Condemned to Banishment? Crossings and Confinements Among Black Communities in Colombian Pacific

Angela Yesenia Olaya Requene
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7947-2224
Harvard University, USA 
yesenia-olaya@fas.harvard.edu

Abstract:

Forced displacement on Afro-descendant communities from the Colombian Pacific has been associated to armed groups fights over strategic grip on lands and territories to deploy criminal economies, including drug trafficking, illegal mining, and human and arms trafficking. Here I argue that those economies can be understood within the framework of global capital accumulation by means of spoil, which restructures Black people socio-historic relations with their territories: destruction of lands and subsistence economies, while creating the conditions for forced displacement. Following Saskia Sassen, we will call these “banishments”, that is, entire communities expelled both from their birth places and the socioeconomic order pre-established by global capitalism. Through ethnography, we analyse the transits of banished families and communities in precarious geographies, referring to places on the “margins” “isolated” and “forgotten”, subdued to the control of violent forces responsible for the ongoing situations threatening and putting banished populations at risk.

Keywords: Banishments, forced displacement, margins.