In Bogotá during Colombia’s national strike, two women hold placards that say, “We didn’t give birth to children of war” and “They got firearms, we got fire in our soul” / credit: Antonio Cascio
“Far too many women are fighting—not only for their rights, but for the rights of all,” says Yomali Torres, an Afro-Colombian activist. The 26-year-old joined throngs of women in the streets of Colombia over the past month to demand an end to patriarchal oppression at the hands of a U.S.-backed neoliberal state.
Women’s presence in Colombia’s national strike—both as activists and as victims—has caught the world’s attention. Many have spoken out against police violence and sexual abuse during the current demonstrations. This, however, is not a new issue. Police, armed forces and illegal groups have used women’s bodies as weapons of war for decades.
The strike, which marks its 1-month anniversary today, continues unabated. It started as a response to a tax reform project that would have devastated middle- and low-income households. Yet, this is not the core of social discontent among Colombians. This is clear as the strike continues, even after the president called on Congress to withdraw the tax reform bill.
At the end of 2019, Colombia saw mass mobilizations of diverse sectors of society, who expressed their discontent with the government of President Iván Duque. Among the criticisms were his ineffective economic, social, and environmental policies, the lack of implementation of a peace treaty with militant group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the numerous assassinations of social leaders, among others. According to Colombian state agency Investigation and Accusation Unity (Unidad de Investigación y Acusación), 904 leaders were assassinated between December 2016 and April 2021.
Gender Violence
Historically, conflict and social inequalities have most affected women. Violence and sexual abuse are commonly wielded to gain control over the territories women and their communities inhabit, as well as their natural resources. The High Commissioner for Human Rights released a document in 2005 indicating 52 percent of displaced women reported having suffered some type of physical abuse and 36 percent had been forced by strangers to have sexual intercourse.
A group of protesters from the first line stand behind their homemade shields during a Bogotá demonstration as Colombia’s national strike continues. Among them, the “First Line Mothers,” a group of mothers who stand together against police violence / credit Antonio Cascio
In a context of multiple violations of human rights—including extrajudicial killings, disappeared persons, torture, arbitrary detentions and use of firearms—gender violence continues to be deployed against the population during the national strike. Colombia’s Department of Protection of Citizen’s Rights has reported 106 cases of gender violence, of which 23 are acts of sexual violence.
With slogans such as “The revolution would be feminist, or it will not be,” “Not one less,” and “With me, whatever you want—but with her, nothing,” protesters have rejected violence against women, while drawing attention to gender inequalities.
One of the cases that has generated widespread indignation involved a 17-year-old girl from Popayan, who committed suicide after having been arrested by police. Before taking her own life, she wrote a statement accusing four members of the riot police of sexual assault. The girl had posted on Facebook police only released her after learning she was the daughter of a police officer.
Feminist Groups and their Demands
Women have taken to the streets, demanding equal access to education, healthcare and employment. They have assumed leading roles as human-rights observers, front-line defenders and community organizers. As a result, human rights groups—formed mostly by women—have suffered acts of intimidation and violence.
Silhouette of a woman in front of a fire on the streets of Bogotá during Colombia’s national strike / credit: Antonio Cascio
“We received death threats from the riot police. They told us they did not want us alive,” says Isabella Galvis of the Waman Iware Human Rights Collective. “At the moment, we do not have guarantees. They are using firearms during the protests, which is illegal under Colombian law.”
Feminist organizations move ahead despite the challenges, having organized multiple events. On May 10, a coalition of 173 feminist groups presented a list of proposals during the current crisis.
These proposals included:
A call for negotiation including all groups involved in the protests,
an exercise of justice regarding human-rights violations, and
a universal basic income that prioritizes women affected by the pandemic, among others.
The Women Who Are Most Vulnerable to Inequalities and Violence
Afro-Colombians and Indigenous peoples have been affected—directly or indirectly—by racism during the protests. Calí, the city where police have exercised the most repression, has experienced the highest number of deaths during the strike. It also has the highest concentration of Afro-Colombian communities, according to the National Administrative Department of Statistics.
An Afro-Colombian woman standing on the first line during a demonstration in Bogotá held during Colombia’s national strike / credit: Antonio Cascio
The high level of inequality puts Calí at the center of these protests. Afro-Colombian people contend with uneven opportunities in the areas of education, healthcare and employment. That means the reforms the government has proposed would strongly affect Afro-Colombians, and women in particular.
“We are here commemorating Afro-Colombians today. We want to fight for our future and our rights,” explains Maria Niza Obregón, a 17-year-old Afro-Colombian girl, who supports the protests. “We want to live, not to survive.”
A clear example of this was the fate of the government’s health reform, which sank after the first 20 days of protests. The regions with the highest concentration of Afro-Colombians and Indigenous peoples also have the poorest health systems in the country, according to a report by organization Así Vamos en Salud.
