Since 2013, CPT has been walking alongside the community of El Guayabo. Over the years, the community has faced threats from armed actors, political and legal persecution, uncertainty, evictions, and the fear of losing their land and livelihoods.
Now, their struggle for recognition – of the injustices endured during the years of armed conflict – has borne fruit.
CPT Colombia this week shares the community’s joy in the acknowledgement of its wounds. In 2011, Colombia passed the Victims’ Law, a set of measures designed to protect victims – both individual and collective – of human rights abuses suffered during the internal armed conflict. These laws guarantee victims’ access to truth, justice, and reparations. Now, the community of El Guayabo has achieved recognition under this process. They are eligible for collective reparations, and must determine what that looks like. The next battle will be getting them.
Whatever comes next, the community of El Guayabo has already achieved a major victory. This recognition “affirms the stories of community resistance and the violence that befell them for demanding minimum guarantees for a dignified life”. More than that, “it is an exercise in memory, where communities turn all the wounds, which have permeated their lives and bodies, into narratives”.
CPT has been walking a long path alongside the community of El Guayabo. Around the world, our teams are in it for the long haul. In Iraqi Kurdistan, after documenting the civilian toll of armed conflict, the team is working on amending death certificates to accurately reflect the circumstances in which victims were killed, so that their families might be compensated. In Lesvos, after walking towards freedom with the Pylos Nine – migrants scapegoated for the Greek state’s massacre of 650 people in the Adriana “shipwreck”– the team now works to hold Coast Guard captain and crew accountable. Underlying all of this is the need to keep memory alive.
As the world faces an authoritarian turn, people talk about the assault on truth: the deliberate lies, the spread of disinformation via new means, and emerging technologies. CPT’s work has long pointed towards an assault on truth: the comfortable stories told by power to absolve itself and keep doing business as usual. Our teams walk alongside our partners to hold aloft the counter-flame of collective memory. As we celebrate with CPT Colombia “the fruits of 13 years of walking together”, we steel ourselves for other journeys ahead.
