Essential Afro-Latino/ Caribbean Current Events

[Yehuda]

Delegations from Kenya and the Congo visit the African, American and Caribbean Knowledge Center in Caracas

Written by Orlando Gallardo on 10/12/2020. Posted in Noticias

This Thursday, the delegations of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Kenya that participated as international observers in the parliamentary elections held on December 6 in Venezuela visited the African, American and Caribbean Knowledge Center to exchange ideas on the historical relations between the peoples of Africa and the South American nation.

At the institution, located in Caracas, the African visitors were received by its director, Reinaldo Bolívar, who gave them a tour of the facilities and shared his impressions regarding South-South Cooperation, promoted by Commander Hugo Chávez and continued by the President Nicolás Maduro, to strengthen the brotherhood of Venezuela with the countries of the African continent.

Present for Kenya were members of the Committee for the Constitutional Implementation Oversight Committee of the National Assembly, Japheth Kiplangat Mutai and Bernard Otieno Okoth, as well as Mary Luka Lemerele, member of the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee of the National Assembly of that country; while the Secretary General of the Congolese Communist Party, Sylvere Boswa, participated for the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

South-South Cooperation offers vital elements so that developing countries and transition economies do not depend solely on capitalist programs. The relations between South America and Africa — the so-called countries of the Global South — have been consolidated under this premise, all of this strengthened since the arrival of the Bolivarian Revolution.

Delegations from Kenya and the Congo visit the African, American and Caribbean Knowledge Center in Caracas

 

[Yehuda]

 

[Yehuda]

A Musical Portal to Africa in the Caribbean

The Colombian artist Jim C. Nedd and the Italian duo Invernomuto examine the exhuberant Caribbean musical culture of the “Picó” in a documentary film which is currently being shown in London. Will Furtado spoke to Nedd about his project, Caribbean music, and multiple identities in the Caribbean.

Jim C. Nedd, Fiesta en guacherna, Barranquilla, 2020. Installation view at Auto Italia, London, 2020. Photography: Lucy Parakhina. Courtesy of Auto Italia.

by Will Furtado
Mon 23 Nov, 2020

The identity of the lived and imagined Caribbean is composed in great part of African elements that manifest manifoldly. Several of these are present in Picó, the musical culture developed around the Colombian Caribbean sound system. In 2017, Colombian artist Jim C. Nedd co-directed a documentary film about this subject together with Invernomuto, an Italian artist duo working primarily with sound and image to explore what remains of subcultures. The final result is currently being shown at London gallery Auto Italia, titled PICO: Un parlante de África en América. In the 60-minute film, Pico culture takes center stage as the portal that connects Afro-Colombians, especially those who come from contexts that still live the colonial legacy of oppression in the marginal areas of Cartagena and Barranquilla. We spoke to Jim C. Nedd about growing up with Caribbean music, the difference between DJ and “Picotero”, and the conflation of multiple identities in the Caribbean in relation to Africa.

C&AL: How did you conduct your research for the film?

Jim C. Nedd: I started listening to music and recording tapes from the radio when I was probably around eight years old. My siblings and I were always encouraged to engage with the arts in any possible form, especially with music as an after-school practice. The main genre in my town is Vallenato, which was echoing across the city 24/7, as well as Salsa, Merengue and Ranchera. But for the first time my identity was explained through the codes that belonged to Champeta. I was fascinated by it, I remember Champeta as the coolest and freshest sound I ever heard. I experienced it through the work of Kevin Flores, El Sayayin, Mr Black, and many others… So I’d say that my personal research on Picó started with my memories.

I vividly remember the social panorama around parrandas [musical parties] by the end of the 1990s, and how the community used to collaborate organically in order to design a space for celebration. Just picture a whole neighborhood hosting a family gathering. Simultaneously I recall clearly how all of this co-existed within a tense atmosphere, set by a armed conflict in Colombia that never officially ended, which left many deaths behind. That’s how it was on a daily basis, a sharp line between life and death; festivity and mourning.

Invernomuto & Jim C. Nedd, Pico: Un parlante de África en América (HD film, 61 minutes, 2017). Film still. Courtesy of the artists.

C&AL: What is the difference between a DJ and a so-called “Picotero”? And why are these distinctions important in the wider international context you’re exploring in the film?

JCN: Both DJ and Picotero bring to the audience a personal discourse, signatures and perhaps also a language expressed in a mixture of imagery and identity. But the differences between the two jobs are essentially communitarian and functional. I’d say that the Picotero is an extension of the crowd and is very aware of the desires for re-tracing their own history, playing out a ritual, based primarily on songs that are part of a lost heritage. Apart from “Música Africana” and “Música Caribeña”, the contemporary market and its mechanism are not much considered in the Picó community, probably because they speak a language that does not speak about Afro-Colombians and our role as peers.

“History is a living thing not a body of facts” (C.L.R. James)

In my personal opinion history needs to be fed by those who embody its heritage, when this process is interrupted is just a question of time before its core vanishes leaving space for cultural predators equipped with passports that allow them to shuffle between different world traditions participating in its destruction and never in its recovery.

C&AL: In the film it’s suggested that African music has a specific accent, for instance a guitar can sound like a drum. What are the other specificities of music originating from Africa that has allowed it to shape so many music genres in the Americas?

JCN: Speaking about all genres in the Americas isn’t easy, as every single settlement has a specific origin and of course is not just “African”. It’s very important to keep in mind that one of the most drastic consequences of the African diaspora was the structural destruction of languages of all kinds. Even after the “abolition” of slavery rituals and music gatherings with African music instruments were still prohibited. Through history, Black music developed in the outskirts as an urgent vehicle for information adapting to eras as a liquid resource that survived all kinds of comportamental rules imposed by white colonisers and not only in the Americas. The guitar sounds like a drum because it needed to survive in some way.

Invernomuto & Jim C. Nedd, Pico: Un parlante de África en América (HD film, 61 minutes, 2017). Film still. Courtesy of the artists.

C&AL: At one point it’s said that Picó is Colombian not African. How does that relate to the title of the film?

JCN: The title of the film is taken from a sentence said by Dairo Barriosnuevo, a painter and historian based in Barranquilla, who explained Picó as an African soundbox living in the American territory.

The Picó is a portal, able to connect Afro-Colombians with a lost world from which they still feel a strong sense of belonging, and the key for that portal is the music, even if the words expressed in the songs are not fully understandable the sonic language is still perceptible.

C&AL: How do you see the acknowledgement of African origin in relation to the conflation of all identities on the Colombian Caribbean coast?

JCN: I don’t think there are any contradictions about identitarian discourses. Rarely identity has anything to do with genetic or science. People from la Costa, the Colombian Caribbean region, chose what to believe, because colonizers destroyed their heritage and traditions as a technique of displacement. The “descendencia Africana” is something that belongs to the revolutionary centers of the Caribbean, those that fought the oppressors – that’s why certain non-Black people from Cartagena and Barranquilla also identify as African descendants.

PICO: Un parlante de África en América continues at Auto Italia, London, UK, until 13 December 2020

Auto Italia South East

Interview by Will Furtado

A Musical Portal to Africa in the Caribbean

 

[Yehuda]

Truth and reparations in the face of ethnic genocide and Afro-descendant ethnocide

I have asked the Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence, and Non-Repetition (Comisión de Esclarecimiento de la Verdad, CEV) to address the ethnic genocide against Afro-Colombian communities and the subsequent ethnocide, recovering these categories of international law

By: Piedad Córdoba Ruíz | November 25, 2020

Four years after the Peace Agreement, the Afro-descendant people and the victims demand truth and reparations

Four years after the signing of the Final Peace Agreement between the Colombian State and the FARC-EP, non-compliance and perfidy on the part of the National Government have prevailed, promoting the continuation of the armed conflict and even its intensification in various territories of the country. The definitive overcoming of the war and the construction of the necessary complete peace requires from the beginning a process of truth and reparations beyond the courts, which begins with the recognition of the complexity of the conflict, its historical causalities and its various forms of victimization that goes beyond not only the current regulations of Law 1448, but must also include non-armed forms of impact on communities.

From this point of view I have proposed to the CEV to address the ethnic genocide against Afro-descendant communities and the subsequent ethnocide, recovering these categories of international law. The acts of victimization and disruption against this community are well known and documented, so there will hardly be any unheard-of data. By systematizing the abundant information on the pain of black people, my contribution to the truth in this case seeks to overcome characterizing this genocide that has not ceased as a mere “humanitarian crisis” and seeks its recognition as a serious war crime. Consequently, I ask the Comprehensive System of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Non-repetition (Sistema Integral de Verdad, Justicia, Reparación y No Repetición, SIVJRNR) to declare the Black, Raizal, Palenquero and Afro-descendant peoples as collective victims of the extensive armed social conflict, so that their rights to their autonomy and sovereignty, to truth, justice and collective reparations are guaranteed and comprehensive, as guarantees for non-repetition and the achievement of national reconciliation within the framework of a stable and lasting peace.

President Duque is wrong for trying to look for a scapegoat. Drug trafficking is not the sole genesis of all problems in Colombia, nor is it the essence of the cause of the current violence. This reductionist and simplistic vision will not let us put a stop to the massacres; if we insist on this stubborn punitive anti-drug policy dictated by the US DEA, we risk perpetuating violence. The case of Afro-Colombian communities shows how before the insertion of our country in the transnational market of illegal drugs, historical exclusion and structural racism are part of the historical causes of political and social violence, and that only their removal can be the basis for a stable and lasting peace. Where Duque only sees bandits, what operates is capitalist expansion and accumulation by dispossession of territories that for centuries have formed part of the periphery of the economic model, but which are now seeing their violent expropriation for the profit of legal and illegal mafias. Where people see isolated events in Afro-descendant territories described with euphemisms, I see a hidden genocide, as even today the African diaspora continues to be historically neglected due to colonial slavery.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948 and the Rome Statue of 1998 are international legal instruments that criminalize genocide, establishing a framework of protection for national, ethnic, racial or religious groups. The definition of genocide in the aforementioned United Nations Convention (1948) and ratified by the Statute of the International Criminal Court is as follows:

Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. (UN, 1948).

It should be noted that genocide has serious legal implications since it forces those responsible to be punished, it formally recognizes the crimes committed with arms or with the legal order and make reparations to the victims. The Colombian State as subscriber to these international norms is obliged to investigate and punish those responsible for the victimizing acts. Thus, it is established in judgment C-291 of 2007, the Constitutional Court gives the rank of jus cogens to the prohibition of genocide. Likewise, judgment C-488 of 2009 incorporates the 1948 Convention and article 6 of the Rome Statute into the constitutionality block.

In this regard, I just want to underline the ruling of the Trial Chamber of the Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia, the Blagojevic and Jokic case in particular, regarding the intention to destroy a human group typical of genocide, it was established that the purpose must be the destruction of the group as a separate and distinct entity. It is not about the physical elimination of all its members but about their disintegration as a community through violence directed against them.

