# Resistir no es aguantar (Ethnic peoples) — Digest

*Tomo 9 of the Colombian Truth Commission (Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la Verdad, la Convivencia y la No Repetición — CEV) Final Report* **Hay Futuro Si Hay Verdad** *(2022). Full title:* **Resistir no es aguantar. Violencias y daños contra los pueblos étnicos de Colombia.** Source file: `08-Resistir-no-es-aguantar-pueblos-etnicos.txt` (32,422 lines). Directed by commissioners María Patricia Tobón Yagarí, Leyner Palacios Asprilla, and María Ángela Salazar Murillo (d.), through the Commission's Dirección de Pueblos Étnicos (DPE).*

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## 1. Identity & purpose

This is the **ethnic-peoples volume** of Colombia's transitional-justice truth report, the mechanism created by the 2016 Peace Accord between the State and the FARC-EP (alongside the JEP special jurisdiction and the UBPD search unit for the disappeared). Its mandate: to "unveil the violences and harms caused by the armed conflict to the ethnic peoples and territories of Colombia" — the **pueblos indígenas** (115 Indigenous/originary peoples), the **pueblo negro, afrocolombiano, raizal y palenquero** (NARP), and the **pueblo rrom o gitano** (Roma).

The title is the thesis: **"Resistir no es aguantar"** — *to resist is not to endure / put up with*. Ethnic survival was active, organized, political refusal — never passive suffering. The volume was built through a culturally-grounded **"Metodología étnica contra el racismo"** consulted (*consulta previa*) with each people's representative bodies: the Mesa Permanente de Concertación (Indigenous), the Espacio Nacional de Consulta Previa (NARP), and the Comisión Nacional de Diálogo (Rrom). It rests on **3,849 ethnic interviews** hearing **11,056 people** — **38.65%** of everyone the Commission heard — plus **247 ethnic reports**.

## 2. Central thesis

The conflict's impact on ethnic peoples cannot be understood as starting in 1958. It is the most recent expression of a **contínuum de violencias** (continuum of violences) rooted in **trato colonial** (colonial treatment — the persistence of a Eurocentric, monocultural, monolingual identity project that subordinates other cultures to dissolve them) and **racismo estructural** (structural racism embedded in institutions, law, education, and the founding narrative of the nation-state). Armed actors *assimilated and replicated* these inherited racist patterns, producing **daños e impactos desproporcionados y diferenciados** (disproportionate and differentiated harms). The State is responsible by **action** (direct aggression, "falsos positivos," sexual violence, sacred-site occupation, *inconsulta* extractive projects), by **connivance** with paramilitaries and economic actors, and by **omission** of its duty to protect.

## 3. Structure

Five parts. **Part I** — who the ethnic peoples are + the continuum/colonial-treatment/structural-racism framework. **Part II** — **17 macroterritorios étnicos** that became strategic **corredores del conflicto** (conflict corridors), each mapped onto coca, gold, oil, coltán, agro-industry and infrastructure concessions ("war and the extractive model are two faces of the same destructive process"). **Part III** (the bulk) — violences, harms and resistances of each people: Indigenous (p.140), NARP (p.357), Rrom (p.605). **Part IV** — conclusions and recommendations. **Part V** — references and eight annexes (incl. case-deepening dossiers per people, the ethnic methodology, and statistical analyses).

## 4. Key findings — disproportionate / differential impact

Nine *hallazgos* anchor the report: (1) colonial treatment + structural racism as a continuum the State sustained by action or omission; (2) armed actors replicated those patterns, causing disproportionate harm; (3) the 17 conflict-corridor macroterritories; (4) statistical invisibility of ethnic peoples is itself **racismo institucional**; (5) **over-representation** of ethnic victims and drastic population decline of some peoples; (6) **territory and nature as victims**; (7) recurrent **physical and cultural extermination** of Indigenous peoples through invasion/occupation/subjugation; (8) the **negación del ser** (negation of being) of the Black people, tied to deprivation of territory and culture, driving cycles of dispossession; (9) the Rrom suffered **cultural persecution, displacement, and eternal exile**.

