Padre Javier Giraldo responds to the U.S. government's decision to release military aid to Colombia

September 20, 2011 Colombia Reports & Amnesty International: "Since 2000, the US has provided billions of dollars in military aid to Colombia, making it the largest recipient of US aid outside the Middle East and Afghanistan. But, despite 10 years and over $8 billion dollars of US assistance, Colombia has failed to reduce availability of cocaine and Colombia's human rights record remains deeply troubling. Despite this, the US continues ignore human rights abuses in order to continue sending military aid."

Heartbreaking news reached us in the community this week: the Obama administration has deemed Colombia, “compliant in human rights” and has decided to release 30 million dollars in military aid. Padre Javier Giraldo, a life-long Colombian human rights defender and avid supporter of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado, wrote this response in the form of a letter to the U.S. ambassador in Colombia, Peter McKenley. The letter outlines various reasons why this decision is dangerous for communities in peaceful resistance as well as civil society in Colombia and respectfully requests a prompt reconsideration of the decision. I spoke with Padre Javier a few days ago about the letter and he mentioned that there is already an English translation circulating as well. Unfortunately I have not gotten my hands on it yet, and thus am posting the version in Spanish below. A PdF version can be found here:
http://i2.kienyke.com.s3.amazonaws.com/SEPTIEMBRE2011/Carta%20a%20Embajador%20USA.pdf

Do feel free to pass it on.


Bogotá, septiembre 20 de 2011
Excelencia
PETER MICHAEL MCKENLEY
Embajador de los Estados Unidos de América en Colombia Calle 24 Bis No. 48‐50
BOGOTÁ, D. C.

De toda consideración.

Hace pocos días los medios masivos de información registraron la decisión de su Gobierno de certificar como aceptable el comportamiento del Gobierno colombiano en el campo de los Derechos Humanos y en consecuencia desbloquear una ayuda militar de 20 millones de dólares asignada a Colombia.

Quiero llamar respetuosamente su atención sobre los sentimientos que tal decisión suscita en las mayorías desprotegidas, vulnerables y vulneradas de este país y en las organizaciones, grupos y movimientos comprometidos con la defensa de los derechos elementales del ser humano.

Es lógico suponer que usted ha jugado un papel de capital importancia en esa decisión, ya que históricamente la representación diplomática que Usted ahora ejerce ha incidido de manera determinante, no sólo en los parámetros de la política de los Estados Unidos hacia Colombia, sino también en la de muchos otros países. Por ello, al tiempo que me permito señalarle muchas realidades que quizás usted no conoce, también le solicito de manera encarecida que le transmita al Presidente Obama nuestra conmoción y nuestra petición apremiante de reconsiderar tal deci‐ sión.

En lo primero que pienso, personalmente, es en el efecto que esa decisión y esa nueva ayuda militar va a tener en la Comunidad de Paz de San José de Apartadó. Como Usted bien lo sabe, dicha Comunidad ha sido víctima de más de mil críme‐ nes de lesa humanidad desde su conformación en 1997. Este año ese accionar criminal se ha incrementado. Estructuras paramilitares que actúan en estrecha unidad con el Ejército y la Policía, quieren expulsar violentamente a quienes poseen tierras en el área donde se proyecta construir una segunda represa Urrá 2. Este año han asesinado a más de 12 campesinos del área de San José y continuamente exhiben listas de más gente para matar en inmediaciones de retenes militares y policiales, al tiempo que violan otros muchos derechos civiles de esa población y anuncian el exterminio total de la Comunidad, sin que el Presidente Santos se digne responder siquiera ni tomar medidas urgentes ante los clamores angustiosos que radicamos continuamente en su despacho. Usted bien conoce, Excelencia, los derechos de petición y las constancias de la Comunidad de Paz, que continúan siendo un “clamor en el desierto”, sin respuesta alguna. Varios líderes paramilitares de alto rango han confesado que ellos actuaron siempre con la aprobación y colaboración de todos los comandantes de la Brigada XVII, la cual ha gozado por décadas de ayuda mili‐ tar estadounidense, pero ninguno de ellos ha sido sancionado. Los actuales co‐ mandantes participan de la misma inmunidad e impunidad y la ayuda de su Gobierno sólo los fortalecerá en su accionar criminal.

También pienso en muchas otras situaciones dramáticas de los sectores más vulnerables, cuyos sufrimientos se han incrementado enormemente:

Las comunidades del bajo Atrato (Chocó), particularmente las del Curvaradó y el Jiguamiandó, han sido víctimas de nuevas estrategias de despojo y exterminio. Es cierto que la Corte Constitucional y la Fiscalía han tomado decisiones jurídicas pa‐ ra devolverles sus territorios colectivos, pero ¿qué efectividad tiene eso, cuando los empresarios y paramilitares que los desplazaron tan violentamente, ahora cuentan con el apoyo del Gobierno en su fuerza pública para invadirles nuevamente sus tierras y someterlos al terror? Es un hecho que la Corte Constitucional ha agotado las medidas jurídicas de protección para esas comunidades, pero el Gobierno no las acata ni las hace respetar sino que, a través de su fuerza pública, se une con los criminales para volverlos a despojar. ¿No cree, Excelencia, que la nueva ayuda mi‐ litar de su Gobierno, hará sentir a la fuerza pública más fortalecida y validada en sus políticas de apoyo al nuevo despojo?

Quienes trabajamos de alguna manera en el campo de los derechos humanos, percibimos con claridad que los discursos sobre una desactivación del paramilitarismo no corresponden a la verdad. Se quiere presentar a las estructuras paramilitares que actúan intensamente hoy en día, como agrupaciones de delincuencia común, sin objetivos políticos y sin relación con la fuerza pública ni con los demás poderes del Estado ni con la clase política. Pero, ¿por qué será, Excelencia, que dichas estructuras, con nuevos nombres, envían permanentemente mensajes amenazantes a los líderes sociales y a los defensores de derechos humanos, en un lenguaje de respaldo a las políticas oficiales? ¿No ha percibido, Señor Embajador McKenley, cómo muchas de esas amenazas se cumplen implacablemente en desapariciones y ejecuciones extrajudiciales, desplazamientos y exilios, quedando, como siempre, la autoría de tales crímenes en la penumbra?

Me angustia profundamente, Excelencia, que la nueva ayuda militar de su Gobierno fortalezca y le suministre nuevos recursos al Ejército y a la Policía para transgredir, como lo han venido haciendo, las normas del Derecho Internacional Humanitario en los departamentos de Cauca, Nariño y Putumayo, especialmente en las zonas indígenas y campesinas, desconociendo los espacios de la población civil; involucrándola en la guerra contra su voluntad; colocándolos como escudos contra sus enemigos bélicos; produciendo destrozos en sus viviendas y cultivos además de víctimas inocentes a quienes pretenden presentar falsamente como combatientes. Todo esto sin contar la violación de los derechos de los grupos étnicos a la consulta previa sobre proyectos que los afectan y destruyen su hábitat, sus recursos, su autonomía y sus mismas vidas.

Tanto la certificación como la ayuda militar favorece a un Gobierno que ha perpetrado en las últimas décadas uno de los crímenes más horrendos, de forma sis‐ temática y continuada, desde las más altas instituciones del Estado, como son los llamados “falsos positivos”, o sea, ejecuciones de ciudadanos inocentes, en su mayoría muy pobres, para disfrazarlos de combatientes abatidos y así dar una imagen de triunfo militar sobre estructuras armadas o delincuenciales, pagando grandes sumas de dinero y otras recompensas por tales falsos “resultados”. Usted bien sa‐ be, Excelencia, que esa estrategia no se ha erradicado; que continuamente se denuncian nuevos casos; que si bien la Fiscalía ha contabilizado más de 3.500 víctimas, la justicia no ha tocado ni al 1% de los victimarios; que muchos de éstos permanecen en altos puestos de mando, o si ya se han retirado, gozan de enormes privilegios; que dicha estrategia no se ha manifestado en “casos aislados”, como lo denunció el Relator de la ONU para Ejecuciones Extrajudiciales, sino que ha involucrado a casi todos los departamentos del país y a todas las brigadas militares. ¿Cree Usted, Excelencia, que es desatinado pensar que muchos “resultados bélicos” que su Gobierno ha registrado como “éxitos” que merecen ser premiados con nuevas ayudas militares, son, en realidad, crímenes contra la humanidad, de los que la fuerza pública colombiana ha perpetrado por millares, con la anuencia o tolerancia de los demás poderes estatales? ¿No cree, Señor Embajador McKenley, que la nueva ayuda militar va a fortalecer esa criminalidad tan arraigada en la fuerza pública, puesto que hay millares de esos crímenes sin esclarecer ni sancionar, dando pie para que se sigan perpetrando?

