Edited and compiled by Jenny James, atlantiscol@hotmail.com,
Website: www.afan.org.uk
Postal address: Atlantis Ecological Community, Belen, Huila, Colombia
Book-site for books on Atlantis Community: www.deunantbooks.com
"It is dangerous to oppose our governments. It is dangerous to acknowledge our deep responsibility to people living in disaster. It is dangerous to risk our liberty and our lives in opposition to violence. It's also dangerous not to, and if it weren't so dangerous, it wouldn't be so necessary."
Ramzi Kysia, 'Voices in the Wilderness', quoted in Lepoco Newsletter, PA, USA
Today, 9th July 2005 is the fifth anniversary of the 'execution' of two 18 year old boys belonging to our Community, Atlantis. One was Irish, my grandson Tristan James Murray; the other was my Colombian son-in-law, Javier Nova. They were murdered by peasant FARC militia anxious to please their superiors, for the crime of visiting relatives and, in the case of Tristan, for having blue eyes..
Five years later, of the band who assassinated them, one is dead, shot by local people for so many killings, including the murder by poison of the relatives Tris and Javier were visiting. This elderly couple, who had been foster parents to Tris's half brother, had helped us to identify the boys' murderers and so they were killed too. Two more of the gang are in prison, one, Arnulfo Parra, was sentenced for 28 years, not for our boys' murder, but for one of many more crimes, the kidnap of some rich foreigners. Both still await trial for the assassination of Tris and Javier.
On June 24th 2005, Anne, who has done the bulk of investigations into these murders (as the Colombian State would never bother) sent the following snippet of information:
"I have just spent a few very fascinating hours at a national meeting of people who have lost family members to State violence. Each region reported their losses in the last year. In Arauca so far this year, over 300 people have been killed.. In the midst of very scary and interesting speeches about the paramilitary take-over of the country, the Director of the Committee for Solidarity with Political Prisoners approached me and said he had a message from Arnulfo Parra, accused of killing Tris and Javier, who is in the high security wing of Valledupar prison, that he would like to talk. A murder charge on top of being done for kidnap would keep him in jail for life. but what could he ever say to us?"
However, Anne will go to see this man, along with my daughter Becky, mother of murdered Tris, to put human faces and feelings to these tragedies...
"Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength." (Anon.)
In October 2004, one of our commune members, Ned Addis, went to a 3-day gathering of peasant people organized by 'Fensuagro', the peasant trade union movement. Here is an extract from his report:
"I listened to a talk called the History of the Campesinos' Struggle for Land in Colombia. The lecturer told us how the IMF, - or whatever the equivalent world-domineering organization of the day was called, - sent a Canadian 'adviser' to Colombia in the 1950s.
"After spending some time in Colombia, this person advised the Government that their country was completely economically backward and that the only hope for it would be mass displacement of the campesinos to the cities, which could only happen, he said, through War or some such disaster.
"Throughout the rest of the talk, the lecturer kept referring back to the words of this Canadian and showed that the displacement by War ever since of campesinos from their land has been a deliberate and planned policy of the government and in fact little to do originally with the guerrilla or paramilitaries."
Those of you who have read the last 3 Green Letters in which we gave details of the San Jose Peace Community massacre and its aftermath will be interested to read this (translated) item from the 9th May issue of Voz, the high quality Colombian Communist weekly newspaper:
"Amnesty International, referring to the San Jose massacre, has said that "it is one of those unforgettable crimes that hundreds of soldiers and paramilitaries have been committing with impunity for many years..The Colombian government, instead of making a public apology and making amends, has threatened repeatedly to terminate these Peace Communities by announcing that army troops, who have been systematically aggressive and homicidal, are going to carry out the military occupation of the lands of these villagers."
Not surprising then, that Anne reports: "I have attended a series of revolutionary meetings where about 900 indian, campesino and black leaders are planning how to mobilize to bring down Uribe's government just as the Indians in Bolivia and Ecuador have done. It is chaotic, but very good. The best are the women and the Indians. These meetings are a response to the passing of the ill-named 'Justice and Peace' law which recognizes the paramilitaries and their friends as the owners of Colombia."
At that same meeting, the delegation from San Jose invited Anne to go back with them to their new settlement to organize the rubbish and compost systems, and to accompany them through the Army checkpoints. Here is her report, written 5th July.
"I have just spent a week in the new settlement of San Josecito, ('little San Jose') where the San Jose Peace Community moved to when the police and army invaded their village three months ago. They left their comfortable houses to build a new settlement from scratch because they refuse to accept as their 'protectors' the same armed forces whose most recent crime, in a long list of crimes, was the massacre of eight members of the Community, including a baby and two children. They also moved out because they knew that the presence of the police and army was bound to attract guerrilla attacks. And of course it did.
"When I arrived there one morning, I just missed the last bursts of machine gun fire of a night-long battle between soldiers and guerrilla that left three soldiers injured and the people of the Peace Community shaken by a sleepless night of fireworks. The new settlement is less than a mile from San Jose where the army and police are barracked.
