Their best rifle is the media

"I was in my bed when an explosion rocked our house." I tell of combat on the edge of the Peace Community, and analyze how the military reported on it. Meanwhile, community kids carry on in a party. Filmed on October 30, 2010. If you'd rather read about this, look at the previous post.

Way too close combat

Two weeks ago it was 7:30am and I was in my bed when an explosion rocked our house. I decided to get out of bed. Heavy combat immediately ensued on the hill immediately adjacent to the village we live in including shots from rifles, AK-47s, M-60s (a type of machine gun) and occasional grenades. The combat on the “Hill of the Cross” (named after the cross placed as a memorial for six peace community leaders massacred by paramilitaries in 2000) between guerrilla and military forces continued for the next twenty minutes as I and my teammate scurried around making contact with community leaders, our team in Bogotá and Colombian military officials. While most of the gunfire and combat came from the far side of the hill, enough shots were fired from the side facing our house to induce wincing.

While I did not expect to be woken up by the war on this particular morning, the combat was not unexpected. For a while now the Colombian military has had an encampment on the other side of the Hill of the Cross. For the past four months the nearby military encampment has come up in conversations with peace community members, always accompanied by a worried prophesy that such a close guerrilla target would eventually bring combat and risk to the village. It was only three months ago that for these very reasons the community removed a trench the military had built much closer to the community on top of the Hill of the Cross. Thankfully, no community members were hurt in the combat, but it’s scary to think how much worse it could have been had the community not removed that trench.

The crazy part of this story though, is not that there was combat (we live in a war zone), it’s the news stories that came out the day after. Various regional radio stations reported the following: “In the military’s efforts to protect the peace community from ‘the terrorists’ a soldier was killed when he stepped on a mine near the peace community.” Rest assured that the military was the main, if not only, source of these news stories. The military’s report of the incident via the radio stations completely twists the truth of what happened to support three common discourses of the state.

These news stories paint a picture of the peace community and civil society as targeted by the guerrilla with the military as their sacrificing saviors. The military would have everyone believe that had it not been for their presence the guerrilla would have attacked the peace community. In reality it was the military encampment that drew the guerrilla attack that put us all at risk.

At the same time that they work to portray themselves as the protectors of the peace community, they simultaneously insinuate that the peace community is somehow responsible for the death of a soldier. Given the history of the state’s efforts to politically slander the peace community as being at best manipulated by the guerrilla, stating through radio broadcasts that the mine was near the peace community is enough to insinuate to the residents of this region that peace community members were involved in placing the mine.

Lastly, these news stories in their complete absence of any mention of combat or a guerrilla attack reflect the desire of the military to prove to Colombia and the international community that the war is over, the guerrilla has been defeated, and the massive militarization of civil society has worked. While the combat was happening we called an official of the Colombian military to remind them of our presence. As we were worrying about stray bullets this official tried to placate us by saying that we shouldn’t worry because the combat was happening for our safety and that it posed no risk to us. A day after the combat, we asked another military official for their report of what happened. After checking with a superior for what information he could give he reported, “There was an inconvenience with an armed group. But there’s nothing to be worried about. There were no deaths or injuries.” The military reported no deaths although it had already gone out that morning on several radio stations that a soldier had been killed after stepping on a mine. This clearly shows what the military is willing to report to the international community to maintain their discourse.

When I talked to some of my neighbors in the peace community about the news stories they responded with anger and frustration, but not with surprise. One of my neighbors in response to me venting about these blatant and twisting lies shrugged, “Well, that’s what they always do.” The news stories fit right in line with the discourse the military and state has used for the past several years nationally: that the military’s presence means security for the civilian population while at the same time accusing that civilian population (and especially human rights defenders) of being aligned with the guerrilla, all the while feeding the international community the idea that their work has succeeded in ending the war. The accusations and misinformation broadcast through mass media, which causes innumerable damage to the peace community and other human rights defenders, has become the new weaponry of the Colombian state to do away with those they stigmatize as the enemy. As one of my neighbors commented, “The radio is the military’s biggest rifle.”