Supongo, Excelencia, que Usted no ignora que la estrategia paramilitar fue recomendada por el Gobierno de los Estados Unidos en la Misión Yarborough en febrero de 1962, con el fin de configurar estructuras mixtas civiles/militares para realizar atentados terroristas que no dañaran la imagen del gobierno pero que destruyeran a los simpatizantes del comunismo, tal como lo establece el informe secreto de aquella Misión. ¿No cree, Señor Embajador, que esa misma estrategia se está aplicando para identificar mediáticamente a las “BACRIM”? ¿Por qué será, Excelencia, que el Ministerio de Defensa se ha negado reiterativamente a entregar copia del documento EJC‐ 3‐10, aprobado por la Resolución 05 de 1969 del Comando de las Fuerzas Armadas, en el cual figuran los grupos paramilitares de “Autodefensas” en el organigrama oficial, alegando ante los tribunales que ese documento aún está en vigencia, a pesar de haber pasado mucho más de 30 años, límite máximo legal en Colombia para que un documento pueda tenerse como “reservado”?

Me preocupa también profundamente, Excelencia, que la ayuda militar de su Gobierno, la que el Gobierno colombiano quiere destinar en forma privilegiada a las llamadas “Zonas de Consolidación”, vaya a fortalecer esas zonas donde hay milla‐ res de tumbas anónimas, como en el municipio de La Macarena, del departamento del Meta, donde hasta el momento se han identificado varios centenares de sepulturas de NN adosadas a una base militar, cuerpos que según los pobladores han sido enterrados con violación de todas las normas legales, que exigen identificar a los occisos y entregar los restos a sus familias, incluso los de los combatientes. ¿Cree, Excelencia, que es acertado certificar, como garante de los derechos huma‐ nos, a un Gobierno que mantiene millares de tumbas anónimas por todo el territorio nacional, que están revelando la magnitud del crimen sistemático de la desaparición forzada de personas, que según organismos nacionales e internacionales afecta actualmente a más de 50.000 familias?

Al desbloquear la ayuda militar y emitir la aludida certificación, su Gobierno ha mencionado la Ley de Víctimas, como signo de una mejoría en el respeto a los derechos humanos. ¿Por qué no esperar a que dicha ley se traduzca en hechos concretos, no sea que lleve a un nuevo fracaso como el de la “Ley de Justicia y Paz”, que sólo produjo una sentencia en firme en seis años, cuando han sido denunciados más de cien mil crímenes? Usted bien sabe, Excelencia, que lo único que ha producido hasta ahora la “Ley de Víctimas” es la muerte violenta de muchos campesinos que han querido recuperar sus tierras, ya que la ley no se ha proyectado en ninguna estrategia de erradicación real del paramilitarismo ni de sus estrechas relaciones con la fuerza pública. ¿No cree, Excelencia, que a veces se quiere exorcizar realidades tan aterradoras como la colombiana, con la emisión de leyes que no pueden funcionar en el contesto real? ¿Cree sinceramente, Señor Embajador Mc Kenley, que puede funcionar una ley, como la “Ley de Víctimas”, sin un proceso de paz concomitante y sin una depuración muy profunda de la enorme corrupción que afecta a nuestras instituciones? ¿Cree, por ejemplo, Excelencia, que los tribunales administrativos de los departamentos, los cuales han producido tantísimas senten‐ cias corruptas durante décadas, ahora van a dirimir “en justicia” la devolución de las tierras robadas (como lo contempla la Ley de Víctimas) sin que sean profunda‐ mente depurados?

Pero la mencionada certificación y desbloqueo de la ayuda militar se produce en un momento en que la política económica de este Gobierno está dando signos alarmantes de desconocimiento de los derechos colectivos más fundamentales de las poblaciones más vulnerables. Las licencias de explotación minera otorgadas a numerosas empresas transnacionales, han activado enormemente el paramilitaris‐ mo y el conflicto armado y están dejando sin tierras ni recursos a enormes pobla- ciones pobres. La destrucción del medio ambiente y la destrucción de comunidades indígenas, campesinas y afrodescendientes que dichos proyectos están produciendo, levantan resistencias de todo género y hacen que la seguridad de esas em‐ presas y de sus proyectos destructivos sólo sean viables con la escolta de enormes contingentes de paramilitares cooptados secretamente por la fuerza pública y los organismos de seguridad del Estado, para lo cual no dudan en asesinar a los líde‐ res de esas resistencias. El asesinato del Padre Reinel Restrepo, Párroco de Marma‐ to, departamento de Caldas, el pasado 2 de septiembre (2011) es una muestra paté‐ tica de esto. También lo es el genocidio permanente que se está perpetrando en Buenaventura, donde los barrios populares y los Consejos Comunitarios aledaños al puerto, están invadidos de paramilitares apoyados o tolerados por la fuerza pública, quienes descuartizan con crueldad aterradora, arrojando al mar sus restos, a quienes se atreven a resistir al megaproyecto del nuevo puerto, que implica la expulsión de los sectores más empobrecidos e incluso la expropiación de terrenos que en medio de su miseria ellos han creado durante décadas sobre basureros, para poder sobrevivir.

Para que un Gobierno pueda ser evaluado a la luz de los más elementales parámetros de respeto a los derechos humanos, y certificarlo en ese campo, un punto fundamental es la justicia. Sin embargo, como Usted bien lo sabe, Excelencia, en Colombia no es dable actualmente esperar justicia respecto a crímenes de lesa humanidad que han sido perpetrados contra no participantes en las estructuras o ideologías políticas dominantes. Si bien se han dado unas pocas sentencias ejemplares en los últimos meses, ¿qué significa eso frente a los millones de procesos que repe san desde hace muchos años, cobijados por la impunidad y la corrupción sistémica? ¿Tiene, acaso, la “Ley de Víctimas” algún mecanismo de corrección de las estructuras de impunidad y corrupción de la justicia, para proteger el derecho a la justicia, siquiera de una parte significativa del 99% de víctimas afectadas por la impunidad proverbial vigente? Pero igualmente grave es la sistematicidad aterra‐ dora que ha ganado el montaje judicial. La cantidad de inocentes que son juzgados y condenados es enorme, debido en gran parte a la intromisión inconstitucional del poder ejecutivo en la justicia (“falsos positivos judiciales”), y en parte a las opciones políticas o intereses de todo orden de los agentes judiciales de todos los niveles. Hace poco un Vice Fiscal General calculaba en 5000 las detenciones ilegales que se producen por año. Los grupos de abogados calculan en más de 7000 los prisioneros que han sido privados de su libertad arbitrariamente, por sus maneras de pensar o por sus actividades democráticas. ¿Cree, Excelencia, que un Gobierno que mantiene ese desastroso panorama de justicia y de atentados contra la libertad, merece una certificación en derechos humanos?

No ignorará Usted, Señor Embajador McKenley, que lo poco que han destapado recientemente algunos medios de comunicación es suficiente para evaluar unas prácticas estatales que llevan muchos años, y de las cuales participó el actual Presidente, que revelan un desconocimiento radical de los derechos ciudadanos, como los espionajes de opositores políticos, de los mismos agentes judiciales que resultan molestos, de los defensores de derechos humanos y de periodistas no cooptados; la corrupción tan aterradora que ha caracterizado el sistema electoral y particular‐ mente la modificación constitucional hacia la reelección presidencial; la orientación de los organismos de inteligencia dentro de unos parámetros de verdadera criminalidad; la cooptación corrupta del Parlamento; el control de las elecciones por el paramilitarismo y el narcotráfico; los pactos entre paramilitarismo y clase política para reformar y controlar el Estado en función de sus intereses, así como muchas otras formas de corrupción que han hecho funcionar el Estado en servicio de las clases más pudientes y delincuentes, situación que sigue vigente en la medida en que la clase política no ha variado en lo esencial en sus mecanismos de control del Estado.

