San José de Apartado: Colombian Peace Community Stands Up for Humanity

[dcsmart]

by Raimondo Chiari
from Upside Down World

A dirt road leaves the city of Apartado, in the region of Urabá, in the Northwestern Colombian province of Antioquia, making its way up into the mountains. The surrounding land hosts banana plantations as far as the eye can see, owned by subsidiaries of the Chiquita, Del Monte and Bonita brands, as well as plantations of African Palm, which have recently made their way as a lucrative cash crops. The road enters a deep emerald forest, crossing small villages with wooden houses, farm animals roaming in the mud and heavily guarded military check points.

Urabá has been major theater in Colombia’s forty years long and ongoing armed conflict. All armed actors are present in the region: the Colombian army, left-wing guerillas and, since the mid 1990s, ultra-right wing paramilitaries. The arm carriers are not only fighting for these fertile lands, but also for the control of this strategic corridor to Panama and the Pacific region of Chocó, indispensable to international drug traffic. Stuck in the middle, thousands of civilians have been killed, disappeared and displaced, stripped of their lands, accused of or forced into collaboration with one or another group. In this sea of violence however, there is an attempt to create an island of calm.

Proceeding for one hour up the bumpy road, an opening in the tropical vegetation reveals a small group of houses surrounded by hills and a river. This is where the Peace Community of San José de Apartado begins. At its entrance, barbwire keeps animals in, and a sign decorated by children’s art work spells out:

The Community freely: participates in communal work, says no to injustice and impunity, does not participate in war directly or indirectly and does not bear arms, does not manipulate or provide information to any of the actors in the conflict.

The peace community of San José de Apartado was created in 1997 by five hundred displaced villagers from seventeen different towns in the wider region, following a wave of massacres perpetrated mostly by paramilitary groups. While forced out of their homes, these farmers were determined that they would not give up their lands. The only way to do so, they resolved, was through self organization and refusing to take part in the conflict in any way.
Text

FULL ARTICLE
http://socialistwebzine.blogspot.com/2009/04/san-jose-de-apartado-colombian-peace.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Thank you for posting this material on San Jose de Apartado.

It was a surprise to see they had also included a child's painting of a massacre at this peace community. I am very thankful to be able to save it for my own files. It says far more than could quickly be describe verbally:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_harpqh_9IwQ/Se4rkoRZVRI/AAAAAAAAAk0/5cBTyIvWivA/s320/rai+5.jpg
From the article:

The peace community of San José de Apartado was created in 1997 by five hundred displaced villagers from seventeen different towns in the wider region, following a wave of massacres perpetrated mostly by paramilitary groups. While forced out of their homes, these farmers were determined that they would not give up their lands. The only way to do so, they resolved, was through self organization and refusing to take part in the conflict in any way.

The community is based on the principles of transparent dialogue, respect of plurality, solidarity, resistance and justice; it demands that all the parties to the conflict not enter the boundaries of the community, respect residents’ right to life and decision of not participating or collaborating with any of the arm bearers, and to recognize their status as non-combatant civilians. Their courageous decision has lived on.

Today, the community counts nearly 1500 members, and has been able to slowly re-conquer portions of land of which they were illegally expropriated.

~snip~
Despite the symbolic power and the international attention that the Peace Community of San José de Apartado has been able to garner, 176 of its members have been assassinated since its foundation twelve years ago. A monument honoring their memory is placed in the center of the village of San Josecito, and their names are also written on the external wall of the school.

Also note the beautiful song video included at the link.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Massacre in Colombian Peace Community

Once again, the trail of blood leads to the SOA:
SOA graduate commands accused brigade

