemaking expectations are placed on these two figures, in a context in which social violence in the country is on the rise, despite the fact that the agreement between the government and guerrilla groups has already been signed for five years. The most recent evidence is assassination of a group of popular leadersexpanding a count that accumulates more than 100 deaths in the last year according to the Observatory of Human Rights and Conflicts of the NGO Indepaz.
Arnobis Zapata Martínez, a social leader from the south of Córdoba, asks for time to answer the questions from NEWS. Communications in the areas through which he travels in Colombia are complicated, not only because of the poor signal, but also because many of the phones of social leaders like him were intercepted. The fear of being killedinternal displacement and threats are common currency among human rights defenders in the country.
“The paramilitaries murdered two of my brothers, we were displaced to Montelíbano and there I suffered an attack, where my children and my wife were shot at the house. I have received multiple threats”, assures Zapata when he can finally speak. The threats come from different sectors.
Adela Luna Lobato is a journalist and works on issues related to the armed conflict, something that she defines as transversal to all her professional activity. “
The murders take place according to the dynamics of each region, and are carried out by the illegal armed groups that exercise violence on those territories. The reasons range from disputes over drug cultivation areas, production or drug transit corridors, to illegal mining or land disputes. But there is not just one violent actor involved or one type of victimized social leaders,” she assures.
María Fernanda Padilla Quevedo is also a journalist. She works with different social leaders in the formation of their own means of communication that allow them to tell the reality, or the multiple realities, that human rights defenders face. “If you go to a territory like Cauca there are latent risks regarding the presence of armed groups, drug traffickers, guerrillas and residual dissident groups of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). There they are more prone to this type of contact with armed groups,” Quevedo tells NOTICIAS.
The violence comes from “paramilitary groups financed in many cases by the State, at the time to fight against the guerrillas, or directly from the landowners who use the mafias and the paramilitaries to persecute social leaders”, explains the sociologist and international analyst Pedro Brieger.
With the dismantling of the FARC after the 2016 peace accords, residual groups remained, and other organizations emerged that fight for control of areas that were previously dominated by the guerrillas. Over there businessmen, guerrillas and governments confront each otherwith social leaders. These conflicts are typical of the clash of interests. “What is not normal is that in Colombia they have a violent process,” says Leonardo González, coordinator of Indepaz.
Those interests resulted in a great danger for those who exercise the defense of their communities and demand land restitution, previously controlled by the FARC, to the peasants. “I know that I am a military objective of the new 18th front of the FARC, and of a group called Los Caparros,” says Zapata.
“Social leaders can be environmental, community, peasant, Afro-descendant, indigenous, or from the LGTBIQ+ community,” González lists. Full details of the assassinated leaderstheir names and the category in which those leaderships fit.
“Peasant social leaders in Colombia dream of the land being for those who work it,” says Zapata. “In Colombia, there is a first group of social leaders with a sense of belonging for what they do, and a second group of leaders full of ambition who fight for their own interests,” adds Lobato.
“There are indigenous leaders who live in luxury while their communities are in absolute misery. They speak of ancestry but you see them with gold chains and the latest iPhone,” says Germán Senna, a guerrilla member of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) who was imprisoned for 11 years after demobilizing. He maintains that the drug traffickers, with whom he continues to have contact, agree with some indigenous leaders to be brought to justice community in case of being judged, with which they gain impunity against crimes such as trafficking, kidnapping and murders.
And beyond the threats, murders and displacements, there is, according to Quevedo, a great deal of stigmatization, which especially affects women. “It is very difficult that in Colombia the Social Organizations have women leaders because of the same machismo that is present throughout society,” adds González. “So the assassination of a female leader is a much stronger blow,” he adds.
For this reason, the arrival to the vice presidency of a social leader like Francia Márquez opens a light of hope for other female leaders. “There is a lot of expectation for the role that Márquez occupies, for her personal history. You have to see how she acts once she is in government, because being a social leader is not the same as being in government. But it can be assumed that there will be a rapprochement to social movements,” says Brieger.
“Some armed groups comply, but there are others that don’t. I hope that the next government will continue to fight drug trafficking vehemently, because there have been enormous massacres, ”says Senna, with his gaze fixed on the weight of Petro to deactivate the Colombian crack.
by Agustina Bordigoni
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