Defragmenting our selves
The Colombian government is planning to dam the Rio Magdalena at San Agustín, a popular tourist town, but local campaigners say it would be an environmental catastrophe. The dam at San Agustín will the third on the Rio Magdalena, one of the major rivers of Colombia, and according to Ricardo Baez, a campaigner against the…
They came from all over Colombia, riding in buses and chivas, many from hundreds of kilometres away, to meet in Bogota under the slogan: “People building peace for a life of dignity.” The Congreso Para La Paz in Bogotá this weekend was the culmination of a long process of building a people’s agenda for peace….
On April 9 people and organisations travelled from all over the country to Bogota to join a march of hundreds of thousands that ended in the Plaza Bolivar. The march was originally organised by Marcha Patriotica and gained the backing of the mayor of Bogota and President Santos himself. Carlos Eduardo, an indigenous campaigner who…
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…