GREEN LETTER No. 78 from Colombia, 22 November 2005 These Letters are collected, compiled and edited by Jenny James of Atlantis Ecological Community, Belen, Huila, COLOMBIA Correspondence with Jenny - atlantiscommune@hotmail.com Instead of longer articles, we have dedicated this issue of the Green Letters to a collection of ‘News in Brief’ to give the reader a sense of the political climate, protests and officially-supported violence in Colombia, plus other items of interest, via a series of news reports and personal experiences. Murder is OK if you’re a paramilitary…. A recent news items told the story of a group of people in a motel hearing a woman’s frantic screams and cries for help. They rushed to the room the sound was coming from and saw a young man standing over a woman obviously about to murder her. The man was armed and threatened the people not to intervene. And he killed the woman. The murderer was a recently ‘reinserted’ paramilitary, and in accordance with President Uribe’s softly-softly approach to his protegés (the paramilitaries), the incredible verdict the Judge pronounced when the murderer went on trial was: that the killing was ‘obviously’ an act of ‘momentary madness’. So ‘obviously’, he let the man go scot free…. The Making of a Paramilitary Murderer – by Katie (20) “My boyfriend has, or rather had, a friend who is now a paramilitary. They used to play together when children. Then my boyfriend came to live in Popayan and a few years later got the terrible news about what his friend was doing. One day they met again after the paramilitary was let out of prison by President Uribe’s new laws, having spent only 8 months there, presumably for murder. “They talked for ages. My boyfriend wanted to know why his friend had joined the paramilitaries and this is what the man answered: That when he was 14, he had a girlfriend who he really loved. One day, walking along the road at night with her, three men came out, overcame him and tied him up, then raped his girlfriend, forcing him to watch. He had never been with his girlfriend sexually and she was a virgin. “The girl was badly hurt and was taken to hospital, but she went mad, she couldn’t look at any man, including her boyfriend, without screaming hysterically, and eventually she died. The boy lived with this night and day, full of anger and hatred and in the end decided to join the paramilitaries so as to be able to kill rapists. The problem is, of course, that rapists were not the only people he killed… “One day, he was on a bus and the guerrilla stopped it and asked everyone for their papers. They had a list of names of people they were going to kill. His name was on that list, but there was some error and it wasn’t exactly the same as the name on his papers, so he managed to convince them that he wasn’t the person they were looking for, that he wasn’t a paramilitary. And they let him go. “Later he was with a group of paras. and went to someone’s house looking for guerrillas and there was the very same guerrilla man who had stopped the bus that time. The guerrilla went pale and said, ‘Spare me my life’. My boyfriend, listening to the story, expected that his friend would have shown mercy. But no, his friend boasted that he just shot the FARC man in the head. “This ex-paramilitary is now working in a glass shop and says he never wants to go back to that kind of life, but all his paramilitary friends who were also let out of prison are now common criminals, living by mugging and extortion. The ex-paramilitary knows that the guerrilla have his name and those of all his friends, so he can never travel or even live feeling relaxed. It is only a matter of time till they find him….” Everyday Family Violence in Colombia – also by Katie And now a family violence story, which is where it all starts… K. is a young friend of ours. Most of her conversations are about the violence in her family. She tells us about her grandmother tying her and her brothers up with their hands tied together above their heads when they were really young. They would be left like this for hours in the hot sun, with the grandmother forcing them to eat huge pieces of raw onion ‘so they wouldn’t get a cold.’ She tells us about her older brother nearly killing her and her sister because they complained about him coming into the house doped and drunk. He took off his belt and whipped them with the buckle making their legs bleed. When they did things wrong, their parents would always hit them, and of course they learnt to use the same methods on each other. She said she always had physical fights with her sisters. Her husband later on was no different. He’d come in late and drunk and want to ‘make love’. When she tried to stop him, he would hit her for this and for other silly insignificant things too. They have a two-year old child together and of course, she now hits him regularly. The child suffers from constipation (because of the awful diet she feeds him), so she hits him to make him go to the toilet! I’ve noticed that whenever she speaks to him, she is threatening to slap or whip him. The child always looks frightened and ill.” Paramilitary Slogan in Poor Suburb: “Good children go to sleep at 8.00 p.m., or we’ll put you to sleep ourselves” (in Spanish: ‘Los buenos niños se acuestan a las 8 o los acostamos.’) - That is, a death threat to young people found on the streets. ‘To War Against His Will’ …Is the title of a news item in the high quality communist weekly newspaper Voz, 17th August 2005. The (translated) text is as follows: “A 20 year old student leader from Saravena, Arauca, Gustavo Monroy, was called up for military service, but he refused to go arguing that he did not want to take up arms and much less to be in the Army. “It is significant that the Dept. of Arauca is the scene of military operations under ‘Plan Patriota’ in which the civilian population has been attacked, as when the army assassinated three union leaders there recently. “In a statement, the organization of students affirmed, ‘In Colombia, conscientious objection to obligatory military service has not been legally approved, though efforts have been made in this direction. However, this process will be a long one and because of the state of the country politically, it will require international support to bring this about, and to make sure that men refusing to serve are not abused whilst in custody in military installations.’ Cases such as that of Monroy must open the debate on the subject in youth and student organizations in particular and for the bulk of Colombian youth in general.” Third Murderer Found We have just heard that the third of the suspected six murderers of our boys Tristan and Javier has been arrested in Fusa, Tolima, for another crime. Our accusations against him can now go forward. Not that it helps Tris or Javier, but it might keep this serial killer from murdering others if he’s behind bars for a long time. Massacre in Icononzo, Tolima (from a report in ‘Voz’ 21st Sept. 2005) Violence continues in Icononzo, Tolima. On Wednesday, 14th September 2005 during the night, an armed group travelling in vehicles (longhand for ‘paramilitaries’) invaded the hamlets of la Fila, La Taja and El Alto de Icononzo, violently murdering five farm workers after torturing them, dragging them from their homes, threatening their families with death and destroying their possessions. They then proceded to take them to a place called Cueva Grande on the River Sumapaz, approximately 8 km. from where they were kidnapped. Amongst the murdered men were Secundino Macias, Juan Romero, and the brothers Pulido Rodriguez and Ramiro Diaz. Paramilitary groups are active in Icononzo and have been denounced on various occasions by the community without the authorities taking any action in this respect. This news item is one of dozens that appear weekly in Colombia. Its particular significance for us is that Icononzo is where we lived for 11 years peacefully, bringing up our children, ‘La Fila’ was just a mile down the road from where we lived, and ‘El Alto de Icononzo’ is the tiny hamlet where we took refuge in the house of a friend after the guerrilla had thrown us out of our farm in 1999. And it was because of our displacement there that we met our beloved Javier, my son-in-law-to-be. And the place to which he travelled with my grandson Tristan a year later on 9th July 2000 to visit his parents. And from which they travelled to Hoya Grande, another village, to meet their deaths. Then it was the guerrilla ruling and killing at will, now it is the paramilitaries. UN in Deep Denial (report from Anne) The United Nations Commission for Refugees in Colombia holds regular fortnightly meetings with foreign NGOs who accompany the endangered peace community of San Jose de Apartado. When the massacre occurred last February of eight people there, including very small children, and members of the International Peace Brigade accompanied the local people on the long mountain journey to locate the victims, the only comment this UN organization made was that they should not have absented themselves from the regular meeting, and that it could not have been the paramilitaries who committed the massacre (it was) because they are in the process of ‘peace’ negotiations with the Government (their employer)! Paramilitary Threats on the Increase in Dept. of Cauca As a result of recent demonstrations by Indians in Cauca to recuperate their land, threats against their principal leaders have not been long in coming. The Nasa Indian head of communications, Emmanuel Rozental, has had to leave the country, having been accused by government forces of being a ‘terrorist.’ A whole list of other leaders have likewise been threatened. With the ill-named ‘Law of Justice and Peace’ (which essentially legalizes the paramilitary forces), paramilitarism in various parts of Cauca is on the increase, causing terror amongst the people there. In Silvia, where Indian communities have taken over land, paramilitary slogans have appeared on the walls stating, “We will enforce respect for Private Property”. Since the end of September, leaflets have been circulating in Popayan, capital of Cauca, signed by the paramilitary organization AUC announcing the creation of a ‘Cleansing Brigade’, threatening people accused of being delinquents. At least 20 young people from poor suburbs have been killed in Popayan, Puerto Tejada and Patia in the last few weeks. One young man of 26, son of a displaced family who worked in building construction, disappeared on 21st October and was found dead next day with signs of torture on his body. (Source:Voz, 9 Nov. 2005) In Popayan, trade union and other people’s organizations carried out numerous protests against the arrest of Miguel Alberto Fernandez Orozco, President of the regional branch of the National Trade Union Organization (CUT), who had been taken into custody aggressively by the DAS (Security Police) and thrown into jail in spite of the fact that he has an order of protection from the Inter- American Commission of Human Rights. The people were also protesting at the detention of the Nasa Indian Jose Vicente Otero. In Popayan and the whole Department of Cauca, there is a climate of tension and insecurity because of the rightwing intransigence of the regional Governor, Juan Jose Chaux. At the entrance to Popayan, on the country road leading from the area of our farm, a road sign saying DANGER, plus a traffic warning, has been spray-painted to read: DANGER: AUC (i.e. paramilitaries). Prelude to the Bombing of San Jose Peace Community As reported in the last two days, the Colombian Government have now seen fit to bomb the newly resettled Peace Community of San Jose. So far one man has been killed. The community sent out many ‘Alerts’ in the period preceding this fresh atrocity, including the following report: That on 31st October in Arenas Bajas, the Army broke into the home of Fidel Tuberquia and arrested him in an arbitrary manner, insulting him and accusing him of being an insurgent. “If the guerrilla shoots at us, we will chop you to pieces”, they said. Then they left, taking with them all his food and chickens. In the 90 days previous to this incident, there were constant hostile acts against the community on the part of the Army and the paramilitaries, causing the people to fear another massacre. (Source: Voz) A message of encouragement to the Peace Communities Five peasant communites in resistance, having suffered theft of their land, attacks from paramilitaries, forced displacement and food blockades, received a message of encouragement and hope from the the world network of anti-war Town Mayors. “You are a seed of enormous hope for the end of the conflcit in Colombia, demonstrating as a daily reality the possibility of resolution of the conflict by non-violent means” wrote Tadatoshi Akiba, Mayor of Hiroshima, President of ‘Mayors for Peace’, who, representing 1,060 mayors all over the world, signed a letter of solidarity and support for the five peasant communities in resistance. Popular Militancy in the face of Military Aggression (Source: Voz 12th October) Ibague, capital of Tolima: Military aggression against the National Strike planned for 12th October increased on a par with the determination of the population to confront President Uribe’s rightwing policies. In the town of Planadas, the military demanded that the Mayor put out a decree prohibiting a demonstration, arguing that it was organized by the armed insurgency and the Communist party. Members of the military then tried to sabotage the public meeting in the main square organized by the Agricultural Workers Unions. Captain Vargas of the 68th Mobile Brigade snatched the microphone and arrogantly spoke for over three quarters of an hour incoherently saying that the guerrilla should hand itself over to the Army and that the country people should all become Army spies. Indignant, the more than 300 peasant farmers gathered there shouted slogans of unity and support for the National Strike and rejection of the US-inspired Free Trade Agreement, demanding respect from the armed forces and guarantees of safety to continue their demonstration, reminding the army that the right to protest is part of the Colombian Constitution. The country women present were incensed and protested with great dignity and determination, shouting in chorus that the military should leave the event and let the delegates and human rights representatives of the National Confederation of Trades Unions (CUT) speak. In spite of military pressure, threats and the filming of those present, the peasants of the south of Tolima reiterated their determination to protest and demanded social justice, investment in their region and peaceful coexistence based on a political solution to the armed social conflict, plus a humanitarian exchange of prisoners of war. Indian Militancy (Source: Voz, Oct. 12th 2005) Chaparral, Tolima: More than 100 Pijao and Paez Indians spent 15 days of peaceful protest outside the Public Attorney’s office in Chaparral, to demand the release of Fernando Martinez, arrested by troops of the Caicedo Battallion on 26th August. Martinez was accused of sedition, but Isaias Noscue, governor of the Indian reserve of Nasaquigüe de Las Mercedes, said that the Indian community had been investigating the alleged connection of Martinez with the guerrilla and found him to be innocent. What had happened was that Martinez had been forced into a false confession after being threatened that he would be killed. The Indian leader said, ‘Martinez is a member of the Indian Guards but not of the guerrilla. We demand that the State respect the indigenous authorities,’ and added that if Martinez was not freed, communities from other areas would come to join the protest and take other legal action. A Letter from the FARC to the Colombian Army The FARC guerrilla army stated in a letter to Colombian military commanders, sub-officers and all those who ‘although having to risk their lives in the line of fire are not allowed to rise to officer level because of their humble background’: “Your opinions, which are beginning to reach us via many clandestine routes, tell us that the desires for a new Colombia that unite us are far more powerful than the narrow interests of the oligarchy that force us to fight.’ (Source: Voz) Colombia the ever-Paradoxical One day we had a visit from 40 campesinos (peasants) from a distant area. They ate with us, talked with us, looked at our farm and compost systems, watched our theatre, heard our songs. When it was time to leave, one diminutive dark-skinned Indian-looking little man, who had shown intense interest in everything we said, took me confidentially aside and asked me to put him in contact with the FARC guerrilla! I said I was sorry, but I had no such facility, and what was the problem? He said that ever since the Army had chased the guerrilla from his region, it had become unliveable in, with common criminals returning and making life hell for the inhabitants and that everyone wanted the guerrilla back to keep order… Some time later, I was waiting for transport on the ‘main road’ (a dirt track) a couple of hours’ walk from our farm, at a communal stopping-point, a shack and shop called ‘La Estación.’ I bristled somewhat to see that on this day, a large group of army soldiers were lounging around everywhere. I had to wait alongside them for several hours and observed the young men in their boredom. My artist daughter Alice was with me, and we were looking at some of her paintings we had with us, and this immediately gave the soldiers an excuse to come over and start chatting. I got into conversation with the commander, who asked the usual question: ‘Do you ever see the guerrilla where you live?’ No, I answered, ‘and the local people aren’t all that pleased about it as they used to keep delinquents under control, but now the buses get attacked and the passengers robbed…’ I said this with fairly obvious undertones of complaint, the implication being that the Army did NOT help with ordinary law and order, and I wondered how the soldier would react…. He nodded in agreement, acknowledging the well-known ‘policing’ function of the guerrilla, and added, well aware of the Army’s reputation: ‘There’s good and bad on both sides, and we have made some bad mistakes’ – a euphemism for committing atrocities. The vehicle I was waiting for arrived, and I left, my mind full of wonderment at this intricate, definitely not black- and-white country… Canada Persecutes Radical Colombian Refugees The Canadian authorities have been persecuting Colombian refugees from radical organizations and attempting to deny them their refugee status, using the argument that they belong to the ‘political arm of the FARC.’ Behind the accusation is the Colombian Embassy. The previous Ambassadress, Fanny Ketzman, who was involved in responsibility for the horrific massacre in Mapiripan a few years ago, and the present Ambassador, Jorge Visbal, one time president of the paramilitary-fomenting organization of cattleowners (Fedegan), prepared lists of Colombian refugees in Canada and spread the line that all communist militants are guerrilla fighters. A simple proof of Election Corruption in Colombia In Cartagena, Dept. of Bolivar, a woman complained publicly that the price of the vote had devalued. She bemoaned the fact that previously she had been paid 50,000 pesos (1 euro = approx. 