Since February 15, 2017, communities in the municipalities of Yopal and Aguazul, in the department of Casanare, peacefully gathered and blocked a road opposite the oil block project El Porton, run by the Canadian oil company Gran Tierra. Since the beginning of the mobilization, social leaders have received threatening calls, have been followed by different vehicles and three have been charged for obstructing the transit way.
By considering the essentially gendered nature of both war and peace, this article analyses the differential impact of the Colombian internal armed conflict according to gender and other factors of oppression. Women’s experiences in Colombia have historically been marked by patterns of social and political exclusion, which impact on gender roles and relations. In shifting contexts of war and peace within a specific culture, gender attributes, roles, responsibilities, and identities shape, and in turn, are influenced by the norms for engagement in war and peace.
The Indigenous and Afro-Colombian community of Marmato won a major court victory in their 10-year fight against a massive Canadian gold mine. Colombia's Constitutional Court ruled in favor of the residents of Marmato, a small community in the center of the country, in their fight against a massive open pit mine project by Canadian gold giant Gran Colombia Gold.
In February 2017, a PASC accompanier has collected the testimony of Albeiro, a farmer from the Meta region, in Colombia. On his plot of land, he cultivates cocoa, plantain and yuca. Some years ago, he witnessed the links between SOCODEVI and the Talisman oil company, both Canadian. "One day, we received a visit from a Talisman engineer. With his big speeches, he informed us that a Canadian international cooperation organization was coming to the region".
With a majority voting “No” in a popular referendum Sunday, local communities in Colombia's Cajamarca department scored a historic victory against transnational mining giant AngloGold Ashanti, likely putting a definitive end to the La Colosa project and setting a precedent for the whole country.
The Colombian Constitutional Court has found in favour of an indigenous peoples’ centuries-old fight for their territory, granting the petition for the protection of constitutional rights requested by the Embera Chamí people of the Indigenous Resguardo Cañamomo Lomaprieta, in western Colombia. The Resguardo’s claim was accepted by the Colombian Constitutional Court, the final court of appeal for constitutional matters in Colombia.
Piedra, it is the rock of resistance, the rock which, placed in the powerfuls’ shoe, bothers. It is the one that, in all its diversity, constitutes our habitat, vital to our existence. It is the rock we throw. And, of course, it is the exploited rock. Extractivism, an economic model based on the exploitation of resources, ravages always increasingly here and elsewhere. It is in “Canada”, on colonized lands, that the majority of mining companies hold their headquarters. As so, the Canadian companies deploy their activities in Colombia in all impunity, and take advantage and participate in the political and social violence that hits this country living in war.
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The Project Accompaniment Solidarity Colombia is a collective which realizes accompaniment with Colombian communities and organizations since 2003, while also creating links here and in Colombia of groups and individuals struggling against the imposition of mega-projects of resource extraction.