Another Assassination Attempt Against Colombian Vice President Francia Márquez

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.”

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.

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.

Meanwhile, Colombia has the highest income inequality and labor market informality in Latin America, according to the World Bank.

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

— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) February 12, 2022

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.”

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.

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.

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.

‘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.

“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.”

Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom.

If you had missed it, don’t worry.

On January 28, the International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism: Sanctions, Blockades, and Coercive Economic Measures launched at the People’s Forum in New York City.

In the two-and-a-half months since then, the tribunal has held four virtual hearings across multiple time zones. Each hearing has zoomed in on a country that has faced Western sanctions. Experts provide testimony in a couple of hours’ time. So far, the impact of sanctions has been examined in hearings held on Zimbabwe, Syria, Korea and Libya.

Not only do the hearings intend to expose the effects of U.S. sanctions and blockades on targeted countries. The goal is to create strategies for legal accountability. Hearings will take place until June on a total of 15 countries in the Americas, Africa and Asia.

The tribunal’s website states:

People’s Tribunals capture the ethos of self-determination and internationalism that was expressed through twentieth century anti-colonial struggles and was institutionalized in the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Cuba. They bring together movement lawyers, scholars, and organizers from around the world and are designed by and accountable to the social movements and communities in which they are rooted. Operating outside of the logics and institutions of capitalist and imperialist law, People’s Tribunals make decisions that may not be binding and do not have the force of law, but their achievements in a political and discursive register inspire and provide the tools necessary for present and future organizing. People’s Tribunals allow the oppressed to judge the powerful, defining the content as well as the scope of the procedures, which reverses the norm of the powerful creating and implementing the law.

There is a long tradition of radical organizers and lawyers using the law to put capitalism and imperialism on trial. Organized by the Civil Rights Congress, and supported by the Communist Party as well as a host of Black leftist luminaries, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Claudia Jones, and Paul Robeson, We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief of a Crime of the United States against the Negro People, indicted the political-economic system of capitalism and white supremacy for inflicting numerous forms of structural and physical violence on Black people in the U.S. as well as drawing parallels to U.S. imperialist violence abroad. The Russell Tribunal was set up in 1966 to judge U.S. military intervention and war crimes in Vietnam. The same format reemerged in later Russell Tribunals dealing with the U.S.-backed Brazilian and Argentinian military dictatorships (1964 and 1976, respectively), the U.S.-backed coup in Chile (1973), and the U.S.-European interventions against Iraq (1990, 2003). The 2016 International Tribunal for Democracy in Brazil critically examined the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and the role of the U.S. government. Organized in Brussels by both Philippine and international groups, the 2018 International People’s Tribunal on the Philippines exposed and condemned the multiple forms of state violence visited on the people of the Philippines since Rodrigo Duterte became president in 2016. And finally, the U.S. government was put directly on trial by a pair of innovative People’s Tribunals, including the 2007 International Tribunal on Katrina and Rita and the 2018 International Tribunal on U.S. Colonial Crimes Against Puerto Rico.

Check out the video of the tribunal’s launch.

The launch event featured jurists, scholars and activists, including:

1. Nina Farnia, Co-chair of the Tribunal Steering Committee & Professor of Law, Albany Law School
2. Niloufer Bhagwat, Confederation of Lawyers of Asia and the Pacific
3. Brian Becker, ANSWER Coalition
4. Mireille Fanon Mendès-France, The Frantz Fanon Foundation
5. Booker Omole, Communist Party of Kenya
6. Carlos Ron, Vice Minister of Foreign Relations for North America
7. Suzanne Adely, President National Lawyers Guild & Tribunal Steering Committee
8. Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Former United Nations Independent Expert
9. Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, Historian & Scholar
10. Claudia De La Cruz, People’s Forum
11. Sara Flounders, Sanctions Kill
12. Helyeh Doutaghi, Co-chair of the Tribunal Steering Committee & Adjunct Professor, Carleton University

Multiple organizations are listed as co-organizers and endorsers.

The public is encouraged to register for upcoming online hearings at sanctionstribunal.org.

Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom.

Clara Ines Yalanda, 36, is a Misak Indigenous woman and a single mother. While she was still a girl, she migrated from an Indigenous reservation to Popayan, the capital of the Cauca region in southern Colombia. With few options available, Yalanda and her family settled in an informal neighborhood.

Twenty years later, Yalanda has been unable to break the cycle of poverty associated with informal neighborhoods. A housing deficit and migration to cities has led rural migrants like Yalanda to construct homes within cities using low-quality materials. These type of homes—which make up 65 percent of housing in Colombian cities—lack basic services, such as a connection to water or a sewage system, and they are constructed outside the bounds of local laws.

Yalanda’s house puts her family’s health and safety at risk because it is near a stream and a sewer drainage system. Currently, only one of Yalanda’s five children lives with her because of her strained finances as well as the poor state of the house.

Early this year, Yalanda’s home and five others’ flooded, with the water having risen more than 1 meter (3.28 feet) high. That forced her to temporarily abandon her home, losing her possessions in the process. Yalanda said the municipality has warned several times that her house is in a risk area—but she added it has not offered a solution.

“They have told me I have to leave,” Yalanda said. “But where can I go? I do not have anywhere else.”

