Towards Peace and Justice in Colombia

Unfortunately, I have not been able to blog recently about what’s going on, but do expect more updates in the near future!  For those of you that attended the event in March at Maya Essence in Chicago, thank you so much for your support!  We had a full house of people watching the documentary Hasta la Ultima Piedra, eating Colombian food, and dancing traditional folkloric steps.

I want to especially thank all of you that made donations to Fellowship of Reconciliation, because this work could not happen without individuals that believe in it enough to give to it.  For all of you that wrote checks at the event, you may be wondering why your check was never cashed.  Unfortunately, the checks were lost in the mail on their way to FOR in Oakland, CA.   Apparently USPS is not as reliable as I had thought.

If you did write a check, and it has not yet cleared, please cancel it and rewrite it.  Sadly, there was over $1000 worth of checks in that envelope, and we are hoping to reach everyone to be able to replace the checks, but undoubtedly we will not be able to get to everyone.  If you are able to, please make a donation to FOR (you can put my name in the memo) and mail checks directly to them in Oakland:

Fellowship of Reconciliation
Task Force on Latin America and the Caribbean
436 14th Street #409, Oakland, CA 94612
Tel: 510-763-1403

I am so sorry for the inconvenience, and I really hope you can still make a donation to this important cause.

A much anticipated (at the very least by myself!) blog entry!

First of all, thanks to all that came to the Fiesta at Maya Essence in the beginning of March, and thanks to all who donated to Fellowship of Reconciliation! This program would not continue without your support, and this work would not be effective without a network of people in the U.S. calling for change in Colombia.

I am just now starting to settle into my new home in La Unión, San José de Apartadó and still training. The history of this country, this community, and this project are extensive, and the details numerous. I also still have a lot to learn about life in the campo. Like how to smoke bats out of your house and how to make a mop from old t-shirts, projects that are on my to-do list.

The peace community I am accompanying has an extensive story – in 1996 campesinos in the area were ordered by paramilitaries to displace from their farms to a local village. This is a strategy that all actors in this war have employed – to empty an area of its inhabitants and resettle it with their sympathizers. If a community is not sympathetic to a particular group, then they are presumed to be against it and scared into displacing (frequently the scare tactic is massacre). Within a year of the 1996 displacement, many of the displaced campesinos organized themselves into the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, refusing to take a side in the decades-long conflict and reasserting their right to live on, work, and control their own land.

In order to be a member of the community, one must pledge to participate in the collective work of the community, to not share information with any armed actors in the war, and to not carry arms themselves. FOR has a permanent physical presence of volunteers like myself in the vereda of La Unión, a community of about 40 families. We travel to other veredas to observe and accompany, but the community also relies on other NGOS, such as Peace Brigades International, to accompany the other veredas in the region.

The peace community is composed of members in various veredas (small rural settlements), some as far as a 14 hour walk from each other. The physical geography of the community has been fluid, as displacements have been frequent in certain parts since its founding. In 2000, 6 leaders of La Unión were massacred in a joint operation between the paramilitary and the military. As a result, the families moved for a few years. In 2005, the military was responsible for a massacre in Mulatos, another vereda of the community, and the families subsequently displaced. In the wake of this massacre, a police post was installed in the town of San José. The presence of a police post in the village violated the Peace Community’s principles of separating themselves from armed actors (who also happened to be their primary victimizers), made them susceptible to guerrilla attacks, and generally deprived the community of its autonomy. A large number of families that belonged to the peace community relocated to land a few kilometers away purchased for them by a Dutch organization. The Peace Community-organized return of a few families to Mulatos just happened a year ago.

In 2000, the Interamerican Court of OAS created Medidas Provisionales, which state that any means of protection the government implements for the peace community have to be agreed upon by the community (meaning installation of a police post, military patrol, etc.). In 2003, the Colombian Constitutional Court upheld these recommendations and dictated that authorities must follow them. This ruling forms the legal basis of not allowing armed actors to enter the zones, and international observers such as myself, are here to help enforce that non-violently. The community and international NGOs have been since working to gain the community the international recognition it needs to dissuade attacks by armed actors.

The basic idea of accompaniment is simple – as internationals, our security is generally something the armed actors (military, paramilitary, or guerrillas) want to assure. International pressure on Colombia to comply with International Humanitarian Law has been an effective deterrent; we try to dissuade actors both on a local level and an international level from causing displacement from humanitarian zones. When we travel, we notify the military of our movements; when we see violations of human rights in the community, we meet with army generals, as well as diffuse the information to NGOs, government officials, and the general public.

The displaced in Colombia number more than 4 million, a figure that surpasses Sudan, making Colombia the country with the highest number of internally displaced people. Colombia is also the largest recipient of U.S. military aid outside of the Middle East, and although the Leahy Amendment to insure that military units that receive aid also comply with human rights conditions was passed in 1996, the system is not proving to be effective. Half of all extrajudicial executions (illegal murders without proof of culpability) have been committed by U.S. assisted units that have been declared to comply with human rights conditions. The deep-seated fear that most community members confess to feeling when they see soldiers is a symptom of a long-time distrust of a government that seeks to control their land, and weaken their organizational structure. Furthermore, the purported purpose of U.S. aid to Colombia, to curb the drug trade, seems to be failing. Data recently made public by the Obama administration show that U.S. cocaine prices continued to fall through 2007, reaching the lowest prices on record, nearly 22 percent lower than in 1999, the year before Plan Colombia was launched. This data undermines claims by the former Bush administration that supply disruptions had achieved unprecedented cocaine shortages in the United States. (WOLA report, April 14, 2009).

What you can do:
The U.S. Congress is planning an upcoming reform of the Foreign Assistance Act, and now is an important time for constituents to voice their concerns about U.S. involvement in Colombia, and the prioritization of human rights. FOR is part of a national coalition planning a Day of Action for Colombia on April 20th. To see what is happening in Chicago and get involved, go to www.crln.org. Residents of the 5th Congressional District, contact Congressman Mike Quigley and urge him to recognize the human rights violations happening in Colombia as a result of U.S. taxpayer money, and vote to stop military aid.
Donating to Fellowship of Reconciliation is another great way to support this work. Email me at rachel.s.dickson@gmail.com if you have any questions, or to update me on what´s going on at home!