Monday, August 25, 2008

Carepa

I’ve been somewhat startled to discover that some people here take me for an evangelist. It makes sense, really: here in Carepa they’re having a revival campaign from Thursday to Sunday. There’s a lot of talk about evangelism and winning souls for Christ. Tonight and Wednesday I’m supposed to give brief reflections at the prayer meetings, and tomorrow a Bible study. I think I’ll use the book of Ruth, since I have a fairly solid base of knowledge there.

The water situation is very different here from anything I had personally experienced before. Since you never know when the running water will be shut off, houses tend to have a basin full of water to use for washing and some stores of water for bathing and for consumption. In many homes, you will bathe from water in a bucket. Public education posters are displayed in many places, informing that basins should be emptied and cleaned every week to prevent the spread of mosquitos. Mosquitos are more of a problem in some houses/neighborhoods than others.

This morning I went with the pastor and his wife to visit some parishioners. At the very edge of town are a number of little campo-style ranchitos and many displaced people live there. Some months ago one woman set fire to her house through a kitchen mishap, and several other houses went down with it. Now the families are being told not to rebuild there, but to wait for the mayor to assign them a new place—because the city plans to build a street right where the houses were. One woman, a single mother with three special needs children, lost her only means of income in the fire: her bicycle and machine for making empanadas and arepas to sell.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Arriving in Urabá

From the moment our plane took off in Medellín for Apartadó and I heard the cheeping of the little chicks in the cargo hold, I knew that we were on our way to a different reality. Urabá is far more rural and less developed than the other presbyteries. The heat and humidity are unrelenting, and air conditioning is uncommon.

The tropical climate brings frequent downpours in the “winter” season, and the roads that remain unpaved (which are many) are often muddy. The swift changes from hot sun to breezy rain result in frequent illness. The prevalence of toxins from the vast plantations of banana and plantain also contribute to illness in the local population.

I arrived in Apartadó on Tuesday afternoon. After a brief meeting with members of the presbytery council where we outlined the schedule for my visit, I was taken to the home of my host for these days in Apartadó. Her home is still in the development stage, unfinished, but very open and hospitable. This pastoral visit has already been filled with opportunities to preach and share in prayer services, more than I was expecting!

On Thursday I spent the morning with the children in the Colegio Americano. We started with a long time for conversation with the oldest ones, and they asked me questions about life in the U.S.—everything from global warming to gun violence to education and fast food. It was fascinating to see what they have learned about the U.S. and what concerns are on their minds. Their dismay about the ease of gun purchases in the U.S. became especially significant to me a few weeks later, when I attended the Stony Point peacemaking colloquium on gun violence and gospel values and had the connection between guns and drugs brought home in very clear terms. How tragic that most folks in our churches have little concern about the prevalence of guns in our society, while these fourth- and fifth-grade students in rural Colombia, whose lives have been closely touched by gun violence, are worried about gun sales in the United States.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Money matters

The U.S. House of Representatives made a bold move last week to change the rules and refuse to be pressured into considering the Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Colombia. President Bush had "fast tracked" the agreement on April 7, requiring an up or down vote, with no changes or amendments, within 90 legislative days (which translates to late September). On April 10, the House approved a resolution which effectively removes those requirements and puts consideration of the agreement on hold indefinitely.

The Bush administration frames this in terms of supporting a strategic ally in Latin America. Many U.S. business interests have been in favor of this agreement because it would eliminate certain Colombian import tariffs on U.S. goods. Elites in Colombia have likewise been pushing for adoption of this trade agreement. However, money is not all that is at stake here, which is why many of us are opposed to this agreement. The House decision to delay a vote is in some sense helpful, but what we really need is for more members of Congress to make a public stance in opposition to the agreement so that it can be clearly defeated.

In summary, these are my primary concerns about this particular trade agreement and the idea of entering into such a relationship with the Colombian government at this time:

Colombia continues to be the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists.

Land appropriated from rural campesinos, Afro-Colombians, and indigenous peoples (by means sometimes questionable and sometimes clearly illegal) continues to be handed over to corporate interests for commercial exploitation.

Environmental protections are not guaranteed.

In recent months numerous members of the Colombian Congress and President Uribe's cabinet have been arrested and connected to collaboration with paramilitary groups and narcotraffickers. Similar collusion has been found in the Colombian armed forces.


For more information I recommend the following documents:

Lisa Haugard of the Latin America Working Group's update on human rights in Colombia:
http://www.lawg.org/docs/So%20Far%20To%20Go.pdf

The American Friends Service Committee has developed a dedicated space to denounce the connections between trade and war in Colombia:
http://www.tradeandwar.org/
Here you can download their excellent document:
http://www.tradeandwar.org/documents/violent-intersections.pdf

Friday, April 11, 2008

Who Causes the Violence in Colombia?

On March 6, 2008 I was privileged to participate in a demonstration in Washington DC that remembered the victims of the violence in Colombia—the many thousands who have lost their lives, those who have been disappeared, as well as the millions who have been forcibly displaced from their lands and those who continue to face harassment, persecution, and assassination for their insistence in standing up for human rights. It was a beautiful moment, joining together in Washington while others were marching simultaneously in Colombia and around the world for an end to the violence. Sadly, I have learned that in the week following the march four unionists who were prominent organizers of the march have been killed in different parts of the country. In the Barranquilla area, two regional leaders of the National Association of Displaced Colombians were threatened by phone. Numerous grass roots and human rights organizations in Bogotá received threats via email on March 12, and the web sites of two human rights advocates were hacked into and emptied of all content. Iván Cepeda, lead organizer of the march, says that these attacks were encouraged because one of President Uribe's advisors publicly stated that the march was organized by the FARC.

No one group bears the blame for Colombia's violence. The guerrilla groups such as the FARC have certainly done their share of violence. But the Colombian military, and the paramilitary forces that have worked in concert with them, must also be denounced and held accountable for their crimes. The Colombian office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights has reported a rise in the reports of extrajudicial killings at the hands of the Colombian army, with nearly 1,000 reported from July 2002-June 2007. In many of these cases, the civilians killed are dressed up and passed off as insurgents, classified as military casualties. The vast majority of these crimes remain in impunity.

We, too, in the United States, have a hand in this and are in need of repentance. The School of the Americas (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) is infamous among those concerned with human rights abuse because of the troubling legacy lived out by its graduates and even some of its recent instructors. Just this year, ranking Colombian military officials who attended the school have been implicated in false attacks that were attributed to FARC guerrillas and caused the death of a civilian and injury to 19 soldiers in 2006. To date, at least five Latin American countries have made official decisions not to send any more soldiers to the school. It is time for us to take an honest look at what the SOA/WHINSEC has been responsible for, repent of our complicity in human rights abuses, and move forward toward healing by openly denouncing the abuses and illegal activites of certain SOA and WHINSEC students and closing down the school and its counterparts for good.

For our part in the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, we continue to take the steps that we can in answer to our calling. We participate in the vigil at the SOA/WHINSEC each fall, and call for an end to funding for this tragically counterproductive school. We raise our voices for peace and diplomacy instead of heightened militarization. We go to Colombia to walk beside our brothers and sisters there who will not let the rights of the displaced and the other victims of the violence be trampled in silence and impunity. Now is also a key time to contact members of Congress and urge them to continue to reduce military aid to Colombia and not to ratify the Free Trade Agreement that our president is so eager to push through Congress. Please do what you can to stand for truth and human rights, for justice, for peace.

Monday, February 4, 2008

Appealing smoke screen?

In cities around the world today, demonstrations were held against the FARC guerrilla forces. This mass mobilization gathered millions of supporters, mostly in Colombia but also in cities throughout Europe, Latin America, and the United States. While this collective moment to stand for peace and speak out against the violence that has plagued Colombia for generations is in a sense a positive sign, it has been denounced by numerous human rights groups for its unfortunately one-sided focus.

Those who stand for peace must denounce all forms of violence. This includes not only the tactics of the FARC, but also the paramilitaries, the rapacious multinational corporations, the narcotraffickers, and the members of government who collude with these various purveyors of violence. To organize a demonstration only against one armed faction turns a blind eye to the complex web of violence and contributes to the impunity of the other actors by focusing the call for correction on just one.

In order for peace to become a reality, the call must be without exception: no more violence. Period.