Massacre of five young Afro-Colombians in the Llano Verde neighborhood of Cali

The CLACSO Working Groups "Afro-descendants and counter-hegemonic proposals" and "Epistemologies of the South" endorse this statement prepared by AFRODES:

They are killing our children and young people. They want to destroy our culture, our present and our future: “we don’t even have the right to life.”

AFRODES Cali and all the Afro-Colombian families who are victims of the conflict and live in the Llano Verde neighborhood of Cali are in mourning. In a massacre, five young people, almost children, were cruelly murdered yesterday, August 11: Josmar Jean Paul Cruz Perlaza (16 years old), Leider Cárdenas Hurtado (16 years old), Luis Fernando Montaño (15 years old), Álvaro José Caicedo Silva (15 years old), and Jair Andrés Cortes Castro (14 years old). Their bodies, bearing signs of torture and execution-style killings, were left in a sugarcane field just meters from our homes. Details about the events are still unknown, but the reality is clear: it confirms the deliberate process of destroying us as an Afro-Colombian ethnic group, given the incapacity and indifference of the government and society. Murdering our children and young people means destroying the possibility of continuing our cultural existence. “We don’t even have the right to life”. 

Our deepest condolences go out to the families, especially the mothers, so they can endure this unbearable tragedy. And we demand that government authorities address a situation we have denounced for years. This is not the first time this has happened. Our children and young people have been systematically murdered. But this time, a massacre of children must prompt government action to stop this genocide. 

The first thing we need is for the structural causes of these crimes to be recognized and understood. This massacre confirms once again the deliberate genocide against the Afro-Colombian people. The families who live in Llano Verde were displaced from our lands by the armed conflict. We fled massacres and other crimes, and in Cali we have been bravely rebuilding our lives and fighting to preserve our cultural identity. Despite the expressions of racial discrimination we face in Cali, we strive with hope so that our sons and daughters have the opportunity to succeed and carry on and perpetuate our way of life. But the same crimes that forced us to flee continue to haunt us: this new massacre, the threats and assassinations of our leaders, the forced recruitment of young people, forced sex work, sexual violence against our women, the violence and murders by drug traffickers vying for control of our neighborhoods, the indifference of the government… 

Llano Verde is our new “territory” that we have built day by day. There we have recreated our lives and our dreams. There we celebrate our achievements, weave our collective projects, we share what we have and what we don't have, we mourn our dead, we support each other in the care and upbringing of our sons and daughters who belong to the entire community. There we have organized ourselves to resist the onslaught of COVID-19. The massacre of our five young people is also a crime against the Afro-Colombian people. 

Llano Verde, like our ancestral territories, today faces persistent violence and stigmatization from the authorities and the people of Cali. Illegal armed groups and the micro-trafficking business have us under siege. The murdered young people were building their lives and had withstood all the threats and pressures of a territory that continues to victimize them, and where adequate opportunities are lacking. 

The anger and sadness that grip us today are not signs of despair or defeat. This new massacre of our children and young people strengthens our resolve to carry on. In this spirit, and in addition to demanding investigative and judicial action to clarify the crime and bring justice, we make the following demands: 

• The Mayor's Office of Cali, in coordination with national authorities, must implement a Specific Plan of Immediate Action to stop the murders of Afro-Colombian children and youth in the Llano Verde neighborhood. This Plan must be formulated and implemented with community participation. We expect a meeting to be convened immediately. 
• The Mayor's Office of Cali must fulfill commitments stipulated in the Cali Afro policy regarding Afro-Colombian victims, which must guarantee conditions so that our girls, boys and young people can effectively enjoy their rights. 
• The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) must monitor the Colombian government's responses in clarifying this crime and in adopting measures to address the problems that the IACHR learned about in the thematic hearing granted to AFRODES and in the visits that commissioners made to the Llano Verde neighborhood. 
• The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) should ask the State of Colombia about the judicial measures it adopts to clarify this new crime against the Afro-Colombian population. 
• The Comprehensive System for Truth, Justice, Reparation and Non-Repetition must strengthen the analyses of the victimizing events suffered by the Afro-Colombian population after the events that caused their displacement, and which occurred mostly in urban contexts such as Cali in the last two decades. 
• The national government must implement a Collective Protection Plan for Afro-Colombian victims' organizations. 

August 12th, 2020
Statement from the National Association of Displaced Afro-Colombians (AFRODES)

The CLACSO Working Groups endorse this
Afro-descendants and counter-hegemonic proposals
Epistemologies of the South

This statement expresses the position of the Working Groups Afro-descendants and counter-hegemonic proposals y Epistemologies of the South and not necessarily that of the centers and institutions that make up the CLACSO international network, its Steering Committee or its Executive Secretariat.