"I greeted old friends and got to know the new village that they have managed to create from zero in less than three months. It's built on a bend in the river, surrounded on all sides by forest, an idyllic spot. They have built over 40 wooden houses, each with a space mapped out for a garden, and kept dry by miles of drainage trenches and stone and gravel paths. They dismantled the cool, breezy, straw-roofed round hut that was their community centre in San Jose and moved it to the new village green. The dozens of pigs, chickens and mules are happy as there's more mud and more grass here and the kids love the river which has excellent rapids and swimming holes.
"After a day of finding my bearings, I figured the most useful thing I could do was sort out the rubbish problem as they are determined to recycle and make compost and had already dug two enormous pits for organic and inorganic rubbish. But many people hadn't understood the concept of refuse separation, so both were filled with smelly mixtures of plastic and rotting vegetable scraps, and one had flooded and turned into a malarial mosquito breeding ground. I don't know who invented this very bad idea of making compost pits, I suppose it would work in a desert where it never rains, but in a normal climate the pits just fill with water and make a horrid smell.
"The next day, I went to each house to talk to each family about recycling and compost and we had a village meeting about it. The following day, I started working with the kids as it was obvious that the adults were all too busy. I was a bit nervous about how they would take to collecting and sorting out the community's rubbish as it's not everyone's cup of tea. But I figured the best way to teach them was to actually DO it, so we borrowed two wheel barrows, one for organic and one for inorganic waste, and went to each house to collect and sort their refuse. The kids took about 15 seconds to become enthusiastic recyclers and another 30 seconds to figure out an excellent working system: we tipped out each bag of rubbish in front of the householders and showed them how they should have separated it into categories.
"After collecting half the village's rubbish, we began a new above-ground compost pile and collected lots of sawdust, horse manure and leaves and made a pretty, clean, odourless compost heap. I had thought I'd manage to get them to work for an hour or two at most, but they worked me into the ground until I suggested we finish the day with a swim in the river.
"Over the next days, when the nearby shootings and bombings allowed us out, we repeated the process with the rest of the village, and two young men made a corral around the growing pile to keep the pigs and chickens from dismantling it. A huge group of adults and kids cleaned up the festering pits, keeping one open for plastic and tins. Then we held a rubbish-tip meeting showing everyone how to manage the compost, and the kids decided to organize themselves into a work group and ask each household to pay them a small fee (about 10 pence) each month for their collecting service and I made a big poster to show simply which rubbish goes where. We also dug and planted a vegetable garden, cooked lots of good vegetarian meals (including some very high class Italian cooking from one of the International Peace Brigade men) and swam a lot in the river.
"Most nights were disturbed by the 'fireworks', so-called because the army bullets are accompanied by a little red light, something to do with differentiating between enemy and 'friendly' fire I think. For us, these lights showed how many bullets 'strayed' into the settlement. We sat around talking and drinking tea till the shooting died down. These people keep their sense of humour even in these situations and usually we ended up laughing at rude stories about who threw up/pissed/shat themselves during past bombardments. There is nowhere to run to in these situations as running into the forest would mean running into even more danger and being shot 'by mistake'. I asked them what plans they have for a direct hit. 'We'll dodge the bullets and catch the bombs and throw them back,' said one man laughingly, to show me how there is no solution.
"Adults and kids talk openly and naturally about their terrible losses in the past and their fears in the present. In the river one day, a beautiful little girl told me that she was 7 when her mother was killed and 8 when her father was killed. I asked her name. She is the daughter of Luis Eduardo Guerra, the Community's leader, who was murdered alongside his eldest son, Deiner, in the February massacre. His wife had been killed by a stray grenade last July. The little girl lives with her baby brother, four cousins, a few stray babies and her aunt in a one-roomed house. They cry when we talk about Luis, but the rest of the time, the house is filled with love and laughter. In February when we were struggling to get back what little remained of Luis Eduardo's body from the morgue in Apartado, another aunt appeared and wanted to take this little girl to the city 'away from the danger'. But she made us all angry as she would not even take the one hour trip up the road to San Jose to see where the little girl lives as 'they're all guerrillas up there', and she wanted the girl ripped away from what was left of her nearest family at this traumatic time and delivered to her. She could never understand the kind of love and real community that this girl is growing up amongst. She could only see the poverty and danger, which are real of course, but in the end they are secondary factors.
"This aunt's misguided attitude is common amongst people who don't know the community (or the countryside in general for that matter) well, as the powers-that-be in Colombia have deeply vested interests in making sure the guerrilla reputation sticks. This is because:
1) If it were to become commonly known that a small and utterly defenceless group of dirt-poor campesinos have managed to make an effective stand against the horrors committed daily by the state forces/paramilitaries (and by the guerrilla groups too, though less so), in spite of suffering terrible cruelties for doing so.. well, that would be really dangerous. As one man said, 'President Uribe says worse things about us than he does about the FARC'. This is true, because the peace communities represent a true ideological opposition to the armed, drug-mongering forces that rule Colombia more and more each day.