In 1981 Unesco published the San José Declaration on Ethnocide and Ethnodevelopment in Latin America, where it is clearly expressed that:

Ethnocide means that an ethnic group, collectively or individually, is denied its right to enjoy, develop and transmit its own culture and its own language. This implies an extreme form of massive violation of human rights, particularly the right of ethnic groups to respect their cultural identity, as established by numerous declarations, pacts and conventions of the United Nations and its specialized agencies, as well as various regional intergovernmental organizations and numerous non-governmental organizations.

We declare that ethnocide, that is, cultural genocide, is a crime under international law, just like genocide condemned by the United Nations Convention for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide since 1948.” (San José Declaration, Costa Rica, December 1981).

Genocide kills the peoples physically, ethnocide kills them in spirit. Both in one case and the other, it is undoubtedly about death, different and complementary ways of death. According to the above, I consider that what has been suffered by the black, Afro-descendant, Raizal and Palenquera communities correspond to an ethnic genocide given the systematic physical violence inflicted on their members and territories seeking their disappearance as a people. Derived from this physical extermination, they have been the victims of an ethnocide that seeks the immaterial and spiritual extermination of the Afro-descendant culture and identity. The are plenty of facts that corroborate these international crimes.

The authorities accept that atrocities were committed, but they reject the fact that there was a systematic intention to destroy Afro-descendant peoples. Afro-Colombian victims are recognized individually, but the relationship between their victimization and their ethnic belonging is denied. Continuing to characterize the plight of the Afro-Colombian black people as a simple humanitarian crisis is problematic because it refers to an episodic event and without perpetrators, almost as if it was accidental. It does not mention sixty and more years of armed conflict, appearing as an act without systematicity, a serious error that the Colombian State continues to make. The transgressions of the aforementioned fundamental guarantees, the violation of human rights and crimes against humanity, have not occurred in an isolated and sporadic manner, but on the contrary, it has been a systematic and continuous practice against Afro-descendant communities and peoples.

In Colombia, the process of accumulation by dispossession includes the expropriation of the territories where Afro-Colombian communities live, which guides the genocide and ethnocide against this people, since their appropriation and relationship with the territory is at the same time an essential part of their identity and the denial of the process of expansion of capitalist accumulation. Stopping genocide and ethnocide is about the protection of ethnic minorities, the defense of their territories, their cultures, their institutions, their own rules and procedures. Stopping ethnic genocide and ethnocide implies putting a stop to the deranged extractivist economic model.

Territoriality, the right to defend the territory, the formation of the territory, the knowledge associated with health, upbringing, socialization, the management of rivers, the sea and the mountains, the social, spiritual and productive dynamics of Afro-descendant families creates not only a social fabric, but the territories are the matrix of cultural practices of well-being from their own point of view, understood as the satisfaction of needs from the use and management of the environment for ethno-development, knowledge about natural resources and its uses. This is why the defense of the territory is fundamental against deterritorialization and ethnocide, driven by big capital and the State, which puts at risk the sustainability of the cultural traits that define the particularity of Afro-descendants as a people. The territory as a basis of identity and cultural integrity includes cultural, natural and material dimensions; it is the source of life, of physical existence and of Afro-spiritual creation, it constitutes our essential nucleus to advance the struggle for self-determination as a people, with autonomy of self-government, as a black nation.

I could go on and on enumerating the profuse cases in which this ethnic genocide has taken place, always driven by the capitalist ambition of accumulation by dispossession to appropriate Afro-descendant territories in accordance with their projects. It is only worth remembering as an example among so many episodes of violence and dispossession against Afro-descendant people the role of Maderas del Darién–Pizano S.A. in Chocó since the beginning of the last century, the incursion of the palm oil megaproject in Jiguamiandó and Curvaradó, the paramilitary actions in the Montes de María, including San Basilio de Palenque, the dispossession of the Afro-Colombian communities in Cesar and La Guajira for the benefit of Drummond Company's coal mining, the so-called process of Colombianization and expropriation of the Raizal community in San Andrés and Providencia, the link between the port of Buenaventura and the overflow of violence in the city, or the disgraceful land theft of Chambacú, Cartagena.

Faced with this and so many episodes, Colombia and the world need to know the truth. It is unethical for a country to try to overcome the armed conflict and structural racism when tributes and apologies are still paid to the slaveholders, and the architects of the Afro-descendant genocide and ethnocide are kept hidden in impunity. Not coincidentally, the official university of this government honors a slave driver without causing greater outrage.

Using this platform, I ask the Special Jurisdiction of Peace to open the macro case for ethnic genocide and ethnocide. I also invite participants and direct witnesses of this holocaust against Afro-Colombian communities to appear before the CEV. I request that the CEV, within its constitutional prerogative, call the following people to tell the truth about ethnic genocide and ethnocide: Fernando Araújo Perdomo and the Araújo Rumié family, Luis Alberto Moreno and others involved in the Chambacú de Indias S.A. consortium; Reinaldo Escobar de la Hoz, Luis Germán Cuartas Carrasco, Víctor Buitrago Sandoval, Álvaro Acevedo González, Víctor Manuel Henríquez Velásquez, Javier Ochoa Velásquez, Juan Diego Trujillo Botero and Jorge Alberto Cadavid Marín, as well as United States citizens Dorn Robert Wenninger, John Paul Olivo and Charles Dennis Keiser; all linked to the case of Chiquita Brands International funding paramilitary groups; Jens Mesa Dishington, president of Fedepalma and Fredy Rendón Herrera, El Alemán, the former paramilitary commander of the AUC's Bloque Elmer Cárdenas; Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, Jorge 40, former paramilitary commander of Bloque Norte; former Senator Juan Carlos Martínez Sinisterra; Maderas del Darién–Pizano S.A. and Jean Claude Bessudo, the owner of Aviatur; retired generals and eyewitnesses to the Special Jurisdiction of Peace Rito Alejo del Río and Publio Hernán Mejía, as well as the management of Drummond–Prodeco.

Truth and reparations in the face of ethnic genocide and Afro-descendant ethnocide

 

[Yehuda]

27 years of black dreams, white nightmare

27 years ago the Afro-Colombian black population dreamed of what for a certain sector of society is a nightmare. A country where it is possible to be and think through diversity. Law 70 of 1993 was born, and with it community dreams and individual nightmares.

By Harrinson Cuero | September 01, 2020

Colombia lived at the end of the last century a time of dreams as exciting as the current one is disappointing. 30 years ago, the peace agreement with the M-19, and a sector of the EPL (Ejército Popular de Liberación, Popular Liberation Army), and the discussions within the National Constituent Assembly, were the subject of conversation in all corners of the national territory.

This social effervescence is the result of the 1991 political constitution, just months after Congress ratified ILO-convention 169, with which the State committed itself to recognize, respect, protect and promote the rights of indigenous and black peoples in Colombia.

In 1992, the Rio de Janeiro summit took place, and in it concern for the environment and the need to put a stop to developmentalism became universal. The search for a sustainable human life model gives life to the Convention on Biological Diversity where the important role of indigenous and tribal communities is recognized.

It is in this international context — favorable for the rights of peoples and the protection of strategic ecosystems — and as a result of strong pressure from black communities throughout the country, that the regulatory law of transitory article 55 emerged on August 27, 1993, also known as law 70 or law of the black communities.

This law has allowed through its regulation — especially Decree 1745 of 1995 — the legal recognition of the lands that these communities have occupied for centuries, but that the State defined as vacant lots.

Today, thanks to this law, we have about 6 million hectares titled to 204 Community Councils, several spaces for political participation (including two seats in the Congress of the Republic), and a series of advances in education, health among others. But these advances are clouded by the low levels of quality of life of the Afro-Colombian population.

But with the land titling, violence also came, and with the spaces for political participation, division has come within our communities. The law has recognized our rights, but has not forced the State to protect, respect and guarantee them effectively.

The rights triad protected by law 70 and what is hidden by denial

The cultural or collective identity is what guides a people towards civilization, towards the development of the potential of each of its members. And that is precisely what Law 70 seeks, the strengthening of the collective identity of the black people of African descent in Colombia. The people who led the formulation of Law 70 were clear about the above and that is why they labeled the triad of rights that they sought to protect with Law 70 “TIA”: Territory, Identity and Autonomy. TIA.

The cultural identity of the black people requires territory and autonomy for its strengthening. Rights enshrined in chapters III, IV, V and VII of Law 70 that the State has not wanted to regulate, and which deal precisely with access, land use and the sustainable administration of natural resources and mining activity. It also develops guarantees for the economic and social development model that is typical of black communities. Of the above, only chapter III has had development.

From 1993 to date there have been 27 years of denial of the rights of the Afro-Colombian black people, and of non-compliance with the constitution and the international obligations enshrined in ILO-convention 169. It is 27 years of promise, of dreams and frustrations for the black people of this country.

President Santos in the autonomous congress of black people held in Quibdó in 2013 assured that “several chapters of Law 70, those related to environmental issues, mining issues, the development of communities — as has been said here — are waiting to be regulated and I want to assure you, and you must commit to me, Vice Minister Oscar Gamboa, that we are going to finish this regulation. We have been here for 20 years, but we are going to finish it before the end of this year. That I assure you”. But it was just one of the many broken promises of the last presidents since César Gaviria to date.

The real power factors in Colombia are afraid of losing their privileges if blacks people wake up in political and economic consciousness. Those miscounted four million blacks would stop begging for crumbs in the cities and towns, and would become an engine of economic, political and social change for the country. Such fear is shared with other postcolonial elites such as the United States, which has caused the death of great leaders such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and the persecution of Angela Davis, among others.

As a result of this fear, and in the absence of real guarantees for the enjoyment of TIA rights, the macabre alliance of political “businessmen”, drug traffickers and armed groups at their service have turned the territories of black communities into areas of armed dispute, or war zones. Territory and Autonomy are real power and the establishment is afraid of that power.

Territory and Autonomy is the power to create an economic model at the service of the community, and prevent the community from positioning itself at the service of bankers. It is a power that can privilege life instead of things. That is, the production of wealth for the needs of the people and not for the luxury of a few stingy privileged. It is a power for coexistence and not for the competition generated by the application of every man for himself.

Territory and Autonomy is the power to guarantee culture and diversity as the only way towards peaceful coexistence. It is the power to mediate conflicts and to arrange solutions in the face of differences instead of the imposition by brute force of arms against each other.

Territory and Autonomy is power for new approaches in education, education for personal growth, for the development of human potential. An education that instead of workers, forms human beings. Education that takes young people out of the conflict instead of pushing them towards armed groups. Education for a social and community being and not to be a soldier, paramilitary or guerrilla.

