Quibdó, Colombia – Elizabeth “Chava” Moreno is a human rights leader from the embattled Litoral San Juan municipality in Colombia’s Chocó Department.
After being forced to flee her rural home by armed groups in 2013, Moreno dedicated herself to advocating for the black and indigenous natives of Chocó.
Today, she is the Coordinator of the Interethnic Forum in Chocó, representing communities who have been victims of decades of conflict and state neglect.
Moreno has received multiple prestigious recognitions, including the United Nations Nansen Refugee Prize in 2023 and the Colombian government’s National Human Rights Prize.
In the empty dining room of a gloomy Quibdó hotel, Moreno loosens the string binding a parcel of banana leaves, releasing a cloud of savoury steam from a hot pastel de arroz. She picked up the Pacific delicacy in the street from schoolgirls raising money for their church.
A waiter offers to plate it up for Moreno, but she declines. “No need to make a mess,” she tells him, waving her hand.
Before our meeting, Moreno had been taking part in a conference upstairs with black community members from the predominantly Afro-descendent region. During our interview, men and women periodically stop in to pay their respects.
Conflict and displacement
The topic on everyone’s mind in Chocó is the escalating humanitarian crisis brought on by clashes between the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group and the Colombian Gaitanist Army (EGC), Colombia’s largest drug trafficking organization also known as the Clan del Golfo (Gulf Clan).
The region is no stranger to war, and has been uprooted by on-and-off violence for the better half of 40 years.
But Moreno stresses that conflict is not endemic to the department, that it came from outside and disrupted centuries of peace.
“Before, we lived in harmony, harmonized by ancestral wisdom and knowledge. But as violent forces in Colombia spread to more remote regions, they eventually arrived in our land,” she recalls.
Moreno’s birthplace is rich in gold and copper and ripe for cultivating coca and marijuana, which has attracted multinational corporations and illegal armed groups looking to make a profit.
“They are driven by the desire to make, to extract, to seize and take advantage of these resources in communities, of people who did not have the knowledge to defend their assets,” she explains.
Armed groups then forcibly removed people from their homes in order to facilitate production, creating mass displacements like the ones seen today.
Moreno was displaced in 2013 by fighting between paramilitary groups.
“Being displaced produces a lot of effects… above all, the rupture of the community fabric, the loss of culture, precarious economic situations, family breakdown, social decomposition,” she explains.
The new wave of fighting in Chocó has displaced over 3,500 people since February.
Moreno warns that people who were already victims of previous bouts of conflict are being impacted again.
“It is very painful, it is very sad… in Chocó, [we are seeing] re-victimization, the government repeating the same mistakes, actors like the ELN, the collapse in negotiations,” she says, referencing the breakdown in peace talks between the state and the ELN in January.
Failed approaches to peace
Many observers believe that Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “total peace” plan has passed a tipping point, with intensified clashes in the northeast Catatumbo region, Chocó and Cauca.
In Chocó, cyclical violence has generated a deep distrust in the state’s ability to protect its citizens.
Moreno criticizes the government’s approach to peace, including the 2016 deal with the FARC guerrilla group, for not involving black and indigenous people living on the frontlines of the conflict.
“That is one of the great failures of the peace agreement’s signing… Afro-Colombians, the victims, the indigenous people, we made it onto the last of the three hundred or so pages of the peace agreement. Only one page talks about the ethnic component,” she says.
Moreno explains that despite hopes that the deal would bring peace, it simply shifted the conflict dynamics to different groups wreaking havoc on the civilian population.
“Here, the leash changes but not the dog,” she says.
In the past two years, Chocó has had the highest percentage of displacements, disappearances and confinements in Colombia.
Moreno calls for urgent action from the government before it is too late for Chocó. She is among many local leaders demanding development initiatives and stronger institutions in the region, rather than security interventions.
Moreno criticizes the government for only acting once it is too late, referencing its failure to respond to early warnings about the crisis in Catatumbo.
Now, she implores it to answer the alerts issued by the government, the ombudsman and local leaders in Chocó.
“You cannot solve the problem when the damage has already been done,” says Moreno.
In Colombia, speaking out against the government and armed groups can be deadly; last year, 188 social leaders and human rights defenders were killed, including seven in Chocó.
When asked if she is scared to speak out, Moreno laughs: “they always ask us that!”
“If we let fear get the best of us, it eats us alive. A friend always says, if we talk, they kill us. So let them kill us talking,” she says.