CPT is planning a delegation for 13-26 January 2009, to highlight the concerns of Colombia's traditional mining communities.  As well as traveling to Bogota and Barrancabermeja, where CPT-Colombia's full-time presence is based, delegation participants will visit a mining community in the San Lucas Mountains of southern Bolivar province.  There, they will hear firsthand about the miners' struggles to stay on their land and maintain their way of life, despite paramilitary violence, assassinations, unjust accusations and arrests, and the encroaching interests of agro-industry and multinational mining companies.

Now is a crucial time to act on behalf of Colombian's traditional mining communities.  While the communities experience and protest the violence, environmental degradation, neglect, and abuse of their human rights, the Colombian government is negotiating with Canada and the U.S. trade agreements that would further threaten these communities' survival.  Please consider expressing your solidarity with the miners by joining CPT's delegation to the mining zone of southern Bolivar.