30 Jul 2024

The joy of football is the remedy for peace in Bagadó

There is no denying that football is the most popular sport in the world. People feel the same passion whether they are playing in a community in the heart of the jungle or on any pitch in a city. This was the experience in the Tahami Indigenous reservation in Bagadó, Chocó, where the joy of football became the backdrop for celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Conondo community.

Officers from the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia travelled from Quibdó to Conondo to join the celebration. “It is about a seven-hour drive from the capital of Chocó, half of which is through a difficult unpaved road,” said Ana María Bustos, a UNVMC Field Officer. “Conondo is part of the regular verification visits we conduct from the regional office in Quibdó as part of our mandate,” she added.

Together with the office of the Agency for Reintegration and Normalization (ARN) that covers the Coffee Triangle, the United Nations Mission supports and verifies issues related to comprehensive rural reform, security guarantees and the ethnic chapter of the 2016 Peace Agreement in several Indigenous communities of Alto Andágueda. The Mission also monitors the security guarantees and the reintegration of a group of peace signatories who have established a new reintegration area in Conondo, which they call the Ethnic Bagadó New Area for Reintegration (NAR).

The peace signatories of the Ethnic Bagadó NAR are politically active subjects in the reservation, such as Arley Sanapi Tequia, who was elected as council member of the municipality of Bagadó in 2023.

This visit was much more than a field mission for Patricio Sosa, an International Observer of the Verification Mission. Sosa, a senior non-commissioned officer of the Paraguayan Police, is also a professional FIFA field football, beach football and futsal referee of the Paraguayan Football Association (APF). “I have officiated professional matches in official tournaments organized by the APF. I even have officiated in the intermediate league in my country and in the Paraguay Cup championship,” said Sosa, who joined the United Nations Mission team in Quibdó in October 2023. At the request of Conondo’s sports promoters, Sosa officiated the lightning football tournament, a central event of the anniversary celebrations.

The tournament involved 8 teams from the 33 communities in the Tahami Indigenous reservation to promote unity and restore good relations within the reservation. Their leaders believe that the love for football of the Indigenous communities of Chocó can be compared to the desire to live in peace, in autonomous territories, free from the control of illegal economies and armed actors, and free from ethnic discordance.

Patricio Sosa wore his official referee uniform. He always takes it when he travels, waiting for an opportunity to officiate a football match. The eight teams of the reservation also wore their respective uniforms and sports equipment. A clay and stone pitch was the setting for a friendly, fun, and exciting tournament. Sosa and the community referee presided over the tournament with empathy, commitment, and a great deal of responsibility, just as peace is mediated.