The Editors - Third World Network

W O M E N
‘Matriarch’ leads struggle to
recover stolen land
A 69-year-old matriarch in Colombia’s poorest province has been leading the
struggle by her community since 2000 to recover land illegally expropriated by the
country’s paramilitary groups in complicity with the Colombian state. Constanza
Viera recounts the harrowing story of a marginalised community’s continuing
struggle for justice.
‘GOD willing, we will make it,’ reads
the sign on a rusty old all-terrain vehicle,
ideal for the complicated drive
to the remote Curbaradó river valley
in the banana-producing region of
Urabá in northwest Colombia.
This area is part of the jungle
province of Chocó, one of the world’s
most biodiverse places until it was
drawn into the armed conflict between
left-wing guerrillas and government
forces – and, since the 1980s, far-right
paramilitary militias – that has
plagued Colombia for nearly half a
century.
Inter Press Service (IPS) travelled
to this isolated region with documentary-makers
from Justice for Colombia,
a coalition founded in 2002 by
the British trade union movement in
response to murders of labour activists
and the overall humanitarian crisis
in Colombia.
The killings in Urabá began in
1995, and the major paramilitary offensive
started in 1996. ‘This has all
changed so much that it looks completely
different now. Everything has
been destroyed: the trees, the jungle,
the rivers, the streams,’ says María
Chaverra, 69.
The slight, dark-skinned mother
of eight and grandmother of 37 has
lived here for over half a century, as a
member of one of the afro-descendant
communities who have practised
subsistence agriculture in the sparsely
populated Chocó, Colombia’s poorest
province, for generations.
Although by law the rural black
communities collectively own their
territories, many have been driven off
their land, which is rich in natural resources
and biodiversity, since the
1990s.
Constanza Viera/IPS
María Chaverra, the ‘Matriarch’: ‘I never
saw a war like the one that took place
here. It was the peasants who suffered.’
Throughout the Curbaradó river
basin and the Jiguamiandó river valley
to the south, Chaverra is known
as the ‘Matriarch’ in recognition of her
leadership role.
African oil palm companies financed
with capital of dubious origin
came into the area and diverted rivers
and dried up streams. After weeks
of drought – inconceivable in the past
in Chocó, one of the world’s rainiest
regions – the water is finally pouring
down now.
This is the Camelias humanitarian
zone, a five-minute walk from the
Curbaradó river. The zone, which is
under the protection of Inter-American
Court of Human Rights provisional
measures, is home to some 30
internally displaced families who
have braved the dangers to return to
their land.
In the humanitarian zone, no
armed actors are allowed within the
premises, to protect the civilians from
the surrounding armed conflict.
Some have dared to leave
Camelias, to move back to their
nearby farmland, which is not encompassed
by the humanitarian zone.
Meanwhile, new families arrive, seeking
refuge from threats.
Camelias, a 3.5-hectare area, belongs
to Chaverra. ‘My husband and
I donated it to create the humanitarian
zone, and to bring people together
here, to struggle, defend and denounce.
When everyone goes back to
their nearby farms, there will be no
more humanitarian zone,’ she says.
‘By denouncing what has happened
here, at the national and international
levels, with the support of the
Colombian Inter-Church Justice and
Peace Commission, we were able to
get help to create this humanitarian
zone. So we started moving closer to
our territory, but most of the people
haven’t made it back to their land yet,’
she explains.
‘We live in the middle of a conflict,
but we have nothing to do with
any of the armed groups – neither the
paramilitaries, nor the army, nor the
guerrillas, none of them,’ she says.
Large signs announce that
Camelias is ‘exclusive to a civilian
population protected by Inter-American
Court provisional measures’.
The area is marked off by barbed
wire on all sides. On the nearby river
bank is a military base. Across the
river is Puerto Brisas, a village reportedly
under the control of
paramilitaries who are supposedly
demobilised.
The paramilitaries moved into the
area with the excuse that they were
driving out the left-wing guerrillas,
who took up arms in 1964. But their
real aim turned out to be the land.
To force the local population out,
the paramilitaries accused them of
belonging to the rebel groups, burned
down their houses and villages, and
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