| Colombia
Peace Presence Update, May 2005
In this Update:
Colombia War Spills into Indians Peaceful World
Report Back on Recent Actions
Keeping the Pressure on Congress
Last chance to apply - Visit Colombia with FOR and Global Exchange
Letter from the Field
This Update marks the last sent by Jutta Meier-Wiedenbach, who has ably coordinated the FOR Colombia Program since early 2002, when the Colombia Peace Presence began. Jutta is moving to Mexico, where she will be continuing her work for human rights. We pay tribute to Jutta¹s wonderful spirit, passionate commitment and great skill. We will miss her. -John Lindsay-Poland/ Wanda Resto Torres
Colombia War Spills Into Indians' Peaceful World
Juan Forero, The New York Times
ACUEYÓ, Colombia, April 28 - The Nasa Indians appear to live well on their lush reservation here in southern Colombia, a swath of mountains and valleys where sweet fruit grows, trout teem in fast-flowing creeks and colorful birds dart about.
They live in tidy, well-kept homes, growing coffee, bananas and beans. Emphasizing economic independence, they run a successful fish farm and are trying to strike up a marble mine.
The one major threat to their existence is Colombia's unrelenting civil conflict, which has ground on for 41 years. But the Nasa, an Indian nation that numbers about 100,000 in this region, has used a pacific civil resistance campaign to stay out of the drug-fueled war, which pits the army and right-wing paramilitaries against Marxist rebels intent on toppling the state.
For four years, the Nasa's stern-faced but unarmed Indigenous Guards - now a force of 7,000 men and women - have simply driven away the fighters who venture into these fog-shrouded mountains in Cauca Province. They confront rebel and soldier alike with ceremonial three-foot batons decorated with tassels in the colors of the Nasa flag, green and red, and persuade the outsiders to leave.
Their success has earned the acclaim of the United Nations and the foreign governments that pay for Nasa development programs.
The Indians have forced traffickers to close down cocaine-producing labs. They have faced down paramilitary death squads. When the mayor of the Nasa town of Toribio was kidnapped by guerrillas last year, 400 guards marched two weeks over the Andes to the rebel camp where he was being held. They won his release.
"We do not want armed groups on our land," said Julio Mesa, 57, the leader of the Indigenous Guards in Tacueyó. "So what we do is we get people together and get them out."
But in the last two weeks, brutal fighting has swept into three of the Nasa's eight towns, testing the Indians' pacifism and autonomy.
Starting on April 14, the rebels began rocket attacks on Toribio. In nine days of fighting, a 9-year-old boy and several policemen and soldiers were killed. The government took back the town, but rebels pounded another community, Jambaló, with their notoriously inaccurate mortars, propane tanks armed with explosives.
Tacueyó was next.
On Wednesday, with a Colombian military plane raining down bullets on rebel positions, dozens of young soldiers supported by light tanks and armored vehicles stormed Tacueyó. The rebels responded by firing nearly a dozen of the makeshift mortars. Soldiers answered back with their mounted machine guns from the central square.
"What worries me are the sharpshooters," said one baby-faced soldier, Andrés Nova, 24, as he squeezed up against a wall for protection. "They are not that good, but anyone with a rifle is a danger."
Shortly after, snipers killed a soldier and wounded two others.
Tacueyó's Indians were caught in the middle. When a rebel rocket landed on a house, severely injuring two children, Mr. Mesa and others ran to help. They looked stunned and helpless.
Mr. Mesa, 57, and his wife, María, 54, also a member of the guard, had spoken to the rebels early on. "They said, 'We're at war,' " Mr. Mesa recounted. "There was nothing more to say, so I left. But first I told them, 'What you're doing is very bad.' "
Across Colombia, dozens of Indian tribes are being hammered by the war. Assassins single out leaders of the Wayuú in northeastern Colombia. In northwestern Choco State, Embera children, whipsawed by war and poverty, have committed suicide. Nationwide, tens of thousands of Indians have become refugees. Some of the smaller tribes, the United Nations recently warned, are on the verge of disappearing.