Yomali Torres, a 26-year-old member of Afro-Colombian human-rights and peace organization Cococauca, denounces the lack of hospitals and specialists in her territory on the Pacific Coast of Cauca.
“If someone has chest pain, the patient has to be transferred to Calí or Popayan,” Torres says. “If we do not die, it is thanks to ancestral medicine.”
Afro-Colombian women have been particularly outspoken during the national strike, especially in Calí.
Torres condemns the violations of the rights of women, and of the Colombian population in general.
“In one way or another, we are taking advantage of the strike to demand justice for all of the women who have been raped, beaten and disappeared,” Torres says.
The United Nations states Indigenous and Afro-Colombian women have been affected disproportionately by the violence derived from the conflict. “Among 3,445 cases of murder in Indigenous and Afro-Colombian individuals, 65.5 percent were women,” the UN reports.
As a sign of indignation, the community of Guapi organized on May 7 an event called, “The Last Night.” With traditional cultural expressions, they commemorated those who have given their lives fighting for the rights of Afro-Colombians and the entire country. This celebration was carried out with artistic representations of graves and singing alabaos, or ancestral songs for the dead.
A month after the first call for a national strike, the different sectors of society are far from calling off the protests. This comes even as protesters’ blockades have generated a shortage of goods in certain communities. As Torres says, “We will not give up, because boats are not arriving with goods. Historically, we have felt hunger for more than 200 years. For us, this is not a real challenge.”
Natalia Torres Garzongraduated with an M.Sc. in Globalization and Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, United Kingdom. She is a freelance journalist who focuses on social and political issues in Latin America, especially in connection to Indigenous communities, women and the environment. With photographer Antonio Cascio, she founded the radio-photography program, Radio Rodando. Her work has been published in the section Planeta Futuro from El País, New Internationalist and Earth Island.
Instagram application on iPhone / credit NeONBRAND via Unsplash
On May 6 and 7, Instagram users in India noticed that some of their posts were starting to vanish. Gone were their COVID-19-related posts that demanded improved conditions for overworked crematorium workers, publicized volunteer-led relief efforts, and linked coronavirus deaths in the country to “abject callousness” of the government. Stranger still was the removal of private chats on the matter.
“There is a growing trend of internet shutdowns, takedown of social media content, particularly around political speech in India over the last few years,” said Vidushi Marda, global AI research and advocacy lead at ARTICLE 19, an international freedom of expression organization that has been tracking the deleted content.
In India right now, whether or not people have access to COVID-19 information on social media is a matter of life and death. Such censorship, however, is not unique to the country. Over the past month, activists and researchers have also collected numerous examples of suppressed content related to unrest in Palestine and Colombia, as well as posts related to the National Day of Awareness of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women in the U.S. and Canada.
On May 7, Instagram said that “this is a widespread global technical issue not related to any particular topic” and that the issue had been “fixed.”
But the following day, the company acknowledged that there were issues with posts relating to unrest in Colombia and Palestine.
“We are so sorry this happened,” Instagram noted in a statement. “Especially to those in Colombia, East Jerusalem, and Indigenous communities who felt this was an intentional suppression of their voices and stories — that was not our intent whatsoever.”
But Instagram failed to acknowledge reports of censorship in India.
A representative of Facebook, which owns Instagram, wrote in response to questions about why dissent in India, Colombia, and Palestine seemed to have been disproportionately impacted: “This was a widespread global technical issue that affected users around the world, regardless of the topic of their Stories. We fixed it as fast as we could so users around the world could continue expressing themselves and connecting with each other through Stories.”
Despite the company’s claims that the takedowns were automatic and universal, Marda said there was “overwhelming evidence of the disproportionate impact these takedowns have had on political speech and dissent.”
In India, she noted that ARTICLE 19 observed “significant overlap between posts about activism, COVID-19 relief and government critique.” All of this, she said, points to “a significantly larger problem than just a single automation tool,” and noted “the opacity of content moderation practices” means that there are gaps in accountability.
Such digital suppression isn’t simply a matter of being able to speak freely. In each of these countries, thanks to government failures and limited media coverage, people have come to rely on social media to share information, track resources, and protect themselves from violence.
Part of the problem is automated content moderation, which uses machine learning to filter content. The systems are blunt instruments that often misunderstand context and remove too much or too little content, noted a report by the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation. These developments, adds the report, can negatively impact minority groups because these tools are often trained on English-language datasets, so they have trouble properly parsing dialects and rarely-used languages.
“[There is] overwhelming evidence of the disproportionate impact these takedowns have had on political speech and dissent,” said Marda. “[This is] precisely why… human rights organizations and defenders around the world have pointed to the dangers of automated content moderation for years.”
