Day 6: Walking the word - decolonising solidarity

It is the end of the beginning. The last day of an exhausting but amazing week of mobilisations. The closing act of the Peoples Pre-congress takes place in the central park in Cali, after another two hour march. An afro-colombia leader from Choco is given a special place in the closure to make visible the presence of afro-colombian communities in the Minga. Choco is the poorest region in Colombia.

"The only way to travel in Choco easily is by plane and we all know who planes are for. We travelled on foot, in canoes and in buses for several days, sleeping in difficult conditions and going without food to get here, to participate in Minga".

He tells us how the population of Quibdo, the main town in the region, has doubled from 40,000 to 80,000. Choqueños, mainly afrodescendents, have been forced to abandon their territories due to the violent imposition of megaprojects such as mining and palm oil .

"We know that alone we are not able to change things, we need to unite with indigenous, with campesinos, because in the end we are all living with the same difficulties and problems. This is why seven hundred of us have made the huge effort to be here in the Peoples Pre-congress".
Tears trickle out of me as I make links between this declaration of the Peoples Pre-congress and a difficult conversation I had last night.

Last night a friend challenges me to reflect on something I did. He challenged me to look at how I controlled the way in which we discusses a difficult conversation, racism within the Minga. With the bitter taste of irony in my mouth, I, with my full set of colonial priviliges, british, privilige to move wherever I want in the world, white, privilige to walk down the street and for people not to think I am going to mug them, set the terms for how we discussed racism that suited my needs, and not his. As we talk, his anger manifests itself as he goes over and over the two words he has written on a scrap of paper, ego britanico.

“I have seen this before many times. The arrogance and preponencia of british people to have their own way, the result of being from a country that has repeatedly colonised and dispossed other peoples throughout history to get its own way”.

His words challenge rather than shock or suprise me. I am grateful to this rare person who critiqued me to my face. I wonder how many people I meet share similar criticisms about my way of doing things but do not tell me. I wonder what this says about ongoing patterns of colonial power within my everyday relationships here. I breathe deeply as I look at my challenge of how to achieve the balance between being myself and being conscious and accountable to how my self has been shaped by my cultural-political-historical context.

Back in the park, we listen to a song by Mercedes Sosa, recently passed away, as the Peoples Precongress in Cali draws to a close in Cali's central park. The thousands of participants stand intently, some listening, some quietly singing alone. The compañeros who sings it, dedicates it to those compañeros no longer with us, including Mateo. As I listen to the beautiful melody, I imagine what he could have taught me. Mateo, a Swiss revolutionary, worked for ten years as part of the Red de Hermandad. He was killed last December in a road accident. Incredibly missed and rememberd within the social movements in Cauca and Valle I wish I had the opportunity to know how he worked to de-colonise himself.
After the song, two compañeros read the final declaration.

"Minga is a collective expression that revives hope, that strengthens resistance and walks the word in defence of dignity and in commitment to collective life. We are conscious of how the neoliberal strategy is strengthened in our territories through the handing over resources and selling of mother earth to international capital, thorugh the recomposition of of corruption and the legalising of crimes against Colombia´s sovereigny, and through impunity and the militrisation of civilian life."

I seek a place to be alone with my emotions of rage and sadness. The weight of being British, of having benefited from so much violence, of being surrounded in the park by so many people who suffer from this violence, overwhelms me. The weight of knowing that the British ego is alive and kicking and that it continues to play a crucial role within the UK in the justification of the violent looting of other peoples natural resources is overwhelming.

I feel a hand on my shoulder and look up to see the caring eyes of an indigenous leader who I have shared words with during the week. He has 5 bullet wounds from attempted assassination attempts and had his farm burnt down. He is now displaced, living between cities. During this week, he was always accompanied by four indigenous guards. He tells me that when he goes back to his community, it is obligatory for him that he travels with thirty indigenous guard, armed with just their bastions of resistance. He listens to my emotions, as the words of the final declaration sound in the background.

"Mingueros and Mingueras, we have gathered in this spaces filled with dreams and ideals and we leave with thoughts on how to legalise with significant popular legitimacy, with proposals on the path to peace, whose route is the word that overflows with solidarity, generosity and resistence."

My solidarity must begin and end with me, a white british folk, learning to notice my colonial mentalities and then taking responsibility for them.

For more thoughs about this work of decolonising solidarity visit decolonizingsolidarity.blogspot.com, the blog a beautiful wise friend.

To read the full closing declaration and the notes from the 5 tulpas that discussed the five points of the Agenda of the Minga check out this blog (in spanish only)

Important world matters: G20 and a child´s views

“Today I really missed you as I thought of affinity and so I go with you in mind. I will be thinking of you and the people you have met as grounding force when I am on the streets.”

Email received Monday from a dear friend as she sets off to London for the G20 protests.