Sunday’s second-round presidential election in Colombia could transform the lives of informal settlement residents like Yalanda. Former-militant-turned-politician Gustavo Petro and millionaire businessman Rodolfo Hernández approach the country’s urban housing crisis and environmental policy in different ways. Meanwhile, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently reported governments must create housing programs that protect the most vulnerable from increasingly volatile weather events global climate change appears to be causing.

Landslides, Fires and Floods Intensify

Precarious conditions like Yalanda’s are not unusual. In Colombia, 65 percent of urban areas are informal, and 20 percent of the population lives in high-risk zones. This increases the exposure of residents to the impacts of climate change, as rainfall and wildfires intensify.

“Informal settlements have been a condition of urban development in Colombia for the last 50 years,” explained Gustavo Carrion, a consultant and on risk management, climate change and territorial planning. “Families migrate to the cities and settle in the most vulnerable areas and [are] the most exposed to landslides, fires and floods.”

According to Colombia’s National Risk Management Unit, La Niña—a weather phenomenon that causes higher-than-normal rainfall—affected between March and June 33,000 families, killed 78 people, injured 91 and caused eight people to remain missing. Although this phenomenon is not a direct consequence of climate change, scientists have warned that La Niña events are intensifying and becoming more frequent due to greenhouse gas emissions.

The Triple Cycle of Vulnerability

Most of the inhabitants of informal neighborhoods had migrated from rural areas that were hit by the decades-long armed conflict and poverty. Much of the conflict revolves around the production and flow of illicit drugs.

Yet, not only are the new homes of rural migrants informal, the way they make their living can be, too.

“I have worked my whole life selling vegetables and depend entirely on this,” Yalanda told Toward Freedom. “I do not have another source of income. The little I earn is for food and some necessities for the children. It is hard.”

Due to these conditions, residents of informal neighborhoods are caught in a triple cycle of vulnerability: First, they lack access to goods and services; second, they suffer material losses during climate-change disasters; and third, they are stigmatized by society and institutions, preventing adequate assistance.

According to Yalanda, the National Risk Management Unit offered a cooking pot and a torch, but denied further support due to their informal condition. A member of the unit reportedly suggested she should go back to her birthplace. Toward Freedom received no response after requesting an interview with the unit.

The IPCC has established “occupants of informal settlements are particularly exposed to climate events, given low-quality housing, limited capacity to adapt, and limited or no risk-reducing infrastructure.”

Early this year, a UN-convened working group of scientists presented the most recent IPCC report. At both the global and regional levels, it is the most comprehensive investigation of how climate change impacts ecosystems, biodiversity and human communities.

The report says “humanitarian responses and local emergency management are vital for disaster risk reduction, yet are compromised in urban contexts, where it is difficult to confirm property ownership.”

‘We Do Not Want Anything for Free’

Rene Delgado, president of the Local Community Action Council, explained residents of El Dorado—where Yalanda lives—have met with government officials many times since they settled in the area more than 20 years ago. A reallocation area was designated, but residents have been unable to participate because of the high loan-interest rates.

“We do not want anything for free,” Delgado said. “The only thing we are asking for is a payment option according to our economic capacities.”

The Cartagena-based Center for Regional Economics found around 70 percent of Colombian households that apply for low-income housing are headed by informal workers. The insecurity associated with this kind of work makes it difficult to apply for a bank loan, necessary for obtaining low-income housing.

“Colombian housing policy focuses on subsidizing loans that drown people financially,” Carrion explained. “Often low-income housing projects do not benefit the most vulnerable families. Instead, it results in a profitable business for a small sector that also participates in policymaking.”

Presidential Candidates on Housing

Previous local mandates set out by each presidential candidate provide a glimpse into what each may offer if elected president.

Petro, the left-wing Pacto Histórico coalition candidate, was mayor of Bogotá between 2012 and 2015. During his term in office, he oversaw the creation of more than 19,000 houses for victims of armed violence and residents of high-risk zones as part of a national housing program known as Vivienda de Interes Prioritario (VIP). Although Petro did not achieve his goal of 70,000 houses, VIPs in Bogota grew by 26 percent. Meanwhile, they shrunk by 27 percent nationwide.

Petro also has highlighted the importance of cities’ adaptability to climate change. Some of his proposals include restoring ecosystems and hydrological systems, reverting to deforestation based on communitarian and public governance of commonly used resources, as well as guaranteeing access to drinking water. The final policy was implemented in Bogotá during his term as mayor.

Hernández—also known as “the engineer”—is running on the League of Anti-Corruption Governors ticket. He became a millionaire by building low-income housing projects in the 1990s. But, by 2019, Hernández failed to deliver on constructing 20,000 low-income houses in Bucaramanga, a promise he made while running in 2015 for mayor of the city. Plus, Hernández’s construction company was involved in a scandal in 2001 for delivering poorly built homes that endangered lives. The company was later liquidated, but it did not compensate the affected residents.

Hernandez provides brief information on his website regarding how he would address climate change. During a presidential election debate on the environment, he expressed he lacks knowledge on the matter. Hernández also has suggested combining the Ministry of Environment with the Ministry of Culture. That has led some to speculate that, if Hernández is elected, the environment would be a minimal concern for his government.

“We are talking about the vulnerability of ecosystems and people,” Carrion said. “For that reason, housing policy has to be articulated environmentally and socially, while also taking into account poverty exacerbated by the pandemic.”