Essential Afro-Latino/ Caribbean Current Events

loyola llothta

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Brazilian government continues privatization of natural parks

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According to the Brazilian environment ministry, the concession process transfers security and maintenance services to the private sector. | Photo: EFE
Published 26 January 2021
Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais and Tocantins are among the states where exploitation permits will be granted.



The superintendent of Governmental and Institutional Relations of the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) in Brazil, Pedro Bruno announced on Tuesday to local media that contracts were signed with six Brazilian states to structure a series of concessions of natural parks to private initiative


The contracts refer to 26 parks with the aim of "focusing on the exploitation of sustainable tourism and the preservation of the environment." The Brazilian official pointed out that BNDES will support the States during all the stages of the possible projects, including the previous ones.

The BNDES representative hopes that the partnerships with the private sector "will stimulate sustainable tourism, develop local economies and ease the spending of state governments in maintaining parks."


The recent states involved in the signing of agreements were Bahia, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Pernambuco, Rio Grande do Sul and Tocantins. Bruno specified that "the first auctions are expected to take place at the end of 2021, and the remaining ones during next year."

According to the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment, the concession process transfers security and maintenance services to the private sector, in exchange for the commercial exploitation of the area, which allows it to collect admission fees to the reserve area.

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Gobierno brasileño continúa privatización de parques naturales
 

Yehuda

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Center for African, American and Caribbean Knowledge signs twinning letter with UNOGA University of Haiti

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Written by Simon Garcia on 29/01/2021. Posted in News

In the framework of the tenth anniversary of the Institute for Strategic Research on Africa and its Diaspora with its Center for African, American and Caribbean Knowledge, a twinning letter was signed this Friday with the Universite Nouvelle Grand Anse (UNOGA), of the Republic of Haiti, under the premise of promoting the diversification of research and study between both nations.

The document, signed electronically due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was signed from Caracas by the director-founder of the Institute, Reinaldo Bolívar, and from Haiti by the rector of the UNOGA University, Maxime Roumer.

This agreement has the objective of disseminating African and Caribbean values, as well as promoting the exchange of knowledge, research and the joint organization of events in the educational field.

This meeting was attended by the Vice-minister for Africa of the People’s Power Ministry for Foreign Relations, Yuri Pimentel, and representatives of the diplomatic corps accredited in the country.

During the event, Vice-minister Pimentel stressed that “this knowledge center has the strong task of providing us with the historical and cultural knowledge of Africa, America and the Caribbean that is part of our history today; I congratulate the great work that is carried out at this prestigious institute.”

The Universite Nouvelle Grand Anse was founded in 1998 and has a headquarters in Costa Rica and Haiti; offers undergraduate and graduate studies, especially in the areas of productive development.

Center for African, American and Caribbean Knowledge signs twinning letter with UNOGA University of Haiti
 

loyola llothta

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Armed men murdered Linda Díaz Romero in her home in the Antioquia region of Colombia. She’s the 12th social leader assassinated in 2021 and was a candidate for a left wing party. US support for Colombia’s narco-dictatorship is bipartisan. The killings will continue under Biden.




 

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Jamaica faces marijuana shortage as farmers struggle

By SHARLENE HENDRICKS and DÁNICA COTO
February 5, 2021


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FILE - In this Aug. 29, 2013 file photo, farmer Breezy shows off the distinctive leaves of a marijuana plant during a tour of his plantation in Jamaica's central mountain town of Nine Mile. While the island has a regulated medical marijuana industry and decriminalized small amounts of weed in 2015, it is running low on the illegal market, due to heavy heavy rains followed by extended drought, an increase in consumption and a drop in the number of traditional marijuana farmers. (AP Photo/David McFadden, File)

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Jamaica is running low on ganja.

Heavy rains followed by an extended drought, an increase in local consumption and a drop in the number of marijuana farmers have caused a shortage in the island’s famed but largely illegal market that experts say is the worst they’ve seen.

“It’s a cultural embarrassment,” said Triston Thompson, chief opportunity explorer for Tacaya, a consulting and brokerage firm for the country’s nascent legal cannabis industry.

Jamaica, which foreigners have long associated with pot, reggae and Rastafarians, authorized a regulated medical marijuana industry and decriminalized small amounts of weed in 2015.

