With treats and actions of historical memory, community rehabilitation continues in the municipality of Remedios with the strengthening of Cahucopana organization

The task of fixing and cleaning the bridle paths, the road that leads to the urban area, the field and the area adjacent to a school, brought the communities of the Camelias and Caño Tigre villages together again, as a sign recovery of social network damaged by the armed conflict in the past.

The invites brought together children, youth, adults and the elderly for two days in these rural areas of the municipality of Remedios (Antioquia) to the joy of its inhabitants, who once again enjoyed a traditional practice of the peasant population, but this time complying with biosecurity measures for the current pandemic.

These autonomous actions, which continue this month, are part of Interlazando community rehabilitation measures of the comprehensive collective reparation plan, implemented by the Victims Unit with the Humanitarian Action for Coexistence and Peace Corporation of Northeast Antioqueño (Cahucopana).

In addition to the cleaning and maintenance days in the sidewalks, this peasant organization held a discussion as organizational strengthening, which included historical memory exercises on its role in the 10 municipalities of the subregion where it works in favor of the communities.

The sessions were led by the Community Action Boards and a member of the organization trained as weavers, as is known to inhabitants empowered with Entrelazando strategy to rebuild social relations.

For Carlos Morales, representative of Cahucopana, these actions “allow us to recover our collective practice, to establish ourselves as an organization that defends the human rights of peasant communities, but also to regain trust with this community and to continue with our commitment to forms of humanitarian organization and pacifist and always committed to the defense of free and sovereign territory”.

Physical and social recovery

The inhabitants of these areas remembered with nostalgia that the treats were important for the development of works in their villages with the joint work and contributions of all, but that this social practice had disappeared due to the clashes between armed groups and victimizing events such as murders of residents and forced displacement.

According to Wilson Córdoba Mena, director of the Victims Unit in Antioquia, “these community practices facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experiences of a generation of adults with young people and to resume the collective projects of the peasants to promote the progress and productivity of the countryside".

He also highlighted that the collective reparation plan with Cahucopana has 14 measures, ranging from the training school with a gender perspective, the generational transfer of knowledge, productive projects such as a community farm and the recovery of traditions.

This peasant organization was created in 2004 to protect the human and environmental rights of peasant and mining communities in the rural areas of Northeast Antioquia and was recognized by the Victims Unit as a subject of collective reparation in 2017.

In Antioquia, the Victims Unit has 65 recognized subjects of collective reparation (more than 600 in Colombia), 22 of these with plans in implementation with measures such as rehabilitation or construction of community infrastructure (community booths, parks, bridges, roads, courts), endowments to medical centers, educational institutions, health posts, houses of culture, productive projects and recovery of traditions.  

(End/JCM/CMC/LMY)