Portuguese and Spanish slavers supplied the Americas with "los Negros," the Blacks. Only those young and strong, impervious to European disease and able to withstand months of torturous living packed in the cruel quarters of slave shipholds survived the middle passage. Those who arrived, stunned and malnourished, lost in a foreign land, were easy prey to the slavers. Removed from a world that had nourished them, left to the mercy of those whose own lack of humanity prevented the recognition of theirs, they were utterly dependent and at the mercy of their captors. Vestiges of racism threaten to dismantle further progress in South America, as they do here. The prophecies of Willie Lynch, a slave owner who created a divisive plan to keep Blacks separate by fostering dissent among them, are coming true. Lynch outlined the differences in physical characteristics among the slaves-skin shade, hair texture, height, etc. By playing up these differences, Lynch promised, "The Black slave, after receiving this indoctrination, shall carry on and will become self-refueling and self-generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousands." Throughout North and South America, Lynch's plan lives on. Color lines rule, with the predominantly European strains remaining in power, and those of darker skin and crisper hair texture continue to be oppressed. It is a chilling reality that echoes down from the brutal suppression of the native peoples of Chiapas to the continued repression of Mexicans here and in their own country, to the harsh discrimination shown the Blacks of Brazil and America.
Many Afro-Colombians have been displaced from their lands due to over 50 years of conflict between the government and other armed groups. This conflict has cost untold civilian lives and the Colombian government has done little to protect Afro-Colombians who attempt to stay on their lands in the face of violence. In short, Afro-Colombians got their 40 acres and a mule and their government is doing everything to take them back. In Colombia, signing a free trade agreement would effectively give the Colombia government the US seal of approval to continue to make economic decisions that do not account for the rights or livelihoods of Afro-Colombians. Despite the known impacts on Afrodescendants across the Americas a few Congressional Black Caucus Members have endorsed a Free Trade Agreement with Colombia. Passing a Free Trade Agreement despite the discriminatory practices of the Colombian government reveals the truth of the US government's policy: lip service to the protection of human rights but not at the detriment of US corporate interests or free market practices.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: C17078
Notes:
Pages 151-162 in Wilbur Schramm and Daniel Lerner (eds.), Communication and change: the last ten years - and the next. University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu. 372 pages.
Special Paper, Kerry J.Byrnes Collection, Special Paper, 7 pages, Technical Report No. 9 consists of an analysis of the data collected to answer the research questions on communication, defined as the maximization of utility in the processing of marketing-related information types, from now on, MRIT. The research questions are based on two objectives: I. To describe and analyze the existing agencies and/or programs for the processing of marketing-related information types; II. To describe use of Cauca Valley mass communication networks.
Researcher for the Inter American Press Association: "practicing investigative journalism can be far more dangerous in small-town South America than in the capitals." Cites deaths of reporters who exposed drug traffickers and corruption, and criticized politicians and ruling elite in rural areas of Colombia and Brazil.