People caught with 2 ounces (56 grams) or less of cannabis are supposed to pay a small fine and face no arrest or criminal record. The island also allows individuals to cultivate up to five plants, and Rastafarians are legally allowed to smoke ganja for sacramental purposes.

But enforcement is spotty as many tourists and locals continue to buy marijuana on the street, where it has grown more scarce — and more expensive.

Heavy rains during last year’s hurricane season pummeled marijuana fields that were later scorched in the drought that followed, causing tens of thousands of dollars in losses, according to farmers who cultivate pot outside the legal system.

“It destroyed everything,” said Daneyel Bozra, who grows marijuana in the southwest part of Jamaica, in a historical village called Accompong founded by escaped 18th-century slaves known as Maroons.

Worsening the problem were strict COVID-19 measures, including a 6 p.m. curfew that meant farmers couldn’t tend to their fields at night as is routine, said Kenrick Wallace, 29, who cultivates 2 acres (nearly a hectare) in Accompong with the help of 20 other farmers.

He noted that a lack of roads forces many farmers to walk to reach their fields — and then to get water from wells and springs. Many were unable to do those chores at night due to the curfew.

Wallace estimated he lost more than $18,000 in recent months and cultivated only 300 pounds, compared with an average of 700 to 800 pounds the group normally produces.

Activists say they believe the pandemic and a loosening of Jamaica’s marijuana laws has led to an increase in local consumption that has contributed to the scarcity, even if the pandemic has put a dent in the arrival of ganja-seeking tourists.

“Last year was the worst year. ... We’ve never had this amount of loss,” Thompson said. “It’s something so laughable that cannabis is short in Jamaica.”

Tourists, too, have taken note, placing posts on travel websites about difficulties finding the drug.

Paul Burke, CEO of Jamaica’s Ganja Growers and Producers Association, said in a phone interview that people are no longer afraid of being locked up now that the government allows possession of small amounts. He said the stigmatization against ganja has diminished and more people are appreciating its claimed therapeutic and medicinal value during the pandemic.

Burke also said that some traditional small farmers have stopped growing in frustration because they can’t afford to meet requirements for the legal market while police continue to destroy what he described as “good ganja fields.”

The government’s Cannabis Licensing Authority — which has authorized 29 cultivators and issued 73 licenses for transportation, retail, processing and other activities — said there is no shortage of marijuana in the regulated industry. But farmers and activists say weed sold via legal dispensaries known as herb houses is out of reach for many given that it still costs five to 10 times more than pot on the street.

___

Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Jamaica faces marijuana shortage as farmers struggle
 

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The Ombudsman's Office and CONAFRO sign an agreement to promote joint actions for the benefit of the Afro-Bolivian people

February 2, 2021 11:13 AM

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La Paz, February 2, 2021. — The Ombudsman's Office and the National Afro-Bolivian Council (Consejo Nacional Afroboliviano, CONAFRO) signed this Wednesday a framework agreement for inter-institutional cooperation that will allow them to put in place joint actions to bring about actions for the Decade of the Afro-Bolivian People, promote the enforcement, advancement, diffusion and observance of the human rights of this population and the fulfillment of its institutional functions and objectives.

Within this framework, specific activities were defined to promote activities to monitor and comply with Law 848 of the “Decade of the Afro-Bolivian People” and the “Proclamation of the International Decade for People of African Descent”, and of the Work Plan for the International Decade of Afro-descendants prepared by CONAFRO, adopting measures that contribute to guarantee the human rights, especially of children and adolescents, women, adults, the elderly and people with disabilities belonging to the Afro-Bolivian people.

Likewise, forums, conferences, seminars, webinars, courses and other spaces will be organized for the exchange of experiences and strengthening of management processes; in addition to establishing direct coordination and communication between both parties, to generate operational capacity to gather and transmit the information and supplies required safely and expeditiously within the scope of their competences.

According to the work plan prepared by the present administration, seven activities will be developed that include investigations by the Ombudsman's Office, dissemination and preparation of spots, recognition of authorities and leaders, orientation and attention to cases of human rights violations, training and the verification of Municipal Comprehensive Legal Services (Servicios Legales Integrales Municipales, SLIMs), Children and Adolescents' Ombudsman (Defensorías de la Niñez y Adolescencia, DNAs), Comprehensive Plurinational Justice Services (Servicios Integrales de Justicia Plurinacional, SIJPLU) and Plurinational Victim Assistance Service (Servicio Plurinacional de Asistencia a la Victima, SEPDAVI) offices, to name a few.