Es muy preocupante, Excelencia, que Usted ignore tantas cosas al asesorar a su Gobierno para otorgar certificaciones y ayudas militares que sólo pueden redundar en mayor violación de los derechos humanos. Quizás Usted, Señor Embajador McKenley, se rige por lo que en Colombia informan los medios masivos de comunicación o los mismos integrantes de la clase política que ha tolerado de manera tan indolente tantas atrocidades. ¿Cuándo ha comprobado Usted, por ejemplo, que las atrocidades perpetradas contra la Comunidad de Paz de San José de Apartadó, sean denunciadas en algún periódico o medio masivo de información? Quizás algunas han sido reseñadas en el diario El Colombiano, cuando le sirven de ocasión para calumniar a la Comunidad, a través de alguno de sus columnistas avezados en la mentira. El derecho a una información objetiva y el derecho a la verdad, no sólo son derechos desconocidos sino que son la clave para mantener situaciones que contradicen toda ética y todo principio de humanidad. Por ello le aconsejo, Excelencia, discernir muy bien sus fuentes de información.

Finalmente le reitero mi petición formal de que le transmita al Presidente Obama mi rechazo ético a su decisión y mi petición apremiante de que la reconsidere.

Respetuosamente,
Javier Giraldo Moreno, S. J.

Que Bonita es esta Vida

The first week of August, I met Jon in Medellin (8 hours by bus from Apartado) to accompany the ACA (see website under “online resources”) to Cauca. Cauca is a department in Southern Colombia which, according to many of my internet blasts that particular week, seemed to be up in flames with FARC attacks. Before we got on the road (beautiful and Pan-Americanly paved) we had a night in Medellin where we stayed with friends from the RED Juvenil(see website under “online resources”). The RED Juvenil blew my mind with their space (terrace over-looking city, office of murals and posters of body art, direct actions and pretty magazines and pamphlets for my viewing pleasure; their work and their passion). Over the accompaniment ACA would also wiggle its way into my heart. Jon and I strolled city streets and ate city food and wore city clothes. I was pretty giddy.

ACA is based in Medeliln, but is made for campesinos. At the bus station I accompanied her to the bathroom. I had to show her how to turn on the faucet. How to dispense the soap. She said she felt “dumb.” I told her I washed my clothes in the clean water of the pila once. She laughed and said there was no way that was true- that would be “really dumb.”

Then we went to Santander de Quilichao on our way to the indigenous community of Guabito where we were to accompany the end few days of a two week documentary film festival. Santander was a typical Latin American town with a central plaza and flowers and people strolling and heat that wasn’t so hot. Santander had a gigantic Saman tree on a park with which I made a pending date for someday. In the 20K between Santander and Guabito there were three military checkpoints. In Guabito, we slept on the floor of a school. We were back in the campo (although, the campo just 20k off the PanAmerican has things like fridges and cookies- hurrah!). The festival was the first annual in honor of Rodolfo Maya, an indeginous Nasa murdered last fall and a member of the school for media within the community. People came from many communities- indigenous and campesino, academic and international- to participate in the festival. The documentaries covered community resistance to everything from the Fair Trade Agreement and multinationals to mines and racism within the country, from the medias representation of the war to capitalism and neoliberalism, social conflict, dams, palm oil and land. So much resistance to so much violence. During the two week festival 6 people were killed within a couple miles of the site where we were. There was a photo exhibition. The pictures were hung up on the school wall in such a fashion that children played hopscotch next to a picture of a non-detinated mine and woman carried candles next to a rifle shell in a stalk of sugar cane.

Before we had a place to sleep a young woman from Uraba said, “we look like a bunch of displaced people, standing around here with our bags and looking for a place to rest.” Everyone laughed. Later when people were introducing themselves and sharing their struggles she spoke so eloquently over the microphone:

“Every time we left our house there would be another dead person on the path. My mom would say, ‘I’m going to the market,’ and we wouldn’t know if she would come back. I was ten when we displaced in 1997. When the paramilitaries came, they burned everything and killed everyone. My mom and I made it out on the last bus. 500 of us from the zone came to Medellin. I will never forget when I got there and the media was representing the massacre. The TV said it was a battle between the FARC and state forces. But I was there and the people they killed were not guerrilleros. They were campesinos. They were my family and my friends and my neighbors. That’s why I want to work in alternative media. I want the true story to be told.”

A U.S. anthropologist who works in Guatemala talked about the indigenous resistance there and I was transported back to those communities. Looking into those eyes and remembering those stories.

As people spoke, I wrote. Story after story of death and displacement. Story after story of defeat turning the defeated into a Phoenix of resistance. Defeat transforming into purpose. In the end everyone called their projects, “projects for life.” There could be no better cause.

After the festival ended there was a memorial for Rodolfo. They created the spine of his life out of flowers and sticks and foods and candles. People spoke about him in the candlelight. His wife and mother made me cry. How hard it is for communities in resistance to lose their leaders. For mothers to lose their children. For wives to lose their husbands. After the memorial there was a graduation from the media school. Rodolfo’s six year old daughter accepted his diploma.
And after the graduation there was a dance because, like my grandma always says when she reflects on those who have died before her, “life is for the living.”

To get back to Santander we sat on the top of a bus which looked like something out of the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test- painted all sorts of colors and full to the brim with double the capacity of passangers on top of leftover food from the festival, sound equipment, tents and garbage cans reaking of chicha. The sun was out and the lowlands of cauca looked like the Midwest. For a moment I thought the sugarcane could be corn. That I could be hitch-hiking home from a summer music festival.

In Santander I lay on the ground under the Saman as the sun went down. It was an ecosystem all its own at that hour, with the birds coming in for the night. Its sprawling branches completely blanketed me from the sky and it was just through the highest tiniest twigs that I could see the moon coming up in the half-lit sky. I felt its roots cradling me under the ground and I felt so at peace. As we were walking to the bus terminal Jon said: “It’s hard to believe there is so much violence here.”

I puked the first half of the busride through the bluegreen Andes from Medellin back to Apartado. Eventually I insisted on practically sitting on the driver’s lap in order to be in the front seat. He was not into it, but eventually gave into my requests. It is in situations like this that my “I’m a gringo, I’m crazy, make me happy” card is so very handy. Once in the front seat and led nauseated, I reflected on the amazing organization of the Nasa communities in Cauca. I felt inspired.

I got home just in time for 15 ex-FOR volunteers to come for a reunion in La Union. The town was overtaken by gringos. The group was amazing and wonderful and the town was bursting at the seams to see them and talk to them. Even Soila was in rare form, modeling underwear from the second story of her half torn-down home. In an unfortunate incident, juice was made for said group with unfiltered water and every last one of us fell ill. The morning they were to go down one of them came to the house and said in Spanish, “My poo came out like hot chocolate this morning- anyone want some?” Oh, expat-stomachworm-campo humor.

After being left alone multiple times in the community over the last six weeks, I feel I have bonded well with my neighbors. I have reached a point of tasty marination in the pot of community dynamics. I now have cookies and milk offered to me. I have friends who come over to play late night cards. I feel like I am getting to know people.

And then, just like that, I hear a crazy story about a neighbor I thought I knew so well. It was about the time he was almost shot at point blank range. And I thought of Cristina Garcia who wrote, “We only hold partial knowledge of each other. We are lucky to get a shred of the dark exploding whole.”

One night while playing hide and seek in our house a little boy fell asleep between the mattresses in the extra bedroom. In the morning he woke us up trying to get out of the house.

When the light went out for five days straight, I eventually ran out of candles. Pure darkness.

A baby was born in the late night storm. I donated medical tape for the umbilical cord and held the youngest human being I have ever held in my life.

I have taken to running on the soccer field in the pouring rain.

Emily and I have officially learned how to wash clothes. Chemicals are key. After multiple test runs (ahem, five months of washing) a neighbor smelled my pants and said, “now that’s a miracle.” In related news of neighbors feeling comfortable enough to tell the truth, I bleached the backpack I wore on the camino after a boy helped me carry it up the hill and then confessed it smelled, “like ass” and could used to be washed.

After 5 seconds of deshelling corn with a ten pound wooden masher, I have a blister. It will probably scar because my skin can’t heal in the tropics. I say this while staring at a scar on the back of my hand that I got in the tropics of Guatemala in 2003- from a wound no deeper than a paper cut.

We have taken some walks. We walked across a canyon to buy cheese from a neighbor. We walked into the jungle to gather flowers for the ExVolunteers. We walked up to see the water tanks. Riverbeds and jungle vines. Overviews and slippery mud. In the jungle I feel so alive, perhaps because everything else is. It is good to go out and walk. Remind ourselves that we actually live in the jungle, it’s just that they machete streets one and two and keep the grass low in the town. Just on the otherside of the soccer field, you run into the wall of a wild tropical jungle. And I do love trees.

The garden is still flourishing, although our tobacco and tomato plants have a worm the size of a horse eating away. The squash is taking over the yard, but providing fruit so we are cool with it. Emily and I have also taken to tanning in the garden- an activity that may be considered dando papaya. This could have a literal meaning if anyone brings it up, as the papaya tree is also right there.

