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Aramis Arenas Bayona
Essential State attributes such as legitimacy are dependent on the State achieving effectiveness in the territories, and as long as this is not the case, violence will remain present. In Colombia, there is a State unable to adapt to modernization processes, where each attempt at political change has been followed by intense periods of violence: after the National Front, the violence of the 80s; after the UP, the violence of the 90s-2000; the patriotic plan. More recently, one can observe the multiple massacres and attacks, especially against social leaders following the peace agreement in 2016. In general, the situation of social leaders, who according to the OHCHR (2020) are people who seek the fulfillment and protection of human rights, has been ignored by the Colombian government, without suitable attempts to investigate the facts surrounding each case, thus leaving a country at the mercy of illegal violence. This article will explore the case of Aramis Arenas Bayona, a social leader who was killed on his own farm for being involved in land improvement projects to promote rural tourism, and it will seek to explain to a certain extent the problems that the Colombian context presents, focusing particularly on the situation faced by social leaders.
Aramis Arenas Bayonas was a social leader who was assassinated in Becerril, a town in the department of Cesar in the North of Colombia, specifically in the township of “Estados Unidos”. Since the 1980s, the community from this town have been dealing with violence. According to reports, that was when the Marxist guerrilla group the FARC assumed control of the territory. Also, following the FARC in the 1990s the “Bloque Norte ” (an extension of the AUC right-wing paramilitaries) tried to push the guerrilla out but this only ended in more violence for the township of Estados Unidos. During the period of violence, many people abandoned their homes, farms and work. Yet when they tried to come back, they found that mining and palm oil companies were dominating the town. Later in the 2000s the company “Prodeco” helped families to reintegrate and also gave work to them. This was the first time where a mining company got involved with a community and its problems with violence. In order to compensate for the lack of state assistance, social leaders started to assume important roles in generating citizen participation in Colombia, and Estados Unidos was not the exception. Aramis Arenas Bayonas was an activist of Becerril. He wanted to improve rural tourism and since 10 years before his death, he had worked in the area and thanks to his efforts, he had become a leading member of the “Junta de Acción Comunal” (Community Action Board) which is a civic corporation composed of neighbours of a determined territory, who meet to try to solve the main necessities of the community. After all his efforts to create a better community, he was found dead of gunshot wounds on May 19 2020; so far no one has been found responsible for his killing.
It is important to highlight that the case of Aramis Arenas is not an exception in Cesar. Henry Cuello was a rancher and social leader in Rincón Ahondó (a jurisdiction in Chiriguana, Cesar). Cuello had been kidnapped twice because of his work as an active member of the “Junta de Acción Comunal (JAC)”. At the beginning of January, 2020, he was found dead. In December 2019, Luis Carlos Hernandez, a leader who had worked with victims of the conflict was shot dead in Curumaní, Cesar. Before that, Wilson Chaustre who had been an active social leader with a lot of influence in Pueblo Bello, Cesar, was assassinated on his farm . He had been the president of the local JAC for three and a half years and despite not having made a formal complaint, had been threatened several times through phone calls in which he was warned to stop managing local projects or he would end up like so many other social leaders who dared to improve the lives of their community.
Cesar is one of 32 departments in Colombia. It is located in the northeast of the country, has an area of 22,905 km² and a population of 1,041,203 inhabitants. Located in the north-eastern part of the country, its capital is Valledupar. Since the 2000s, Cesar has been one those departments affected by paramilitaries and AUC presence, especially in the north of the department. The “AUC” or Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia was a paramilitary group that operated in Colombia between 1997 and 2006. This group committed violations of human rights and their principal financial method was drug trafficking. This group was labelled as a terrorist group by the international community because of its acts. Nowadays, the department of Cesar has new groups operating in the zone. Some of these were formed from the demobilized AUC such as the Golf Clan (Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia / AGC). Furthermore, the department also has the presence of ELN guerrillas, in addition to several other criminal organisations. Basically, these groups focus their presence in the rural part of the department where there is low state presence and sow fear in the territory to control them. The main factor for the violence in the region is the low progress in the economy of the region, making it vulnerable to violence and inequality. Also, illegal mining in this region is a big issue because almost 44% of the total of Cesar’s economy depends on mining, so that the illegal use of these resources represents a big loss to the region. On the other hand, ranching is another big contributor to the economy of Cesar. More than 500.000 heads of cattle are in Cesar’s territory without forgetting that Klaren’s (a national brand of dairy products from Cesar) represents the industrial potential of the department. However, the wealth generated from these sectors is concentrated among a small minority of the department’s population and has done little to alleviate the level of poverty throughout Cesar.
The cases of Cesar are part of the 322 social leaders (some estimates have the figure as even higher) who have been killed following the implementation of the peace accords, among whom we find rural leaders, indigenous people, students, and presidents of communal action boards, among others (Pacifista, 2020). According to the report “¿Cuáles son los patrones? Asesinatos de Líderes Sociales en el Post Acuerdo” (created by various NGOs with the “Universidad Nacional”), the victims are mostly people in a condition of socio-economic vulnerability, placed at a disadvantage in asymmetric power relations belonging to ethnic groups historically discriminated; sectors that have been seen as an obstacle for illegal and legal economic groups, who hold the economic power in these long marginalized regions. This situation is alarming and has been a challenge for the current government, which has not yet taken adequate action to protect them and save their lives. In Colombia, these people represented a voice for those marginalized by the state, for the peripheral areas where the state presence is just a facade of buildings without officials, for those most affected by the collateral actions that the long armed conflict has brought, the people. It seems that the territorial dynamics with the presence of illegal armed groups and illegal economies, in addition to to the mining interests and the ranches of Cesar (two sectors with a history of links to illegal paramilitary groups in the region) are leading to the killing of social leaders such as Aramis, and other leaders from Cesar. It appears as though these leaders, along with their community support projects, are identified as an obstacle to the interests of other actors in the region. These killings generate little action at a judicial level thanks in part to the limited interest of the government, meaning the elimination of these “obstacles” is easy and frequently go unpunished.
Finally, one must come to the conclusion that Aramis Arenas Bayona, like many other leaders, was killed for trying to improve the living conditions of his community through the defense and the use of land to promote rural tourism. The state abandonment in Cesar and the slow economic development are the main reasons that give way to the illegality present in the department. At the same time, the illegal use of its resources affects the community since its economy is mostly based on these same resources, a fact which puts Cesar in a vicious cycle of illegality, slow development and violence. This cycle causes anyone who wants to improve the situation to be seen as an obstacle to the various illegal interests, and in many cases to end up dead. Arenas Bayona is not an isolated case, nor is it an extraordinary situation. It is something that sadly has become common in the country and a problem that the state has not put enough effort into resolving, allowing such violence, which was expected to end with the signing of the agreements, to continue.
*Article researched and written by Rosangelica Barrios, Keylin Mercado & Maria Angelica Roa
Information in the article sourced from:
https://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/asesinan-en-a-aramis-arenas-defensor-de-derechos-humanos/672515/ (image retrieved from this article)
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