Featured Collection

El Chocó, Colombia: A Community's Struggle for Peace

El Chocó is the northwestern-most department (state) in Colombia where the largest population of African descent in the country reside. The area is also home to as a substantial concentration of Amerindian and mixed African-Amerindian Colombians. It’s mostly a tropical rainforest region where social and economic life centers around its rivers: the Atrato, which travels north into the Caribbean and the San Juan and Baudó, which flow into the Pacific.  In the 1990’s a local life centered on fishing, hunting, modest lumbering, panning for gold and platinum, and banana cultivation was tragically disrupted in the 1990s with the warring factions of three armed groups: the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) and ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional) guerrillas, right wing paramilitaries and government forces. 

Steve Cagan visited the region between 2003 and 2008 and captured the tragedy of this rural community: violence, forced displacement, death.  The images here are part of a much larger project on the struggle for cultural and environmental survival. The faces of organized resistance in a women’s peace march, the hopeful mother with her children displaced by military violence and the expression of the young boy at a memorial service for the victims of a massacre reflect the struggle of a community clamoring for a return to their former lives.  Amid so much violence, it is the people’s faith that kept El Chocó’s hopes alive. The Holy Week re-enacting of Christ’s passion on Good Friday reflects the people’s resilience. Cagan notes “religious activities, rituals and festivals, beyond their function of expressing devotion, are an opportunity for the community to unite and confront their problems, the abuses they are suffering, as well as celebrating their communal identity.” 

Learn more about Stanford Library resources on Afro-Colombians, more specifically on El Chocó.  Steve Cagan’s site also has more images from this project.

Adan Griego
Curator for Latin American, Mexican American & Iberian Collections

Items on Display

From left to right:

National women's peace march organized by Women's Peaceful Route. Quibdó, November 2005. 

Family displaced by military movements in Bojayá. 

Memorial service for victims of massacre at Bojayá (2002) that killed 100+ civilians taking refuge in a church. 

Holy Week Procession, Good Friday, Stations of the Cross. Bagadó. 

Holy Week Procession, Good Friday, Stations of the Cross. Bagadó.