2,500 pesos) for her vote, whereas now politicians were only offering 20,000 ….!! Protest at Enforced Hair-cutting (from Voz) The Indian organization of Ecuador (CONAIE) declared Colombian President Uribe ‘persona non grata’ when he arrived in Quito on 23rd October, to convince the Ecuadorian president to sign the unpopular Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. The Indians were protesting that seven Ecuadorian compatriots had been expelled from Colombia and had had their traditional long plaits cut off by the Colombian authorities. CONAIE is a powerful organization that was instrumental in bringing down a former corrupt Ecuadorian president, Jamil Mahuad, and in bringing about significant social changes in the country. Colombian Govt. To Privatize Forests (Translation of information in a Voz article, 9th November 2005:) A much-contested Forestry Law is about to be approved by the Colombian Congress. One of the chief bodies opposing this Bill is the Colombian Commission of Jurists, who point out that the law ignores the right of indigenous and Afro-Colombian peoples to be consulted, and favours only the timber industry, whilst ignoring present environmental legislation, the National Forestry Plan and international forestry rules: treaties which Colombia has signed regarding protection of the environment, maintaining diversification, the struggle against drought, protection of indigenous and Afrocolombian communities, the battle against Climate Change, and international agreements on tropical timber. It also ignores agreements made with the Intergovernmental Forestry Panel of the UN. In the opinion of the Commission of Jurists, it is an exclusive law which will work towards “giving incentive to investors to exploit forestlands economically with no kind of sustainable ecological management. In no way does it guarantee the conservation of the ecosystems. If the law is approved, 60 million hectares of Colombian forestland, approximately 27 million of which belong to indigenous and afro-colombian communities, will pass into the hands of foreign investors.” Greens Not Welcome in Colombia At the beginning of November, 25 Green members of parliament from Europe, Latin America, Asia and Australia visited Colombia to investigate the political situation and to demand that the government negotiate for the release of their counterpart in Colombia, Ingrid Betancourt, kidnapped several years ago by the FARC. They held meetings with various political parties and institutions, but were not received by the national government who said they had ‘no interest in meeting them’. ‘We were vetoed’, commented one of the Green members of the European Parliament. Spreading ‘Democracy’ in South America and elsewhere, US style The US military is present in 120 of the 191 nations in the world. (Testimony before Armed Services Committee, 5.4.04., taken from ‘Lepoco’ peace activists’ bulletin, USA) “If the US government were held to the FBI’s official definition of terrorism (‘the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives’), their list of victims since World War II alone would include: Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, Mexico, Chile, Grenada, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador, Zaire, Namibia, Lebanon, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Bangladesh, Iran, South Africa, the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Iraq, Cambodia, Libya, Israel, Palestine, China, Afghanistan, Sudan, Indonesia, East Timor, Turkey, Angola, Mozambique, and Somalia.” Chris White, (ex-US Marine Corps.’serving’ from 199498 in places such as Diego Garcia, Okinawa, Japan, and Doha, Qatar). Conversion by Des Brittain “The very first anti-Vietnam war demo I went on was the Moratorium in Australia. I was 21 and pro-American then and raged against the long-haired hippy commies. I even got my picture in a Melbourne newspaper as a lone pro-war protestor amongst the hundreds of thousands on the march. “At the end of the demo, as everyone listened to the speeches, a young couple took me aside and explained things to me. I remember vividly them telling me about the American invasion of Nicaragua in particular and also of Lebanon. “They spoke quietly to me for about half an hour, gently disillusioning me about all I thought I believed in. They gave me some leaflets and I came away from that meeting a totally changed person. It was most definitely a ‘conversion on the road to Damascus’. God bless that anonymous couple wherever they are now. They don’t know it, but they changed totally the course of one man’s life.” (Des was brought up on a military base) On ‘Education’ – by Anne The rule that you need diplomas and degrees to get a good job is how this horrible capitalist ‘culture’ controls, buys and sells people’s intelligence and knowledge. You only have to look at how much any of those bits of paper costs in Colombia to realize that what matters most is the ‘negocio’ – the business - not the knowledge or education. The other day, a nice lady from the Bogota City Council was looking at the ‘Moon gardens’ in order to decide whether the Council will give them – and me – some money to run the project. She asked me what Qualifications I had as an ‘Agronomist’! It is a normal question here, but I have still not got over it. There she was, looking at the gardens and the tons of black earth we had created in a desert, and all the food growing all over the place, and all the people working happily, but a University Degree is what really proves you know something. My heart still beats fast when I think of what this question – innocent on her part – really means. It means you only know something if you paid lots to learn it, and not just with money, but with your soul and your braincells too. It means that the only people who get good jobs that give them power over other people are those who have managed to deaden themselves enough to sit and be bored for several years by mediocre teachers, whilst the really intelligent, open-minded, hard-working people who are too poor to get a degree are paid f.all and get treated like dirt. A Happy Birthday in Prison by Anne I just had a nice birthday party in prison. The prisoners I visit managed to get a little cake, with fruit and milk. Yesterday, I had a posher celebration, but definitely prison was the best venue, with nice men, good conversation, no loud music, no booze, no fags … all my posh middle class friends thought I was mad going to jail for the day! An ‘Ecological’ Dream (by Jenny) I dreamt I was looking at a very steep muddy mountain slope down which huge boulders were tumbling unstoppably. People were rushing down in front of them, obviously about to be overcome and crushed, with no hope of