Martin spent his last week on the guitar. He went house to house to sing this vallenato hit. It rang out in La Union day and night for a week: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQWrN4ETI2A

I moved into Martin’s room. There are rats and bats. I got knee deep in chlorine and reorganized the furniture. I am still adjusting and still waking up really early. I like seeing the pale pinks in the sunrise give way to the mauves and then the blues.

Elisabeth arrived. We had a welcome party with flowers and bunuelos and chocolate and dancing. Now she is adjusting to life here. Aren’t we all. All the time.

The day they buried the body, I went up to the kiosk alone. I could see the cementary far below me in the distance. I was writing after the funeral party retreated and while a few neighbors stayed to finish the burial. I wrote to the sound of them pounding in nails. I heard dirt hitting the coffin. And men laughing as they rested from their work.

I have never lived in a small town. I am finding it interesting.

When the tropical storms come, the thunder comes rolling down the mountain so loud and so hard and I just wish there was a way to describe it. It is awesome.

While Jeff Buckley sang, I wrote about how there was nowhere else I am supposed to be. About how people everywhere think we are different, but really we are all just one extension of each other through space and time. In that moment I felt both as through I were always meant to be here and that I will never recover from it. Looking back through my journal I realize that same evening I missed my 10 year highschool reunion. Oh, the places you’ll go. Eventually during my writing hour Jeff Buckley’s Grace transitioned to Paul Simon’s Graceland. These are the days of miracles and wonder.

In other news:

Please take the time to send in the photo and letter for our Land you Love campaign, which I posted earlier today.

Also, some recent press can not go without note. Both The Washington Post article (far) below as well as the wikileaks documents links were forwarded to me. Much of the wikileaks have to do with the (still pending) investigation into the 2005 masacre. For those of you who are interested and have faster internet connection than I do, please forward me those you think are of note.

Wikileaks:
http://wikileaks.org/cable/2005/03/05BOGOTA1918.html2005-03-01 MASSACRE OF 13 PERSONS IN URABA AREA
http://wikileaks.org/cable/2005/03/05BOGOTA1999.html
2005-03-02 PEACE COMMUNITY COMMISSION FINDS NO THIRD MASSACRE SITE
http://wikileaks.org/cable/2005/03/05BOGOTA2156.html
2005-03-04 REINSERTED GUERRILLA CLAIMS FARC RESPONSIBLE FOR MASSACRE IN URABA REGION
http://wikileaks.org/cable/2005/03/05BOGOTA2348.html
2005-03-10 PBI REPRESENTATIVES CONFIRM PEACE COMMUNITY WILL NOT SPEAK TO FISCALIA INVESTIGATORS
http://wikileaks.org/cable/2005/03/05BOGOTA2619.html
2005-03-18 AMBASSADOR MEETS WITH PEACE COMMUNITY ABOUT URABA MASSACRE
http://wikileaks.org/cable/2005/03/05BOGOTA2674.html
2005-03-22 GOC OFFICIALS DISCUSS URABA MASSACRE CASE
http://wikileaks.org/cable/2005/04/05BOGOTA3361.html
2005-04-12 INTERNATIONAL DELEGATION VISITS SAN JOSE DE APARTADO
http://wikileaks.org/cable/2005/04/05BOGOTA3843.html
2005-04-21 FISCALIA CONTINUES ITS INVESTIGATION INTO URABA MASSACRE
http://wikileaks.org/cable/2005/05/05BOGOTA4973.html
2005-05-24 PEACE COMMUNITY CONTINUES PUBLIC RELATIONS OUTREACH
http://wikileaks.org/cable/2010/02/10BOGOTA233.html
2010-02-12 2005 MASSACRE TRIAL DELAYED AGAIN, DEFENDANTS WILL NOT BE RELEASED

Washington Post Article:
U.S. aid implicated in abuses of power in Colombia
By Karen DeYoung and Claudia J. Duque, Published: August 20

The Obama administration often cites Colombia’s thriving democracy as proof that U.S. assistance, know-how and commitment can turn around a potentially failed state under terrorist siege.

The country’s U.S.-funded counterinsurgency campaign against a Marxist rebel group — and the civilian and military coordination behind it — are viewed as so successful that it has become a model for strategy in Afghanistan.

But new revelations in long-running political scandals under former president Alvaro Uribe, a close U.S. ally throughout his eight-year tenure, have implicated American aid, and possibly U.S. officials, in egregious abuses of power and illegal actions by the Colombian government under the guise of fighting terrorism and drug smuggling.

American cash, equipment and training, supplied to elite units of the Colombian intelligence service over the past decade to help smash cocaine-trafficking rings, were used to carry out spying operations and smear campaigns against Supreme Court justices, Uribe’s political opponents and civil society groups, according to law enforcement documents obtained by The Washington Post and interviews with prosecutors and former Colombian intelligence officials.
The revelations are part of a widening investigation by the Colombian attorney general’s office against the Department of Administrative Security, or DAS. Six former high-ranking intelligence officials have confessed to crimes, and more than a dozen other agency operatives are on trial. Several of Uribe’s closest aides have come under scrutiny, and Uribe is under investigation by a special legislative commission.

U.S. officials have denied knowledge of or involvement in illegal acts committed by the DAS, and Colombian prosecutors have not alleged any American collaboration. But the story of what the DAS did with much of the U.S. aid it received is a cautionary tale of unintended consequences. Just as in Afghanistan and other countries where the United States is intensely focused on winning counterterrorism allies, some recipients of aid to Colombia clearly diverted it to their own political agendas.

For more than a decade, under three administrations, Colombia has been Washington’s closest friend in Latin America and the biggest recipient of military and economic assistance — $6 billion during Uribe’s 2002-10 presidency. The annual total has fallen only slightly during the Obama administration, to just over a half-billion dollars in combined aid this year.
Although significant gains were made against the rebels and drug-trafficking groups, former high-ranking intelligence agents say the DAS under Uribe emphasized political targets over insurgents and drug lords. The steady flow of new revelations has continued to taint Colombia’s reputation, even as a government led by Uribe’s successor and former defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, has pledged to replace the DAS with a new intelligence agency this fall.
Prosecutors say the Uribe government wanted to “neutralize” the Supreme Court because its investigative magistrates were unraveling ties between presidential allies in the Colombian congress and drug-trafficking paramilitary groups. Basing their case on thousands of pages of DAS documents and the testimony of nine top former DAS officials, the prosecutors say the agency was directed by the president’s office to collect the banking records of magistrates, follow their families, bug their offices and analyze their court rulings.

“All the activity mounted against us — following us, intercepting our telephones — had one central purpose, to intimidate us,” said Ivan Velasquez, the court’s lead investigative magistrate and a primary target of the DAS surveillance.

Gustavo Sierra, the imprisoned former DAS chief of analysis, who reviewed intelligence briefs that were sent to the presidency, said that targeting the court “was the priority” for the DAS under Uribe.

“They hardly ever gave orders against narco-trafficking or guerrillas,” Sierra said in an interview.

Resources and guidance
Some of those charged or under investigation have described the importance of U.S. intelligence resources and guidance, and say they regularly briefed embassy “liaison” officials on their intelligence-gathering activities. “We were organized through the American Embassy,” said William Romero, who ran the DAS’s network of informants and oversaw infiltration of the Supreme Court. Like many of the top DAS officials in jail or facing charges, he received CIA training. Some were given scholarships to complete coursework on intelligence-gathering at American universities.

Romero, who has accepted a plea agreement from prosecutors in exchange for his cooperation, said in an interview that DAS units depended on U.S.-supplied computers, wiretapping devices, cameras and mobile phone interception systems, as well as rent for safe houses and petty cash for gasoline. “We could have operated” without U.S. assistance, he said, “but not with the same effectiveness.”

One unit dependent on CIA aid, according to the testimony of former DAS officials in depositions, was the National and International Observations Group.
Set up to root out ties between foreign operatives and Colombian guerrillas, it turned its attention to the Supreme Court after magistrates began investigating the president’s cousin, then-Sen. Mario Uribe, said a former director, German Ospina, in a deposition to prosecutors. The orders came “from the presidency; they wanted immediate results,” Ospina told prosecutors.
Another unit that operated for eight months in 2005, the Group to Analyze Terrorist Organization Media, assembled dossiers on labor leaders, broke into their offices and videotaped union activists. The United States provided equipment and tens of thousands of dollars, according to an internal DAS report, and the unit’s members regularly met with an embassy official they remembered as “Chris Sullivan.”