2) Calling them guerrillas ensures less public outrage when there is a massacre, as in 'ah well, who knows what those people were up to, they probably deserved what they got.' A woman here said this to my face and got rapidly educated for doing so.
In the six days I was there, the tension and pressure mounted daily. The phoney 'Peace Process' with the paramilitaries is taking place just hours away and the 'reinserted' paras, i.e. legalized killers, are to be sent to 'help' the police and army in San Jose. One angry policeman threatened that 3,000 were coming, probably an exaggeration, but 30 would be enough to cause real terror and death. Every day I felt terrified for the people I was working with for unless the open paramilitarization of Colombia is stopped, they have no future. They are all deeply committed to staying on their land, even if it means death. The only 'protection' they have are the voices and actions of support from Europe and the US. The men and women of the International Peace Brigades and the Fellowship of Reconciliation accompany the community as much as they can, but their lack of resources combined with the restricting rules and regulations imposed upon them, don't allow them to do as much as they would like to. So I would like to end this report with a call for help:
Anyone of any age who would like to come out here to help, work with and accompany these brave people would be welcomed. The company of foreigners gives great moral support and is a real buffer between them and the war. But you'd have to be aware of the following factors:
1.. that it is a war situation and therefore dangerous,
2.. that the climate, being hot and humid, is not easy for people from temperate zones,
3.. that the conditions of bed and board are extremely basic and as people are extremely poor, you would have to contribute towards your own living costs,
4.. that life here is tough and physical and the daily agricultural work is hard but gratifying,
5.. that psychologically you'd have to be patient, calm and willing to listen, learn and observe without imposing your own views,
6.. that you'd need to have a fair grasp of Spanish.
On the other hand, the gains of working with a brave and interesting community of true pioneers are enormous.
Anne then added a personal PS to her friends, not originally intended for publication:
"There are loads of things you'd like and a few I don't think you would stand, like the constant noise of the generator, much worse for the soul than bombs and bullets! I begged to have it turned off but they need it to be able to recharge the cell-phones that are a real life-line at times. The one night we did have it off, for my last night, we sang and had a much nicer, deeper time.
The other thing is the lack of toilets. I am extremely bugged by this whole subject and on my next trip will have to deal with it properly. Oxfam are financing two toilet shower blocks with septic tanks which are being built by local labour according to architectural plans, which of course no-one understands how to read, so they built the foundations to the wrong measurements and had to start again. In the meantime, the forest is the toilet. People do bury their waste well, and anything unburied gets eaten by pigs and dogs. So far I have gone under to negative reactions of disgust when I suggested simple earth closets, the waste to be used later as compost, but next time I will simply get a few hands to help me build one and start a toilet compost pile and use it myself if no-one else does! I think my credibility is now good enough to get people started on this.
The other hassle is the hot humidity, though after being in Remolinos in Caqueta everywhere else seems cool. Surprisingly, food is not an issue because all the Peace Brigade people are into decent food and there is very little meat available here; also the neurotic but likeable little nun in her late 60s who runs the visitors' shack is into healthy food too.
The other bugbear at first was the disrespectful little boys whose parents don't organize them and so they would listen to nobody, until they met the first fierce foreigner of their lives.. No-one could believe I got them working and obeying me so easily, and now I only have to glare at them to make them shut up and go away when they are intruding.
Regarding ideology, I admire very much the 'pacifist' stance taken by the Community but I am also very clear that if it were my family and community members who were being cut to pieces by the army/paras., I could not respond like the campesinos and Indians do, though their position is completely logical because if they were to respond by taking up arms, more of them would be killed or imprisoned, and the army would have the perfect excuse to invade their lands and displace them all to the cities where their lives would be hell. So their 100% anti-weapons position is pragmatic and it's what gives them a moral edge over the violent and corrupt State. Within the Colombian resistance movement there are many shades of 'pacifism' and only meeting the people and working with them gives an understanding of the enormous variety of positions and philosophies. This is an enormous subject as the label 'pacifist' is so easily misunderstood as sometimes it is used to mean apathy or fence-sitting or, worst of all, within many left-wing first-world movements, it is used to make it 'illegal' to express anger and rage, i.e. it's an energy-killer. But here, to take a pacifist stand means literally risking your life and that of your family and friends."
To add insult to injury, President Uribe is now trying to blackmail the UN and all media into never using the words 'armed conflict' to describe the Colombian civil war. Here is a translation of the response of UNHCR (the United Nations High Commission for Refugees) to this move:
UNHCR considers leaving Colombia if the government bans the expression 'Armed Conflict' - Robert Meier, UNHCR delegate to Colombia, said that no government can instruct other governments regarding the terminology they are allowed to use. He added that if the Colombian government makes a formal ruling on this, then UNHCR will have to consider leaving the country.