Mr. Mesa and other Nasa leaders are determined to see their nation avoid that fate.
The Nasa, also known here as the Páez, were not always peaceful. In the 1980's, they formed a fighting group, Quintin Lame, but the violence only escalated. The Indians changed tactics, and vowed to stay out of the fighting. They focused on building a self-sustaining community held together by an overarching philosophy of self-determination and the right to be left alone.
"The government wants to involve us, in their army, in the police, in their informants network," explained Nelson Lemus, an Indian leader. "The guerrillas, they want us to get involved in the revolutionary story, the fight for power."
But "getting involved in war," he said, "hurts our culture, our language, our ways."
As Mr. Mesa spoke about the Nasa's efforts to keep the peace, a sniper's bullet came close and the Indian leader and other guards hit the ground.
"We want to talk, to see if they will listen," Mr. Mesa said, lifting his short, bulky frame off the ground and dusting himself off after the shooting ended. "Sometimes they do listen to us, but lots of time, they do not."
For the army, whose commanders met with the Indians throughout the ordeal, there could be no withdrawal, though Col. Juan Trujillo said he understood the Nasa's position. But he said it was the army's job to fight off the rebels. "We are the state here," he said.
Still, Mr. Mesa was not about to give up. Last Thursday, he calmly trudged across Tacueyó, wearing a farmer's hat and carrying his trusty baton, and generally oblivious to the shooting around him. What he faced, though, was at times heartbreaking. A 2-week-old girl had died; villagers debated whether the missiles and bullets that had raked the fields near her home were to blame.
But not all the news was bad. When townspeople became concerned that light tanks were being positioned too close to where most villagers had escaped, Mr. Mesa was able to get a tank commander to hold off.
And when a young man was detained by soldiers, suspected of helping the rebels, Mr. Mesa was able to get the army to turn him over.
"You see," Mr. Mesa said, leading him away. "Talking is the best way to resolve things."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/international/americas/02indians.html
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Report Back on Recent Actions
Mother's Day Peace Vigils
Peace advocates across the United States took a stand for accountability and justice in Colombia during Mother's Day Peace Vigils in over 20 locations including Bogotá, Colombia, Cleveland (OH), Dayton (OH), Bally (PA), Chicago (IL), Seattle (WA), San Francisco (CA), and Washington DC. Participants expressed their solidarity for countless unarmed Colombian civilians struggling with determination and unwavering courage for peace. The vigil in San Francisco, organized by FOR and Global Exchange, drew representatives and leaders from the American Friends Service Committee, San Francisco Friends Meeting, San Francisco Zen Center, the Franciscans, Casa Cultural Colombiana, and California Peace Action. Various media outlets were paying attention and representatives from FOR and the Casa Cultural Colombiana had a long meeting with the consul expressing their concern about recent attacks on civilian social activists.
Picture from the vigils can be viewed at www.peaceincolombia.org/gallery.htm
Speaking Out for Peace
On April 26, individuals and organizations around the country called their members of Congress to demand a new demilitarized U.S. policy on Colombia. Organizations such as the Lutheran World Relief, the Latin American Working Group and Witness for Peace have reported lots of active participation by hundreds of their constituents. The United Church of Christ reported that they were able to generate 1,000 faxes to Ambassador Michael Kozak and one Minnesota University mobilized 150 people to call in. Thousands of responses were also reported through the Sojourners website.
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Keeping the Pressure on Congress
Aid for Colombia is passed each year as part of the Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill. Over the next month, the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee will draft the first version of the FY2006 bill, which it will debate on June 14. Debates continue the week of June 20 in the Appropriations Committee and in the full House as early as the week of June 27. The Senate schedule is similar, although a little slower. It is critical that we make our voices heard at this point in the process; right now, we can influence the makeup of the first draft of the bill.
