Displaced communities in Colombia advocate for land, says priest

Published: 2005-12-19

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- After years of displacement and chaos, many of the indigenous and Afro-Colombian people from the remote region of Choco, Colombia, want to go home and live safely, but paramilitary groups, guerrillas and drug lords need to leave and return what was taken, a Colombian priest said. The ethnic communities -- mostly Catholic indigenous and Afro-Colombian people -- of the jungle region used to live peacefully as subsistence farmers, fishermen and miners until competing, illegally armed forces destabilized their land in the late 1990s, said Father Manuel Garcia Anaya from the Diocese of Quibdo in the Colombian Choco region. The region was more peaceful when just the left-wing guerrillas dominated control of the region, he said, adding that when the right-wing paramilitaries moved in both forces contributed to citizen displacement. The armed groups went to the Choco region because of its geographical remoteness from the Colombian government armed forces.

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