PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTOJOURNALISM VIDEO by PAUL SMITH

PROJECTS/EXHIBITIONS: LOST - the abandoned lives of Colombia's displaced

n the last 25 years 4.9 million persons have been forcibly displaced in Colombia's civil conflict, bringing it alongside Sudan as one of the two largest internal displacement situations in the world¹.

At the root of the violence and displacement in Colombia is control - control of the local population, control of territory, control of natural resources, and control of local economies - and it is the rural civilian population that has lost most at the hands of right-wing paramilitaries, left-wing guerrillas, the private armies of criminal drug trafficking syndicates, and State's own security forces.

But, by far the greatest numbers of deaths and displacements can be attributed to right-wing paramilitary groups who have morphed into the private armies of drug traffickers. The interests of these are maintaining the drugs routes and grabbing whatever takes their fancy. In their more than 25 years of existence head to head combats with their guerrilla adversaries, who also kill and displace, are almost unheard of.

In many regions of the country the land of which the displaced have been dispossessed has passed into the hands of front companies for the chiefs, financiers and political allies of paramilitary and drug-trafficking groups.

These companies manage large-scale agro-o-industrial projects (particularly oil palm plantations), many of which have or are still receiving economic subsidies from the Colombian State.

For those few displaced who have returned to their lands to start from scratch, they lack the financial credits and State handouts they need to reconstruct their lives. These have more commonly been given to large landowners allied to politicians in the Colombian government or to agro-industrial projects owned by large companies.

It remains to be seen if poor farmers will figure in government strategies and investment priorities, or if these will merely be paid lip service whilst the tax money goes to agro-business and political friends. Poverty and lack of opportunity are not the exclusive recruiters of young men into armed groups, but they do significantly help to swell the ranks. Billions of dollars of go to the military to combat the illegal armies that are exclusive to Colombia in Latin American. That money could undoubtedly be better spent elsewhere.

¹ - www.codhes.org

The photographs in "Lost" are from the Middle Magdalene Valley and Urabá – two strategic corridors which have seen great numbers of their populations displaced by armed groups. The testimonies gathered during the project are from people still living in displacement and from those who have returned and are scraping a living from the land.

(To see the full testimonies and histories, click on the photographs in the slide show - opens new window).