Territory and Autonomy, is the power that the establishment fears and that is why it opposes it. And these few buttons they pressed are a demonstration of this fear:

• Reversing the land title of the La Boquilla community in Cartagena is the result of fear and pressure from hotel managers who want to deprive the black communities in the Caribbean of the few lands they still have.
• The refusal to recognize the rights of the Buenaventura communities in the territories reclaimed from the sea listed by the port and tourist “entrepreneurs” who want more ports and tourist piers. The low-tide black communities that have resisted all types of attacks since the beginning of the century, the legal attack that declared them occupiers of State territories, the technician who forced them to evict for occupying areas at risk from natural disasters, the economist that offered them overcrowding in boxes of precarious social interest and work in exchange for voluntarily leaving and finally, the most violent of the attacks, the military man who has expelled all those they have not been able to assassinate, make away with or scare off.
  
• This fear is also evident in the lack of guarantees for the effective return of the lands usurped by oil palm plantations and colonizers in the Alto Mira y Frontera Collective Territory, and to guarantee the exercise of authority and government of the Community Council submitted by drug traffickers, guerrillas and paramilitary groups.
  
• The community of La Toma in Buenos Aires also knows the effects of resisting the legal dispossession of the mining companies. There they have been left in the middle of the crossfire after demanding from the State the right that it was trying to take from them by handing over their territory to the mining company AngloGold Ashanti.

These, among hundreds of other cases, of which the Constitutional Court indicates some in order 005 of 2009, are the expression of a dispute that has as a backdrop the refusal of the State as a whole, to regulate Chapters IV, V and VII of Law 70, key chapters for the real exercise of rights to the territory of black communities.

Dreams remain but coordination is the main challenge

From the official spaces, AMUNAFRO (Asociación de Municipios con población Afrocolombiana, Association of Municipalities with an Afro-Colombian population) headed by Óscar Gamboa, insists in establishing horizontal dialogues between the national government and the black local governments. This is how on June 19, in the midst of the most complicated scenario generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the “Dialogue with the Association of Mayors of Municipalities with an Afro-descendant Population” was held between AMUNAFRO and the Presidency of the Republic with the accompaniment by the director of the IDB, African-American congressman Gregory Meeks, the ambassador of the United States, among other high officials of the State. In this meeting moderated by Gamboa, and with a large presence of mayors, issues related to the threat of COVID-19 and other key issues for Afro-Colombians were discussed.

On the other hand, authorities and ethnic-territorial organizations — linked to CONPA (Consejo Nacional de Paz Afrocolombiano, National Afro-Colombian Peace Counci) and cornered by the violent people at the service of drug trafficking and macro-businesses — are advancing in strategies that allow maintaining pressure for the regulation of Law 70 as the only possible way to live in the territories. At the same time, from the Ethnic Commission for Peace and the Defense of Territorial Rights, progress is being made in the consolidation of a route that allows the materialization of the Enough Humanitarian Agreement (Acuerdo Humanitario Yá – AHY): a desperate mandate in the face of situations of violence as dramatic as those experienced in territories of the Pacific and the Andes in Cauca.

These two sectors are obliged to coordinate and join others in strategies that advance in the same direction, given the determination of the government of the Democratic Center to destroy the Peace Agreement and force the guerrillas to take up arms in the stateless territories: the ethnic minority territories.

The civic strike movement in Buenaventura and Quibdó, and the Women's Movement for Life and the Defense of Ancestral Territories led by Francia Márquez, are two examples of the ability to coordinate and of the tenacity of black people for the defense of the territory and autonomy. “Let's go against racism and the pressure of the powerful mining and port companies, damn it!”, they shout from Quibdó and Buenaventura. “Because the territory is life and life is not for sale!”, say black women from all corners of the country.

“In the long run you can always even up the score”, they say in the Pacific. 27 years ago, black communities won one of the most important games of the last century in the state game. Now, it is up to its young players to shuffle the cards well and come back with a better strategy so that this dream becomes a reality for the allegedly 4 million Afro-Colombian blacks.

Because the people do not surrender, damn it!

27 years of black dreams, white nightmare

 

[Yehuda]

 

[Yehuda]

Maduro waves election victory, leaving ‘Lima Group’ with nothing to show!

By Earl Bousquet | December 9, 2020 12:36 pm

Saint Lucia, Guyana and Haiti on Monday joined the Dominican Republic as the only Caribbean members of the anti-Venezuela ‘Lima Group’ at the Organization of American States (OAS) — the USA and Canada, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay and Peru — to reject the results of Sunday’s Venezuela National Assembly elections.

No plausible reasons were offered, other than the usual outright collective rejection of President Nicolas Maduro and his ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) – nothing new, as Washington and Toronto had, long before Election Day, joined London to condemn the poll.

What’s somewhat strange is that that this failed hostile US policy that has taken tens of thousands of lives and affected tens of millions, continues to be supported by some CARICOM member-states — even during the current Washington transition, despite outgoing President Trump having lost the election — and before the incoming Biden-Harris administration even outlines it’s Venezuela or Caribbean policy.

As if to give the departing US president a parting gift of fulsome praise while mourning the loss of his failed policy, the four Caribbean nations joined Washington and Toronto to again spit on the latest Venezuela election results.

But could they have been spitting in the sky?

Only Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, St. Vincent & The Grenadines and Surinam have dared to publicly oppose Washington’s naked external interference in the internal affairs of Venezuela at the OAS, while Barbados, Bahamas, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Kitts & Nevis and Trinidad & Tobago maintained throughout 2020 the usual conga-line approach of engaging in safe social and verbal distancing from Venezuela votes at the Washington institution, by absence or abstention.

With four against, four for and six neither for nor against, CARICOM remains divided down-the-middle in what’s become a regional political 4X4 relay on Venezuela, but with nothing to show for dumping a fellow Caribbean nation that has been nothing but good to them all – bar none, especially Haiti.

Venezuela’s Petro Caribe initiative saw Caracas provide hundreds of millions of American dollars’ worth of fuel and petroleum products on profitable long-term, low-interest rates, to reduce their energy bills; the ALBA-TCP Alliance doled out tens of millions more in direct social and economic assistance to CARICOM states in identified areas of need; and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) proved to be a formidable bastion of regional multinational economic, political and social thought and action.

Venezuela has been nothing but good to Saint Lucia since 2000, especially vis-à-vis the USA, when it comes to practical delivery of benefits that directly touch people.

The Caribbean island that gave birth to Venezuela’s National Independence Hero and former Governor of Eastern Venezuela, Jean Baptiste Bideau — also a naval captain and confidante of Simon Bolivar who once saved Bolivar’s life and died fighting in defense of Venezuela’s sovereignty against Spanish invaders — benefitted greatly from Venezuela under both Presidents Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro between 2000 and 2016.

More than US $10 Million was directly donated to Saint Lucia through the ALBA Bank for funding social programs between 2011 and 2016, with thousands of free laptop computers for students and teachers and dozens of scholarships for local students as the island started the transition to computerization of education.

Venezuela also donated and constructed three brand new bridges (in Dennery and Vieux Fort) and enlarged the major Sans Souci Bridge in Castries, while also assuring constant support for the Saint Lucia School of Music – and much more…

All was well between Castries and Caracas until regime change visited Castries and Washington, respectively, in 2016 — and especially after President Trump entered the White House in January 2017.

Saint Lucia has since 2016 incrementally increased its isolation of and political distancing from Venezuela, not accepting the credentials of the new ambassador, literally hand-cuffing its Embassy’s ability to operate here and eventually causing Caracas to close shop in Saint Lucia under the collective local effects of the host government’s unwillingness to dance and the deadly US sanctions.

Then, earlier this year, Saint Lucia quietly pulled-out of the ALBA group.

Monday’s statement is the most direct spit-in-the-face for Venezuela from the Caribbean member-states involved that benefitted greatly from Caracas’ regional largesse when times were better.

They have decided to stick to President Trump’s line of march, even in the face of this being his last stand as US Commander-in-Chief.

But Washington’s political allies in Venezuela having boycotted the poll long before a date was even set, Sunday’s election turned out to be much more participatory than the US presidential poll on November 3: more than 14,000 candidates registered to run for 277 contested seats, representing 107 political parties – 98 opposing and only nine supporting Maduro.

With 83% counted electronically shortly after polls closed on Sunday night, the PSUV-led Grand Patriotic Alliance had officially won 67% — enough to guarantee a sizeable majority in the National Assembly.

The US has tried unsuccessfully to use the refugee crisis that its sanctions manufactured to drive a wedge between Venezuela and its neighboring CARICOM friends, especially Trinidad & Tobago.

The Trump White House, in less than three years, imposed over 150 sanctions to force Venezuela into political submission through everything from starvation to denial of medical supplies – and long before COVID-19 — while at the same time dividing CARICOM through selective invitations to private presidential summits and parleys, in exchange for security and investment promises that have yet again failed to bear anything but bitter lemons.

With President Trump still in office until January 20, Venezuela cannot say, even think, that its election victory has pulled it out of the woods.

But while still under the US radar, Maduro has Sunday’s impressive widely-observed election results to wave (which cannot be erased by mere expected condemnation), while the CARICOM nations that condemned it still have absolutely nothing to show.

Maduro waves election victory, leaving ‘Lima Group’ with nothing to show!

 

[Yehuda]

Statement of the 18th ALBA-TCP Summit in the 16th anniversary of its foundation

Written by Joselyn Ariza on 14/12/2020. Posted in News

1. The Heads of State and Government and the Heads of Delegations of the Member States and guests of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – Peoples’ Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP), meeting virtually on December 14, 2020, to commemorate the 16th Anniversary of the Alliance, by signing this Declaration, we renew our commitment to strengthening this political conciliation mechanism founded by Commander-in-Chief Hugo Chávez Frías and Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz.
2. We vindicate the ideals of Bolivar, Marti, San Martin, Sucre, O’Higgins, Petion, Morazan, Sandino, Maurice Bishop, Garvey, Tupac Katari, Barolina Sisa, Chatoyer, and other leaders of Latin American and Caribbean independence, as historical and cultural memory which tie us in an instrument of unity and development for our peoples and governments, based on dialogue, cooperation, solidarity, complementarity, justice, sovereignty and independence.
3. We confirm our commitment to a genuinely Latin American and Caribbean integration, allowing us to face together the desire for imperialist domination and growing threats to regional peace and stability, multilateralism and the principles of international law, including respect for the self-determination of peoples, sovereignty, territorial integrity, non-interference in the internal affairs of States; as well as the prohibition of the use and threat of the use of force and the peaceful resolution of disputes, endorsed in the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.
   
4. We stress the need to strengthen the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) as a genuine mechanism for regional political concertation based on the principle of unity in diversity. We recognize the work of the Pro Tempore Presidency of Mexico to revitalize our Community with a commitment to continue to support its management.
   
