Raizal women from San Andrés delivered a report to the Truth Commission on the armed conflict in their region

Before the Truth Commission (CEV) women from San Andrés delivered a report on the armed conflict in their region, this act is part of the process of dialogue in the archipelago to clarify the events experienced, based on listening to people and communities victims of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, which is being carried out by the entity .

The document submitted to the peace commission was prepared by the 'Cane Roots' Organization, made up of 12 women leaders of the island, and received by commissioners Carlos Ospina and Leyner Palacios, “it details the violent dynamics that have been generated within the department and that have not been sufficiently made visible”, says the organization.

According to the National Information Network, one million 144 thousand people from black, palenquera and raizal communities are registered as victims in the country. During the delivery event Silvia Archbold, a member of the organization, said, “people will say that there is no violence, that there is no armed conflict, that everything is peace in San Andrés, but that is not the reality. This document is the feelings of women who have dared to say what their feelings are, what they have experienced. Their losses, their families, their disappearances and the violence that is in our department,” he said.

As of 2020, the CEV has recorded 380 cases of victims in San Andrés, during the armed conflict in Colombia, “those are our figures, but other studies tell us about more than 700 people who are victims of this phenomenon, through disappearances at sea or executions in the territory,” said the entity born from the signing of the Peace Agreement, between the Colombian State and the former FARC guerrillas in 2016.

This was explained by María Matilde Rodríguez Jaimes, representative of the Raizal People and the Archipelago before the Commission. “The statistics that we had recorded since 1993 indicate that there were 380 missing persons, that figure was revealed by the Caribbean Observatory. Then, when you have looked back, there are more than 700 people missing, and they are chilling numbers, but since there are no mass graves or bodies, they are not counted, nor are they identified within the national horror.”

The event was led by the Directorate for Social Dialogue of the Commission and in it, the Women's Organization emphasized the value of listening for “the construction of a broad and plural narrative, allowing a dialogue in society about what happened, for non-repetition, especially on the dynamics of the armed conflict in the archipelago that are unknown in the rest of Colombia”.

“The truth is that the first step of just listening to us is a blessing. The report is received, the idea is that they can read it, to be able to generate comments and that it can be used to be part of all the exercise they are doing throughout the territory, that the truth of San Andrés is known”, concluded Archbold.

With regard to the role of the raizal woman and the phenomenon of disappearance, documentary filmmaker Luz Marina Livingston, the Raizal leader of Providencia, spoke about the situation that island women must experience after the loss of their husbands: “The woman has been pressured, because when her husband disappears, she not only becomes the mother of always, but also plays the role of the father. The island woman always thinks that this man will return, even though fifty years have passed, they still hold hope. It is torture that is maintained internally and it is also a social pressure on women and the family.”

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