CONAFRO is the parent organization — at the national and international level — of the Afro-Bolivian people and its raison d'être is to enforce its individual and collective rights; as well as the implementation of the International Decade for People of African Descent 2015-2024 declared by the United Nations, calling on States across the world to create policies in favor of Afro-descendant peoples.

The Ombudsman's Office and CONAFRO sign an agreement to promote joint actions for the benefit of the Afro-Bolivian people
 

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Venezuelan authorities discuss strategic vision of cultural cooperation with Africa

Written by
César Torres on 09/02/2021. Posted in News
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On Tuesday, Vice-minister for Africa Yuri Pimentel held a meeting with Culture Minister Ernesto Villegas to discuss initiatives on cultural diplomacy developed with the African continent for the year 2021 and precautions in the context of the pandemic.

Likewise, they reviewed the strategic vision of cultural cooperation between Venezuelan and Africa and the working agenda with each African country.

“A large part of the Venezuelan population finds its historical, ancestral and cultural roots in the African continent; that’s why this joint work is important,” said the vice-minister for Africa.

At the meeting, the Cultural Festival of African Peoples stood out as an event organized every two years by the Ministry of People’s Power for Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of People’s Power for Culture.

In this regard, the two Venezuelan ministers agreed on the need of holding this Festival despite the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and enjoying an extensive program of artistic, cultural and educative activities.

“The Cultural Festival of African Peoples will be held in May on the occasion of the Week of Africa and the commemoration of Africa Day. It was one of the main topics we discussed with Minister Villegas,” informed Vice-minister Pimentel, who announced similar initiatives will be undertaken this year.

Venezuelan authorities discuss strategic vision of cultural cooperation with Africa
 

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Black Citizenship Forum: Pan-Africanism and the Pitfalls of National Citizenship

Editors, The Black Agenda Review | 27 Jan 2021

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Black Citizenship Forum: Pan-Africanism and the Pitfalls of National Citizenship / Photo: Dr. Layla Brown-Vincent

The Review interrogates the thought of academic and activist Layla Brown-Vincent, who says she was “reared and steeped in Pan-Africanist thought and organization” from birth.

For the second post in the Black Citizenship Forum we feature an interview with cultural anthropologist Dr. Layla Brown-Vincent. Brown-Vincent teaches Africana Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is completing a manuscript titled Return to the Source: The Dialectics of 21st Century Pan-African Liberation that compares the political strategies of the Movement for Black Lives with those of La Red de Organizaciones Afrovenezolanas (the Afro-Venezuelan Network). For The Black Agenda Review, Brown-Vincent responded directly to the series of questions we sent to contributors for the Forum. Her responses focus on the possibilities of a return to the philosophy and political practice of Pan-Africanism as a model for resolving the limits of Black citizenship and she offers Venezuela as an example of an alternative vision of citizenship for people of African descent.

From your location, what do you see as the primary and most urgent issues concerning Black people’s relation to the nation-state? How does Black people’s relation to the nation-state shape the experience and conditions of Black citizenship?

As a Pan-Africanist, reared in the intellectual traditions of the All African People's Revolutionary Party - GC , I follow the ideological teachings of Kwame Osagefayo Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, and Kwame Ture. They promote the fundamental political objective of a United States of Africa under Scientific Socialism . That Black/African people—whether located on the African continent or in the African diaspora—continue to seek belonging in a supra-national political community, however imagined, is a testament to the limiting and contentious relationship they have to their supposed national citizenship.

If I were to limit my answer to this question to Black/African people’s relationship with the U.S. nation-state, particularly in the wake of this past summer’s global uprisings and the most recent national elections, I would have to say that the masses of Black/African peoples continue to experience second-class citizenship—or 21st century slavery, as Malcolm X might characterize it. If we understand citizenship as full and equal membership in a given polity, we can clearly see that the Black/African masses do not exist on full and equal footing with the non-Black/African masses in this country. I find the US political system to be fundamentally undemocratic, corrupt, and morally bankrupt, and therefore do not personally view voting in the U.S. context as a worthwhile endeavor. However, if voting is a right supposedly guaranteed to U.S. citizens, the miseducation, voter intimidation, and voter suppression in this most recent election alone reveals the bankruptcy of Black/African citizenship in the United States.