5. We congratulate the people of Bolivia on the strong victory of MAS-IPSP, celebrate Bolivia’s reinstatement to ALBA-TCP, and confirm our strong support for President-elect Luis Arce Catacora and Vice President-elect David Choquehuanca.
6. We underline the conscience of the Bolivian people who regained democracy through free and democratic elections, after an abrupt interruption of the democratic order of the constitutional president in office, Evo Morales Ayma, developed by foreign interests in alliance with radical sectors, and the establishment of a de facto government in which human rights, freedom of expression and the economic crisis were aggravated.
   
7. We welcome the results of the prime minister elections in St Kitts and Nevis and in St Vincent and the Grenadines.
   
8. We congratulate the people and institutions of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela on the democratic day held on the occasion of the “Parliamentary Elections of Venezuela 2020” on 06 December. We also turn to the Bolivarian Revolution, the civic-military union and the Constitutional President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros, in the struggle for peace and stability of the Venezuelan people.
   
9. We recognize that these results revitalize our Alliance and demonstrate that it is only with the unity of the people that it is possible to confront interference and reverse the coups promoted and financed by the empire in the region, in collusion with local.
   
10. We reiterate our strong rejection of the imposition of unilateral coercive measures against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which violate international law and the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations and represent a collective punishment of the Venezuelan people, causing unspeakable suffering indiscriminately to the entire population.
    
11. We condemn the hegemonic claims of the United States of America in its quest to revive the Monroe Doctrine; as well as attempts to revive the Inter-American Treaty on Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR) to attack the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which can have a terrible impact on the peace and security of the region.
    
12. We confirm unconditional support for the Sandinista government, President Daniel Ortega Saavedra and the people of Nicaragua in their decision to continue to defend the sovereignty, peace and remarkable social, economic, security and national unity gains made. We express solidarity for the impacts caused by two intense hurricanes, in less than 10 days, which caused loss of life and considerable property damage.
    
13. We condemn the attacks and repeated destabilizing attempts against the legitimate government of sister Republic of Nicaragua by the United States of America, promoting unilateral coercive measures, among many other destabilizing actions to try to interfere in their internal affairs. These acts are not only a clear violation of international law, but a scorn against the people and the independent government of Sandino.
    
14. We fully reaffirm support for Caribbean countries in their claim for compensation for the genocide of the native population and the horrors of slavery and transatlantic trafficking.
    
15. We ratify the right of Caribbean countries to receive fair, special and differential treatment. The Caribbean will always find in ALBA-TCP a platform of cooperation and complementarity for the defense and promotion of its fair claims and reparations.
    
16. We strongly reject the measures taken against the Caribbean sister countries by considering them non-cooperative jurisdictions. We call for a review of graduation criteria that qualify them as “middle-income countries,” making it difficult for them to access credit and international cooperation.
    
17. We express our sorrow for the fatalities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in the world, while expressing our concern at the devastating socio-economic impact and multidimensional crisis generated, which require a coordinated, supportive and joint response to ensure the inclusive and resilient recovery of our economies, enabling us to strengthen sustainable development as well as poverty eradication.
    
18. We reiterate the central role of the State in the implementation of national strategies that strengthen health and social protection systems. universal access on a fair and affordable basis to vaccines and treatments developed for the treatment of COVID-19.
    
19. We recognize the gigantic efforts of health professionals, scientists and humanitarian personnel to combat the COVID-19 pandemic in different parts of the world, to guarantee the right to health and life of our peoples, exposing even their own. We also highlight the leadership of the World Health Organization (WHO) in the process of raising awareness, prevention and combating the Pandemic.
    
20. We recognize, in particular, the contribution of the Republic of Cuba to the response to the pandemic, despite the complex circumstances imposed by the upsurge of the economic, trade and financial blockade of the United States and the campaign of the United States government to discredit and sabotage the international medical cooperation that Cuba offers in dozens of countries and which has benefited millions of people.
    
21. We congratulate and recognize the humanist and altruistic work of the Cuban Medical Contingent Henry Reeve and its contribution to the confrontation of the coronavirus in ALBA-TCP countries and other nations around the world. We welcome the numerous initiatives to formally register this Contingent’s candidacy for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.
    
22. We thank compañero David Choquehuanca Céspedes for the work done at the helm of the Executive Secretary of ALBA-TCP and reiterate the best wishes for success in his new duties as Vice President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.
    
23. We salute the appointment of compañero Sacha Sergio Llorentty Soliz, as the new Executive Secretary of ALBA-TCP wishing him the greatest success in his tenure.
    
24. We highlight the development of the ALBA-Petrocaribe complementary economic zone, as a true model of productive and technological development, based on the values of the Alliance and the principles of the Peoples’ Trade Treary.
    
25. We confirm our commitment to building an alternative model of economic sovereignty, expressed in a New Financial Framework, to consolidate a system of reciprocal, solidarity, participatory and complementary exchange and cooperation that strengthens our economic and commercial freedom.
    
26. We stress the imperative to forgive external debt that suffocates underdeveloped countries or to take measures to relieve, suspend or restructure especially under COVID-19 pandemic conditions.
    
27. We are committed to redoubled efforts to develop a trading system based on local currencies, as well as the opportunities offered by new technologies exploring formulas for the use of crypto assets, in order to promote the economic and financial independence of our peoples, having as important precedents the with the SUCRE monetary compensation, as well as the “Petro” cryptocurrency in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
    
28. We congratulate Banco del Alba on its successful performance over the past year and, in particular, on the advance initiatives to mitigate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, such as the moratorium on its entire funding portfolio and the underpin of the Alba Salud and Alba Alimentos programs, as well as the establishment of the Alba Humanitarian Fund, proposed by the leaders of the Bolivarian Alliance.
    
29. We reiterate our willingness to continue working and cooperating in the fight against climate change, a phenomenon sharpened by the capitalist system and its irrational patterns of consumption, which attack our Mother Earth and that increase the frequency and intensity of natural phenomena that cause unfortunate human and material losses.
    
30. We rescue the participation and full presence of social movements, solidarity and popular sectors in our integrationist process, in order to advance the construction of societies that are inclusive, culturally diverse and environmentally responsible, that exclude the exploitation of the human being.
    
31. We express our commitment to work together with indigenous peoples in the implementation of measures for the preservation, transmission and development of indigenous languages in order to safeguard the right to revitalize, use, encourage and transmit to future generations their stories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures.
    
32. We reiterate our support to the just and historic claim of the Plurinational State of Bolivia on its right to a sovereign sea access.
    
33. We reiterate ALBA-TCP’s strong condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, including cases in which States are directly or indirectly involved, which is unjustifiable whatever the motivations, considerations or factors that are involved.
    
34. We denounce the use of unconventional warfare strategies to attack and disable governments and progressive leaders in the region through politically motivated judicial processes (lawfare), the manipulation of human rights for destabilizing purposes, the propaganda and misinformation campaign, the malicious use of information and communication technologies, cyberattacks, and others.
    
35. We approved the ALBA-TCP 2021 Post-Pandemic Work Plan and called for the reactivation of its various Councils since the beginning of 2021 in order to move forward on a concrete agenda of actions and re-implementation. We instruct the executive Secretariat of ALBA-TCP to monitor, consult and comply with it for the benefit of strengthening Alliance.
    
36. We affirm our determination to move forward and deepen its strengthening as a political-strategic alternative to Latino-Caribbean, counter-hegemonic, democratic, inclusive and participatory integration.
    
37. We recall that the ALBA-TCP countries since its founding are in a permanent consultation session, to defend the independence, sovereignty and free self-determination of their peoples.

Caracas, December 14, 2020
​

Statement of the 18th ALBA-TCP Summit in the 16th anniversary of its foundation

 

[Yehuda]

ALBA-TCP agrees on post-pandemic work plan to consolidate integration in the region

Written by César Torres on 14/12/2020. Posted in News

At the 18th Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-People’s Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP), held on Monday, December 14, on the 16th anniversary of the regional integration bloc, the member countries agreed on a post-pandemic work plan to consolidate joint cooperation, political agreement and economic recovery.

I.-International/Multilateral Area

1.-To start, widen and consolidate relations based on political agreement and technical cooperation with third countries.

Likewise, with regional organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, North Africa and the Middle East, Asia and Oceania such as CELAC. CARICOM, ACS, the Central American Integration System (SICA), UNASUR, the African Union, the Arab League, the Latin American and Caribbean Economic System (SELA), ECLAC, the Ibero-American System, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the Eurasian Community, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Organization of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, the Arab Cooperation Council, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Forum for East Asia-Latin America Cooperation, among others, including Russia and China.

2.-To strengthen our presence and voice in the international community through a common agenda that includes:

a) The promotion and defense of International Law, the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, particularly the self-determination of the peoples and peace,

b) The relaunch of an integration, unity and regional dialogue agenda.

c) The defense of Multilateralism.

d) Resuming the offensive in the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights for all, and condemning their politization with destabilizing purposes.

e) Condemning and fighting unilateral coercive measures and economic, commercial and financial blockades.

f) Condemning and fighting the judicialization of politics (lawfare).

g) Strengthening the coordination of positions in the fight against existing world crises, especially Climate Change, and for the democratization of water and the rights of Mother Earth.

h) Linking ALBA-TCP’s social agenda to the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations.

i) Promoting the reparation of peoples of African descend and American native people.

II.-Economic Area

1.-To relaunch an ALBA-TCP Economic, Commercial and Financial Agenda based on the June 2020 Post-pandemic Economic Plan (Annex).

a) To appoint a new coordinating country in the Council of Economic Complementation.

b) To establish coordination and follow-up actions among the Ministers of the area, National Coordinators, the authorities of the Bank of ALBA, the Sucre Monetary Council and the ALBA-TCP Executive Secretariat.

c) To hold ALBA-TCP Economic, Trade and Financial technical roundtables in the first quarter of 2012 in order to establish the Alliance’s economic priorities, including the technical-political review of the ALBA-TCP Complementary Economic Zone project.

d) To strengthen the operational action to lever the Bank of ALBA.

e) To hold a meeting of Presidents of Central Banks to assess the situation and feasibility of OROCARIBE, PETRO and SUCRE.

f) To relaunch ALBA-Fishing, ALBA Agriculture and Petrocaribe.

III.-Social Area

1.-To relaunch the ALBA-TCP Social Agenda:

To establish a coordination and follow-up scheme among the Ministers of the area, National Coordinators and the ALBA-TCP Secretariat.

To call the 6th ALBA-TCP Social Council to revitalize its bodies in the calendar year to deepen the social, collective, solidarity-based, popular model.

To relaunch the ALBA-TCP Social Missions as a Political Strategy.

To make a diagnosis of the international social missions.

To launch a campaign for the respect of migrants’ human rights.

IV.-Social Movements-Coordination of Political Parties Area.