India’s History Of Digital Censorship
Because of the Indian government’s monumental failure in tackling the coronavirus, people in the country have come to rely on social media to seek and provide COVID-related help like oxygen supplies and vaccinations. Many people have also used social media to collate lists of supplies into a larger, searchable database.
Silicon Valley-driven censorship in India, therefore, has become a matter of survival, despite the fact that Instagram has yet to acknowledge it.
“Despite documented instances of censorship [in India] and Instagram users highlighting them very prominently, there was a complete lack of recognition [by Instagram] of what’s happening in India,” said Apar Gupta, Executive Director, Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), a New Delhi-based organization that seeks to ensure that technology respects fundamental rights.
Digital suppression in the country isn’t new, despite the fact that the Indian Constitution guarantees the right to freedom of speech and expression.
On April 28, Facebook temporarily hid posts critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that included the hashtag #ResignModi for “violating its community standards.” A Facebook spokesperson later said that the posts were hidden “by mistake, not because the Indian government asked us to.”
“Silicon Valley platforms have a very natural interest in keeping governments happy in the regions that they operate,” Gupta said, pointing to the fact that India is Facebook’s biggest market.
The lack of institutionalized free speech protections is further compounded by laws and regulations in India that allow the Ministry of Electronics and Information to not disclose censorship orders sent to social media companies, said Gupta.
Users are therefore often given no official explanation why their posts were suppressed.
Content Moderation In Colombia
There have also been numerous reports of censorship related to ongoing protests in Colombia over proposed tax increases and the resulting police crackdowns.
“We identified a specific problem with Instagram,” said Carolina Botero Cabrera, a researcher with Karisma, a Bogotá based civil society organization that works on technology and human rights. “We have over 1,000 reports of censorship, around 90 percent of it was by Instagram and the content was overwhelmingly about the [ongoing] protests,” she added.
Deleted posts reportedly related to the national unrest, unemployment numbers in the country, and the death of a protester.
For Colombia, a country with a long-lasting civil war, such automated content moderation is all the more contentious because journalists and human rights activists often find that their content is removed, their reach is diminished, or their accounts are blocked because their content is deemed too violent.
Jesus Abad Colorado, an experienced Colombian photojournalist, recently had his Twitter account blocked after he posted photographs of an armed dispute in the Chocó Department in Western Colombia. A few days later, when an independent media outlet livestreamed an interview with Colorado about the dispute, their account was blocked, too.
Another challenge, said Botero, is that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — People’s Army (FARC), the longtime leftist guerilla group that disarmed and became a political party in 2017, “was flagged as a terrorist organization [by social media companies at the time] even though they were in peace negotiations.”
The peace process spanned about four years, culminating in a peace agreement in 2016. “Any research about the peace process will have to deal with important problems to [understand] FARC’s position, actions, and voice,” said Botero, noting that blocked social media accounts and deleted content hamper documentation of the process.
Suppressing Palestinian Voices
As tensions escalated in Israel and Palestine, digital suppression in the region also appeared to increase.
“We have over 100 reports of censorship on Instagram,” said Alison Carmel Ramer, a researcher at 7amleh, a Haifa-based digital rights organization based in Haifa, Israel.
Muslim, a media publication, also documented blocks on Instagram livestreams related to Palestine.
According to ِRamer, Facebook told 7amleh that a majority of the Instagram takedowns were mistakes because they did not violate community standards and that they have restored the content.
“This means there is a problem in the way content is moderated,” said Ramer. “Why is content which is not against community standards being taken down? [Facebook] also did not tell users under which policy the content was taken down.”
In general, Palestinian content is “over-moderated” Ramer added, noting posts are often suppressed either because they are considered hate speech, or the posts appear to be connected to terrorist organizations. Many Palestinian leaders are designed as terrorists by the United States, meaning Facebook censors content related to them. Ramer also explained how hate speech in the region written in Hebrew is not censored to the same extent as hate speech in Arabic.
A March 2021 report by 7amleh which analysed 574,000 social media conversations in 2020 showed that one out of every 10 Israeli posts about Palestinians and Arabs contained violent speech, a 16 percent increase compared to 2019. “We have sent reports like this one to Facebook for several years and every year, [but] we find that this content just remains online,” Ramer said, adding that Facebook has not informed them of what, if any, actions it intends to take.
“Zionism is a political ideology,” Ramer said. “Political speech must be protected. Words like ‘Zionist’ and ‘shahid’ [martyr in Arabic] should be protected.” Censorship in the region is especially concerning because of the longstanding lack of transparency around Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, political activist Noam Chomsky told The Daily Poster.
“Israel’s brutal repression of Palestinians for many years, with strong support from the U.S. particularly, is a shocking crime in itself and has ominous international repercussions as well,” said Chomsky. “There have been extensive efforts to block efforts to bring the facts and their significance to the general public. These efforts amount to direct participation in the crimes.”
When asked about social media companies’ ability to freely censor content, Chomsky replied, “Their enormous power should not be tolerated.”