“When we were advancing on certain activities, he would go to see how we were advancing,” Jose Gabriel Jimenez, a former analyst in the unit, said during a court hearing.

The CIA declined to comment on any specific allegations or the description of its relationship with the DAS provided by Colombian officials. “The three letters CIA get thrown into the mix on a lot of things, and by a lot of people. That doesn’t mean that allegations about the agency are anything more than that,” said a U.S. intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

As initial DAS revelations emerged in the Colombian media during late summer 2009, then-U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield called an embassy-wide meeting and asked which U.S. agencies represented were working with the DAS, according to a secret State Department cable released by WikiLeaks. Representatives from eight agencies raised their hands — including the CIA, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service. All agencies, Brownfield reported in the Sept. 9 cable, “reaffirmed that they had no knowledge of or connection to the illegal activity and agreed to continue reducing their exposure to the agency.”
Brownfield, in subsequent meetings with Uribe and other officials, urged the government to get out in front of the disclosures and warned that they could compromise the U.S.-Colombia partnership.

“If another DAS scandal erupted, our Plan B was to terminate all association with DAS. Immediately,” Brownfield reported telling Francisco Santos, Uribe’s vice president, and DAS Director Felipe Munoz on Sept. 16, 2009.

Still, the relationship continued for an additional seven months. In April 2010, Brownfield announced that all U.S. funds previously directed to the DAS would henceforth go to Colombia’s national police. Today, the 51-year-old DAS, with 6,000 employees, multiple roles and an annual budget of $220 million, still limps along. But Munoz has been under investigation, as have four other former DAS directors.

Uribe, speaking through his lawyer, Jaime Granados, declined a request for an interview. But the former president has denied that he oversaw illegal activities and said officials from his government were being persecuted politically. Four of his top aides are under investigation, and his chief of staff, Bernardo Moreno, is jailed and awaiting trial on conspiracy and other charges.

Years of trouble
Interviews with former U.S. officials and evidence surfacing in the DAS investigation show that the agency has for years committed serious crimes, a propensity for illegal actions not unknown to embassy officials.

The first DAS director in Uribe’s presidency, Jorge Noguera — whom the U.S. Embassy in 2005 considered “pro-U.S. and an honest technocrat” and recommended to be a member of Interpol for Latin America, according to WikiLeaks cables — is on trial and accused of having helped hit men assassinate union activists. Last year, prosecutors accused another former DAS director of having helped plan the 1989 assassination of front-running presidential candidate, Luis Carlos Galan.

Myles Frechette, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia from 1994 to 1997, said that even in his tenure American officials believed that DAS units were tainted by corruption and linked to traffickers. But he said the embassy needed a partner to develop intelligence on drug smugglers and guerrillas.

“All the people who worked with me at the embassy said to me, ‘You can’t really trust the DAS,’ ” said Frechette. adding that he thinks the DAS has some of the hallmarks of a criminal enterprise.

Several senior U.S. diplomats posted to the embassy in more recent years said they had no knowledge that U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies were involved in DAS dirty tricks, but all said it would not surprise them.

“There were concerns about some kinds of activities, but also a need in the name of U.S. interests to preserve the relationship,” said one diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “I’m reasonably confident our support was correct.”

Duque is a freelance journalist based in Bogota, Colombia. Correspondent Juan Forero, also based in Bogota, contributed to this report.
© The Washington Post Company

LAND YOU LOVE call to action: Please send in a photo and support Colombians who are reclaiming their lands!

Please join FOR in supporting Colombians returning from displacement...

More than five million people in Colombia have been forced to leave the land that is most dear to them. In this year alone, 15 leaders who were struggling to have their lands returned to them have been assassinated.

From September 30 to October 4, the city of Cali, Colombia, will celebrate the National Congress on Land, Territory and Sovereignty, in which indigenous, Afro-Colombian, popular, social, and human rights organizations will work to liberate, decide, and legislate on the issues that Colombian society faces.

As international accompaniers of various social movements in Colombia -- many of which are taking part in the National Congress on Land, Territory and Sovereignty -- the Fellowship of Reconciliation believes that the Colombian government is not doing enough to protect the people who are reclaiming their lands.

We are asking you to show your support and solidarity by demanding that the state provide the necessary guarantees for these communities to exercise their legitimate right to return to or stay on their lands without putting their lives at risk.

During the month of September, help us flood the Colombian government and U.S. embassy with photos of the land you love and this message of hope: Every Colombian deserves to live without fear and with dignity on the land she or he loves.

How to participate
Copy and paste the Spanish version of the message below into an email of your own.
In the "To:" field, include both of the following email addresses:
Vice President: contactovicepresidencia@presidencia.gov.co
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development: despachoministro@minagricultura.gov.co
In the "Cc:" field, include:
U.S. Ambassador to Colombia: AmbassadorB@state.gov
A copy to FOR: landyoulove@forusa.org
Attach a photo of the land you love.
Hit send!
Spread the word! Forward this email to your friends and family, "like" our Facebook page, write about it on your blog, and talk about it with your friends. Write to us at landyoulove@forusa.org if you have any questions.

Please send the Spanish message far below. First, one translated to English for all to read...

Our message, in English (for reading)
Subject line: For the protection of land

To Whom It May Concern:

My name is ____(your name)____ and I am from the United States. In the context of the National Congress on Land, Territory and Sovereignty and considering the current situation in Colombia, I am writing to express my deep concern about the safety of people in Colombia who are working to reclaim the land they have been displaced from. In the past year, 15 people who attempted to take back their lands were assassinated. I urge the Colombian government to guarantee the rights of these leaders and communities through truth, justice and comprehensive reparations as defined by the communities themselves and without an increase in militarization. I also hope that the Colombian government not only guarantees the physical security of these communities, but also the economic security by supporting the local economy that small farmers depend on.

I am attaching a photo of the land I love, representing my hope that every Colombian lives without fear and with dignity on the land he or she loves.

Sincerely,

____(your name)____

Our message, in Spanish (for copying and pasting)
Subject line: Por la protección de la tierra

Estimados Señores:

Yo soy ____(your name)____ de los Estados Unidos. En el marco del Congreso Nacional de Tierras, Territorios y Soberanías y por la situación actual del país, quiero manijfestar mi profunda preocupación por la situación de riesgo de la gente Colombiana quien está trabajando para reclamar sus tierras de las cuales ha sido desplazada. En lo que va de año han sido asesinados 15 líderes de procesos de restitución de tierras. Urgo a las autoridades colombianas garantizar condiciones de seguridad a líderes y comunidades atraves de un proceso de verdad, justicia y reparaciones integrales definidas por las comunidades mismas sin incrementar la militarización. Además para facilitar el retorno sugiero que contemplen proyectos productivos orientados al fortalecimiento de las pequeñas economías campesinas y garantías en materia de derechos en el campo colombiano.

En adjunto mando una foto de la tierra que camino yo para representar mi esperanza que cada Colombiano/a pueda vivir sin miedo y con dignidad en la tierra que el/ella camina.

Atentamente,

____(your name)____

Letter from the Field

Below is an article I wrote for FOR's most recent Latin America update. You can read the rest of the articles from this Latin America Update (with the photos) and/or subscribe to get these updates by email here:
http://forusa.org/blogs/john-lindsay-poland/julyaugust-2011-latin-america-update/8876

Letter From the Field
Reclaiming the Filo de la Cruz
By Gina Spigarelli

The Filo de la Cruz (The Ridge of the Cross) sits overlooking La Unión, the small rural Peace Community village in Colombia where FOR has a permanent accompanimient program. The land that makes up the hill belongs to the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, individuals that make up that community, and other surrounding campesinos. From the center of town in La Unión, one can reach the top of the Filo in a quick 10 minute walk. It is but one jungle covered hill that makes up the beautifully impressive country landscape surrounding La Unión. As with every piece of land in this war zone, the Filo de la Cruz has a complicated history.

The hill received its namesake in the late 1990s, when the military murdered a young Peace Community member in the woods there. In honor of his life, the community placed a cross on the ridge; the cross was made of wood, and has long since fallen, but the name has stuck.

“Two years ago, when the military started camping on the filo, we had no idea they were planning to stay so long,” explained Juan. “For decades both legal and ilegal armed actors have passed through community property, often spending a night or two in hammocks on the filo and leaving traces for community members to later find.” This time was different, however. The military men on the filo didn’t move on after a night or two. They started to build an encampment.

