In Colombia's jungles, echoes of Argentina's 'Disappeared'

[Say_What]

After Israel and Egypt, Colombia is the world's third largest recipient of US military aid. The Colombian army then trains and advices the paramilitaries who commit 70% of the atrocities in Colombia--your tax dollars at work. What happened in Central America is now happening in Colombia and we hear nearly nothing from the corporate press. Why you ask? OIL, OIL, OIL.

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Cacarica, Colombia -- Mirta Acuna de Baravalle's white headscarf flashes through the thick green foliage of Colombia's Darien jungle. Even in this remote territory, the symbol of Argentina's celebrated Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo is unmistakable.

Twenty-five years have passed since Acuna joined other mothers on a weekly march around the now-famous Buenos Aires square, wearing headscarves and carrying photos of their children, whom they believed were "disappeared" by military kidnappers. In 1976, Acuna lost her pregnant daughter, Ana Maria, a sociology student, along with her son-in-law.

The 79-year-old Acuna, one of 14 founding members of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo (the latter created to find missing grandchildren), could be home celebrating an August decision by the Argentine government to repeal two amnesty laws that had long shielded hundreds of military officers from prosecution for the estimated 30,000 killed or disappeared during the armed forces' 1976-83 "dirty war" against its political opposition.

Instead, she recently traveled 3,000 miles north, to Colombia's Choco province, to bolster an interfaith church group called the Justice and Peace Commission, which is fighting to protect and find out what happened to the disappeared of Cacarica. This remote, predominately Afro-Colombian community of 1,200 inhabitants was created several years ago after a massacre and at least 70 disappearances by paramilitary militias drove its residents from their villages.

<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/01/12/MNGDB485701.DTL>