I am also not sure that we, as Black/African peoples in the United States, can have a robust, imaginative, and ethical conversation about the state of our citizenship without being in dialogue with the Indigenous peoples of this land. I think that far too often we are seduced by ideas like the so-called “Black Belt Thesis ,” as well as those assertions of a fundamental claim or right to citizenship in the US. I would never deny the forced role we had in building this country, a role which certainly entitles us to the same rights as our white settler-colonial counterparts. However, we need to make a continuous and vigorous political commitment to having this conversation about Black citizenship in the US with our Indigenous siblings. If we do not, we risk becoming complicit in perpetuating the same ills upon Indigenous peoples that white settlers have perpetuated for nearly five hundred years.

Historically, class has been a constitutive part of Black citizenship formation. Yet class has often held a difficult place in discussions of race and racism. What is your sense of how class conflict—especially the intra-racial class conflicts between the Black working classes and the Black middle classes and petit-bourgeoisie—has emerged where you are? Furthermore, is there an international dimension to this conflict, in as much as imperialism, multinational corporations, and transnational finance are remaking the local terrain of class, class conflict, and class struggle?

In a 1989 speech at the University of Chicago on lessons learned from the sixties, Kwame Ture declared that, “the class struggle in the African revolution must be more ruthless and uncompromising than in any other revolution.” He goes on to proclaim that “The African bourgeoisie is the most corrupt bourgeoise in the world. In Africa they seek luxury in the midst of mass suffering… In America as soon as they arrive at a position based on the blood of the people, they snatch that position and run away from the people.” Such an example can be seen in the likes of Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Jim Clyburn, and even (or perhaps especially) Barack and Michelle Obama. These are enemies of our people, first and foremost, because their very existence is meant to quell our righteous discontent as a people. Furthermore, the active role they play in the public admonition of our very human responses to our inhumane existence is a betrayal par excellence. They only represent their opportunistic selves, using the masses of our people every step of the way. Ture concluded his speech with this admonition: “Here then the masses must come without pity and without mercy to trample upon these reactionary pigs who, after the people have gained struggle through their blood, come to hand back the gains on a silver platter to the very enemy the people fought.” Figures like Donald Trump are easy enemies because they make no bones about their priorities and objectives. The true danger for us as Black/Africans living in the United States lies with those who would have us believe they are working on our behalf in order to silence us.
 

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What impact does U.S. imperialism have on Black citizenship? Do you see the possibilities for, or practices of, transnational or diasporic Black solidarity against empire?

When it comes to the question of US imperialism, I am inspired by the example of Venezuela. In November 2019, I participated in the First International Congress of Afro-Descendant People held in Caracas. The theme of the three-day conference was “Cimarronaje against Imperialismo”— Maroons Against Imperialism. It was organized by the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or PSUV) and a number of organizations representing the Afro-Venezuelan community. The conference demonstrated Venezuela’s commitment to building political power and revolutionary solidarity among the globally dispossessed peoples of the African Diaspora.

The aim of the congress was to examine, “Afro-descendants in the programmatic agendas of social movements and left-wing political parties, within the framework of the International Decade for People of African Descent and Reparations, as a fundamental basis for the eradication of structural racism, a condition for the construction of Socialism.” For three days, approximately 250 delegates—including Roland Lumumba, the son of the late Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba—from more than 50 countries gathered in Caracas, Venezuela. Congress participants were divided into various tracks representing different social movements and tendencies, ranging from Pan-Africanism to Black feminism to multiple forms of Marxism. Each track had a specific set of agreed upon aims to structure its thematic workshops. Some of those aims included:

* To compile, configure and disseminate our own horizons of senses expressed in the liberating praxis of cimarrones and cimarronas of all times, through the construction of historical routes resulting in educational materials.

* To locate reparations not only in the economic and legal field but also taking into account reparations to epistemicides, culturicides, memoricides, linguicides, ecocides, filicides and economicides, through militant processes of literacy against colonization and imperialism.

* To recover decolonial, American, African and Afrodiasporic thought in general, which positions our places of enunciation in the consciences, incorporating them in the plans and study programs of all the educational subsystems and in the generators of media content.

* To systematize the recovery of the nodal nucleus of our Afro and diasporic narratives from international research groups and political, religious, spiritual and cultural platforms, impacting the communication structures and the public policies.