1.-To relaunch the ALBA-TCP Council of Social Movements:

To ratify Bolivia as a coordinating country in the Council of Social Movements.

2.-To foster coordination of political forces and social movements.

V.- ALBA-TCP Communications, Culture and Identity Area.

1.-To activate the ALBA-TCP Policy on Communication:

To coordinate an ALBA-TCP Meeting of Ministers of Communication and Information in the first quarter of 2021 to develop a high-impact Communication Plan, both in formal and alternative media, and, in this regard, to promote the participation of our top media representatives, especially TELESUR and other media outlets of friendly nations (Russia, China, Iran and others).

b) To activate the ALBA-TCP Social Networks by defining and implementing an ALBA-TCP Strategy in social networks, in coordination with Social Movement and Political Forces.

2.-To strengthen ALBA-TCP Institutional Identity:

To agree on a schedule of meetings between national authorities.

To undertake a similar process including universities, institutions and centers of studies and research.

3.-To continue moving forward with the work by ALBA-Cultural.

VI.-Revitalization of the ALBA-TCP Bodies:

Executive Secretariat

1. To strengthen the political and diplomatic capacities of the Executive Secretary.

2. To raise the profile of the Executive Secretary, widen his/her international presence and reach according to the ALBA-TCP strategic agenda.

3. To boost the agenda of political meetings and operational execution.

Political Council

1. To strengthen permanent coordination among the Alliance’s Foreign Ministers.

2. To assess permanently the regional changing dynamics.

3. To define, implement and monitor the political actions demanded by circumstances.

4. To call an urgent meeting of ALBA-TCP National Coordinators to complete the comprehensive work plan and delegate responsibilities for its implementation and follow-up.

5. To resume quarterly meetings of National Coordinators in the most feasible format to agree on and coordinate follow-up of the ALBA-TCP Strategic Agenda.

6. To foster Coordination among Political Forces.

 

[Yehuda]

Council of Economic Complementation

1.-To appoint a new coordinating country of the Council of Economic Complementation.

Council of Social Movements

1.-To ratify Bolivia as Coordinating Country of the Council of Social Movements.

ANNEX

POST-PANDEMIC ECONOMIC CONTINGENCY PLAN

1. To boost sanitary security:

To Reactivate the ALBA Health program

First, work should be done to establish a program to strengthen the health systems of the ALBA-TCP member countries, to overcome the existing gaps for the most vulnerable population to access health, and to be capable of addressing the increase in the number of imported cases from other countries as the opening of borders takes place and international transport is resumed.

In this regard, we propose the reactivation of the ALBA Health program by first undertaking three actions:

To establish an ALBA-TCP bank of medicines, medical equipment and sanitary supplies specialized in the treatment against COVID-19. This includes the adoption of a common in order to guarantee access and availability for all the ALBA member countries to vaccines when they are released.

To establish an ALBA-TCP health observatory to monitor the evolution of pressure on the health services of the ALBA member countries, and anticipate eventual collapses in national health systems.

To maintain scholarship programs for students of ALBA-TCP member countries in the Latin American Schools of Medicine, particularly in the West Caribbean countries.

To boost food security:

To reactivate the ALBA Food program

The post-pandemic economic recovery will leave behind big holes in sectors such as international tourism, which represents an important motor of the economy in most of the ALBA member countries.

Likewise, there will be an important decline in imports as a consequence of slower incomes and the reduction of international transport.

Therefore, it is urgent to design a special plan to boost agricultural production and increase the self-supply levels for food security.

In this regard, we propose the reactivation of the ALBA Food program by undertaking the following action:

To promote a contribution to the Solidarity Fund from the Bank of ALBA amounting to $5 billion, aimed at the West Caribbean countries to contribute to the strengthening of their agricultural production systems. This implies each country will disburse between $500,000 to $1.5 million according to the size of their population and each country’s vulnerability level.

3. To strengthen Intra ALBA Transport as a support for commercial exchange and travelers.

In the face of the closure of borders and the reduction of all kinds of transport, it is important for ALBA.TCP to reinforce its own transport systems, where airliners play a determining role.

In this regard, the joint meeting of the ALBA-TCP ministerial councils will be able to propose measures aimed at strengthening the air transport sector by:

3.1. Backing up the approval of a credit line to strengthen the LIAT regional airline through the Bank of ALBA, so that by the year 2021 it can strengthen its capacity to provide air connectivity to the West Caribbean region, especially to ALBA-TCP member countries.

3.2. Backing up the approval of a line of credit to strengthen Venezuelan airline Conviasa through the Bank of ALBA, so that by the year 2021 it can strengthen its capacity to offer long-range flights.

3.3. Boosting synergy between the two airlines by intertwining their itineraries to provide a better interconnection of passengers to the multiple destinations of the region and beyond, particularly to provide an air corridor linking Managua and Havana through Caracas to the West Caribbean.

4.To guarantee energy security by giving a new impetus to the Petrocaribe initiative:

At the joint meeting, we expect to assess the proposal to give a new impetus to the Petrocaribe initiative by following these guidelines:

4.1. To announce the end of the reconciliation of debts of East Caribbean countries with Petrocaribe and the assignment of these debts to the Bank of ALBA, bringing benefits through a 50% reduction as a consequence of the application of the net present value.

4.2. To promote the intervention of each country’s fuels in the local market from Petrocaribe joint ventures, including the purchase of different products from PDVSA to reactivate competence in such markets and counter the speculative increase due to the abuse of a dominant position of local fuel companies.

4.3. To promote joint ventures the continuity of investments of Petrocaribe’s remaining funds in the development of logistic capacities to strengthen the region’s energy security.

5. To guarantee financial stability:

Moratoria on credits

The global economic collapse due to the pandemic is having serious consequences putting at risk the fiscal stability of ALBA governments and the financial situation of the organizations supporting their economies.

In this regard, the joint meeting of the ALBA-TCP ministerial councils will be able to propose measures aimed at mitigating these effects by:

5.1. Promoting a moratorium on the lending portfolio of the Bank of ALBA for the year 2021.

5.2. Promoting a moratorium on the lending portfolio of the SUCRE Stabilization and Reserve Fund during 2021.

These two decisions will enable the countries to have at their disposal resources for debt services to address other priorities.

This is an appropriate occasion to invite the government of Grenada and Saint Kitts and Nevis to join the Bank of ALBA Constitutive Agreement to complete the full membership of ALBA countries.

6. To guarantee the free movement of funds:

Local currency compensation and use of cryptocurrency

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, the region’s countries have experienced the reduction of possibilities to move their funds through the gradual reduction of correspondent banks, in some cases due to the lack of interest and mainly due to the over-compliance with financial standards of prevention associated to prejudices towards some ALBA’s countries under unilateral coercive measures.

This circumstance restricts the possibilities of developing stable, consistent commercial exchanges. The proposal is to move forward with a strategy countering this financial blockade through the implementation of trade compensation mechanisms by using local currency and cryptocurrencies.

The joint meeting of the ALBA-TCP ministerial councils will be able to propose measures aimed at mitigating these effects by:

6.1. Backing up the reactivation of the Sucre through the renewal/ratification of representatives to the Sucre Regional Monetary Council, especially its Presidency. This is an appropriate occasion to invite the governments of East Caribbean to join the SUCRE Constitutive Agreement as a compensation and payment mechanism by using local currency.

6.2. Assessing the implementation of mechanisms of payment, within and outside the Sucre, in cryptocurrency, including Petro, for commercial exchange operations among the ALBA member countries.

7. To adopt natural disaster relief measures:

Creation of the ALBA Humanitarian Fund

ALBA-TCP has a special responsibility towards its member countries in the East Caribbean region, which have not overcome the pandemic and must face the upcoming hurricane season.

In this regard, we propose to strengthen the Alliance’s instruments to face this kind of situations through the creation of an ALBA Humanitarian Fund:

7.1. To agree on the creation of an ALBA Humanitarian Fund, consisting of a fiduciary mechanism without legal personality and managed by the Bank of ALBA, which will receive and manage donations in cash for this purpose and record the value of non-monetary donations and contributions (medical services, air support, donations of goods).

This fund will start with a $2 million contribution from the Bank of ALBA Solidarity Fund which will be made by the ALBA Natural Disaster Mitigation Program.

8. To project ALBA in supra-regional organizations to attract cooperation funds.

In a post-pandemic economy, it will be indispensable to use more efficiently the scarce available funds available for cooperation and development.

In the case of the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), where Venezuela is the second largest shareholder, it will be able to propose initiatives aimed at raising funds for the region’s development by:

8.1. Backing up the development of projects aimed at improving the region’s capacities and physical infrastructure.

8.2. Backing up the development of the region’s energy infrastructure projects.

8.3. Backing up the development of projects aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change and natural disasters in the region. Venezuela’s representation in the OFID will make the relevant arrangements for managing these projects through the Bank of ALBA.

9. To promote a common strategy for economic development by boosting the ALBA Council of Economic Complementation

The ALBA-TCP post-pandemic economy will require constant efforts to overcome the inevitable difficulties in the economic area, a task that will be more effective if it is undertaken in coordination with allied countries that can become commercial partners.

A boost to the Council of Economic Complementation, comprised by the economy ministers of ALBA member countries, is the natural space to agree on common strategies in the productive, commercial and financial areas.

In this regard, we propose the following measures to strengthen and relaunch this Council:

9.1. To establish an ALBA Technical Office of Economic Complementation in Caracas, under the sponsorship pf the Bank of ALBA.

9.2. To appoint a new coordinating country in the ALBA-TCP Council of Economic Complementation.

ALBA-TCP agrees on post-pandemic work plan to consolidate integration in the region

 

[Yehuda]

Corporations finance UK political agenda on the Esequiba

December 11, 2020 7:59 am.

United Kingdom flags fly in the British Parliament (Photo: Getty Images)

The territorial controversy over Guayana Esequiba has taken on a new nuance since oil deposits were discovered in 2015 in the maritime zone of that region. This asset, so highly valued among the corporations of the planet, attracts the interference of actors beyond the nations incubated with the resolution of the problem: Venezuela and Guyana.

However, their participation is indirect, through institutional representatives who make little effort to pretend that they seek stability in the region, when reality points to their coming to that territory to favor the interests of billionaires in the energy industry.

Evidence is always welcome to support these certainties.

Journalist Molly Antigone Hall published an investigation for Declassified UK that shows connections between UK government officials and British companies with interests in the oil sector, calling into question London's position in favor of the Guyanese government in the dispute over the territory of the Esequiba. At the same time, these data explain the hostilities against the legitimate government of President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and the protection of the fictitious government of Guaidó.

Swire Energy Services and the former UK minister

The first link Antigone Hall reviews is one between Conservative Hugo Swire, UK Foreign Minister during the tenure of former Prime Minister David Cameron, and a “company that will benefit from Guyana's offshore oil”.

