Club Congress 7pm $10 Benefit for Centro Pazifico For several years now, Camino Común, a Colombia solidarity project organized by Raquel Mogollón, and the People’s Human Rights Observatory (an international human rights network) have worked with AURACOL (Colombian Association for Agrarian Unification and Reorganization), a union of rural farmers in the town of Sevilla, and UBUNTPAZ, a local organization in Buenaventura, Colombia, to develop opportunities for their member families. AURACOL is also part of REDFIC (Francisco Isaias Cifuentes Human Rights Network), which operates the Centro Pazífico center in Cali. We are working with all these organizations to plan a delegation to the area in May with two objectives. One is to put a roof on and further rehabilitate a building for a prospective school to serve the children of AURACOL at their collective farm. The other is a neighborhood clean up and beautification project organized by UBUNTPAZ for a children’s center in Nayita, one of Buenaventura’s neediest barrios. The benefit is to buy the tools and materials for these projects, all of which will be left with the respective organizations when the delegation has finished its work. Both AURACOL and UBUNTPAZ are in a part of Colombia that registers the highest rates of political violence in the country. AURACOL is a labor organization of farmers and farm workers. Its leaders and supporters are under constant threat from local paramilitary groups and narcotraffickers. Buenaventura, where UBUNTPAZ is located, is the largest port on Colombia’s Pacific coast, a city that is more than 85% Afro-Colombian, and one of the poorest areas of the nation, despite the megaprofits being made by the port. We will be working with the UBUNTPAZ children’s center in Nayita and its recycling program that gathers plastic waste and turns it into park benches, playground equipment, and more. The center plays an important role in providing education and opportunities to local youth and alternatives to the heavy recruitment by paramilitaries and narcotraffickers. Supporting these projects is an important contribution to peace and an end to the armed conflicts in the region that have caused so many problems for these organizations and the populations they serve and represent.
