Linda Y. Posso Gomez

It is often heard in popular slang that when the river sounds, it brings stones. In our community he also brought life, joy and hope. But, the river no longer sounds. He no longer brings stones, nor fish, nor sings, nor laughs, nor cries. It seems that the time when this river of living waters was turned into a river of blood does not end, similar to that time of conflict and violence that we want to leave behind, but that is transformed every day. This is the story of a black community that has resisted one of the biggest environmental conflicts in Colombian history in recent decades: the ecocide of the Anchicayá River.

Anchicayá is a territory located in the rural area of ​​the district of Buenaventura (Colombia), one of the most important ports in Latin America. It is made up of nine community councils of black communities and it is home to about six thousand inhabitants, approximately. For them, the preservation of the ancestral legacy, the cultural practice and its relationship with the environment as a way of life, are fundamental.

At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, various armed actors arrived in different parts of the Colombian Pacific, but in Anchicayá they had not yet arrived —although it was expected that this would be the case because there were already incursions in Buenaventura. There were only rumors, so strong that it caused the displacement of many people. However, one morning on July 23, 2001, in this rural area of ​​Buenaventura, no one imagined that they would “murder” the Anchicayá River.

The Pacific Energy Company (EPSA, Unión Fenosa), today known as Celsia, opened the discharge gates of the Bajo Anchicayá hydroelectric plant. It is estimated that during thirty days 500,000 cubic meters of accumulated and putrefied mud were spilled in these waters. This caused the clogging of the river and great effects on the ecosystem and the communities, for whom the river is a way of life, it is the main economic, food and transportation source.

The Anchicagueños undertook a process of legal struggle that was strengthened through incidence, mobilization and the development of methods of persuasion and protest, this is what is known as a combination of conventional actions with the exercise of civil resistance. After the mud spill in the river, the community filed a complaint and, in September 2001, the Ministry of the Environment opened an investigation against the company EPSA. That was the beginning of a long road to seek the protection of the rights of these communities in Buenaventura.

A chronology of some relevant events will allow us to understand more quickly important milestones in this case, which at the time of writing this article and despite the final ruling in favor of the communities, seems to have no end.

For a long time, the EPSA company did not acknowledge its responsibility for the damage caused, it also justified its actions by stating that the discharge responded to routine actions, such as dam maintenance, and they pointed out that the lack of sedimentation was due to the activities of deforestation developed by the inhabitants of the area. The company, until then allegedly responsible for the damage, also added that all the actions taken by the community were unfair. Thus, between complaints, pronouncements, revocations, annulments and appeals, almost a decade passed. In 2009, there were first and second instance sentences that ruled in favor of the communities. In 2013, the United Nations made a request to the Colombian State to report on this case to the United Nations Human Rights Council and, in 2018, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights opened the case under the name of the Afro-descendant community of the river Anchicayá —the support of international actors, as nonviolence academics have argued, contributed to strengthening the cause of this process of civil resistance.

In 2021, a ruling recognized compensation for the affected communities and issued a sentence to the company that owns the hydroelectric plant, the environmental authority of Valle del Cauca (CVC) and the Colombian State. The sentence generated multiple reactions. The defendant company acknowledged the ruling and said it will abide by the decision. At the end of 2022, they claimed to have paid the compensation since March 22 of the same year. However, some community leaders believe that the ruling and the way of proceeding with respect to the compensation was counterproductive because it put the communities at risk to access financial resources as reparation.

While the EPSA company requests the entity in charge of managing and guaranteeing the delivery of said resources to the identified population, it indicates that there were no such effects or at least not to the extent that the communities argue. EPSA assures that “it is not true that the river is dead or that the dam is in poor condition“. The Anchicayá River is no longer the same, but despite the many damages it experienced and the contamination of which there are still vestiges, this river refuses to die and its communities fight to protect it.

Some of the most common strategies used by activists combined methods of persuasion and intervention such as protests, blockades, pronouncements. The communities of Anchicayá developed advocacy actions through speeches and public statements, symbolic acts, use of the media and social networks, marches, and caravans. The blockades in Buenaventura, as intervention strategies, had an impact on the national economy since this is an important port for the country. Other nonviolent persuasion actions have been the forums for the dignity of the Anchicayá River, which had the participation of international allies who contributed to disseminate, position the agenda and make visible the importance of the case. The strategic allies also generated incidence from communications, videos, testimonies, complaints. For example, Humanconet created a petition strategy addressed to the Constitutional Court of Colombia and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights as a support mechanism for the Anchicayá communities.

A very important nonviolent action was the mobilization on December 1 and 2, 2022 towards Bogotá, the capital of Colombia. The trip by land took approximately eleven hours, this was necessary to reach entities with decision-making capacity regarding the case. Thus, in front of the Ministry of the Environment, the Congress of the Republic, the Colombian Ombudsman’s Office and the Constitutional Court, voices were raised and rights were demanded. This mobilization was characterized by being a planned, organized and articulated strategy. It was loaded with a strong cultural and ancestral component, through songs, symbolic acts, public speeches. The action carried out in this context was called March for the dignity of the Anchicayá river and its communities.

The leaders constructed songs and sang them at all times and places, “I come from the sea to Bogotá to claim the rights of the Anchicayá river.” As part of the strategy, symbolic acts were important: a candle was made as a tribute to the deceased and in memory of the deceased. In this act there was silence, they danced and sang to the rhythm of the culture of the communities. With these acts of creative and cultural civil resistance, it was requested that the Anchicayá river be legally recognized and declared as a subject of law. This is the desire of this community to guarantee the truth, reparation for damages and guarantees that there will be no repetition of these atrocious events.

Finally, in October 2021, the Anchicayá community was recognized with the National Human Rights Award in Colombia for its hard work in protecting the territory, natural resources, and ethnic identity. A great achievement without a doubt. However, Colombia ranks first among the countries with the greatest risk to defend the environment and territories. In a context where the balance of power tilts in favor of big capital, the defense of the territory means the defense of life and freedom, but it is also the prelude to the violation of rights.

The ACLED Organization (for its acronym in English) identified a total of ten critical areas by 2023 where the conflict will evolve in positive (de-escalation) or negative (growth) terms. Colombia is one of the ten critical areas identified, along with Ukraine, the South Caucasus and Central Asia, the Sahel, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Yemen, Kurdish regions, Burma, and Haiti. According to the 2023 Global Risks Report, in the next decade, the greatest risks will focus on climate and environmental terms, and they are risks for which the world is least prepared.

With the above, I try to leave a clear message: just as in war, with the damage to the ecosystem, we all lose. There are no winners. Capital should not be above life. This is an urgent call, that Total Peace, that flag of the new government that seeks dialogue with all the illegal armed groups, and the path towards a Colombia that is a “world power of life”, as a route of national plan for the next four years of government, privilege the care of the territory, and break cycles of direct, structural and symbolic violence that many communities in Colombia have experienced. Thank you Buenaventura, thank you Anchicayá for teaching from the resistance

Linda Y. Posso Gomez

She is a sociologist and a native of Buenaventura, Colombia. Master in International Relations, mention in security and human rights (Flacso Ecuador).

Text published in alliance with FES, on May 3, 2023.

Translated by Damian Vasquez