Swire Energy Services is a company that belongs to the Swire Group, an international conglomerate chaired by British billionaire Barnaby Swire, who also has family ties to Hugo Swire. Recently, Swire Energy Services has closed an agreement to supply sea containers and equipment to Global Oilfield Services, a US multinational that plans to drill the oil fields.

From 2015 to 2019, Hugo Swire and the Conservative Party have been receiving donations in the amount of £ 70,000 from Barnaby Swire and other members of the Swire family.

“Barnaby Swire had donated £ 4,999 to the Conservative Party in 2019, adding to his previous funding of £ 5,000 in 2017, £ 2,000 in 2015 and a personal donation of £ 2,000 to Conservative MP Julian Brazier in 2015. Swire's mother, Lady Moira Swire donated £ 3,000 to the party in 2017”, says Antigone Hall.

It makes sense then that Hugo Swire's foreign policy tasks have touched on the Guayana Esequiba issue several times.

The Declassified UK journalist recalls, for example, a post on Twitter issued by the then British Chancellor, setting a position in favor of the government of Guyana (led by David Granger at the time) after meeting with the Guyanese Foreign Minister to discuss the “border dispute with Venezuela”.



The other connection: Tullow Oil and the Bank of England

As soon as Washington launched the plan to send deputy Juan Guaidó to proclaim himself president of Venezuela, the government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson did the same “recognizing” in order to aprehend 31 tons of Venezuelan gold deposited in the Bank of England, an action that was being planned since 2018.

In that sense, Antigone Hall explains that “Dorothy Thompson, non-executive director of the Bank of England Court, its governing body, is also the executive president of Tullow Oil, a British company that operates off the coast of Guyana. The company's accounts show Thompson made £ 318,904 at the oil company in 2019”.

The British oil company began exploration in Guyana in 2008, and in 2016 it obtained a stake in the Orinduik offshore block. Last year it reported the discovery of oil in the area and forecast an average “of more than 100 million barrels of recoverable oil”, says Antigone Hall, adding that the company “has reportedly received tax concessions from the government of Guyana”.

Let us remember that all these explorations by foreign oil companies and “concessions” that Guyana has given are subject to discussion as many of them are being negotiated in the maritime projection of the Esequiba territory that has not yet been resolved between the interested parties. The actions of Venezuela to resolve the dispute are framed in a protocol stipulated in the Geneva Agreement of 1966, the only legal instrument endorsed by the Venezuelan government.

One could assume that the government of Guyana, by opening the way to foreign investment, would be trying to raise money to carry out social policies that help the Guyanese, a population among the poorest in South America. But if that were the case, Tullow Oil and the UK are not the best business allies: it was revealed that in 2011 British ministers “had lobbied heavily for the company in Uganda after it became embroiled in a dispute over the payment of taxes in the country in 2011”.

In this case, it is more feasible to suspect the complacency of the current government in Guyana towards the interests of the United Kingdom and its support for the Guyanese side in the controversy over the Esequiba. For the same reason, thinking that in the future the regime change operation would triumph in Venezuela, Guaidó's former representative in the United Kingdom, Vanessa Neumann, after meeting with British officials to negotiate their support, ordered that the issue of the Esequiba recovery was discarded, exposing the absence of sovereignty in the anti-Chavista discourse.

Other findings of the investigation

• In addition to the Conservatives, other British politicians have received money from companies with interests in Esequiba oil. “The oil giant Royal Dutch Shell, which has earned the rights to commercialize Guyana's first shipments of crude oil, donated more than £ 25,000 to Labor Party politicians from 2005 to 2012”, says Antigone Hall.
• France's Total Oil & Gas has donated more than £ 11,000 to British politicians over the past ten years, obtaining in exchange concessions from Guyana to explore offshore oil fields.
  
• It was the British High Commissioner in Guyana, Greg Quinn, who said in 2017: “from oil and gas here, interest from UK companies has exploded. We are now at the stage of seeing new companies appear every week. There was one this week and we have another next week and a lot of them are like service companies”.
  
• In 2018, Quinn traveled to Aberdeen, a city in Scotland with a highly developed oil industry, and visited Scottish energy companies. “The bottom line is that if there is a company here in Aberdeen that is looking for an opportunity to do business in Guyana, we should be their first port of call”, he said.
  
• One year after oil was discovered, in 2016, “the British Royal Navy gave four Guyanese staff members an intensive one-week course on how to protect their Exclusive Economic Zone”, with special attention to the offshore blocks that host oil resources.

When it comes to imperialist agents, such as the United Kingdom and its centuries-old history of colonialism and looting in the world, you must be suspicious of any position it takes on extraterritorial matters that do not correspond to it.

Corporations finance UK political agenda on the Esequiba

 

[Yehuda]

“If racism does not take a break, neither will our fight”, says former Minister of Racial Equality

Professor Matilde Ribeiro analyzes the setbacks in social equality policies underway in the country

By Lu Sodré | November 20, 2020 07:57

“My stint in government only enhanced my political action”, says Matilde Ribeiro, a professor at the University for International Integration of the Afro-Brazilian Lusophony — Photo: Pedro Borges/Alma Preta

“Nothing about us done without us”. It is based on this principle that Matilde Ribeiro, chief minister of the extinct Secretariat for Policies to Promote Racial Equality (Secretaria de Políticas de Promoção da Igualdade Racial, SEPPIR), thinks about the development of public policies against racism and echoes the multiple voices of the black movement.

Heading the portfolio created during the first term of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers' Party), the role of the social worker and master in Social Psychology made the fight for racial equality gain more prominence in the Planalto Palace in the early 2000s.

It was after the creation of SEPPIR, dismantled after the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, that the demands of the black movement occupied the government's agenda in a previously unprecedented way.

Recalling the immense list of claims, she is proud of the achievements that continue to bear fruit across the country. Among them the prioritization of policies aimed at remaining quilombo communities and the implementation of racial quotas in public universities.

“It is essential that the main manager, who is the President of the Republic, is convinced of the importance of these policies being implemented. When there is no credibility on the part of the manager, the positive direction of these policies is lost”, says the former minister.

She says that “he [Bolsonaro] talks nonsense, uses insults and takes it back at the same time like nothing has happened. As if that wasn't enough, there are other areas within the government that are having their management undermined, such as the Palmares Foundation, where the main leader does not value what the body's role is and demonizes the black movement, for example”.

In her opinion, Brazil is experiencing the consequences of strengthening conservative sectors that never conformed to the rise of policies to promote racial equality.

“We are in danger and we need to react to that. And the reaction only occurs with the confrontation of the black movement and by the democratic sectors of society”, she says.

On this November 20, Black Awareness Day, Ribeiro celebrates advances achieved from the coordination of the black movement, such as the proportional distribution of money from the Party Fund and the Electoral Fund to black candidates, and the election of any of these candidates in the last election.

Still, she stresses that the ongoing fight against racism, especially in the midst of conservative governments, should not be allowed to cool down.

“It is not because we have some actions in progress that racism ceased to exist. If racism does not take a break, neither will our fight. It is important that the processes of struggle and claims to change this reality are part of society's daily life. We can't take a rest.”

Today, however, the scenario is completely different. In an interview with Brasil de Fato, Ribeiro assesses that there is a notable setback in the racial agenda in the Bolsonaro government, where there is no body dedicated exclusively to the development of anti-racist policies.

Check out the full interview below.



Brasil de Fato — You were the first minister of the Secretariat for Policies to Promote Racial Equality here in Brazil. What did the creation of this executive body represent for the country and for the black movement? What were the portfolio's main achievements in the first decade of the 2000s?

Matilde Ribeiro — The creation of SEPPIR is based on a negotiation of the black movement with the Workers' Party and more parties of the coalition of the time. It was an old claim that there was a body that would carry out racial equality policies in the federal government. So, it was an achievement.

In that sense, the list of claims was immense. We made a choice of a path to follow, which took place with the prioritization of policies aimed at remaining quilombo communities, for the issue of quotas in public universities, the issue of education, considering that Law 10.639, which made the teaching of African and Afro-Brazilian history and culture nationwide compulsory, had already been sanctioned.

And from these, all the other claims as we made connections with different ministries and sectors of institutionality in Brazil.

We also created a forum called FIPIR (Fórum Intergovernamental de Políticas da Igualdade Racial, Intergovernmental Forum on Racial Equality Policies) that established the connection between the federal government and local, state and municipal governments. This helped a lot to boost the relationship at the national level.

We also held in 2005 the first national conference to promote Racial Equality. All of these actions taken together boosted a political agenda that only grew stronger with each action.

This period was very dynamic, very intense, in policy development. And today they are asleep or left behind by the current government.

The racial quota policy, approved in 2012, gains great social prominence. How did the insertion of this policy impact Brazilian education? Was it a seed that allowed for further advances?

The quota policy is extremely important in higher education. Before its existence, it was rare for you to find, numerically, poor black or indigenous students within academia.

With the existence of quotas, there was an expansion and nowadays this quantity is visible. The photograph of public universities has changed.

I teach today at UNILAB (University for International Integration of the Afro-Brazilian Lusophony), which was also created with an alternative measure while Lula was president. It goes through the quota policy but is not exclusively about that, the key is the relationship with the Portuguese-speaking African countries.

So today we have in a classroom Brazilian students from the interior, in general, because it is located in two cities in the interior. One in Bahia and another in Ceará. They are quilombola, indigenous, riverside students, children of rural workers, rural workers as well as African students. The classroom has a great diversity.

What you get with that is you get closer to the real history of Brazil and you revisit our relationship with the African continent. This is UNILAB.

But in other universities, diversity is also extremely important and quotas have guaranteed that.

You promote an opportunity that, without quotas, as history shows, would be practically impossible. Education is one of the levers for social education in our country.

Currently it is common to hear certain revisionist sectors of the right that speak about reverse racism, militate against quotas. How do you evaluate these actions against the agendas of the black movement?

This is part of an institutional racism, embedded in Brazilian life, which not only prevents the participation of the black population as a citizen of rights, but also promotes ideas aversive to that participation.

The remedy for this is to make things happen. And the quota policy is an excellent exercise because Brazilian universities can only benefit by guaranteeing diversity within them. It is a healthy exercise that breaks the logic of this structural and institutionalized racism.

In 2015, the secretariat was incorporated into the Ministry of Women, Racial Equality and Human Rights. What were the consequences for racial politics with Temer's arrival as president?

The merger of several secretariats into one meant a negotiation as far as possible at that time, but not necessarily an advance. Each secretariat itself has a specificity and all together do not necessarily get stronger. The junctions were not necessarily a demand of the black movement, but an institutional negotiation according to the moment of national politics.