The Path Ahead
At ARTICLE 19, Marda said that in order to align itself with international human rights standards, Facebook “must publicly and transparently acknowledge the reasons for recent takedowns” and “provide information for the substantive and legal reasons for takedown.”
Marda added that Facebook should also “restore all blocked content” and “publicly commit to not bowing to governmental or judicial pressure that requires it to act in violation of international human rights standards and jurisdiction-specific standards on freedom of expression.”
Left-wing presidential candidate Gustavo Petro (bottom left on the mic) addressing a crowd in Colombia / credit: Gustavo Petro
For Francia Márquez, land is life.
The 39-year-old Afro-descendant woman was raised in mountainous territories that have been occupied by generations of Africans in what is now known as Colombia. They are the offspring of people who had escaped slave masters.
“Territory is a space of life and diversity,” said Márquez, who was dressed in white from head to toe and clad in African jewelry. She addressed a standing-room only event held on February 7 at a community center that serves the Spanish-speaking population in Hyattsville, Maryland, on the border of Washington, D.C. “And now, I want to be president of Colombia.”
Militant-turned-politician Gustavo Petro is seen as the inevitable Pacto Histórico candidate in this year’s presidential election in Colombia / credit: Facebook / Gustavo Petro
Many say the upcoming Colombian presidential election looks to be the most consequential in decades. That’s because, while some praise Márquez, everyone Toward Freedom spoke to agreed militant-turned-politician Gustavo Petro is the strongest candidate on the left. The most recent poll shows Petro as the most favored left-wing candidate, with 77 percent of the public’s favor, compared to only 12 percent for Márquez. More interesting is that Petro is the most recognized and favored candidate across the political spectrum, according to Centro Nacional de Consultario, a Colombian think tank.
“With the failure of the government of Iván Duque, the public is really looking for something different,” said Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, Director for the Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). Under the right-wing Duque presidency, murders of social leaders have continued as the 2016 peace accords to demobilize guerillas remain unimplemented. “Last year’s civil strike, the effects of COVID-19 and the economics of the country have pushed people who normally wouldn’t have run.”
Márquez and Petro are seeking the nomination of Pacto Histórico, a left-wing coalition, during today’s party consultations. These primary-like events will determine who will move on to first-round runoff elections on May 29. A second round would be held on June 19 if no candidate wins at least 50 percent of the votes. While Petro seeks the coalition’s nomination as a Colombia Humana party candidate, Márquez is vying with the support of Polo Democrático Alternativo, a social democratic party.
Aside from Pacto Historico, a center-right coalition, Coalición Equipo por Colombia (Team Colombia), and a center-left coalition, Coalición Centro Esperanza (Hope Center), are deciding on candidates today as well. A few candidates, including the notable former senator and once-exile Ingrid Betancourt, have opted out of today’s consultations and will run against the coalitions on May 29, either on a party ballot or independently.
Left-wing presidential candidate Francia Márquez (left) with members of the Afro-Colombian community in 2018 in La Toma, Cauca department. Márquez seeks the Pacto Histórico nomination in today’s party consultations / credit: Goldman Environmental Prize
Putting Colombia in Context
Colombia is among the top 20 most violent countries in the world. That is partly because the United States has provided $4.5 billion in arms and military training via Plan Colombia, a 22-year-old anti-narcotics program implemented during the presidency of right-wing president, Álvaro Uribe (2002-10). The U.S. military also reportedly has helped build out and now occupies seven Colombian military bases.
Out of 49 million people, 8 million have been displaced since 1985, according to Human Rights Watch. That’s because of decades of struggle between coca producers and traffickers, miners, Indigenous and Afro-descendant people, and those who represent foreign interests.
The Ovejas River in La Toma, Cauca department, Colombia, where a fierce battle has raged over land and displaced millions of mostly Afro-descendants and Indigenous people / credit: Goldman Environmental Prize
The Fear of ‘Becoming Venezuela’
Dan Kovalik got much pushback for announcing in February his support for Petro, who was roundly lambasted for recently saying in a radio interview, “We do not like [Venezuelan President Nicolas] Maduro. We have said it many times. We don’t like what is happening in Venezuela in terms of the extinction of democracy.”
Another attack came on Twitter: “I suggest Maduro stop his insults. Cowards are those who do not embrace democracy. Get Venezuela out of oil, take it to the deepest democracy. If you have to step aside, do it.”
Le sugiero a Maduro que deje sus insultos. Cobardes los que no abrazan la Democracia.
Saque a Venezuela del petroleo, llevela a la más profunda democracia, si debe dar un paso al costado, hágalo. https://t.co/kA8DBwQ3fT
These kind of comments have moved some to call Petro “another Boric,” alluding to Chile’s new president, Gabriel Boric, who recently criticized Venezuela and Nicaragua.