The headline disproportionality: ethnic peoples are ~13.6% of the population but **23.7% are registered victims** vs. 16.58% of non-ethnic Colombians — Rrom 26.19%, Afro 24.91%, Indigenous 21.20%.

## 5. Statistics & data

- **Ethnic victimization:** 23.7% of ethnic people are registered victims (RUV, 1981–2021). Severe **subregistro**: ethnicity is unknown for 72.6% of forced-disappearance, 64.2% of homicide, and 52.5% of recruitment records — real figures are higher (corrected via JEP–CEV–HRDAG imputation across 112 archives / 21M+ records).
- **Indigenous:** ~14,562 homicides (1985–2018; peak 1,068 in 2003) — paramilitaries 6,171, FARC-EP 3,245, state forces 2,174; ≥764 massacre victims; ~5,830 forced disappearances; ~1,796 child recruits (FARC-EP 1,312) — Indigenous children were recruited at ~9× their demographic weight; 226,112 Indigenous women victims; 269 Indigenous leaders killed since 2016. **Constitutional Court Auto 004/2009 declared 34+ peoples at risk of physical and cultural extermination**; the **Awá** and nomadic **Nukak** are named as facing extinction.
- **NARP:** **Forced displacement = 89.2%** of all victimizing acts; **1,053,459** Black displacement victims (1985–2019); **23.8% of the Afro population displaced** vs. 15.2% of non-ethnic. **Buenaventura:** ~158,315 victims, ~33% of its population. Titled/in-process *consejos comunitarios* hold **35.1%** of all ethnic homicide victims; ~10,374 Afro disappearances; Black women the single most-affected population.
- **Rrom:** mobility collapsed — the Rrom moved through **64% of municipalities before the conflict, down to 28%**; ~198 homicides, ~89 disappearances, 10,421 displacement victims; census/auto-census gap (2,649 → 1,330) attributed to exile and invisibility.

## 6. Mechanisms of harm

The report deliberately uses **"daño"** (harm) over "impact," grounded in the ethnic victims' decrees (4633/2011 Indigenous, 4635 NARP, 4634 Rrom), and frames harm as **collective, territorial, and spiritual** — not individual:

- **Cuerpo-territorio / territorio como víctima** (body-territory / territory as victim): Decree 4633 makes the territory itself a legal victim — an *"integridad viviente"* (living integrity). Harm to a body is harm to the land and vice versa.
- **Ley de origen / Derecho Mayor / Derecho Propio**: the oral law-of-origin and cosmovisión; killing elders, *médicos*, *mamos*, *sabedores*, *payés* breaks intergenerational transmission (**daño transgeneracional**).
- **Pervivencia**: continued existence/survival as a people — the value every harm threatens.
- **Etnocidio / exterminio físico y cultural**: the cumulative interlocking of violences risks a people's destruction as a **sujeto colectivo de derechos** (collective subject of rights) — so a single leader's death is a collective catastrophe (**daño individual con efectos colectivos**).
- **Daño a la integridad cultural**, **a la autonomía y al gobierno propio**, and **daños psicosociales y psicoespirituales** (bombings "release evil spirits," *desarmonía*; documented suicide epidemics among Embera and Wounaan tied to territorial rupture).
- **NARP-specific:** **negación del ser**; **desterritorialización** (rupture of the physical/cultural/spiritual bond to ancestral land — broader than legal "displacement," per Auto 005/2009); **des/ombligamiento** (the war-severing of the birth ritual that buries the umbilical cord in the land — *"el ombligo de mi hijo está en una matera"*); **racismo ambiental** (mercury 13× WHO limits, aerial fumigation, mining, monoculture); **confinamiento**.
- **Rrom-specific:** **daño a la itinerancia** (loss of nomadic itinerant trade — their self-identified principal harm); **daño a las kumpañy** through homicide of **Sere Rromengue** (family-head authorities); destruction of trades (*talabartería*, copper-working, *mancia*).

