On August 20, the government of Colombian President Gustavo Petro arrived in Caldono, Cauca, to hear community demands and concerns / credit: Alfonso Prada / Twitter
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by People’s Dispatch.
On August 20, the newly inaugurated left-wing government of President Gustavo Petro and Vice President Francia Márquez in Colombia launched the first Unified Command Post for Life (PMU) in the municipality of Caldono, in the Cauca department. The PMU is an initiative that aims to achieve total peace and protect the population affected by violence across the country, especially social leaders, human rights activists, environmentalists and former combatants of the demobilized FARC guerilla group.
The launch was led by Interior Minister Alfonso Prada, Environment Minister Susana Muhamad, Labor Minister Gloria Inés Ramírez, and around 30 legislators from across the political spectrum, including the president of the Senate, Roy Barreras, and the president of the Peace Commission of the Senate, Iván Cepeda.
“We have installed the PMU, which is a command post to achieve rapid security in a preventative approach, not in the approach of sadness when we receive the news of the death of social leaders,” Prada said.
Prada explained that the protection plan will cover the 65 municipalities hardest hit by violence in the country, adding that initial emphasis will be placed on “5 to 10 of them, which are in a very delicate situation and are systematically assassinating their leaders.” He said that the state would provide accompaniment and maintain a permanent presence in those 10 municipalities.
The Interior Minister said that the government is particularly committed to the Cauca department. “For us, Cauca is a huge priority… If we achieve integral and total peace in Cauca, I have no doubt that we can dream of having total peace in Colombia,” said Prada.
Prada explained that instructions had been given to the institutions that have powers related to the protection of the lives of social leaders, land defenders, environmentalists, community leaders, peace signatories, land restitution managers, and those who work in crop substitution.
Prada added that the government had already ordered the local authorities to comply with the early warnings issued by the Ombudsman’s Office, especially for the municipalities of Caldono, Buenos Aires and Santander de Quilichao, in Cauca. He also said that the government would strengthen the National Protection Unit (UNP).
For her part, Environment Minister Muhamad stressed that this plan recognizes land defenders as people who make a positive, important and legitimate contribution to the protection of nature and promotion of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Muhamad assured that with the beginning of the plan, the implementation of the Escazú Agreement also begins, pending its ratification by the House of Representatives.
With regard to illegal paramilitary groups, Senator Barreras said that dialogues are the only way that allows peace. “The government and the congress have every desire to allow them to reintegrate into society and these command posts for life are spaces for dialogue and listening, the message that we are sending them is that they take advantage of the opportunity to lay down their arms so that they can join the life of Colombia,” said Barreras.
Iniciamos el Plan de Choque para salvaguardar la vida de las y los Líderes Sociales en Colombia, así como de quienes firmaron la paz .
Comisión del Gobierno Nacional, 20 congresistas y la Comunidad Internacional en defensa de la vida y la paz en los Territorio, rumbo al Cauca pic.twitter.com/sTQgD8i0rD
On August 19, the Ombudsman’s Office released a report in which it reported that between January 1 and July 31, 122 social leaders and human rights defenders had been assassinated in different departments of the country. It also reported that Cauca with 19 assassinations, Nariño with 17, Antioquia with 12, and Putumayo with 11, are the departments with the highest number of cases.
According to the Colombian human rights organization Institute of Development and Peace Studies (INDEPAZ), between January 1 and August 20, 119 environmentalists, land defenders, human rights defenders, Afro-descendent, Indigenous, peasant and social leaders had been killed by illegal armed and drug-trafficking groups operating in the country. Additionally, during this period, 32 ex-combatants of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who were in the reincorporation process, had also been murdered.
Petro and Márquez, during their election campaign, vowed to fight drug trafficking and paramilitarism, and consolidate peace in the country. The day following their inauguration, on August 8, in the first press conference to local media, Petro confirmed the resumption of negotiations with the National Liberation Army (ELN), the largest leftist guerrilla group active in Colombia. On August 11, a delegation of the Colombian government, headed by Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva Durán, visited Cuba to establish contact with the leadership of the ELN in order to advance towards peace negotiations. On August 20, President Petro announced that in order to further advance in the dialogue with the ELN, the arrest and extradition orders against the members of the insurgency group were suspended. At the same time, he confirmed the restitution of the negotiation protocols with the ELN that had been signed with the government of former president Juan Manuel Santos.
On July 9, security guards shot a 24-year-old man on the premises of forestry company Forestal Mininco in the city of Carahue in Chile’s Araucanía region in what the Chilean media described at the time as an “armed confrontation.”
Pablo Marchant Gutiérrez, a Chilean anthropology student who had joined the indigenous Mapuche people’s struggle for autonomy and recuperation of ancestral lands, was found dead after what appeared to be an execution.
