Take Action for Colombia

At the end of July, the State Department again certified that the Colombian military has been meeting the basic benchmarks set forth by Congress on respecting human rights and breaking ties to paramilitaries.

While progress has indeed been made in a few high-profile human rights cases, and some important arrests have been made, the sad truth is that the Colombian military continues to commit human rights abuses with near total impunity.

The Latin American Working Group (LAWG) is asking people to send a simple, but strong, message to the State Department - wrong decision, wrong time, wrong message.
Click here for an on-line form to take action and make sure your voice is heard!

A big human rights concern that we have seen in our work is extrajudicial killings by the Colombian military. We wrote in an earlier blog post about this phenomena, and The LA Times recently published an updated story on these illegal killings by the military which are common (329 last year), but rarely result in prosecutions, or even thorough investigations of the soldiers involved. There are also some photos on the CPT website from a recent accompaniment CPT did to support the investigation of one of these extrajudicial killings.

Free trade and small farmers

Recently Colombia has been in the news a lot in discussions about the proposed "free" trade agreement (FTA) being proposed between the U.S. and Colombia. I recently wrote a short article for CPT's e-mail list about the FTA and the effects it would have on small farmers. A lot of Colombians oppose the FTA, but in trying to write about it I've discovered that the issue is complicated - its easy for multinational companies to see how it benefits them, but it's hard for family farmers, factory workers, and ordinary citizens to understand the economic impacts it will have on them, and on the Colombian civil conflict. My article attempts to explain some of these impacts, without getting too technical.

Unfortunately, although the U.S. congress has refused to vote on the FTA this year, I'm pessimistic that this is more than a short-term victory. There was a great article recently in the Globe and Mail talking about a proposed Canadian FTA with Colombia, and how when that passes - now seen by most observers as almost assured - the U.S. will follow suit.

Extrajudicial killings

The end of March, there were articles in both the Washington Post and the LA Times about Colombian civilians killed by the military. In our work here in the Middle Magdalena, we frequently hear about people, often civilians, who are killed by the Colombian military outside of combat. The LA Times article in particular, titled "Extrajudicial slayings on rise in Colombia", did a good job of describing the underlying incentives for these extrajudicial murders.

Books about Colombia

A while ago my Dad was asking me about a book on Colombia, and I (Nils) realized that he might not be the only one interested in reading about Colombia. Here are some books about Colombia I've read or had recommended to me; if you have other suggestions let me know.

NONFICTION:
More Terrible than Death: Massacres, Drugs, and America's War in Colombia by Robin Kirk.
A good overview of the Colombian conflict, but because the focus is on political violence, I think it makes the conflict in Colombia seem more intensely violent than it really is. Mom, please don't read this book.

The Profits of Extermination: Big Mining in Colombia by Francisco Ramirez Cuellar.
Michele is reading this book, which uncovers the way foreign corporations have manipulated the law and worked hand in hand with right-wing death squads and the US and Colombian government to ensure profits at the cost of the rights and lives of workers, peasants and miners. Ramirez Cuellar is president of the Colombian mining union Sintraminercol, and has been a speaker for CPT past delegations.
This book is especially relevant to CPT's work in the Sur de Bolivar, where small-scale gold miners are being pressured to displace from their land at the same time that multinational mining companies are moving into the region.

Killing Pablo: the Hunt for Pablo Escobar by Mark Bowden.
This book charts the rise and fall of Colombian drugs baron Pablo Escobar, exposing the massive operation by covert US Special Forces and intelligence services to hunt down and assassinate him in 1993.

The Open Veins of Latin America: five centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano
I am currently reading this analysis of the effects and causes of capitalist underdevelopment in Latin America. It was written in 1973, so it's a little dated, but Galeano is an engaging writer and an excellent analyst, and the dynamics of underdevelopment he describes are even more evident today. He's written some more recent books too, such as Upside Down (2001).

FICTION:
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez is considered one of this century's greatest authors (he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982), and this tale of life in a small Colombian town is seen as his greatest work. How can you go wrong?

