Jesusita Moreno "Doña Tuta". | Photo: Twitter/ @AntisanaNews
Published 8 June 2022
"She was the vindication of the rights of Black and Indigenous communities, which live overwhelmed by the armed conflict," the Inter-Church Justice & Peace Commission stated.
On Tuesday afternoon, Jesusita Moreno "Doña Tuta", a popular and beloved Black leader, was shot to death in Cali city.
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"Doña Tuta was the vindication of the rights of the San Juan's Black and Indigenous communities, which live overwhelmed by the intensity and degradation of the armed conflict," the Inter-Church Justice and Peace Commission (ICHPC) stated.
"She received accusations, threats, and stigmas due to her forceful voice demanding respect for the peoples' lifes and territories. She was herself the voice promoting humanitarian agreements... She was the target of judicial set-ups due to to her community role. She managed to save hundreds of lives."
The attack against the 60-year-old Black leader occurred while she was leaving her son's house in the La Floresta neighborhood. Although Doña Tuta managed to be immediately transferred to a hospital, she lost her life due to the seriousness of her injuries.
After the crime, the National Police captured the alleged gunman, who would have a criminal history related to homicide, robbery, and prison escape.
"One day, the material and intellectual authors of her murder will recognize that she was only a concrete and real manager of peace," the ICHPC said, recalling that Doña tuta evidenced the different forms of the Colombian state's complicity in the structural violence against the poor.
"In her honor we continue to encourage and demand a Global Humanitarian Agreement and the construction of a Global Territorial Peace. Doña Tuta is a sign of the peace that the peoples of the Pacific deserve," it added.
Shock over murder of social leader Jesusita Moreno Mosquera in Cali
Jesusita Moreno Mosquera
Armed men broke into the house.
Armed men broke into the house.
She was a human rights defender in San Juan, in Chocó.
CALI
CALI
June 08, 2022
The murder of social leader Jesusita Moreno Mosquera, 60, inside a house in the La Floresta neighborhood of Cali has shocked the community.
According to the deputy commander of the Metropolitan Police of Cali, Colonel William Quintero, the case was registered on June 7.
In the Inter-Church Commission for Justice and Peace they reported: "His forceful voice for the demand for respect for the life and territory of his communities generated accusations, threats and stigmas against him. She was, in herself, the voice that led to humanitarian agreements to achieve respect for the Military Forces, gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC), and the ELN guerrillas."
The human rights defender, according to the Interclesial Commission, would have been a woman warrior for her people. He saved hundreds of community lives because of his community role.
They called her 'Doña Tuta' affectionately and she was part of the Noanamá community, in Itsmina, in Chocó. There he promoted different agreements with settlers.
How was the crime that leaves a suspect in detention?
It was 5:50 p.m. on Tuesday, when armed men forcibly broke into the house where the renowned social leader and human rights defender was.
Doña Jesusita had arrived a month earlier from the neighboring department, north of Valle del Cauca, and was staying at a son's house.
"Although she was transferred to a hospital, she lost her life due to the severity of her injuries," said the deputy commander of the Cali Police.
He said that after the shooting, the police in this part of the city activated an operation that allowed the capture of a man as an alleged aggressor.
According to Colonel Quintero, the detainee has been investigated in the past for alleged crimes of homicide, qualified and aggravated theft, and escape of prisoners.
But he clarified that, according to verifications carried out by the Judicial Police, "Mrs. Jesusita Moreno is not registered in the Integral System of Human Rights (Sideh)."
And added: "The police institution has arranged all its intelligence and Judicial Investigation capabilities for the clarification of this unfortunate fact and the capture of those responsible."
CALI
The murder of social leader Jesusita Moreno Mosquera, 60, inside a house in the La Floresta neighborhood of Cali has shocked the community.
According to the deputy commander of the Metropolitan Police of Cali, Colonel William Quintero, the case was registered on June 7.
In the Inter-Church Commission for Justice and Peace they reported: "His forceful voice for the demand for respect for the life and territory of his communities generated accusations, threats and stigmas against him. She was, in herself, the voice that led to humanitarian agreements to achieve respect for the Military Forces, gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC), and the ELN guerrillas."
The human rights defender, according to the Interclesial Commission, would have been a woman warrior for her people. He saved hundreds of community lives because of his community role.
They called her 'Doña Tuta' affectionately and she was part of the Noanamá community, in Itsmina, in Chocó. There he promoted different agreements with settlers.
How was the crime that leaves a suspect in detention?
It was 5:50 p.m. on Tuesday, when armed men forcibly broke into the house where the renowned social leader and human rights defender was.
Doña Jesusita had arrived a month earlier from the neighboring department, north of Valle del Cauca, and was staying at a son's house.
"Although she was transferred to a hospital, she lost her life due to the severity of her injuries," said the deputy commander of the Cali Police.
