Short video about our work

In January, our CPT Colombia team participated in a on-line dialogue about Unarmed Accompaniment on the New Tactics for Human Rights website. When the two of us were back in Minnesota in April, the folks for New Tactics asked us if we would be willing to be interviewed by them for a short video about Colombia and the use of accompaniment as a tactic to protect communities at risk of violence. Below is a nine-minute video they made, based on the interview with us.



Special thanks to our friends Tim and Kevin for the use of their lovely sunporch.

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.

Our recent trip to southern Colombia and Ecuador

In August there were a bunch of other people on team with us so we were able to take a two-week vacation to see a little more of Colombia (the south this time) and to visit Ecuador. See below for pictures.



We went to stay with our friend Karen that Michele met at a workshop last year, and and visited the Tatacoa desert near Neiva with her. Then we continued on to San Agustin, where archeologists have discovered hundreds of tombs and funerary sculptures dating from between 900 BC and 1200 AD. We continued on to Popayan, Pasto and Ipiales, and then crossed the border to Ecuador. We spent several days in Otavalo, Ecuador hiking and visiting the indigenous market, and then went on to spend a day in Quito and to visit a monument at the Equator, which runs just outside of Quito.

Recent Accompaniments

Here are a few photos we have taken on recent accompaniments.

Recent accompaniments - June 2008

Photos of Barranca

Here are some photos of life in Barrancabermeja, our home for the last year and a half.

Barranca

Our trip to the Caribbean

Hi everybody,

We're back form two weeks of relaxing along Colombia's Caribbean coast. It was great. Here are some photos from our trip.

Caribbean Coast Feb 2008

Women's Mobilization in Nariño

Last November when Nils was in Nariño he got to attend an amazing women's march for Peace, bringing together over 4,000 women from all over the country. (He also got to travel 30 hours across Colombia with 40 exultant but sleep-deprived women returning from the march.) Here are some photos of the march that I should have posted a long time ago.

National Women's Mobilization

South America Log - No. 10

Dear Friends and Family,

We are back from our trip to Garzal where we enjoyed experiencing a rural Christmas. Click the picture below to see some of our photos from the trip:

Garzal

We were relieved that it was a quiet week given the communities concerns about increased violence during the holidays. Since we have only recently started working with this community, we spent much of our time visiting families to introduce ourselves and CPT, and to learn a little about their life and experiences.

We found many of the Christmas traditions to be familiar. Families were enjoying out of town guests. A common meal was prepared and shared by many families before going to Christmas Eve church services. Some families gave small gifts to their children. We enjoyed special foods that are usually only prepared at Christmas, including tamales and a spice cake baked over a wood fire. And, some in the community celebrated with drinking beer all through the night and into the next day.

A memorable part of our stay in Garzal was the Christmas Eve vigil at a small evangelical church in the community. (The pastor’s family was our main host for the week so our decision about whether to spend Christmas Eve with the church-goers or beer drinkers was clear.) The pastor, perhaps running short on music to keep the 4-hour vigil going until midnight asked us if we would sing a song. We agreed and sang ‘Joy to the World’ and ‘Silent Night’, explaining that in many churches in the US on Christmas Eve, the lights are extinguished and Silent Night is sung by candlelight. The pastor decided to end their vigil in the same way, so they passed out candles, turned off the generator, and we all sang ‘Noche de Paz’ at midnight. It made us both a little teary to enjoy a tradition from home and to think of many of you singing the same song that night.

We also enjoyed swimming in the Magdalena River, which is the color of chocolate milk, with our host’s family. And, on our last night with the family, we sat around joking and singing before going to bed. They asked us to sing for them and said they would sing for us in return. We sang Jingle Bells and then taught them the chorus. Several people caught on quite quickly while some of the grandchildren got the tune but used the typical “shwah, shwah” sounds to imitate the English words. I imagine we will still be hearing the grandchildren sing “Jingle shwah, Jingle shwah, Jingle shwah, shwah, shwah” to the tune of Jingle Bells when we return to their home.

While this Christmas was free from violence for the people of Garzal, our many conversations with families reminded us that the threats they are facing continue to be very real. Although many have farmed the land for 40 years, they are in the midst of a 6-year-long struggle to gain titles to their land, titles they have a right to under Colombian law. In the past few months the struggle has intensified with increased pressure from illegal armed groups for the families to abandon their farms. Fortunately, more human rights workers and a lawyer have joined with the community to work on their behalf. As we listened to the worry of so many farmers about the possibility of losing their land and their livelihood we were reminded of the words of a Colombian mother we met on our first visit to Colombia. She described peace as “going to bed at night with a roof over your head, food for your family, and freedom from fear”. We pray that 2008 will be the year the families of Garzal receive the titles to their land, and we all can rejoice with them in being just a little closer to Peace on Earth.

May you and your community have a roof over your head, food for your family and freedom from fear in 2008.

In Peace,

Michele and Nils

Bonus Christmas Song -

People who live in rural communities have access to an abundance of fresh food and are happy to share, but by the end of our time we were beginning to feel like we were in a food-themed ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’, which inspired the following:

Seven Days of Christmas in Garzal:

On the seventh day in Garzal, a neighbor gave to me

Seven cups of coffee

Six coconuts

Five kilos of oranges

Four cups of tamarind pulp

Three sour guavas

Two ripe bananas

And a chicken tamale wrapped in banana leaves!

