Dilan Cruz, Javier Ordóñez, Juliana Giraldo, Juan de Jesús Monroy Ayala, Luis Alexander Largo. These are a few names of the many people murdered in Colombia recently because of their peaceful opposition to environmental destruction and political corruption. So far this year, there have been more than 50 massacres, with 200 people assassinated. Massive protests against these infractions of human rights continue in the capital Bogotá and elsewhere. But as they say in Colombia, everything happens and nothing happens.
The Black Lives Matter movement in the US has been a beacon of hope for Colombian descendants of African slaves and the numerous indigenous peoples resisting destruction of their territories and livelihoods. It has helped revitalise grassroots organising, both nationally and internationally. The Minga, an indigenous Colombian group, have marched for justice against the criminalisation and stigmatisation of social protest—regrettable colonial hangovers. These demonstrations have shown exemplary strength, will, and solidarity. But they have largely been ignored by the government.
Interconnections between the Colombian state and big business, drug traffickers, paramilitaries and other groups outside the law, with the support or silence of other governments and transnational companies, enable human rights violations, inequality, and violence, not to mention denying the nation’s great cultural and environmental diversity.