But, in any case, the work continued and the minister at the time, Nilma Lino Gomes, ran this ministry incorporating the secretariats and did a very commendable job. Now, with the impeachment, with the coup against President Dilma and the arrival of Temer, many of the public policies developed since the first term of President Lula have been weakened.

They started to fade away. The racial equality policy suffered this weakening impact. Then they went missing with the Bolsonaro government.

This is visible, not only when we analyze the policies of the current government, but also the results of policies in the quilombos area. An entire policy implementation design was made, valuing the territoriality and the rights of quilombo communities and this policy is in a cast, currently paralyzed.

All policies implemented on the Racial Equality agenda are weakened. Although there are laws, we have the Law of Quotas, the Statute of Racial Equality, Law 10.639, these laws still exist but the execution, the movement, the dynamism of the policies has been redone.

We are now in the second year of the Bolsonaro government. How do you rate the racial agenda in this government with a president who accumulates racist statements made in a playful tone?

The Bolsonaro government is a government that stands in opposition to the rights of citizens and their social rights. There is a loss of rights in all areas: human rights, health, education, work. These are notorious setbacks. In addition, the population is placed at a loss with respect to racial equality, with a cut in public policies. The loss is very great.

Is Bolsonaro's stance reflected in the failure to implement public policies to combat racism? What is the interference?

Yes. It is essential that the main manager, who is the President of the Republic, is convinced of the importance of these policies being implemented. When there is no credibility on the part of the manager, the positive direction of these policies is lost. With that, the focus is lost. This is what is happening today.

He talks nonsense, uses insults and takes it back at the same time like nothing has happened. As if that wasn't enough, there are other areas within the government that are having their management undermined, such as the Palmares Foundation, where the main leader does not value what the body's role is and demonizes the black movement, for example.

Since you brought this up, before the Secretariat, institutionally, only the Palmares Foundation, founded in 1988, dealt exclusively with the racial issue in this country. However, now we have Camargo, who, as you said, called the black movement “damn scum”. He also said Zumbi dos Palmares enslaved black people and criticized Black Awareness Day. What does this type of individual at the forefront of the Foundation represent in the history of Brazil and black people?

It is the strengthening of conservative sectors that were never satisfied with the rise of policies to promote racial equality and today are support by the existence of negative positions about this policy. We are in danger and we need to react to that. And the reaction only occurs with the confrontation of the black movement and by the democratic sectors of society.

More than symbolic, the situation of the Palmares Foundation is an example of concrete action. An action that contradicts a political agenda that values that as long as there is racism, there is no democracy. This agenda is contradicted daily, by means of fallacies such as those uttered by this man.

 

[Yehuda]

You have been away from public life since you left the government in 2008. Can you comment on this process and on the factors that influenced this decision?

Actually it wasn't a decision to leave, it was a compulsory leave since I was in the office and, due to an administrative mistake, I had to resign. Although time itself proved that there was no irregularity, but at that time I had no way out.

I continued my life. I went back to study, did my doctorate, worked in the São Paulo City Hall in the same area that I worked in the federal government. I took a service examination and joined UNILAB. It was not a stop, it was a change of strategy. Today I work as a university professor through a public service examination.

Truth be told, I was persecuted by the media, by conservative sectors that never appreciated the Lula government in its trajectory. Any issue considered subject to criticism was blown out of proportion. In my case, there was not an irregularity, but an administrative error that could have been remedied if there was no media persecution. That's what happened and it was worth the lesson. My stint in government only enhanced my political action.

An IBGE survey during the pandemic showed that women and black people are the most affected by the coronavirus. The scenario is also repeated in the United States, where black people are the main victims. According to CONAQ, more than 4,600 quilombolas are already contaminated. What does this show us?

In a pandemic, we are all subject to being infected. Now the sectors that suffer most are the vulnerable, those that have less access to goods and services. As a result, the disease spreads and increases in situations of vulnerability. It is a trend present in countries where inequality is also present from a racial, not just a social point of view.

It demonstrates that people who have greater access to health treatments, with better resources, tend to avoid diseases. And sectors that do not have this access are vulnerable. This is logical. That is why we have to take extra care in search of treatment and denounce this racial and social historical gap.

Inequality is huge in our country and historically discriminated populations tend to suffer the most from negative impacts. Whether in a pandemic or in situations of violence and social persecution.

Although we are in a context of setbacks, there are achievements such as the approval of the distribution of party funds to black candidates. What is the importance of this decision and its application in the 2020 elections, in the midst of the unprecedented socioeconomic crisis?

For some decades now, campaigns have been growing in a mediatic way and this has a cost. Candidacies from social movements, from popular leaders, are always welcome but are not accompanied by resources for their support.

A standardization for the redistribution of campaign resources is extremely important because it creates greater conditions for the participation of these historically less empowered sectors. It is the guarantee of opportunities. It is essential that this occurs.

Data from the Superior Electoral Court reported that 49.9% of the candidates in this election declared themselves black or brown, a situation that can be considered slightly more consistent with the demographic profile of Brazil, although there are some questions. We also had black women elected among the ten most voted in some capitals of the country. How do you rate these numbers?

We learned during the performance of the black movement that we have to count on the support of the parties and of the most diverse candidacies in relation to the racial issue, but it is extremely important that blacks are putting themselves as candidates, considering the emblematic phrase: “Nothing about us done without us”.

In this sense, this growth in candidacies is very healthy. With regard to black women, there was effective political action to make this increase happen. From the National March of Black Women in 2015, women began to understand that it was time to be present as candidates. So, black women are numerically more present through a deliberation of political action.

The trend is not naturally upward. It depends a lot on the persistence and maintenance of the political position of social movements to guarantee these spaces. Naturally, power in Brazil has a profile: it is white, it is male, and elderly. Young people, women, black people, indigenous people are out, this is the logic. And to break this logic, it is necessary to have political determination and persistence in guaranteeing this presence. Something that's in this electoral moment but should continue in other movements.

In recent years, and especially with the murder of Marielle, the black movement and its agendas have gained even more prominence. The international anti-racist uprising after George Floyd's death also sent a message to the world against police violence. In your opinion, what is the perspective for this articulation? Especially against extreme right candidates like Donald Trump and Bolsonaro.

The reactions of social movements in black communities after what happened in the United States and in the world after the murders are very positive. We cannot see the injustice happen and continue to have our arms crossed.

The counterpoints to conservative politicians like Trump and Bolsonaro are multiple. The reaction is multiple, not only from the black movement but from sectors that seek to build a democratic agenda.

I believe in adding our energy and potential. The potential of women, indigenous people, workers. This sum that will give a stronger broth of contestation and the search for diluting conservatism. This is done over periods and not all at once.

Since the military dictatorship, the black movement has always been present in the pursuit of building a democratic agenda. At times with stronger voices, at other times with fragilities, but this is part of the process of organizing the struggle.

If racism remains standing, it is because it is carried out by conservative, right-wing sectors, in particular. We always have to put ourselves in the reaction and in the fight for deconstituting the role of the right.

The election of Biden in the US was largely driven by the choice of Kamala Harris. A woman who's the daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother elected vice president. How do you see this victory? Do you believe that it can be reproduced in other countries, does it indicate a trend?

It is very important from a symbolic and concrete point of view that we have this representation, which enacts people who represent historically discriminated sectors. If in the United States we already had a black president and now a black vice president, it is possible that this happens elsewhere, including in Brazil.

It is important to be aware that this fact, that this very significant victory, can be repeated many, many times. Politics is not linear, it has ups and downs, route changes. It is important to stick to these route changes and may they serve to stimulate democratic struggles.

On this Black Awareness Day, in 2020, what message should be echoed and what can we expect for Brazil in the coming years regarding the racial issue?

First I would like to say that the struggle is continuous. Even if we are experiencing moments of cooling off and loss, this does not mean that it will last forever. It is important to reinforce democratic struggles and believe in the maxim that there is no democracy with racism.

And for the next periods, we should bet on what we have already built. We have learned a lot in relation to democratic public policies from the point of view of racial equality. We must keep in mind that there are periods of conquests, recovery and expansion. This has to be the logic for guaranteeing change.

Comparing the early 2000s, where you headed an executive branch created to combat racism, with what we have today, is it possible to say that the myth of Brazilian racial democracy has been ripped apart? Do we live in a less racist society than we did 20 years ago?

I believe that we are living in situations that put us on the path to change, such as quotas, such as policies for quilombos, Law 10.639, the election of black candidates... all of these put us on the path to change. But this runs concurrent with structural racism, which does not take a break.

It is not because we have some actions in progress that racism ceased to exist. If racism does not take a break, neither will our fight. It is important that the processes of struggle and claims to change this reality are part of society's daily life. We can't take a rest.

It is always good to talk about this topic. One way to fight it is to bring it to the agenda. It is important to do this on dates like the 20th of November but any day of the year. Every day is a day of struggle.

A careful look at racist acts is what causes political reactions to occur and these attitudes to be restrained. It is a snowball that is always moving.

Editing: Rodrigo Chagas

“If racism does not take a break, neither will our fight”, says former Minister of Racial Equality

 

[Yehuda]

How Black Brazilians Are Looking to a Slavery-Era Form of Resistance to Fight Racial Injustice Today

Clébio Ferreira, 36, founder of Quilombaque in the Perus neighborhood of São Paulo on Dec. 5, 2020. Pétala Lopes for TIME

BY CIARA NUGENT AND THAÍS REGINA/SĀO PAULO, BRAZIL
DECEMBER 16, 2020 1:06 PM EST

Adozen people are dancing around a bonfire in a yard between two large warehouses in São Paulo. It’s early November and members of Quilombaque—a Black community hub in Perus, a poor neighborhood on the city’s northern fringes—are celebrating. They’ve raised 50% of the funds they need to buy the space they’ve occupied for the past decade and avoid eviction by the owner, who is selling up. As the fire spits embers up to a dark sky, and a steady drum beat marks out a rhythm, the group sings: “I will build my refuge, I will build my place, I will build my quilombo.”

The word quilombo–derived from languages brought to Brazil by enslaved Africans–was the name given to rural communities established by those who escaped slavery in the centuries before Brazil abolished it in 1888—the last country in the Americas to do so. At least 3,500 of those rural quilombos still exist. But today, quilombo is taking on a wider meaning. Young Black Brazilians say they need to form new communities of Black resistance to deal with a society still shaped at every level by the legacy of slavery.

Racial tensions in Brazil were inflamed by the 2018 election of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who on the campaign trail compared Black quilombo members to cattle and said “they don’t even serve to procreate.” But the president is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Brazil’s systemic racism. Around 56% of Brazilians identify as Black—the largest population of African descent outside of Africa—yet Black people make up just 18% of congress, 4.7% of executives in Brazil’s 500 largest companies, 75% of murder victims and 75% of those killed by police. Things are getting worse. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Brazilians, who already earn just 57% of what white Brazilians do on average, have died and lost their jobs at a higher rate. Police killings rose to 5,804 in 2019—almost six times more than comparative figures for the U.S. Bolsonaro pushed forward an anti-crime bill last year that included a blanket “self-defense” justification for the use of force by police; the congress passed it with some limitations in December 2019, though critics still say it grants officers significant impunity. Activists and academics have accused the Brazilian state of employing a “death policy” against the Black population.

