"None of us have to change the world, just our small piece of it."
Lesley Docksey, MAW news (Movement for the Abolition of War)
We begin this issue with a letter from Anne Barr to the BBC on the occasion of them inviting the rightwing president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, to take part in a programme called Talking Point about how he "stopped 40 years of war in Colombia", a concept breathtaking in its cynicism.
"I am Irish but have lived in Colombia for 15 years and have suffered the effects of the long-drawn-out civil war here, as two of our boys were killed by FARC guerrilla in 2000 and we were forced to leave two big farms and forest reserves upon receiving threats from the FARC. So you might suppose we would have good reason to support Uribe and his much-touted war against the guerrilla. However, we have to consider the following facts:
"At present, the area where our boys were killed is no longer under the command of the FARC, but of the army/paramilitaries (which are one and the same). The local peasants are now in a much worse situation than before as they must now deal with murder and extortion supported, or at least deliberately ignored, by the state. It was bad enough when it was 'just' the FARC. I have been told that this situation is being repeated all over the country.
"I know many country people who voted for Uribe because they desperately hoped he would create law and order and stop abuses by the FARC guerrilla , and who are now in jail, caught up in the mass arrests that are the order of the day under this government, arrests that are part of the tragic soap-opera that is Uribe's reign, as the state supposedly shows how Uribe is fighting the guerrilla. Many of these people are local administrators, mayors and community leaders and they are replaced as quickly as possible by Government appointees who then take control of whole communities and regions in this underhand way.
"When Uribe came into power, there were approximately 62,000 people in jail. Now there are about 82,000. Most of these people are innocent. Even in one of the most conservative and pro-Uribe institutions in Colombia, the State Attorney's Office (Fiscalia), the state lawyers who deal with these illegal arrests complain that Uribe has destituted the legal system of what little credibility it ever had. Yet anyone who openly opposes his policies loses their job.
"The ease with which informers and army criminals 'escape' from jail defies belief. In the last three or four weeks (this piece was written 22.11.04 , ed.) four high profile prisoners have 'escaped', two of them leaving polite and friendly notes for the State Attorney. A few days later, one of them, a FARC commander-turned-informer, gave himself up and was seen on TV shaking hands with the President who said he was a good boy and that he would be given a room in one of the city's most expensive hotels with his family. All this might be seen as South American quaintness and eccentricity if it were not for the lives lost in the midst of it all. This particular ex-FARC commander killed anyone who tried to stop him using his powerful position to extort and rob. We know this as he killed a friend of ours, Eduardo Rincon, an honest 'Green' politician who objected to his corrupt dealings (see very early Green Letters for this story , ed.).
"The 'peace process' between the state and their paramilitaries is a farce. Many fine houses in the posher districts of Bogota are being used to house 'reinserted' paramilitaries, men who have brutally killed and massacred countless peasants, trade unionists and community leaders, and they are paid well.
"Two weeks ago, a trade unionist was taken to a hospital for a routine heart check. His family was with him as he was always under threat from the state paramilitaries. A male nurse came into his room and ordered everyone out as he needed an injection. He died minutes later as he had been injected with poison. The 'nurse' was nowhere to be found, and no doctor had ordered the injection. The family are too frightened to be named publicly.
"You do not need to be a statistician to note the state of Colombia: the number of whole families living on the streets and begging for a living has greatly increased recently. If you stop to ask them why they are there, they will tell you about army/paramilitary and guerrilla brutality in their regions. The lives of the poorest Colombians, that is, about 70% of them, have become much worse under Uribe's rule. As none of these people understand or write English nor have they cable TV, the BBC interview with Uribe will never reach their ears so they will never have a chance to refute the "Uribe-saves-Colombia" fiction.
