Desterrados | Voces de Resistencia

Desterrados: Voces de Resistencia is a project of legal denunciation, audiovisual visibility and resistance in the field. It takes a historical perspective in which parallels are drawn between the past and the present. The stigma towards the Afro-descendant community in the Caribbean has been perpetuated from slave-owning times to the present day.
It can be said that the starting point of the project is to give greater visibility to the denunciations through a documentary film, «Huella Colonial». Half the team is from Colombia and the other half from Catalonia. The Colombian team is responsible for the content, while the Catalan team is in charge of giving it audiovisual form. "Huella Colonial" is a feature film that takes as its starting point "Aigües de Barcelona", a Spanish company that is characterised by appropriating natural resources under the pretext of development. This company, like many others operating in Colombia, provides itself with high-value infrastructures at ridiculous prices, leaving the population in utter destitution.

The testimonies are part of a criminal process (report) for the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP). The SJP is a body under the aegis of the United Nations, which tries guerrilla fighters, politicians and third parties linked to the armed conflict in Colombia.

Documentary:
The 150 interviews, the result of three months of field recording for the documentary series, more than 170 interviews (including: leaders, peasants, fishermen, community assemblies, prior consultations, senators of the Republic of Colombia, mayors, former paramilitaries, former FARC combatants, former first lady of Cartagena, lawyers, historians, biologists, anthropologists, military, prosecutors and police, among others), have been annexed to the report presented by 70 organisations associated with the National Ethnic Agency and the lawyers' collective "Justice and Law", represented by activist Adil Meléndez and a technical team specialised in human rights, human rights and democracy. These reports have been annexed to the report presented by 70 organisations associated with the National Ethnic Agency and the lawyers' collective "Justice and Law", represented by the activist Adil Meléndez and a technical team specialised in human rights, constitutional and ethnic rights. This team confronts large multinationals and land dispossessors in the Colombian Caribbean.
Description:
The project, and its historical aspect, is analysed from San Basilio de Palenque, the first Afro-Colombian town to achieve independence in 1691, in fact, it achieved independence 119 years before Colombia.
Through three visits by Adil to denounce the serious environmental and human consequences caused by different multinationals, the documentary shows how Afro-descendant communities in Colombia deal with different companies that operate under a colonial model still in force today, and the course of public denunciation against these companies.

OBJECTIVES

General Objective Destarados-Voces de resistencia:

Their objectives are to generate collective awareness of the need to defend and promote human rights, peace, the rational use of natural resources, the protection of the environment, to redefine, vindicate and dignify the victims of transatlantic trafficking, the victims of the Colombian armed conflict, to make visible the work of leaders, the impacts and damage caused by multinationals in Colombia, to promote political and administrative actions that have an impact on the respect for human rights and the environment.

Objectives

- To give visibility to these issues so often silenced by the Colombian and international media.
- To show the huge environmental and human problems caused by multinationals, generally foreign ones such as Aigües de Bcn, Zeus and Hocol.
- Interweave the documentary with similar issues in other parts of the world.
- Let Adil Meléndez's team open a criminal prosecution, through the documentary and the many interviews to document what we have done.
- Take a leader from each community to Europe to present the problems caused by these companies to Aigües de Barcelona, Zues la FAO.

COMMUNITY

The work of the series would not have been possible without the communities. The people who are part of Desterrados live in constant danger and yet they gave us their stories.