Marchant’s killing is the latest incident in the conflict between Mapuche communities and Forestal Mininco, which has been accused of human-rights abuses during violent land evictions in Wallmapu. That is the Indigenous name of the Mapuche people’s ancestral home, which encompasses the southern cone of South America that is divided between the modern states of Chile and Argentina. Because Mapuche culture is tied to the land, its medicinal plants, as well as geographical elements such as lakes, rivers and forests, denying the Mapuche people the right to live there is tantamount to genocide, per the United Nations’ definition.
However, between former U.S.-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet’s terror laws being used to criminalize Mapuche elders and activists, the United States and the United Kingdom arming Chile’s security forces, and the failure of international agencies to treat the Mapuche conflict with urgency, the West appears complicit in the genocide of the Mapuche people.
Questioning Authorities
Not satisfied with the official accounts of events, Marchant’s family requested forensic investigations, from which a sinister picture emerged of what had happened on Forestal Mininco’s premises.
Pablo Marchant Gutiérrez with his mother, Myriam Gutiérrez / credit: Myriam Gutiérrez
The investigation found Marchant was shot in the back, contradicting the police’s account that Marchant had threatened officers with a M16 assault rifle. The report stated he was killed “on his knees” with his head inclined towards the floor, and that his injuries were consistent with that of an execution.
Neither the police nor prosecution services informed Myriam Gutiérrez, Marchant’s mother, of her son’s death. Instead, the Mapuche community relayed the news. Afterward, Legal Services of Temuco—another city in the Araucanía region—called Gutiérrez, saying she needed to be present at the autopsy. However, when Gutiérrez arrived, she wasn’t allowed in the facility.
“To this day, five months on, there has been no form of justice against those who have protected my son’s murderers,” Gutiérrez told Toward Freedom. “I must also point out that these cases are never resolved because the state does not recognize these [recuperation] acts as legitimate—instead, they qualify them as ‘terrorist actions.’”
Toward Freedom contacted Forestal Mininco, the Chilean consulate in London, and Chile’s Interior and Security Ministry, but they did not respond as of press time.
Not long after Marchant’s death, President Sebastian Piñera announced on October 12 a state of emergency in response to escalating tension in the southern regions of the Andean country. Over 1,000 troops are deployed in the Araucanía region, armed with drones, tanks and anti-riot weaponry. The central Chilean region is known for its virgin forests.
Less than a month into the military occupation, security forces opened fire at a roadblock, killing one Indigenous man and injuring several others, including a 9-year-old girl.
Despite the frequency and severity of the violence, political persecution and racism Mapuche communities face have failed to prompt an appropriate response from international agencies. Free from international intervention, Chilean security forces have been able to kill, evict and arrest Mapuche people with complete impunity, all with an eye to protect the interests of industries operating out of contested Indigenous land. This comes despite Chile being a signatory to the 1989 Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention of the International Labour Organization (ILO Convention 169) and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Chile is the only Latin American country that does not recognize the existence of Indigenous peoples in its constitution.
“What the state is doing is colonial domination against the Mapuche people via a repressive genocidal political agenda, in turn denying their right to exist as an autonomous Mapuche nation,” Gutiérrez said. “Pablo knew and understood that people were being repressed and that they had been banished from their land in a brutal and repressive manner.”
Subsidizing Corporations
Chile currently holds the largest planted area of Pinus radiata, or Monterey pine trees, in the world. These fast-growing, medium-density softwood trees are known for their versatile uses, ranging from constructing homes, cabinets, boats and furniture to acting as a noise buffer in residential areas.
The Mininco and Arauco forestry companies own over 2 million hectares (4.94 million acres) of forest and supply 400 different products in approximately 80 countries, including wood chips for paper pulp production.
The forestry sector’s success can be attributed to state subsidies and land grabs facilitated during Augusto Pinochet’s time as the U.S.-backed dictator following the 1973 coup. Pinochet’s extractivist policies ensured more than $800 million in Chilean tax money funded the sector. Large swathes of land previously belonging to the Mapuche people, peasant farmers and state-owned agencies, such as CORFO (Chile’s economic development agency), were seized and handed to Pinochet’s inner circle, including Julio Ponce Lerou, his son-in-law.
“Though most political parties recognize that the conflict with Mapuche people is political and not military, they continue to ignore demands for restitution of their lands, autonomy and self-determination,” Mariqueo said.
Lago Conguillio in 2017 in Chile’s Araucanía region, known for its virgin forests / credit: Flickr/Sarah and Iain
Western Complicity
The military occupation of Araucanía would not be possible without the support of the international arms industry. Multiple human-rights NGOs, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, decrying human-rights abuses that took place during the 2019-20 social unrest dubbed “El Estallido.” Yet, countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom have continued to supply arms to Chile, whose military expenditure is one of the highest in the world, making up around 1.9 per cent of GDP.