CPT MISSION STATEMENT: Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) Colombia is a
community made up of trained volunteers from different cultures that forms part of the international, ecumenical organization, CPT. Our work is based in, though not limited to, the Middle Magdalena region of Colombia. We work together on grassroots initiatives to expose and transform structures of domination and oppression through active nonviolence in order to make possible a world grounded in respect, justice and love, even of enemies.

Read more or make a donation at www.cpt.org.

Salsa dancing!

I (Nils) am back from Nariño. My stay there ended up being just three weeks, but I had to turn right around for another five-day accompaniment almost as soon as I arrived back here. Now at last Michele and I have been able to spend some time together.

Click on the photo below for some pictures from a recent evening of dancing with some of our teammates at Las Cotorras, a favorite salsa bar. It was a supremely fun night, and a reminder that we need to get out more and enjoy Barrancabermeja’s nightlife.

Salsa Dancing

Update from Nils

Michele and I are spending a few weeks apart as I take part in an accompaniment in Nariño, in the far southwestern corner of Colombia, 30 hours from Barrancabermeja by bus. Nariño is beautiful, it’s very mountainous and also has a lot of rainforests. Right now I’m in Pasto, the capitol of Nariño, but we’ll mostly be working in the town of Ricaurte, about four hours from here. The newspaper ‘Diario del Sur’ has a bunch of photos of Ricuarte on their website (click here).

The photos do a pretty good job of telling the story of Ricaurte: beautiful mountainous rainforests, and lots of soldiers.

We’ll be in Ricaurte to accompany a community of Awá indigenous people that have been suffering in the armed conflict recently. Hundreds of families have had to flee their homes due to ongoing battles between the army and the FARC guerrilla, and many civilians have been killed, either caught in the crossfire or killed by landmines, which are prevalent in the rural areas. My teammate and I are not going to be visiting the rural areas for our own safety, but our accompaniment from Ricaurte can be helpful to the community leadership as they go about their work. We’re also hoping to write some articles to make the struggles of the Awá people more visible. I was here in Nariño last year in November, and it feels good to be back doing this valuable work.

Vacation in San Gil

We recently took a few days off team for a 4-day vacation in and near San Gil. Nils is leaving for an accompaniment in Nariño (the far southwestern corner of Colombia) so we wanted a vacation together before he left. San Gil is about 5 hours away from Barranca by bus, and the area around there is known for it's natural beauty, and it's beautiful colonial towns, as well as being a center for extreme sports such as whitewater rafting, hang gliding, and spelunking. We didn't do any extreme sports, but we did have a nice getaway, and went on some great hikes together.

In addition to San Gil, we visited the nearby village of Barichara, a beautifully-preserved colonial town. From there we hiked to a waterfall and to Guané, an even smaller village. Here are some pictures from our trip:

San Gil

Video about Small Miners on the web

The British non-profit organization War on Want has produced a short video about mining issues in southern Bolivar province in Colombia. This area is close to Barranacabermeja, and we do a lot of work in the region, including accompanying the miners federation mentioned in the video. Michele and I have met José Uribe, the man interviewed in the film, several times, and accompanied him at times when he felt his life was under threat.

The film does a good job of underlining the issues the small-scale miners are dealing with in the face of development interest by multinational mining companies.
Click here for the video.
It's worth watching.

Trip to Chile, April 2007

In April we spent two weeks visiting Santiago and Southern Chile with our neighbors from Minneapolis, Lisa, who is on a sabbatical with her family, Sergio and Camilo.

Chile, April 2007

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.

Opon river accompaniments

The last month we have each made several trips to the Opon river, where we accompany several communities that were displaced by violence and have now returned. CPT has accompanied these communities since 2001. Our accompaniment, along with the organizing the communities themselves have done, gives them the security to remain on their land.

Click on the album to see a bunch of photos we took over various trips.

Opon trips - March & April

Mining Delegation

Michele recently helped to coordinate a delegation of North Americans who spent 12 days learning about the issues impacting small gold miners. Michele's mom was one of the delegates. The delegation travelled by boat, truck and foot to get to a remote mining area. After 5 days of listening to miners the delegates returned to Bogota where they planned a public witness to bring attention to the issues facing the miners.

Mining Delegation

Team photo

Here's the CPT Colombia team, as of February 20, 2007
Back row: Pierre, Noah, Jenny, Stuart, Michele, Sandra, and Julián
Front row: Suzanna, Nils and Joel

Our life here

Here are some photos of our everyday life here in Barrancabermeja:

Our life in Barrancabermeja

Visit to Venezuela, February 2007

We recently took some time off of the team; our first real vacation since we got here to Barrancabermeja in October. We went back to Mérida, Venezuela to visit Nils' former host family. (Nils lived in Mérida for a year in 1984-85 as an AFS exchange student.) It was also nice to get out of the heat of Barranca, and do some hiking in the mountains with Victor, Nils' host father. Click below to see photos of our trip.

Venezuela Feb. 07

Security for this blog

We wanted to share pictures with you, but given the nature of the conflict and CPT's work here in Colombia, we also need to be careful about sharing information over the Internet. Therefore, in this blog we won't name any of the Colombians who appear in the photos, and we'll need to be somewhat vague about the locations we visit.