"I remained unenlightened when I was told gruffly it was 'for peace', so I moved
on down the street through barriers of riot police and I began to meet people I
know carrying cardboard coffins and with banners saying: 'paramilitary
assassins' and 'Uribe legalizes murderers' and they explained to me that the
suspicious crowd were a 'rent-a-para-supporter' mob.
"Then I met Eduardo Umana's father (Note: Umana was a famous human rights lawyer
murdered by the rightwing) - a frail old man carrying a cardboard coffin and
shouting at the police and fighting them to be let in to the Congress building.
He eventually did get in, with Manuel Cepeda's son (Note: Cepeda was the editor
of Voz, the excellent Communist weekly in Colombia, likewise assassinated by the
paramilitaries), and they were both ejected when they went up to where the
paramilitary chiefs were giving speeches, and called them murderers.
"Later I saw bits of the speeches on television: it was nauseatingly violent and
made me squirm with embarrassment to see these brutish killers saying they were
'sorry' - one even managed to cry! - for all the massacres and murders. But
none of them were going to jail, all of them were absolutely confident and
arrogant and a lot of politicians were supporting them.
"The radical MP Gustavo Petro gave an excellent speech about inviting chainsaw
murderers to come and threaten the country from the Parliament, and why don't we
just invite all the car thieves and common criminals from the streets too?
Apparently all the main roads from the City centre to the airport were closed
down during the morning rush hour to let the paramilitary caravan through
safely. This is surreal even by Colombian standards.
"I met a woman who is making a documentary about the Palacio de Justicia
massacre in the 80s. She named a list of politicians and army generals who
ordered the killings at that time who are now supporting the paramilitaries.
None of the cases of the 'disappeared' have ever been brought to justice, though
the families of the upper class judges and magistrates who were killed have been
given compensation - but not the ordinary workers' families.
"Another indication of the way this government is going is that our lawyer
friend M. who has helped us with legal advice ever since our boys were killed,
came to see me at 7.0 a.m. fuming as she had had a public showdown at an office
meeting the night before: she is now leaving her posh job at the Vice-Presidency
because her boss, a well-known female politician, wants to use the office and
its resources, which are supposed to be for teaching people how to take action
against State corruption, to help get Uribe re-elected by using their public
meetings all over the country to do campaign work for him.."
************
Gardens on the Moon
"What greater folly can there be than to call gems, silver and gold precious,
and earth and dirt vile? .if there should be as great a scarcity of earth as
there is of jewels and precious metals, there would be no prince but would
gladly give a heap of diamonds and rubies and many wedges of gold, to purchase
only so much earth as should suffice to plant a jasmine in a little pot."
GALILEO
". and no man but feels more of a man in the world if he have a bit of ground
that he can call his own. However small it is on the surface, it is four
thousand miles deep, and that is a very handsome property."
Charles Dudley Warner, both quotes taken from Organic Gardening Magazine, USA
"I have just been to a strange lunar landscape in the South of Bogota. It is a
very large high hill of pure white pottery clay, with lots of goats, sheep,
cows, dogs and chickens there. The people belong to a small community of
ex-brickmakers who can't make bricks any more because the coal slag they used to
fire the kilns was giving the whole area bronchitis. So amongst the strange
land shapes caused by their quarrying for clay are dozens of big, old, beautiful
round brick kilns that no-one knows what to do with. Some of the people, now
workless and hungry, are sufficiently desperate and have enough faith in
miracles to plant gardens in the hard white clay. These gardens are tragic to
behold and they want and need to garden seriously. A man I know who works with
housing projects was asked to help them, and he rang me and off we went for a
hike around the moon.
The place is like a strange mediaeval village looking down on Bogota, just a
steep climb away from the main thoroughfare; there are no roads, only muddy
tracks. Within minutes of getting there, we were surrounded by people wanting
to know how to make compost. I felt like running away, just at the sight of the
dry desert they live in, but I said I would help and this made them all very
happy. So I set them some homework: to collect all their organic waste into a
kiln and find a good source of horse manure (apparently there is one nearby).
Then we went to see a local administrator and got promised the delivery of all
the grass cut in the public parks and some wire for fencing, and some guinea
pigs to live in the kiln to help make rapid compost.
Then the local social worker, a lovely lively lady, took me to the social centre
where she tries to keep the local kids off drugs with music and dance workshops.