"But here's a bit of good news: I know leaders from at least 20 communities all over Colombia who have become convinced of the need to grow their own food as the army and its paramilitaries have blockaded their access roads and rivers and don't allow them to bring in food unless they pay very high 'taxes' for each boat or lorry-load. Now here we have a real achievement! Uribe has convinced whole communities to take up organic farming, compost-making and to accept the vital need for self-sufficiency! Only one problem , he didn't mean to.
"If ever the BBC would like to hear the other side of the story from ordinary Colombians, and not just give airspace to a man who is becoming another Fujimori-type dictator, I'd be very glad to help with contacts.
"Yours sincerely, Anne Barr."
PS. Another bit of Good News here is that the 'anti-terrorist' Bill being pushed by Uribe and Co. that would give the killers in the army and police judicial powers, has been thrown out by the Constitutional Court because a video was made that showed up the cheating tricks that were used to get enough votes to approve the bill in the Congress. In spite of everything, there is a strong and vital strain of judicial democracy in Colombia, some very well trained and passionately democratic legal experts that somehow have always maintained respect and power here and quietly managed to keep some kind of balance.
Uribe lives on hot air, US arms, threats and a lot of media twisting.
"Several hundred people attended, the house was full and the attention perfect. As I arrived, a woman from Tame, Arauca, was speaking about the campaigns of constant intimidation and fear that the army now go in for. First of all, two years ago, they killed or displaced the local community radio staff and reporters, and anyone who might make a fuss, then they installed cameras outside places where people met, and they put up their own far-reaching radio tower and started broadcasting propaganda, saying all community and education projects were guerrilla-organized activities, thus implying that all community leaders and organizers were guerrillas. She spoke of several massacres and said that at first people were too afraid to protest but when three trade unionists were taken out of their house and shot in cold blood by the army at the beginning of August, the massacred men were too well-known as pacifists for people to swallow the government's lies any more and enormous marches took place, so that now people have overcome their fear of cameras and threats. She showed slide pictures of North American soldiers everywhere in open patrol.
"Then many people talked of similar situations in other, mainly Indian, areas. At question time, one of the written questions was, 'Doesn't this kind of thing mean that armed resistance is the only way forward?' Everyone laughed and made noises of agreement. The woman said, yes, except for the fact that faced with so many army men and such advanced weapons technology, the guerrilla forces don't feel capable of replying in kind, so more subtle intelligent methods must be found. I sought out this speaker afterwards and talked to her about us going to her area and our girls singing and for us to observe and report on the situation there.
"Later, one of the Grandmothers from the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina spoke. She looked like a little grey granny, but wow, what a woman! No self-pity, yet she is one of the many Argentinians from the '70s who never again heard of her disappeared daughter and son-in-law, except she found out that her daughter had the baby she was pregnant with when they took her, but the child was never traced. She was so personal yet so deeply political in a sensible female humorous way. She spoke of how once the parents of the 'disappeared' organized themselves to seek justice, they often found that there might be two families on the same street who had lost loved ones in the 'disappearances', but they had been too embarrassed and scared to say so and that that kind of shame is the worst enemy, and the hardest to overcome. She told the story of how one mother was about to commit suicide after her son was taken, so she said to her: 'If you're really going to do that, please kill the colonel responsible too, then at least your death will mean one less colonel to deal with. But I warn you that when you are gone, I will have no time to look for your son.' That despairing mother turned into one of the greatest speakers for their cause. Many of the militant parents were 'disappeared' too, but those who remain still keep going and now some of the military men responsible for the mass murders have been put in jail.
"A woman beside me at this meeting told me that her husband and brother had been disappeared by the army and that she had had no justice. She was crying, and I thought it must all have happened recently, but it was nine years ago. Another woman spoke, her voice full of emotion, about three family members who had disappeared, as well as many members of ASFADES (the Organization of Families of the Disappeared) who themselves had vanished. She was asking the Argentinian woman how to get over this. She was so upset, I just listened and felt for her , and then learnt that this had happened eleven years ago.
"We have to try and start a serious political therapy movement: it is just awful
how people are not transforming this kind of pain into anything but more fear.