ARROYO DE PIEDRA
BAYUNCA
SANTA ANA
PERIMETRAL
PLAYA BLANCA
PUNTA CANOA
TIERRA BAJA

LA BOQUILLA
GATO VIEJO
MARÍA LA BAJA
NELSON MANDELA
TIERRA BOMBA
SAN ONOFRE
RINCÓN DEL MAR

PALENQUE
PUERTO BADEL
MATUNILLA
SINSELEJO
ROCHA
LA ESPERANZA
GATO VIEJO

TURBANA
ISLA DEL COVADO
ARJONA
TOLÚ VIEJO
SUCRE
OLAYA HERRERA

OUR TEAM

ADIL MELENDEZ

Born in Sucre (Colombia). At the age of 11 he was very clear that he wanted to be a lawyer and since then, after years of work, he has specialised in human rights. He has been working for 20 years with the territory and communities of the Colombian Caribbean. In 2008 he formed ANET (Corporación Agencia Nacional Étnica) with a technical team that includes lawyers, biologists, anthropologists and historians.

CYNTHIA AMADOR

Born in Cartagena de Indias (Colombia).
Trained in Political Science and Government. Her passion for politics has made her one of the most influential women in Cartagena. In 2019, she led the campaign for Mayor of Cartagena in which she became First Lady of the District.
Actualmente, asesora campañas políticas que compagina trabajando con las comunidades, en la gestión y la creación de proyectos sociales en comunidades históricamente empobrecidas.

DAMIÀ PUIG

Born in Barcelona. Trained in the audiovisual field and investigative journalism for the last 15 years, he has focused on documentaries. Specialised in scriptwriting and direction of socio-environmental themes. Founding partner of the production companies ACATS and Cabal films, with which he has won 5 international awards, as well as several nominations and participations in festivals around the world.

CRISTINA GUTIERREZ

Born in Girona.
Trained in the performing arts. In 2010 she created a company called VOLA ALT TEATRE where she travelled around Spain taking her theatrical creations to different theatres. She has carried out workshops of expression, improvisation and non-profit creation accessible to all ages and social classes. In 2020 she became interested in the audiovisual medium and, with her experience in the socio-cultural field, she started making documentaries where she has been working with passion for the last year.

INTERVIEW

OF THE MONTH

- Rubén Castro Quintana worked for 45 years in the electricity sector in Bolívar and currently heads the retirees' association.

He joined in 1977 with Electrificadora de Bolívar and later ELECTROCARIBE, with more than 30 years of service with the trade union organisation SINTRAELECOL, the umbrella organisation for workers in the Colombian electricity sector. As a trade union leader, he was the victim of all kinds of repression by the company's management and paramilitary groups.

In 2008, as a pensioner, we created the association of Electricaribe Bolivar retirees ASOJEBOL.
After the sale of Electricaribe, the national government was forced to create a fund called FONECA to cover pension liabilities.

- Special 25N, interview with Yaneth Valencia Lerma, Afro-Colombian social leader.Yaneth del Pilar Valencia Lerma
Afro-Colombian activist and founder of the Lila Mujer association in Cali, Colombia. Yaneth is a point of reference for black women living with HIV in the communities of south-western Colombia. She was the creator of the Network of Popular Women living with HIV in Colombia, as well as the coordinator of the Movement of Positive Women in Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2007, she won the prize "For a Better Cali", awarded by the Mayor's Office of Santiago de Cali. Between April and May 2023 Yaneth toured Spain in collaboration with the association Encuentro Pazífico Barcelona, Nancy Garín and different organisations, where she was invited as a panelist at the ESPAL in Palmas de Gran Canaria, and at the University of Barcelona UB, the University of Girona UDG, where in addition to sharing the panel with Adil Meléndez, Afro-Colombian lawyer and part of the team Desterradxs Voces de Resistencia, she participated in a welcome interview with Adil that will be featured in the first chapter, Huella Colonial.

- Cindy Lorena Ospina A migrant woman, researcher, symbolic and spiritual Guardian of Water. Trained as a civil engineer at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona and a Master's degree focused on Research in Sanitary and Environmental Engineering at the Universidad del Valle and the UNESCO IHE-Delft Institut for Water Education. Since 2016 I have been volunteering, backpacking and doing individual and collective activism. Since the birth in 2019, PaziFlora was conceived as a "medicine" space for the agency of a neurodivergent woman and other women who wanted to join in.
She has accompanied women in processes of social transformation in communities exiled to the peri-urban areas of "developed" cities in Colombia.