I gave her one of the girls' CDs and in her car later she played it and cried
from the first song. I was a bit worried about the driving.. She looked at the
picture of the girls on the front and said, 'I'd love to meet them but I suppose
they wouldn't come to a place like this?' so I explained a bit about how our
kids were brought up in the jungle without schooling and working on the gardens
and how we have always done free theatre in rural areas and she cried some more
(luckily we were parked by then). I explained that Katie would come any time
but she would need her fare paid as we have no income and she said she would try
to raise this.
Anyway, if we ever get displaced again, there are some brick-kilns on the Moon
where we could live.." Anne Barr
My land, your land,
is no-one's land,
by god given briefly
to the gardener's loving hands
till they rejoin the clay.
Brian Quail, Scottish anti-nuclear campaigner
Gardening , Cooking & Compost Course for The Peace Community of San Jose
In our last Green Letter, No. 66, we explained a little of the Peace Communities
that are springing up in rural Colombia: communities of peasants trying, often
in vain, to stay out of the civil war violence wracking Colombia by declaring
themselves 'neutral.'
Anne Barr and 19 year old singer-composer Katie, - now our travelling
compost-makers and vegetarian cookery advisors - recently accepted an invitation
to participate in the first session of the 'Peasant University' set up by the
people of San Jose de Apartado in Uraba, Northern Colombia, one of the worst
areas for paramilitary violence. Anne spent 23 days there, Katie a shorter time
because of duties back home in the South. When Anne returned, she sent us the
following report:
"First I want to write about some of the people I met there as almost every one
of them was worth meeting. Most were practically illiterate, but all incredibly
brave people, as community leaders have to be here in Colombia.
One lad from the Wiwa tribe of La Guajira was a real pain to start with, talking
such rubbish for the first few days that I became sure his tribe had sent him so
they could get a rest from him! However, when I finally got fed up with the
rules of politeness and told him to stop waffling, he took it well and did come
out with some gems: such as the fact that his tribe have successfully kept out
the multinational mafia who want to dam up their rivers, by using the magic of
the tribal elders to bring about flash floods at the right moment to wash away
the heavy machinery.. This has worked several times now, according to him!
A girl at the gathering, 23 years old and looking like a Barbie doll, had
rescued several of her community in Santander from death at the hands of the
paramilitaries simply by using her very sharp tongue and her courage. Each time
someone is taken away, she goes to confront the paras, the Army, or the
guerrilla. Her stories are hair-raising, and she has been so successful that
she now cannot leave her house without foreign accompaniment. This is provided
by an organization called Peace Brigades International: they accompany anyone
who has to walk or go by bus anywhere outside the village. Her community, after
many massacres perpetrated by all sides in the civil war, have built up
agreements to leave civilians out of it. Like everyone else, she says the
guerrilla are the ones who most respect these agreements, which seem to work:
1. Because people insist on respect and don't back down;
2. through the presence of foreign witnesses and international pressure
3. and because the communities involved say they will move out en masse if the
armed forces move in. Disgustingly, this terrifies the Army as it leaves them
in the rural areas to fight the guerrillas with no human shields in the way.
Incidentally, one day while I was talking to the 'class', some guerrilleros
passed by, stopped to listen for a while, and carried on their way..
A 72 year old man from a squatters' settlement in Medellin worked and walked
alongside us all as if he were in his 20s. He told horrific stories about the
army killing many people in his community to try to get them to move on. They
are all refugees from the countryside.
Some of the most heartbreaking stories were not about people but about the earth
destroyed by US aerial spraying of glyphosate (Monsanto's 'Roundup Ready'). A
Paez Indian from the Alta Naya in Cauca said that after an aerial spraying 4
years ago, the land still won't produce a blade of grass, so it's not just
'Roundup' that is being used, but something much more lethal. A woman from
Caqueta who runs an organic chocolate factory co-op had her cacao trees sprayed
and killed and the land rendered useless. Experts say it will take ten years to
recover. Cacao trees do not look like coca plants even from the air!