A military encampment overlooking a Peace Community brings obvious concern to the citizens living in the valley below. “ It’s just not good for civilians to be so near an encampment,” Francisco* shared with me. “We immediately knew that we would be in more danger than before. When the military plants themselves somewhere, they attract other armed actors. This is exactly what happened and

Military trench on ridge at edge of La Unión in Peace Community.
FOR photo

we as a Peace Community were at risk to be caught in the crossfire.” Over a two year period, there were combats and bombings happening literally just outside of town. “They even had a dummy in military fatigues sitting right there, to draw fire,” added Fernando, motioning to a tree stump on the village-facing side of the hill.

The Peace Community, along with their international supporters, repeatedly published newsletters and action alerts expressing their concern over the proximity of the military to cilvilians in the zone. After an exceedingly dangerous combat in October of 2010, where the military and guerrillas were shooting next to the homes of small farmers, the community reached an agreement that they needed to do all they could to convince the military to leave.

“Originally we planned to go up to the filo and tell them to go,” Juan began, “but that would have been particularly complicated and we didn’t know excactly who was there. Instead we decided to continue publishing complaints. Earlier this year though, when they started interrogating people on their way to work or down to town, we started to be more forward about telling them that we didn’t want them there and they were putting us in danger.”

“Two years is a long time in one place. We were all getting nervous that the military was actually going to come up and build a permanent base on the filo. For us this would have meant serious consideration of displacement,” Francisco said.

In May of this year, without warning, the military withdrew from their semi-permanemt position on the Filo de la Cruz. After a few weeks, the Peace Community planned a community work day to clean up the trash left behind. Walking up the filo and around the encampment, we saw old playing cards and deep trenches, tomato plants and improvised water tanks. There were tents and hammocks and mosquito nets- remenents of an abandoned jungle camp in a war zone.

Rosa explained the idea behind cleaning up the encampment, “We went up there to burn their trash and get rid of their mess. We cleared out the brush and left the área with few places to hang hammocks. We wanted to reclaim that land. We really don’t want them to come back. When they are here they surround us. They make it hard for people to get to work and they pose a constant threat of combat. One feels bad knowing there is an encampment in their backyard.”

The Peace Community is happy that the military has left the encampment, but even today as I write this article, there are once again helicopters landing on the far side of the filo. When I asked around to see if people thought the military would be back to that encampment, some were more optimistic than others. The vast majority of people, however, gave the same response: “We hope not. We really hope not.”

* All interviewed Peace Community member’s names have been changed.

On the Move

Most of the time, I feel like I am an actor in a bad Hollywood war movie. I don’t think it helps that many of our code names for people are names of A listers.

While in the process of writing an article, I went on an investigative hike up to the recently abandon military encampment just adjacent to (at times, arguably on) the Peace Community property of La Union. I took many photos, which will be uploaded shortly. You can see just how far the Peace Community was from the trenches. Not far. In response to the post overlooking the gate to LU, Emily said: “Well, I guess they knew when we came and went.” I went up to the filo with a neighbor. He didn’t warn me about the stuffed fatigues and when we walked up on them, I thought we were walking up on a corpse. I gasped. He said it was just one of their tricks to draw fire. A scarecrow military man overlooking the Peace Community… spooky enough to keep me away. The only military term crossing my mind as we traversed through the abandoned encampment was RETREAT, but my neighbor coaxed me along. He explained the different tactics they used to know people were coming. He showed me where they played cards (flipping a moldy deck into 52 card pick up) and how they gathered water and where they slept. The trenches were spooky. The abandoned tents were spooky. Everything about it was spooky. “Look,” he said, “only a couple months since they left and the jungle is already retaking the area.” He continued along, and I said I didn’t want to follow anymore. He asked why not. I said, in reference to the land mines neither of us were talking about,: “I want to go back to my country with two legs.” He said, “I want to go back to my house with two legs.” I said, “Let’s.” He laughed.

I heard the closest combat since I’ve been in the community a couple of weeks ago. I was in bed. It sounded like it was right outside my window (which figuratively I could say it was, but literally there was a bit more space). It made me wonder just how loud those machine guns are to those actually firing them.

We were talking about all the recent killings the day that the young man’s body was brought into the community for his vigil. He died that night while crossing the river. A neighbor sighed, then looked at me and said, “here even the river is an assassin.”

FOR in Colombia also accompanies organizations outside of the Peace Community. Emily and Isaac went on an accompaniment in Medellin. They accompanied the Red Jovenil, an amazing group of young people who are contentious objectors (they can legally be so as of last year in Colombia) and who threw an anti-militarization festival. There were bands and shows and theatre performances all in the lovely city center. They spoke out about resistance to all forms of domination- from capitalism to machismo. Emily came home with amazing pamphlets and newsletters and stories. It was so good. To hear about resistance in the cities, with the youth and outside the context of San Jose de Apartado. Tunnel vision, I think, happens to us all in our daily lives. We forget about things that happen outside our small little world. The accompaniment was just what we needed to remember that the fight is happening all over, and that the world is oh so big.

We have all been on the move so much that Emily, Sean and I have not all three been in the same place for more than 24 hours in more than two weeks. I spent my first days and nights alone in LU. When a hen climbed onto Emily’s desk and made everything fall, I thought for sure a small child was playing “jump out at Gina.” They have realized I don’t like this game and they think it’s hilarious. My dad use to play it with a monster mask on when I was a child. It scared the shit out of me. Now I am in a war zone and of the opinion that nobody should jump out at me. Ever. Kids hung out a lot while I was alone. Mostly I didn’t mind. In the end being alone wasn’t so bad. I fell asleep to the rain like always and had visitors like always and did a lot of work like always. I was pretty proud of my lack of fear. When Emily came back we were staring from the kitchen over to the wooden house and commenting on how in the world we managed to have ten kids so quickly. They were wildly swinging in hammocks. Emily said, “Isn’t that what the monkeys do in the zoo… climb the hammocks up to the wooden beams and then hang there?” It sure was. We stared in awe.

The kittens grew large enough to be terrorized by the neighbor children. They used to think riding on my shoulders was bad, but when the kids came around they started actually clawing their way up my bare skin to take refuge there. Yesterday we gave them away. We will see if they stay away.

It is zapote season. We eat them in abundance.

Emily made banana cake. She looked like a house-fire victim in search of the fireman- hanging her head out from the one foot square window in the stove shack of our neighbor, smoke billowing out from around her head as she gasped for air.

The 20th was Colombia’s Independence. We did not realize this until we tried to get in touch with the general and were told he was “at the parade.” We asked our neighbors why they didn’t tell us it was Independence Day. They said, “well I didn’t know that either.” Alternative education.

The older I get and the more time I spend in Latin America, the less I think about traditional culture shock and the more I think about personal life shock. The other day I was listening to my cousin sing, like I have since forever. His cd was pouring from the office computer. His voice was competing with an artillery helicopter. When I arrived at the internet café today I was reminded that this month is my ten year high school reunion. Memory and growth and bringing everything you are everywhere you go… life really is a strange one.

Tomorrow I take off for Cauca. It is very far away from where I am. It’s my turn to go travel and accompany and see how wonderful it is what people do to improve our world.

Marissa and Patrick brought nummy chocolates, and I got a few days off...

Marissa and Patrick came up to the community to visit while on their Colombian summer vacation. They brought good luck. I do get slightly nervous bringing my loved ones into a war zone, but I was excited to show them my life and where I lived and it’s great to have people in your life who can picture where you live and what you do. It is, afterall, pretty impossible to describe. The whole thing could not have gone safer/better. We had dry days for the walks both up and down with low river crossings, even though it had been raining up until they arrived. We had strangely cool evenings (I saw Sean in a sweater for the first time!). When the torrential downpour did happen, the light didn’t even go out (!!!). And when the rain stopped, there was a rainbow. It looked like it ended at the FOR house. When I said, “the end of the rainbow is at the FOR house” Marissa thought I said “whore house” and this still cracks me up when I think about it. We went to the poza and talked about life in the war zone and life not in the war zone. We ate nummy chocolates that they brought me and we hugged a lot and lay in hammocks and cooked meals and visited neighbors. And then they left. And I miss them.

Sapa moved her babies out of my room. I am beginning to think they shit where they sleep until they can’t take it anymore and then move to another room to do the same. It may be about time to get knee-deep in bleach in LU. Sapa is the only cat I have ever met who doesn’t like to chase string. I don’t think the babies got that gene. After all her tender loving care, Emily may kill them with her knitting needles.

