By Maricelly Malave
In early August of 2019, I, along with another CUNY Law student, joined a human rights fact-finding delegation of Colombian and U.S. activists and CUNY graduate students to Pacific Colombia. Organized by Witness for Peace (WFP), an international and politically independent organization that challenges and confronts U.S. and corporate imperialism in the Americas by bringing people together to build peace and sustainable economies in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Punta Icaco, Buenaventura by Daniel Cardenas
For eleven days, the delegation visited the Middle-Pacific region of Colombia to conduct the human rights fact-finding and peacebuilding mission. The delegation visited Afro-Colombian and indigenous collective communities in the CONPAZ network, located in the port city of Buenaventura (Department Valle de Cauca) and the rural areas of López de Micay (Department Cauca), and Litoral de San Juan (Department Southern Chocó).
The region is still feeling aftershocks of the violence, trauma, and oppression resulting from six decades of internal war exacerbated by the United States’ involvement and military aid in the form of an antiquated drug war. The result was one of the largest humanitarian crises in history; more than 6.9 million people were internally displaced and more than 200,000 were left dead. In 2000, under the devastating Plan Colombia, United States sent more than $10 billion to Colombia purposed mostly for counternarcotics and militarization. This archaic drug war policy directly armed the targeting of many innocent civilians and the most vulnerable and poor communities of color in the country.
This delegation was clearly special because of the unique opportunity it created for CUNY Law students to develop a legal framework to both utilize Pan-American activism and challenge U.S. foreign policy and support of repressive governments. – Maricelly Malave
We met with CONPAZ network base communities and their leaders and conducted group interviews. CONPAZ network leader Maria Eugenia Mosquera, who facilitated the delegation, said: “Bringing people from legal and graduate programs in the United States into our collective memory process is vital to our work as a community to end harmful policies. We believe that solidarity from people in the United States with access to legal systems and decision-making spaces will be a force to demand just and humane foreign policy of the United States.”
San Francisco, Rio Naya
People interviewed were asked about the history of the conflict in their area, what their experience has been since the signing of the 2016 Final Peace Accords with FARC – EP, the current stage in their local peace process, and what local demands they wished to be highlighted. These conversations, along with community messages to the greater international human rights community, informed a report documenting direct testimony about life in the CONPAZ Network territories since the signing of the Final Peace Agreement.
You can read the full report here.