I never really felt like I was doing or accomplishing anything with my 'course',
yet to them it was a whole new world. I explained and talked about compost
toilets and the organizers got me buckets, and I got several nice simple showers
built and a guinea-pig run (this small voracious animal is one of the best
compost-making animals in existence!) All I could see was how far they had to
go until it was no longer their instinct to chuck rubbish, until they would look
at horse manure and go ooh! instead of yuk! and until they wouldn't be quietly
horrified when I suggested building a compost loo - as I was noisily horrified
about them flushing their bodily wastes downstream; also to reach a point when
they would become sensitive to the smoky stoves that are giving them lung cancer
and consider the modern innovation of a chimney-pipe! The wonderful thing about
being seen as a 'teacher' is that one can really go on about this kind of thing
and be listened to - for the time the class lasts anyway!
In the latter days of the course, I read out your 'Message from a European',
Jenny, (a piece written in our first year in Colombia contrasting the value of
the simplicity of rural life with the emptiness of the 'civilized' rich
countries). It was received with a quality of silence and attention that was
totally unique in the whole course. Everyone wanted a copy and the organizers
got me enough photocopies to give around. I told the leaders that you want to
come and take part and they obviously found this too much to believe and could
barely respond. They can't really believe that people want to help them I
think.
I managed to train a couple of people to help me put on our comedy about
'Ecotourism' which went down very well. Then because people obviously felt sort
of inferior after the kind of brash confidence that comes out of me onstage
(covering the fact I didn't sleep the night before for stage-fright!), I offered
to take on anyone who was willing and make up a play in the morning and put it
on that night so that they would see that it is not impossible to do theatre.
Ten people volunteered, including two wonderful gringa girls (from Peace
Brigades International) who were amongst those who laughed most at the
Ecotourism play. I got everyone to make up a play and we practiced it at lunch
time and at 5 p.m. and then we put it on. It was hilarious though somewhat
chaotic, and ended in a dance which we got the audience to join in with.
Several men wouldn't dance and actually ran away and got really slagged off for
it. It was very funny. This was my last day in the community, and next day
they all insisted on walking halfway to San Jose with me, which I found
embarrassing, then I had to say goodbye to each person individually. I was
quite glad to get away after that.
At the end of the course, there had been an embarrassing 'evaluation' when all
the community leaders attending invited me separately to go to their
communities in various parts of Colombia; they asked really humbly, as if they
were scared I would not accept. And several people apologized for being
careless about rubbish and waste and a few said that the best advertisement for
vegetarianism was meeting Katie, whose main contribution was her singing and the
simplicity of her 'being'. She sang every night and at other times whenever
anyone asked her to. She worked at the cacao planting and in the kitchen, she
talked about her upbringing in the mountains and jungle and about the death of
the boys. And she enchanted everyone."
Tragedy Hits San Jose
Midway through the course, tragedy struck the community: Luis Eduardo, the man
who first visited me in Bogota to invite me to attend, lost his wife in an
explosion caused by a grenade left by the Army. Another young woman was killed
with her, and his 8 year old son is in hospital with his genitals almost blown
away. I went to the funeral and spent a day and a night talking and crying with
the families.
The fallout in the media from this tragedy is incredibly poisonous, with
attempts to say the explosion was caused by a 'home-made bomb'. However, the
young boy who is injured never lost consciousness and was able to describe all
that happened. He saw the grenade fall at the feet of the girl who died first -
she had found it and picked it up, not knowing what it was. Most of her body
was destroyed but even still she talked and lived for a few hours. He saw his
mother a few feet away being thrown up into the air. She landed hard and it was
the knock and the shock of seeing her son who she thought was dead that killed
her as she had no injuries to her vital organs: she suffered some kind of
attack, lost consciousness, never regained it and died two days later. The boy
said he tried to talk to her to say he was alive but couldn't speak. He was
thrown up into the air too but he says factually, in that way that Colombians
naturally weave magic and material reality into their way of thinking, that as
he was about to land with a thump, "two boys he didn't know caught him and let
him down gently and then disappeared"...
Luis, the father, had to fight off the army who wanted to put him in prison
while his wife was dying, saying he had a bomb-making laboratory in his house
and that that was what the 'peasant university course' was about. This was all
put out on the radio and made me so furious that I wrote a letter to the radio
station, thinking I'd be the only one who'd feel secure enough to sign it. Then
I read it to one of the women from Caqueta and she wanted to be in on it, then
another lad heard us, and then another and another, until the whole group wrote
the letter together. It was very moving, thanks to the Colombians, and very
clear, thanks to me because as you know Colombians care more for poetry than
logic! The community council loved it and are sending it around the world.
