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Social Movements in Colombia

Published: May 2012
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The majority of the marchers who took to the rainy streets of Bogota at the end of April with their flags and picket signs calling for peace and social justice had travelled up to 20 hours by bus from the rural corners of Colombia.<br />
Photo: Leonardo Villamizar
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The majority of the marchers who took to the rainy streets of Bogota at the end of April with their flags and picket signs calling for peace and social justice had travelled up to 20 hours by bus from the rural corners of Colombia.
Photo: Leonardo Villamizar

  • The majority of the marchers who took to the rainy streets of Bogota at the end of April with their flags and picket signs calling for peace and social justice had travelled up to 20 hours by bus from the rural corners of Colombia.<br />
Photo: Leonardo Villamizar
  • Some 1700 organisations began planning the Patriotic March two years ago, resulting in one of the largest mobilisations in Colombian history—it is an initiative that seeks to become a real democratic alternative for the country. <br />
Photo: Leonardo Villamizar
  • Popular mobilisations which are expressions of different social struggles have been on the rise in the last decade.  <br />
Photo: PBI Colombia
  • Mauricio Archila, historian and analyst of social movements for CINEP, says the social movements that achieve the most are those that are able to avoid violent confrontations.<br />
Photo: Leonardo Villamizar
  • Over the course of the last year, thousands of students have protested and achieved the withdrawal of a proposed project to reform the Higher Education Law (Law 30).<br />
Photo: Leonardo Villamizar
  • Last year, a planned mining project that would have threatened the Santurban highlands (Santander) brought social organisations and environmentalists together to lead a movement that rejected the plan´s implementation.  The legal actions taken as well as the mobilisation of thousands of people succeeded in halting Canadian company Greystar from moving forward with its gold extraction project.<br />
Photo: Leonardo Villamizar
  • One of the most important social movements of the last decade has been the victims’ movement.  <br />
Photo: Leonardo Villamizar
  • The National Movement for Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE) emerged as a part of an investigative project called Colombia Never Again that documented crimes against humanity.<br />
Photo: Damien Fellous/librearbitre.
  • Within the movement 283 organisations work together.  Today, they have gained recognition and hold an important position within Colombian society.  <br />
Photo: PBI
  • According to human rights defender and forensic anthropologist Berenice Celeyta, another significant movement is the Peoples’ Congress that emerged as the minga of social and communitarian resistance.    In Colombia, minga is an indigenous word that describes social movement and resistance.<br />
Photo: Julian Montoni
  • There were two Peoples ‘Congresses held between 2010 and 2011 with approximately 90,000 participants. <br />
Photo: Julian Montoni
  • Thousands of representatives of indigenous communities throughout the country came together in Bogota in 2008 after a journey of nearly 500 kilometres from the city of Cali (Southwest Colombia). <br />
Photo: Damien Fellous/librearbitre
  • Human rights defender Berenice Celeyta emphasizes: “We are not all here yet.  There are still many people afraid to come out on the streets and there are still many people afraid to express what they think.”  <br />
Photo: Leonardo Villamizar
  • One of the most important challenges are the pressures—threats, killings, and stigmatisation –that are faced by leaders and participants of human rights organisations.  <br />
Photo: Leonardo Villamizar
  • “It´s truly heroic that there are still organisations in the countryside” says Luis Eduardo Celis, investigator for Corporation Nuevo Arcoiris, expressing his admiration for the courage of many people.  In the year 2011, according to different registries by non-governmental organisations, at least 28 people were killed that were linked to processes of land restitution as peasant farmers and as victims of displacement and dispossession.<br />
Photo: Leonardo Villamizar
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