“It might be tactical,” said Kovalik, who teaches international human rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. “He still represents that [guerilla]. That’s why I still like him. He’s opposed to U.S. imperialism.”
Petro has gotten backing from figures of the international left, including U.K. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. While regional leaders, including Maduro, assailed Petro on Twitter for criticizing Venezuela while it undergoes a process of socialist construction that began in 1998, some understand the rationale.
Sánchez-Garzoli has been working on Colombian issues since 1998 and has been exclusively focused on the country since 2004. She said Uribismo, the far-right ideology of Uribe that helped escalate the drug war, is to blame for the inflamed relationship with Venezuela. That has created a fear among Colombians that their country is “becoming Venezuela.”
“Colombians think of Venezuelans as their cousins,” Sánchez-Garzoli said. “There’s always been good relations, people to people—it’s just been the government that has had this antagonistic approach.”
Ajamu Baraka is a human rights activist who co-founded a grassroots organization called the Black Alliance for Peace. He has lived in Calí, a predominately Afro-Colombian city, since 2011, and regularly advises movement and elected leaders in the country. “This spat between him and some figures like Maduro, while it is politically unwinding in terms of regional politics, plays a certain role in Colombian politics.”
Baraka said it is unclear if real ideological differences exist between Petro and Maduro, or if Petro’s statement was a critique from the left, or if it was Petro’s way of creating space between him and Maduro. “It’s understandable, but also opportunistic,” Baraka said.
Sánchez-Garzoli said part of the reason Petro lost the 2018 presidential election was because he wasn’t able to attract more moderate elements of the population to vote for him because of the public’s aversion to anything related to Venezuela.
Baraka said the question is similarly complicated among Afro-Colombians. “Part of it is confusion,” he said. “Part of it is the relative conservatism that’s across the region, unfortunately.”
When a candidate is considered in favor of Venezuela, that reinforces the right wing and the moderates because they fear a public seizure of companies as well as persecution of political and economic elites, Sánchez-Garzoli said. She added the center and the right recently have come together. “They are making alliances [with groups] they’ve never worked with before,” Sánchez-Garzoli said. “It’s very hard to know what that will mean in practice.”
In a region where the left has successfully taken state power, many said it is important for Petro to win to create more stability for the Western Hemisphere’s left pole, which includes Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua and Perú. “They’re not going to go away quietly,” Kovalik said of Colombia’s ultra-right wing.
James Early, a board member of Washington-based think tank Institute for Policy Studies, also sees potential in a Petro presidency. “Getting rid of this ultra-right Duque government and whoever would become the steward of state power is really the bottom line. This is where the rub comes.”
Left-wing presidential candidate Francia Márquez (fifth from left in the second row) poses in 2018 with members of the Afro-Colombian community in La Toma, Cauca department / credit: Goldman Environmental Prize
The Afro-Descendant Question
Charo Mina Rojas, an Afro-Colombian who supports Márquez’s candidacy, believes it would be a boon if Petro wins the presidency. But that support comes with reservations.
“Gustavo Petro continues to be part of that white supremacist voice that does not recognize diversity and the political power that diversity can have in this country, particularly from marginalized ethnic groups,” said Mina, who is a member of the Proceso de Comunidades Negras, or Black Communities Process, which represents more than 100 Afro-descendant community councils and organizations spread across 4 departments, or states. “Colombia always performs as a Mestizo country, but it’s white people governing.”
Unfortunately, Petro’s campaign did not respond as of press time to Toward Freedom’s inquiry.
Sánchez-Garzoli noted Petro has been known for a more top-down approach, keeping decision making to a tiny circle of advisors.
That is unlike the Afro-descendant tradition, in which every aspect of life is collectivized, attracting many to Márquez’s candidacy.
“She’s fearless—she’s a leader,” said Victor Hugo Moreno Mina, an Afro-descendant who is running for a seat in Colombia’s congress under the Green Party banner. “She has been defending Black communities in the cities, but also in the rural areas.”
Moreno is the Consejo Mayor, or president and legal representative, of the Asociación de Consejos Communitarios del Norte del Cauca (ACONC, or the Association of Community Councils of Northern Cauca). ACONC represents 210 rural communities and 10 municipalities in Cauca department.
Moreno was with Márquez on May 4, 2019, when armed assailants shot at their group as they were preparing for discussions with the government on what they see as negligence. “She defends people who don’t have their basic needs [met] in our communities.”
For Afro-descendants, their ancestral territories dating back to the 17th century have been equated with life itself. They descend from Africans who were kidnapped from the same villages in Africa and sold together, which meant they could communicate in their native languages to outsmart the slave masters. After escaping into the mountainous jungles of Colombia, they established the first African settlements. Their descendants had been able to continue the traditions of their homeland in relative isolation until the drug war in the early 2000s that began mass displacement. Then an influx of mining companies continued the violence in the 2010s.
