The eight coffins, three of them child-sized, are easy to handle as they contain hardly any flesh, only bones. The people whose remains are in them were killed just a week ago, last Monday the 21st of February between 9.30 am and lunchtime, but the vultures, pigs and the humid heat made quick work of the corpses. That bit of this story is horrible, not a subject for polite conversation, but the real horror lies in who killed them, how, and why. It would be an insult to the animal kingdom to say that the killers and their methods were brutal or bestial, because animals don't kill like that.
I knew two of them, Luis Eduardo Guerra, 35, and his son Deiner Andres who was 11. Luis Eduardo was for many years the target of non-stop death threats from the military/paramilitary forces of the region, a brilliant and eloquent campesino leader and founder of the Peace Community who spoke out unceasingly against the persecution of his community by the Colombian state and military. "Persecution", what a weak and overused word to describe decades of brutal killings, 174 to date, and not one of the perpetrators arrested yet, in spite of copious evidence.
He was small and dark, and shone with the strength of his belief in his community. I met him only last June when I was invited to take part in the Campesino University of Pacifist Resistance that his community, the Peace Community of SanJose de Apartado had created. I'd already received an invitation by mail to help in a compost and garden-making course and was delighted to take part in a 'University' with no walls, no campus, no fees or salaries and no diplomas, whose only pass mark is that the practical methods of self-sufficiency in all the basic areas of life 'food, health, and education' be taught and put into practice in the communities and tribes of the participants, who are community leaders from all over Colombia. But even if I hadn't felt like that already, Luis Eduardo and Eduar, another leader, would have had me convinced within minutes, as soon as they began to tell me about what they have acheived, a rare patch of light in the dark confusion that is Colombia, a small group of campesinos who've decided they won't take up arms, won't ally themselves with any of the armed forces and and won't leave their lands no matter what happens, and who don't accept money from any NGO financing sources who try to use charity to control their actions. They speak out strongly and honestly all the time, whether to army generals, vice-presidents, ambassadors or in foreign parliaments. They know that while many at home and abroad admire them and support them, they are alone and essentially defenseless, a tiny island of peaceful cooperation in the middle of the huge and violent sea of paramilitary-run Northern Colombia. Often that sea overwhelms them as it did last week.
It is hard to get myself to stay seated in front of this screen as I write the next bit. Luis Eduardo, his girlfriend, Bellaneira, and his son, Deiner Andres, went to harvest cacao from his farm about 6 hours up the mountain from the village of San Jose last Friday the 18th of February. They were on their way home when they saw an army patrol lying in wait further along the path. One of the group, who cannot be named as it would put his life in danger, said, "Let's run!" "No", said Luis, "I've nothing to hide and anyway Deiner can't run well." Deiner was seriously hurt in August when a grenade left by the army exploded, it killed his mother and another woman and almost destroying his right leg and genitals.
The other person bolted and is still alive. Luis Eduardo, his son and his girlfriend were surrounded by the army, the 17th Brigade who are based In Apartade. They were taken a few hundred yards away and murdered. No bullets were used as they were strangled. The wire used was left, bloody, beside Luis corpse. They were also tortured and mutilated. Deiners head was found 30 yards from his body, it had been detached by brute force, not even a machete was used. It was found that Luis Eduardos scalp around the back of his head had been sliced through and then pulled forward so that it covered his face.
The young man who escaped hid in the forest for a few hours and then went looking for them. He didn't find them but when he got to a nearby farm he found traces of blood that led him to a shallow grave. That only half-hid the remains of the second family the army killed that morning. Around the house were signs of grenade explosions and inside were signs of torture with clumps of human hair everywhere. He sent word to San Jose. The Community notified the police and then 120 of them went to find the bodies. They had to guard against the Army dressing the corpses as guerrillas or otherwise manipulating the evidence to make the innocent look guilty. This is a very common practice.