In La Casa de la Red we have been keeping up to date with the protests in London. I want to give a damming critique of how, irregardless of what outcome the G20 come up with, capitalism is crisis. I see it so painfully on the streets of Bogota everyday. 300 people arrive in Bogota every day, the majority fleeing the violence, the violence imposed to re order land use, to control it so it can be handed over to one of thousands of the multinationals. I see old men, old women, men with kids, young women always always politely begging with the utmost respect. I don´t know how they keep their spirit, faces ignoring them for days after days, invisibilising them, my face turning away. Yesterday I physically kicked out, frustration, powerlessness filled me.

The moral argument goes that this economic crisis is set to increase unemployment causing misery for faceless people (in Colombia unemployment due to increase this year from 40% to 60%) so governments must do something. Yet this is a blinkered take on it, (or I could say, a historically and politically decontextualised view, if I want to use a snippet of the language of experts so I am taking more seriously. I have been reading the Times to see what the elite/my parents are thinking about the G20. The Times, exempify a problem with the UK elite: the constant rational, pseduo scientific arguments that only with those with access to high levels of education can engage with

.

Arguments won before even made due to invisible privilige. Arguments then used as tools against those with visible non-privilige. I ´m not going to use my privilige today to read, intellectually think in order to engage with The Times articles about supposed benefits of the G20 decision on the twistedly-named ´developing´ countries . Nor let myself be made to feel shit by their supposed superiority of knowledge on important world matters. I have a story of importance. It is about a little girl called Lorelia.

I met Lorelia last week in the sierra of the sur de Bolivar. The adults were deep in working groups debating and fine-tuning the community standards (normas de coexistencia) that they are creating for their region. Once they have been approved by a general assembly the government must legally recognise them as autonomous community laws.

Lorelia had earlier won a game I had set a group of kids and her prize was some of the fruit salad that those of us struggling with rice and yuca three times had made. As we sat and ate together I asked if she knew what the adults were talking about, if she knew what normas were. I asked if she had any suggestions for what could change in her community to make life better for her and other children. She sure did. This seven year old told me about incidences; fights with broken bottles injuring kids, drunken drivers, rubbish being thrown everywhere (normal everywhere in Colombia but exciting to hear a kid criticising this culture), people being killed, and she easily translated these experiences into suggestions for changes. I created a political space for her within the assembly and she presented her contributions for the community standards. She was confident, articulate, awesome, inspiring.

There is a disturbing parallel between this story and government get togethers: marginalisation where both people and cultures deem certain people to be important and ignore the rest. Yet, everyone, irregardless of their education and ability to participate, has a right to participate in the shaping of policies that will affect their lives. Fortunately, Fedeagrominisbol, the Small scale miners federation, is progressive, that is they listen, learn and grow in their political processes. It was not a struggle to create a space for Lorelia and I´m confident that spaces for participation of children will grow.

With governments, marginality is a deeper rooted problem. With governments in the current period, marginalising of social organisations and the absolute centering of business is the norm. People protesting in London are creating a space in which a different philosophy can exist. Fedeagrominisbol are building a federation with the strength to defend their cultures, not a static culture, but one that is changed by the communities in ways like what I witnessed with las normas de convivencia, rather than changes made through state and para-state violence imposing a ´development´ model on them.

While Fedeagrominisbol cannot participate in the protests against the G20 and talking about people in London representing people from the Global South I hugely problematic, there is a misty familiar reflection across the pond.

At a time when my blog had begun to feel more like a habitual routine, I really feel a reaffirmation of my commitment to encouraging cross pollination of stories across borders and cultures. So more people may take strength in walking with others beside them. So Lorelia knows that up on the bleak sierra in the rains there are people elsewhere also taking responsibility and collectively figuring out ways to create and defend alternatives to this fucked up violent injust robot.

A Tourist in Colombia

My quiteness comes from being on holiday with Y~ for a while, yet this has not caused quietness in my pondering mind. There is much I’d like to share about being read as a tourist. Primarily it is a much less enjoyable and priviliged experience than when I am with La Red.

I am seen as someone to make money from, understandably as my very ability to be in there home town comes from having money, and I refuse to accept the bullshit of travellers who claim they have no money to give, and negotiate down as much as they can just so they can stay travelling for longer – a privilige that the fuckers who are ripping us [white westeren tourists] off will never have.

I am much more visibly sexualised, that is I got a lot more sexual hassle walking down the streets, most of the time easy to ignore, but a few times I bit back and got an apology.

It made me really realise the beautiful privilige I have through doing my work, the wonderful insights I am invited in to see in people’s communities; accepted, trusted and seen as an ally.

It made me realise that I have very different criteria for what is a good place to go and relax and be on holiday than others. There is little chance of relaxing if gross injustice is staring me in the face as I am swinging in a hammock. And so begins my rant of Parque Tayrona, Colombia’s second most visited national park and apparentely as “must go place”. The moment Y~ and I arrived we wanted to get out of this artificial environement, created as a piece of propoganda for the Colombian government to show how they conserve the natural environment, run as a business by a paramilitary controlled company that charges extortionate prices for people to get it, thought very kindly lets the indigenous they kicked out come back for free on special sacred days.

