Podur
If
you had the chance to see ‘Traffic’, you know the War on Drugs is a sham.
There’s a good chance you know that its domestic effects are to imprison
thousands and thousands of non-violent offenders who aren’t dangerous, cut them
off from their families and friends, destroy their life chances, destroy social
bonds and devastate their communities, and lock them up in brutal places which
are training grounds for crime. You probably know that the money and arms the US
sends to countries like Colombia to ‘fight’ drugs ends up in the hands of
paramilitaries who use it to produce drugs and kill civilians.
Perhaps you know about Plan Colombia, the violence of which is beginning to take
effect. The Plan that sends $5 billion in military aid to the Colombian
government to fight drugs, which translates to sending the Colombian military
and paramilitaries $5 billion in advanced weapons to fight guerrillas and
progressive social movements. Perhaps you know about the impunity with which
trade unionists and human rights workers, journalists and legal workers are
murdered in places like Barrancabermeja. Maybe you’ve read about the familiar
process: small farmers, or indigenous people, or afro-colombians, on resource
rich lands. Local elites and politicians cut a deal with multinational
corporations to split the resources on the lands– to build an oil well, or a
hydroelectric dam. The only obstacle? The people who live there. So make
refugees of them, and if they resist, murder them.
But
if you’re like me, you probably haven’t had the chance to hear directly from the
social organizations who are resisting this kind of development. You probably
haven’t had a chance to see the courage, intelligence, and resilience with which
they resist and persist in pressing for a negotiated solution to the conflict
between the government and the guerrillas. You probably haven’t had a chance to
see the diversity of the types of organizations, their strength, and their
attempts to construct real alternatives to the destruction being meted out to
them.
The
Canada-Colombia Campaign made it possible for some of us to have that chance. It
brought six activists from six different organizations in Colombia to Toronto,
Montreal, and Ottawa to discuss the situation in Colombia, the connections with
North America, and what genuine solidarity between activists here and there
could mean.
The
mainstream press tells us that North American opposition to the FTAA and
corporate globalization is self-interested and guaranteed to deny the third
world its opportunity. We selfish, greedy north americans don’t want the FTAA
because we don’t want to lose our jobs to the southern countries when companies
relocate there. But as Patricia Buritica, a trade union leader with the Central
Unitaria de Trabajadores said, company relocations from northern countries
causes misery– company relocations to the southern countries cause deaths. It
is to please those same companies that paramilitaries have created a refugee
population of around 2 million in Colombia. To please those companies,
paramilitaries and the army make Colombia one of the most lethal places in the
world for trade unionists– 50% of all trade unionists who are killed, are
killed in Colombia. In other words, the less mobile corporations are, the
better– for everyone.
Maria
del Pilar Cordoba, a feminist and peace activist with the Ruta Pacifica de
Mujeres (Women’s Path for Peace), asked North Americans who want to build
solidarity with Colombia to leave their fear behind. "Everyone I’ve talked to
here, when I tell them what I do in Colombia, says ‘oh how frightening’. I would
rather they not be so frightened. I would rather they turn that fear into
something else. We all live with the fear of death, and we have to keep working,
and we want you to do the same." Dora Guzman, a leader of the Popular Feminist
Front, (Organizacion Feminina Popular), extended the discussion of fear further:
"There is not one of us who doesn’t face several threats a day on our lives from
the paramilitaries. What we’ve done is to collect all these fears into one big
fear, and then get rid of that, so we can continue with our work."
They
talked about the small victories that solidarity has helped bring about, and the
potential for greater victories. Agustin Reyes, a peasant leader with the Peace
Communities and Territories (Comunidades y Territorios de Paz), told a story of
how his organization took a denunciation of a paramilitary threat against his
community to the Attorney General. Shortly afterwards, his organization began to
face threats and harassment from paramilitaries. They then took a denunciation
of this to the Attorney General, and also to the international human rights
network. A letter writing campaign followed, inundating the Attorney General
with mail, forcing him to take steps to guarantee their safety. Maria del Pilar
Cordoba told a story of a mother who used an Amnesty International
letter-writing campaign to force authorities to disclose the location of the
remains of her disappeared and murdered son. Ezequiel Vitonas Talanga, an
indigenous leader with the Indigenous Autonomous and Peaceful Co-Existence
Movement (Proyecto Nasa) told another story of how letter-writing campaigns have
saved lives.
The
presence of international observers has also done much to deter impunity. While
activists from Colombia face murder, international observers there are
relatively safe. The six activists and their organizations extended an
invitation to North Americans to go to Colombia and see what’s going on, and
help chip away at the impunity there.
I
asked the Colombian leaders what we could demand of our own governments in order
to complement their struggles. They told me to oppose the FTAA, and Plan
Colombia, and the investments and aid projects that displace and destroy people.
Someone in the audience told them about North American governments’ repression
of the American Indian Movement, the dispossession and destruction of indigenous
people here. Agustin Reyes noted how this showed that we were fighting the same
enemy, and that our struggles really could be complementary.
As
the discussion wound up, I wondered about that $5 billion figure. I wondered how
much progress could be made against drug addiction with that amount of money. Or
how far $5 billion would go in rebuilding communities devastated by the War on
Drugs, or in rebuilding social services destroyed by globalization. Or how small
a fraction of that money it would take for Peace Brigades International or the
Christian Peacemaker Teams to establish a large, permanent international
observer presence in places in Colombia where it could save many lives. It was
probably idle dreaming, but after listening to these activists, I didn’t feel I
had the right to give up hope.