Some time after the meeting, two women who had attended phoned me asking me to
help them form some kind of group that would be involved with helping the
families of the disappeared and transforming it into a serious organization in
Colombia. They want to call it Aquelarre , Coven, an apt name for this seed of
our next big project which is being sown at Hallowe'en."
At the time of the presidential elections in America, friends in the US and elsewhere would write us passionate letters expounding their various views on the right way ahead, the essential difference being between those who were putting all their energy behind the Kerry campaign, however inadequate they knew him to be, - that is, the conventional parliamentary route - and those who opted for a more subversive route to change. Here is a letter Anne wrote to them at the time:
"The two positions you represent are the dilemma of anyone who thinks, feels and wants to do something about the deep mess we're in. I don't know any political person who doesn't go through this crisis, I argue about it with myself on the bus daily. It's a constant in my life because here in Colombia, there are many people who were in the very radical armed movements of the 70s and 80s who are now in bureaucratic governmental positions. I am very glad for their existence as they appreciate the work we do and help in all kinds of practical ways. But emotionally I can identify with the put-a-bomb-under-the-bastards attitude , as in fact do most of my friends in bureaucratic positions! But they really have done the put-a-bomb-under-them bit and are now looking for another way. No-one has found it, of course, as bureaucracy wastes time and saps energy.
"I also spend a lot of time in jail with people who have used the bomb method, some of whom now decry it and some of whom will go back to it as soon as they get out. None of them say it's the right way as it has some very ugly results and shrapnel kills too many innocents, as we know to our very painful, personal cost, through our two lads being murdered by the very side we would much prefer to be able to support. And yet Colombia is the strange phenomenon that it is , a place of enormous beauty, freedom, fun and humanity , because the violence has not been disguised and sanitized by pretend-democracy and its efficient image-makers, lie-tellers and brainwashers. The only conclusion I ever get to in this argument with myself about right and wrong political attitudes is that 'biodiversity' is the thing, and more important still is finding a method of action that gives one pleasure as we all know the awfulness of being in the company of political puritans who make everything as miserable and boring as possible.
"I feel very out of my depth writing this, not being any good at theoretical political thinking, so I will go now and get stuck into the next lorry load of rotten vegetable scraps with my compost ladies as this is my personal political path to ecstasy!"
"Gardening adds years to your life, and life to your years". (Resurgence Magazine, England)
Here are the latest in our series of reports from Anne on the magical Moon garden saga in the barren hills above Bogota:
6th January 2005: I walked into 'my' shanty town carrying a huge bag of paper that I'd saved for the compost heap, and got instantaneously surrounded by several people who'd been at that embarrassing present-giving event (see last Green Letter , ed.), all saying thank you. At the gardens, there were twice as many women working , we're usually about ten, now there were about twenty. The garden looks quite pretty now, and we have begun to harvest cilantro, radishes and peas. And the emotional fertility that gardening brings is spreading to other areas: two of the women have taken the step of breaking up with violent husbands and are determined to make their vegetable growing and compost-making become a means of support for themselves as single mothers. I am glad about the break-ups but their business ambitions make me nervous as this is not my forte.
After working with them and with some hard-working kids, I went back down to the centre of Bogota to where a lawyer friend of mine who has become mayor of a district of the City has her new office. The sector she is in charge of has three public market places and I have offered to take care of all the 'waste' from one of them if they will deliver it. Her driver told me that one of the markets has a shredder which would be wonderful
12th January 2005: Yesterday, I had one of those Moon garden days that made me feel this thing is really taking off. I went to the garden I usually go to and was working away with two of the older women when I got a message that we were supposed to be working on the New Garden - we had planned one up on the highest part of the hill but hadn't managed to get the transport to get the sawdust and vegetable waste up there. I walked up the steep smelly path , all their waste waters run down there , and found that over the holiday period, the people had managed to carry sackload upon sackload of compost waste up there, had fenced in a reasonable area, and in a few hours, we made one of our instant gardens, long compost heaps that quickly become beds.