We stayed the night and the following day opted for the 5hour walk out, stunning rock formations, trees, and a deserted inidigenous village – El Pueblito. On the display boards it says there was a population of # thousand until the Spanish arrived. No mentions of how many people were living there when the land became a national park. The village has no residents, the park ranger told me that people were not allowed to live in the park, and refused to answer directly my question of whether they were forced to leave. There was an indigenous man there, whose job it is, is to register all visitors in a book. I apologised for being complicit in the continued displacement of his peoples.

My very presence as a paying tourist, great for business, is what prevents his community living there. Maybe at some point the company and state will decide it is good for business to have indigenous living in pueblito and they will be allowed back but only if they play the role of nice cutey dressed traditional indigneous and certainly not as indigenous building their cultural practices and process like is happening in Cauca.

So I wouldn’t recommend Tayrona. Beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder, but also in the knowledge of the beholder.

I would recomment Bocachica, a fishing village on the Island of Tierradentro, Cartagena and Minca, a village in a coffee growing region in the hills behind Santa Marta were beautiful. Both with real, living, breathing, changing communities that are adding to their existing economies with small-scale tourism. Both with warm and kind people who proudly showed off their community to us, and wanted to chat and share opinions about our shared world and let Y~ and me see a glimpse of life for people in these places.

My racism that allows new futures for Gabo.

Five days in the hot tropical city of Barranca Bermeja where spanish words are harder to catch - muffled by the constant whirl of fans hanging precariously above us. The smell of yet more roast chichen wafts from the Mac Pollo restaurant over the road yet different from Bogota - at 35degrees every breathe feels strained.

A pattern of breakfast, meetings, lunch, siesta, meetings, sitting around in the hotel reception, dinner, bed is quickly established . Nothing visibly powerful to do or see.

Gabriel's (Gabo) story - the warm, funny, dedicated man who I accompanied - assures me that my presence is powerful. Here is his story.

"We moved to Sur de Bolivar in 1971, when I was 21. Before that we lived in Calda but there was already many small scale farmers and not much land. We found land in an area that was not occupied and we settled there. We were looking for a place where we could have a better quality of life.

There were 10 families to begin with and many more people started arriving from different regions. By 1998 there was around 1000 people living in the community.

When our children started to grow up we built a school. We found teachers who had a high level of education that meant every child could get a good education. We also started building good paths, and later, roads (35km’s worth) around the community and to other villages.

A normal day for me was to work from 6am to 6pm. I grew yuca, plantain and rice. I also looked after the cows and pigs. This was my life, my passion, mi gusto. For me this proves that things that appear impossible can become real when we work communally.

Then the paramilitaries entered the region in February 1999, just one hours walks from my farm. Over the next few years we organised 8 marches - in the municiapl towns and the Capital of the region – demanding our rights were respected and that the paramilitaries leave the region. I was singled out as an organised and so had to leave the farm.

I stayed in the region until 2007, moving between different places, supported by different communities, with my wife and young daugher. At times we had to walk for 25 days in order to leave the region to report murders.

What I saw wasn’t fair, what was happening. They were killing the young people, old people. There was masacares all over the region. I was not going to work on the farm any more, instead dedicate myself to social work, building up people’s skills, organising.

When the paramilitaries were there I could hide but now the army have arrived I can’t hide in the region. One has to understand that within the army are the paramilitaries so the army does not mean you have security.

Before the arrival of the paramilitaries, the army already disappeared, tortured, killed. There was so many reports made about this that they had to change their strategy. And so the paramilitaries entered – they could do the brutal things.

What we now understand is that people were killed and disappeared because other interests appeared in the region, interests of multinationals.

They killed my son, they disappeared another. Brother of my wife was also disappeared. My son was killed on the 22 Sept 2002 in El Pairaiso, the army disappeared my second son in the middle of May 2005.

I’m not one to cry too much but everything that happens to you, your family or to your neighbour or friend, it reinforces your work. And you begin to understand who is the enemy.

The debate around the Law for Victims (that we went to on Thursday) to me is very dangerous as it supports impunity. It can’t ignore why we are victims, who benefitted from us becoming victims. The truth wil be when the state recognises that what has happened is a project of the state.

The land has to be taken away from the paramilitaries, from the multinationals and people can return to their territories. They must return my land, my house, and that they leave us in peace.

Those who are guilty must pay. But the guilty is not the person who shot, he is not the enemy, he probably didn’t know why, he was just ordered. Those who give the orders - they kill.

Now my wife and I live in the flat of my daughter in Bogota. We are looking for some land, as we are campesinos. I would like to live in the Sur de Bolivar but it is not possible. To go there I need to have accompaniment but this isn’t possible all the time so a bit of land near Bogota would be good."

The fact of my place of birth and my skin colour means that Gabo can return and work in his region. He knows that the political costs of disappearing him are raised higher with the presence of the likes of me.

I am strategically using racist structures - ones which make clear that my life as a white European is worth more than a brown Colombian. And as I do, I am complicit with racism. This is difficult. How do I ensure I don't reinforce a sense of European superiority over the Latin American's with the people I meet. Perhaps I can't - they will read my body as they choose. But I can think about how my behaviour, mannerisms, ideas, words might be interpreted by the people I am with, and with this I can try to walk a sensitive path.