The Bush Administration has requested another $731 million for Colombia for 2006. As in previous years assistance is overwhelmingly dedicated to fumigation and military aid. Even more disturbing is a recent request by Colombia's President, Alvaro Uribe, for an additional $130 million specifically for fumigation. The policy of aerial fumigation of poor farmers' crops to stop drug cultivation has been an utter failure and has taken an immense toll on rural Colombian communities. We need a new policy, and we need your help to ensure that there be a full debate of this policy in Congress. Your activism keeps this issue on Congress' radar screen. To see if you or someone you know lives in the district or state of any of a subcommittee member, go to: www.lawg.org/countries/colombia/fy06alert.htm#Vote
Wherever you live, please call or e-mail the members with the following message:
I am a constituent from ____. I know that you will soon be considering the 2006 foreign operations appropriations bill, and I would like to ask you to support a new policy toward Colombia. Current policy has not stopped the flow of drugs to the United States-- in fact, the amount of coca planted in Colombia at the end of 2004 was exactly the same as the year the policy started. Human rights conditions in Colombia have worsened since US aid began in 2000. I believe that we need a major shift away from fumigation and military aid, and toward alternative development programs, aid to the displaced, and support for Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities. A shift in resources and priorities won't cost the United States more money, but it could have an immense impact in Colombia. Please support a change in policy during the debate over the Colombia.
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Last chance - Visit Colombia with FOR and Global Exchange
There are still spaces available in our Colombia Delegation from July 30 to August 13, 2005. Be part of the solution by joining our delegation to Colombia. Participants will visit various communities and organizations working for peace in order to learn from their movements and bring a message of hope back to the United States.
Contact Global Exchange at 1-800-497-1994 or FOR at <forcolombia@igc.org>, 415-495-6334 with any questions about this trip. Deadline for applications is June 15, 2005.
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Letter from the Field: A visit to Bojayá
Sarah Weintraub, CPP volunteer
In early May I went on a commission to the Bojayá region in the Pacific coast department of the Chocó, one of the most oppressed departments in Colombia. The people who live in the Chocó are almost all Afro-Colombian or Embera indigenous. In May 2002, Bellavista, a town along the banks of the Atrato River experienced a terrible tragedy. About 1,000 of the people who were living in the town were caught in the crossfire of a battle between the guerrillas and paramilitaries. Many took refuge in the church, a building they thought neither side would attack. But there were paramilitary troops in the courtyard, and when the guerrillas launched a missile at them, it missed and hit the church. There were 119 people killed, including 46 children.
After that, a great deal of international and national attention was focused on the region, and a lot of promises were made. Now, three years later, the whole Bojayá region and all the land along the Atrato river is still a battleground, there are barely any government services, and there is still a lot of violence. Promises to rebuild the town and bring in a health center, among other things, have not been fulfilled. Residents are also experiencing a form of colonization through the forced cultivation of African palm and the exploitation of wood. So, while it has been three years since the tragedy, the problems continue and suffering is widespread. The purpose of the commission was to bring attention to and share information about this situation. The commission was made up of people from national and international NGOs, the Diocese of Quibdó, and two grassroots organizations from the area, the Afro-Colombian ACIA and the indigenous OREWA. The commission split into smaller groups and traveled all over the region.
I ended up in a group of seven people and we traveled on the Atrato and Bojayá rivers to the Cuia River. We were in a small canoe with an outboard motor. It fit the seven of us and our bags, with no room to spare. We visited three indigenous communities Hoja Blanca, Punto Cedro, and Punto Alegre. The communities are in a very perilous situation like so many places in Colombia, they are attacked from all sides the guerrillas won¹t let them into their fields where they grow plantains, the paramilitaries won¹t let them bring in food from town, there are no schools, health centers or other civilian presence of the state, all sides accuse them of being with the other side. And it is very poor no electricity, no running water (they bring up water from the river), no bathrooms or latrines.
