While known as a leftist-socialist, Gustavo Petro seems to have gone out of his way to both calm fears in the international investment community and protect Colombia’s diplomatically strong relationship with the United States, its largest economic and political patron.

Secretary of State Blinken pledged US support for implementation of the ethnic chapter of the 2016 Peace Accords, and cited the $60 million USD aid package supporting political, social and economic inclusion in Colombia, along with $1 billion + USD in US economic support since 2016 for Peace Accord implementation.

Finance Colombia provides a transcript of the signing statements by Vice President Marquez and Secretary of State Blinken. The transcript (and above photo) is courtesy of the US State Department.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Buenas tardes.  Gracias.  Gracias a todos.  I looked for this because I was almost rendered entirely speechless, quite literally.

To all of you here, this is a special place, and even in the few minutes that I’ve been here, I can feel that.  It’s very, very powerful.

Vice President Marquez, thank you for your leadership and also for your partnership, and I’ll have more to say about that in a few minutes.

38 percent of Afro-Colombians, 27 percent of Indigenous people registered as victims of the conflict.  By 2017, nearly a million had been forcibly displaced.

Ambassador Murillo, so many others here from the Colombian Government, from multilateral organizations, from civil society, from other institutions working toward the full implementation of the Peace Accord – thank you, thank you for your commitment to this effort.

And I very much want to recognize the service of Mr. Wouriyu Valbuena and all of the Afro-Colombian, Indigenous, and other civil society leaders who are here today for their brave and sustained efforts on the part of their communities.

Let me also acknowledge María Belén Sáez for hosting us in this remarkable museum.  I’m grateful for that.

It’s quite simply moving – moving to be here and to bear witness to the harrowing consequences of more than 50 years of conflict that are depicted all around us.  From the paintings that reflect the agony of forced disappearances for victim’s families, to the floors beneath our feet, crafted from melted guns, hammered into tile with the participation of victims of sexual violence.

Every part of this space shows the cost of conflict.  Every part makes an urgent case for peace, for justice.  And every part also shows profoundly our common humanity, as translated through art, an ability to connect so powerfully one human being to another.

The United States has been proud to be a partner to Colombia and its people throughout the peace process.  Today, we’re taking another step in support of securing a lasting peace, by becoming the first international accompanier to the Ethnic Chapter of the Peace Accord.

The chapter recognizes that there can be no lasting peace without justice and equality for the Afro-Colombian and Indigenous people, who have been disproportionately harmed by this conflict.

Over five decades, 38 percent of Afro-Colombians, 27 percent of Indigenous people registered as victims of the conflict.  By 2017, nearly a million had been forcibly displaced.  Countless others suffered atrocities and human rights abuses – massacres, torture, disappearances, killings, sexual violence.  Too often, those crimes went unpunished.

These injustices were rooted in centuries of racism – a living legacy of slavery and colonization.

Many persist to this day.  According to the United Nations, of the more than 400 human rights defenders killed between 2016 and 2020, 16 percent were Indigenous, though Indigenous people make up less than 5 percent of the population.

And as so many of you in this audience know very, very well, Afro-Colombian and Indigenous people continue to experience systemic marginalization and inequality.  To give just a few examples, even when they have the same qualifications, Afro-Colombians tend to earn less than their peers.  And on average, Indigenous people receive two years less education than other Colombians.

The Ethnic Chapter sets out a vision for an inclusive peace that addresses this history of inequity and ensures the rights of Afro-Colombians and Indigenous people going forward.

It’s a vision that the United States shares and that we’ve long worked to try to help make a reality.

Since supporting the negotiation process, we’ve supported Colombia’s efforts to help protect vulnerable communities, dismantle criminal organizations, support investigations and prosecutions of perpetrators of violence and human rights abuses.  In all, we’ve contributed more than $1 billion to support Colombian-led efforts to implement the Peace Accord.

We’ve also worked to expand opportunities for marginalized communities.  The United States Congress – thanks in large part to the leadership of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Chairman Meeks in particular – has helped provide significant economic development aid for Afro-Colombian and Indigenous people for the last nine years.

And last year, the U.S. Agency for International Development launched a five-year, $60 million program to support economic, political, and social inclusion in Colombia – the largest program of its kind in the world.  We’re partnering with nine Afro-Colombian and Indigenous organizations to create and implement peacebuilding and sustainable development initiatives, with a special focus on empowering women, young people, LGBTQI+ people, people with disabilities, people who are affected by violence.

Working toward greater equality will not only strengthen the foundations of peace in Colombia, but also the country’s democracy.  Because when every community has equal access to opportunity, to justice, to development, and security, all of society benefits.

That’s true in Colombia.  It’s also true in the United States, with our own deep history of discrimination, which is still felt in our institutions, policies, and society.  That’s why President Biden has made the fight for equity and racial justice a priority for our administration, at home as well as around the world.

Now, you know better than anyone that this work can be challenging.  But our willingness to confront the painful parts of our history – as well as our present – and do it out in the open, that is one of democracy’s greatest strengths, and it’s one that the United States and Colombia share.

The work that we’re here to support – like the Ethnic Chapter itself – is only possible because of incredibly courageous Colombians who have risked everything in the fight for equal rights.

