Bathing in the Dam Lake

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 distributed 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.

My girlfriend and displacement

h#g-:;oh – That is all the text that Microsoft Word could recover from my wonderful blog entry after the electricity went out. It also happens to be what I said when I realized I had lost my blog entry. This information will most likely not change how you read this blog, but I just want everyone to know that I’m not happy about it. On with the blog…

Amanda, my girlfriend, recently came to visit. She’s lovely. For a time we were in and around Medellín, one of the largest cities in Colombia. While there we stayed in a cabaña at a homely, peaceful retreat center that is typically used by catholic monks on spiritual retreats. The retreat center and we were taken care of by Antonia, Pablo and their family (not their real names).

Amanda and I, while busying ourselves with stuff recently reunited couples do, found out the retreat center had a steam room (I guess Catholic monks find sweating together useful). Antonia asked Amanda and me if we wanted to join her and Pablo for a time in the steam room. So we spent some time soaking (and watching each other soak) in our own juices and chatting. There with our sweat flowing into the same drain Antonia and Pablo told us of how they had to leave their farm in southern Colombia after receiving threats from guerrillas and how they had been waiting two years with 30 other displaced families to be given a small parcel of land by the government.

I was glad that Amanda could hear some of Antonia and Pablo’s story (all the better in a steam room) because it gave a personal example of the reality of millions in Colombia. Many people now in the states are familiar that there’s an “issue” with displacement in Colombia. A few may even know that with 4 million Colombia has the second largest internally displaced population in the world (1st is Sudan). But I haven’t heard many people recognize that so many campesinos being forced of their land translates into a nationwide, highly illegal, informal agrarian counter-reform. Along with the pain it brings those it affects, displacement is dramatically changing who owns the land in Colombia.

In some cases folks flee their land due to threats from guerrilla, paramilitaries and/or militaries and other people take advantage of their absence to occupy their land. Recently however, a handful of large oil palm growers were subpoenaed by the attorney general’s office for contracting paramilitaries to forcefully displace small farmers to make space for their oil palms (palm oil is found in most supermarket products). Although the subpoenas are recent, this practice is not. For years, small farmers have struggled to return to their lands only to find it suddenly enveloped in large banana or oil palm plantations. Where I live there is a lot of concern that increasing violent pressure to displace will come to peace community members and other small farmers to make room for coal mines, oil palms, or large dams.

Its this horrible, terrible, overwhelmingly saddening and seemingly inevitable trend that makes the work of the peace community, whose principles of neutrality and solidarity prevent displacement, and the Association of Antioquian Farmers, who assist farmers returning to their land, (and our accompaniment of them) so important. Most of the peace community members I live with have displaced and returned to their land various times with the help of the rest of the community. The peace community however, continues to be affected by this agrarian counter-reform. The largest village in the peace community is itself a displacement site that people moved to in 2005 after the state put a police post in their previous village. They haven’t been able to return to that site unfortunately because the state (i.e. police and military) maintains a strong presence there (thus making holding principles of neutrality impossible).

Along with the pain and loss of desplacement we need to see it as an agrarian counter-reform. I hate agrarian counter-reform. It makes me fear the future of Colombian. What happens to the campesinos displace to a city economy and culture? Who owns the land once they leave? Who are the ones that will control Colombia's food supply? I hope that the efforts the peace community and many other communities and organizations can stem the tide a bit. I hope that FOR’s work can make it safer for them as they do so.

Here are a photos of my time with Amanda and just life in the peace community: