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Murdered social leader Hernan Antonio Bermudez Arevalo was involved in land restitution programs
In the last years, the status and work of social leaders in Colombia has become dangerous and very complex. The systematic killing of these leaders even after a huge peace process and the demobilization of the country’s biggest and oldest guerrilla organization has become a challenge for the government and it has opened the debate about the future of leadership and social movements in the country.
Social leaders are people who peacefully fight for the rights of others and are recognized by those communities as spokespersons for them. In the Colombian context, many of these leaders are born because of the necessity to seek justice from paramilitary or guerrilla interventions in marginalized regions during the country’s 52 years of armed conflict. Therefore, many of them are involved in land restitution programs since processes such as the taking of land by illegal armed groups has been one of the most common situations during the war which has caused the displacement of tens of thousands of citizens leaving them with nothing and increasing the poverty levels in the country. This article wants to share the story and work of Hernán “Po” Bermudez, a social leader involved in a land restitution process in his hometown of Riohacha in the department of La Guajira, who was killed on his doorsteps and what might be the reason for his assassination.
Hernan Antonio Bermudez Arevalo was a social leader involved in land restitution who was born in Riohacha, La Guajira. He was 56 years old. According to his family members, he was a calm man full of peace; a relaxed man who was dedicated to his family. He did not use weapons or any sort of violence as he determined and understood that his work could not offend or scare anyone. He lived with his family on a plot of land located about thirty minutes from the city of Riohacha. The social leader who was killed at 7:10 pm in the village of Mundo Nuevo -a rural area of Riohacha- invited his assassin to sit down and talk to him. However, the hitman refused and seconds later, he unraveled the weapon and shot “Po” 10 times. Before getting shot, Bermudez had asked the hitman multiple times why he was acting the way he was, to which the assassin coldly replied “there is nothing to talk about” and proceeded to open fire on the 56-year-old leader. This story was told by his wife, Gladys Garcia, who had lived with him for 35 years. She confessed that people near to Hernan were really afraid because of the risks his job as a mediator for displaced families in land restitution processes involved. In addition to leading the land restitution process for displaced families and victims of the armed conflict, Bermúdez Arévalo belonged to the El Eneal Community Council of Afro-descendants with whom he had been carrying out a series of social work projects in order to strengthen much of the Afro-Caribbean culture.
In order to understand better why it is so dangerous for social leaders like Hernan Antonio Bermudez in departments such as La Guajira, we need to have a clear understanding of the social context in La Guajira.
If we measure the risk situation in the department of La Guajira, highlighting that it is one of the most corrupt departments of Colombia and that it has an active participation of armed groups such as: the Urabeños, the Paisas, the 59th front (dissidents) of the FARC and others, which are illegal groups that take part in the armed conflict that exists in Colombia; we would say that the risk is extremely high. Displacement, threats against leaders claiming land, forced disappearance and selective killings, recruitment of children, young people and adolescents, affectation of indigenous peoples’ territories and recruitment for trafficking and extortion; these are just some examples of risk scenarios that people in La Guajira have to overcome each day. Social leaders, specifically those who are fighting for the restitution of land, like Hernan, are significantly more at risk. The presence of illicit crops and the weakness of local organizational processes are highlighted when talking about land restitution. Due to this, social leaders like Po are in greater danger than others, because they represent an obstacle to the armed groups and their way of controlling and subsisting. Next, it is important to learn about Po’s work with land restitution and how the violence surrounding these processes were likely the cause of his death.
The issue of land restitution most probably cost Hernan Antonio his life and it is a complicated issue throughout the region and Colombia. Of 6.5 million hectares abandoned or stripped all around the country , only 314,849 have been returned, which represents represents only around 4.8%. La Guajira is one of the most affected regions because of the violence the department has suffered. And after the peace agreements signed in 2016, the region has had many problems such as violence, poverty and many others. Since the agreement, the land restitution projects have suffered many challenges due to a lack of the government attention, especially in La Guajira where the government prefer to give priority to other issues that for them bring bigger benefits. But La Guajira is not the only department that has faced violence against social leaders because of land restitution issue. The Forjando Futuros Foundation came up with a report in 2019 showing that the departments with the greatest aggression against human rights defenders are also the regions where there is a “slight advance” in land restitution. The report shows that the departments with the highest number of attacks against human rights defenders are Cauca, Antioquia and Norte de Santander. Around 4,365 applications are counted in Cauca and the percentage of the refund is 4%, while the leaders killed until March 2019, were 32. A similar situation happens in Antioquia, where applications are 21,204 and the refund does not exceed 6%; the murdered leaders amount to 31. Finally, in Norte de Santander, with 4,871 applications and a percentage of the refund of 5%, homicides of social leaders total 19.
After doing this research, the conclusion to which we arrived is that Hernan or “Po” was a social leader who believed in his work because it brought some sense of justice into the lives of many people who lost their land and their homes because of the terrible violence derived from a 50 year old war. The state abandonment that La Guajira has been going through for so many years created a power vacuum allowing the presence of illegal armed groups such as guerrillas, paramilitaries and cartels which need land to cultivate coca and poppies and also, to use it as a sign of power. Therefore, the work Hernan was doing represented a threat to their business, their influence in the region and their power overall; that’s why we believe one of those groups was responsible for his murder. Hernan’s story and situation is not an exception; it is the norm throughout the entire country. Hundreds of social leaders fighting for the improvement of their communities are threatened and killed; such threats and killings are a daily reality. Even though the current scenario may not seem hopeful, we truly believe in the work of the people and how their influence can change the country for the better and how, even if it is not easy, there will at least be a government that truly worries about the social leaders and that they, together with the people of the communities, will not only work to provide protection for them, but also to work together to create a better Colombia.
*Article written by Camila De Avila, Danna Diaz, Linda Florez & Maria Daniela Zalabata
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