He said that after the shooting, the police in this part of the city activated an operation that allowed the capture of a man as an alleged aggressor.
According to Colonel Quintero, the detainee has been investigated in the past for alleged crimes of homicide, qualified and aggravated theft, and escape of prisoners.
But he clarified that, according to verifications carried out by the Judicial Police, "Mrs. Jesusita Moreno is not registered in the Integral System of Human Rights (Sideh)."
And added: "The police institution has arranged all its intelligence and Judicial Investigation capabilities for the clarification of this unfortunate fact and the capture of those responsible."
CALI
Jesusita Moreno, Doña Tuta, social leader of the San Juan River in Chocó murdered
Redacción Colombia
© Provided by El Espectador
Jesusita Moreno "Tuta" was a reference in the San Juan del Chocó River. Since the nineties he showed his leadership in the community of Noanamá, Medio San Juan. During the last months he had been in charge of the humanitarian space in that area to protect the inhabitants from the intensification of the war in the region.
Last Tuesday, June 7, the social and Afro-Colombian leader Jesusita "Tuta" Moreno was murdered in a neighborhood of Cali, while celebrating the birthday of a son of hers with members of her family. Sources said the hitman came to the house and shot Moreno in front of his relatives. Moreno had left Chocó three weeks ago to treat a health problem in Cali, where some relatives live.
Since the nineties Jesusita Moreno was a recognized leader of the San Juan River in southern Chocó, where she lived most of her life. Tuta was a municipal registrar in Medio San Juan and also worked with the Regional Corporation of Chocó (CodeChocó), her parents had also exercised leadership in Noanamá, the corregimiento on the banks of the San Juan River where Jesusita was born and lived almost all her life. In recent years he managed a shop he owned near the village jetty.
In an episode of Travesía, the television program with which the journalist Alfredo Molano toured a good part of the most remote corners of the country, Doña Tuta appears still young, with a fresh and imposing smile, talking about the organizational process of her community and the collaboration between indigenous and Afro-Colombians in the struggle to defend their territory.
Read: Doña Tuta's smile: denunciation from the Middle San Juan
In those years the Peasant Association of the San Juan River (Acadesan) was consolidated, an organization that today has become the second largest community council in Chocó and the country. These were the times when black communities fought for the titling of their ancestral territories and the right to self-determination, as Jesusita Moreno told Alfredo Molano: "We are already aware of the problem we have and we all fight, right now we fight for ours: our territory, which is the most important thing for us."
Just when the black communities began to receive their first collective titles, it was when the invasion of the armed groups into their territories began, first the paramilitary takeover by the Atrato River and the confrontation between the FARC and the self-defense groups in the San Juan River. Now, the dispute over drug trafficking routes and large mining resources, in which criminal groups, rearmed paramilitaries and the last ELN strongholds that still today are present in Chocó intervene.
See also: In Unión Chocó only the dogs remained
Jesusita Moreno worked as an intermediary with the armed groups that occupied the area after 2000 after the arrival of the FARC and paramilitaries in her region, where the ELN had maintained a sporadic presence since the eighties. The leader always acted in defense of the communities and demanding respect for life, that she did until three weeks ago, when she left the San Juan River, where she was leading a humanitarian initiative.
Her work of intermediation was key for the release of former congressman Odin Sanchez, kidnapped by the ELN, as she told journalists of this newspaper in October 2021, when Colombia+20 toured the San Juan River documenting the humanitarian crisis that plagues the region. Tuta also made efforts to reach out for a possible release of Tulio Mosquera, the mayor of Alto Baudó kidnapped by the ELN, efforts that never materialized. Mosquera died in the hands of that guerrilla last year in circumstances that have not yet been clarified.
In recent months, Jesusita Moreno was at the head of the Humanitarian Space in her town of Noanamá, where more than three hundred inhabitants arrived displaced from several hamlets of the river due to the fighting between the Agc and the ELN on February 22, in the midst of an overflowing humanitarian crisis that still continues in southern Chocó.
Colombia+20 covered these events and spoke with Tuta in the last week of February, who assured that the situation was critical and the only hope of the communities was that the bishops of Chocó would hold a frustrated meeting with President Iván Duque. "God willing that there is a solution out there and we can have peace of mind," the leader had told this newspaper.
The fighting between the AGC and the ELN persists in the San Juan River, with a serious toll on Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities. In the last week of May, it emerged that an ELN attack had left a dozen AGC fighters dead in the vicinity of Negria. No institution was present to carry out the lifting of the bodies, which had to be buried several days later by the same inhabitants in a common grave. It was around the same time that Tuta Moreno left the San Juan River for Cali.
The authorities have not yet commented on the motives for his murder. "Very serious, the situation is very hard," said another Chocó leader who prefers to keep her name in reserve, who added: "nobody knows anything." In 2019, Tuta Moreno had denounced threats and fabrications against her for her work of humanitarian intermediation.