He was responding to a Colombian Government circular sent out from the email address of Luis Alfonso Hoyos, presidential adviser for Social Action, to all foreign ambassadors, representatives of international organizations and aid agencies.
Specifically, it stated that not only must the expression 'armed conflict' not be used, but also the following: 'non-government fighters', 'civilian protection', 'peace community', 'peace territory', 'humanitarian region or camp' and 'observatory of the humanitarian situation', amongst others. According to the Government, these expressions lend legitimacy to the illegal armed groups. In some diplomatic circles, this government memorandum was interpreted as a preamble to the exit of other international agencies such as the Office of Human Rights, refugee organizations and the office for Humanitarian Affairs, whose mandate is based on the protection of civilians in the midst of the armed conflict.
Sitting recently in the waiting room of the Colombian Embassy in Tulcan, Ecuador, on visa business, I was astonished to see two large colourful posters, clearly explained with cartoons for rapid popular understanding, being pinned up by the male receptionist. They were produced by UNHCR, the UN refugee organization, and gave exact details of how Colombians under threat and in danger as a result of the civil war, could apply for asylum in Ecuador (quite a simple process). Repeat, this was the Colombian Embassy! On the opposite wall was a photo of a lady I recognized - she was the very nice Vice-Consul official I was currently dealing with. She was sitting holding a man's hand. The man was President Uribe, the 'Paramilitary President', wearing as usual a smirk somewhere between that of President Bush's cynical grimace and Blair's hypocritical grin. Even after nearly two decades of practice, I find it hard to get my head round this one. Bogota Promotes Hunger.
Moving now from the beleaguered Colombian countryside to the awful city of Bogota, Lucho Garzon's leftwing administration of this city is proving disappointing in some important aspects. Anne reports here on the much-flaunted 'Bogota Without Hunger' programme, which the campesino agricultural union Fensuagro call 'Bogota With Hunger'. Anne works with Juan, the Secretary of this union:
"Juan lives on the run, though as far as I know, the most radical thing he does is organize farmers' markets - but it seems this is enough to get you killed here. Juan's Fensuagro union and their farmers' markets are a direct response to the hateful, un-radical programme that 'Bogota Without Hunger' really is: the official plan is to close all the city market places as they are 'dirty' and replace them with supermarkets owned by the big chains - their idea of food for the poor is date-stamped little packages of garbage from Carulla (the biggest chain store), which of course destroys any decent dietary habits that poor people, especially poor kids, still have, like drinking fresh fruit juice. So Fensuagro bring in campesinos from areas near Bogota with their 100% organic products, their musicians and their cane-sugar juice and they set up great cheap markets that are social events as well. I was with Juan at the last one about two weeks ago when he had to run off because he got a call that his work-mate Hernan Hernandez had just been arrested and he had to get lawyers on the case.
"I was invited by two of the more revolutionary women from Bogota's city council office to a meeting with a Spanish NGO to do with agriculture, and I met Eduardo Diaz who is head of 'Bogota Without Hunger'. The two women immediately started telling him about their plans to start a healthy urban-garden-supplied vegetarian communal kitchen as they privately rage about the official food-for-the-poor policies. Diaz went totally negative saying that price-wise this kind of communal kitchen would be impossible. The two women both just went 'hmmm' and smiled nicely at him and didn't answer as they have had so many confrontations with him. He got all awkward and left. Then they both turned to me and expleted and then asked would I take on the running of a vegetarian communal dining-room? I felt horrified at the thought as I prefer the garden type of work, but I said I would certainly help if they get the place and the equipment together.
"While on the subject of food, today our lawyer-friend Miriam (who originally dealt with our boys' murder case - ed.) said that she had talked to the US embassy official in charge of funds for reinserting illegal armed groups and had told him what I once said to her, that I would like to work with a small committed group of these people on gardening, to change their way of eating, and to hold therapy groups with them, and that he was really 'enthusiastic'. I cannot imagine working for the US embassy or working with paramilitaries, which is what most of the 'reinserted' are, but I can't help being interested. However, of more immediate practical interest was that she gave me 100,000 pesos (less than 40 dollars) to buy wire for one of the Moon Gardens (see previous Green Letters) as the local pigs finally broke through the laughable plastic fence around one of them the other day and ate the potato crop.
"And while on the subject of Bogota, the whole of the centre of the city now evidently closes down around 8 p.m. for fear of the roving gangs of 'reinserted' paras. that are being lodged there and who roam the streets attacking and robbing and buying drugs. Great peace process."
For the first 11 years of our lives in Colombia, before suffering our first enforced displacement by the guerrilla, we lived in the Municipio de Icononzo, which was where our lads were eventually killed. Icononzo has been much in the news lately as the Mayor of the little town has taken it upon himself to introduce a new law for his municipality against often life-endangering gossip about people - in fact this kind of rumour-mongering may have been a large factor in the murder of our boys: a loose word, conjecture, supposition or ill-feeling about someone, usually with deliberate malicious intent given the situation in Colombia, can lead to people being put into prison or murdered by either Army, guerrilla or paramilitaries, most especially now that this Government actively encourages people to 'tell on' their neighbours, offering large sums of money for 'information' leading to arrest for alleged guerrilla-collaboration. Needless to say, in a poverty-stricken country this is a licence to kill with one's tongue.