Racism is the root: the statistical invisibility, the dehumanizing labels ("indios," "negros," "raza inferior"), and 1920s eugenic immigration law and elite race doctrine (Laureano Gómez) are documented as the soil the armed actors' cruelty grew from.

## 7. Emblematic cases

- **Bojayá** (Bellavista, Chocó, 2 May 2002): in FARC-EP vs. AUC combat, a FARC cylinder-bomb struck the church sheltering civilians — **102 victims** (49 children, 9 unborn). The report stresses **accumulated responsibility**: FARC, paramilitary human-shielding, and State omission.
- **Bahía Portete** (Wayúu, La Guajira, 18–20 Apr 2004): the AUC *Frente Contrainsurgencia Wayúu* ("Jorge 40") with Army complicity tortured and killed Epinayú-clan women.
- **Naya** (Nasa/Afro, Apr 2001): Bloque Calima (AUC) massacre, 30+ killed, 6,000+ displaced; State responsibility confirmed (Consejo de Estado, 2007).
- **Awá** (Nariño): people "at risk of extinction"; the **Tortugaña-Telembí massacre** (4 Feb 2009) — FARC-EP killed 11 and cut the fetuses from two pregnant women, after Army torture days earlier.
- **Nasa / Norte del Cauca:** El Nilo massacre (1991, 20–21 killed); priest Álvaro Ulcué assassinated (1984).
- **Embera:** leader **Kimy Pernía Domicó** (anti-Urrá-dam) killed and thrown in the Sinú river by the AUC (2001) — Mancuso called it "a crime of State."
- **Kankuamo/Arhuaco/Wiwa (Sierra Nevada):** 200+ killed 2000–2005, 41 Indigenous "falsos positivos" (Batallón La Popa); Arhuaco spiritual leaders tortured/killed (1990).
- **Punta Coquitos** (Urabá, 1988): paramilitary + banana-business killing of mostly Afro workers (a businessman admitted responsibility to the Commission).
- **Canal del Dique** (Montes de María): used as a corpse dumping-ground; communities forced to count bodies in their water sources. **Marino López / Operación Génesis** (Cacarica, 1997): beheaded alive by the AUC — Gen. Rito Alejo del Río convicted.
- **Buenaventura "casas de pique"** (chop-houses, revealed 2014): torture and dismemberment, bodies thrown to the sea.
- **Raizal (San Andrés):** **forced disappearance at sea** — *"nuestros muertos y nuestros desaparecidos están bajo las olas."*
- **Barí (Catatumbo):** AUC forced them to dump corpses in the river; **Sikuani "guahibiadas"** lineage (Orinoquía); **Rrom**: AUC torture/murder of a Sero Rrom thrown in a river in Antioquia.

## 8. Resistance & autonomy — the distinctive ethnic political contribution

This is the volume's signature claim: ethnic peoples generated a *political* repertoire of nonviolent resistance.

- **Guardia Indígena** (founded 2001, ACIN): unarmed, >51,000 members, carrying the **bastón de mando** (staff of authority); rescues kidnapped people, blocks recruitment, searches for the disappeared. Its Afro counterpart is the **Guardia Cimarrona** (maroon guard), rooted in **cimarronaje** — the marronage of escaped enslaved people who founded **palenques** (**Benkos Biohó**, San Basilio de Palenque, "first free town of the Americas").
- **Autonomy / gobierno propio:** cabildos, *planes de vida*, **Jurisdicción Especial Indígena**; **consejos comunitarios** under **Ley 70 de 1993**; the Rrom **Kriss Romaní** tribunal of elders.
- **Consulta previa** (ILO Convention 169 / Ley 21 of 1991) and **juridical resistance** (Quintín Lame's "Quintinadas," the 1991 Constitution's plurinational recognition, Autos 004/092/005, IACHR measures).
- **Diplomacy & mediation with armed actors:** the **Resolución de Vitoncó** (1985) rejecting all armed actors; Política de Neutralidad Activa; Wayúu *pütchipü'üi* (palabreros); humanitarian spaces (Puente Nayero, Bojayá) and territory-defending caravans.
- **Armed resistance, renounced:** the **Movimiento Armado Quintín Lame** (1984–91) demobilized into the 1991 Constituent Assembly — the report draws the lesson that armed self-defense was *eradicated* as an option, reaffirming nonviolence.
- **Women's resistance:** *tejido* (weaving as healing/memory), *cantadoras* and *alabaos* (*"cuando las mujeres cantan, los violentos no ganan"*), **La Comadre** (displaced Afro women), mothers reclaiming recruited children, Rrom women transmitting *romanés* and *zakono*.
- **Rrom:** invisibility as survival strategy, then the strategic shift to visibility/recognition via **ProRrom** and **Unión Romaní**.