The congress concluded with a presentation of the final declaration of the congress to President Nicolas Maduro at Miraflores (the presidential house), to which all congress participants were invited. The final declaration included statements of solidarity with the peoples of Bolivia, Haiti, Colombia, Ecuador, an Chile, support for the legal recognition of Mexico’s afro-descended populations, condemnations of US and western European imperialist intervention around the globe and of US human rights violations of Black Americans and Black immigrants, and a call for recognition of and reparations for the genocide visited upon the children of Africa in the Americas. The congress concluded with a commitment from President Maduro to provide resources and to create a central operation point for Afro-descendant peoples working to build a global left movement guided by the political and material necessities of the oppressed masses. The resolutions placed a particular emphasis on the role of women, afro-descended and Indigenous peoples, and those ravaged by the world capitalist system.

In January 2020, as a follow-up effort to continue growing, activists organized the International Anti-Imperialist Cumbe of Afro-Descended and African People to attend the World Conference Against Imperialism, which also took place in Caracas. The word “Cumbe'' comes from the Venezuelan maroon community Cumbe de Ocoyta (1768-1771), led by Afro-Venezuelan cimarron Guillermo Ribas. At this conference, the Cumbe redoubled its efforts by expanding the South-South International Center for Training and Research on Afrodescendant and African peoples.

I choose to read these configurations as an alternative visioning of belonging that moves beyond the nation state, even Venezuela, but that draws on the hemispheric visions of Simon Bolivar and Jose Marti that inspired the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. That imagined belonging is precisely what took me to Venezuela for the first time in 2011, when I began conducting research for my dissertation. In many ways Venezuela in the early 2000s offered the hope of other possibilities for political community and belonging in much the same way Cuba did for previous generations of Black radicals. I imagine the South-South Center as a space of cross fertilization away from the spying eyes of the US government—a place that might birth a new generation of Black radicals that will facilitate more just and humane configurations of community and belonging.

As Joseph Biden takes office of the U.S. presidency, and we are presumably freed from the fascist terrorism of Donald Trump, alternative forms of Black belonging and citizenship become ever more important. While Biden may provide more structure in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and nominal economic relief on the domestic front, he has already made it clear that international policy will remain business as usual. Biden’s incoming Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has confirmed that the new administration will continue to recognize Juan Guaido as the country’s “legitimate leader” despite the results of the last presidential election which clearly indicate Nicolas Maduro is the duly elected and constitutionally approved president of Venezuela. Biden even went so far as to invite Carlos Vecchio, one of Guaido’s cronies, who has assisted in coup attempts against Maduro, to his inauguration. Perhaps most importantly, Blinken also confirmed that Biden has no intent of removing, or even lessening the sanctions , which are effectively starving and killing hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans. If the US cannot respect the Venezuelan peoples’ electoral process and their right to sovereignty through the so called basic democratic right of electoral choice, what would make Black people in the US believe we have any chance of being recognized as rights bearing citizens?

What is the role of Black intellectuals—be they academics, activists, or artists—in helping to shape a public discussion around citizenship and national formation? Are you able to draw on a local history or tradition of Black intellectual activity that helps us make sense of the present?

In Consciencism , Nkrumah, describes his experiences studying in the United States. While studying philosophy at Lincoln University, Nkrumah recounts his encounters with Plato, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx and others. One of the first arguments he makes in Consciencismis that, despite the temptations of seemingly universalist thought of such European philosophers and theorists, Nkrumah learned to “see philosophical systems in the context of the social milieu which produced them.” Heeding his own call, Nkrumah resolved that the first necessary step in the process of our liberation as Black/African people is “a body of connected thought which will determine the general nature of our action in unifying the society which we have inherited, this unification to take account, at all times, of the elevated ideals underlying the traditional African society.” Social revolution, he continues, must have “standing firmly behind it, an intellectual revolution, a revolution in which our thinking and philosophy are directed toward the redemption of our society. Our philosophy must find its weapons in the environment and living conditions of the African people.”

From birth, I was reared and steeped in these teachings, this tradition of Pan-Africanist thought and organization. These teachings are so embedded in me that I often have to be careful to give credit to the likes of the names I mention here as opposed to my own parents. It is from these teachings and my upbringing, as a child of members/organizers with the All African People’s Revolutionary Party-GC, that I draw my own purpose, make sense of the present, and endeavor to determine the contribution I am to make before I exit this world.