The Dark Bride by Laura Restrepo
Restrepo is one of Colombia's most acclaimed contemporary writers, and this book is set in the oilfields and slums of a fictional town modeled on Barrancabermeja, where we're living this year. I loved this one, and her other books are also supposed to be excellent.

Read one. Read them all. Propose them to your book club. Happy reading!

Mining Zone Accompaniment

In March, Michele and I spent 11 days accompanying the Agro-miners Federation as they held their leadership school and annual assembly in Mina Caribe. Click on the picture below to see an album of photos from that trip.

Accompanying the miner's federation

We also wrote a two articles about our time accompanying the Mining Federation for the CPT e-mail list. To read these articles, click here for part 1 and here for part 2.

You can also visit our Yahoo Groups website to read more articles written by our CPT team, or to sign up to receive regular (about twice weekly) updates on our work.

URGENT ACTION

Update - GOOD NEWS!

Katherine Gonzalez Torres appears alive and well:

A full investigation of her kidnapping is called for

We rejoice with the news that Katherine Gonzalez Torres is alive and back in loving hands as of Monday, March 12th, 2007, after a month in captivity. As we reported in an earlier urgent action, Katherine disappeared on February 13th. Local human rights workers believe this event is likely linked to her sister's political work against continued paramilitary violence. However, local law enforcement authorities responsible for investigating her disappearance were reticent to recognize it as a politically motivated crime, suggesting that she may have run away with a boyfriend, a possibility people who knew her refuted vehemently.

Katherine reports that she was sedated and kept in a dark room, and routinely threatened by her captors. In the early morning hours of Monday the 12th , they left her, bound and blindfolded, near the bus terminal of Bucaramanga –about 2 hours from her home town of Barrancabermeja. She was able to free herself, and called her sister Sandra who immediately traveled to be with her. Her family reports that she is heavily traumatized and will now begin a period of physical and psychological recovery.

We wish to thank all those who responded to the original urgent action, and those who kept Katherine, her family, and the OFP in their hearts and prayers. Please continue to do so as Katherine and her family recover from this trauma.

For more information about the kidnapping and what you can do to help hold the investigators responsible see this Urgent Action

----Original urgent action below----

KATHERINE GONZALEZ TORRES is the 20 year old sister of Sandra Gutierrez Torres, a member of the leadership team of the Women’s Popular Organization (Organización Femenina Popular). The Popular Women’s Organization is an important partner in CPT’s work in Barrancabermeja.

On Tuesday, February 13, Katherine disappeared unexpectedly. We are concerned that she was abducted by an armed group because of her sister’s work with the OFP. Click here for a link to the Urgent Action on CPT’s website with more information about Katherine’s disappearance and actions you can take that may help return her to her family.

SOA Watch delegation

In January Nils helped host a delegation from School of the Americas Watch, that was here to learn more about the role of U.S. trained military in the Colombian conflict and to ask the Colombian administration to reconsider its commitment to sending soldiers to the School of the Americas at Ft. Benning in Georgia. SOA Watch is an organization that we have supported for a long time - the past six years one or both of us have attended the annual vigil at the school in November. It was great to host this group, and to share a little of our work here with them.

I wrote an article about the delegation, and there are pictures of the delegation available on CPT's website. Lisa Sullivan from SOA Watch also wrote an article about their visit to Colombia; much of the article is about the trip they took with us visiting rural communities.


Here's a picture of Nils with the delegation and a family they visited

Michele also led a delegation of North Americans here in Colombia last month. That delegation was organized by CPT, and she hasn't had time to do much writing about it yet. Michele's mom, Doris, took part in the delegation; it was great to have her here.

Articles

An important part of our work here with CPT is reporting on the conflict here in Colombia. The United States is expected to send 700 million dollars in aid to Colombia this year, most of it military aid. Therefore it's crucial that people in North America know what's going on and how our tax dollars are being used.

Below are links to some of the articles that Michele and I have written:

Aerial Fumigations-- "I Wish the Pilots Were More Intelligent"
by Michele - December 16, 2006

Miners Return Home
By Michele and Joel Klassen - November 9, 2006

The Power of Prayer - CPT holds witness against Fumigations
by Nils - November 1, 2006

We'll add more articles to this blog as we write them.