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NEWS & LETTERS, January-February 2005Afro-Colombian fightEditors note: We print a NEWS & LETTERS interview by Brown Douglas with Rosa Elena Ruiz Echeverry, of the Kambiri Afro-Colombian Women's Network, when she was in Memphis for the Southern Human Rights Organizers Conference in December. * * * We have been organized as Black women fighting discrimination for a long time. In Chocó, where I live, 95% of us are Black and 5% are mestizo. The mestizo dominates. We end up living in misery and we don't have the opportunity to work. The municipality is the largest job provider, but the famous 550 Law has cut municipality jobs from 200 employees to 16! The 550 Law is a restructuring law that affects bankrupt departments and municipalities like ours and stops the little money that the government sent. In Mismina, my municipality, the unemployment is overwhelming. People are dying of hunger. Because we are miners, the foreign companies come and there is abundance for a short time, but when they leave everything returns to the way it was. Health care is dead. The children are dying of hunger and sickness. The doctors and medicine are so costly we try to survive with herbal remedies passed down from our ancestors. Chocó has always been ignored by the government even though recently Uribe (Colombia's president) has given a little aid but not enough. We women feel three discriminations: being poor, being Black, and being women. Now there is a fourth: the violence of being displaced. The plain truth in Chocó is that the liars that come to power are benefiting from the little money the government gives us. I ran for the municipality council but didn't win because of their political machine. Politics is beautiful, politics is global and social and we must participate. But the politics here is pure politiqueria (dirty politics) where the community leaders who can help our people are never given the opportunity. We need to analyze things and see the resources around us, to love them, and to use them in our favor. Not only those who come from outside have the right to use our resources, but we do too. We have even more right to them. The foreign companies come and stupefy us with their money. We're dependent on them and the government. What is more important is the state of our minds. We need to stop being slaves in our minds. That's what I tell the organizations and micro-enterprises I work with. |
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