A poster depicting Francia Márquez features her campaign slogan, “Soy Porque Somos,” or “I am because we are.” / credit: Francia Márquez
Ubuntu, a term with roots in the Bantu languages of central and southern Africa, means “I am because you are and you are because I am.” That is reflected in Márquez’s campaign slogan, “Soy Porque Somos,” or “I am because we are.” Marquez helped organize rural Afro-descendant women in her hometown of La Toma, located in the Cauca department, against foreign mining companies. Eighty women walked 350 miles in 10 days in November 2014 to the capital, Bogotá. That, as well as a 22-day protest in Bogotá, moved the government to end illegal mining activities and convene a national task force. But before that had taken place, the death threats had become too much to bear. On April 5, 2014, she was forced into exile with her two children, landing in the city of Calí. Her efforts caught international attention, winning her the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2018.
Left-wing candidate Francia Márquez, who seeks the Pacto Histórico candidacy, seen in 2018 accepting the Goldman Environmental Prize / credit: Goldman Environmental Prize
The collectivism of the Afro-descendant community filters into Márquez’s approach to campaigning for president.
“I don’t have anything to offer. We have to change the logic,” Márquez told a crowd of mainly Spanish-speaking people on February 7 in Maryland. “That’s why we have a mandate.”
Instead of running on a platform, she brings to the public the demands of the Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities, which includes distributing land to women, a focus on education, the legalization of drugs, an end to obligatory military service, the right to abortion and an end to the country’s 60-year-old civil war.
“She is contesting these structures from a very clear Black feminist perspective,” Mina said.
A Black woman at the event stood up wearing a Daishiki, a West African blouse-like patterned garment. “You have not let those evil forces touch you,” she told Márquez.
“To see you gives me hope,” said Pedro, an Indigenous Colombian who wound up in the Washington area after fleeing the violence.
“She defends everything with her body and soul,” Moreno told Toward Freedom.
The Afro-descendant population in Colombia is mostly concentrated in coastal areas, as represented by the shades of brown / credit: Wikipedia / Milenioscuro using data from OCHA Colombia’s Censo DANE 2005
‘Tricky Ethical Situation’
Mina said Márquez’s candidacy represents a grassroots process. And the people are patient.
“Nothing is going to change in a four-year period,” Mina said. “But in a long-standing process, we can expect a successful political alternative.”
Petro will need help to not only broaden his base, but to keep his current base excited. That’s where Márquez, who is unlikely to win today, can play a role.
“Francia has really forced the debate on different issues,” Sánchez-Garzoli said.
The 1991 reformed constitution includes a declaration that Colombia is a plurinational state. Unfortunately, that has not played out in giving Afro-descendants and Indigenous Colombians full reign over their lives. That contradiction again has come to a head with the ethnic chapter of the 2016 peace accords not being acted upon, according to a 192-page report Instancia Especial de Alto Nivel con Pueblos Étnicos (IEANPE, or Special High-Level Body with Ethnic Peoples) issued in December. Non-governmental organization Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Paz (INDEPAZ, Institute for Development and Peace Studies) reported murders of social leaders, which includes activists, politicians and journalists, surged to 1,270 between 2016 and 2021. Although forced displacements hit their peak in the early 2000s, as seen in the INDEPAZ chart below, about 100,000 or more people have been displaced every year since the peace accords were signed.
Chart showing how many people have been displaced each year in Colombia / credit: INDEPAZ
“The citizen backing is going to have to be significantly organized to broker deals with whoever emerges,” said Early, who, as part of a delegation, met with militants in Cuba as the peace accords were being hammered out. He said, as the only Afro-descendant at the meeting, he advocated for the safety of Afro-Colombians. “That is the principal question inside Colombia: How will the candidacy of Francia negotiate with the forces who are gathered around Petro?”
Mina takes a more realistic, or perhaps pessimistic, view.
“I don’t think they can change the relationships as they are,” she said. “You need a lot of economic power to do that.”
Mina added Petro has been trying to gain alliances with those in power. She and others saw that as a tough road to walk. More right-wing elements like the Catholic Church may require compromises that can go against a candidate’s positions.
“That is a tricky ethical situation,” Mina told Toward Freedom on a phone call from her Calí home. “If that was just words, that is okay. But that is not just words. When he wins, all those people will come back to cash the check.”
Kovalik said the international left, much of which has not seized state power, should support Petro’s candidacy.
“Even if he’s not openly supporting Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua, he’s not a lackey of the military in Colombia,” he said. “It will be a huge step forward for Latin America to have a president of Colombia who’s not willing to allow Colombia to be a giant military base for the United States.”
Editor’s Note: This lightly edited article was originally published by The Real News.
