By Diana Cariboni and Constanza Vieira
QUIBDÓ, Colombia, Oct 29 2007 (IPS)

What was the going rate for a vote? "About 100,000 pesos (50 dollars)," says Víctor Raúl Mosquera, the ombudsman for the northwestern Colombian department (province) of Chocó.

Armed men are ubiquitous in Atrato. Credit: Jesús Abad Colorado

In this jungle province, which is rich in natural resources yet where the people are the poorest in Colombia, "elections are the business opportunity of a lifetime for most people," Mosquera said.

Some voters were paid in kind: "a dozen planks of wood, a dozen zinc roofing sheets, a toilet bowl, sacks of cement, or cans of paint," he said. "It isn’t easy to control. They tell the people, go to such-and-such a place and pick it up."

Which parties did this? "The conservatives, the liberals, all of them!" he said, referring to the two traditional parties.

But he qualified his statement: "Not the Polo (the leftwing Alternative Democratic Pole), nor Zulia Mena’s party; they didn’t stoop to that." Mena, a former congresswoman who represented black communities in the 1990s, was standing for mayor of Quibdó, the provincial capital, as the candidate for the Liberal Party.

It used to be even worse. "They would hold onto people’s identity documents, and only hand them out on election day. Now they are more subtle, they manage things more discreetly," Mosquera said.

On Friday Oct. 26, two days before the elections, "I heard that votes were going for between 20,000 and 50,000 pesos (between 10 and 25 dollars). Imagine what it must have been like on Sunday, when the rate was even higher," he told IPS.

A lot of money has been changing hands recently in Quibdó. "Some people were withdrawing 100 or 200 million pesos (50,000 to 100,000 dollars)" in cash from the banks in the two weeks period before the elections.

"People say, ‘they’re offering a lot of money, and as we haven’t got a bean…" Julia Susana Mena, a leader of the Community Council of the Comprehensive Association of Small Farmers of the Atrato (ACIA), in the riverbank town of Puerto Conto, told IPS.

"I was trying to see how we could organise ourselves. I turned up and said ‘let’s all fight together.’ But the people said ‘we have no money, let’s vote for this candidate, who’s offering us cash we can use,’" she said.

ACIA, which brings together the traditional authorities of 120 black communities in Medio Atrato (the area in the middle range of the Atrato river), was formally constituted 20 years ago. Created to combat poverty, it was promoted and accompanied by the Catholic diocese of Quibdó.

Mena completed six years of primary school and afterwards learned from courses and experience within the organisation. A single mother with five children, she is a recognised leader not only in her province, but also among Colombian communities nationwide who oppose the decades-long internal armed conflict with civil resistance.

In the civil war, leftwing guerrillas face off with the regular armed forces and their ultra-rightwing paramilitary allies.

Mena says that if ACIA had fielded its own candidates in the eight municipalities in its area of coverage, they would all win hands down and things would be different. But no consensus was reached.

Instead, ACIA backed other candidates who promised "to follow our local government programme, which is already drawn up, and reflects what the communities really want."

"But some mayors, when they get to power, forget who put them there, and start to do whatever they want and don’t spend the funds the way they ought to be spent," she said.

So since the elected authorities do not fulfil their promises, let them at least pay for people’s votes – this would seem to be the general opinion.

That is the reality of elections in the black communities along the Atrato river, which flows through Chocó province from south to north, into the Caribbean sea.

"People said to candidates, ‘give me a little something,’ knowing full well that their ‘little something’ wouldn’t get us out of the mess we’re in, nor would it hold the candidate accountable later," said Mena.

Also, "vast numbers of candidates" competed with those supported by ACIA.

Everyone voted for different candidates, because the communities didn’t organise how they would vote. Eventually, "they ended up admitting that they made a mistake," said Mena.

On Sunday in the municipality of Medio Atrato, ACIA backed a local teacher, Luis Gorgonio Moreno Valencia, standing for the Apertura Liberal (Liberal Opening) party, for mayor.

During a motorboat tour on the Atrato river, lawyer Roque Rentería, another leader of the small farmers’ association and a former mayor of the municipality, told IPS that "we can’t forever be presenting candidates from the core leadership of ACIA, because it would become a monopoly."

"We backed someone local, and gave him or her our support. We’re gaining experience in the electoral political process," he said.

But ombudsman Mosquera warned that for ACIA to campaign and participate in the elections, without first educating the communities to overcome their dependence on clientelism, was dangerous.

He also posed a delicate problem: in places where guerrillas or paramilitaries are active, mayors have to pay part of the municipal budget to whichever force is exercising power locally. "That’s the reality, there are no two ways about it," he said.

"So there are two options: either you do not run for office, or if you do run, you have to play by the rules, and take public money to pay those people. That’s why I say it’s better not to run," Mosquera said.