These denunciations were published by this newspaper in a profile written by the reporter and photographer Ramón Campos Iriarte, who made one of the last photographs of her, where she is already tanned over the years but with the same joy and powerful laughter with which she received Alfredo Molano on his journey along the San Juan River.
Redacción Colombia
© Provided by El Espectador
Jesusita Moreno "Tuta" was a reference in the San Juan del Chocó River. Since the nineties he showed his leadership in the community of Noanamá, Medio San Juan. During the last months he had been in charge of the humanitarian space in that area to protect the inhabitants from the intensification of the war in the region.
Last Tuesday, June 7, the social and Afro-Colombian leader Jesusita "Tuta" Moreno was murdered in a neighborhood of Cali, while celebrating the birthday of a son of hers with members of her family. Sources said the hitman came to the house and shot Moreno in front of his relatives. Moreno had left Chocó three weeks ago to treat a health problem in Cali, where some relatives live.
Since the nineties Jesusita Moreno was a recognized leader of the San Juan River in southern Chocó, where she lived most of her life. Tuta was a municipal registrar in Medio San Juan and also worked with the Regional Corporation of Chocó (CodeChocó), her parents had also exercised leadership in Noanamá, the corregimiento on the banks of the San Juan River where Jesusita was born and lived almost all her life. In recent years he managed a shop he owned near the village jetty.
In an episode of Travesía, the television program with which the journalist Alfredo Molano toured a good part of the most remote corners of the country, Doña Tuta appears still young, with a fresh and imposing smile, talking about the organizational process of her community and the collaboration between indigenous and Afro-Colombians in the struggle to defend their territory.
Read: Doña Tuta's smile: denunciation from the Middle San Juan
In those years the Peasant Association of the San Juan River (Acadesan) was consolidated, an organization that today has become the second largest community council in Chocó and the country. These were the times when black communities fought for the titling of their ancestral territories and the right to self-determination, as Jesusita Moreno told Alfredo Molano: "We are already aware of the problem we have and we all fight, right now we fight for ours: our territory, which is the most important thing for us."
Just when the black communities began to receive their first collective titles, it was when the invasion of the armed groups into their territories began, first the paramilitary takeover by the Atrato River and the confrontation between the FARC and the self-defense groups in the San Juan River. Now, the dispute over drug trafficking routes and large mining resources, in which criminal groups, rearmed paramilitaries and the last ELN strongholds that still today are present in Chocó intervene.
See also: In Unión Chocó only the dogs remained
Jesusita Moreno worked as an intermediary with the armed groups that occupied the area after 2000 after the arrival of the FARC and paramilitaries in her region, where the ELN had maintained a sporadic presence since the eighties. The leader always acted in defense of the communities and demanding respect for life, that she did until three weeks ago, when she left the San Juan River, where she was leading a humanitarian initiative.
Her work of intermediation was key for the release of former congressman Odin Sanchez, kidnapped by the ELN, as she told journalists of this newspaper in October 2021, when Colombia+20 toured the San Juan River documenting the humanitarian crisis that plagues the region. Tuta also made efforts to reach out for a possible release of Tulio Mosquera, the mayor of Alto Baudó kidnapped by the ELN, efforts that never materialized. Mosquera died in the hands of that guerrilla last year in circumstances that have not yet been clarified.
In recent months, Jesusita Moreno was at the head of the Humanitarian Space in her town of Noanamá, where more than three hundred inhabitants arrived displaced from several hamlets of the river due to the fighting between the Agc and the ELN on February 22, in the midst of an overflowing humanitarian crisis that still continues in southern Chocó.
Colombia+20 covered these events and spoke with Tuta in the last week of February, who assured that the situation was critical and the only hope of the communities was that the bishops of Chocó would hold a frustrated meeting with President Iván Duque. "God willing that there is a solution out there and we can have peace of mind," the leader had told this newspaper.
The fighting between the AGC and the ELN persists in the San Juan River, with a serious toll on Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities. In the last week of May, it emerged that an ELN attack had left a dozen AGC fighters dead in the vicinity of Negria. No institution was present to carry out the lifting of the bodies, which had to be buried several days later by the same inhabitants in a common grave. It was around the same time that Tuta Moreno left the San Juan River for Cali.
The authorities have not yet commented on the motives for his murder. "Very serious, the situation is very hard," said another Chocó leader who prefers to keep her name in reserve, who added: "nobody knows anything." In 2019, Tuta Moreno had denounced threats and fabrications against her for her work of humanitarian intermediation.
These denunciations were published by this newspaper in a profile written by the reporter and photographer Ramón Campos Iriarte, who made one of the last photographs of her, where she is already tanned over the years but with the same joy and powerful laughter with which she received Alfredo Molano on his journey along the San Juan River.
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