My position on the role of intellectuals can be summed up with a quote from the Kwame Ture speech I mentioned earlier:

“No individual African...makes any advance unless it is a result of mass struggle. Any student sitting in any seat in any college in America knows that they didn’t gain that seat through any individual talents but only through the struggles of the masses of their people. Thus that seat belongs to the people, the knowledge they acquire there must be used for the people. Otherwise they have already betrayed the people and have repeated errors... Students have a responsibility to use their knowledge to help advance the struggles of humanity.”

Black Citizenship Forum: Pan-Africanism and the Pitfalls of National Citizenship
 

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Buenaventura's misfortune

Buenaventura and the Afro-Colombian peoples of the Pacific do not need “more State”, as it is stated in Bogotá cafes, we need ANOTHER type of State, which overcomes structural racism and historical exclusion

By: Piedad Córdoba Ruíz
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| February 10, 2021


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A city that moves more than 400 billion pesos a year through its port cannot have the majority of its population living in poverty, or drug trafficking as its main employer

Buenaventura's misfortune includes the violence that is ending the lives of its young people, but also its causes: inherited poverty and exclusion, and an indolent racist establishment with its problems, which only covets the territories of its communities.

Today, February 10, the youth of Buenaventura promote a new mobilization against death. The violence that plagues Bonaverenses as well as the entire Afro-Colombian people is structural violence as a result of racism and historical exclusion, it is the accumulation by dispossession of their territories and is part of the ongoing ethnic genocide and ethnocide, as I presented it last year before the Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-repetition. The current crisis that has made it possible to put the city at the center of national concern is the overflow of a decades-old conflict of territorial projects which far exceeds the problem of security or public order and requires a comprehensive policy for resolution.

It is worth taking into account the 2015 report of the National Center for Historical Memory “Buenaventura, a port without a community” that shows how the municipality has experienced different spatial reconfigurations in the division of the city and the development of the port, socio-territorial appropriations through collective land titling promoted by Afro-descendant organizations versus the imposition of land use planning based on logistics or tourism megaprojects, which privilege plans for the expansion of the cargo port and also the reconstruction of a new port in Bahía Málaga for ships that require greater depth, as well as the eviction of the inhabitants of the low-tide neighborhoods, the Buenaventura-Buga dual carriageway, as well as other displacement of residents to promote commercial interests, including the new esplanade. It is on these conflicts — and dispossessions — that the actions of the illegal mafias come to operate and intersect with what some academics have rightly called the transnational capitalist criminal drug trafficking company, which exists thanks to its obvious links with the government.

A city that moves more than 400 billion pesos a year through its port cannot have the majority of its population living in poverty, or drug trafficking as its main employer. There will be no deactivation of the drug trafficking circuits that have turned Buenaventura into a disputed area for transnational cartels if the problem of crops for illicit use throughout the Colombian Pacific is not also deactivated. Seeking to end drug trafficking by militarizing the port is as useless as doing it by fumigating our forests and rivers. Without a comprehensive plan that includes rural reform and voluntary substitution for growers, the high returns for the illegal business will be maintained, with its benefits to many “legal” businesses.

In the Peace Agreement, a Pilot Plan was contemplated to dismantle the successor organizations of the paramilitaries that were beginning operations in Buenaventura and Tumaco, which contemplated changes in the public force in charge of the two cities, with serious corruption problems. It also included Buenaventura as a PDET (Programas de Desarrollo con Enfoque Territorial, Development Programs with a Territorial Approach) municipality, which prioritized it for the implementation of plans for the development and reparation of victims, and guaranteed its own political representation together with other municipalities of the Pacific in the House of Representatives through the Special Territorial Circumscriptions of Peace. None of this has been fulfilled almost 4 years after the signing. The agreements arising from the Civic Strike of May 2017, which contemplated improving access to health, education and drinking water for all its inhabitants, have not been complied with either. The government does not fulfill any agreement to the people of this country, let alone to Afro-descendants, since 1619 when the Spanish Crown violated the agreement with Benkos Biohó and captured him to hang and dismember him in 1621. Four hundred years in breach of contract against us.