People like the vice president, who has spent her entire life defending Colombia’s underserved communities, their lands, their rights – “los nadies,” as she says.  As a teenager, when the vice president helped protect a river in her community from exploitation; later, when she helped lead a march of women for more than 300 miles to protest illegal mining; and throughout the peace process, when she made sure that the voices of Afro-Colombians and black women were heard.  Work she did despite harassment, despite death threats, work she continues to this day, not only as vice president but also as her government’s first minister of equality.

Her persistence, and that of so many indigenous and Afro-Colombian leaders like her – including some of you gathered here today – you’ve brought the nation to this moment, and you will continue to carry it forward.

As the vice president said, now is the time – now is the time – to work toward peace – “decisively, without fear, with love and with joy.”  I can think of no more powerful and no more fitting words for this moment.

And I can conclude simply by saying the United States is proud, proud to be your partner in this endeavor.  Thank you.  Gracias a todos.

MODERATOR:  (Via interpreter) Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.  Now it is my honor and pleasure to welcome the vice president of Colombia, Francia Marquez, for her remarks.  Madam Vice President.  (Applause.)

VICE PRESIDENT MARQUEZ:  (Via interpreter) Good afternoon, everyone.  Everyone who is here today in this space, I would like to extend my special greetings to Mr. Antony Blinken, Secretary of State of the United States, and of course to your entire team of colleagues who are with you as a part of this special delegation.  I would also like to extend my greetings to the representatives of the United Nations for human rights, Juliette de Rivero.  Thank you for being here and for always being so willing to stand by our side and our arduous fight to protect life.

I would like to greet Luis Gilberto Murillo, our ambassador, who has been a part of this historic fight that we have waged as peoples.  I would like to extend my greetings to the director of the victims unit, Patricia Yagari, who is here with us.  I would like to greet the secretary of the high-level instance for ethnic peoples, Mr. Armando Valbuena.  My greetings to all leaders who are here as well, social organizations, members of the media, and my greetings to the community in general.

The first thing I have to say is that we are very pleased to receive this visit from the Secretary of State of the United States.  We receive you and are happy to do so as a government, as an administration, because accompanying the Ethnic Chapter for peace is to take on the commitment for total peace, complete peace.  These floors upon which we have walked are wrinkled; they are made of weapons, weapons that were used to murder and hurt millions of Colombians, but especially Colombians who were Indigenous and Afro descendants, raizales and palenqueros.  As the Colombian state recognized and as was recognized by the FARC at the time, there was a disproportionate effect on these people, and that continues to be so in the framework of the armed conflict.

I can’t be here as a black woman, as a victim, without reaffirming our commitment to peace to tell you, Mr. Secretary, that we have still not silenced every bullet.  There are many weapons here that we were able to place here, but there are still many weapons out there, out there murdering, taking life, denying possibilities, hopes and dreams for our people.  And I would like to especially talk about youth, about black and Indigenous youth, youth who today do not see any roads that are open to them, who see that the future is murky.  They don’t see that it’s possible for them to achieve their dreams.  Young people who on the Pacific coast of Colombia are committing suicide because they do not see a road ahead for themselves, young people, children, women who continue to be victims of forced displacement, who are expelled from their land, who are still undergoing a terrible humanitarian crisis.

And this armed conflict is not uncoupled from structural racism.  My presence today as vice president is just one step; it is not the end.  The end is to find dignity for our people, black people, raizal and palenquero people, our Indigenous peoples, for peasant workers, for women, for young people, and for all of Colombia.  That is why, as we discussed during our meeting with the president, it is necessary that we solve the drug problem, the drug trafficking problem, the problem of death economies, towards an economy that allows for peace for us all.  We must plant happiness, hope, and love on our land, because unfortunately and sadly, our land has been planted with pain, sadness, and blood.

With that hope, Gustavo – President Gustavo Petro came into office, as did I, in order to be a part of the state in order to change those realities.  We celebrate the fact, then, that the U.S. Government today is taking on being a partner in this exercise of ensuring rights for the victims of this country, and especially for victims, of ethnic peoples, in order to find a decent life for them and to make strides in seeking total peace.  I will repeat: this is a huge stride to the end.  This is a demonstration of the fact that we are on the right path, that hope continues to grow, so that we may overcome our fear – a fear that still takes hold of our people, that still takes hold of our leaders.

That is why, then, I would like to thank you on behalf of our national government, on behalf of my people, on behalf of our leaders, on behalf of those who are no longer here because they gave their lives for this moment so that we could reach this place.  But we would like to reaffirm our commitment to total peace, to justice, to social justice, to human dignity.  We would like to reaffirm our commitment to tackle, in a radical way, structural racism which has not allowed us to be as people and as communities.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for being here.  I would like to thank the media, and a message of hope, of happiness, of love, and of brotherhood is what I would like to extend to the Government of the United States.  Thank you very much.

MODERATOR:  (Via interpreter) Thank you, Madam Vice President of the Republic of Colombia, Francia Marquez.  And now we will move to this very important moment, a moment that Indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants have waited for for so long and that we have worked on together with the United States Government.  We will move to the signing ceremony.

