IRTF News

Thousands of Colombians have celebrated in the streets what is hoped to be a “second liberation,” now from neoliberalism, via the ascension of the first left-wing president in the country’s history, Gustavo Petro, together with his vice president, Francia Márquez, to power. A former guerrillero and an Afro-Colombian activist now hold the highest political positions in the country, a turning point in Colombian political history and a key moment for the whole of Latin America. But Petro and Francia will not have much time to celebrate. Huge challenges await them.

Former right-wing President of Colombia, Ivan Duque, has landed a job at the Washington-based Wilson Center as a “Distinguished Fellow” and Global Advisor” for issues including defense of democracy and climate change, despite his atrocious record on human rights and environmental destruction. Whilst Duque’s supposed democratic credentials are lauded in Washington, Colombia is the most dangerous places in the Americas to be an indigenous or union leader, a situation that has worsened under Duque’s leadership. As of May 2022, the murder of community leaders averaged out at one every two days.  

Deportations of children in Honduras have increased by 60% compared to the previous year. 27% of these are unaccompanied minors who undertake the migratory route fleeing violence, poverty, criminality, lack of access to quality education and health in the face of the lack of public policies for the care of children. As of July 30, the Coordinating Network of Private Institutions for Children, Adolescents, Youth and their Rights (Coiproden) reports that 11,263 children have been deported to Honduras (mainly from the United States), which represents an increase of 62% of cases compared to the same dates in 2021.

While the US and Colombia are different, the need to reckon with structural racism and its effects on the basic, civil, economic, socio-political rights of ethnic minorities are not dissimilar. The obstacles faced by Afro-descendant and Indigenous persons in both nations share root causes and challenges. Ethnic communities have a strong history of leadership, resistance, resilience, organization, and activism in both countries. Also, the drug and military policies in the US and Colombia that disproportionately negatively affect ethnic communities are interlinked.

The Garífuna indigenous group of Honduras demanded Tuesday an investigation into the disappearance of five of its members in July 2020 in the Caribbean Triunfo de la Cruz community. “We are here to demand justice and to investigate the disappearance of our five brothers from Triunfo de la Cruz two years ago,” said one protester. The missing people, who are suspected to have been kidnapped in the early hours of July 18, 2020 by armed men wearing vests bearing the logo of the Police Investigation Directorate, are Milton Joel Martínez, Suami Aparicio Mejía, Gerardo Misael Trochez, Albert Snaider Centeno and Júnior Chávez, the latter president of the board of trustees of the Triunfo de la Cruz community and a member of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras.

There has been little progress in the fulfillment of the reparation measures dictated by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR Court), which the LGBTIQ+ populations have awaited with so many expectations, to attract changes that will strengthen respect for their human rights. President Xiomara Castro created hope in the diverse populations, since she promised the reparation measures would be fulfilled quickly. But so far, there are 12 reparation measures established by the Court-IDH in response to the damages caused, which the government committed to comply with, but which, for the most part, diverse populations are still waiting. 

by U.S. Department of Homeland Security

En español

Some time in the 17th century, a vessel carrying enslaved people from the west coast of Africa ran aground near the Caribbean island of St Vincent, close enough to shore that the survivors swam to land, disposed of their captors and settled alongside the Indigenous Carib-Arawak people, who already offered a safe haven to runaway slaves from other islands. The Afro-Indigenous culture that resulted came to be known as ‘Garifuna’ (meaning ‘Black Carib’). Their language derives from that of the Arawak, a people whose pre-Colombian origin is in the Orinoco River basin in Venezuela. Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines since 2001, had been visiting the village of Orinoco in Nicaragua, where some two thousand Garifuna now live. Orinoco is in a remote part of the Caribbean coast, accessible only by boat, and nearly 2500 km from St Vincent. The Garifuna diaspora is a consequence of the brutal treatment they received from the British when they were eventually colonised.

The Military Police of Public Order, PMOP, arrived in the community of Guapinol to protect the mining company Inversiones Los Pinares. Local community members have carried out protest actions against the company that continues its operations despite the fact that the government of President Xiomara Castro announced last February the cancellation of the licenses and to make Honduras free of open-pit mining. The PMOP was the right arm of former President Juan Orlando Hernández, who bet on having his own security corps to fight efforts by human rights activists to protect their rights.

On Sunday, August 7, Colombia will inaugurate its first ever leftist President, Gustavo Petro, and its first Afro descendant Vice President, Francia Márquez. The new administration inherits a country hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and its economic fallout, one that in 2021 experienced a national strike and protests, and with an abysmal human rights record. Expectations that the Petro government will immediately remedy the economic and social problems facing Colombia are high. However, many of the challenges ahead are due to structural factors for which there is no quick fix.