In February, the Biden administration’s first foreign arms sale was to Chile. The $85 million package included:
16 SM-2 block IIIA rail-launched missiles,
two MK 89 Mod 0 guidance section adapters,
one target-detection device kit,
Mod 14 naval guns systems, and
associated training and supplies.
The UK also has armed Chile’s repressive military forces. A Freedom of Information request by British newspaper Byline Times found 50 percent of the £164 million ($217 million USD) worth of arms licenses sold to Chile since 2008 had been granted during 2019-20. This included so-called “non-lethal” weapons, such as smoke canisters, tear gas and other riot-control agents. Those tools were turned on more than 500 Chilean people who lost sight in one or both eyes. A similar tactic had been deployed during the 2019-20 Yellow Vests uprisings in France.
Genocide for Profit
None of the Chilean government administrations since the 1989 transition to democracy have challenged the might of forestry companies in Araucanía.
Whether left-leaning like Michelle Bachelet or extreme-right like Sebastian Piñera, the conflict rages on to the detriment of Indigenous people. It was Bachelet who commissioned the FBI to investigate the existence among Mapuche activists of terror cells linked to guerrilla groups like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA). And it was Bachelet who conceived special unit Comando Jungla, a special military force trained in the Colombian jungle to combat alleged terrorism and narcotics operations in Chile.
“The militarization of the region continues, giving carte blanche to commit all kinds of atrocities against those communities peacefully struggling for the right to live on ancestral land,” Mariqueo said.
Meanwhile, Gutiérrez said her son only sought to help defend Wallmapu.
“He wanted to be among, collaborate and live like a Mapuche.”
Carole Concha Bell is an Anglo-Chilean writer and Ph.D. student at King’s College London.
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.”
Children in 2010 in a camp site in Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti. At the time, 4,000 displaced Haitians resettled at the site, collaboratively built and maintained by the International Organization for Migration, ShelterBox and civil defense forces from the Dominican Republic / credit: Sophia Paris / United Nations
Correction: The event in Ciudad Juan Bosch took place in May.
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic—Manuel Dandré recounted a case of the injustice suffered by Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent.
Haitian parents of two girls had permanent residency in the Dominican Republic. Both children were Dominicans because they met the constitutional criteria that their parents be in regular migratory status at the moment of their birth in Dominican territory.
“In spite of this, the girls were detained,” Dandré, a lawyer, told this reporter. “The father had to go on a motorcycle to catch up with the bus that was transporting them.” With the intervention of United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and UN-affiliated International Organization For Migration (IOM), the deportation was prevented at the border.
Unfortunately, that is but one case where a family was not broken apart. From January to November 2022, UNICEF had counted more than 1,800 unaccompanied children expelled to Haiti from the Dominican Republic, often without documents to prove that they were Haitians. In the midst of this situation, Dandré provides legal assistance through two organizations that assist Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent, the Sociocultural Movement of Haitian Workers (MOSCTHA) and the Jacques Viau Network.
A record-breaking 154,333 Haitian immigrants were expelled in 2022. That’s more than triple the yearly average of the period between 2017 and 2021. The Dominican government’s campaign of mass deportations is the latest episode in what human-rights advocates, and social and political activists, describe as a strategy to deepen racial discrimination.
A Dominican soldier stands by a 118-mile border wall the Dominican Republic built to keep out Haitian migrants / credit: La Prensa Latina
Deportations Continue Unabated
United Nations officials had called in November for an end to the mass expulsions of Haitian citizens. However, Dominican President Luis Abinader responded the deportations would not only continue, but would be accelerated. Abinader also issued decree 688-22, which creates a special police unit to target immigrants and orders the immediate expulsion of immigrants living on state or privately owned lands. This definition coincides with the reality of the Bateyes, communities established in sugarcane regions for migrant Haitian workers and their families.
On Nov. 19, the U.S. embassy issued a travel alert according to which travelers to the Dominican Republic “reported being delayed, detained, or subject to heightened questioning at ports of entry and in other encounters with immigration officials based on their skin color.” U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) stopped the entry of raw sugar and sugar products produced by Central Romana Corporation, which operates in the eastern part of the country, stating it had found indicators of forced labor.
The Dominican Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ response stressed that the “humanitarian, social and political” crisis in Haiti “seriously affects the national security of the Dominican Republic.”
“The Dominican government would never have imagined such serious insinuations about our country, whose population evidences in its skin color a wide melting pot of races,” added the official note.
Central Romana, owned by the Cuban-American Fanjul family, replied that CBP’s remarks “do not reflect the policies and practices of Central Romana.”
