Forrest Hylton

After a honeymoon period of perhaps six months, President Gustavo Petro’s government – the first ever to make protection of social movement leaders a priority, at least rhetorically – has gone from struggling to embattled. In 2022, Colombia tied with Syria for the highest number of internally displaced people in the world (6.8 million), notably in the departments with the highest Indigenous and Afro-Colombian populations; forced displacement reached a ten-year high. Murders of social movement leaders, many of them Indigenous or Afro-Colombian, continue unabated. For now, peace with either the narco-paramilitary AGC or the nominally Marxist-Leninist ELN lies beyond the horizon (the ELN and the government have signed a bilateral ceasefire agreement that may or may not hold).

Since I last wrote about the trials of Víctor Peña, his doctor’s son has died of the injuries inflicted on him by the narco-paramilitaries who followed through on their threats of what would happen to Dr Z’s family if he didn’t turn ‘el indígena Víctor’ over to them. This desperate situation was created by the nightmarish configuration of gangster rule in Colombia, in part a consequence of US counterinsurgency and counter-narcotics policies under Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama.

I have written before about Víctor Peña, a displaced cacique of the Zenú people whose entire family has died since the Covid-19 pandemic began, some of them murdered by narco-paramilitaries. We did relief work together in Medellín – getting alcohol gel, masks and food to Zenú mothers – during the pandemic in 2020. If he ever returned to his home town, Tuchín, Victor would be killed too.

On 30 March, former president Jair Bolsonaro arrived in Brasília from Orlando to face justice. ‘I’m being humiliated,’ he said. No more than a few dozen supporters had turned up to greet him. After the failed coup attempt on 8 January, it seems there’s little appetite for direct action among Brazil’s fascists (for the time being). The day after Bolsonaro’s return was the anniversary of the military coup of 1964, which he celebrated annually during his presidency. This year, the army vowed to punish anyone who did so.

Among the visitors to Salvador was the US ambassador, Elizabeth Bagley, who was photographed leaning from a window to shake hands with Governor Jerônimo Rodrigues as the blocos passed below. Bagley tweeted that her first trip to the city ‘could not have been better’, thanks to the ‘contagious energy’ and the ‘music, colours and people’. Gilberto Gil performed with Margareth Menezes, the new culture minister. Other musicians included BaianaSystem and Ivette Sangalo.