They finally found Luis Eduardo, his sons and girlfriends bodies by following their noses. There was little left to find, most of the flesh had been eaten by vultures and pigs. At last on Friday the Fiscalia arrived in helicopters and exhumed the 5 bodies in the shallow grave. The bodies of the 3 adults came out in bits, as the soldiers had chopped them up using the campesinos own machetes, the blades were left nearby, chipped and broken from cutting through bones. One arm was chopped in 4 bits. The adults had been sliced open and their guts spilled. Only one man was killed by bullet as he had tried to escape. Another person did manage to escape.
The soldiers who massacred these people did not run, they felt secure enough to stay close by the scene of the crimes. And why wouldn't they? As stated above, they've never had to face justice for any of their previous murders and massacres. Just over the mountains in Cordoba is the protected area of Santa Fe de Ralito, a paramilitary haven where the 'peace monologues' are taking place. That's the cynical name commonly given to the talks between Alvaro Uribes government and his spawn, the paramilitaries. In reality the 'talks' are an attempt to legalize the paramilitary armies and all that they have gained in territory and power by murdering tens of thousands of campesinos and displacing hundreds of thousands more. The other telling nickname for this sham is the 'Santa Fe Reality show'. When confronted by local people about what they had just done, the soldiers didn't bother to deny it, and one of them actually said that the locals should be grateful (agradecidos) that they hadn't killed more.
That they tortured and murdered Luis Eduardo so cruelly is no accidental, one-off incident. Likewise the massacre of the three children of eleven, six and eighteen months. It is a clear message that the Peace Community must leave their lands or suffer more of the same. The paras are determined to have this beautiful jungle area at any cost for their 'agricultural reinsertion programmes' a.k.a. coca leaf and palm-oil plantations.
Two days later around midnight we finally managed to wrest the stinking, almost-empty coffins from the torturous, pointless, bureaucratic rituals of the local morgue in Apartade. Then we drove them up the dangerous, long, dark, bumpy road to San Jose. This was thanks to a brave local jeep driver who constantly put his life at risk by taking us up and down the road through the army and police checkpoints.
I wish we could have chained the killers to the central post in the big, palm-roofed, open-sided central meeting place in San Josè during the night of mourning. Then they'd have been forced to see the pain they've caused. Pain that can't be described with words. I wish they'd had to search for a way to comfort the young woman who clung to me for hours asking me over and over again why the soldiers had killed her sister, her brother-in-law and her nieces. He had managed to escape together with another man when the army attacked his family as they were eating lunch but when he realized that his children and wife hadn't managed to get away he went back to try to help them, saying to his companion that he couldn't live anyway if they were killed.
I wish the killers had to be present in the lush green graveyard when earth was being thrown on to the coffins. I wish they had to answer the sturdy 3 year old campesino boy I met running down the steep muddy jungle path with his family, helping to carry all their worldly possessions (mainly chickens, bedding and cooking pots) in a few sacks and baskets to the relative safety of San Jose. I was on horseback and he willingly took a lift with me. Before falling asleep on the saddle he asked me if it was true that the soldiers had cut the fingers and toes off the little children?
Maybe seeing and hearing all this would have stirred some deeply buried memory of human feeling in them. Maybe not.
12 members of 3 nearby families are still missing, we fear the worst.
This is an account of just some of the details of this massacre.
Any expressions of condolence and solidarity would be gratefully read and
shared. You might naturally feel that words are useless and impotent
against such evil darkness but I assure you that from the receiving end they
really do help.
Anne Barr.
** This is important information from Justice for Colombia **
This latest outrage is all the more disturbing for British people as the UK Government is continuing to train and fund parts of the Colombian military despite their constant murders of civilians.
Please protest in the strongest possible terms to the Colombian authorities
calling on them to arrest without delay the soldiers responsible and open an
independent investigation into the killings. Please also contact the UK
Government calling on them to immediately freeze UK military assistance to the
Colombian Army. Finally, please send copies of these communications to the
Peace Community address, cdpsanjose@hotmail.com.
Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos: fsantos@presidencia.gov.co
Colombian Ministry of Defence: siden@mindefensa.gov.co
Colombian Embassy in London: mail@colombianembassy.co.uk
And to the Minister responsible for UK relations with Colombia:
Bill Rammell MP: rammellb@parliament.uk