However, I am seriously annoyed with Bureaucracy now. Here we are with a cost-free successful little project and all we need is the use of a city lorry. Why is the world structured in such a way to make anything useful impossible? Sorry, stupid question.
20th January 2005: I must be mad. This is how I spent today: Last night, after meeting and talking to the local Mayor of the Moon garden area, at 11 p.m. I got a phone call from him saying a lorry was free for today to get earth. So I went at 7. 0 a.m. to get a paper signed, which took several hours of nonsense that I won't even go into (no-one is badly intentioned, it's just they have to complete a ridiculous amount of paperwork), then a long journey out of Bogota to get black earth, and then back through to the other side of Bogota , and then the worst bit: Neither the driver nor I knew the road up to the new garden, but we found our way over what is definitely the worst most dangerous road I have ever been on in Colombia, just pothole after pothole, and it winds along the edge of an abyss. And then a parked car blocked half the road so my driver had to pass within an inch of the abyss to get past. I got off and walked that bit and could hardly bear to look. I wondered what I am doing this for, but then a bit further on, I met the women waiting to unload the lorry and looked at what we have made and felt that maybe I wasn't that mad. The owner of the latest garden, Ines, was there: she was in the pits of depression when I first met her because she had been frying doughnuts for sale at Christmas time and one blew up in her face, so that she got badly scarred. But now she has thrown herself into this gardening work 100% and already has plans to double the size of what we just made on her land.
21st January 2005: Revolution Rumbling: I just went to a meeting of the 'Urban Agricultural Network' which is a group of people who have an interest in urban gardens. I used to attend these meetings, but got fed up with all the talk and no action. However, a woman from the mayor's office invited me to meet her there today so I went. On the list of items to be discussed I saw the words: 'managing organic waste' and immediately stopped feeling bored as I have one or two feelings about 'rubbish.'
The meeting was broken up into small discussion groups which then reported back at a full session later in the day. I found I had an enormous amount to say and that it caused a lot of interest. I had a long list of very concrete criticisms of institutions and bureaucracy and lots of practical suggestions about how they could actually help. So I was voted spokesperson for my little group and given free rein to say what I wanted to a captive audience of about 12 bureaucrats from the Mayor's office who are supposed to be helping to create gardens. I was happy and nervous. I spoke straightforwardly at length about the deep cynicism that all the people I work with feel towards these institutions and that we cannot possibly talk of garden projects whilst all the materials for making compost are being chucked into the waste pits and that multinational companies are being paid to take this treasure from us to chuck, and I proposed the formation of a group to work on this, to help the offices in charge of this kind of thing to help us get our hands on this essential ingredient, as these offices are not badly intentioned, they are just inexperienced, clueless and impractical. I got clapped! by most of the people but got daggers from the 'Bogota Without Hunger' people who have tried to take over this grass roots organization and make everything so slow and impossible that everyone gives up. They are a group appointed by Bogota City Council who are supposed to ensure that the poor of Bogota get at least one good meal a day. It is a kind of copycat of President Lula's programme in Brazil. When the programme was first aired, there was a big outcry from the bourgeouis opposition to Lucho, Bogota's leftwing mayor, in which he was accused of planning to 'sow cabbages in the parks', and whatever political deals went on behind the scenes at that point led Lucho to put a constipated bureaucrat in charge of the programme. As with most bureaucrats, gardens belong to another planet, and as for practical help, well, they are allergic to that. So it seems like the little plot of peas and onions and spuds we have growing on the 'Moon' is the only food growing in Bogota!
Anyway, at the meeting, I said we don't need big projects, we need tools, wire and seeds. I got lots of nods and smiles and yeses from those with dirt under their nails and from a few good office people. So I went a bit further saying that the Bogota Without Hunger programme had been conceived to make things work for people at a local practical level but it had been taken over by theoretical politics , many nods and yeses at this point , and that we need to turn things around so that the office people listen to the needs of ordinary folk and find a way to fulfil them otherwise what are we doing?
