November 2007 Colombia Peace Update

Monthly Update — November 30, 2007

• Thousands of Women Gather at Border
• Army Captain Charged in Peace Community Massacre
• 'Parapolitica' Scandal Reaches More Colombian Officers
• US Organizations Support Ecuador Military Base Closure
• Letter from the Field: Speaking Their Names

Thousands of Women Gather at Border

By Liza Smith

On November 23, approximately 5,500 Colombian and Ecuadorian women marched for demilitarization, to end violence against women, to construct peace with dignity and social justice and for a negotiated solution to the conflict. Their celebration was to mark November 25, the International Day to End Violence Against Women. This was the seventh year that women from all over Colombia mobilized "to make visible" an area of conflict in the country and specifically, how that conflict impacts women.

Photo: Ecuador Indymedia

Women marched from Tulcan, Ecuador and Ipiales, Colombia: they met at the international bridge of Rumichaca, the border between the two countries. The march called on all women to join: housewives, campesinas, afro-descendants, indigenous, trade unionists, students, displaced, poor and intellectual women. Their slogans for the march were, among others: Militarism = Violence, Militarism = Displacement and Militarism = Poverty and Hunger. They marched with painted faces, a colorful quilt, Colombian and Ecuadorian flags, and many signs to end the armed conflict which is experienced in the lives and on the bodies of women.

Colombia has the third largest population of displaced people in the world, and the border between Colombia and Ecuador is increasingly a site of this reality: 250 thousand Colombians have spilled across the border of Colombia into Ecuador, according to the UN High Commission for Refugees and the Colombian government. Thousands of people are fleeing the intensification of the armed conflict with the presence of multiple armed groups, the fumigations and the militarization of the border. According to one of Ruta Pacifica's statements about the mobilization, Nariño (a southern department of Colombia which borders with Ecuador) is "one of the departments with the highest level of militarization of civilian life, which has negative consequences for the lives and bodies of women through prostitution, unemployment, poverty and sexual and domestic violence."

Despite the possibility of roadblocks, tear gas, harassment, and other kinds of repression, these 5,500 women stood, marched, walked, yelled and sang. FOR's Colombia Program sent a message of solidarity and sorority to be read at the march: although not standing on the Riocacha bridge itself, we are there in spirit, inspired and motivated by these women's courageous efforts to end the militarism that destroys the lives and bodies of women around the world.

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Army Captain Charged in Peace Community Massacre

by John Lindsay-Poland

Colombian prosecutors on November 22 ordered the detention of an army captain, Guillermo Gordillo, for participating with paramilitary killers in the massacre of eight civilians, including three children, in San José de Apartadó in February 2005. "The community was right," read the Semana headline, about Gordillo's detention. The case led to the suspension of more than $70 million in US military aid that year.

The prosecutors' move acknowledges what Peace Community leaders said from the beginning, but was categorically denied by Colombian Vice-President Francisco Santos (nominally designated as the Colombian state's human rights representative) and high military officials.

On November 23, the morning after the announcement, army soldiers in San José detained 10-year-old community member Efren Espinoza Goes and beat him up for more than 15 minutes, according to the community, threatening to kill him and running a machete over his fingers, saying they would cut them off so he couldn't use them to fire a weapon. One community member informed FOR that he came upon another community member detained by soldiers, who asked the man why he was afraid if he had not done anything.

Captain Gordillo is being held in a military barracks, accused by several demobilized paramilitaries from the group "Heroes of Tolová". According to one of the paramilitaries, knowns as 'Melaza,' a paramilitary troop operated with some 50 soldiers commanded by Gordillo, who "secured the terrain" while the paras went ahead to commit the crime. The men beheaded several of their victims, including the children of 11, 5, and 2 years of age. According to Melaza, Gordillo reportedly told another paramilitary that they had "screwed up" by killing the people, who by order of the Inter-American Human Rights Court, the army was supposed to protect.

Semana suggested that the compelling evidence of army participation in the massacre raises two questions: about the military's stigmatization of the Peace Community and of similar initiatives, and about mechanisms for addressing military abuses, including a history of collaboration between the Army's 17th Brigade — to which Gordillo belonged — and paramilitary death squads. In fact, according to Amnesty International, Gordillo's commander, Colonel Ivan Duque, who has apparently not been accused, has been transferred to the army's 12th Brigade, where an increase in abuses has reportedly led to a suspension of US assistance to the unit.

