Stories of displacement from my Witness for Peace delegation

A while ago I posted an entry about the context of the Witness for Peace delegation that I went on last month, but I am only now able to sit down and write about the delegation itself. There is so much to tell that I just haven't known where to start. So this piece is but a humble attempt to do justice to the people who shared harrowing stories with us and to help give you a picture of the realities in one corner of Colombia.

Over the course of four full days of travel in distant parts of the Curvaradó and Jiguamiendó river basins, our group visited five different communities. All but one were designated as "humanitarian zones," areas described well by an Inter Press Service article (see link below) as communities opposed to Colombia's ongoing war that "defend the distinction between civilians and combatants, as established by international humanitarian law." As one person in the Las Camelias humanitarian zone put it, the zone is "a way to protect our lives and our land in the midst of war." The zones all have the backing of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

The humanitarian zones are remote communities. To get to Pueblo Nuevo -- the first zone we visited -- we traveled by airplane, bus, 4x4, and boat (really a dugout canoe with a motor attached to it). The zones have no electricity or running water. Residents practice some subsistence farming and barely eke out a living. In two of the zones I saw school buildings (more like shacks, really), but it was unclear to me if or when teachers actually come through to offer classes. In Pueblo Nuevo, as I stood under the leaky school roof while a torrential tropical rainstorm raged, I was hit by the smells of wood smoke and raw sewage. It occurred to me that that combination is the smell of poverty.

The humanitarian zones were founded by peasant farmers who were forcibly displaced from their homes and their land by military and paramilitary operations in the mid- to late 1990s. They joined the ranks of Colombia's internally displaced population, which in 2009 (according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring cntre) numbered up to 4.9 million.

In Las Camelias, one woman (I'll call her Rosa) told a representative story of what displacement had entailed for her. Rosa is a rail-thin Afro-Colombian woman who smoked ragged cigarettes and hugged me like an old friend when she met me. She is the mother of eight, grandmother of 36, and great-grandmother of three. She has been accused of being a leader of the 57th Front of the guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. There is a reward on her head.

Her diplacement began in 1996, when she and some other people from her town fled into the jungle to escape armed attacks on their community. They lived there for six months. During that time, the men would sneak back to their land to get food. The group would scatter to another area whenever they heard gunshots. With help from a Spanish non-profit and an area church, Rosa and her companions eventually left the jungle for a town where they lived for a year -- all the while hearing gunshots and explosions as the paramilitaries occupied neighboring communities.

They then relocated to the town of Caño Seco where they could hear the destruction of the town from which they had just been displaced. While in Caño Seco, the community got together and decided that the elderly and people with young children should move to the town of Murindó. The rest of the group moved too, but to the town of Bartólo where they stayed for two years. This pattern continued for years. Rosa told us that, all totalled, the community endured 13 displacements before deciding to return to the land that had been theirs and establishing the humanitarian zone.

Heartrending stories like this one were repeated everywhere we went. It was hard to listen to over and over again. But it was impossible not to be intensely moved by the courage these people have shown and continue to show as they defend their right to live what in Spanish is called a "vida digna," a dignified life.

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Stories of current struggles from my Witness for Peace delegation

Just as we heard many stories about forced displacement, we heard many accounts of current struggles in the humanitarian zones, all of whom are under violent pressure from the paramilitary-backed large land holders who took over the lands from which the communities were displaced.

The most extreme and most intense testimony we heard was in a tiny, recently-established humanitarian zone named for its leader who was assassinated in January of this year by two local known paramilitary agents who operate openly and with impunity. The wheels of justice turn excruciatingly slowly in Colombia, however, and the case has not moved forward. Now his brother who I'll call Javier, a soft-spoken man who spoke with downcast eyes, has received threats that he will end up like his brother if he does not stop his efforts to reclaim the community's land. He is afraid to leave the zone. His sister Elena wept as she talked about her fear for his safety, and person after person expressed the same concern.

The community has asked the police to patrol the perimeter of the zone to ensure its residents' safety, but this protection has yet to materialize. They do not want the army to be responsible for these patrols because they know that there are members of the paramilities working within that institution. After our meeting and lunch with the community, I chatted with a woman while she washed dishes. She illustrated why the community might need the protection of the police, she said she is afraid that the paramilitaries -- working in the service of neighboring land-holders -- will eventually just invade the zone some night while the community sleeps.

After describing their current fears, the community members spoke movingly about their life before their forced eviction by the army and paramilitaries. "We used to live well," said one woman. Elena told us that "Life was easier before. We had daily food . . . and were able to go to [the nearby town of] Mutatá to study. . . . But happiness doesn't last . . . I had to leave everything I loved." After hearing testimony like this, it was hard to leave this particular zone knowing that sometimes, an international presence can discourage paramilitary attacks.

But we had to get to a meeting with an official of the 17th brigade of the Colombian army, the military unit charged with providing security in the region we had visited (and the brigade that the communities had charged works hand-in-hand with paramilitary organizations). In a frigid, air-conditioned, and windowless meeting room, we spoke with a lieutenant who serves as the brigade's human rights officer. His answers to our carefully-constructed questions were at times telling and at times laughable. He explained that the primary factor that demonstrates improved security in the region is increased foreign and national investment. "The [civilian] population is not at risk today. This is proven by foreign investment," he said. Needless to say this comment belies the government's priority for the region and, in light of all we had heard in the humanitarian zones, begs the question "security for whom"? He went on: "The facts speak for themselves. There have been no violent deaths in the region and no attacks on civilians in this region." When asked about links between the army and paramilitary groups, he said that if they had existed, it was in the distant past. We left that meeting dismayed and more convinced than ever of the army's (and therefore the government's) total lack of concern for marginalized people like those who live in the humanitarian zones we had visited.

In light of all that we had seen an heard during our days in these rural parts of the Lower Atrato region I felt that there is little reason for optimism regarding the achievement of a real and sustainable peace in Colombia, the government's claims to the contrary notwithstanding. I had suspected as much even before my visit to the region. When I think back to my original reasons for going on this delegation, I can say that I accomplished what I had hoped to. I travelled far from the bubble of Bogotá. I saw the grinding poverty in which so many Colombians live. I got to be a witness to the realities of people affected by Colombia's enduring armed conflict. I was deeply moved and with a sense of responsibility to bear witness to these realities.