The background of the Dantesque reality of the so-called “chop-up houses” or the daily massacres in the middle of 2021 can be summarized in that, in the Port of Buenaventura, legal economic circuits intersect with illegal ones: drug trafficking and arms trafficking, micro-trafficking, extortions, tolls and control of local commerce, crops for illicit use, criminal mining, money laundering and establishment of businesses related to the port circuit, guerrilla presence and paramilitary arrival since 2000, territorial conflict and dispute over the communities, managing to corrupt even some leaders. All this conflict has been expressed in the atrocious methods of violence and terror, where not only murders are committed, but corpses are chopped, selective homcides, forced disappearances, massacres, attacks against the civilian population, combats, confrontations and harassment are carried out, that configure a permanent terror, deterritorialization, construction of logic of horror, destructuring of family structures and kinship networks. All of this results in the weakening of the community culture of Afro-descendants, the loss of the meaning of control and territorial autonomy by the communities, the establishment of a new social order based on violence and armed logic, economic damage generated by economic and violent dynamics, growing impoverishment of the poor, increasing inequality, loss of production capacity and growth of businesses carried out by local communities. However, despite this panorama, the organization and social mobilization persist in the midst of terror and dispossession, as the convocation that I join SOS Buenaventura reminds us.

The problem of public order in Buenaventura and in the entire Pacific is only its most obvious expression but not its cause. For this reason, it is not resolved essentially within the security policies, and even less with the constant elevation of the military force that occupies the city. Buenaventura needs a Social Emergency Plan, a national pilot project that includes, among other thing, the application of the basic income model, promoting the creation and formalization of employment. Buenaventura and the Afro-Colombian peoples of the Pacific do not need "more State" as it is stated in Bogotá's cafes, we need ANOTHER type of State, which overcomes structural racism and historical exclusion by proposing a productive and inclusive economic model; another type of State that abandons the infertile policy of militarization of social life that has demonstrated its ineffectiveness and opts for the recognition of the communities and guarantees their appropriation of their territories. Only in this way can my Buenaventura truly have good fortune.

Buenaventura's misfortune
 

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WIPR-TV launches program celebrating Puerto Rico's Afro-descendants

Afrodescendencia: Raza en la piel y en la conciencia will be a series of six documentaries

By Metro Puerto Rico
Wednesday, February 10, 2021, 15:49


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WIPR-TV presents Afrodescendencia: Raza en la piel y en la conciencia, a series of 6 documentaries about various prominent personalities from our Afro-descendant history in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.

The show, which will premiere on Sunday, February 14, 2021, at 6pm, will be moderated by the actors Modesto Lacén and Jessica Gaspar.

This program is part of a collaboration between WIPR and the Río Piedras Campus of the University of Puerto Rico, the Faculty of General Studies and the Interdisciplinary and Multicultural Institute, which will have the renowned writer Mayra Santos Febres as librettist and curator of the content and José Arturo Ballester as Artistic Director.

“It's important to develop an education dedicated to bringing inclusive changes in institutional public policy and being a focal point for the development and study of our racial configurations in the United States and Latin America. Thanks to this documentary series we will be able to know and correct details that have been historically overlooked about these 6 personalities”, said Mayra Santos Febres, librettist and curator of the content.

The 6 documentaries — combining interviews and narration — will focus on the lives of: Arturo Schomburg, the brothers Rafael and Celestina Cordero, Roberto Clemente, Sylvia del Villard, Ruth Fernández and Juano Hernández. Additionally, through its social networks, WIPR-TV will publish — throughout the month of February — pamphlets with the biography and achievements of the different prominent Afro-descendants of Puerto Rico.

“With this initiative we don't want our youth to forget an important part of our Puerto Rican and Caribbean history which is the lives of these prominent Afro-descendants, and their impact on Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, the Americas and the world”, said Eric Delgado Santiago, president of the Puerto Rico Public Broadcasting Corporation.

WIPR-TV launches program celebrating Puerto Rico's Afro-descendants
 

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Venezuela calls for coordinating fight for reparations of social movements at ECOSOC Special Meeting

Written by César Torres on 18/02/2021. Posted in News

On behalf of the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela, the Minister for People’s Power for Foreign Affairs, Jorge Arreaza, urged on Thursday to reflect on how to take decisive actions to eradicate racism, an institution of the industrial liberal capitalism, which insists on maintaining the necessary conditions for the proliferation of multiple forms of discriminations.