survival whatsoever. I stared in utter amazement, as it was equally obvious that all the people had to do to save themselves was to STEP TO ONE SIDE out of the path of destruction…. And on a lighter note: Old Wives’ Tales, Colombian style - by Louise Having a newborn baby opens you up to a barrage of unsolicited Advice and Rules from all and sundry. Here is the most recent crop thrown at me in the first weeks of my son’s life: I’ve been told never to sit my baby up (any baby’s favourite position) because it’s spine will bend and stay like that for the rest of its life and its cheeks will end up permanently sagging downwards! And here’s what to do for Hiccups: wet a piece of paper and stick it to the baby’s forehead. I’ve actually seen this done throughout my life living in many different parts of Colombia. By the way, getting hiccups means the baby is feeling cold. And yawning means the baby is hungry! I have lately been severely told off by all my friends for not completing (or even starting) my “dieta”: this means staying in bed for FORTY DAYS (heaven forbid!) after giving birth. This ritual has to be carried out in a dark room and I have to eat chicken soup everyday. “But I’m vegetarian,” I say, “and I don’t believe in these things.” “Well, you are going to suffer from chronic head aches and heavy menstrual pain and back pain and weakness for the rest of your life then,” they say. Funny that, haven’t seen those symptoms in my mother who was up gardening a few hours after giving birth to my sister Alice! Also, I’m supposed to wear a tight thick strap around my waist ‘to help the womb go back into place’ and, worse, to put one on the baby ‘to avoid a hernia.’ Plus, I have to ‘put a necklace of garlic around the baby’s neck’ to avoid the Evil Eye, and he should wear a little image of the ‘Virgin’ Mary and Jesus so that the Devil doesn’t take him away… this was told to me by someone who sells these little images, but I also heard it at school when I was a child. A few days after having my baby, I was stopped on our street by a lady who said, “Were you the girl who was pregnant?” Yes, I said. “Oh, I got to you too late,” she said, “I needed you still pregnant so you could come and cure my niece’s hernia by putting some of your saliva on it…” One day, I was holding my baby in front of a mirror and a young girl said to me almost panicking, “DON’T DO THAT! - If the baby sees himself in the mirror, it will make him recycle his own poo inside his stomach.” (For goodness’ sake, where do this get all this from?!) I have been told by innumerable people that I should not let people look at my baby while he is so small, as so many people have bad energy and an ‘evil eye’ which will make my baby ill, thin and dried up, especially women who are having their period will have this effect. Whenever I respond that I don’t believe in these things, they always insist and tell stories of people in their family it has happened to. My sister Katie’s boyfriend’s family told me in all seriousness that when a woman who is having a period looks at a baby, the baby will start grunting and groaning and will be very uncomfortable, and that the only solution is to get that same woman to put a tiny bit of her saliva into the baby’s mouth. Colombian leprechauns (from Jenny) When travelling the long night hours over the mountains from Popayán to our farm with the local milkman in his van, one of his favourite topics of conversation is duendes (dwarfish fairies), - he is worried that I don’t believe in them and seems to feel it his duty to show me the error of my ways. One night we were talking about Jack, my extremely lively adventurous 2 year old grandson. I was telling my milkman friend Luis how Jack loves to wander off up the steep hills of the mountain behind our house. ‘Oh dangerous!’ said Luis. ‘Yes, I know, it is a bit worrying,’ said I, ‘he chases the cows and they might turn on him’. ‘No, no, no,’ says Luis, ‘because the Duende might take him away.’ Jack’s Colombian father Mario was sitting beside me, and I then had to listen for hours in silent amazement whilst these two normally down-to-earth, macho working men had a long and very serious discussion about duendes, the most notable aspect of which was the following Final Proof of their existence – and of their preference for stealing away little girls, the only females in the world the right size for them: The very young daughter of a friend of Luis’s had disappeared. She was tragically found dead, stretched on a rock in the middle of a stream, far from home, with no scratch or sign of injury upon her, in an area she could not possibly have reached alone at her age. Therefore Duendes exist. In England, one might at the very least expect a murder investigation…. Not here, they know how it happened…. More next Letter, With love to all our Readers, Jenny James ~ End Green Letter 78 ~ Green Letters No.79 from Colombia: 7th January 2006 Compiled and edited by Jenny James Correspondence welcome: atlantiscommune@hotmail.com We begin with a report from Anne Barr regarding a very uncomfortable visit we made to ‘hot country’ recently: “At the beginning of December Louise, her 6 week old baby Michael, Katie, Jenny and I went to Meta along with Gloria Cuartas, a fiery famous left-wing activist and now candidate for the Colombian Senate, plus the director of the National Parks of that area, his wife, a young Colombian documentary maker and a young Colombian ecologist. We were invited by the same group of women who had invited me last August to talk about resistance via food self sufficiency and then again in September to help them make gardens. They had organised a Seed Exchange Encounter with other women’s groups in the area, which is an enormous territory that used to be part of the Demilitarized Zone where peace talks took place from 1999 to 2001 between the Colombian Government and the FARC guerrilla. The army moved into most of the former Zone in 1991 but they seemed to have forgotten about this bit and left it alone until very recently. However, at this very moment they are invading it and the people we met there have mostly left their houses to hide out in the jungle. There are reports of many peasants who have disappeared. “The journey there is very long (about 12 hours) and very bumpy, dusty and hot. We went in 3 separate groups, each group of Colombians accompanied by one or two of us pale- skinned foreigners so as to lessen any aggro when going through the many army checkpoints. “We all got there with little hassle but with very sore