COLOMBIA:
Black Communities
Organise in Country’s
Poorest Region
By Constanza Vieira and
Diana Cariboni
QUIBDÓ, Colombia, (IPS)
- During the "high
season" of popular
festivals in Colombia’s
Chocó region, "pregnant
girls as young as 13
start flowing in," says
a nursing assistant in
the obstetrics
department at the
hospital of the
provincial capital,
Quibdó.
The fiesta of San Pancho
-- as Saint Francis of
Assisi, the city’s
patron saint, is known
-- is a two-week
festival that begins on
Sept. 20, with
traditional music,
abundant drinking,
dancing and street
processions of comparsas
or conga bands through
the neighbourhoods.
Not long afterwards, "we
have around 50 cases of
abortion complications a
week," the nursing
assistant told IPS,
saying she had even seen
10-year-old girls with
complications from
back-street abortions.
(As in most of Latin
America, abortion is
illegal in Colombia
except in cases in which
the mother’s life is in
danger, the foetus is
badly deformed or the
pregnancy was a result
of rape.)
In Colombia’s Pacific
coast region, where
Chocó is located, the
proportion of young
women who got pregnant
between the ages of 15
and 19 grew from 17.5
percent in 1990 to 23
percent in 2000,
according to official
figures.
In the rundown public
hospital in Quibdó,
which carries the name
of the town’s patron
saint, there are only 26
beds, and many women
have to lie "on benches
or on the floor." In
addition, "there are
hardly any materials,"
said the nursing
assistant.
The maternal mortality
rate in the Chocó region
is the country’s
highest: 409 per 100,000
live births in 2001 --
more than four times the
national average.
The region also has some
of the worst national
indicators in terms of
poverty, malnutrition,
illiteracy, maternal and
child health, and gender
equality -- nearly all
of the areas covered by
the United Nations
Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs), adopted by
the international
community in 2000.
Years ago, in 1990, the
Journal of Tropical
Pediatrics published
"Women and Health in
Chocó, Colombia", a
study carried out
between 1979 and 1988.
It reported that the
average size of a family
in the province, one of
Colombia's poorest,
where 90 percent of
inhabitants are black
and most of the rest are
indigenous, was 7.5
children per woman, and
that women over 45 had
had an average of nine
pregnancies.
At that time, 22 percent
of households were
headed by women on their
own, and since women had
less access to land in
this rural region, the
female-headed households
"faced increased
economic risks."
Child mortality was
significantly higher in
families in which the
mother was illiterate,
and morbidity levels
were often higher among
women, with 43 percent
of women suffering from
vaginal discharge. The
rate of cervical cancer
was also very high.
Illiteracy rose from
19.9 percent in 1999 to
21.7 percent in 2003,
while the national
average went down in
that same period, to 7.6
percent in 2003.
In the 1980s and 1990s,
the black communities
along the Atrato river,
which crosses Chocó from
south to north,
organised themselves to
gain control over their
communal territories,
with the support of the
Catholic Church.
After a lengthy
constitutional and legal
battle, 120 communities
belonging to the
Asociación Campesina
Integral del Atrato (ACIA)
rural association
secured legal collective
property rights in 1997
to 800,000 hectares of
their traditional land.
How have things gone for
women since that
victory?
PARTICIPATING - IN THE
KITCHEN
It is noon in Puerto
Conto, a village on the
Atrato river, some 200
km from Quibdó. In the
parish church community
room, representatives of
ACIA communities discuss
how to make sustainable
use of the wealth
offered by the
surrounding jungle.
Only a handful of the 30
or so people taking part
in the meeting are
women.
"You don't see women
here, but they are over
there in the kitchen, in
charge of making the
food, so in one way or
another they are
participating," says Ana
Rosa Heredia, a member
of the ACIA High
Community Council’s
gender team.
So why can't they come
and listen to what is
being debated? "Because
they don't have time.
They have to make
breakfast and lunch,"
says Heredia, ticking
off their
responsibilities on her
fingers.
Because of problems with
the men? "Nooo," Heredia
and fellow gender team
member María del Socorro
Mosquera say in unison,
breaking out in
laughter.
The men used to tell
them to go to the
kitchen and cook, and to
take care of the
children. But today, "in
the fields, we work from
sunup to sundown, just
like they do."