But on Nov. 20, Vice President Hamilton Mourão claimed that “racism doesn’t exist in Brazil.” He was responding to protests over the brutal beating and killing of João Freitas, an unarmed Black man, by security guards at a grocery store in the city of Porto Alegre, which was captured on security cameras. For his part, President Bolsonaro said social justice groups protesting over racism were “attempting to bring tensions into our country that are foreign to our history.”

In an era of overt racial injustice ignored by those in power, Black Brazilians are creating spaces that explicitly celebrate Black identity and power their resistance to racism. Black people in cities are forming urban quilombos, while others are pushing to aquilombar—the word’s verb form – on social media and in art and literature. Black political activists have discussed forming a quilombo in congress. “Our main goal is to fight the genocide of the Black population,” says Clébio Ferreira, 36, who founded Quilombaque with his brother in 2005 in response to poverty and violence faced by Black youth in Perus, where he has lived most of his life. “When we build a quilombo, we are coming together to build a new world.”

The Black community hub of Quilombaque, in Perus, São Paulo on Dec. 5, 2020. Pétala Lopes for TIME

The Bolsonaro Administration’s denial of racism in Brazil has historical roots. As Brazil emerged from the slavery era in the 1900s, elites in the country promoted an idea of the country as a “racial democracy”—a supposedly harmonious mixing of Indigenous, white European, and Black African cultures. But at the same time, politicians, the media and academics also encouraged the descendants of enslaved Africans and indigenous communities to marry and have children with the descendants of white colonizers, as well as an influx of European immigrants, in order to produce increasingly lighter-skinned generations and “whiten” the country. Some conservative Brazilians still idealize their country as a racial democracy, where racial discrimination or conflict cannot exist.

Now, Black Brazilians are increasingly looking to another aspect of history for lessons on how to deal with a racist country. Of the 5 million enslaved Africans brought to Brazil, tens of thousands managed to flee plantations. They settled in rural areas, forming communities outside of white society. To describe these new settlements, they borrowed the word “quilombo” (often loosely translated as “war camp”) from Bantu languages spoken by some communities in sub-Saharan africa, says Stéfane Souto, a cultural researcher in Salvador, northern Brazil. “The word has many meanings, but basically it’s a social practice carried out by nomadic warriors; it can refer to both the warriors themselves and the territories where they meet.”

A man dances at a Black Awareness Day event in front of the monument honoring Zumbi dos Palmares, quilombo leader and symbol of the fight against slavery in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro on Nov. 20, 2019. Barbara Dias—AGIF/AP

The largest quilombo in Brazil was Palmares, which existed for much of the 1600s. At its largest Palmares covered 10,000 square miles on Brazil’s northeastern coast and counted 20,000 members. Today it lends its name to the Palmares Cultural Foundation, the state-funded institution set up in 1988 to protect and support quilombo rights.

In the 1970’s, Beatriz Nascimento, an academic and influential figure in Brazil’s 20th Century Black rights movement, began to bring attention to how quilombos could serve the wider cause of anti-racism in Brazil. In articles and the 1989 documentary Ori, she explored the concept of the quilombo and traced the links between Black Brazilian communities and the cultural and political traditions of several African countries. “Nascimento knew that quilombos were not fixed places,” says Alex Ratts, an anthropologist and author of a biography on Nascimento. “She was the one who widened the meaning of the term quilombo. In her thinking, there could be quilombos in literature, in history—even a person could be a quilombo.” Today, 25 years after her death, her work is seeing renewed interest from a younger generation. “When people read her work now, they say “that’s what we need to do,” in a country like this, we need to aquilombar,” Ratts says. “It’s not a conversation from people in rural quilombos. It’s a very urban thing, a very contemporary political movement.”

Bianca Santana, a São Paulo-based writer and activist, says the “intensification of the racial conflict” in Brazil has spurred the growth of that movement. “We’re seeing a proliferation of aquilombamentos—in favelas, in universities, in literary movements, in hip hop—because the Black community needs to reorganize,” she says.

In August, Tamara Franklin, a 29 year-old musician based in Minas Gerais state, released an album titled Escape roots for aquilombamento. Franklin says she only recently began to learn about the history of Black people who escaped slavery to form quilombos, and read a lot about them during a COVID-19 lockdown in her home state of Minas Gerais. “When I look at the situation of Black people in Brazil today, I see that escape is still necessary. We still need to flee from these territories, which aren’t always physical, sometimes they’re economic, political, social.”

For her generation, she says, quilombo means “a place where we can meet with our equals and look after each other. Even if it’s not a physical territory.” Art and music about aquilombamento, cultural and political activism workshops, and connection on social media can provide that space, she says.

A quilombo child holds a banana blossom in her hand in Galvão, São Paulo in Oct. 2019. Fernando Netto

Activist and writer Bianca Santana, 36, in Parque da Agua Branca, São Paulo on Dec. 5, 2020. Pétala Lopes for TIME

 

[Yehuda]

Urban quilombos, physical spaces for the Black communities to gather for cultural, educational and political activities, have also sprung up around Brazil, primarily in Black-majority favela neighborhoods on the outskirts of cities like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

Ferreira says creating São Paulo’s Quilombaque was a way to fight back against the negative image of Blackness that Brazilian society’s historic preference for “whitening” has fostered. When Quilombaque began, he says, Perus didn’t have any cultural spaces. He started putting on drumming sessions and other cultural events like capoeira and art classes. Now, Quilombaque runs a community library and a tourism agency to stimulate the local economy. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, cultural events have been suspended and the center has focused on preparing food baskets for families affected by the pandemic. “The questions we’re working on here are: How can we make a person see themself as Black and have pride in being Black? How can we build that self esteem so a Black person doesn’t lower their head when they pass police officers?”

While a modern concept of the quilombo is growing, the rural communities that inspired it are under attack. Jacira Oliveira, 48, lives in the Galvão quilombo, just a few miles from Bolsonaro’s hometown of Eldorado, in São Paulo state. Having been born there herself, Oliveria has raised six children in the quilombo and serves on the community’s coordinating committee. Founded in the 1830s, beside the Pilões river, Galvão has faced many of the same challenges as other quilombos: state neglect of its infrastructure, high poverty rates and disputes with farmers who attempt to take over their land. In 1982, Oliveria’s cousin was shot dead during one such dispute. Things have improved in recent decades, though, she says. Brazil’s 1988 constitution allowed quilombos to obtain legal rights to their land. Soon after, government bodies were set up to protect and assist quilombos, including the national Palmares Cultural Foundation and a section of São Paulo state’s land agency. In the 2000s, leftist governments introduced social programs that helped support many of the communities.

Today much of that progress is under threat. Oliveira is haunted by Bolsonaro’s words in a campaign speech in Rio de Janeiro in 2017. “I’ve been to a quilombo,” he said. “The lightest afrodescendent there weighed 7 arrobas [a Brazilian measure used for cattle]. They don’t do anything. They don’t even serve to procreate any more.” He added that he would cut funding and land rights for quilombo communities if elected. “His words opened a wound, and it still hasn’t healed,” Oliveira says. “They keep trying to take away our rights, but we’re digging in our heels.”

In 2019, the president installed Sergio Camargo—an outspoken opponent of social justice groups who denies the existence of structural racism —as the head of the Palmares Cultural Foundation. He has dramatically slowed the speed at which the state is granting official recognition to quilombo communities, according to advocates. In July 2020, Bolsonaro vetoed sections of a law that would have required the state to provide emergency financial support to quilombos and Indigenous communities during the pandemic. In September, the government gutted 2021 budgets at the land agency that deals with disputes over territory, slashing 90% of funds for the department responsible for recognizing and compensating quilombos. According to local media, two thirds of the agency’s total budget are now allocated for compensating farmers—a key support base for the president.

“We’re seeing everything we worked for, everything we’ve achieved, undone,” says Selma Dealdina, executive secretary of CONAQ, a national nonprofit representing the vast majority of Brazil’s rural quilombos. While she recognizes the shared fight of all Black anti-racist activists in Brazil, Dealdina cautions that the urban movement celebrating quilombos needs to make sure it also works for the rights and prosperity of rural quilombo communities, and doesn’t just appropriate the term. “Are you actually trying to support quilombos? Buying food from quilombo communities? Reading books by quilombo authors? For me, to aquilombar has to mean helping others. Otherwise, it’s just a trend.”

The moment of more “explicit, naked, crude” racism Brazil is passing through is not a surprise to Black communities, Dealdina says. “We’ve always known it was there. A Black person in this country can’t have a moment of rest, you’ve got to keep your eyes open 25 hours a day,” she says. It won’t change the nature of quilombos, though, which are playing the role they have for centuries, she adds. “We’ll be here resisting, whether in the cities or the countryside. Quilombos are resilience itself.”

The feet of Gabriela, Jacira Oliveria's niece, in the backyard of her aunt's house in the Galvão quilombo in São Paulo in Oct. 2019. Fernando Netto

For Santana, the writer and activist, Bolsonaro’s election in October 2018 was part of a backlash against advances made not just by quilombos but by Brazil’s entire Black population as a result of social programs and affirmative action policies introduced by lefist governments throughout the 2000s—including racial quotas for university entrance and state jobs. “Before, when Black people didn’t have access to the same rights as white people, Brazil could pretend not to be a racist country through the myth of racial democracy,” she says. “Now, voting for someone who is racist, misogynistic, homophobic, who praises torture and the military regime, suggests many Brazilians are trying to put things back the way they think they ought to be: Black people in subaltern positions.”

Quilombos may help to power an anti-racist political response to the current moment. At Brazil’s municipal elections, political activist group Quilombo Periferico (“quilombo from the outskirts”) ran a collective candidacy of several members for São Paulo’s city council, securing a seat for local campaigner Elaine Mineiro. “Aquilombamento in politics means coming together to defend the rights of Black people, poor people, LGBTQ people—to demand new policy, and affirmative actions that are necessary if you’re going to be anti-racist,” Mineiro says.

Mineiro’s grandfather grew up in a traditional quilombo. She says it’s crucial that Black activists in both cities and rural areas put the history of those communities at the center of their political movements, because Brazilian education and media have tended to erase it in favour of the myth of racial democracy. “They have tried to take our past from us, and the past is where you look to learn,” she says. “It’s extremely important for people to be able to understand why things are the way they are. To understand that society as it is now wasn’t born, it was built. And if it was built it can be rebuilt.”

How Black Brazilians Are Fighting Racial Injustice Today