~snip~

http://www.soaw.org.nyud.net:8090/img/Luis%20Eduardo%20Guerra.jpg

Among those killed was Luis Eduardo Guerra, an internationally recognized peace activist and a co-founder of the Peace Community. In November 2002, Luis travelled from Colombia to Fort Benning, Georgia to speak out against the School of the Americas and to give a first hand testimony about the brutal impact that SOA training and US foreign policy have on the dire situation in Colombia.
http://www.soaw.org/article.php?id=1024

~~~~~~~~~~~
Linked from the SOA site:

~snip~
The San José community has sought and received accompaniment from outside groups, who have embraced it as a model of non-violent resistance to war. Peace Brigades International and the Fellowship of Reconciliation have maintained a volunteer presence for years. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts) and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) have visited the remote town. Leaders of the town have toured the United States and Europe, educating grassroots groups. The Peace Community has received provisional protection from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Between February 21 and 22, a group of armed men detained Luis Eduardo Guerra - one of the community's most prominent leaders, who had visited the United States on speaking tours - as well as his son, his partner and another person near the Mulatos river, several miles from the San José town center.

According to witnesses, the army's 17th Brigade - based in nearby Carepa, Antioquia - had been carrying out operations in the Mulatos area. According to Amnesty International, "Soldiers in the area have reportedly told local inhabitants that if the killings had not been reported, they would have killed more civilians. The soldiers have allegedly referred to the eight victims as 'dead guerrillas' ('puro guerrillero muerto')."

The detainees were taken to the farm of Alfonso Bolívar Tuberquia, whom Peace Brigades identifies as "a member of the Peace Council of the hamlet of Mulatos." Neither the detainees, their families, nor Tuberquia was ever seen again. An investigative commission that traveled to the zone on February 25th found recently-dug graves with the bodies of five adults and three children, aged two, six and eleven. Among the bodies was that of Luis Eduardo Guerra, showing signs of torture.

More:
http://www.peaceincolombia.org/sjablurb.htm

[dcsmart]

2. SOA watch is great...have you read the book about its founder..

http://www.maryknollsocietymall.org/description.cfm?ISBN=978-1-57075-434-0

here is an interview with him
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkXABRWuZJ0

glad you enjoyed the post...
thanks for the additional info

[Judi Lynn]

3. Why Did They Kill the Children?

April 21, 2009
By Anne Schoeneborn - Translator

Justice
Four years after the massacre in San José de Apartadó, during which three childrenwere decapitated and dismembered, SEMANA reconstructs what happened during those horror-filled days and the cover-up that followed.*
April 21, 2009

In February 2005, Armando Gordillo experienced both heaven and hell in the space of
less than one week. While providing security for the television stars filming the reality
show “Desafîo 2005” at the lively beaches of Capurganá on the Caribbean coast, the
Army captain received a phone call. He was ordered to go to Nueva Antioquia, near
Apartadó, because Operation ‘Fénix,’ planned by the Seventeenth Brigade, was
scheduled to begin.

Only a few weeks prior to the day Gordillo received the phone call, the brigade had
received its heaviest blow in recent years, and the heaviest since Álvaro Uribe was
elected president. In the neighborhood of El Porroso in Mutatá, one officer and 18
soldiers were killed in a FARC ambush. The brigade had been unable to explain what
had happened. They said there were problems with communication, that it had been an
ambush. Whatever the explanation, General Héctor Fandiño and all the high officials of
the brigade were pained and humiliated by this blow, and the General was even
sanctioned.

Because of this recent history, the order to take part in an operation with various
battalions near the canyon of the Mulatos River, where the 5th and 58th Fronts of the
FARC were known to have a camp, did not surprise Gordillo. Also, ‘Samir,’ a
particularly feared guerilla, was known frequently to hide out in the area. Neither did it
surprise Gordillo to find members of his battalion, both officers and soldiers, meeting
with a paramilitary group when he arrived in Nueva Antioquia on February 17th.

This was not the first time that had happened. Everyone knew that Don Berna’s “Bloque
Héroes de Tolová” had its operational headquarters on the La Hoz Hill, where the logistics of the operation were being planned. Two months prior, the “Bloque Bananeros de Urabá” had been demobilized and its members were thought to be reintegrating into civilian life under the command of Ever Veloza, ‘H.H.’

According to Gordillo, when he arrived in Nueva Antioquia his superiors of the Vélez
Batallion, Lieutenant Coronel Orlando Espinoza and Major José Fernando Castaño, had
already coordinated everything with the paramilitaries of the Héroes de Tolová. In fact,
the Alacrán Company of the Contraguerrilla 33 Batallion had already left and was headed toward Las Nieves. The group was being guided by a paramilitary known as ‘Melaza,’ who had been recently demobilized and had long been an acquaintance of the members of the military and a regular visitor of the Seventeenth Brigade. He had no problem dressing in fatigues and carrying an official gun while also communicating via radio with the other companies in the area.

Gordillo was assigned to a paramilitary group coordinated by alias ’44’ that included
various thugs, such as ‘Kiko,’ ‘Cobra’ and ‘Pirulo.’ Gordillo told the Attorney General’s
Office, “They said that they knew the area, knew of FARC camps and hiding-places near the Mulatos canyon… that the operation had already been spoken about with superiors.” The events that followed show that the operation was one of revenge. The victims of the raid would be civilians, several of them children, who were decapitated and dismembered in a barbarous act rivaling the massacres of ‘chuvalitas’ in the period of La Violencia.

More:
http://www.semana.com/noticias-print-edition/why-did-they-kill-the-children/123116.aspx