Of course, "it’s clear
that the women are paid
less," says Heredia.
She also admits that
"there are problems at
home. In the afternoon
we’re taking care of the
kids and cooking, and
the men are always
resting. And when the
harvest money comes in,
there are men who don't
tell the women what they
spent it on, which leads
to fights."
"But we're waking up
now. We see there has to
be equality at home,
because a couple
consists of two people:
a man and a woman," she
adds.
The inequality can reach
the extent, says
Mosquera, that when the
man of the house is not
around, tragic events
happen, like one sick
woman who died because
she did not have her
husband’s permission to
go to the hospital.
"So it can't be just the
man who gives the
orders. But what can we
do to get equality of
rights? It has to be
through dialogue. We
have no other power,"
she says.
ACIA’s nine-member
gender equality team set
up a school to teach men
and women about "gender
equality, human rights,
peaceful coexistence and
organisational skills,"
says Heredia.
Every community has its
own internal rules. But
all of them provide for
sanctions for men who
mistreat women, and for
women who swear and say
rude things in public.
Long before the
international community
adopted the MDGs in 2000
to combat poverty and
inequality, ACIA was
taking steps in that
direction.
The community councils
outlined the top
priorities and needs of
their specific villages,
as part of ACIA’s
"ethnic development" or
empowerment plan.
"We drew up a list of
problems, and saw that
they were the same. The
villages that have a
teacher don't have a
school, the ones that
have a school have no
teacher, there is no
health post or nurse,
and there are no
medicines," says Julia
Mena, spokeswoman for
ACIA’s High Community
Council.
Chocó’s abundant natural
resources and its
strategic location, with
shores along both the
Pacific ocean and the
Caribbean sea and a
border with Panama, have
turned this jungle
paradise over the past
decade into one of the
bloodiest fronts in
Colombia’s nearly
five-decade civil war.
"In many communities,
the houses have been
damaged or destroyed by
the violence and forced
displacement," says MENA.
That is why the list of
needs includes a plan
for building and
repairing housing.
"The three of us are the
heads of our households.
The forced displacement
has put many of us in
that condition," says
Mosquera.
Between 1999 and 2006,
nearly 70,000 people in
Chocó were forcibly
displaced, of a total
440,000 inhabitants,
according to the
non-governmental
Consultancy on Human
Rights and Displacement
(CODHES).
Because the violence
"targets men more than
women, it’s important
for women to receive
training, because you’re
left alone with five or
seven kids and you don't
know how to survive all
by yourself," says
Mosquera.
That was the desperate
situation of one local
woman who approached
these IPS reporters in a
Western Union agency in
Quibdó, while she waited
for a few pesos sent by
a distant relative. Her
husband had been killed
by the far-right
paramilitaries in a
rural area near the
provincial capital.
She said she was not
even considering
returning to their home.
She had placed her five
children in different
homes, and was making a
living cleaning houses.
She asked us for money
and cast-off clothing,
and even for our
telephone numbers, so
she could call in case
of emergency.
What would have happened
if the communities had
not organised themselves
in ACIA? "We would no
longer exist, because
they would have taken
away everything we had.
We organised in defence
of our resources,
because they were
violating our rights.
There were people who
did understand that
their children would be
left without a thing,"
responds Heredia.
The leaders of ACIA
obtained support for
rural microenterprises
like "trapiches" or
small scale sugar mills
that produce hand-made
brown sugar in loaves,
rice threshing machines,
or small food
businesses.
"And we did it. You
would go to a meeting,
and 60 percent of the
people there were women.
And it was the women who
did the speaking, and
the men were fenced in.
One of them came in a
big boat from Quibdó to
pick up the women. ‘Get
ready, we're coming to
get you!’ And you could
see that all of the
women couldn't even fit
in the boats," she
recalls.
But the "ethnodevelopment"
or empowerment of
impoverished black
communities is running
against powerful
currents, funds are
scarce, and all
transportation is by
river. Although it is
expensive, it is the
only way to get around
in this roadless region.
Many microenterprises,
including the trapiches,
have been brought to a
standstill. To keep a
restaurant in Quibdó
open, "we took out a
loan of three million
pesos (1,500 dollars),"
says Mosquera.
So "because of a lack of
resources, the equality
‘unequalised’ us," she
concludes.
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