Anyway, I was definitely the most interesting thing that happened as everyone else speaks that empty airy language of concepts and theories and the poorer people who have experience feel inhibited to speak up in the presence of these 'educated' people who have been put on the planet to make sure nothing ever happens. As soon as the official part of the meeting was over, I got surrounded by all kinds of people throwing invitations and ideas at me about rubbish collecting and congratulating me on my speech and by 'experts' saying they have heard wonders of what we do on the Moon and want to come and see. Once again, I was shocked to the core to realize that the extremely scruffy small little gardens we have made are the only ones that are working, everything else is theory or pot plants on balconies. This is extremely bad. I also noticed that the air coming off the Bogota Without Hunger lot is nothing short of violent and they now have me as a sworn enemy, they are neo-liberal bullshit artists who talk down aggressively to people. I said quietly to a little group of dirt-under-the-nails people, 'Let's have a little revolution, we'll make a list of what Bogota Without Hunger should do and give it to them and if they don't do it, we'll go public and make trouble.' I got a wonderful response so we'll have a meeting about this on Sunday night after I come back from a jail visit. I really want to get all the obstructive officials sacked as their solution to hunger is to distribute date-stamped goods from the big expensive supermarkets, which of course makes people give up the habit of preparing cheap healthy fresh food, and I know from my occasional brushes with them before that they hate the concept of gardens. I don't know why the leftwing Mayor, Lucho, put the neo-liberal git that he did in charge of this, his flagship programme, but I am going to find out. I told the one nice woman from the Mayor's office of our grass roots revolution plan, and she was really excited and will unofficially help.
26th January, 2005: I just got back from a long Moon garden day with lorries, sawdust and horse-poo , and that was the clean bit of the day, because then I went to a meeting in the Botanical Gardens supposedly about growing food. I should never have gone as I now know why the world is in the state it is as I was with several posh bureaucrats who have to do with urban agriculture. None of them are actually ill-willed, so I can't hate them or feel angry. But I listened to them going on about laws and official rubbish and knitted in the sun to keep myself sane. I could think of nothing I wanted to say, as they live too far away from real life. Then I left them, and went to the nearby house of my friend Rodrigo who is poor but loves the garden project and he had got me a bit of hose, a pruning knife, a tap for the hose, and seeds, all stolen from the Botanical Gardens. The contrast was stark and obvious and the conclusion is the one we always come to..Tomorrow we have the first harvest cook-up at the Moon gardens..
February 2nd 2005: I am upset, crying, as I have struggled for the last 28 hours to organize 12 women (their only problem is that they haven't any money for bus fares), plus the Botanical Gardens who said yesterday they'd finally sign an order for some earth, and a nice but lazy lorry driver who drives the local corporation lorry, of which miraculously we have a loan today to collect sawdust, manure and earth. I have been up since 5.0 a.m. hassling everyone to be in the right places at the right time, as it involves journeys all over the city. Then at 8.30 a.m. I went as arranged to collect the earth and the two bureaucrats said NO, sorry, you're not REGISTERED in our programme. I said: Yes we are, I did that last week. Sorry, they said, But we have to VISIT the project and APPROVE it. I said: What a shame you didn't let me know this before wasting the time, bus fares and petrol of people who haven't got it to waste and I couldn't help beginning to cry, and I walked away. Well at least I left them feeling bad and I managed to warn everyone and we have plenty of things we can do with the lorry. But I am upset at the violence and hatefulness of bureaucracy. I've seen too much of how this 'LEFTWING' city administration treats poor people and anyone with any initiative and I don't want anything more to do with any of them.
