I like belt buckles. About a year ago my grandfather, who lives in a small town of about 80 in Amish country, Kansas, gave me a buckle with “Yoder”, the name of the town, written in cold steel on the front. On the back of the buckle below a minuscule history of Yoder’s founding the buckle’s maker stamped into steel “183 of 300”. I, along with my aunts and uncles, was one of the few proud owners of a Yoder, Kansas belt buckle. About a week ago a very respectable and threatened Colombian human rights defender (lets call him Josh) sunk it to the bottom of a lake.I had been accompanying Josh to meet with peace community members who live around a very large man-made reservoir. On the last day of the accompaniment, Josh, my FOR coworkers, various members of the peace community, two accompaniers from Peace Brigades International (PBI), and I all paddled out onto the lake in a canoe and had a splooshin, splashin fun bath time. On the way back, my pants, shirt and belt rested in the canoe, which Josh started to rock, supposedly in an effort to continue the splooshin splashin fun. Naturally, we responded by splashing lots of water in his face, which only caused the boat to rock more. Eventually we capsized and my belt and its buckle sunk. It mostly likely came to settle on what used to be a lovely little farm. The bed of that lake is just littered with them.
The water that now covers my buckle wasn’t there before 1998. Urrá, a dam built on the river Sinú, flooded 18,300 acres to create it. Thousands of campesinos were relocated (read displaced) due to Urrá. The figure would be quite a bit higher had paramilitaries not committed a number of massacres, clearing out the land shortly before the flooding. On the recent accompaniment with Josh, a peace community leader commented to me, “They [the paramilitaries] say to displace one hundred, kill one. To displace one thousand, kill ten. That is their strategy.”
The Colombian government loves Urrá because, as its owner, it gets to sell the energy Urrá creates (about 3% of all energy produced in Colombia) to Ecuador, Venezuela and other neighboring countries. They love it so much they want to make it bigger and duplicate it. Since at least February 2009, Urrá has planned to build another 50 meters onto the dam to flood a 100 meter ribbon around the reservoir. More reservoir = more pressure = more energy = more $$$. Urrá is also planning on building a second dam just upriver (dubbed Urrá II) that would be 10 times the size of the current (Urrá I).
Problem is there are some people in the way. Specifically, many members of the peace community who work the land within100 meters of the current water level and would be flooded out by Urrá’s expansion project. Pamphlets from Urrá have been distribu
ted asking those that live in the “flood zone” to leave. Peace community folks worry they will be displaced especially considering their suspicions that Urrá used paramilitaries to make room for Urrá I and may do so again. Recent paramilitary activity in and around the peace community seems to confirm their fears. Throughout June, paramilitary groups held meetings in communities bordering the peace community informing those in attendance they would be retaking control and having meetings in all the communities in the region, including those of the peace community. Then in early July, paramilitaries entered the house of a peace community member “inviting” those in the area to a meeting the paramilitaries said they would return for in the next couple days. In response, the peace community asked us and two other accompaniment organizations to begin a rotating presence of internationals in these areas of the peace community. The paramilitaries have not returned for their meeting, but as one community leader recently said, “When armed actors aren’t present it doesn’t mean that everything is OK, but that they’re preparing for something else.”For now, the Peace Community has not asked for a specific response from us other than the continued work of accompaniers. Its possible though, that as the situation develops I may be making a specific ask for some small political action (letter, email, fax, phone call) on your part for the sake of the peace community’s safety.
