'Jerico 11' resistance exposes Colombia’s extractivist violence: how far-right policies and corporate land grabs erase Indigenous stewardship
Original framing: “‘Water yes, mining no!’: the 87-year-old farmer who became a nature hero in Colombia” — The Guardian - Environment
The story omits the voices of *campesina* women like *María* from Jericó, who lead water protests while facing sexual violence from mine security. A 2021 *Amnesty International* report found that 78% of women defenders in Colombia report gender-based violence, yet Garcés’ narrative centers male leadership. Afro-Colombian communities in Chocó, who have blocked mining since the 1990s, are entirely absent—despite their legal victories in the *Inter-American Court*. The framing of Garcés as a 'hero' without acknowledging these erased struggles risks replicating the same hierarchies it critiques.
The 'Jerico 11' case is not an isolated moral tale but a symptom of Colombia’s extractivist death spiral, where far-right governance accelerates land grabs under the guise of 'economic growth'.
The criminalization of defenders like Garcés mirrors the 1990s paramilitary strategy of terrorizing communities to clear land for plantations and mines—a pattern the 2016 peace accord failed to dismantle. Indigenous *resguardos* and agroecological practices offer a blueprint for water sovereignty, yet they are systematically undermined by mining concessions backed by global financiers like BlackRock. The solution lies in a *trickster*-inspired inversion: using legal tools (e.g., *juntas de agua*), financial pressure (debt swaps), and cultural resistance (artistic-spiritual frameworks) to expose the absurdity of treating water as a commodity while calling its defenders 'criminals'. The global precedent of *Standing Rock* and *Yasuní* proves this is winnable—but only if Garcés’ story is reframed as the vanguard of a systemic shift, not a lone hero’s sacrifice.