Help Youth Dancers Targeted by Paramilitary

Urgent aid is needed to feed and house the 28 families of the Asocorvica Dance Group who have been targeted by paramilitary forces and driven from their homes. 

Last week, 2,800 people from the rural area of Bajo Calima, Colombia were driven from their homes by illegal armed forces , and have been forced to flee their land due threats and indiscriminate violence with the murder of over 20 people, including children. The land is strategic for these paramilitary and guerrilla groups, both geographically, and to use for the cultivation of coca. These groups are trying to clear the territory of inhabitants and children are particularly at risk of kidnapping to recruit into these forces.

Among those forced to leave are members of the The Asocorvica Dance Group, a group of black youth activists whose dances and music promote respect for cultural diversity and their environment. They have been displaced to the city of Buenaventura, but are without housing, food or clothing and their families do not have access to their traditional means of survival, fishing and cultivation. Because of this, many are having to choose between trying to survive without this support, or to risk returning to their homes and the violence being threatened there.

Our organization, Cuerpos para la Reconciliación (Embodying Reconciliation) has worked with the Asocorvica Dance Group  for the past 3 years, and the group has taken part in our Environmental Dance project and was planning on participating in the Intercultural Festival, Bodies for Empathy. They are bearers of intangible cultural heritage and doing incredibly important work. We are organizing urgent aid, starting with the 28 families of the group. Your contribution will go towards the immediate needs of these families, their food, and temporary housing. They need $3000 to survive the coming month, an amount that seems small but is far beyond their current means. We hope that the network of people who are engaged with dance, music, activism, and peacebuilding can come through with community aid.

At Embodying Reconciliation-Cuerpos para la Reconciliación, we work towards developing alternative pathways to promote a peaceful and empathetic world using cultural heritage. While this emergency focuses on basic physical needs, we believe that the cultural work done by Asocorvica and Cuerpos para la reconciliación will be even more vital after this moment of crisis. Your contributions will allow these young people, who have been strategic targets for war, not only to survive but to persist in working with arts and culture to transform their reality.