bones. One of the people due to speak at the two-day event was Jenny and on the second day of the meeting, she spoke to a packed open-air hall of about 300 people, men, women and children, many of them FARC militia and almost all of them FARC supporters, for they live in an area that has been well and justly run by the FARC for about 40 years. “As long-time readers of the Green Letters will remember Tristan James, Jenny’s grandson, and Javier Nova, her daughter’s boyfriend, were murdered in July 2000 by FARC militia in Icononzo, Tolima. She spoke about this event very emotionally but without blaming the whole FARC guerrilla movement for these tragic deaths. The attention given to her speech was total, for open criticism in FARC areas of FARC lack of control of their people is not very common! And as a great proportion of the audience were militia, there was some discomfort amongst them for they naturally felt some of the blame fall upon them. “After her long and moving speech, she handed the microphone over for questions from the audience. At first people were reluctant to ask anything but soon warmed up and several men who had the look of guerrilleros about them asked pointed questions. One asked should we not forgive and forget and another asked were we blaming the whole movement for these deaths. Jenny answered that on the personal level, forgiving or forgetting was a psychological impossibility, but that on a political level, we understood what had happened, and she went into a great deal of detail regarding our various meetings and discussions with FARC leaders in the aftermath of the tragedy. I experienced it as a huge relief to be talking openly about this with this kind of audience. And when one of the elder women leaders stood up and talked strongly about the need to control young bucks with guns it felt like a small but important victory over the murderous machismo that infects this country on all levels. “Jenny interspersed and ‘punctuated’ her talk several times by getting her two daughters, Louise and Katie, who were on stage throughout, to sing specific songs of their own composition, which they did beautifully and with such professionalism that many people assumed they were famous singers. She also handed the microphone to me on several occasions to add comments, information and my own experiences. “I could feel that this talk had caused waves and sure enough in the days that followed, gradually the feedback trickled in. It was heartening to note that the main supporters of the way Jenny had talked were the strong women of the area, most of whom had formerly been guerrilleras. Many of them reported that they had argued in their homes with people, both men and women, who had misinterpreted Jenny’s speech as wholesale criticism of the FARC. However, it was disheartening to realize that not enough of this kind of open discussion takes place. “In the evening of the same day, our two girls put on a very amusing hour-long musical play which essentially took the piss out of town living and showed up the benefits of living in the countryside with Nature, which everyone loved and which sealed their fame in that area forever! “After this series of events, we spent about a week walking around in dangerously hot sunshine and terribly degraded and deforested land visiting people who had invited us to their farms, or to see often depressing little gardens they were trying to make in this boiling land. I had given some workshops on compost and garden-making a few months beforehand but hadn’t expected to be taken seriously as the climate is gruelling, the economy is almost entirely based on coca leaf and chemical use is extremely accepted and widespread. Sure enough one of the gardens we had made had had weed-killer applied. I was furious and upset and refused to go and see it until several of the women said they had scolded and sanctioned the woman who had done it. But it’s a tough climate for the likes of lettuces and carrots though one woman did manage to feed us on fresh lettuce from her tiny garden in the midst of her coca-leaf patch.... “After Jenny’s speech, a lovely old hippy-looking woman had invited us, with a kind of urgency in her voice, to her house where she lives with her second husband, her first husband having been killed by the FARC in another area. Hers was a terrible but not uncommon story of intrigue, betrayal and the kind of twistedness that occurs in every civil war: her husband’s own brother told the FARC that her husband was an army spy so that he was killed by militia. He then made it seem that SHE was his killer and she had to run for her life leaving all she had, her farm and her livelihood, to the husband’s brother. But she is a fighter, and after settling in the area we were in, she fought for her good name and that of her husband and had their names cleared. The other man, her brother-in-law, turned paramilitary along with most of the area she had lived in formerly. “This kind of betrayal within a family is not an unusual thing here, and I remember my grandmother telling me similar horrific stories about how families and close neighbours killed each other over a field or an old grudge during the Irish civil war in the twenties. Jenny tells me the same thing happened in the Spanish civil war. Civil wars seem to bring out the worst in people. “The woman’s second husband, a lovely man of 69, began to tell us his story and had us glued to the hard little stools we were sitting on for many hours in their simple but very pretty farm: He had been captured by the army in 1982 and tortured for 9 days, most of which time he spent in so much agony that he begged for a quick death. He was beaten very badly day after day and had sharp instruments stuck under his finger- and toe-nails and was threatened with being thrown into a pit where they had already thrown many other bodies, all to make him ‘confess’ to knowledge about the guerrilla that he didn’t possess. He said that many of the lower rank and file soldiers tried to help him on the quiet and the pain was so bad that he even began to think about making something up. However he decided to stick to the truth, until finally, when they were about to take him to the torturer with the worst reputation to break him or kill him, he said that he sat ‘concentrating on the mind’ of this man for a long time in a final desperate attempt to get out of his plight, and just as his torture was about to recommence, the captain decided to set him free. Then, mindtwistingly, the same men who had tortured him all