The past 2 months since I wrote last has been full of meetings, trips and news that strike at the heart of human rights in the Community of Paz. Personally, it has been a time during which I finally settled in to life in La Union and really started feeling like I have a place here. Clearly, then, I should have been documenting it as it progressed. Sadly, I was not that judicious. As a result, I have decided that, rather than having one extremely long blog entry, I would break it up into several.
TODAY: January and February´s military meetings
1st half of January:
This period wasn’t the easiest for anyone on the team. It is right after the holidays, so those who didn’t go home are still reeling from the experience of Christmas alone and those who did go home are reeling from the shock of being back. Needless to say, January started off with a bang at new years and quickly tapered into something of a general lull for us all. To make matters worse, living in a very rural environment where the only extra-work activities include afternoon soccer, reading, thinking or talking, a person who doesn’t really like soccer and isn’t very good at talking ends up spending a lot of time alone, thinking. This can be great, but as we all know, Navel gazing, as I have grown up calling it, usually results in little more than spinning mental wheels trying get to the absolute root of all their problems, a generally impossible goal.
2nd half of January/First week of February:
Luckily, there was work (and, recently, amateur house planning) to pull me out of myself and into the world above.
Lately, work has been consumed by planning for and carryout meetings with the military, police and state-human rights departments. We do this twice a year every year, but this round was particularly important because January saw a wave of turn overs in the military and police ranks as well as a couple worrying occurrences in both Cordoba and Antioquia (I live in the latter but the community has members in the former) that we needed to mention to the state authorities. Before I get to the meetings themselves, there are a few things I have to clarify.
First, it is important to understand the relationship between the government, including the military and police, and the Community. The history is complex and long as is any history that involves corruption, a 60 year rebellion, three armed groups, murders, drugs and impotent justice system. However, the short of it all is that in 2005 Luis Eduardo Guerra, one of the Community´s most important leaders, his family and several others were murdered in n the same morning in the area around Mulatos, a small village north east of where I live. Since then, despite the fact that several soldiers and commanders have admitted to the military’s involvement in the crime, none of them has ever been prosecuted, much less punished. As a result, the community decided that it could no longer trust the government, including its justice and military systems, to protect them and their rights and thus declared that they were officially and indefinitely rupturing relations.
This means that the Community does not want the government involved in their lives at all. No social services, no social aid and especially no military and police protection. While the guerilla facts DO present a real and serious danger to the community, the community believes that military presence only works to bring the fight closer and is not protective. Instead, they believe that the only way to really protect themselves is to separate themselves completely from the conflict, I .e. adopt a policy of strict pacifism and neutrality. The hope is that if they don’t get involved with any side, no other side will have any reason to attack. To deepen their security peacefully, the community works very hard at creating and strengthening international ties. Here, the idea is that having a large number of citizens of politically powerful countries advocating on the Community´s behalf, any incursion on their rights will be too politically costly for any actor.
This is where we and our meetings are useful. While meeting with brusque military men and listening to same government discourse repeatedly is fun, there are more important reasons for these meetings. One is to remind them that we are here, watching and recording human rights violations and that we are passing them on to higher political authorities life foreign embassies and Colombian government departments. Another, we make sure they are aware of the situation in the zone. Many of the higher ranked officials are disconnected with reality on the ground, and, moreover, many people are jumping on President Santo´s bandwagon declaring that the conflict is coming to an end. We try to clarify that, it is way too early to begin declaring victory, especially when we are still seeing so many violations on a regular basis. Finally, we meet to keep communication lines open and get their personal contact information that we use in cases of emergency.
Now, the summaries. Given the fact that we come from an anti- military stance that is very skeptical of recent assertions that things in Colombia have changed for the better, meetings with military and police are frustrating to say the least. We say that paramilitaries still exist, they say that paramilitaries are groups like firemen and paramedics; we say that the community is threatened and given the history, doesn’t trust the government; they merely repeat that they should go to the government. In general, the meetings feel like little more than a tennis match, each of us volleying back and forth our official discourses, neither appearing to gain any ground.
Meetings with the military are simultaneously exciting, elucidating and frustrating. Exciting because it is one of the few opportunities we have as accompaniers to really exercise our political power. Elucidating because each time we go through the process of refining agendas and analyzing what topics to discuss and how to discuss them, we get a deeper understanding of the subtleties and complexities of the relationship between the government and the community. Despite the power trip and the clarity these meetings lend, one can’t help but walk away from them feeling like nothing was truly accomplished. One can only hope that behind the official discourse, something of what we said, or maybe the mere fact that we are there watching, did sink in and will have an effect.
