The resistance of the black people of the Pacific coast of Cauca

We agreed to meet early at the pier. Tall wooden posts stand out on the surface of the water, where hundreds of rickety boats rest. The pier comes to life as we wait. Someone empties a gasoline can, while another unloads a sack and the others wait. Their gaze is fixed on the water, with no apparent hurry. In Guapi, as in other cities on the Pacific coast, you learn to navigate from childhood. There are no roads that connect the villages. To go to the market, people from the rural area must board a boat or a narrow canoe called a “potrillo.” Nor are there roads that connect the municipality with the rest of the country. To leave, it is necessary to go by boat to Buenaventura or by plane to Cali. The river gives life and allows for meeting others.

Pier, 9 a.m.

The Cococauca gang, as they call themselves, finally picked us up. Laughing, they explained the delay; something about a piston or a missing lathe in one of the boat’s engines. We sailed upriver for more than two hours. The journey is usually shorter, but the rebellious engine still refused to cooperate. Every now and then, someone would offer a “viche curao,” a sugarcane distillate that has been produced in the region for centuries and is used to cheer up the day and parties, to welcome people home; also to cure ailments and accompany prayers.

On the banks, there was tireless and abundant vegetation, of an untouched jungle. At some point, Caíto pointed out some pieces of wood nailed to the ground among the plants. They were the stilts of houses, he told us, that had been abandoned during the difficult period of paramilitary violence. Before, all this was populated.

We finally arrived at a place where a dozen stilt houses stood. We docked in front of Berenice’s, the newly appointed legal representative of the Community Council of that area, and got down to say hello. That’s what we came to do: say hello.

Orlando Pantoja, the senior “palenquero” of the Coordination of Community Councils of the Pacific Coast of Cauca – Cococauca, explained it to us later. The organization brings together eight community councils and nine grassroots organizations from Guapi, Timbiquí, and López de Micay. These visits serve to remind their members that they have the support of Cococauca and that the struggle for the ethnic reaffirmation of the Black people of the Pacific coast is collective. It’s what they’ve been doing since time immemorial: sharing a lunch, chatting, laughing, confirming that they are in this together.

It all started about 40 years ago. In the eighties, some young people from Guapi began to wonder if because they were Black they were condemned to poverty and to be victims of violence. “We didn’t understand why our life was like that. We didn’t understand if our social and economic condition was something natural. We wanted to understand.” Thus, says Dionisio, the rebellion began.

They wanted to study at the university, but most couldn’t. They had been born in Guapi, that city founded by slaves who had worked in the mining camps, where there were no universities. Their families, many of them peasants, had no way to send them elsewhere. They were Black in a racist country. The one who could, against all odds, was Orlando. His feat was a reference for the young people of Guapi, who began to gather to promote dignified life in the region. They created a first association of young people for agriculture. Meanwhile, from the National University headquarters in Palmira, Orlando wrote long letters “drawing a line.” He also collected texts that he brought on vacations or sent by mail. Before it was born, Cococauca was already a political school.

It was in 1991, when the country was talking about the new Constitution, that the mission of what would later be Cococauca appeared. The same young people who had started to meet a few years earlier were in charge of mobilizing the population of the Pacific coast of Cauca and influencing the inclusion of the demands of the Black population in the Constitution. Thanks to networking with other organizations, they achieved the unthinkable: including an article in the Constitution that forced Congress to issue a law to recognize the Black communities of the Pacific Basin. Two years later, Congress issued Law 70 of 1993.

The law allows Black communities to title the lands they inhabit as collective property, for which they must create their own Community Council (a body that directs and administers the affairs of each community). Cococauca was born as a direct response to Law 70; it was conceived as an organization dedicated to accompanying the collective titling and the creation of community councils in the municipalities of the Pacific coast of Cauca: Guapi, Timbiquí, and López de Micay. Then would come the accompaniment to the creation of their ethno-development plans.

For that, they had to teach politics and laws. But learning was never as important as remembering. In their enslaved ancestors there was already the courage and the fight for freedom and autonomy, in the Latin American Black culture there were their own forms of organization (such as councils, “convites,” and communal property). The songs, prayers, and poems spoke of how to live well with others and with the land. At the end of lunch—fried snapper and plantain in boiling oil over the fire, rice with coconut—Berenice said that she had some difficulties in the Community Council. Orlando recalled the story of Uncle Tiger and Uncle Rabbit, a children’s story from the Afro-Pacific tradition. It already spoke, he told us, of slavery, of false allies, of those who put the freedom of the Black people at risk. The answer to Berenice’s problem was in the story her grandmother told her as a child.

Today, Cococauca is an organization that, through training, communications, and dialogue, influences the vindication of Black identity and the defense of the ethnic and territorial rights of the Afro-Caucan population. This objective takes many forms: training processes, complaints on social media, meetings of wise people. The gang, now, has the teachers of the Constituent process, like Dionisio and Orlando, and the enthusiastic and committed young people who decided to stay and work for Guapi, like Felipe, Silvio, Caíto, and Freddy.

View from the Cococauca headquarters in Guapi.

In the streets and on the rivers they know them and greet them. You feel like staying with them, of being part of that complicit and cheerful gang that is always about to throw a party. That, which seems little, perhaps hides the key to one of their great achievements: preventing young people from the region from joining the ranks of armed actors. Since its birth, Cococauca has set out to show that in the Cauca Pacific there is another option: peaceful resistance. This demanding path requires all the courage, wisdom, and haughty dignity that their ancestors had and that each of the members of the Regional Coordination now has.

Researchers from Dejusticia

This article is part of the special #TejidoVivo, a product of a journalistic alliance between the Dejusticia study center and El Espectador.