Here is a translation of an article in El Tiempo about Icononzo, headed: 'Prison for Rumour-Mongers'."The Mayor of Icononzo has established economic sanctions and even prison for anyone who, through their malicious gossip, casts aspersions on a person's honour. From this week onwards, anyone caught telling lies about or speaking badly of another person in the streets of this town may have to pay for it with up to 4 years imprisonment, in proportion to the type of gossip.
"This measure, strange as it may seem, is an attempt to reduce the risk of murders and unjust detentions of peasants who, as the result of pure rumour, end up being accused of being collaborators of armed groups...The new measure establishes that anyone who feels affected by 'bad talk' can go to a police station where an account of their complaint will be recorded. The Mayor, Ignacio Jimenez said, "At this moment in Ibague Prison, there are at least eight campesinos who are being investigated by the authorities after being accused of being guerrilla collaborators, all because of malicious gossip." He announced that this controversial decree will be read out in churches and community action groups, and notices about it will be pinned up in bars and shops so that no-one is caught speaking badly of anyone else. He ended by saying, "I am more frightened of malicious gossip than of the guerrilla or the paramilitaries."
A case in point occurred in our own house in Popayan, where some of the young people of our community live, study and work. Someone somewhere put the police on to us and one night around 10.0 p.m. half a dozen armed plain clothes police came to the door. Here is the report, translated from Spanish, of Rafael Loaiza, a Colombian boy who has lived in our community for about 9 years, who was arrested that night:
"When they came to the door, they said they had to investigate as they had received information that 'many boxes and other strange objects' were being brought to the house (vegetables from the farm?! - ed). They pushed the door open on Alice who was shocked and shouted for all of us as she thought they were thieves. They came in by force and began to treat us heavily; they pulled me away from the computer and wouldn't let me use it, the girls were very scared. Javier asked for identification from them; I was amazed at the way they intimidated us without giving any concrete reason, and I tried to tell them not to treat us like that, that what they were doing was an abuse. They got very annoyed and threatened Javier and me with arrest because we didn't want to shut up, and they tried to put handcuffs on Javier, but couldn't as he is so tall! But they got hold of me (Rafael is a short, dark-skinned Colombian, Javier tall and white - ed.) immediately and handcuffed me in a very violent manner, hurting my hands. They called a police patrol and they came for me, they changed my handcuffs, tightening them still more and took me to prison. They kept me there for 13 hours in a very small dirty room with four other men. They gave me no time to take a jumper or anything to cover myself with. When I arrived at the police station, they pulled my handcuffed wrists apart, causing a strong pain as if my skin was being pulled off me, they did it deliberately so that I would shout louder with the intense pain. Then they made me take all my clothes off, shining a torch on all parts of my body to see if they would find some sign or scar that would show if I was a guerrilla, and they said to me, 'Are you a FARC guerrilla or from the I.R.A.?' (This because he lives with Irish people!) Then they said to me, 'we have been informed that where you live they have found two grenades.' Then they put me in a dark cell that smelt dreadful and some hours later they brought in four more men and a tramp. Then it was more interesting as they all had a sense of humour and we could entertain ourselves the whole time telling jokes and imitating the actors in films, which was an idea of mine. Three of the men said they had been arrested for hitting their wives, the tramp was one of them. And so we spent the rest of the night until 6.0 a.m. Then they let three of them go and they left me 3 more hours with the beggar in the cell without being able to sleep for one minute. At around 9.0 a.m., they told the homeless man that a relative of his had died, and he started crying bitterly, so they let him go, and I was the last.
"During the night, Javier brought me a blanket but they wouldn't let me have it; afterwards, he took off his jacket and sent it in to me with two policemen. In the morning, he brought me some herb tea which I shared with the street man so that he would stop his bitter crying. It really worked, he stopped crying for a good while.
"When I got home, the girls told me that the police had turned everything upside down and were very arrogant with everyone, especially the female police officer. That is my sad story of what I had to go through because of the corruption of Colombian 'justice'. This was the first time anything like this had happened to me, so it was a very heavy frightening experience for me."
Here is Anne's account of one of her many prison visits:
"I have been to Combita prison today and feel very down. This is because Gerardo and Jose told me about the murders that happened here a few weeks ago. Two men were killed, very horribly, by the FARC who are the main power in that patio. One of the murdered men was evidently truly bad and was supposed to have killed people in La Picota (another prison), but the other was innocent. Five FARC men went into the cell of the two men, supposedly to tell them to leave the patio, for good reasons as the bad one was a drug dealer and was always pushing to be allowed to sell in the patio. Jose, the ELN leader in this prison ( i.e. from the other, smaller guerrilla force) was supposed to go with them to deliver this news, but the FARC men said 'don't bother'. They had weapons made of iron bars that they dig out of the concrete walls and then put sharp points on. They killed the men with these, just before morning lock-out and the guards didn't find the bodies till night.
