Raizal

The Raizals are a Protestant Afro-Caribbean ethnic group, speaking the San Andrés-Providencia Creole, an English Creole, living in the Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, presently the Colombian San Andrés y Providencia Department, off the Nicaraguan Miskito Coast. They are recognized by the Colombian authorities as one of the Afro-Colombian ethnic groups under the multicultural policy pursued since 1991.

Separatism

In 1903 the local Raizal population rejected an offer from the USA to separate from Colombia as Panama had done. However, the policy followed by successive Colombian governments of trying to modify the ethnic composition by promoting extensive migration of Spanish-speaking mainland Colombians resulted in increasing discontent, especially when, in 1947, the assimilation policy was led by Catholic missions.^[1][2]

Towards the end of the 1960s, separatist movements began to be active in the archipelago.

The first separatists, an underground movement, were led by Marcos Archbold Britton, who addressed a memorandum to the United Nations, asking for the inclusion of the archipelago in the list of colonized territories. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) paid a private visit to the archipelago shortly afterwards, arousing suspicions in Colombia.^[3]

The second movement, born at the end of the seventies, grew stronger in the following decade, and culminated in the creation in March 1984 of the Sons of the Soil Movement (S.O.S.), openly claiming the right to self-determination.

Since 1999, another organization, the Archipelago Movement for Ethnic Native Self-Determination for the Archipelago of San Andrés, Providence and Kethlena (AMEN-SD),^[4] a radical separatist movement led by Rev. Raymond Howard Britton, has demanded the creation of an associated state.^[5]

There are nowadays, according to a document from the Colombian government, two trends among the Raizals: a radical one, the Pueblo Indígena Raizal, represented by the Indigenous Native Organizations, among whom Amen, Barraca New Face, Infaunas (a Rastafarian-inspired group of farmers and fishermen), Ketna (Ketlënan National Association) and the SOS Foundation, and a more moderate one, Comunidad Raizal (Native Foundation and Integración Básica) led by former governors who are friends of the Colombian establishment, mainly Felix Palacios, Carlos Archbold and Alvaro Archbold N. This latter group is understandably more ready to participate in bipartite institutions set up by the Colombian authorities.^[6]

Demographics

In 2005, Raizal constituted 57% of the 60,000 inhabitants of the San Andrés y Providencia Department, according to official statistics,^[7] but other sources claim they are now a minority population in the archipelago, as a consequence of migration from and to mainland Colombia. The Raizal community in the mainland is represented by the Organización de la comunidad raizal con residencia fuera del archipiélago de San Andrés, Providencia y Santa Catalina (Orfa, based in Bogotá).^[8]

Notes