San Andrés, Colombia – On July 4, San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, the most far off of Colombia’s 32 departments, elected a new governor in special elections.
The outgoing acting governor told Latin America Reports she hopes that more attention will be brought to the needs of the community on the islands, and she remains hopeful that relations between the archipelago and Colombia’s national government will improve.
The archipelago, situated in the Caribbean sea closer to Managua than Bogotá, leaves many of the over 70,000 islanders feeling disconnected geographically as well as culturally from mainland Colombia.
The native population – called Raizals – speak an English-based Creole and mainly follow Protestantism in contrast to the majority Catholic Colombian mainland, due to the original inhabitants being English settlers and enslaved people brought to the Caribbean from Africa.
“For many years, San Andrés has been failing to address the needs of the Raizal community, to provide solutions and effective proposals for what they are demanding,” Vilma Jay, the outgoing Governor of San Andrés, told Latin America Reports during an interview in June in Coral Palace, the island’s governmental headquarters.
“…We have overpopulation and we also have a shortfall in the provision of public services that do not cover the full demand.”
She added, “San Andrés is a multicultural island which, as I said before, breathes the Caribbean.”
The governor explained that their unique Creole language comes from their English background and “African idioms that gave rise to this unique language.”
Situated closer to the Nicaraguan coast than mainland Colombia, the archipelago has officially been a part of Colombia since a 1928 treaty with their Central American neighbor.
This was followed by what has been dubbed a process of ‘Colombianization’ by locals after San Andrés was named a free port in 1953; an increase in tourism, immigration from the mainland, and the imposition of Spanish and Catholicism amongst the Raizal population.
“Raizals learnt that to live or survive we had to exist within the system,” explained Cleotilde Henry Valvuena, a Raizal community leader in her 80s, who recalls the necessity to be baptised Catholic to get a higher education during her youth.
Valvuena runs a Posada Nativa in her family home, a type of homestay that can only be managed by members of the Raizal community in an effort to keep profits from the tourism mecca in locals’ pockets.
“We are no longer owners of the economy, we are no longer owners of the land. And this is because of the policies of the State, who designed it so that we would lose everything,” she told Latin America Reports inside her family home in June.
Governor Jay explained that the Colombian government has long been disconnected from the island territory, and this “has created a sense of distance that is not only physical but also patriotic [which] has certainly taken its toll; it has become deeply ingrained within the community as a betrayal by the State towards us.”
That feeling of neglect came to the forefront in 2020 in the aftermath of Hurricane Iota, which slammed the island of Providencia as well as Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras.
On the island, a community initiative to coordinate emergency accommodation and supplies led to the creation of One Raizal Corporation, an organization that looks to preserve and celebrate Raizal culture amongst the young population of the islands.
Keaniu Newball McGovern, the group’s president, hopes the group can create spaces for young Raizals to discuss politics and the islands’ future, underlining the need for a “new way of doing politics and making spaces”.
“San Andrés has always been overlooked,” McGovern told Latin America Reports, “politicians [from the mainland] will come and spend a weekend here […] but they don’t have a real commitment.”
I visited the islands in between the first and second round of Colombia’s presidential elections, and posters of candidates for the July 4 special gubernatorial elections were as prominent as those of the presidential candidates.
“The election that stirs up the most passion and, let’s say, garners the most public support is the departmental election for Governor,” said Jay. “
Jay was appointed governor by President Gustavo Petro after the previous governor, Nicolás Gallardo Vásquez, was removed from office for electoral irregularities.
She said the voting habit “sheds light on how this disconnect has really existed between the island’s inhabitants and the rest of the country, and with the authorities in Bogotá and the State.”
The governor does see an opportunity to mend the relationship, however.
“I remain hopeful that these relations can be re-established through political will and effective management [and] dialogue in which the community and the specific characteristics of the territory take precedence,” she said.
She says she’s “completely convinced” that with political will on both sides, a “great deal could be done to promote the development of the archipelago.”
Incoming governor Girley Natacha Ordóñez Bowie, 35, is set to take office this month after winning 64% of the vote in elections where just 31% of the electorate participated.
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons. License details.
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