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Last Friday, January 12, there were strong landslides on a road near the town of Carmen de Atrato, in the department of Chocó, in Colombia. President Gustavo Petro declared a natural disaster, which allows for the use of exclusive and urgent resources allocated to the tragedy that left more than 35 dead and at least ten missing. Although the resources allocated now are essential to avoid future tragedies and accidents, we cannot ignore the fact that the negligence with which this road access has been treated responds to the structural racism that keeps Afro-descendant communities and indigenous peoples in marginalization situations.
To help understand why the lack of free and easy access to the entire territory is indicative of how structural racism operates, we can turn to one piece of information: since 1998 the Quibdó-Medellín highway has claimed more than 150 lives. It is necessary to remember that structural racism can be defined as the sum of institutions and dynamics that benefit certain people according to their identity or racial condition in the economic, social, cultural, political or geographical spheres, among others. So restricted access and mobility, especially for Afro-descendant communities or indigenous peoples, is significant when it comes to the execution of their rights. In other words, this road represents thousands of lost opportunities due to the limitations that a road in poor condition brings with it. He points it out well. Audrey Mena, Afro-Colombian lawyer and deputy general director of the organization ILEX Acción Jurídica: “Structural and systematic discrimination is manifested flagrantly in the lack of investment in road safety measures and in the absence of adequate road maintenance. As Afro-descendant communities struggle to access quality medical services and education, the path that should be their bridge to opportunity is transformed into a constant danger.”
Road access should allow a constant and safe flow from one territory to another. However, maintaining a neglected road for so long can reveal how structural racism operates. The case makes it evident that there has been no effort—neither from civil society, nor from the Attorney General's Office or State officials—have achieved complete paving. The Quibdó-Medellín highway has been systematically neglected despite the fact that it is only a 215-kilometer line. We cannot ignore the fact that roads in good condition are decisive in facilitating the entry and exit of all types of resources.
As the lawyer recalls, the department of Chocó comprises 82% of the country's Afro-descendant population. There are 50 community councils referring to the Pacific Region, in addition to approximately 12 indigenous communities. For this reason, she says, the accident cannot be separated “from structural racism and state abandonment that have woven a blanket of disparity over this population and communities. Accidents, far from being mere fatalities, are the result of a system that puts certain lives first and neglects others,” she insists.
Landslides or disasters can occur at any time. To try to prevent risks, meticulous evaluations must be made according to the specific needs of the terrain. But, again, structural racism is seen in the lack of care with which progress has been made in maintaining the road, since the hiring to do so has been carried out by people from the national government, not the regional or the municipal since 2002. This is very relevant, since in Chocó it rains between 287 to 300 days a year, which implies that the investment made must pay more attention to the compression of one of the rainiest regions in the world. , but what has been seen so far are palliative measures that do not see the importance and need to make lasting changes alongside consultants who know the region.
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Chocó is one of the corridors that connects two of the main cities of Colombia, Quibdó and Medellín, and it is alarming that it bears the nickname “death corridor.” The fact that the most important media in Colombia refer to this highway in this way is not only an example of the state's negligence that has not provided a permanent solution to the problem of the poor condition of the road and landslides for years; It is also a compelling example that the mass media still does not understand the impact that its work has on the racialization or re-victimization of a community and its territory. Since the ways in which we name situations, groups of people, dynamics of any kind contribute to our collective imaginaries, which leads us to ask ourselves: why name such a painful problem with sensationalism and spectacularization? Naming things with an ethical perspective can contribute to a less biased image of the Pacific and Chocó.
Structural racism is a problem for all people. This tragic case shows us that the way budgets are distributed does have a bias and does respond to social models that are directly related to readings of race, class and gender. As Choco writer Velia Vidal explained in an interview for the media The Empty Chair about the collapse: “Colombia has engineering works that stand out internationally, it has tremendous tunnels, we have done very high-tech things, but none of this type of investment reaches Chocó. We do not have our own exit to the sea in the apartment. It became evident with Forensic Medicine that we do not have the capacity to process the number of bodies that resulted from this tragedy. We do not have the medical capacity to care for the victims and injured in a tragedy of this magnitude. We are looking at much deeper issues here,” he said. What the collapse revealed was an abysmal lack of knowledge of the territory, state negligence that has gone unpunished for decades, and an epistemic vacuum in the media about what structural racism is.
The avoidability of this tragedy is one of the most painful and most determining factors in how racism operates. Velia Vidal also said this in her column for Change: “We Chocoans can't stand putting one more dead person on our roads. The only explanation for this cyclical tragedy is structural racism, which has prevented a fundamental solution to this problem that year after year reminds us that our lives are the ones that matter the least in this country.” Let us hope that the 128 million dollars that Gustavo Petro promised to secure and transfer to the National Highway Institute will be accompanied by a long-term vision that takes into account the unique characteristics of the territory, the communities that inhabit and transit it, and the thousands of statements that people in Chocó have made about the urgency of connecting the Pacific with the rest of Colombia in an effective and safe way.
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