CHOCO: GRIEVING, IN SOLIDARITY AND RESISTANCERUTA PACIFICA DE LAS MUJERES DE CHOCO
REGARDING RECENT EVENTS IN BOJAYA

Once more, we appeal to you today showing our solidarity and to express the pain we feel as a people in our march for the community of Choco as we confront the violence that took place this last May 2nd in Vigia del Fuerte and Bojaya, where more than 100 people died, the majority of whom were children, women and the elderly, and where a considerable number of people have also disappeared. This is a vulnerable sector of the population who, of course, should be protected by International Humanitarian Law. However, instead of receiving help and protection, they are targets for cross-fire between two factions in confrontation over a land dispute, land which historically and by rights belongs to the indigenous and black rural communities.

What happened at Bojaya is unspeakable, indescribable and even in the context of war, the pain and suffering the civil society has already suffered had not yet come to this extreme of cruelty and extermination. In the presence of today’s scenario in all Colombia and especially in the Department of Choco, we ask what is the role of the civilian population in our country? What are the alternatives for the people’s organizations, labor movements, women’s and other community groups, seeing that we are being attacked with prior warning and the State continues to be insensitive and indifferent to the murder of those of us who neither take any part in the war nor benefit financially from it. As a society, we are daily becoming more and more accustomed to terror, to the fear of threats, because they are our daily bread or even because they are the only source of work for our young people, who, lacking other opportunities, join in with one or another of the armies in the region. Unfortunately, we are facing a conflict that will supposedly lead to peace. Or, as the warring factions would have it, all that has happened and that will happen is necessary in order to wipe out the problems that currently afflict Colombia.

This is the reality of Choco and many departments that are being affected by the armed conflict and social upheaval. The events in Bojaya have left more than 100 dead, 100 wounded and a people yanked from its roots and left totally desperate and miserable. This Department is dying and will continue to die for lack of resources for a good education and because of not having an opportunity for a life with dignity, which is the right of all human beings who live in this country. Abandonment of its duties by the State goes beyond the war. This time the national government has stated that they were not able to get to the spot where the events took place because they had no guarantees. Gentlemen of the government, you cannot classify yourselves as victims; you were elected to guarantee the life and property of the people of Colombia. Your role is to provide us with guarantees for a democratic society.
You, gentlemen of the government, have not fulfilled your obligations to the people of Colombia. You have given Choco no guarantees for a hospital to take care of the citizens of this community. It is a crime of State that even one person should die from malaria, or a snake bite or a hemorrhage… all conditions that when treated in time need not lead to death. The armed conflict has made this all too real. Choco is in mourning and this event replete with pain and death serves to define the scope of the war that involves all of us more and more with each passing day. Pain and grief have brought us together and now give us the strength and fortitude to take a firm position in the face of this war and as MUJERES EN RUTA PACIFICA DE CHOCO, now, more than ever before, we see with clarity the violence that is increasingly becoming more and more a part of our daily lives. Most certainly these events affect us deeply, but this pain is also an opportunity to not succumb to terror but to grow as human beings in solidarity and to continue building our society, our resistance and our County.

7 May 2002, Quibido-Choco
RUTA PACIFICA DE LAS MUJERES – CHOCO
Translated by
Trisha Novak, USA