- Pedro Ramiro holds a PhD in Chemical Sciences from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). Since 2005 he has been a member of the Observatory of Multinationals in Latin America (OMAL) - Paz con Dignidad, of which he is currently the coordinator.
In the context of OMAL's (Observatorio Multinacionales América Latina) visit to the Juan Gómez de Rocha swamp, which was severely affected by Aguas de Cartagena (Aigües de Barcelona), this interview represents a further achievement of international visibility that affects different communities that depended on this body of water, the most important in the area.

- Felipe Polanía, political activist (Colombia, 1970) in the fields of asylum, migration and anti-racism, artistic mediator and political exile in Zurich since 1997.
He studied Graphic Design and Social Communication in Colombia and a Master's degree in Art Education at the School of Arts (ZHdK) in Switzerland. Since 2008 he has been involved in different artistic, pedagogical and political projects in Switzerland; he was co-founder of the Autonomous School of Zurich (ASZ) between 2009 and 2012 and of the political-artistic collective Antikulti Atelier between 2010 and 2014.
In 2014 and 2015 he worked as an art mediator at the Shedhalle gallery in Zurich and since 2015 he has been responsible for community radio projects and special programming at the local alternative radio station Radio LoRa in Zurich. Since 2021 he has been working as an educator with asylum-seeking minors in Switzerland. In his work as an artistic mediator as well as in various texts and lectures, Felipe Polanía addresses topics such as racism, colonialism, migration, exile and memory.

NEWS

Desterrados News - Huella Colonial

Monday 11 December 2023 video clip launchAgua Corre»
This project is the result of a process of collective creation by talented musicians from the Caribbean and the marimba of the
Pacific.

- Past 7 December 2023The Sociedad de Activos Especiales (SAE) handed over more than 160 hectares of land to 300 families of the Montes de Dios Association in the village of Canchenche in the municipality of Turbana.

The lawyer Héctor Pérez, one of our protagonists in the ".Huella colonial"The legal representative, who has fought a tough legal battle, sends a message of social justice and change to ensure the country's food security.

- We invite you to read the article in 28 November 2023Cartagena: megaprojects and corporate offensive in the Colombia of change written by The Observatory of Multinationals in Latin America (OMAL) - Peace with Dignity writes a report on Cartagena after their visit to the territory.

https://www.elsaltodiario.com/una-de-las-nuestras/cartagena-megaproyectos-ofensiva-corporativa-colombia-del-cambio

- Serious allegation.
From the community of Campos Bello/San Bernardo in Cartagena they denounce that the city council ordered the eviction the day 20 November Adil Melendez, a lawyer defending 130 affected families, has received a response from Francia Marquez as we speak.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C0LxtRltapE/

• El 10 November 2023 The Fifth Labour Court of the Circuit of Cartagena admitted a tutela action brought by the Association of Micro-entrepreneurs of Pasacaballos (ASOEMPAS) against Dimar, Cardique, Dragados Hidráulicos, Cormagdalena, Anla, EPS, ANI, Sacyr and Ecosistemas del Dique, for the alleged violation of the fundamental right to prior consultation, due process, participation, minimum vital and food security, cultural and social integrity, and autonomy of their profession or trade.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cznq5mQKb8z/

- Observers from OMAL (Observatorio Multinacionales América Latina) visit the Juan Gómez de Rocha swamp, seriously affected by Aguas de Cartagena (Aigües de Barcelona). Affecting different communities that depended on this body of water, the most important in the area, this visit represents a further achievement in terms of international visibility.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CzeWOS6q-Xk/

• El 14 September Pedro Arrojo Agudo, Special Rapporteur on human rights, safe drinking water and sanitation, presented his Annual Report to the UN where he mentions the "Cartagena Case".
Here is a short extract from his speech.