Displaced Haitians not yet assigned individual tents share in 2010 a large tent house at a camp site in Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti / credit: Sophia Paris / United Nations
Extorting Relatives of Detainees
Dandré, born in 1960, is himself one of the more than 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent affected by a denationalization policy initiated in 2004, when the migration law defined immigrants without visas as persons “in transit,” to exclude their children from acquiring Dominican nationality at birth. This policy culminated in 2013 with Constitutional Court ruling 168-13, which retroactively applied the criteria of the 2004 General Law of Migration to all born after 1929. Widespread international condemnation ensued. After litigation, Dandré regained documents certifying his Dominican citizenship.
Dandré told this reporter about a 16-year-old girl who was detained by the police and taken to the immigration detention center in the town of Haina, on the outskirts of Santo Domingo, where she was held for nine days. The law prohibits the detention of minors, pregnant women and elderly people in immigration proceedings, but such violations of the law are frequent, he said.
“The Haina detention center is overcrowded and in terribly unsanitary conditions,” Dandré explained. “If a detained person has relatives who bring food, the officers demand payments to deliver it—they extort them.”
When it was imminent that the court would order the release of the girl, she was handed over to another institution, the National Council for Adolescence and Childhood, which carried out her expulsion to Haiti.
“She should never have been taken to Haina, where most of the detainees are men,” Dandré pointed out.
Two months after arriving at Las Matas de Farfán in the Dominican Republic’s southwest to earn a living as a construction worker, Haitian Joel Lolo was shot in the back of the head by migration officer Robinson Fernelis Piña, according to local press reports, during a warrantless raid of this house he rented / credit: Vladimir Fuentes
‘Dehumanization’ of Haitian People
Ana Belique is one of the young leaders of the Movimiento Reconocido, which fights for the restitution of Dominican nationality to the people affected by ruling 168-13.
“In 2004, the new Migration Law was made and, in 2010, the Constitution was changed. Both changes are strategically designed to limit the rights of Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic,” Belique pointed out.
A statement signed by Movimiento Reconocido and dozens of Dominican and Haitian organizations describes this strategy as the imposition of systematic racial discrimination, warning about the risks of ethnic cleansing and apartheid.
Belique has first-hand knowledge of cases of foreigners who have suffered discrimination because they “look Haitian.” She mentions Caribbean and African exchange students, as well as the case of two Black U.S. citizens besieged in May by neo-Nazis and National Police officers in Ciudad Juan Bosch, a suburb in the eastern part of Santo Domingo.
“What worries me most about the current campaign of mass deportations is the dehumanization against Haitian people,” Belique added.
On Dec. 2, representatives of social organizations met with Dominican Attorney General Miriam German.
Among the complaints they presented regarding human rights violations against the immigrant community were the murders of Joel Lolo and Delouise Estimable. Lolo, a 18-year-old construction worker, was shot in the head by an immigration agent during a warrantless raid on his home in Las Matas de Farfan in March, while Delouise was beaten to death in a truck in the northern province of Valverde in July.
Little more than a week later, an illegal raid took place of the offices of the Dominico-Haitian Women’s Movement (MUDHA), one of the organizations represented in the meeting with the Attorney General. In a joint statement, social organizations denounced that raiding agents wore military intelligence uniforms.
Retired Haitian sugarcane worker Ephesiel Bonel (left) shows his worker card from formerly state-owned Río Haina Sugar Mill. Old worker cards are often the only identification retired sugarcane workers possess. On right is another retired Haitian sugarcane worker, Yega Fabián / credit: Vladimir Fuentes
‘To This Day, I Am Without a Pension’
Meanwhile, thousands of Haitian sugarcane workers who arrived in the country between the 1960s and 1970s, like Belique and Dandré’s parents, have organized in the Union of Sugarcane Workers (UTC) to demand the payment of their pensions. Around 15,000 sugarcane workers have been waiting, many of them taking to the streets for years. Some have passed away without the state recognizing their claim. On Dec. 7, they rallied again in front of the Ministry of Labor in Santo Domingo, to demand an end to forced labor in Central Romana.
“I joined in 1972, I worked in Altagracia, in the State Sugar Council,” recounted retired sugarcane worker Yega Fabián. “When I went to the sugar mill they gave me a machete, a sack and sent me to cut cane. I applied for the pension in 2012. To this day, I am without a pension. I have six children and 13 grandchildren. All of them have an identification card, but not me.”
The protest, to the traditional cry of “No sugarcane workers, no sugar,” was marked by news that another retired Haitian sugarcane worker, Lico Alerté, had died early that morning.
Alerté never received his pension.
Vladimir Fuentes is the pen name of a freelance journalist based in the Dominican Republic.