A Different Kind Of Composting: Colombian Communities in Resistance Meeting Reportback:

international | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Thursday October 06, 2005 16:35 by Anne

At the end of September a 5-day meeting of many Colombian Communities in Resistance and supporters from several countries took place in the pretty green hill-top village of la Union, which is at the heart of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartadó.

The meeting began with a memorial walk to the spot where 8 members (including 2 children and a baby) were brutally murdered and chopped into bits the 17th Brigade of the Colombian Army seven months ago, and to several other spots where people of the Community have been murdered by both the state and it’s paramilitaries and by the guerrilla. These ‘walks’ - in reality long, sweaty, grueling hikes up and down difficult, muddy forest-paths - were not just pilgrimages but also search-and-rescue missions for the remains of many victims who were buried in unmarked graves over the years. This should be done by the state as it is technically illegal for private citizens to exhume graves. But many parts of the Colombian state have a vested interest in not counting the murdered victims of this war against their own people, so repeated petitions that the State Justice system exhume these graves have fallen on deaf ears.

On the morning after our arrival the local ladies, who’d stayed up all the previous night to cook for us, handed us our lunches of rice and beans wrapped in banana leaves and three teams (over 120 people in all) set off on different routes. I went on the medium-short hike; we walked ‘only’ 6 hours to our base camp, a deserted ruin of a farm and school in the midst of spectacular wooded hills, a once-productive area where no-one lives anymore thanks to the constant paramilitary massacres and robberies. We ate lunch and left a team cooking dinner before heading down along the Mulatos River.

We splashed down-river for two hours through heavy tropical rain-showers until we came to an overgrown little path that led to a simple wooden cross, the spot where Luis Eduardo, his girlfriend and his son were hacked to death by machete. We gathered around the spot awhile in the rain and mosquitoes whilst, just yards away, men with spades looked for the remains of a young woman who’d been killed, by the guerrilla 4 years ago, wrongly accused of being an army informer. A young man who’d secretly watched the burial knew the spot – but he wasn’t with us. (However he went there next day and the bones were successfully exhumed.) In the dark we tramped back up the river, wet, cold, tired and empty-handed to our simple camp dinner. We waited anxiously for another team who’d gone to find remains at an even more distant spot; we’d seen rubbish left by a recent army patrol and heard shots in the distance, but at last, well after dark they arrived even more tired and muddy than we were, but safe and sound.

We bedded down on the earth floor of the wall-less ruin, clustered in small groups to keep ourselves warm. There were family groups of campesinos who’d come to find the remains of their friends and relatives; some Nasa indigenous people and their guards cuddled up comfortably in one corner, all laughing as they manage to enjoy themselves almost anywhere; groups of English, New Zealand, Canadian, Italian and US Peace-workers talking to Colombian trade unionists in another corner; two large Spaniards and myself under one little mosquito net; two young Colombian documentary makers; and a extrovert group of big black men from the Pacific communities who kept themselves warm by flirting with all the girls. Somehow despite the cold, the mud and the lack of sleeping bags, the tragic nature of our mission was transformed into warmth, laughter and new friendships.

Next morning we went to another spot in the forest by the river to dig up the remains of a young man, who’d been killed by a notorious serial murderer and paramilitary chief, el Cordillera, because he’d refused to run when they came to steal his cattle. He’d owned the ruined farm house we’d slept in. The men who were digging into the soft fertile soil talked quietly about the dead man, his family and their own narrow escapes from death. As the bones were uncovered, Javier Giraldo, a jesuit priest, talked about how death is not final. That kind of talk had always seemed too submissive in the face of violent injustice, but when coupled with this kind of active, rebellious solidarity, bringing the dead home to rest amongst their family and community and not letting their murderers tell their lies in peace, it rings true.

A few days later a crowd of babies were baptized and the remains of 6 victims were blessed and buried in a new memorial garden.

But how do we avoid more massacres for they are surely being planned even as we re-bury the dead? We received a report from a nearby lowland campesino community who have just been told they must sell their farms cheaply to the paramilitaries or die.

On our hike we were just a few hours walk from the specially-protected area where 21,800 paramilitaries have been quietly pardoned and legalized over the last few months without having to give any compensation to their tens of thousands of victims or return the vast areas of land they have stolen from campesino, black and indigenous communities, without even having to confess what they have done. One of the paramilitary chiefs currently in that zone was recently heard to say the area of San José de Apartadó is now his…... All of this means the real war has hardly even begun yet.

There are many good people within the Colombian state who quietly support the Peace Community but to do so they risk their lives and jobs. Meanwhile the US via Plan Colombia backs the worst elements within the state, the government of Alvaro Uribe Velez. There were many people from Europe at this meeting and I was deeply shocked to hear that Uribe Velez has a good image over there. As a lawyer told us at the meetings that followed these walks “The human rights situation here in Colombia is at one of its worst points ever but with a big difference from previous lows – this time most people think everything is getting better.”

Anyone reading this who has the interest and the time to help, please write to your Minister of Foreign Affairs and tell him not to support the most cynically titled Law of Justice and Peace which is being used to legalize the paramilitaries even as they carry on killing and stealing. ”. Please help get the truth out. The war being waged here is not against the guerrilla groups or against drug crops, it is against ordinary people who happen to live in areas of mineral wealth that are of strategic interest to multinational companies. San Jose has rich lands, water, oil and coal.

If you would like to inform yourself on San Jose and its history, you can look up:

http://www.colombiasupport.net/sanjose/whatis.html#Return

or

http://www.cdpsanjose.org which is in Spanish but also has an excellent picture gallery.

All the best

Anne