## 9. Representative quotes

> *"Hemos dicho: si nos quedamos callados, nos matan. Y si hablamos, también. Entonces, ¡hablamos!"* — Cristina Bautista, Nasa leader (killed while the report was written). *"We've said: if we stay silent, they kill us. If we speak, they kill us too. So — we speak!"*

> *"El ombligo de mi hijo está en una matera. No hay territorio. No hay qué entregarle a un hijo."* — Afro leader. *"My son's umbilical cord is in a flowerpot. There is no territory. There is nothing to hand down to a child."* (the harm of **des-ombligamiento**)

> *"Nuestros muertos y nuestros desaparecidos están bajo las olas… Cada familia en el Archipiélago casi que cuenta con uno."* — Raizal leader, San Andrés. *"Our dead and our disappeared are beneath the waves… Almost every family in the Archipelago has one."*

> *"El gitano ya no viaja, no saca a su familia; le da miedo salir… Hay gitanos que perdieron la cultura."* — Sero Rrom. *"The Gypsy no longer travels, doesn't take out his family, is afraid to go out… There are Gypsies who lost their culture."*

## 10. Recommendations + distinctive coined concepts

**Recommendations**, grouped by the Commission's headings:
- **Construcción de paz:** full, integral implementation of the Peace Accord including the **Capítulo Étnico** (Ethnic Chapter) with resources and timelines; settlement/restitution for Nukak, Embera Katío, and named *consejos comunitarios*; humanitarian demining; a *consulta*-built plan for the 17 ethnic macroterritories; ethnic-differential reincorporation of ex-combatants.
- **Víctimas:** **reparación colectiva, integral y transformadora** (collective, territorial, spiritual — not merely economic); a unified victims information system disaggregated by people/gender/age; deeper investigation of gender and sexual violence; restoration of territorial integrity and biodiversity.
- **Régimen político y participación:** develop the 1991 Constitution's ethnic articles per people — Indigenous territorial entities and jurisdicción especial; full regulation of Ley 70 (NARP collective territories); a Raizal **Estatuto de Autonomía**; a Palenquero territorial entity; a protective Rrom rights catalogue.
- **Transformaciones socioeconómicas y culturales:** dismantle structural racism through education reform and anti-racist pedagogy; guarantee ethnic children's schooling; create an ethnic-peoples **Comisión Histórica de la Verdad** to recover oral memory; policies for ethnic women's rights with LGBTIQ+ inclusion.

**Distinctive coined / load-bearing concepts** (with glosses): **resistir no es aguantar** (resistance is not passive endurance — the thesis); **contínuum de violencias**; **trato colonial**; **racismo estructural** / **racismo institucional** / **racismo ambiental**; **daño desproporcionado y diferenciado**; **cuerpo-territorio** and **territorio como víctima / integridad viviente**; **pervivencia**; **etnocidio / exterminio físico y cultural**; **ley de origen / Derecho Mayor / Derecho Propio**; **sujeto colectivo de derechos**; **negación del ser**; **desterritorialización** and **des/ombligamiento**; **macroterritorios étnicos / corredores del conflicto**; **guardia indígena / guardia cimarrona** and the **bastón de mando**; **cimarronaje / palenque**; **kumpania/kumpañy**, **Sero Rrom / Sere Rromengue**, **Kriss Romaní**, **itinerancia**, **zakono**, **gadzhé** (Rrom lexicon); **acumulación por desposesión** (accumulation by dispossession — the war-economy logic over ethnic land).