One thing that’s difficult about this job is that there is so much pain in a war zone. I may be ready to drink my morning coffee and laugh at pigs chasing their mother, but a neighbor may feel like talking about a massacre. And conversations end up being pretty heavy pretty often.

It was us and a few PBIers talking about our lives and siblings. He was the only community member in the room. When we asked him about his siblings, he said he didn’t have any: “I used to, but not anymore.” Sensing he wasn’t up to telling the story, we asked him about his kids. He said, “I had four children. They were all killed by paramilitaries. The last one three years ago.” He was crying, the tears welling in the corners of his eyes, but he wiped them before they could drop down his cheek. He is alone. Everyone in his life is not only dead, but has been killed.

She tells us about her children that have been killed. About the lies told about her. About why people want to kill her. She talks easy and tells it like it is. In the end she says, “If I am honest and die for the truth, that’s ok. Dying for the truth is ok.”
This job constantly brings to mind the difference between international human rights defenders and local campesino resistance.

This month there is a FOR volunteer reunion. We will hear more stories and meet the people who came before us in this accompaniment program. This afternoon I am meeting up with the first to arrive. Historical memory.

We get three days off a month. I am taking mine right now. I am staying in an airconditioned room. It is amazing. And skyping with my family. They are amazing. And listening to Lou Reed sing Street Hassle. He is amazing. It’s called a “salida de contexto” and is supposed to remove us a bit from what we do all of the time. Even that is difficult, though. I find it hard to remove myself from the context of life here. The stories and the people and the tears, they are always present.

I have updated the slideshow, for those of you who are interested in seeing some new photos from the field.

We've got time to kill, what a thrill, June and July...

Thank you to everyone who responded to my last blog and politcally supported the community last month by contacting your representatives in regard to the Dear Colleague letter in Congress and by signing the petitition against the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. We are following the developments here, and hoping for the best.

To all of my fellow fans of snail mail: I now have an address in Apartado, as the post office has officially re-opened after their move. The name on the box is Susana Pimiento, so your letters would have to read:
Gina Spigarelli c/o Susana Pimiento
P.O. Box 25008
Apartado Postal
Colombia, Sur America

My first jeep ride up to the communtiy post-vacation had me sitting next to a neighbor of mine. Four to a row, facing the four on the other row (that’s four adults- not counting bags, children, chickens etc.) and packed in pretty tight. About fifteen minutes into the ride, the woman across from me’s face went slightly whitish. I thought perhaps she had motion sickness. She did not. She saw the notedbook sized spider located behind my head. (Note: I think most spiders here are large. Most locals think most spiders here are invisible, so the fact that the four individuals accross from me were concerned about this spider suggested it actually bites.) As everyone in the jeep noted the size and “anger” of the spider, I tried to wiggle my way further away from it (futile). My neighbor, bless her, realized I was not going to be the one to deal with the situation, even if I was the closest. She asked the driver if he “had a tool with which she could kill a large spider” and he stopped the car to remove his boot. I was instructed to lean forward and I lept to Emily’s lap, a feat in and of itself since she was kiddy corner two people away. The spider was hit. The spider did not die. In the end I think it was a mixture of boot, pole and random sharp object that took him down. I have not ridden inside the jeep since. Hanging off the back of the jeep as it bumps up the mountain has the extra advantage of a quick bail out if the whole thing goes off one of the cliffs (also likely).

Coming back to La Union after vacation took a few days of readjusting. Luckily, Bendy is the most amazing friend ever and brought me curries, soap, sriacha and music to ease me back into war zone living. I found myself reacting fiercly to the surroundings- jumping back and forth between slightly relaxed and severely stressed- depending on the activity. At one point Emily looked at me and said, “I think you need some hot chocolate.” So wise. And then things fell back into place and I stopped startling myself at the helicopters and gunfire and I stopped losing sleep over my neighbor’s stories of death and destruction and historical horror and injustice. I started to enjoy weeding the garden with Emily and (far more effective than the two of us combined) one of my favorite teenagers, and I laughed at my grandmotherly neighbor whipping chickens to get them out of her house (yes, with a horse whip), and I joyfully shook popcorn in a plastic bag full of salt to share with the kids, and I watched a confused hummingbird watch himself in our mirror, and I relaxed into the rythmic sound of Emily juggling bowling pins outside my window, and I listened to neighbors whistle communication across the canyon, and I lectured loud cow’s mom when she woke me up at 5:30AM (she, obviously, just continued chomping away, staring at me with eyes half-mast and jaw slowly circulating), and I visited one of my favorite families at sunset and sat on their porch and gorged on the last mangos of the season while they reassured me that the zapote and mandarine seasons that came next were also deliciously fun.

June was full of hot days and balmy nights. In town the shop owners sat directly in front of fans, and left the freezer open an extra second when they sold ice cream. In the campo people scrubbed their water tanks more often than normal and took multiple showers a day. My hair had to go. Emily cut it in front of our house while I overlooked a country mountain landscape, dotted with horses grazing and children chasing piglets. I wanted her to shave it (it was so hot I thought I could not go on), but she refused. Instead it now hangs shoulder length. A foot and a half of my redishblonde hair was piled in front of our house for a few weeks, admist cowpies and horse poo. Just when I thought none of it was going to go to use in a bird nest or the like, a puppy arrived to play in it. He wanted to be blonde.

Sapa gave birth to two babes in Emily’s bed. Between Sapa and Emily, they were protected for weeks from any and all threats. The kittens have now officially grown out of the blind rat stage and are furry and open-eyed and pretty frickin’ cute. They have also officially moved from Emily’s room to mine (Sapa, uninvited, carried them there a couple weeks ago for some unknown reason that apparently was not up for debate) where they play in my arts and crafts bag and sleep on my clothes shelf and dart out from under my bed to attack my feet when I walk in. There were a few nights of constant struggle with Sapa, who was convinced my bed was actually hers. The nightly battle went something like this:
Gina: (delicately sleeping)
Sapa: Jumps on Gina’s head with baby in her mouth looking to take over the bed, simultaneously breaking the mosquito net.
Gina: Violently removes Sapa and gently sets babies on ground then gets up, cursing, and reties mosquito net.
Sapa: (after waiting patiently for mosquito net to be retied)Jumps on Gina’s head with baby in her mouth looking to take over the bed, simultaneously breaking the mosquito net.
Gina: Violently removes Sapa and gently sets babies on ground then gets up, cursing, and reties mosquito net.
(Repeat until dawn or until Gina is so tired she doesn’t mind choking on mosquito net.)
There were a few nights of lost sleep, but I think we understand eachother now. We were feeding Sapa while she was pregnant and first nursing. She is now back to the hunt; last night I woke up to the sound of crunching on bones. Poor little field mouse.

One thing every member of the Peace Community does is participate in weekly community work days, where everyone gives a day to work on something that benefits the entire community. This month they spent several weeks in a row improving the walking path from La Union to San Jose. It’s pretty awesome now… enough rocks jetting out of the mud that you pratically don’t ever have to step in it. Parts of it are nearly (gasp!) cobbled. How do they do it!?! In other community work day news, there have been Peace Community sugar cane harvests and honey making. Check this out- throw a little baking soda in freshly made Peace Community honey and voila- you have malt candy. Campo tricks = so good.

I have been up and down a lot this month…

The first time we met on the path he jumped out at me. I nearly had a heart attack. But he was unarmed and familiar looking and had a nice smile and told me where he lived. Another time he and his sister were knee deep fishing in the river with translucent line while I clumsily crossed it trying now to get wet (fail). They waved and smiled. One time they ran down to the path to bring me coconut for a snack when I was walking by their house. I think they find me strangely intriguing. They comment on how sweaty I am and ask me how to say things in English and compliment me on how “quickly” I walk (note: we are but gringo slugs next to the local campesino cheeta). I like them because they are nice to me. And because it is nice to have friends outside the community. And because they are siblings who get along, and I miss mine.

You always here about them- here and there, killing a chicken or killing a cat. Emily saw one once. The first time I saw a snake on our path,I was moving pretty quickly. I was on my way to a meeting and I wanted to arrive with enough time to shower. The snake wasn’t moving at all. It was just in the way. I watched it watch me for a moment and then walked far around it and continued on my way. About 200 yards down the path I ran into a family on horse back:
Me: There is a snake on the path.
Son: Where?
Me: Just up there. I don’t know if it’s poisounous.
Mom: What does it look like.
Me: Yay big, head like this, red.
All: Nervously laughing.
Mom: Is it alive or dead?
Me: Alive. Why would I tell you to be careful of a dead snake?
Dad: Oh my child, that one will kill you.
Mom: Are you alone?
Me: Yep.
Dad: You need to carry a machete.
Yes, I can see it now. The machete wielding peace working gringa in the war zone, taking on poisounous snakes. Since then I’ve seen a few more, but that red one was the coolest looking.