The communities affiliated to ACIA are opposed to any armed presence in their territory of 800,000 hectares, to which they obtained collective title in 1997, but their neutrality is not heeded.

"Monitoring these elections is very difficult. The national electoral authorities are weak, and the whole Colombian electoral system is very fragile," said Mosquera, because not even the security of the ballot boxes in transit to collection centres can be guaranteed, once voting is over.

In addition, there are plenty of opportunities for the voter lists, or the contents of the ballot boxes themselves, to be altered. "Colombia has the most backward electoral system in Latin America," a source from the Organisation of American States’ Electoral Observation Mission, who requested anonymity, told IPS.

The poverty of the rural villages demonstrates that a candidate elected by paid votes is not accountable to the community that voted him or her in, but to his or her financiers. And these wield a great deal of power in Chocó.

After controversial negotiations between the national government and paramilitary commanders, many of whom are drug trafficking bosses, a partial demobilisation of the paramilitaries was achieved. In Chocó this took place in the municipality of Istmina in August 2005.

"But they continue to run their trafficking business, exercise power, and operate their extortion rackets. Obviously this means that people can’t lodge protests, because they’re afraid. Those people are still making threats and ‘disappearing’ people," the ombudsman told IPS.

"They merely changed their name," and they still have influence in the north of Chocó, in Quibdó, Istmina and Baudó, a municipality near the Pacific coast.

"Drug trafficking is their source of finance, and they launder the money by buying legitimate businesses. They have bankrupted traditional businesses in areas like housing construction, and new activities like grain storage barns, pharmacies and shops," Mosquera said.

"They have a powerful influence on the (rightwing) Colombian administration (of Álvaro Uribe), because they also finance the presidential election campaigns," he said.

The governor of Chocó, Julio Ibargüen, is under investigation by the Supreme Court for having allegedly handed over the health sector of Chocó to "El Señor", a druglord on the Pacific coast.

Mosquera has two proposals to combat vote buying. The main one is state financing of election campaigns.

The other one is this: "if the state were stronger, it could require banks to divulge money movements in the past few weeks, and see who have made huge withdrawals last week or the week before," he said.

Leftwing guerrillas, meanwhile, make their presence felt in rural areas, and in some towns, where they fight turf wars with the paramilitaries. In September, the rebels issued death threats against candidates, town councillors or officials in nine of the 31 municipalities in Chocó, as well as against business associations and chambers and state institutions in the Lower Atrato.

On Thursday, guerrillas burned electoral materials in the municipality of Nóvita.

"They don’t want elections to be held, or people to vote," said Mosquera. In Chocó, the two main guerrilla forces, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), act in concert, he said.

This article is part of a series about the Millennium Development Goals in Chocó. The project that gave rise to this effort was the winner of the AVINA Investigative Journalism scholarship. The AVINA Foundation is not responsible for the ideas, opinions or other aspects of the content.

Excerpt:

By Diana Cariboni and Constanza Vieira
QUIBDÓ, Colombia, Oct 13 2007 (IPS)

"Let&#39s go to the sea, let&#39s go to the sea," one hears a nervous voice say every so often in the fishing village of Bahía Solano, on the Colombian Pacific coast. A package has been seen floating and boats are going after a not-so-traditional catch: cocaine thrown out by fleeing drug traffickers.

A load of lumber travels down the Atrato River. Credit: IPS/Jesús Abad Colorado

The artisanal fisherfolk call a truce with the fish during this "momentary advantage". If they are lucky, they find and sell the drug, and earn the equivalent of decades of fishing.

Because fish is the basis of the region&#39s diet, for a few days there are many who are left without food. And the tourists end up eating beef or chicken instead of seafood.

That is what an IIAP study found in Cabo Marzo, in the municipality of Juradó, neighbouring Bahía Solano, for tracking the marine-coastal biodiversity of the bio-geographic Chocó, a region of 145,000 square kilometres that encompasses southern Panama, northwest Colombia and its Pacific coast, and northern Ecuador.

The heart of this tri-national region is the Colombian department of Chocó, 46,530 square km of vast natural wealth – and the country&#39s poorest population.

Another "catch" beyond the usual fishing occurs when the communities "trap" boats, almost always tuna vessels, that violate the minimum mileage from shore, and fish using drag nets.

The community holds on to them for a time, and then they let them go. "They are boats from here. The owners are the senators, that&#39s why nothing happens," said Klinger.

This year the IIAP completes fieldwork in Bahía Solano-Juradó for presenting an integrated management plan for the area in mid-2008. By then it will have launched a similar study in the southern port of Tumaco, in Nariño department, in alliance with Conservation International.