became friendly and offered him food. Then they brought him a long document to sign to testify that they had treated him very well... Of course he signed it to get out, and then he was told to spy on the guerrilla and to return every two weeks to town to report to the army. This would mean certain death at the hands of the guerrilla, so he moved away to another area leaving his pigs and chickens in the care of his neighbours, but he missed his home and decided to risk coming back, only to find his pigs and chickens and all his household goods had been stolen by the same neighbours. “Yet even after all these trials, there he was in front of us, healthy and keen to tell his story. His wife who lives from growing soya beans and making tofu and soya milk, was hopping up and down with impatience during his long and harrowing tale because he has never made formal complaints about how the Army treated him and she was insisting that he should still do this. He had also seen one of his neighbours beaten so badly by the army that the sticks they used were broken into splinters. This old couple had asked us to visit them so that we would tell their tale to as many people as possible.” Guerrillas, lace hearts and government officials (also reported by Anne) “Once when I was in the house of a woman who makes her living as a seamstress for the guerrilla, amongst the long bolts of camouflage material they had brought her to make their tents, I noticed a lot of frilly, coloured bits of lace and appliqué teddy bears and sequined flowers and hearts. I asked what they were for and was left jaw agape as I was told they were for decorating the insides and the borders of the female guerrilleras’ mosquito nets …. “Later some guerrilleros came to have their measurements taken for new shirts. I was sitting facing the road whilst they had animated discussions about where to put the pockets on their new clothes and so I saw before they did that a government official who had never visited the area before was approaching. I warned them but they were cool and calm and basically didn’t care. The government official pretended he didn’t know who they were or what all the camouflage was for and they all engaged in small talk. Later there was a rumour that the army were invading and upon seeing the distress of the seamstress at possibly being caught with so much camouflage material around, the government official got out a spade and buried it in the back garden…. “Another anecdote from this very strange war: When I was travelling to Meta on a previous occasion, near the end of the long road we met a few dozen young soldiers, armed and dressed in protective gear to the hilt, panting and sweating as they ran away from a confrontation with the guerrilla. They warned the driver of the jeep I was in that we shouldn’t go any further because of grave danger from the guerrilla, but the passengers for whom this was daily fare, urged him onwards as they wanted to get home. About half a kilometre down the road, we met a group of very young guerrilla fighters, shirtless and relaxed, drinking fizzy drinks. They hopped on the crowded jeep, hanging off it from all corners. Another two minutes down the road, we came to a full blown local party and football match with music so loud no-one had heard the battle…” The strange policy of the Colombian National Parks department for the conservation of national park buffer zones. (by Anne) “Our various visits to Meta were initiated by a programme paid for by the Dutch government (to the tune of so many millions of euros that my head can’t hold the figure), which is a part of the Dutch ‘carbon debt’, connected, I believe, to their signing of the Kyoto agreement. This money goes to the Colombian Ministry of Environment Parks Dept. supposedly to help peasants create lifestyles that do not involve destroying more jungle. The Parks Dept. then immediately run into basic Colombian-type political difficulties, as most areas where trees still exist in numbers worth saving are guerrilla-run areas, and most government functionaries are nervous about going there, as they are well-off city people instilled with media-inspired fears and, they believe, in danger of being kidnapped. “So to get around this problem, they contract an agricultural trade union whose members are fiercely persecuted by the government to go into these areas. The peasants from these unions know that the guerrilla are, in the main, not the bogey men richer Colombians believe them to be. Most guerrillas are very talkable-to and negotiable-with although we also know to our cost that not ALL of them are like that, as if they were, our two boys would still be alive today. “I have two good friends within the peasant agricultural union who know of our work, and it was they who originally asked me to go and run workshops on compost and gardens and how to eat vegetables, which I enthusiastically did. But then I discovered that the financing of my little courses was not officially part of the Dutch deal, and that my friends were paying for me to go there from their own salaries because they realise the importance of vegetables and compost. The Parks department have dedicated most of this grant money to bringing in thousands of animals – goats, pigs and chickens – most of who will sicken and die in the humid jungle heat, the rest will simply get eaten, and the coca trade will carry on as merrily as before for it is the only produce that sells easily. This is what you get when financing is handled by office people who have little or no idea of the reality of country living.” Geriatric Courtship (by Anne) And now for a little light relief: “On one of our scorching walks around Meta, I was left alone one morning in a farmhouse with the father of one of my local friends. She had gone out to milk the cows. As soon as she left, her father, a silent old man of 97, suddenly came to life and asked me had his daughter really gone? ‘Yes’, I said, somewhat puzzled. ‘Good!’ says he, ‘then we can go to bed, I haven’t had a woman in two years.’ This was not a request, you understand, but an order! I was somewhat flummoxed by the situation and tried politely to tell him that I had some notes to write up. This was disregarded and he grabbed my hand and started pulling me towards his bedroom. So finally I had to tell him I really did prefer younger men, at which he huffed and went away. Later when his daughter and his ex-wife came home, I told them of the incident, and they fell about laughing.” SOME BAD NEWS ABOUT THIRD WORLD PEASANT WOMEN by Anne “Most women I know, myself included, would not call ourselves feminists, because it is too glaringly obvious that both men and women share the blame for the awful state we’ve got this beautiful planet into. But there are moments…and recently there have been a lot of moments…. when I fully agree with my more vociferous sisters about the need for a feminist revolution. These moments have come about because of what I’ve learned over the last two years since I’ve been working more closely than ever before with peasant and Indian communities. “These are some of the things I’ve been shocked by: - Women with ugly scars on the neck and jaws, where their men have tried to cut their heads off in fits of jealousy or drunkenness. And more shocking even than the scars are the women’s attitudes of acceptance, of not wanting to ‘make a fuss’. - Indian women who fully accept that if they weed or plant whilst menstruating the plants will die…and that’s only the beginning of what they can’t do whilst menstruating! Also their acceptance of rape – not by ‘white’ men but by their own people, an acceptance that they’ve integrated into their myths and tales by calling babies of rape the children of ‘Mohan’ - a big black dog that gets women if they go out late at night. - Women accepting conditions in their kitchens of blinding choking smokiness and lack of the most basic cooking tools, that means they very often suffer from serious respiratory disease as if they smoked 60 cigarettes a day. - Watching as mothers load their daughters with work whilst letting the little boys do as they wish – which is usually make lots of unnecessary noise, get under one’s feet, or play dangerously with machetes. - Having to fight daily with 30 men because of them sitting around with their arms folded waiting while 2 or 3 women serve them their dinners, and they didn’t even have the excuse of a hard day’s work, as they were just attending a course. And even more shocking than fighting daily with the 30 men was that I had to argue daily with the 2 or 3 women who privately moaned and bitched about the men, but refused to stand up and speak out clearly and publicly. And when I humorously pushed the men to clean or cook, the women rushed to the men’s defence.... “And a recent event has made me stop awhile and think about all this more thoroughly. Wherever I go, I take my astrology tables and tarot cards with me, as they are a wonderful tool for really getting to know people, both men and women, very deeply and quickly. So over these last two years I’ve done a lot of readings, which are really more like deep and honest conversations about the problems that we all universally experience in couple relationships and with our kids. “One woman who came to me a lot to talk, as she was in a bad way with a man whom she spent most of her time in agony waiting for, as he shared his time between her, his other woman and child, and his mother, soon had me saying to her: 'never mind what the damn cards say, just get yourself out of that relationship and find someone new.' Word of this practical and impatient attitude of mine got around and soon I was no longer welcome at that community... Widespread repercussions from that one are still going on and will be the subject of further reports in the future! “Once I got over the shock of this ‘ban’ and took time to take stock, I came to the following conclusions: “That there’s a lot of work to be done with Colombian country women to get them to stand up and speak out. If the women of any given community are not interested in this kind of work, then all one can hope to change are the superficial details, because the women hold the keys to change in many respects like: - They allow their little boys to be raised to disrespect women, to be little macho brutes who then go to war as soon as they can. - They have the power to change the basic and most important aspects of life like food, where it comes from, and how it’s prepared. - They raise their little girls with the same attitudes of submission to their brothers and fathers. Recently a peasant woman-friend told me that her boyfriend, with whom she’d recently split up, had told her that she must come back to him as he was having to pay someone else to do his washing. To her this was a romantic declaration of love. I was too stunned to argue.” An anti-President Uribe joke doing the rounds: A teacher told her pupils to compose a story about Uribe and his re-election. When the children had finished, she told Pepito to read his piece. He said, ‘I have a cat and yesterday she had five kittens and they are all Uribe supporters.’ When the teacher saw that Pepito knew that even the kittens were pro-Uribe, she suggested to the school principal that he call the Inspector of the Ministry of Education to come and hear the composition. A few days later, the inspector arrived at the school and the teacher told Pepito to read what he had written. And he read: I have a cat and a few days ago, she had five kittens and three of them support Uribe’s re-election. Hearing this, the teacher said, ‘Pepito, the first time you read your composition, you said that all the kittens were Uribe supporters – what happened?’ And Pepito replied: ‘well, since then, two of them have opened their eyes.’ CHAVEZ DOLL (Report taken from a Bogota newspaper ‘Hoy’ (‘Today’), 27th Dec. 2005 One of the best-selling presents this Christmas in Venezuela was a small model of President Chavez. ‘Chavecito’ (‘Little Chavez’) as its creators call the toy, is 60 centimetres high and dressed in the famous red beret, army uniform and boots. The doll talks. It says: ‘I am with you to do all that is humanly possible to be useful to the Venezuelan people in their dreams, hopes and efforts to become equal and free.’ This small version of the President caused such excitement that the toyshops where it is sold are still being besieged with requests. According to shop owners, the doll rapidly sold out. ‘In just one week, 1,500 ‘Chavecitos’ were sold, that is, more than 100 a day,’ said Douglas Bustamante, the manager of one toy shop in Caracas. It was also reported that not only Chavez’ supporters but his opponents were buying the doll. The article didn’t explain what for.... We welcome correspondence, questions and comments from our readers on anything contained in these Green Letters. Our old website is out of actiion, and a new one is currently being produced. Books on our community at: www.deunantbooks.com With best wishes to all our readers, Jenny James ~ end GREEN LETTER 79 ~