Down in the South of Colombia where we have our main organic food-growing project, our farm-keeper, Ned, attended a large assembly organized for peasants by a group of NGOs ('Non-Governmental Organizations'). Here is his report:
"The gathering I went to would have politicized the most narrow-minded person. There were more than 500 delegates from all over the country, some representing thousands of people, some just a handful. It was held in a huge modern school in a very small town, and most of the food was donated by local peasants, with the kitchens run voluntarily by local women.
"The practical organization was very good, the teachers and the students all helped, everyone slept on the floors of class-rooms on mats which were supplied from somewhere, though I didn't take enough blankets and was cold. I was the only vegetarian there and after the first night when I had arrived in the dark to find that the only food had meat all mixed up in it, I decided to make sure I got in to work with the kitchen women, which was hard work but a lot of fun and after that I think I ate better than anyone else.
"Unfortunately, the leader of this event seemed to be some kind of hip fascist. They had loads of videos on genetic engineering, Cuba and other important ecological and political subjects and we would often be interrupted in the middle of an interesting conversation, delivered shouted orders and herded in to watch them. A lot of the information in them I get from reading, so I didn't share the attitude of holiness of the people there towards them, and longed to slip out. There were also long talks given by experts, one on the history of campesino struggle for land in Colombia, very good and moving but I'm afraid most of the speakers didn't have a clue how to speak in public, they loved and knew their subject inside out but needed a short course on getting themselves across.
Most people seemed to be displaced persons and of course that kind of suffering causes politicization and a raising of consciousness in general. One boy who was certainly no more than sixteen years old spoke so beautifully and clearly about the two hundred or so people he came to represent in Antioquia, they'd been displaced from their from their land by paramilitaries as the government wants to build a huge dam in their area. They had been fobbed off with an inferior bit of land by the state but are now working it as a community and are completely organic, and it has become a political act of resistance and rebellion. There were black people from the Choco there who'd lost their land and former self-sufficient way of life to huge oil palm crops run by huge companies, and they were refusing to cooperate and become slave-workers on them.
"Everyone who had brought seeds had their own table set up for them, mine with Comunidad Atlantis already written above it. I took many types of greens and a load of the special ancient variety of potatoes we grow, plus some of the interesting-looking local wild beans that grow in our area, also the girls' CDs. The potatoes got a lot of attention, no-one else had them but quite a few people nostalgically remembered them from their parents or grandparents. It was very rewarding to feel the huge gratitude coming off people when I gave them just two or three potatoes , at least 30 people from all over Colombia took away samples of them to plant.
"We were accompanied by people from the Peace Brigades International as we were in an area which had been run by the ELN (National Liberation Army , the 2nd largest guerrilla force in Colombia) until they put an army base there. There were soldiers patrolling outside the school where this event was being held. I talked to a Spanish girl from the Peace Brigades, and was astonished to see she smoked; I couldn't believe how many seemingly intelligent people still smoke cigarettes. The criticism one hears about NGOs being parasites on other people's suffering was particularly clear at this gathering. An organization called Justicia y Paz (Peace and Justice) were part sponsors and organizers of the event, and I understand that they do a lot of very good campaigning, but you can't feel good about people who hang around so much, talking rubbish, smoking, with a halo over their heads and a middle-class unquestioning confidence that the poor dear peasants will of course continue to labour so that They may eat and live
"People presented theatre and music in the evenings, some awful, some quite good and funny. I longed for our Atlantis Green Theatre (see earlier Green Letters for many reports of this , ed.) and felt very nostalgic, they would have loved it. Towards the end of the gathering, I jumped up on the stage and did my rather strange dancing to music from a local campesino group and later got others copying me in a circle. It was a lovely mixture of people, locals young and old, very serious peasant leaders from everywhere, Indians in their traditional garb, the black Chocoanos who I got to try and teach me to dance their way as they are such beautiful movers, the Bogota PC lot ('politically correct'), a lot of nice camaraderie.
