Colombian rapper-activist brings message of struggle to Bristol

Written by Bill Heaney Monday, 25 October 2010

Colombian rapper and environmental activist Jota Ramos was recently in Bristol as part of a tour to raise awareness of the destruction of his people's way of life by government forces and big business.

Jota Ramos (left above) is a rap singer and campaigner from the former slave colony of Villa Rica. When slavery was abolished in Colombia in the 1830s, Villa Rica was the last city to be freed. On the day of liberation, a ship carrying slaves from Africa arrived at the port, but the owner was unwilling to accept that his "property" would be lost, so he forced the people to work for 18 years to "buy" their freedom from him.

Freed slaves from other parts of Colombia came to their aid. They planted a cross in the owner's path with the message that neither he nor Jesus Christ could escape that cross. When he came to a halt in front of it, the former slaves rushed down from the hills and killed him. From that time, the freed slaves of Villa Rica cultivated the land. They grew their own food, they exchanged goods and lived without money. "We lived happily as we had our own music and our own lives," Jota said.

That was all to change when the Colombian government implemented new plantation laws. From the 1970s, large farms started eating up fertile land for sugar plantations. When they came to Villa Rica, the African-descendant farmers told them the land was not up for negotiation.

So they used other tactics. First they sprayed the crops at night with herbicides. Then they sent in big landowners ostensibly with an offer of help. They said they'd rent the land from the farmers for just three months to plant one crop of fast-growing sugar. This would pay them enough to buy food for the year, so many farmers said yes, especially as their crops had already been destroyed and they had nothing to eat.

The chemical fertilisers and pesticides the big companies used essentially poisoned the soil, so when the local farmers tried to plant their own crops again, the soil was no good. The next tactic was to send in more landowners to buy the land from the farmers at very low prices. Many of the Africans were destitute and felt they had no choice but to sell.

For those that managed to cling on to their farms, the big landowners used another tactic, which was to set up agrarian banks to lend the remaining farmers money at high interest rates. After this onslaught, only five families managed to hold out and hang on to their farms, and this after one and a half centuries of continuous small-scale farming in Villa Rica.

Now the young people of the community are forced to work long hours for low wages for the big landowners. "It is difficult to organise them politically as they work such long hours. They also tend to be hired to outsourced companies on short-term contracts, so there is very little job security," Jota said.

"I'm an artist and I've come to be well-known nationally in Colombia. From the start my music has had a political message. At one point, I realised my music was not enough and I had to back it up, so I set up the Fundacion Villa Rica to work with the young," Jota said.

The foundation started the "Make it Happen" campaign to support the five remaining families to keep their land and to help others to regain what was taken.

Jota's work is not without risk. In October 2009, just four months after he started the campaign, leaflets started appearing saying he was a guerilla. In Colombia, this meant he was at risk of being killed on the spot by the police or paramilitary forces. "I should stop or be killed for everyone's benefit, but as I prefer to live where I live and do what I do and not move away, I'd be willing to die," he said.

Jota has made a documentary about Villa Rica with the remaining five families and he has compiled a CD to highlight what is going on. "The idea is to show the world what is happening... to capture international attention. The reason for the international campaign is that we do not trust anyone," Jota said.

Jota said that if he were to go the normal legal way, he was afraid he would be killed as happened to the leaders of a similar protest who had organised a demonstration. "The TV claimed it was a violent uprising," Jota said.

"It's important to create self-sustaining communities, because if we find a way of feeding ourselves, we wouldn't have to give money to the multinationals to do it for us. More and more people are giving to the multinationals. If we reduce that, it is much better."

If you would like to find out more or offer help to Jota and the remaining farmers of Villa Rica, please visit the Colombia Solidarity Campaign, the Fundacion Villa Rica, Soporte Klan or send an e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .