Defragmenting our selves
A thousand women’s rights campaigners marched through Bogota on 6th April 2013 for the right of women to behave and dress as they like. Joining a global trend of similar annual “slutwalks”, as they are known in English-speaking countries, the participants in the “Marcha de las Putas” in Bogota demanded a change in attitudes towards…
Colombian social organisations are organising a Congress to bring together 15,000 people in Bogota in April to add another voice to the peace talks taking place between the government and left wing FARC guerrillas. “We think that peace is important and we want to talk about it on a local level. We don’t think peace…
The government has ordered the posters of a popular campaign for “blank votes” against an Italian-built dam in south west Colombia to be torn down, leaving only one legal campaign for governor of Huila. A gubernatorial campaign in Huila in which the main parties put forward a single joint candidate has been left looking even…
Something that is noticeable about Colombian social and political organisations on the left is that they involve themselves in ‘processes’. This includes processes with each other, meaning that they establish ways to work together for common ends. I have just been to the Regional Congress for Peace, a forum to feed into the national Congress…
For 15 years a “peace community” in northwest Colombia has maintained neutrality in the country’s armed conflict, defiantly staying on their land despite ongoing battles between security forces, guerrillas, and neo-paramilitaries. The Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado in the northwestern Uraba region was founded in 1997 during a particularly bloody period. “Bullets took…
Threatened prominent land restitution advocate has told Colombia Reports why land is not being returned to those displaced in Colombia’s conflict. The priest Jesus Alberto Franco, of Colombian NGO the Intereclesial Commission for Justice and Peace (CIJP), has accused associates of former president Alvaro Uribe of blocking land restitution, particularly those who have investigations against…
Gold mining companies are undermining local democracy by giving money to the municipalities where they operate, said a local NGO in western Colombia on Sunday. As mining companies move into southwest Antioquia to mine for gold in the mountains, local NGOs are claiming that the money the companies give to local mayors risks usurping the…
Tens of thousands of coffee growers will attempt to bring roads across Colombia to a standstill in February to demand the government step in to save their troubled industry, said a strike organizer Wednesday. The coffee growers strike will block national highways across 12 departments of Colombia, in an attempt to save an industry for…
The road to Doima, at best unpaved and bumpy, is today crossed by rivers in flood. The rivers have submerged the low concrete bridges and at the second bridge the river is so high the bus has to stop and wait for the waters to subside. The rainstorm that caused the flood gradually dies and…
The first Afro-Colombian mayor of Cartagena is too ill to govern and his potential replacements are not similarly popular figures, said a local NGO on Sunday. Campo Elias Teran became mayor of the popular tourist city of Cartagena on January 1, 2012 riding in on a wave of popular support having made his name on…