A new jeep record was set: 12 people hanging on to the outside.

I took antibiotics on vacation, but apparently they didn’t kill the infection because I just got gradually sicker upon me return to La Union. This culminated during the week my boss and a former FOR volunteer where here visiting. We managed to get quite a bit of work done, but I was nowhere near feeling well. Liza, my boss, is lovely. We talked about many things and how to make them even better. We got approval for pending requests and we ate delicious food. She even brought sundried tomatoes without knowing my obsession for them. Paul worked for FOR in La Union in 2005, just after a masacre. We talked about how quickly things change in a war zone and he told us story after unbelievable story from his time here. He told us about accidentally meeting the FARC under a avocado tree while on the way to the fields and the Military walking straight down the street next to the FOR house. It was nice to have visitors. Particularly these two. They are what I may call gems. Unfortunately I missed a lot of the lively conversation while either shitting, puking, feeling faint, laying feverish in a hammock, listening to sounds I’ve never heard coming from my stomach, or otherwise in pain/delirium.

Eventually I was thrown over a donkey which Paul and Liza alternatively led down to town. When I visited the doctor she was surprised I wasn’t complaining of a sore throat. I told her, now that she pointed it out, it was pretty difficult to swallow. I had strep. She asked if I had a fever. I told her I was hot. She took my temperature and told me that was because I had a fever. I told her I was always hot and slightly delirious due to the climate. She told me if I was this hot and delirious, it was because I had a fever and not because of the climate. I also had leptospirosis. It’s a nice little disease contracted by ingesting urine from farm animals. I dare you to google it. I spent five days in Apartado sleeping and drugging myself and visiting the clinic. Once the fever subsided, I visited the PBI house and they made me tea. I went to the internet mid-day because it has airconditioning. I watched so many sitcoms I never knew existed. I was sick and alone and sad.The worst thing about being sick far away from home is that sickness is always pumped with homesickness. It was pretty lame. One evening Forest Gump was on (dubbed in Spanish, mind you) and I cried when Forest told Jenny about the beauty he could see in the war zone. Then I got better and felt like a Whole. New. Person. I realized I’d been sick since my arrival in La Union, at least at a low-level. Strong kill-all antibiotics are amazing. Now there is just the conundrum of finding local probiotics so that I don’t catch the first thing that I come in contact with now that all of my nice infection fighting bacteria are, like the infection, dead.

When I came back up to the community, I heard my name shouted accross the canyon. I waved at the lush green hill from which the shouting came. Later I learned it was some neighbors, traversing the mined hill, looking for a rogué pig. I couldn’t help the flash of a scene from the movie Los Colores de La Montana when it crossed my mind.

Eating is even more fun when your stomach acts like it should. The papaya grew on our garden tree for more than a year. We ate it in less than a half an hour. Sean says, “fried yucca is the closest thing to a campo pretzel” and our neighbor makes them so well you could sell them at a traveling carnival. Garden vegetable soup is so good when the vegetables actually come from your garden. I love soup. Palomas, the Italian accompaniment organization, invited us to a dinner meeting- their pasta dishes = . Emily accomplished the imposible: she made a loaf of bread without an oven. I could have died from happiness.

Emily’s birthday week kicked off with a trip to the swimming hole. The wáter was high from rain and more than 10 of us were in one pool, playing tag on a hot Sunday afternoon under the mini waterfall. Our full visión for Emily’s big 3-0 was that she would be “princess for a day,” wearing a chiffon dress and a crown while riding around on loud cow and shouting orders to all her humble subjects. In the end I did make her a crown, but the chiffon dress was unattainable. When she went down to town for some food for the party, kids gathered at the house to make decorations. At the party we made empanadas and covered crackers with homemade fudge and danced to vallenato. Neighbors passed by and hung out and danced a song or two. It was a wild ragin’ succesful campo celebration. At one point a neighbor turned to the birthday girl and said, “you know, we usually only have birthday parties for the children.” In fact this worked out fine, because Emily and I had previously decided she was actually celebrating the quinceañera she was denied during her childhood in the states.

Emily and I did an accompaniment to Mulatos, another of the Peace Community villages that’s a 6 hour horse/mule ride from where we live in La Union. The path is beautiful. You climb and climb and climb and at the top of the mountain, there’s a view of the caribbean bay. We passed the most picturesque of places. We saw land that belongs to our neighbors, where they hike everyday to work. It was a good thing I practiced riding a horse with a neighbor before going (a thought that randomly occured to me a few days prior) because it was an intense ride. The up is UP. The down is DOWN. There is mud and horse flies and biting ants and the horses are tired and they look for ways to avoid the knee deep mud by walking on the edge of the path, dragging you through trees and bushes and thistle. We arrived in Mulatos with new bruises and cuts and saddle sore. The Mulatos Peace Community makes La Union look like a bustling urban center. There are seven families there, Split 3 and 4 by a river. It is quieter. Emily and I even managed to take a nap one day. The stars are clearer. The roofs are made with palapa, which makes the terrential rains sound more gentle. One of the community leaders there has the most infectious of laughs. The war there is louder. We went for meetings. We went to see the military presence in the zone. Our first night we heard land mines being disactivated. We listened to stories of the various armed actors and what they were doing and where they were. We heard helicopters and saw single soldiers on the path and knew in the back of our minds they were backed by entire tropos, hiding in the jungle and watching us.

And then, unexpectedly while we happened to be there, a neighbor (note: “neighbor” implies anyone within two hours walking for this community) was taken by the military and didn’t return home. His wife called. It was decided if he didn’t return home by dawn, the community would go look for him. At 6AM we took off on a 1.5 hour hike/rescue mission to locate the mobile counter-insurgent troop that had this man. Some 20 campesinos met on the path along the way- men, women, children, babies- some on horse back, most walking, all with complaints they intended to bring up to the troop commander in their backyard. We walked past the sight of the FARC planted, military disactivated land mines. They were no more than 30 feet off the path and left large cráter holes. Spooky. We hiked up to the top of a hill where the troop was last sighted. There, soldiers appeared from behind banana leaves and disappeared again behind them. Eventually the commander agreed to talk with the community and emerged from the lush jungle. On behalf of the two groups there was a lot of talking. There was a lot of discussing. On my behalf, there was a lot of furious note-taking. On Emily’s behalf there was a lot of satalite phone-call making. In the end, the man was returned to his family. We felt pretty good about international accompaniment. We left our friends in Mulatos blowing kisses into the wind and promising to return soon. We half hiked-half rode back home. The last 30 minutes we followed a man bringing his cherry tomato harvest down to town to sell. We bought some. I’ve never had better cherry tomatoes in my life. The hike/ride was long and we arrived in La Union exhausted.

July 4th passed without incident here. Sean, Emily and I did our June finances. We wished eachother a lacluster ‘Happy 4th of July’ whenever someone asked the date.

July 8th however, the 11th anniversary of the 2000 La Union massacre, did not pass without incident. The day brought in a low fog and an oppressive humidity, and of course, an emotional heaviness that lasted a few days longer as people remembered the massacre of their family members and community leaders. On that day in 2000, a group of military backed, paramilitary soldiers entered La Union, gathered everyone in the center of town, and massacred the community leaders.

Emily knits with her natural died wool. The bag she is making now has wool dyes made from avocado, marigold, fruits and other campo seed delights. Sean plays Silvio Rodriguez songs on his guitar and jams with our neighbor. He has also been playing on the La Union soccer team in the Peace Community ternament and they have been winning, although he says this is not due to him. Emily and I got up to our knees in bleach and scrubbed out the shared accompaniment house in San Josecito. We now itch less when we sleep there. A boy turned seven and Emily had no problem being the only non-organizing adults at the party. Parties are fun. This one came chalk full of fun- piñatas and balloon games, and young children dancing vallenato and reggaeton with more finesse than I could ever dream. We also played community bingo, which we lost. One afternoon I pulled out my clown makeup and let the little girls do my makeup and their own. Emily looked at me and said, “frightening.” Last night we attended a party at the PBI house down in town. Attending parties full of OEA and Doctors without Borders and the UN Refugee workers makes me feel like a foreign diplomat. Then I remember where I live. And what I do. And I find life all the more strange.

Two friends from Guatemala arrive tonight. Friends are so good.