In Sipí, south of Chocó, the silence of dispossession is deafening. The only thing that disturbs the apparent calm are the gunshots or the boats going down the river, although there are fewer and fewer of them. The municipalities of Barranconcito, San Agustín and Buenas Brisas are uninhabited. Only empty houses and abandoned crops remain. All of its inhabitants fled as best they could. In other corregimientos, such as Lomas de Chupey, there are no more than 50 people. The instructions given by the armed actors to those who failed to escape are clear: do not leave your homes, do not cross the river and do not make any noise. So the Chocoanos have been living in fear, hunger and fear for years. A humanitarian crisis that has worsened in recent months due to the territorial dispute between the ELN guerrillas and the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. According to the Ombudsman’s Office, as of 2023 so far, Chocó accounts for 79% of the country’s detentions and is the second largest department with the highest number of forced evictions.
Among the inmates is Lucía, who asked to change her name for security reasons. Due to her tenure as president of the local council, she felt staying on was the best option. He didn’t have enough money to move and felt he would be useful to his people. Her children have fled and she is alone, facing the rigors of the armed attack ordered by the ELN on July 4 in Nóvita, Sipí, Istmina, Litoral del San Juan and Medio San Juan. During the ten-day armed strike, the humanitarian aid that arrived was minimal and hunger was unbearable. NGOs denounced that around 9,000 people were affected by the strike imposed by the Western War Front Omar Gómez. The conflict in the region is so great that boats trying to transport supplies were unsuccessful as they got caught in the middle of the clashes.
In many places in Chocó, people prefer to confine themselves to eviction because they have no option to leave, or in other cases they refuse to give up what they have achieved through years of hard work: their crops and their small huts. The situation is exacerbated by a kind of state neglect towards the displaced, who, according to Lucía, arrive in other cities without adequate living conditions.
The latest armed attack hit 52 communities in five communities in the San Juan subregion. But it’s not the first such event in the region: this year alone, five armed attacks have been carried out, affecting around 23,000 people, most of whom are African American and Indigenous. Since 2018, the ombudsman has issued 100 early warnings for 27 of the 31 communes in the Chocó department.
A woman from the Cacarica community in Chocó. Santiago Mesa
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One of Lucía’s sons wants to devote himself to sport, he wants to become a soccer player. The other two want to finish school. Fearing the threat of recruitment, her mother told her to go to the city’s capital, Itsmina. The leader is responsible for the upkeep of the three. When he can, he sends them what he gets, and though he misses them, he explains that he wants them to be safe.
In Chocó, the struggle for territorial control over areas where coca is grown or illegally mined has not only resulted in displacement and massive incarceration; The risk of recruiting girls, boys and young people has also increased. Although the phenomenon has increased by 23% nationwide, this department is one of the hardest hit departments along with Cauca and Antioquia, and the main victims are Indigenous and African American youth. As a result, there has been an epidemic of suicides in the Emberá indigenous communities, as recently warned by a special commission of the Attorney General’s Office.
The NGO Doctors Without Borders is one of the few that has managed to establish a permanent presence in the region. Faced with the bleak prospect, he decided to focus a large part of his efforts in Upper and Central Baudó on mental health care. “Enforced incarceration has a profound psychological impact on populations. The fear and violence they face cause widespread trauma and stress. Children and young people are deprived of their right to education and their future prospects are jeopardized,” Mario Fumo, coordinator of the Community Health Care project, told EL PAÍS.
The ministry’s Education Secretariat reported an increase in early school leaving: 6,019 students dropped out in 2022 alone, and more than half of them are from the San Juan area. The reasons are often related to the fear of recruitment and displacement. In addition, under-reporting of forced recruitment is significant across the country, with young people’s families being tricked into not reporting it out of fear.
Adding to the already worrying recruitment situation are other problems such as extortion, environmental damage and threats. The latter escalated so much that the mayors of San José del Palmar, Bagadó, Lloró and Santa Rita de Iró went into exile and are now having to leave other municipalities.
a distant peace
Through a dropped phone call to the house where she’s locked up, Lucía says that since 2007, her community hasn’t known what rest is. For them and their compatriots, the peace that is so much talked about in the big cities is alien. While the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) were talking to the government in Cuba, residents of Chocó were starving and others were dying because the illegal groups did not allow them to reach the city’s capital, according to statements by the Red de Pacific Human Rights.
National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas in a remote village in Chocó, 2017. Ivan Valencia (Bloomberg)
The governor of Chocó has expressed in various national media the need to involve the Clan del Golfo in efforts to achieve total peace. “We have asked President Petro to include the Clan del Golfo in the overall peace proposal. “The cessation of hostilities signed with the ELN ignores this,” he said. Many fear that history will repeat itself and that the vacuum one gang might leave will eventually be filled by another, or that the conflict will escalate further and talks in Cuba will not materialize. Likewise, the Mexican Revolutionary Forces and the RPS-Cartel del Norte Armed Forces, two of the gangs operating in Quibdó, the department’s capital, announced late last year their intention to initiate a ceasefire. However, the process was only in its infancy.
Likewise, the Department’s Indigenous Authorities and Black Community Councils have asked the Office of the High Peace Commissioner to have their voices heard in building total peace. The grassroots social organizations in the region have a long history and experience that they hope will be taken into account in negotiations in their territories, especially if they are the main victims of the armed conflict in the region. An example of this was the Humanitarian Agreement Now, a document containing eleven humanitarian demands jointly prepared in 2017 and presented in the negotiations then held with the ELN in Quito (Ecuador) during the tenure of Juan Manuel Santos.
For her part, Lucía showed courage and implored the various armed actors not to involve the civilian population. “Here they told us that if another armed group came and we decided to stay, we would pay. So I told them: “No, we are not to blame for anything, we are not of one side or the other.” Their demands also extend to the national government, from which they sense a shift away from Chocó to Chocó that has lasted for several decades : “We don’t need more army, we need food.” Then he is silent and the signal goes away again, but he can still hear before he hangs up: “El Chocó can’t take it anymore.” Neither can you.
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