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:

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.