"My prisoner friends didn't tell me too many details as they were so freaked out. The guards, by searching for blood stains, got two of the killers, but three are still there. I just listened and asked questions and had fits about the FARC and told them of the title you suggested for a talk on the FARC 'How Not to Run a Revolution'. Jose, being very political, was deeply unhappy about the fact that the reputation and respect they had built up as a political patio who resolve their own fights, keep out drugs and keep the peace without violence, has been destroyed. Edwin, another guerrilla prisoner who always sits with us on visits, got ill and was in solitary confinement from the stress. I met his woman outside later and she told me the nightmare details of the mutilated corpses, as she lives in the same house as the woman of one of the murdered men (not the drug-dealer), and she had had to go and collect the body.
"I asked what was being done, but they said they cannot say anything publicly as they are in danger day and night. I will try to do something through the left-wing lawyers' collective. All the better FARC people have been taken out of Combita to other prisons because they organize too many strikes but even so, Jose and Gerardo have managed to send messages to them to complain and ask for justice and control of these bad elements from the FARC themselves. It was a hard visit."
This is a translation of a piece of writing by 28 year old Gerardo, mentioned above, who is coming to the end of an 86 month long sentence for 'subversion'. His brother, with whom he was arrested, is a self-confessed member of the FARC guerrilla force and was sentenced to 76 months. But Gerardo, believing in justice, told the truth, that is, that he has never been part of an armed group. So he got 86 months for 'not confessing.'
"We are about 250 prisoners in the 5th block in Combita High Security prison, a mixture of political prisoners (from the guerrilla groups FARC; ELN and JEG and from the paramilitaries) and social prisoners (those condemned for drug-trafficking, money-laundering, fraud, rape and murder). Although I have been placed in the first group, made up of people directly involved in our country's conflict, my case is different. Outside these bars, I was never involved in any of the groups who participate in the armed struggle. Nonetheless, the socio-political conflict of our country can trap you at any moment. This is true of the social prisoners too, for although they've never been in the ranks of the armed political groups, they are also part of the war that degrades our society day by day. We have become as used to violent death as we are to our daily breakfast. It doesn't shock us to hear on the news that someone killed someone else just to steal their shoes or a few pesos, or maybe just to watch them die - that's what I've heard from some of the prisoners with whom I have had the opportunity to talk in my efforts to understand a way of thinking that I believe can be changed. Not only the social prisoners say this kind of thing but you can hear it from the political prisoners too.
"Obviously, they don't just talk about death and violence, but it is the most common theme. Our society insists on seeing us only as 'violent criminals' and because of that it shoves us aside and expects no improvement or change in our ways of thinking and acting, yet the spontaneous acts of some prisoners cast doubts on this prejudice: A thing that intrigues me is watching some of these people, for whom life has no value, each evening gather beetles and flies which they store in a jar or a bag so that the next morning, as soon as the guards unlock the cell doors, they can throw the insects to a small bird called a 'sirili' in these parts (a swallow). As the days have gone by, it has become trusting, knowing that there is always food for it here. So it perches on the edge of the roof waiting for the beetle bombardment which it catches as it dives. However, sometimes when it flies low enough, some of the prisoners try to catch it with blankets, but it escapes thanks to its speed, just like some people manage to escape the violence. In spite of this, it's there every morning waiting for its food.
"This kind of thing doesn't happen only with birds. One time when the guards took us out to the football pitch, the prisoners caught a little mouse which got through the guards' search hidden in a prisoner's testicles. Once inside the block, they kept it on a leash, fed it bread and water and enjoyed its company for 4 or 5 hours before letting it go free (anyone see the moving film 'The Green Mile' about Death Row - and a mouse - in the US?!) The case of the snake was different. They found it on the football field and kept it in a cell in a big plastic bottle with earth and air-holes until it was found by the guards on one of their searches and 'liberated'.
"In the search operations, the guards take away things that have no importance, but hardly ever find the extremely sharp stakes which prisoners make from iron bars that they manage to extract from the concrete walls. These can be used to kill people as happened to two prisoners who were stabbed to death on 6th January this year.
"The guards play hide-and-seek with us. We hide, they seek. Most of the time, we win and they almost always lose as these operations take place every 2 weeks and last 2 or 3 hours, so we have more time to hide things than they have to seek them. Of course they don't always go away empty-handed as they occasionally find a stake or other objects that are prohibited, like needles or money. But the game continues as the days pass by. Likewise, our lives pass by within these cold walls as we occupy ourselves doing one thing or another, reading, writing, playing draughts, chess and poker or some kind of cultural activity which never gets beyond a few jokes, poems and songs due to the restrictions that limit the entry of any materials that might help us engage in deeper and more educational activities. This lack of meaningful activity makes people feel so useless that some prisoners, both social and political, whose release date is coming up can be heard talking about how they'll look for 'easy money' when they get out usually by kidnapping someone.
"In my opinion, re-socialization should mean that prisoners are taught some kind of skill that will help them earn a living outside these bars and let them feel that they are useful within society. Here the 're-socialization programmes' are a farce, as there are no professional teachers who could guide prisoners towards real re-socialization so that they can reintegrate and help build a better society."
The 'committed'-song singing of the young girls in our commune leads them into contact with all kinds of people. Here is Louise's report on two people kidnapped by the Guerrilla for six months.
"My sister Katie and I were asked to sing for a family in Popayan who had had two of their members kidnapped for 6 months. The kidnapped mother and 27-year-old son had been released and had returned safely home. We were asked to perform for free at their house and we were more than willing to do so.
"When we arrived, everyone sat around in the living room listening to all the stories the mother and son had to tell about their experience. Their experience was horrific at times, but mainly they felt it was just a very long boring wait, and the worst thing about it was they did not know when they would be released, if ever.
"The mother said that when they were first kidnapped, they were taken into the mountains and forced to walk for days on end through the forest on muddy steep paths and sometimes no paths at all. Her husband was then asked for a huge sum of money if he wanted them back alive. The family is among the richest of Popayan, but that does not mean very rich, as Popayan is generally not a very well-off place and they could no way pay what they were being asked for.
"The mother, in her late 50s, said she was so exhausted from walking so much, that one day she simply refused to continue and sat down and said to the guerrilla soldiers who were escorting them that they could kill her if they wanted to, but she would not move another inch. She said, 'I have lived my life: go on, kill me!' The young soldiers, some of them just 14, didn't know how to handle her. So they all stopped and set up a camp and sent a message to their superiors asking them what to do. The orders came back the next day to build a place to lock the prisoners in until they could move again.
"The young guerrilla soldiers were aggressive, especially the girls, she said. They had all obviously had terrible upbringings, quite likely with a lot of physical violence.
"The mother and son were locked up and only allowed out to go to the toilet but always under escort. Their beds were on the floor and the room was always dark. They had nothing to read. They just had each other to talk to and endless time to think and worry. In order not to get depressed, they did loads of exercise in their small room. Then one day the soldiers announced that they were going to be separated, and the son would have to continue walking with them. The mother once again said they would have to kill her first, so they eventually allowed them to stay together.
"The guerrilla tried to force them to record a fake message for their family to say that the mother was seriously ill and dying. As usual, she refused and instead sent a message saying she was OK and not to worry about them and she said hello to each and every member of the family and sent her love. The guerrilla said, that's fine, we will send this, but we won't ever be letting you go.
"The son said the soldiers were constantly verbally abusive, especially getting at him for being rich and spoilt. The mother said she felt sorry for them, 'they are only children' she said, and she spent the six months lecturing them and assuring them they would never get the money they were asking for and telling them they were wasting their time and next time they should kidnap someone truly rich. She told them they would become the biggest joke in the Department of Cauca, trying to get money from a family like theirs who didn't really have anything.
"We were not told how, but in the end they were released. They had to walk a long way without escorts until they found their way out of the forest. They looked very happy to be home. The husband would hardly let go of his wife's hand as if she could be taken away again at any moment. We sang many meaningful songs about peace and Colombia and we made some friends for life."
"War is a cowardly escape from the challenges of Peace." Thomas Mann
a letter from Becky, mother of assassinated Tristan, in Ireland
"Two nights ago, I was working as a night porter in the local hotel. Part of this work was to have to serve drink to a load of Americans who had come over to see their cousins. I listened to a conversation amongst them arguing with English relatives over the war in Iraq. I was busting after three hours of listening to a lot of US crap - the English family were quite good and said they hated what the US was doing all over the world. Just before they all went to bed, I said, 'I am so sorry, but it is hard for me not to say just a few words before you go..'
"I mentioned Tris and Javier being killed as a result of the war in Colombia which is supported by the US. I said it is such a shame the governments of this world are dragging us all into bloodshed and war. I talked quite gently to try and say what I wanted, by bringing it back to the killings in South America and the fact that it is nearly always the poor and the country people that get killed worldwide.
"But oh dear, these guys were totally brain washed. They could not answer anything I said, but just repeated things like, BUT THE TWIN TOWERS WAS REAL! and: 'THE ONLY REASON THE WORLD HATES THE USA IS BECAUSE WE HAVE THE MOST SUPERIOR ECONOMY IN THE WORLD AND 'THEY' ARE JUST JEALOUS OF US.' One of them ran out of the bar as he said this to make sure he did not have to listen to anything else said.
"So relax everyone, the USA has to defend itself you understand, and so it is OK for them to carry on killing off the rest of the world. Oh yes, and one of them said to me very menacingly: 'And you guys are the next on the list to be got,' meaning the English as we are hated too. This is a very shortened version of a very charged evening, but scary to see the Americans and how they just love themselves.."
"If you have never heard of the War Movement, that is because it does not call itself that. Its specialist books need no specialist bookstore, they're at your station newsagents: War Machines: The World's Most Comprehensive Encyclopaedia of Military Weapons of the 20th Century; The Winds of War; Action Adventure for the Death Dealing British Superjet; The Screaming Eagles, 101st Airborne. Kill or Die! . Its films are at your local Odeon; its donations are our income taxes; its news is mainstream national news.
"Sometimes the war movement says to the peace movement: not only are you dangerously naïve, but you are self-righteously unjust too. Don't you know that we ALL hate war? To which we can only reply: 'You could have fooled us'. If the War Movement hated war, there would be no war.. or at least no CELEBRATION of war. Successful soldiers would not march in triumph down the street any more than successful hangmen would.. Military Tattoos, Beating the Retreat, The Royal Tournament, Trooping the Colour and open days at military bases would have all the appeal of day-trips around a morgue or sewage works. Remembrance Day, supposedly a day for grief over the pain and wastage of war, would be just that, and the politicians would lay their wreaths last, not first, behind the war-disabled, widowed, orphaned, not ahead of them, recognizing as politicians that war is their failure and nobody's triumph."
(With thanks to Chris Murray for sending this piece)
The Soldiers at My Front Door - by John Dear SJ, written late 2003, taken from Lepoco Magazine, Pennsylvania, USA
I live in a tiny, remote, impoverished three-block-long town in the desert of NE New Mexico. Everyone in town, and the whole state, knows that I am against the occupation of Iraq and that I have been preaching against the bombing of Baghdad.
Last week, it was announced that the local National Guard unit, based in the nearby Armory, was being deployed to Iraq early next year . I was surprised the following morning to hear 75 soldiers singing, shouting and screaming as they jogged down Main Street, back and forth around town for an hour. It was 6 a.m. and they woke me up with their war slogans, chants like.."Swing your guns from left to right, we can kill those guys all night." .
Suddenly at 7 a.m., the shouting got dramatically louder. I looked out the front window of the house where I live, next door to the church, and there they were - all 75 of them, standing yards away from my front door, .. shouting and screaming at the top of their lungs, "Kill! Kill! Kill!" Their commanders had planted them there and were egging them on. they had deliberately decided to do their exercises in front of my house because of my outspoken opposition to the war. They wanted to put me in my place.. Over the years, I have been arrested some 75 times in demonstrations, been imprisoned for a 'Ploughshares' disarmament action, been bugged, tapped, and harassed, searched at airports, and monitored by police. But this time, the soldiers who will soon march through Baghdad and attack desert homes in Iraq, practiced on me.
I put on my winter coat and walked out the front door right into the middle of the street. They stopped shouting and looked at me, so I said loudly, publicly for all to hear, "I order all of you to stop this nonsense, and not to go to Iraq. I want all of you to quit the military, disobey your orders to kill, and not to kill anyone. I do not want you to get killed.." Their jaws dropped, their eyeballs popped and they stood in shock and silence, looking steadily at me. Then they burst out laughing. Finally, the commander dismissed them, and they left.
Later, military officials spread lies around town that I had disrupted their military exercises.. Others appealed to the archbishop to have me kicked out of New Mexico for denouncing their war-making. I have spoken out extensively against the US war on Iraq and been denounced by people, including church people, across the state. I receive hate mail, negative phone calls and at least one death threat for daring to criticize our country. ..New Mexico is the poorest state in the US. It is the most militarized, the most in need of disarmament, the most in need of non-violence. It is the first place the Pentagon goes to recruit poor youth into the empire's army...
In the end, this episode for me was an experience of Hope. We must be making a difference if the soldiers have to march at our front doors...
Arise then, all women who have hearts! Whether your baptism be of water or of tears! Say firmly: "We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, For caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, Will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs." From the centre of a devastated Earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe our dishonour, Nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil At the summons of War, Let women now leave all that may be left of home For a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means Whereby the great human family can live in peace.
Private Peaceful by Michael Morpup, publ. Collins 2003. Extremely moving short novel for all ages set in the First World War
Israel, the Hijack State, SWP (Socialist Workers' Party) pamphlet by John Rose.
2 English pounds, from: SWP, PO Box 82, London E3 3LH
Brilliant historical analysis, including a stunning expose of Britain's bloody
role in the destruction of the Palestinian people, clearly shows the roots of
today's centre of the holocaust to come.
Web of Deceit: Britain's Role in the World by Mark Curtis, Vintage Books 2003, 7.99 English pounds. Clear, disturbing and temperature-raising facts of Britain's war-mongering activities since 1945. Vital reading.
And for those in America:
Vegetarian Voice a very readable quarterly magazine, Box 72 Dolgeville, NY 13329
"I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men." Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519
Looks like we haven't started to catch up with him yet.