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During the past 30 years the Colombian armed conflict has generated more than 6 million victims. In northern Colombia there is a mountainous subzone known as the Montes de María, that experienced a brutal violence; there, a large amount of peasants, farmers, and artisans, all innocent civilians were tortured, assassinated or displaced during the conflict…

 

Estimated Figures of Colombian Armed Conflict Victims in the Montes de María.

Period Montes de María
Massacres 1993-2009 237
Homicides 1990-2009 10,162
Kidnappings 1996-2009 998
Displaced Individuals 2000-2009 209,690

Source:  Research by Semana Magazine and web portal “verdad abierta (open truth)”.

 

How did this happen?

There are several antecedents that are important to know in order to understand why in this zone the war took these dimensions. In the last 5 centuries, these are the 5 antecedents of violence determined what happened in the Montes de María during the last 30 years:

 

Violence Antecedent No.1: The genocide of its native inhabitants by the Spaniards in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

 

The Montes de Maria is a mountainous sub region in the Colombian Caribbean abundant in water, biodiversity and fertility, which led to its occupation by indigenous communities long before the arrival of the Spaniards in the sixteenth century. Archaeological excavations carried out in San Jacinto at the end of the last century, discovered ceramic pieces 6000 years old, currently exhibited in the Community Museum of San Jacinto, which prove the presence of sedentary groups with an agriculture developed at the same time as writing was emerging in Mesopotamia (Present-day Iraq) and the first settlers arrived to the Great Britain islands from the European continent.

 

From the arrival of Christopher Columbus to America and during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Europeans colonized the American continent. The Zenus, or Sinues, lived in the Montes de María. They were laborious farmers of cassava and corn and weavers of hammocks and cotton cloths. An interesting anecdote says that, when in 1509 some of its chiefs (known as caciques) were informed by the Spaniards that now their territory, by order of the Pope, belonged to the King of Spain, they replied “the pope must be drunk if he gives what is not his own and The King must be crazy because he asks for what belongs to others”. Brave response, even though it didn’t save them from the impact of European colonization that violently destroyed them with violence and diseases, such as smallpox, that Spaniards brought with them.

 

Violence Antecedent No. 2:  African slavery in America and the Cimarrones (African slaves at large) fighting for their freedom.

 

The Spaniards also brought blacks as slaves from Africa to compensate for the labor shortage caused by indigenous genocide. One of the main slave ports was established in Cartagena de Indias, less than 45 miles north of the Montes de Maria. Some slaves fought for their freedom and autonomy and fled inland in order to establish themselves in locations of difficult access where they could be autonomous. These escaped slaves are called Cimarrones and their towns are known as “palenques”. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there were 23 palenques in the Spanish province of Cartagena de Indias; 12 of which were located in the Montes de María. Some palenques were razed by Spaniard settlers, others survived through the centuries, as in the case of San Basilio de Palenque, which still today in 2016, exists 49 km from Cartagena and was the first free American village since 1716 (one century before the declaration of independence for most Latin American nations).

 

Violence Antecedent No. 3:  Waves of settlers that took land by force, concentrating it in a few hands.

 

In 1776, Antonio de la Torre y Miranda, in the name of the Spaniards and seeking to connect Cartagena with the savannas of Tolú (present-day Corozal) crosses the Montes de María, founding towns where he found towns. Thus founding: Ovejas, Nuestra Señora del Carmen, San Jacinto, and San Juan Nepomuceno, among others. From then on, and up to the present, for 240 years, waves of wealthy people have reached the Montes de Maria, occupying land either by buying it or taking it by force, displacing and abusing the indigenous people or their “mestizo” and “zambo” descendants.

