Blog Posts

We know that Juanes’ good looks and smooth voice holds a special power over throngs of fans worldwide, but it wasn’t until last month that we learned that he can actually stop bullets. When Juanes returned to his hometown of Medellín to join local musical and civil society groups in a concert on International Peace Day in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, Comuna Trece, they convinced hundreds of members of the city’s violent gangs to commit themselves to peace.

Afro-Colombian communities in the past year have faced increasing threats of displacement and violence. On September 21st, LAWGEF joined the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and other partner organizations in organizing a public event in DC where Clemencia Carabali Rodallega, a prominent Afro-Colombian leader, spoke about the dire situation that many communities are in today. The following video and quotes were taken from that event.

In 2005, I visited the community of San José de Apartadó, Colombia. A group of poor farmers who had been repeatedly displaced from their homes by violence, they had decided to call themselves a “peace community” and reject violence from all sides—paramilitaries, guerrillas and the army.  Yet the community was subjected to ever more harassment and violence, including by the local 17th army brigade.  Some 170 members of the peace community have been assassinated since 1997. My visit came soon after seven members of the peace community, including three children, and a local farmer had been massacred and dismembered.  The community members had left their army-occupied town to construct a bare-bones, dirt-floor village down the road.

Colombia's Constitutional Court issued an important decision last week which sent Colombia's new administration back to the drawing board to secure approval for a U.S.-Colombian military base agreement.  The decision effectively struck down the contentious agreement, chastising the Colombian executive for having failed to get approval from Colombia's Congress, and requiring them now to seek congressional endorsement before moving forward.