Black women’s resistance in Esmeralda

Esmeraldas, the black territory of the ancestors, the home of a diverse culture, rich in forms of resistance, languages, movements, bodies crying out for justice, “is alive Palenque”, as Nicha Preciado tells us, presenting us the territory it inhabits.

In the current context, news about violence against Esmeraldas is becoming more frequent, as if they want to strike fear into our bones and silence us. I know that there is a reality of leaving the state and therefore of structural violence. So I asked myself how are the women, children and girls in Esmeralda? Official and conventional reports reveal numbers of deaths, violence, drug trafficking problems, child recruitment into gangs, border vulnerabilities, huge gaps in health, education, employment, water, but I would also like to know how black communities are resisting these violent structures and the historical oblivion of the state, therefore, the three compañeras who join my voice today are black women who inhabit the ancestral city of Esmeraldas who are recognized in the continuous activism and resistance of the diaspora of Afro-descendants.

They are; Teodora Lara, founder and director of Fundación Mujeres de Frontera (FMF), PhD in international relations. Nicha Preciado is an Afro-feminist, part of the Mujeres de Asfalto collective, leader of culture and dialogue, and social communicator. Diana Ante Padilla is an environmental activist, master of contemporary integration of Latin America in Brazil, creator of the Dialogue for Climate Action in Ecuador. Three voices met in Mami Zamba. A creative art space promoted by Diana and her collective where she builds “Imagined Territory”, a book that showcases the potential of women and youth from Esmeralda. Where through poetry, autobiography, narration, stories and challenges they show the reality of inhabiting the black body and the emerald territory. Here is Nahomi Mosquera’s song, “Agua Fuente”:

three different people

head, hands, heart.

Three women who inhabit parts

different

of the same body.

The tide of tradition which

transcends,

transmutes, crosses space and

time.

And inhabit this black body

What is your and your mother’s body like?

and that of your mother’s mother

and her mother’s.

Mama Zamba, a collective dedicated to issues of environmental protection, integration into the LGBTIQ+ community and art. At the beginning of 2023, they carried out Imaginary territory with 4 independent meetings with the help of excellent women from Esmeralda. Adults and young women who are co-authors of Territorio imaginado participated in it. Writing was a means of denouncing the violence experienced in bodies, and of course very necessary in the context in which Esmeralda lives. For Diana Teodora and Nicha, this project allowed them to believe, dream and maintain hope for young Esmeralda, while creating networks of activism, support, meeting people who provide resistance from the academic community, entrepreneurship, writing, poetry, etc. .

The three compañeros agree that despite the fact that the national media only talk about bullets, deaths, violence, they are actively resisting in the territory. This is an example of Mama Zamba. Or in her case, Teodora, implements gender awareness initiatives to strengthen spaces for dialogue and encounters between women. His interest and work in politics gave him a broad overview that the needs that Esmeraldas has will not be solved by separate actions, but by the investment of the national government and the sectional governments. For Nicha, the problem that Esmeraldas has now is the historical compulsory neglect that she has experienced, and that it is not just a problem of the border, but she recognizes the very important value that the black communities of Colombia share with Esmeraldas, where they are one as a diaspora of the Pacific with intertwined culture and knowledge. Both Diana and her companions recognize that the serious problem has always been structural racism, which has been combined with insecurity, needs versus drug trafficking, the recruitment of children and adolescents into gangs, the escalation of violence against women, among others.

For this reason, for Nicha, blacks resist despite the constant erasure, folklorization of their knowledge and that of their ancestors. Despite the explicit racism of the church, they resist religious syncretism such as the celebration of Saint Martin de Porres, with “a black celebration, where there are drums, lullabies, singers, a procession on water, canoes with a lullaby”.

For them, in addition to the fear instilled by the current context, there is a fear of being a woman, a black woman, a daily occurrence for both Diana and Nicha, who migrated to Quito for their studies, and for Teodora, who was forced to emigrate to Spain in 1998, racism he often attacked them in the cities. And it is clear to them that with his daily life, his activism, together with people, he resists to maintain his oral memory, his knowledge and his ways of making music. That’s why returning to your territories and acting from there means resisting. For example, Nicha resists the defense of black women’s rights with Mujeres de Asfalto, as well as Grupo Manglar, a music hotspot that provides learning spaces for children from 3 years old to 25-year-olds. It was a safe space to release and contain emotions, “listening to the sound of a bass drum that transmits your soul to the ancestors is also an exercise in resisting fear, because we prefer the bass drum to sound louder than bullets. . They are killing us, and we are resisting.”

Diana tells me that she had to overcome her fear because the needs of her people are greater and because she firmly believes that she should be and continue to create agents of change. For her part, resisting Teodora means continuing with her normal rhythm of life without fear, continuing to fight for funding for projects in Esmeraldas that were very difficult to reach from all angles, and continuing to occupy collective spaces with art, training and awareness for women. Finally, Nicha teaches us that her resistance lies in calling herself black, “knowing that we are black without affecting us without hurting us, (…) I recognize myself from blackness as an exercise in claiming to be black as something good because what she has is always seen as black as a negative. I recognize myself as a black woman, as a fugitive, as a woman who resists in a living palanquin with many more women where we try not to erase what is black and to make it visible. And what we do affects the whole country.”

Now we know that it is not only Mama Zamba that is a transforming and connecting thread with other spaces of resistance. There are several voices and hands that are being activated and asking for support. And in art, music under the hand of Niche and its collective; culture, art, academia, where Diana and her activist family travel; as well as gender and politics where Teodora lives. These are the roads that Esmeralda also owes the news to. (OR)