“We welcome the establishment of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent so that governments can confront the disastrous consequences of colonialism and the transatlantic trafficking in slaves,” said the Venezuelan diplomat in his statement at the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) special meeting on “Reimagining Equality: Eliminating racism, xenophobia and discrimination for all in the decade of action for the SDGs.”

In the same vein, Arreaza condemned those ideologies and leaderships that take advantage of divisions with political purposes at the expense of human pain, as well as the unilateral coercive measures against the wellbeing and peace of the peoples.

“Venezuela condemns the political use of migration and economic blockades as one of the most sophisticated and cruel practices of modern discrimination, affecting millions of Venezuelans and over a third of humanity.”

Likewise, he expressed Venezuela’s will to move forward with the Sustainable Development Goals and to put an end to the isolating rhetoric harming the multilateral system to the detriment of human rights mechanisms and exacerbating racial and national divisions.

At the virtual special meeting, the Venezuelan foreign minister said that in the face of the critical scenarios of uncertainty resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine, “the United Nations is called to increasingly exercise its leadership to favor a fairer distribution system, so that it won’t be another expression of discrimination, exclusion and the geopolitical game of the most powerful.”

Arreaza remarked that the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action should lead to concrete actions and should not be limited to be a reminder, and called for coordinating the fight for the reparations of all social movements struggling against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and other racial-related forms of intolerance.

The Venezuelan foreign minister reaffirmed the will and commitment of the Venezuelan people and Government to moving forward with practical actions and public policies on the path of an inclusive society, without any form of discrimination, in a democratic, equitable, solidarity-based, inclusive, international order.

Venezuela calls for coordinating fight for reparations of social movements at ECOSOC Special Meeting
 

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Jaime Hurtado's thoughts and struggle are still valid

February 17, 2021

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Today, February 17, we remember one more year of the vile assassination of our comrade Jaime Hurtado González, perpetrated in 1999. Jaime was the first Afro-Ecuadorian deputy in the House of Representatives in 1978 (now the National Assembly) and the first Afro-Ecuadorian presidential candidate in 1984, finishing in fourth place. His people knew him as the leader of the Democratic People's Movement, or MPD, as a tribune consistent with popular causes and an enemy of corruption and compromise. In 1998 he returned to the National Congress and, together with his party, he fought the anti-popular, sell-out policy of the Jamil Mahuad administration.

The current political scenario, the electoral confrontation between the people and the oligarchy, makes Jaime's words resound in our ears when, from the parliament, he pointed out: “We tell the Ecuadorian people that this is a class struggle, a clash between those responsible for the crisis, who have been ruling Ecuador, and the people who organize to change things in this country. This is a class struggle between those who want to take everything and the people who need to save even their right to live.”

From his platform, Jaime and his party, the MPD, denounced the attempts to declare a bank holiday. He vigorously warned that “they want to rehabilitate banks and, consequently, the companies that are doing badly”. How right he was! A year after his murder, the Christian Democratic government froze bank deposits and declared dollarization. Today, the successors of that party (Creating Opportunities) and their candidate Guillermo Lasso star in a blatant electoral fraud to prevent a popular and leftist option from reaching the second round...

Jaime's thought gains strength and vigor; his speech not only denounced the bourgeoisie and imperialism, but also synthesized the programmatic proposal of the revolutionary left. “… no one debates whether or not is it necessary to have development and increase production. What we discuss and what the Ecuadorian people question is the way wealth grows while being virtually used by a handful of families, who are the ones who run the country. The wealth created by the people has to go to the popular sectors, who forge the wealth and yet don't get to enjoy it”.

Before being assassinated, in his speech on February 17, 1999, Jaime denounced how Congress rewarded Guayaquil water and sewer utility ECAPAG's debtors. He denounced how the bourgeoisie, violating the principles of legality, decided to benefit the big companies of Guayaquil by forgiving the interests they were obliged by law to pay for the use of the drinking water service. Twenty years later, the National Assembly and the Moreno administration carried out a tax amnesty that ended up harming small-scale producer and benefiting large economic emporiums.

The murder of Jaime Hurtado, Pablo Tapia and Welington Borja continues to go unpunished. This State crime has not been punished and those who saw in them a danger to their interests are still free.

Jaime Hurtado's thoughts and struggle are still valid
 
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