 

  • At the end of the eighteenth century the wealthy Spaniards or their direct descendants (criollos), acquired the “natural” right to take land and exploit it as a result of founding those towns, using the inhabitants who lived in them as labor.
  • During the nineteenth century, especially after the independence wars and at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the area attracted more families who sought to expand their cattle ranches; including Cuban immigrants (who brought tobacco crops), Germans, Italians and people from the Ottoman Empire, with Turkish passports added to the miscegenation of this area

 

 

Twentieth-century countrymen in Colombia (and in the Montes de María) are the descendants of Native Americans, African slaves and white Europeans, who, although initially separated as if they were castes, were mixed into a poor and exploited peasantry, that has been displaced to marginal areas and must work the land that others have taken from them. (Fals Borda, 1975)

 

Some figures on poverty in the Montes de María:
Estimated population of the Montes de María: 596,914 inhabitants.
69% of the land in the Montes de María is concentrated in few hands.
66% of the population of the Montes de María do not have their basic needs met and 33% are in extreme poverty conditions.

 

Violence Antecedent No. 4:  The Cold War and the polarization of the world between US and USSR.

 

Since World War II, the US and the USSR became embroiled in a worldwide dispute over the imposition of their own political and economic ideology. Latin America, with the discontent of a large impoverished mass of people and with a very high concentration of land, was a breeding ground for the emergence of guerrillas who tried, by arms, to establish the Soviet model; as happened in Cuba in 1959. The Cuban case motivated in Colombia the emergence of several guerrillas in the 1960s and 1970s: M19, ERP, FARC, ELN, and the PLA in the upper Sinú and San George rivers basins.

 

In addition, during the 20th century, some of the first countrymen leagues in Latin America emerged in the Montes de María; these were associations that peacefully fought against the injustices suffered by the large countrymen population inflicted by the wealthy families who concentrated the great majority of the land and adopted a feudalist system of production, in which they charged the farmers to plant in their haciendas, and / or were contracted with very low salaries, besides selling them those same  products at very high prices in stores located in their estates.

 

In the 1990s, the guerrillas sabotaged, extorted, and kidnapped rich landlords and threatened and killed poor farmers without distinction; in their search to take over power by arms. The rich assembled their own armed platoons in order to defend their own economic and political interests (paramilitary groups); farmers ended up as defenseless victims of crossed fire between guerillas and paramilitary groups.

 

 

Violence Antecedent No. 5:  Drug trafficking and paramilitarism at the end of the 20th century in the Montes de María.

 

Colombia is world famous for producing and exporting drugs, and for the bloody consequences that this has generated in its history. This drug traffic created new fortunes (and strengthened some existing ones); this new wealthy social class that moves outside the law, permeates all levels and places of Colombian society, including the political class and expands throughout the national territory. In this scenario, the Montes de María region became a natural route for drug trafficking that found a seaport in the municipality of San Onofre in the Gulf of Morrosquillo.

 

Drug traffickers and landowners alike, as well as political leaders decided to create squads of armed men (paramilitaries) to militarily, politically and economically control the area of the Montes de María. These squads or paramilitary cells had among their functions:

 

  • Defend their bosses from guerilla sabotage, extortions and kidnappings.
  • To guard their private contractors commercial and / or political activities to guarantee sustained privileges for an economic and / or politically dominant class.
  • Imbue terror among countrymen so they would not fight for their right to decent work and land ownership.
  • To protect and / or carry out drug trafficking activities.

 

Thus, since the 1990s and during the first decade of this century, the systematic violation of human rights during the Colombian armed conflict in the Montes de María, through rapes, massacres, kidnappings and assassinations by guerrillas and paramilitary groups, in complicity with the Colombian government, ends up desolating the fields; hundreds of thousands of countrymen migrate to cities to be poorer than they already were in their own towns.

 

But THEY ARE COMING BACK HOME NOWADAYS!!!!

 

Some have returned to find that the land from where they were displaced now belong to other owners, that claim they purchased them legally from intermediaries; other have not yet return because of fear.

 

Even though the economic conditions have improved, the land continues to be clustered in just a few hands, there are municipalities like San Jacinto where there is not even water utility; many others have returned and figured out a way of rebuilding their homes and began farming or weaving again despite the trauma a war leaves behind.

 

Latinlán wants to help these individuals; when you buy Latinlán products, you support them!! Thank you for helping us help them!!! (aquí sale a ventana emergente, donar, comprar, visitar)

 

MONICA MARQUEZ
LATINLAN