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.

Were getting away with it, again

I’m not that unique in my embarrassment of the U.S.’s history of open support for dictators and regimes that destroyed their countries to benefited U.S. interests. Its easy to be so looking back at the U.S.’s relationships with Somoza and the Contras in Nicaragua, the Salvadoran 1980s military, and Pinochet in Chile among others all who were violently repressing their civilian populations and any group that organized for social change. Nowadays the legacies of Somoza, Pinochet and the Right in El Salvador are generally recognized as repressive, which makes it hard for me to imagine how the U.S. government ever got away with so openly supporting such nightmare governments. Especially considering that at the time, the information was there thank you to 1980s activists in the U.S. and in Latin America. But I guess so were the ever so alluring lies about fighting communism. The U.S. populace largely only got around to recognizing that the U.S. was supporting repressive governments out of self-interest after the fact. It must have been so frustrating for those speaking the truth to have the U.S. government and populace continue to support repressive regimes while being told that they were repressive.

But, along with the Rolling Stones’ “Dirty Work” album cover I saw this kind of strategy by our government as something that, like many things in the 80s, was embarrassing, but in the past. Needless to say, living in a community targeted by the Colombian government has affected my view of things. The fact that the U.S. government continues to fund the Colombian military is just as ridiculous as when they funded Pinochet. Just like in the 80s, the information about the Colombian military and government’s approach towards its civilian population is available and recognized by many!

The paramilitaries are merely a branch or strategy of the Colombian military. All the internationals I’ve met here who are working in humanitarian organizations, accompaniment organizations, the United Nations, or just working on their thesis recognize this fact. Daily occurrences attest to this reality to the extent that the Peace Community does not differentiate between Paramilitary and Military troops. Many times the military will sweep through an area threatening campesinos and warning of “those that come behind.” In 2008 the “Black Eagles”, a name used by paramilitary groups countrywide, spread fliers around Apartadó (where we go to buy groceries) warning businesses to close and people to stay off the streets for two days. Guess where the military and police were those to days…nowhere. A town normally chocked full of military and police presence was suddenly without state presence the two days the “Black Eagles” were carrying out their “armed strike.” While the military-paramilitary alliance is obvious to people that can see the evidence in their daily lives, there are also some clear signals for the international community as well. Capitan Gordillo plead guilty of working with paramilitaries to plan and carry out the killing of eight Peace Community members in 2005! The ten soldiers involved in the operation have also been convicted and await their sentence. Even with this information made clear in reports, letters and demonstrations, the U.S. government has chosen to ignore or negate the violence the Colombian military and paramilitaries have jointly brought to the Colombian people by giving the Colombian military 6 billion dollars over the last 10 years.

And whom does the Colombian government threaten and kill with the paramilitaries? The left, those working for social change, anyone that threatens their power, or anyone that disagrees with them. Of course, the government chooses to call them guerrillas, terrorists or communists. The Colombian government targets civil society working for human rights and social change as the enemy! People working to inform communities of their rights are often the most in danger of being accused of 'unpatriotic activities' in a country where such slander often leads to threats and death. After the 2005 massacre in the Peace Community Uribe, the president of Colombia, explained the massacre on national television by accusing the Peace Community of being guerrillas. Among those the Colombian government finds suspicious is FOR! In February 2009 FOR’s phones were revealed to be tapped along with other non-governmental organizations, trade unionists, opposition politicians and Supreme Court justices by the DAS (Administrative Department of Security, which is kind of like the CIA, FBI, and Immigration Services all rolled into one). Now when we make calls to each other we assume someone is listening and we encrypt all our email communication. The Colombian government views those working for human rights or just a life without war as threats and treats them as such.

Colombia is the current day instance of the U.S’s major support of violent repression of social change in Latin America. The U.S. continues to pump money into a system that is known to view human rights defenders as the enemy and a military known for its complicity with the paramilitaries. I bet that ten years from now we’ll look back and wonder how the U.S. was able to get away with supporting a government so clearly repressive.