We suggest a third question that is at least as important: about the military and State's cover-up of army involvement in this brutal massacre. The Ministry of Defense, eight days after the killings, published maps of the purported locations of 17th Brigade troops when the massacre occurred, alleging that the troops were 3 or 4 days, and even 7 or 8 days away from the events. But according to the military's own reports, troops had killed a guerilla fighter in a settlement only three hours walk from one of the sites. And when community members arrived at the scene together with FOR and other international observers, army soldiers, including Gordillo were already there. Vice-President Santos also quickly denied army involvement in the massacre, and called on judicial agencies to come to a rapid conclusion, effectively pressuring prosecutors to accuse guerrillas of the crime, as he did. Moreover, the Defense Ministry posted on its web site a spurious interview with a purported FARC deserter, alleging that Luis Eduardo Guerra was a guerrilla killed because he planned to leave the Peace Community.

Meanwhile, Peace Community members plan to return next February to live and work in the settlement where Luis Eduardo Guerra, his companion and his son were killed in the massacre. But paramilitary men, armed with long guns, are threatening others in the area, saying they have killed four people in the last two weeks, and that another massacre is on its way.

As many Colombians have written in on-line comments about the news, Gordillo and his paramilitary cohorts should be prosecuted for their crimes. But justice also requires that those with greater power, who used that power to cover for the killers, must also be exposed and held accountable for their actions.

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'Parapolitica' Scandal Reaches More Colombian Officers

Colombian Attorney General Mario Iguarán announced that he is re-opening investigation of retired General Rito Alejo del Rio's collaboration with paramilitaries in the Urabá region from 1995 to 1997. Del Rio commanded the Army's 17th Brigade, which has jurisdiction in San José de Apartadó and in Afro-Colombian communities of the lower Atrato region, which suffered massive killing and displacement by paramilitary forces during Rito de Alejo's rule.

Two paramilitary commanders have publicly accused Del Rio of working with them. Ever Veloza, commander of the paramilitary 'Banana Block' that committed multiple massacres of civilians in the Urabá region, said he twice witnessed Del Rio meeting with paramilitary commander Carlos Castaño. Salvatore Mancuso, who succeeded Castaño as national commander of the paramilitaries, testified that Del Rio met with him and other commanders to coordinate the paramilitaries' expansion throughout northern Colombia.

"With the investigation of Del Rio," writes the weekly magazine Semana, "a process similar to the 'parapolitica' [scandal] begins, but surely with greater magnitude. While many of the para-politicians are accused of benefiting electorally from the 'self-defense groups,' in the case of the military, there are massacres, disappearances, murders and many other atrocious crimes involved, for which the country has already been condemned by international judicial bodies."

The para commanders also accused other military officers — most of them retired or dead — of supporting their scorched earth atrocities. Veloza said that Bayron Carvajal — imprisoned for leading the killing last year of ten elite anti-drug policemen on behalf of drug mafia — had introduced himself in 1995 in Turbo (town in the 17th Brigade's and Banana Block's zone of control), and the two carried out operations. Carvajal studied at the US Army School of the Americas, according to the database compiled by School of the Americas Watch.

Iguarán also announced investigations into military officers responsible for the death of Colombia's entire Supreme Court in 1985, because of excessive use of force in re-taking the Palace of Justice, taken by M-19 guerrillas on November 6 of that year. The disastrous outcome of the event traumatized many Colombians, and the events — including the disappearance of 11 cafeteria workers — were never clarified.

The Army continued its pattern of extrajudicial executions of civilians who are later passed off as guerrillas. The commander and six other members of an elite anti-kidnapping unit, GAULA, were accused earlier this month of kidnapping a businessman on July 27 from a cybercafe. They later claimed he was a guerilla killed in combat. The commander of the unit, Gustavo Soto, studied at the US Army School of the Americas in 1993.

The recent pattern of corruption and abuse by the Army is documented in detail from public sources by Colombia Support Network, in "Terrorism, Thievery, Bungling and Massacres," available in English to download (pdf)

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US Organizations Support Ecuador Military Base Closure

More than 40 peace, religious and solidarity organizations publicly declared their support for Ecuador's decision to close the US military base in Manta, Ecuador, in a letter sent to President Rafael Correa.

"We applaud your administration's publicly stated decision to not renew the agreement for the FOL in Manta, and to withdraw from the UNITAS naval exercises that were held in June, led by the U.S. military," the groups said.

The groups pointed out that the US commander in Manta has said the base's operations are "very important" to Plan Colombia, and that Plan Colombia has not been effective against drugs. "The militarized approach to reducing traffic of illegal drugs represents a tragic decision that has not affected the availability or price of these drugs in our communities," they wrote. "Every dollar spent on military approaches to drugs represents a theft from programs for at-risk youth in the United States, for investment in reducing the United States' carbon emissions, and for payment of other debts our country owes to the world."

President Correa has said publicly that it would be possible to maintain the base agreement, which expires in 2009, if the United States allows Ecuador to have a military base in Florida.

Fellowship of Reconciliation coordinated the letter to Correa, which was signed by leaders of the American Friends Service Committee, United Methodist Board of Church and Society, School of the Americas Watch, United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers, among others. "In the struggle to demilitarize our country's relations with yours, you may count on us," they wrote.

Download the full text of the letter here

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Letter from the Field: Speaking Their Names

by Liza Smith

The day before traveling to the School of the Americas protest in Ft. Benning, Georgia, I was at the copy shop to pick up the materials that I would take with me for Fellowship of Reconciliation's workshops and tabling efforts over the weekend. The guy behind the counter asked me what my name was. I answered, "Liza." And then he asked, "what does it mean?" After a pause, I said that it comes from the name Elizabeth, and that it was a historical name, and that... my explanation tailed off. He said, "ahhhh... no one knows the meaning of their name these days."

A few days later, after the workshops and tabling, after talking to people from many different parts of the country, after handing out hundreds of pieces of paper to those interested in FOR's work and campaigns, we spent the morning of Sunday, November 18th, hearing names. Name after name after name. Two hours of names. These were the names of those who had been killed in Latin America at the hands of SOA graduates. Thousands of names, spoken, sung and chanted. After every single name, we responded with the simple word in Spanish "presente."

When you say presente in Spanish, it is like when your teacher called out your name in school. "Liza Smith?"

My hand would pop into the air.
"Here!"

This was the eighteenth time that the SOA movement had come to the gates of Ft. Benning and spoken the names. Names of people that most of us have never met, but names that have meaning, names that have stories, names that were human beings, the name of a person who had a favorite food, who had a story about the first kiss, the first fall, the first fight, who had a special grandmother, who had children, the name of a person who had lived through tragedy and joy, just like the rest of us.

As the list of names is read, I search for a familiar one. I want to hear a name from Colombia, that place and those people who have somehow become entwined with my days and weeks, with my own stories, joys and tragedies. I want to hear a name that has been mentioned to me before, a name that has been explained, the why and where of that person's death.

I wait for them to say the name of Luis Eduardo Guerra, leader of the peace community of San Jose de Apartadó, perhaps the only name of the thousands mentioned, who is a person that I actually met in life, en carne y hueso. A man who was at this protest himself, just four years ago, who spoke out on stage about the brutality of the war in Colombia, who heard the names sung, who walked in the procession. Now he was a name on our list.

I wanted to yell does everyone here know that a person who stood here, right here at the gates of this military base, in solidarity with our struggle to close this school, became one of the names himself? Would they include the name of his compañera? Would they say the name of his ten year old child, Diener Guerra, also killed in that brutal massacre on February 21st of 2005?

White crosses at the School of the Americas As we say your names, our action is your memory
You have been Dis-membered
But we will Re-Member you
We will sew your sinews back together
And speak your name
Speaking memory to life
When the media tells us lies
When the state erases all the traces
We stand here to speak their names
And our own

My name is Liza Jean Maytok Smith-Bershen-Landau-Norris. Otherwise known as Magooza. Today, as the names of those who have struggled and died throughout Latin America are spoken to life; today because Luis Eduardo is no longer here to join our chorus, I will say: "Here, here we are." In death and in life, with a raised fist and thousands of white crosses, "presente."