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Delegation 2004 to Colombia - First-Hand
Reports
Cacarica: July 18-August 7, 2004
San José de Apartadó: July 18-31, 2004
Organized by
Chicagoans for a Peaceful Colombia
and Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR)
Fourth Report:
July 24 & 25, 2004
There was a power outage in La Union, so we could
send nothing from there, so this report on Saturday and Sunday 7/24 & 25 is coming to you from Bogotá where
we returned last night (Wednesday 7/28). The group's experience in La Union
will be covered in a report or reports coming soon.
We were going to begin this report by saying that it might be quite brief,
as some of us, including the writers, went out dancing our last night in
Medellin with some members of the youth group we met with on Saturday afternoon,
Red Juvenil (Youth Network) (more on them below), and we didn't get back
to the hotel until after three in the morning. In this way, we honored
our last night together as a group before separating for our distinct destinations,
by participating in the work-hard-play-hard philosophy of serious Colombian
peace activists. And had a great time!
But backing up, Saturday morning we visited first with members of the
Corporacion Juridica Libertad (Liberty Law Corp. or CJL), an 11-year-old
group of lawyers who provide training, accompaniment and advocacy to people
in the organized movements of resistance to government, paramilitary and
rebel violence. They work in the barrios of Medellin, other parts of the
Antioquia province, including San Jose de Apartado, and also in the department
of Choco, to the west. They gave us an overview of the security situation
in the places we were headed, and the history and organization of the communities
and the struggle to resist displacement from their lands. Colombia has
many good laws with respect to some of the issues these communities face
that are not enforced, and the CJL provides a crucial avenue for seeking
vindication of these rights, and to open a space for further self-determination
by people the state generally seeks to shunt aside. When they cannot get
relief in national courts, the CJL has also taken petitions to international
bodies. An example of the potential success of such strategies (though
not itself a CJL case) is last week's historic decision of the Interamerican
Human Rights Court of the Organization of American States, ordering the
Colombian government to pay 6.5 million U.S dollars in damages to the family
members of 19 people killed in a massacre by paramilitaries over 10 years
ago. It is the first time a court has officially recognized the organizational
and causal link that exists between the official government forces and
these supposed private armies. Like other groups we heard from, CJL supports
a negotiated end to the armed conflict and an end to human rights violations
by all sides.
Later that morning, members of CJL led us up to
a settlement perched high on one of the mountains surrounding the city
(with an indescribable
view), where we met with representatives of a community of displaced campesinos
from different rural areas, including San Jose de Apartado. They spoke
movingly of the lives they had left, and long to return to. In the countryside,
one of them said, "we were poor, but we had our land and we lacked
for nothing." Fleeing to the city, they have left everything behind,
and have had to construct makeshift dwellings on the steep hillside and
attempt to make a neighborhood and a life, often subsisting by begging
or selling things in the streets of the city far below.
We were told no details of the displacements themselves that caused them
to relocate, or which armed actors were responsible, and this in itself
was telling. For as recently as November another delegation received
detailed testimonies on those subjects from various community leaders
and others. The change since last fall is that the leaders have all been
detained on various pretexts, and there is an increased presence in the
community of individuals associated with the paramilitaries, which has
caused people to be fearful of speaking their minds as before. This is
a process that has been repeated in neighborhood after neighborhood in
Medellin, where, as we learned from others, the paramilitary organizations
have achieved substantial dominance in many areas of pubic life. They
operate pretty much as a crime syndicate, run from one of the city jails,
demanding and collecting protection payments from merchants and businesses,
and, through their domination of the local councils in the communities
where they increasingly hold sway, even getting access to city funds
meant for various improvement projects, which they then spend for their
own purposes. When it was rumored that the leaders of this syndicate
were to be moved from their established place in the central jail to
another facility, the paramilitaries paralyzed the city through a mass
stoppage of public transportation, and the move was abandoned. All these
activities of intimidation, repression and graft take place with the
effective cooperation of the established government forces, and, as everyone
has told us, the ranks of the paramilitary groups include many people
employed by the police and army who simply turn their badge around after
work.
We left the settlement with some hope for their organizing process, but
mostly with a sad and sharp understanding of the costs of the massive internal
displacements in the country, and of the crucial importance of assisting
campesinos to stay on their land.
As we pulled up to Red Juvenil's offices we got a taste of their brand
of pacifism, and it was loud and jubilant. Led by drummers, marchers assembled
in the streets outside Red Juvenil's offices. As soon as we sat down to
talk to them we found out that Red Juvenil was participating in a festival-parade
to demand the release of the members of the rock band Pasajeros (Passengers)
who had been detained six weeks ago while performing at a public protest.
Red Juvenil is a network that started 13 years
ago by youth in Medellin who lost loved ones to the armed conflict or
who conscientiously object
to the military/police draft. 150 people make up the whole organization
with 30 youth working from the office as a core. The youth network has
members in the northeast, northwest, and the center of Medellin. In Red
Juvenil members' words, "The Red is the only organization that is
having an impact on the whole city because we are working from our base.
In 1997, we decided we wanted to show how we wanted to remake Medellin.
We took the cooperative games we did amongst ourselves and taught them
in the schools and neighborhoods suffering a great deal of conflict. We
started practicing nonviolent direct action."
The Red focuses on three areas. One group focuses on the practice and
promotion of nonviolence, forming study groups, performing street theater
and direct action. This group also teaches games to other youth that activate
values, such as a soccer game where no one loses. A conscientious objector
(CO) group helps youth find alternatives to a mandatory draft that leaves
CO's unable to get a college degree or secure a job without proof of having
served in the military. This group also works with rock bands like the
Pasajeros to spread an anti-militarist message through music. Yet another
group works to educate youth about their human rights and how the law works
in Colombia.
Wearing her "We Are All Passengers, Arrest Us!" t-shirt made
by the Red the Red Juvenil member described their new project, "We
decided to set out for the south of the city. Now we are bringing home
what we learned in our neighborhoods to the south." In fact like many
of the groups we met with, the members of Red Juvenil are networking with
other human rights groups around Columbia and the world, in their case
including the youth of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado.
Sunday morning we rose early for a final check-in as our combined San
Jose and Cacarica group, before heading to the airport for our short flight
to Apartado. (Apartado is a town and a municipality, like a county. San
Jose de Apartado, where the peace community is located, is one district
of the municipality, and includes the (much smaller) village of San Jose
de Apartado and a number of veredas or hamlets, including La Union, the
ultimate destination of the San Jose group.) Having taken off from a bowl
high in the Andes (though not as high as Bogota), we landed at practically
sea level, amid endless banana plantations and stifling tropical heat.
This is a conflict zone, and the small, otherwise sleepy airport is highly
militarized. We'd been led to expect one-on-one interviews with a combined
security agency representative upon arrival. Thankfully, this was apparently
not part of the drill that day, and we exited to the curb with minimal
hassle. There, we said our goodbyes, and the Cacarica group went off in
taxis for their drive to Turbo, the port city where they'd be getting the
boat across the Gulf of Uraba, and thence upriver to Cacarica that night.
We trust they arrived safely! Don't expect to hear from them until they
return to Bogota next week, as there is no internet connection where they
are. (Which of course turned out to be the case for our San Jose group
as well, but our stay in the country was shorter....)
Now eleven, we boarded a minibus into the town
of Apartado, where we laid in groceries and other supplies for our stay
in the peace community,
hired our transport for the drive to the town of San Jose Apartado, and
relaxed and lunched at a small cafe with our bags spilling out onto the
sidewalk. The carreterra ("highway") between the towns of Apartado
and San Jose is a six-mile, pitted, winding road of dirt and rocks, that
takes an hour to drive and is considered the most dangerous stretch of
highway in the area with respect to abductions, detentions and disappearances
by the military and paramilitary forces. We rode in two "chiveros," or
covered jeeps, open in back, with benches along the side facing inward,
so you bumped knees with the person across from you. All our bags went
on top. We drove in caravan, each driver always keeping the other vehicle
in sight--a wise precaution as one of the jeeps, which take a beating on
this route, broke down twice. Shortly after one of the chiveros was resurrected
we came upon a military checkpoint and were asked to take down our luggage
for the soldiers to look through. After apologizing for the intrusion the
soldiers let us continue on.
Half an hour later, we arrived in the center of San Jose de Apartado,
to be greeted by a passel of children. The center of town is a square book-ended
by the two largest buildings in San Jose, a combination town/hall, school
house, and dormitory for visitors, and the town warehouse that housed the
community's cacao and marmalade processors, as well as a meeting space
for the community council. While unpacking several farmers came up to us
to thank us for our presence in the community, telling us how much it meant
to the security of the community that we were present. We were sore from
the ride in the chiveras but we hardly noticed amidst the multiple welcomes
we received from young and old. More soon on our first day in the Peace
Community
____________________________
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Task Force on Latin America and the Caribbean
2017 Mission St. #305
San Francisco, CA 94110
phone: (415) 495-6334, fax: (415) 495-5628
www.forusa.org
©2004
Fellowship of Reconciliation |