Unless you’re buck naked as you read this, chances are that you’re wearing at least one garment manufactured in the Haitian apparel factories of Port-au-Prince, Caracol and Ouanaminthe. Those Hanes or Fruit-of-the-Loom briefs in your dresser drawer; the classic Levi’s denim jacket hanging in your closet; or that cheapo, trendy, puff-sleeved H&M frock you hope to add to your spring wardrobe—all of them were likely made by men and women in Haiti earning the barest of minimum wages.
Since 2019—until the government announced a modest, unsatisfactory hike just two weeks ago to quell the workers’ fighting spirit—the Haitian minimum wage for garment workers making clothing for export has been 500 gourdes a day (or $4.82 USD). The math is even crueler than expected: In exchange for an eight-hour work day, around 57,000 Haitian garment workers have been earning almost three cents less per hour than the average incarcerated worker in the United States makes, which is only 63 cents per hour.
With their products sold at major outlets like Walmart, Target, Zara and The Gap, 62 U.S. brands have profited handsomely for years by paying miserly, unlivable wages to Haitian workers. But on February 9 and 10, too poor even for strike accoutrement like matching tee-shirts or printed placards, workers marched out of the factories en masse in the first of several strategic strikes. Pouring into the streets, they raised their voices in protest of the daily exploitation and destitution they endure. Their only protest swag consisted of common leafy twigs held high in affirmation of their right to a portion of this earth’s abundance in their lifetimes. Poetry in motion; they do not stand alone.
On behalf of its 50 million members worldwide, the secrétaire général of the IndustriALL global union in Geneva, Atle Høie, wrote to Haiti’s Acting Prime Minister and President, Ariel Henry, urging wage relief for workers whose earning power is being crushed by inflation. Since then, the tidal wave of support for the Haitian strikers has continued to swell. Workers United, the successor union in North America to the International Ladies and Garment Workers Union, issued a statement of solidarity. Secretary Treasurer Edgar Romero admonished U.S. companies for their silence as their workers were being assaulted by state police, and reminded them that their actions are not invisible:
The world is watching, and will call to task the companies that are profiting manyfold on the backs of our Haitian brothers and sisters. It’s time for corporations, especially our American companies who import garments manufactured in Haiti to step up, and pay workers what they deserve.
Your brand is at stake.
Exploitation of Workers Is Stitched In
According to Ose Pierre, a representative of the Solidarity Center, the largest U.S.-based international worker rights organization, who is working to support the labor movement in Haiti, a typical Haitian garment worker starts their workday at 6:30 a.m. Too early to cook and eat before they leave home, many workers buy breakfast from vendors, a meal referred to in Haiti as “lunch before work.” With food and drink, “lunch before work” costs about 100 gourdes, Pierre told The Real News. They also buy their “manje midi,” or noon meal (a plate of rice, beans and meat), for about 200 gourdes. Transportation, depending on where they live, could cost 100 gourdes. With four-fifths of their day’s earnings wiped out by necessities, the only way to get marginally ahead is to volunteer for “the wages of production.”
Though the phrase might sound innocuous, wages of production is a discretionary bonus system based on over-and-above production, wherein a line of 10 or so workers make side deals with their bosses. “An importer decides, ‘Well, you were going to make 5,000 of these, but if you do 7,000 you can have some extra money,’” Pierre explained. “The workers have to work extra hard and fast.”
Almost every economic hardship in modern Haiti can be traced back to the unprecedented reparations debt that Haiti, the victor over France in its revolutionary war, was saddled with in 1825 in exchange for recognition of its independence and sovereignty—the equivalent of $21 billion, which has been paid over 122 years, and was resolved only in 1947. As a consequence, Haiti’s development has been strangled and mauled at every turn, a structural power inequality that has led to a neocolonial dependency on foreign investment that has proven impossible for any Haitian government to overcome. All of former Prime Minister Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s efforts to significantly increase wages—in 1991, 1994 and 2004—were answered with coups, sanctions, smears or all of the above.
Similarly, many of the political hardships Haiti faces today, like the ongoing instability and insecurity in the aftermath of the July assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, can be traced back to the Core Group. Imposed upon Haiti by the United Nations in 2004 after the U.S.-backed coup that ousted Aristide, the Core Group is a multi-national supervisory body with the nebulous mission of “steering the electoral process.” Its creation was originally proposed as a six-month interim transition support measure, yet it endures to this day.
Proponents of the Montana Accord, a civil society proposal put forward by a coalition of 70 political organizations and social groups, want to plan for a transition of power to stabilize the country and move toward free and fair elections by 2023 without outside interference. By contrast, acting President and Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who is answerable to the Core Group, has been pushing for elections later in 2022, which will again presumably be “steered” in service of the interests of the oligarchic forces within Haiti and the forces of international capital at the expense of another generation of Haitian workers.