Luis managed to stay out of prison thanks to the opportune arrival of the Peace
Brigades, whose accompaniment idea really does work, though even so, two men
were murdered by paramilitaries on the road from San Jose to Apartado in the
three weeks I was there (see Appendix at end). The Peace Brigades have a rule
that they must only be observers and not express an opinion about anything, so
it must be very boring for them at times. The majority I met (about 15 of them)
are admirable, live in very basic conditions and do very long walks over some
very bad paths. The locals say that this foreign presence is essential to the
success of their refusal to have the police or army in their area. Evidently
this right of refusal is backed up legally so now the community refuse to have
anything to do with the Fiscalia (Public Prosecutor's office) too as so many
people who have made statements against the army have been quickly killed for
it.
Santos, the Vice President of Colombia, came to visit the community after the
bomb explosion to 'help make peace' and the community leaders refused to allow
his army bodyguards to take their guns to the meeting and so they disarmed, very
unwillingly. What Santos actually accomplished was the further endangerment of
the community leaders as he brought with him the heads of the local
paramilitaries cum army barracks for the 'dialogue', and now these killers can
put faces to the best known names there, so that many lives have probably been
shortened. Up until now, the community have had a policy of never naming
leaders but saying they are all leaders, which is true in a sense as every man,
woman or child you meet there will tell you that they would rather die than
accept the army amongst them as it would rob them and their dead of their
dignity to have to accept amongst them the killers of their friends and family.
After this meeting, the threats from the local paramilitary-controlled radio got
worse and worse.
The whole idea of this settlement was originally facilitated by a bishop who was
later killed by the paramilitaries. Now they have some young nuns amongst them
and one of these young women was the only blight upon my horizon (once I'd
brought the salt levels in the food under control, plus had some stone paths
built through the mud, made a few nice showers and got the late-night radio
maniacs under control!). I ended up having to be quite rude to her as she kept
trying to get me into their falsely jolly religious meeting at night. This is
the new face of 'evangelical' Catholicism - fun and games, then prayers. I had
to tell her I found it all false and aggressive. That shut her up. Her
companions, two lovely young women, came to me later and said that they had had
the same differences with her attitudes. To my amazement, these women wanted
their astrology charts done and mostly wanted to know about men and
relationships, so hopefully I have helped them towards hell and damnation. It is
obvious that the local people simply use this religious connection as they are a
real shield against the paramilitary killers and have at times helped to avoid
massacres. However, god save us from religion. What saved me was not god but
many of the other community leaders, especially the Indians who had no time for
the nuns either and I ended up in another house with them having music and dance
sessions during the prayer meetings, and more and more people came to join our
gang instead!
One of the Indians, from the Kuanamo tribe near the Sierra Nevada heard on the
radio that his cousin, the tribal leader, had just been killed by the same band
of paramilitaries that the Government is having 'peace talks' with - 'Monologues
of Peace' as the peasants cynically call them, as for them to be 'dialogues',
there would have to be two separate parties."
End of Green Letter 67, but see Appendix below:
Statement from the Community of San Jose
From Anne Barr:
Below is a translation of the moving and terrifying statement sent out by the
Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado, Colombia, on the 6th of August 2004.
It clearly shows the collaboration that takes place between the Army and the
paramilitaries in the region of Uraba, against a community of unarmed, extremely
poor, and extremely brave and determined campesinos who have decided that they
would prefer to die than be once again chased off their lands by para/military
threats and murders. Their greatest 'crime' in a country ruled by the fear of
murder and massacre has been to refuse to continue being the cannon fodder that
feeds this war.
I was at the Campesino University mentioned in this statement, from the 31st
July till the 20th August, working with campesinos and Indians from all over
Colombia who live in similar "communities of resistance". We made compost and
food-gardens as food self-sufficiency has become a necessity in the face of
frequent food blockades. I discovered a side of Colombia I hadn't seen in 15
years of living here, a small, bright but fragile spark of hope in the midst of
so much suffering and cruelty, a gathering of people who have finally overcome
the fear that has allowed the killers and bullies to keep a stranglehold on the
country. We heard on local paramilitary-run radio that we were probably
teaching bomb-making....
Translation by Jenny James.
