VivirLatino

The BBC has a devastating story of how Afro-Colombian’s are treated in Colombia–namely massive evictions and displacements to make room for palm oil plantations:

Take Yajaira, a slender 18-year-old, one of four children whose family was displaced from a settlement in the Cacarica river basin just south of Colombia’s border with Panama.

She misses her place of origin deeply.

“My home was surrounded by banana and mango trees, and coconut palms,” she recalls, fingering a bracelet she wears made of seeds and feathers gathered in tropical forests.

“We used to bathe and fish in a nearby stream.”

According to the BBC, many (of not most or all) of the displaced peoples wind up in shanty towns–which of course–are not surrounded by trees and streams that are clean enough to fish and bathe in. Does race have anything to do with the evictions? According to one of the displaced people, “We are displaced, we are black and we are poor.”

So, in other words, when there’s money to be made through a lucrative business–who cares about a few poor black people who have to move into shanty towns, right?