On the other hand, communities have organized to prevent being displaced from their ancestral lands and to demand services from the state. Many times on this trip I heard the people talk about their connection to the land by saying "la tierra es donde enterramos el ombligo" (the land is where your umbilical cord is buried) because of that, they belong to the land and can never leave it. ACIA and OREWA have arisen from the communities themselves to help them defend those territorial rights, as well as demand that the government provide them with health care and education. They demand that the armed groups leave them alone, and bring attention to the situation of the conflict in the region, particularly the plight of displaced people.
Each of the three communities has a governor who, when we arrived, gathered all the adults of the community in one of the raised wooden houses to meet with us. During these meetings the governor and a few other men often presented most of the information, but the women, many of the them nursing babies or with small children leaning against them, also jumped in. Although they didn't speak Spanish, they participated fully jumping up to shout their opinions. During the meetings many minutes of heated discussion in Embera would go by until someone translated for us and filled us in on what was going on. In Punto Cedro, the largest community we visited, the organizational structure was particularly strong. Here, the governor showed us a detailed list of everything that the government had guaranteed to them when they returned from displacement (a health center and health promoter, a school and teacher, a dock, etc.) - none of which they received.
The topics of all three meetings were conflict, health, education, and organization. In the discussion about conflict the communities confirmed that the guerrillas were upriver and the paramilitaries were downriver between them and Bellavista, the main town. Both groups, particularly the guerrilla, come in to the communities frequently and tell people they can¹t go to their fields or they force the them to sell food for less than it costs. The guerrilla says they have put landmines in the fields. The paramilitaries and the military have put a cap on how much food a family can bring in $30,000 pesos (about 15 dollars) worth per week. The gas to go by boat from these communities to the main town and back costs about $120,000. Although none of the communities had been directly attacked recently, they felt threatened.
Traditionally people plant a large variety of food crops rice, corn, sugarcane, plantains and many other types of bananas, etc. Part of the paramilitary development project is to force them to plant only African palm (which is processed for oil) and buy their food with the money they make from that. African palm does not start producing until about five years after you plant it. Many farmers who have planted it end up getting deeper and deeper into debt to the companies they are selling it to, who don¹t pay them enough money on which to live. It reminded me of the situation in US coal mines many years ago where people worked and worked but didn¹t make enough money. They had to purchase from the "company store," getting deeper into debt with each day they worked. This has been going on further down the Atrato River and is starting in the Bojayá region also.
People go hungry while their food rots in the fields. Most of the children had big, swollen, parasite bellies. Only one of the communities had a school teacher and he was hired and funded by the OREWA. The other communities had not seen any teachers for about two years.
In the meetings I noticed that even the discussions that weren¹t about the conflict ended up being about the conflict. Hermana Maria encouraged the people to let the girls go to school and learn too. She framed it by saying, "Who does the war take? The war takes the men. So we have to educate the women so that they can be the heads of families, defend themselves, and so no one will be able to take advantage of them because they are not educated."
Padre Jorge gave a mini-workshop on medicinal plants for treating parasites, malnutrition, malaria and other ailments. Maria talked about how one of the two secrets to resisting on your own land is traditional health care. The other is spirituality. The Embera practice their own religion, respecting their haybanas (shamans), and Jorge said that "before, the Catholic church was confused about this and tried to get people to change, but now we know that you are worshipping god too." They both talked about "resisting from within your own culture."
Cristian from the COCOMACIA also shared comparisons and insights from his work with the Afro-Colombian communities. We were were accompanying the group without getting involved with the training by the Diocese. But our presence helped make it possible for them to go there. The Diocese travels all over, but when they travel with internationals they say they feel like they have a shield. The people in these communities are very isolated and asked for more accompaniment and more visits.
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If you have any further questions about the FOR Colombia program, please contact us. Thank you again for your ongoing support.
In Peace
Jutta Meier-Wiedenbach
Colombia program coordinator
____________________________
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
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