Garment Workers Forced to Strike, Face Tear Gas and Live Rounds
In tension with these systemic constraints, the Haitian constitution (Section 35: Freedom to Work) explicitly guarantees workers certain rights and duties: Among them the right to a fair wage, rest, vacation and bonus, and to unionize and strike. But legal ideals aside, for decades, garment workers have been denied anything approaching the standard of fairness.
In theory, the Superior Council of Wages (SCW) is responsible for analyzing socioeconomic factors and ensuring that the minimum wage reflects changes in the cost of living at scheduled reporting intervals. Additionally, any rise in inflation over 10 percent triggers a requirement for action under Article 137 of the Haitian Labor Code. But the SCW hasn’t fulfilled its charge; thus, on January 17, noting a current inflation rate of 22.8 percent, a coalition of nine trade unions representing or affiliated with garment workers in Haiti sent an open letter to Henry seeking a wage increase from 500 gourdes ($4.82) per day to 1,500 gourdes ($14.62). With that, the unions fired their opening salvo in what Mamyrah Prosper, international coordinator of the Pan-African Solidarity Network, called in her March 2 piece for Black Agenda Report, a “Different Fight for 15.”
In February, having been ignored by Henry, the unions joined the workers in the execution of a number of strategic, multi-day strikes to force the issue. Interested onlookers could follow events as they unfolded on the “Madame Boukman—Justice 4 Haiti” Twitter account, after she began posting about ValDor Apparel, a Florida-based company that shuttered its factory in Haiti on December 31, absconding with its workers’ wages. Madame Boukman told The Real News that, building on the positive international responses to her tweets, she’s seeing growing support for the workers’ movement in and outside of Haiti.
“It’s a movement that can transfer immense power from the small, but powerful, economic elite to the poor masses,” she observed. “Haiti’s minimum wage is the lowest in the region due to years of violent suppression by external and internal forces. With a near non-existent parliament, a de facto prime minister and no president, the masses are taking it into their own hands to set a path to a living wage.”
Their actions have started to move the needle. Talks between the government, foreign factory owners, and the unions have resulted in several incremental advances and concessions on wages and proposed supports, like transportation to work. But so far the negotiations have fallen short of the strikers’ primary demand: On February 21, the SCW acted to raise the minimum wage across sectors, and the highest wage, applicable to garment workers who are part of the import/export tranche, is now 770 gourdes, which amounts to roughly half of what garment workers are demanding.
Strikers returned to the streets again on February 23, but this time they were met with lethal state violence meant to terrorize them back to their sewing machines at any price. Pierre suspects this police violence has had the opposite effect and has stiffened strikers’ resolve, though videos of the police assault against peacefully demonstrating strikers are certainly shocking.
“The workers were protesting: They have their mobiles with music, and Haitian music is playing, and they’re dancing, and they have their flyers saying what they want—their demands,” he explained. “Then the Haitian National Police came. They used tear gas.”
Besides choking on the gas, some of the workers were burned by canisters that hit their bodies and feet. Amid the mayhem, another unknown police force reportedly came and shot into the crowd.
“Masked police without any identification badges came in white cars with generic plates… and they shot the peaceful workers, and three journalists,” Pierre said. Photojournalist Maxihen Lazarre was killed, and two other journalists were injured. Another worker was shot in the foot, three people were hospitalize and many others were injured, according to local reporting. The factories were then closed—ostensibly, the closures were for Carnival celebrations, but more likely they were intended to allow worker outrage, like the toxic gas fired by police, to dissipate.
“People ask me if I am safe in Haiti, and I say, ‘I am not safe, but I am quiet,’” Pierre said.
A History of Unaccountability Pervades the International Community’s “Investments” in Haiti
Sandra Wisner, senior staff attorney for the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, thinks it’s time the international community acknowledged its role in creating these conditions on the ground. “It needs to take a look at itself,” she told The Real News, “and focus on providing a long-term, rights-based approach to development in the country instead of prioritizing foreign interests.”
The Caracol Industrial Park, where the recent spate of garment worker actions started, is a good case study.
In 2010, after the devastating earthquake, it was decided by foreign actors—the United States and the Inter-America Development Bank—to locate a new garment center in the northeast district, distant from the epicenter. But in the process of building the garment center where they did, Wisner explained, Haitians were dispossessed of valuable fertile land, replacing subsistence farming with a textile industry that exploits cheap labor. A dozen years later, hundreds of farmers and their families are still waiting to get paid for the seizure of their land and the loss of their livelihoods.
“It was slated to provide 65,000 new jobs to the country,” Wisner said of the original plan for the garment center. “But as of two years ago, it had only provided around 14,000 jobs. When the international community comes into the country and decides what development is going to look like, no matter the repercussions for Haitians, there needs to be accountability for that.”
“Where is the accountability for that?” she asks.
Frances Madeson writes about liberation struggles and the arts that inspire them. She is the author of the comic political novel, Cooperative Village. Follow her on Twitter at @FrancesMadeson.