"The bad thing about the whole event was the organizers and their fascist prefects. It may sound like a cliché, but they really did need therapy, group and personal! The main problem I saw was that there was not one half decent leader type with vision. On the last night a few of the 'leaders' got into the most ridiculous long squabble over bureaucratic details of how to organize the official very boring document they had to prepare to report on the gathering; this was particularly awful because it took place in front of hundreds of very tired simple people who didn't understand the details and who just wanted to be brought together and led which definitely never happened. It was very bad form on the part of the organizers, especially as the obvious fact was that everybody there was in total agreement about everything: every single person was totally into organic agriculture, the importance of self-sufficiency, totally tuned-in politically, and the aim of it all was no less than the organization and mobilization of the campesino masses to protect and promote a way of life against the onslaught of a rapacious 'civilization' from outside. So there was actually nothing to argue about. Ned"
"We make war with our brethren because we are incapable of making peace with our
environment." Resurgence Magazine
Here we present a kaleidoscope of news titbits written by Anne emanating from our everyday dealings with Colombian reality:
A female lawyer friend has told me that often paramilitary soldiers are drugged when committing massacres, that many become drug addicts and are paid with drugs. She has talked to several who have asked her for help.
A woman friend heard from her aunt who lives on a farm in Arauca the following story: The paramilitaries moved in to her area and inevitably corpses started appearing. The aunt, who sounds quite eccentric, went to the nearest town, sat down to drink some beer, and asked the shop-owner to point out the paramilitary leader when he passed by. This happened and Aunt Alicia called him over. She said that there was no-one in the whole region who had not helped the guerrilla (ELN) so they would just have to kill everyone, starting with her. She gave her name and her farm and said she'd be waiting for them to come the next day and kill her, but she refused to live in fear.
She's still alive, and that was a few weeks ago (written 18.9.04).
A friend made me an appointment with a congressman from Antioquia to talk about army and paramilitary threats to the peasants I have worked with up there. So I rushed off to the Congress in Bogota, was stunned by the scruffiness of the place and the lackadaisical cops , if the guerrilla haven't bombed the place, it's because they can't be bothered. I was shown into a very untidy big beautiful old room full of silly girls giggling over cups of coffee and lots of greasy guys lounging about doing f. all. Then a very young man with long hair in a pony tail approached me and said he was the congressman. His handsome aide came with him and sat with us. I explained all about our community, - he had already heard of us - and I told him about visiting the peasant peace communities of Uraba and the army intimidation and murders there, and said I was going to ask him the impossible: could he please put pressure on the army to stop hassling and killing people as these folk were not guerrillas but good, strong, brave campesinos who just want to live in peace. He asked me for the names of the army personnel who were causing trouble and I sent him this information later by email. Then he rushed off to make a speech to the Congress. I asked his aide what political line they represent , they're Uribistas, i.e. support the rightwing President, who helped establish the paramilitary armies in the first place!
I said that was very interesting and could he please explain to me what anyone could see in Uribe. He said Uribe plugged into the Colombian lack of fathers by presenting a strong daddy image and that his fight against the guerrilla is very good. I asked as nicely as I could what about this media circus with the paramilitaries (pretending to hold a 'peace process' with them, when the government are actually behind them). He waffled, said nothing real, obviously supports them - and was very friendly. His main line was that the Left don't get their act together (not surprising as they all get murdered). I said please if he talks to the President soon would he ask him to stop these hateful massive arrests as I know several people who have been put in jail for nothing, even people who voted for Uribe and that it is really very counter-productive. He said he would! Then we got on to the subject of astrology and he said that the team that worked on the election of the congressman with the pony tail used the advice of an astrologer in Medellin to time meetings and find ways to work well together and he wants me to do his chart next week..
I was invited to the launching of Peace Week here in Bogota, an event organized by a lot of NGOs and Lucho Garzon was one of the speakers. His speech was very anti-war, anti-Uribe (the President), anti-Free Trade Agreement, but the main thing that kept the thousands of people in the audience riveted is that he speaks totally from the heart. He is a very good man, in spite of his garden bureaucrats!
