Harvesting Oysters, March 2019, photo … Afro-Colombian – Choco, Colombia
While people are poor in Choco, the land and sea are rich in food. Here, an Afro-Colombian woman pries oysters off the rocks to feed her family for the evening. She lives in a house on stilts in a community in the intertidal zone a few minutes walk from here.
Back in the time of African slavery in Colombia, escaped slaves would run west to the free lands on the Pacific coast… Choco. The region is still majority Afro-Colombian: about 82% Afro-Colombian, 13% indigenous Embera and 5% “paisa”… what in other parts of Latin America would be called “mestizo”. Most land in Choco is communally owned, a tradition going back to the times of escaped slave communities.
While Choco is rooted in people escaping violence, the last 4 decades have been on ongoing wave of violence, with most people in Choco having been displaced by the long ongoing conflict and violence fueled by cocaine trade and illegal gold mining. Everyone has hard stories to tell of loved ones loss, harrowing experiences escaping, and difficulties settling into new environments. Some were displaced 30 years ago. Some in the last few years.
Here is a 60 minute video montage and short trailer of quotidian details of current life and stories of displacement among these interwoven communities.