Over 400 human rights defenders have been killed since 2016. In most cases by rural mafias and drug traffickers. Under the Duque administration, coca harvests have reached all-time records. Local farmers who resist growing the crop; the raw ingredient for cocaine production, face intimidation and assassination by rural mafia enforcers, and there is almost a consensus that the government has failed to provide adequate protection.

The letter sent to Secretary Pompeo reads as follows. A PDF version can be downloaded here.

Dear Secretary Pompeo,

As the coronavirus pandemic exposes and magnifies existing problems in each of the countries it ravages, we are particularly concerned that it is affecting the safety of Colombia’s brave human rights defenders and social leaders who are putting their lives on the line to build lasting peace.

We write to ask you to actively urge the Duque Administration to consider recommitting to implementing the historic 2016 peace accords and protecting Colombia’s endangered human rights defenders whose vulnerability has only increased during the COVID-19 quarantine.

Colombia is now the most dangerous country in the world for human rights defenders. Over 400 human rights defenders have been murdered since the signing of the peace accords – a loss of committed and valiant civic leaders that Colombia cannot afford. The Colombian government’s slowness in implementing the peace accords, its failure to bring the civilian state into the conflict zones, and its ongoing inability to prevent and prosecute attacks against defenders have allowed this tragedy to go unchecked. This appears to have intensified as illegal armed groups take advantage of the pandemic while the government fails to respond, further increasing the vulnerability of targeted rights defenders and local leaders.

For example, on March 19, three armed men entered a meeting where farmers were discussing voluntary coca eradication agreements and killed community leader Marco Rivadeneira. He promoted peace and coca substitution efforts in his community, represented his region in the guarantees working group to protect human rights defenders, and was a member of the national human rights network Coordinación Colombia Europa Estados Unidos. Afro-Colombian, indigenous, and poor farming communities like the San José de Apartadó peace community continue to suffer and are even more vulnerable from the unchecked presence of illegal armed actors in their territories.

Marco Rivadeneira was one of 23 social leaders killed between March 15 and April 24, during the first weeks of Colombia’s pandemic lockdown. According to the Colombian NGO, Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Paz – INDEPAZ, in the first six months of 2020, 153 social leaders and defenders were killed in Colombia.

To stop this tragedy, we ask you to firmly urge the Duque Administration to consider the following:

• • Improve protection of human rights defenders and social leaders, starting with effective investigations of attacks and threats against them, identifying those who ordered these crimes and publicly presenting the outcomes of these investigation.
  • Develop a road map for protection in consultation with defenders in the guarantees working group, including for pandemic-related challenges such as the need for personal protective equipment.
  • Fund and implement collective protection measures with differentiated ethnic and gender approaches in consultation with communities through the National Protection Unit. Collective measures agreed to with Afro-descendant and indigenous communities’ authorities must be guaranteed. The self-protection mechanisms of the San José de Apartadó peace community and similar humanitarian zones should be respected, including the support provided by international accompaniers, even during the pandemic.
  • Dismantle the paramilitary successor networks involved in drug trafficking, which fuel much of the violence against human rights defenders and social leaders. The government must honor its commitment to regularly convene the National Commission of Security Guarantees, which was established by the accords to develop and implement plans to dismantle illegal groups and protect communities, social leaders, and ex-combatants.
  • Effectively investigate, prosecute, and present results about these paramilitary and criminal networks through the Attorney General’s special investigative unit. We welcome the new agreement between the Colombian Attorney General’s Office and the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia to train prosecutors and investigators in aggressively addressing these human rights crimes. It is critical the State end impunity in the murders, disappearances, assaults and threats against human rights defenders, social leaders, land rights and environmental activists, journalists, trade unionists and other defenders.
  • Swiftly hold accountable Colombian Army intelligence members, including at the highest ranks, who ordered and carried out mass surveillance on 130 journalists (including U.S. reporters), human rights defenders, political leaders, and military whistleblowers. The U.S. should also ensure that U.S. security and intelligence assistance does not assist, aid or abet such illegal surveillance, now or in the future.
  • Vigorously implement the peace accords, including by adequately funding the transitional justice system, fully implementing the Ethnic Chapter, delivering on commitments for protection for ex-combatants and productive projects to reintegrate them into civilian life, and honoring commitments for truth, justice, reparations, and guarantees of non-repetition for victims of the conflict.

We urge you, Mr. Secretary, to ensure that all agencies of the United States speak with one clear voice to condemn these ever-escalating murders and to press the Duque Administration to take the necessary steps to identify and prosecute the intellectual authors of these crimes and dismantle the criminal structures that protect them.

Finally, we urge you to continue to provide valuable U.S. assistance to Colombia to implement the peace accords, provide humanitarian assistance for Venezuelan refugees and refugee receiving communities, and address the health and food security crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. should also take advantage of opportunities provided by the peace accords to carry out sustainable and lasting eradication of illegal crops by working with communities to replace coca with legal livelihoods and by dismantling trafficking networks.

Thank you for your attention to these important concerns in this difficult time.

94 House members signed the letter. Their names can be seen here.