THE KILLINGS CONTINUE
Once again the San Jose de Apartado Community of Peace in Colombia has to report
on acts of terror and death against our Community. The facts which we present
here for judgement by History and the rest of humanity are the following:
On 23rd July 2004, around 10 a.m., a certain Mr. Wilmar Durango was present in
the Public Transport Terminal where various members of the Peace Community were
waiting for a bus to take them to San Jose. He declared to these people that
the paramilitaries were watching out for the right moment to assassinate the
leaders of our community; that he himself was part of this plan and that the
people of the community should realize that no matter how many complaints they
put in about the situation, these would only end up on his desk and that he
would simply laugh, as he was working with the Army and therefore no harm could
come to him as the State Prosecutor's office had absolved him of everything.
After saying this, he gave the names of the leaders and their companions who
were to be killed first.
The following day, 24th July, Mr. Wilmar Durango sent two letters to the
Community, in which he accused the leaders and their friends of working with the
guerrilla and of having planned assassinations....
On 30th July at 6 p.m. in the suburb of Mangolo, situated at the exit of
Apartado on the road to San Jose, 54 year old LEONEL SANCHEZ OSPINA was murdered
as he came down from San Jose in his van.
SANCHEZ OSPINA's job was to transport and sell drinking water in bags in San
Jose. A group of paramilitaries dressed in civilian clothing and carrying guns
made him get down from his truck. Then they took him to one side of the road
and assassinated him. .
On 31st July, paramilitaries threatened the person who transports the fuel for
the electricity generator which is used in the Peasant University course which
is at present taking place. The paramilitaries said that the fuel was for the
guerrilla. On the same day, about 2.0 p.m., at the Army checkpoint of la Balsa,
Army soldiers asked for the same man, saying that they had information that he
worked for the guerrrillas.
On 2nd August about midday, a group of paramilitaries gathered various people
from San Jose together at the Transport Terminal and told them they were going
to recommence a blockade against 'that damned Community', that they hadn't
managed to destroy it yet but now they were going to find out just how long they
could hold out if all supplies were stopped. They also said that they had
pinpointed the leaders and that all that remained was to decide whether they
would kill them in San Jose or elsewhere. They threatened the people by saying
that as they could kill their leaders, they could destabilize the community and
thus take over San Jose and therefore they shouldn't be surprised by the deaths
that were occurring, nor the ones to come.
On 3rd August around 7.0 p.m., JOAQUIN RODRIGUEZ DAVID was murdered in the
suburb of San Fernando de Apartado by paramilitaries in civilian clothing and
carrying guns. RODRIGUEZ DAVID lived in Victoria, a village situated between
Apartado and San Jose, where he had a shop. When they killed him, they said
that this was the beginning of what they had promised.
On 6th August at approximately 8 .0 a.m., the paramilitaries sent a message with
the driver of a public vehicle to the driver of a lorry carrying wood who was in
San Jose, that he had to take the wood to them. If he did not do this, they
would go to San Jose for the wood themselves and kill him. They also threatened
the rest of the tradesmen who work in San Jose.
Without any doubt, acts of assassination are being carried out against our
Community and the murders confirm the threats delivered. A blockade of our
community and a plan to exterminate its leaders and their companions has
recommenced, announced by paramilitaries and confirmed by the Army. Here we see
clearly the cynicism and absurdity of the 'peace talks' between two parties who
have always worked hand-in-hand: the paramilitaries and the State; the so-called
Truce - all these acts are simply a smoke-screen to take attention away from the
killings the communities are being subjected to; indeed our very existence is at
stake. They are trying to put an end to us, murder us, and once again they have
started with the people who do business with our community in order to cause a
fresh blockade.
We ask for national and international solidarity to demand from the Government
respect for the development of our Peace Community and that the killings and
extermination of our leaders and companions cease. The experiment we have begun
with our Peasant University which we are taking to many communities is a sign
that we are not going to give in, not even when faced with death, threats and
arrests following absurd frame-ups. We will remain firm in our principles of
truth, openness, justice, solidarity, and in our opposition to impunity. We know
that the generosity of so many people, organizations and communities will be a
tremendous support and bring the light of hope to carry on firmly.
Death cannot prevail on the life-positive paths we are treading.
SAN JOSE DE APARTADO COMMUNITY OF PEACE
6th August 2004
COMUNIDAD DE PAZ DE SAN JOSE DE APARTADO