I told a female lawyer at the Fiscalia that I had been to the San Jose Peace Community gathering. She was really interested and asked how the people in the Community are handling the violence they are faced with. Her attitude could only be described as leftwing! She told me of a video that was once made when Gloria Cuartas was mayoress up in that region, when they managed to film paramilitaries in the moment of chopping a kid's head off. I told her about Santos, Colombia's Vice President, getting a rough time from the community leaders when he went to visit and she couldn't hide her glee. She said that the path taken by the communities of resistance to all sides in the war is the only hope for this country, and that anything she has ever had to do with the army has her convinced that all they want to do is kill and that they have been very brainwashed. She told me that the communities' opposition to the state comes from very real grievances This woman is not a radical, but here she was speaking with great passion against the Government's official line in the Fiscal's office, the most rightwing establishment in Colombia! I said the whole country needs therapy, to learn to sit down and talk to each other. She said what it needs is more like a powerful exorcism as it is haunted by blood and hatred. Anyone still want to try and fit Colombia into a black and white box?!
After getting to know the Peace Community in San Jose, and the people from other communities who came and talked about their areas and how they are standing up to any of the armed groups that abuse their power, and after experiencing the more open attitudes of where we live now in Cauca and Huila, I realized that we began our stay in Colombia 15 years ago in one of the darkest pits of this country, the Icononzo area, where the people have never recovered from the fear instilled into them during the Violencia in the 50s and 60s, there were so many terrible massacres in that area. This fear has turned into permanent paranoia and the wall of silence we came up against when we began to seek justice for our murdered boys. I see Hoya Grande (the hamlet where they died) like a black hole where everything is sucked back in and kept secret.
A few weeks ago, I talked to the leader of the Committee for Political Prisoners about Icononzo and asked him if there was any hope or help for the people there to organize themselves like in the Resistance Communities of the north. He said No, the situation was still too complicated and the fear of speaking out against the guerrilla was too great, and now the paras have arrived on the scene as well, plus many innocent people are in jail as a result of the government's tactics of 'mass arrests'. There are no clear sides for the people to take as in San Jose where the army and the paras have been killing and displacing people for years so people have a clear vision of who the enemy is; whilst in Icononzo, it is all much messier because the guerrilla came in as saviours, worked well with the peasants for many years, and then Gonzalo, the brutish FARC commander who ordered us off our land and later ordered our boys to be murdered, arrived with his henchmen. He took over and wrecked the whole movement with his endless killings, which simply mirrored what the other side had previously done.
One of my starkest images of the earlier Violencia in the '50s comes from a woman called Rosita who lost her daughter in the Palace of Justice massacre. She was born near where we first lived and described seeing cartloads of bodies of men massacred by the paramilitaries of those days being taken away, and of people hiding out in the coffee bushes and getting caught and killed.
I was at a conference about political prisoners and speakers were going on about the awful conditions, which of course is true, but I had to bite my tongue a few times as I wanted to say that clean, organized European jails are much worse as they are more inhuman. One speaker said that many of the guards in the newly built American prisons where you only get to visit through a glass wall via a telephone are very ashamed of what they are having to put their fellow countrymen through and want to find a way to help the prisoners' protest groups! Now, that's Revolution.
"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"
"Naturally, the common people don't want war but it is always a simple matter to drag people along the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country." Herman Goering, Hitler's Reich-Marshall
"We will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming.. We need not
deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world
benefaction We should cease to talk about vague.. and unreal objections such as
human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization" George
Kennan, Head of US State Dept. Planning Staff, 1948 (quoted in "The
Compassionate Revolution" by David Edwards)
To our Readers: Your feedback or queries about any issues raised in these Green Letters is welcome, also requests to visit us in Colombia.
Write to Jenny or Anne at: atlantiscol@hotmail.com or to:
Comunidad Atlantis,
Telecom , BELEN,
Huila, Colombia,
S. America