Unlike other scientific research centres, IIAP, founded in 1993, has a mission that includes promoting development and autonomy in the black and indigenous communities – inhabitants of the bio-geographic Chocó region.

Each study aims for rapid implementation. The director is elected by a delegate assembly of 24 people, including eight representatives of the black communities and eight from the indigenous communities, with collectively held lands.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) mentions 7,000 to 8,000 plants and 100 bird species found only in the Chocó, but "there are no conclusive inventories," says Klinger. "There is much more we don&#39t know."

There are unexplored areas "where neither the drug trade nor the irregular armed forces (of the Colombian civil war) have been able to penetrate, he adds.

This is one of the rainiest areas of the world, with up to 12 metres of precipitation a year, which rules out burning of the forest to expand the agricultural frontier, as is common in other zones.

According to WWF, the bio-geographic Chocó maintains intact "nearly 58 percent of the total area" of forest.

Its precious metals – gold, silver and platinum – attracted the Spanish, who introduced African slaves centuries ago to work the mines.

In Klinger&#39s opinion, the relative natural conservation is due largely "to the cultural dynamic of the blacks and Indians, who don&#39t have a culture of accumulation of capital," and take from the forest and from the sea "only what they need to survive."

The processes of collective land titles held by the Afro-Colombian communities, beginning with the 1991 constitution, officially established their ties to the territory.

Forty years ago, this was "a pristine zone, with few settlements and very little intervention," entrepreneur Paolo Lugari told Tierramérica. He was the first director of what was then known as the National Corporation for the Development of Chocó (Codechoco), founded in 1968.

One of Lugari&#39s tasks was to identify economic options for the department, but "none of the existing development models is appropriate for Chocó," he said.

He believes that to make best use of the forest it should be harvested, but that does not mean cutting it down. "What is needed is sustainable management, which is much more than supportable management."

In that search, the Gaviotas research centre, founded by Lugari, conducted a joint study with U.S. ethnobiologist Richard Evans Schultes of the "milpesos" (Jessenia polycarpa) palm, whose fruit produces an oil "of the same quality as olive oil," with applications for industry or as a biofuel.

Evans Schultes, of Harvard University, "directed a doctoral thesis about the Jessenia polycarpa palm and ended up setting up an oil extractor in Gaviotas," which provided the technology.

The botanist concluded that the experience was applicable to Chocó, because its outcome was "the ideal of any industrial project: social, economic and environmental feasibility at the same time," said Lugari.

In the early 1970s, Chocó had "the largest wild milpesos palm population in the country," according to Lugari. Now, noted Klinger, it is hardly seen at all.

The pioneering project did not succeed. Meanwhile, starting in 1996, the massive planting of the exotic African oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) has expanded from the north.

"The change in land use should not happen through the monoculture of the African palm," says Klinger. The biodiversity of the area&#39s jungles produces a "recycling of nutrients," which ensures that other species appear. That is why any monoculture "that removes the forest&#39s wealth of nutrients is going to suffer deterioration in the medium term."

Klinger is promoting a study on the "integral valoration of forests in collective territories of the bio-geographical Chocó", which aims to measure this wealth from different perspectives.

The first is wood products from the Chocó, famous for its fine trees like the choibá, mahogany and guayacán.

In line with Lugari, and the second aspect to study, the IIAP sees greater value in non-timber products: tannins, resins, rubber and medicinal plants.

There will also be an inventory of the little-studied fauna, and another of the environmental services provided by the jungle, such as capturing carbon from the atmosphere, protecting water supplies, tourism and science.

The indigenous and black communities "are in complete agreement that they have to know the economic value of what they have," says the IIAP director.

Obtaining compensation for "avoided deforestation" would allow the Chocó communities an income in the framework of the global fight against climate change.

But furthermore, "many macroprojects (of forest or mining exploitation, and transport or energy infrastructure) could pass through collective territories… If that were to happen today, we wouldn&#39t have any idea" what the compensation should be, says Klinger.

Los Riscales Community Council, owner of Nuquí, in the Gulf of Tribugá, and the San Luis de los Robles community, in Tumaco, are already allied with IIAP to begin research in their territories.

"Medical patents" is another IIAP project – "our greatest news," says Klinger. The validation of traditional knowledge about the Chocó forests held by "chinangos", the Afro-Colombian community doctors.

And of course there is "prior contract with the traditional doctors about how the patent would be distributed. They give their blessing, but they are not releasing information here and there. The relationship with the traditional doctors is very difficult," and two western doctors have figured out how to do so, Klinger told Tierramérica.

This article is part of a series about the Millennium Development Goals in Chocó. The project that gave rise to this effort was the winner of the AVINA Investigative Journalism scholarship. The AVINA Foundation is not responsible for the ideas, opinions or other aspects of the content.

Excerpt: