Colombia Peace News: April 2009 — Politics & Kindergarten?

• What if political action started in kindergarten?
  
• Learning to Live Together
  
• Letter from the Field: Breaking borders, breaking structures, breaking guns
  
• Summit Behind the Smiles and Handshakes
  
• Authorities Dismiss Libel Claim
  
• News Briefs and Opportunities
  

From Kindergarten to Political Action

By Liza Smith

We think it's because people miss kindergarten — cutting out stencils of human figures and decorating them with markers is fun! And it's very different from how most of us spend our time doing very serious, time-consuming, "adult-like" activities.

How else to explain the massive outpouring of grassroots energy in this year's National Days of Prayer and Action this past April 20, the largest mobilization calling for a change in U.S. policy towards Colombia since 2003? Does it show that the winds of public sentiment are changing?

Massive outpouring of grassroots energy might sound exaggerated, but here are the numbers: more than 100 churches and faith communities participated in holding a prayer or service for peace in Colombia; more than 300 people took to the streets to demand change in seven different cities; 3,000 faxes/emails and 20,000 postcards were sent to President Obama to request a bold new policy towards Colombia. All across the country, schools, churches, community groups, Colombians, and gringos alike came together in over 100 doll-making parties to create, by hand, about 10,000 dolls. Thirty interviews were broadcast on a wide variety of U.S. radio programs and Colombia's media covered the events in both major newspapers and on radio stations as well. Activists met with Congressional offices in most of the cities where the actions took place; in one case the delivery of paper dolls impressed Nita Lowey's staff (D-NY) so much that they were promised a meeting with the Congresswoman herself.

In San Francisco, we started our march with a bit of sage, drums, and a blessing to the four directions. Sixty of us gathered on the sidewalks in the midst of the city bustle while Luis, a local Colombian, gave instructions to turn and face in each of the four directions.

East: To our Congressional representatives and President Obama, may they hear our message loud and clear!
South: To our brothers and sisters in Colombia, may our solidarity be felt!
West: Where the sun dies each day, may it rise again!
North: That's where we are standing right now, look around, see who is next to you.

— up above, look at the sky and the heavens.
—. down below, to our ancestors, those who have come before us —

From there we started our march in the hot sun (it was 92 degrees!), each person holding a long string of paper dolls. After about 40 minutes of walking, sweating, chanting, and handing out yellow flyers to onlookers, we made it to the Federal Building where Nancy Pelosi's office is housed. A commission of three went upstairs, bearing gifts: a strand of paper dolls, a letter signed by those present, and a poster opposing the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia.

Each of our dolls represented 1,000 people who were forced to leave their lands and homes. Four million internally displaced people in Colombia is a number that is extremely difficult for any one person to imagine. As one long-time Colombia advocate expressed "nothing else [like the paper-doll making project] has managed to make the problem visible so well."

Maybe that's part of the explanation for this outpouring of energy — we are bombarded with numbers about the dire straights of the world's human population and environment. Every day we hear how many people have died in the Sudan, how many kids go without water in India, how many acres of rainforest get destroyed every minute in South America and how many fewer ice caps exist at the North Pole. The numbers are not only overwhelming, but they can immobilize us, leave us feeling helpless and impotent.

The idea of making paper dolls to represent a crisis of epic proportions was precisely to make tangible an issue that is hard to grasp, not only for those of us making them, but also for the general public, our politicians, and reporters from the media. It was a creative, hands-on way to approach the problem.

But there's another explanation: this year's Days of Prayer and Action for Colombia is the fruit of many years of work and the success we experienced encourages us to take a long-view of our struggles. When Plan Colombia was made policy in 2000, activists quickly started to mobilize: in the fall of 2001 and spring of 2002, people joined together in Washington, D.C. to strategize and mobilize against the new policy. In the spring of 2003, five actions took place across the U.S. to target corporations that were implicated in human rights abuses in Colombia. Over the years there have been many delegations, speaking tours, lobbying visits, educational events, and local protests. More recently, faith communities came together to hold services and prayers for peace. Solidarity activists have been working hard since 2000; this year was yet another colorful manifestation of our desire to change harmful U.S. policies towards Colombia.

The lesson learned? Put together nine years of hard work and a bit of kindergarten play and you can create a grassroots uprising.

We have our efforts to celebrate — and a long road ahead.

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Learning to Live Together?

By Peter Cousins

In a message for Semana Santa (Holy Week), the Catholic Church in Colombia called for reconciliation and forgiveness between Colombians. This followed an interview given by Archbishop Rubén Salazar, president of the Colombian Bishops' Conference, with El Tiempo newspaper, in which the archbishop urged reconciliation and put the Church at the service of this search. Such a call prompts us to ask what "reconciliation" is about, and what it might look like in Colombia. It also suggests questions of the Church itself. But the very word "reconciliation" has largely remained absent from political and civil society discourse. This increases the significance of the archbishop's call.

How might we conceive of "reconciliation"? I propose a definition (drawing on many previous attempts by academics): "learning to live together." Thus defined, two important elements are captured: the goal, and the process. Some scholars have called into question the relevance of the word reconciliation in societies that have never been truly conciled with themselves in the first place. It is clear that both of these points find expression in Colombia, a country which has suffered more than 50 years of continuous violence, and is unlikely to be brought together overnight.

So, what might have to happen for Colombians to "learn to live together," to (re)concile with one another? We might start with the release of the hostages held by the FARC rebels (a recent Semana article suggests that the exact figure is unknown, but could sit at 125).

But it cannot stop there — the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) in Colombia now stands at 4.6 million — second in the world only to Sudan. A country that aspires to "live together" should at the very least offer a dignified place to live for all those wishing to go home. The gross social and material inequalities in Colombia would start to be ironed out.

And Colombians will have to face up to the crimes committed by all sides over the years. President Uribe's 2005 Justice and Peace Law has proven controversial owing to the relatively light sentences handed down to some who have admitted their responsibility for major crimes; however, truth for amnesty agreements have been used relatively successfully elsewhere, for example in South Africa. The president has nevertheless undermined his own project by extraditing so many people (some 800) to the USA on lesser charges of drug trafficking, thus reducing the chances of the full truth about certain crimes being arrived at. In this respect, the State itself has a long way to go. It is itself implicated in many crimes. As one former paramilitary has said: "The State asks for the truth, but why, if it cannot bear it."

All of this is set against the background of an armed conflict, the existence of which is, incredibly, denied by some right-leaning politicians. And much of the above is either a cause or a consequence of this violence. An end to hostilities is ultimately a condition for meaningful reconciliation, though steps can be taken towards this goal while the conflict persists.

None of this, it must be said, is particularly new thinking — it has all been expressed before. But the archbishop's exhortation casts a new light on the challenges ahead, and their gravity. What role the Church itself will play in this process has yet to be seen. Archbishop Salazar's admission that its concentration on humanitarian issues alone has cost it credibility with the guerrillas, might suggest that it plans to broaden the scope of its analysis and action. Part of the issue here is that the Church has not always spoken with a unified voice in the past. The differing attitudes of various bishops of Apartadó towards the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, are one example of this inconsistency. If the Church is to find a position that advances the cause of reconciliation, it will take all of the "creativity" to which the archbishop, in a different context, refers in his interview.

Finally, it is worth considering why it is that the Church has chosen to speak out for reconciliation at this particular point. Though Holy Week is the most important time in the Church’s calendar, the timing has more to do with the 2010 presidential election, campaigning for which is gearing up already. There is a great deal of uncertainty whether President Uribe will stand for a third time, which would involve a change to the constitution. Should this not happen, there are plenty of Uribistas lining up to take his place.

The campaign is shaping up to be contested along one of two lines — a continuation of Uribe's Democratic Security policy (which seeks the defeat or demobilization of FARC guerillas), or pursuing a humanitarian accord, in which guerrilla prisoners would be exchanged for FARC-held hostages. In his interview, the archbishop appeared to support both positions (which may be an example of his diplomatic creativity!), but came out against Uribe's remaining in office for a third term. With a year or so to go before the election, much could yet happen. But it seems as though the Church wanted to put its oar in before the boat gets out to sea.

The next year could prove to be truly significant for Colombia. It this a "ripe moment" for a humanitarian accord, as the basis for a lasting peace? Could this be the start of Colombians learning to live together? These are the big questions beneath the surface of Archbishop Salazar’s call to reconciliation.

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Breaking borders, breaking structures, breaking guns —
through nonviolence, love, and the imagination

By Kristen Kuriga

Last night I dreamt I was in Colombia. I was walking down the street at night alone and the lighting was dim. A man with a machine gun came out from behind a building and forced me to the ground. He put his gun up to my head and I could hear him slowly pulling the trigger back. My heart was pounding as I lay with my face on the cold concrete. Am I going to die? Everything was in slow motion. As I heard the bullet coming out of the gun I grabbed the end with my hand and bent it. I stood up, took the gun from the man, and broke it with my hands. I threw the gun on the ground and walked down the dark street alone.??

What I saw and felt of the conflict in Colombia is slowly drifting out of the background of my mind and into the foreground of my dreams. In the first days of my return I was filled with the joy and love of life that permeated the organizations we visited and the spirit of the conscientious objectors. I was and am inspired by what they have transformed this conflict into for themselves: empowerment, alternative vision, celebration of life, and standing up against injustice and fear. That with a gun to their temple, they choose to break the gun with their bare hands. That they believe it is possible to end violence with nonviolence.

And I realize that I also took from this delegation the way that violence and militarism creeps into our minds and our hearts, even when we are not aware of it. As I remember walking down the streets of Bogota and Medellin, certainly not alone, and especially not at night, I saw many men and women with guns. Yet they were police officers and military members, and for that reason, I think somewhere in me I accepted their right to carry a gun. I realize how easily we have accepted, and I have accepted, that in our culture those in authority have the right to threaten and to use violence as a means of keeping order. It took me back to the days following 9/11 in New York City. When I first entered the train station or walked through the financial district and saw men and women with machine guns and in riot gear, I was startled. I had never felt so frightened, so much like I was living in a war zone. And slowly I began to accept it. To see it as normal. This morning I realize the depth to which I have accepted violence as normal. How desensitized perhaps I have become to the constant war we are living in.??

My visit to Colombia opened my eyes to the reality of armed conflict. For more than 60 years, Colombians have been fighting an internal war. Disappearances, assassinations, mass displacement of peoples, mass graves, curfews, and recruitment into military groups have become normalized. All that I have read about social and economic structures, globalization, conflict resolution, and peace and justice became real, became felt for me.

What is it like to be a youth in this world of violence, militarism, and war? On both sides of the delegation, Colombia and the U.S., we talked about how the social and economic structures of our specific contexts have attempted to dictate our options. In Colombia, as a youth from a "barrio popular," the options you are given is to fulfill your mandatory service to the military and perhaps die or kill in the conflict between the state, paramilitary groups, and the FARC and ELN, to join the paramilitaries, the drug trade, or a guerilla group, or to be part of the masses of unemployed. For youth from poor communities in the U.S., especially communities of color, youth are presented with the options to join the military, to work a minimum wage job in the service sector, if you are "lucky enough" to get one, or to a join a gang and likely end up in the rapidly growing prison system. Are these real options???

Although the situation for youth on the surface seems so drastically different in Colombia and the U.S., we were able to see the parallels between these two contexts by sharing personal stories. Through the practice of council, each of the U.S. participants shared on the topic of? "the experience of violence in your life," with the opportunity for the Colombian delegates to relate their own experiences to these stories and mirror back to the group what they felt and heard. It was amazing to me that in the sharing of these personal stories, youth from both?sides were able to see that not only was their experience personal, or even representative of the context of their own community, but is a reflection of the way in which global social, economic, political and military structures have impacted their options and lived experiences.?It was clear that each person was an individual with a distinct story, but that the themes and experiences knew no boundaries and no borders.

As we left Medellin to return back to Bogota, Tanya and I fought back tears in saying goodbye to the members of the Red Juvenil who had shared so much story, art, and passion with us. Sandra eloquently shared something that moved me so deeply I was tempted to take out my?tape recorder and ask her to say it all over again. But I remember it in my heart — she shared something like this:?

Do not cry for sadness because we are separating. Tears of sadness do not accomplish anything. Cry for joy because you have made friends here, you have made family. Know that we have made relationships, and so now we can talk to each other and visit one another. Know that to get to know each other, to build relationships, is to break borders.

Breaking borders, breaking structures, breaking guns through nonviolence, love, and the imagination. Despite all of the obstacles and barriers to envisioning other possibilities, this delegation brought together youth who refuse to accept that these are the only ?options. That said, I want a different life for myself and for my community. I don't accept your structures and your limitations. I realized the power of community and art to allow people not only to vision, but to live a different reality. Several times on the delegation we had the opportunity to discuss, what is a conscientious objector? Is it refusing to serve in the military? Is it refusing to participate in violence? Or as I heard from many of the men and women in Colombia, that being a conscientious objector is refusing to accept structures of injustice that have harmed me, my community, the earth, conscientious objector was the belief that all of this could change. These organizations, these youth, show that it is possible by living it.

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Summit: Behind the Smiles and Handshakes

By Teo Ballvé

With all that happened at the Summit of the Americas, it was easy to miss a significant about-face by the Obama administration.

No, it wasn't the administration's supposedly softer stance toward Cuba. Nor was it Venezuela's well-received offer (by Chávez-basher Hillary Clinton no less) to re-exchange ambassadors with Washington. Obama won't read the Spanish edition of The Open Veins of Latin America, a gift from Chávez, so that can be dismissed, too. The about-face came when Barack Obama promised Colombian President Álvaro Uribe that the White House would work toward helping pass the stalled "free trade" agreement between the two countries.

During Obama's presidential campaign, his opposition to the trade deal was one of the few concrete policy stances he took on Latin America. The trade pact came up in a debate with John McCain, who tried to ridicule Obama by suggesting that he did not understand what was at stake with the Colombia trade deal. In stating his opposition, Obama shot back: "Actually, I understand it pretty well, the history in Colombia right now is that labor leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis, and there have not been prosecutions." Obama added, "The trade agreement itself does have labor and environmental protections, but we have to stand for human rights, and we have to make sure that violence isn't being perpetrated against workers who are just trying to organize for their rights."

Apparently, Obama had a change of heart over lunch with Uribe. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs explained, "The president has asked our trade representative, Ambassador Kirk, to work with the Colombians to work through our remaining concerns, the president's remaining concerns, about violence against labor leaders in Colombia."

At the same meal, where Uribe and Obama spoke for 45 minutes, they agreed to set a meeting in Washington to discuss the trade deal and Plan Colombia. (Many analysts predict Plan Colombia, a multi-year military assistance package aimed at fighting rebels and the drug trade, will face cuts in the next foreign appropriations bill.) At the lunch, Uribe reportedly showed Obama statistics that claim a drop in the murder of unionists and an increase in arrests of the perpetrators. The Colombian president is known to have a way with numbers, having a Fidel Castro-like knack for citing statistics in his speeches.

The devil is, of course, in the details. The Colombia-based National Labor School, a watchdog group, notes that nearly 2,700 unionists have been killed in the country since 1986, mostly by murderous right-wing paramilitary groups, with only 90 convictions — a 97 percent rate of impunity. The overall number of labor activists killed in recent years has decreased — mainly due to the much-criticized demobilization of paramilitaries under Uribe's amnesty program. But killings of unionists spiked last year to 49, compared to 39 labor leaders killed in 2007.

At a U.S. congressional hearing in February, José Luciano Sanín of the National Labor School testified, "More than 60 percent of the all murdered unionists in the world are Colombians. The murder rate of unionists in Colombia is five times that of the rest of the countries of the world, including those countries with dictatorships that have banned union activity." Uribe probably suggested to Obama that under his administration more murderers of these peaceful activists were brought to trial than under any previous government. Again, the facts don't corroborate this assertion.

Uribe's amnesty program required paramilitary commanders to confess all their crimes in exchange for light sentences as short as five years — a pittance for charges including crimes against humanity. ??But Uribe singlehandedly undermined even this minimal punishment scheme.

Take, for instance, the case of José Ever Veloza García, a paramilitary leader also known as "H.H." His paramilitary bloc was active in the 1990s in the northwest region of Urabá — a center of operations for Chiquita, the banana company. At last count, H.H. confessed to at least 1,200 murders, including the brutal killing of workers belonging to the region's banana unions. H.H. admitted, "During that time the unions were really strong and there were a lot of strikes. What we did, and it was our duty, was to force the workers to go back to work at the plantations—. Those who disobeyed and didn't go work, knew what they had coming."

One of H.H.'s close collaborators in Urabá was a banana magnate-turned-paramilitary named Raúl Hasbún. In a recent interview with the Miami Herald, Hasbún coldly admitted, "I killed a lot of union members."

H.H. was one of the few paramilitary leaders who willingly confessed most of his crimes — some 3,000 in all. Some of his confessions implicated high-ranking politicians in Uribe's governing coalition. One of the politicians forced to resign due to his links with H.H. was Colombian ambassador to the Dominican Republic Juan José Chaux Mosquera — an Uribe appointment. As H.H. was in the process of revealing the extent of his crimes, which continued implicating government allies, Uribe abruptly extradited him to the United States on drug trafficking charges. The family members of H.H.'s victims in Colombia criticized the extradition saying it violates their right to know the full truth about what happened to their loved ones.

Let's hope, for the sake of slain unionists and their families in Colombia, that President Obama does not forget his own campaign promise and his suggestion at the Trinidad Summit that "true security only comes with liberty and justice."??

Teo Ballvé, NACLA's web editor, is a freelance journalist and editor based in Colombia. His web site is www.TeoBallve.com.

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Authorities Dismiss Libel Charge for Human Rights Complaints

"There is no better defense than an strong offense," you often hear people say in Colombia. Colombian army officials have used this strategy against human rights defenders and San José Peace Community leaders in a perverse manner: backed by practically 100% impunity, they filed criminal charges for libel and slander against victims of military abuses for denouncing those violations before the international community.

Backed with false testimonies of demobilized guerrilla collaborators, Colonel Nestor Iván Duque, the head in 2004-05 of the Bejarano Battalion operating in San José de Apartadó, brought criminal charges of false complaint, libel and slander against Jesuit priest Javier Giraldo, regional ombudsman Miguel Angel Afanador and attorney Elkin Ramirez of Corporacion Juridica Libertad. All three had denounced the army's participation in the brutal 2005 massacre to the international community, and Ramírez spoke before the Inter-American Court of Justice. It was a novel action to accuse those who denounced violations before the Inter-American Court of libel.

Four years later, the Bejarano Battalion's current commander, Colonel Germán Rojas, is adopting an almost identical strategy to counter complaints of threatening accusations against peace community leader Reynaldo Areiza. The peace community recently reported that Rojas told Areiza that "unless he collaborates with the definitive destruction of the Peace Community, he would be prosecuted as the 'financial manger of the 58 Front of FARC' and as a 'drug trafficker,' for which that he has obtained 'witnesses'." Rojas responded to the community's complaints by bringing criminal charges against Areiza for libel and slander.

International pressure mounted over the case against Father Javier Giraldo, Elkin Ramirez and Miguel Angel Afanador. On April 8, the prosecutor leading the investigation against them closed the investigation, saying that "no crime has been committed." But it may be early to rest: Colonel Duque can appeal the ruling.

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News Briefs & Upcoming Events

The next time you hear someone call U.S. policy in Colombia or the presidency of Álvaro Uribe a success consider this news: forced displacement of Colombians from their homes rose by 25% in 2008, with 380,000 fleeing because of political violence during the year, according to a new report by the Consultancy on Human Rights and the Displaced, CODHES.

Because of FOR's close relationship of accompaniment to the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, and role in responding to the February 2005 massacre there, has led us to report frequently on developments in the investigation of the massacre. In April, Semana magazine published an English translation by the Colombia Support Network of a remarkable account of the military and paramilitary operation that led to the massacre. Recommended.

Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos confirmed in an interview published April 21 that negotiations to establish a U.S. military facility in Colombia are advancing. U.S. military operations conducted at an airbase in Manta, Ecuador must end by November, under terms of the agreement with Ecuador. He said he expects negotiations to be completed in June, and the operations to begin early next year.

First Ruling Punishing Colombian Army for Killing of Peace Community Member: Peace Community member, and leader of humanitarian zone, Edilberto Vasquez was killed by troops of the Army 17th Brigade's Voltigeros Battalion on January 12, 2006. Early that morning, the army came to his house and asked him to come with them. Shortly after, he has shot dead, a gun, a radio and a grenade planted next to him. Vasquez was presented as "a guerrilla killed in combat."

On April 17, an Apartadó court found seven low-ranking members of the Voltigeros Battalion guilty of the crime, sentencing them to 30 years in prison. While the ruling was presented in the media as a blow to the Colombian army's practice of "false positives" — the killing of unarmed civilians presented as success in the counterinsurgency war — the highest-ranking officer sentenced for the crime was a Second Sergeant.

Does U.S. foreign military training affect human rights? The government doesn't know. In this Foreign Policy in Focus article, John Lindsay-Poland writes about American lack of accountability in sharing lethal skills.

August 15-29, 2009 Delegation to San José Peace Community, Medellín and Eastern Antioquia

Witness the incredible commitment and experience of the Peace Community of San José and other Colombian grassroots initiatives. $1,500 from Bogotá. For information, contact John Lindsay-Poland, johnlp@igc.org. To download an application, please click here (MS Word document).

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