COLOMBIA UPDATE: July 1-15, 2003

Summary:
While maintaining its primary focus accompanying threatened communities
along the Opon River, the CPT Colombia team was also able to visit two
other areas outside of Barrancabermeja. Witnessing the effects
of fumigations on civilians in the village San Pablo allowed the team
another window into the effects of United States foreign policy. Visiting
the autonomous community of Micoahumado for the first time since Christmas
of last year reminded the team of local efforts to resist the civil
war. In the team's base city of Barrancabermeja, they observed peaceful
marches in defence of publiclyowned institutions.

July 15
Members of CPT, with a resident of the Opon, travelled to Micoahumado, a
small town in the department north of Barrancabermeja, to observe ongoing
community meetings regarding their declaration of autonomy in Colombia's
civil war. The town of Micoahumado and its surrounding communities have
been in the process of declaring themselves autonomous of all armed groups
since an incursion by the paramilitaries last December. Community members
and CPTers were interested in learning more about how these communities are
pursuing local security in a nonviolent way in response to the threats from
armed actors on all sides.

July 3
Members of CPT observed another peaceful march against the privatization of
the stateowned oil company, Ecopetrol. This was the third march in
Barrancabermeja that CPT had accompanied since June 19. Thousands of
people expressed their dissatisfaction with the national government's
policies, which they believe will allow foreign companies to control
Colombia's oil resources, and potentially eliminate many wellpaid jobs.

July 4
Sandra Rincon and Adaia Bernal, both of Bogota, received three month visas
to the United States to attend the CPT training in Chicago this summer.

July 9
Setting adrift a single candle on the waters of the shallow lake, team
members held public prayers for two recently disappeared men in the Cienaga
del Opon, one of the communities the team accompanies. They read from the
first chapter of John, in which Jesus is presented as the light of the
world, shining in the darkness.

July 910
CPTers and two representatives from Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in
Bogota, participated in a two day exploratory commission on antinarcotic
fumigations arranged by one of CPT's partner organizations. The fifteen
member commission, which included representatives from the Diocesis of
Barranca, Jesuit Refugee Services, and Project Counselling Service (an
advisory group for international development organizations), visited two
very isolated communities in the vicinity of San Pablo on the Magdalena
River. They interviewed farmers who had recently lost many food crops to
fumigation and learned about how and why people are affected by the aerial
spraying. The fumigations are intended to eradicate the coca plants
(source of cocaine), yet often the coca plants survive while food crops are
killed and bodies of water are poisoned. (See forthcoming release.)

July 10
CPTers in the city recited prayers for the recently disappeared in front of
city hall and read the litany of resistance with passersby.

July 15
The team held a one day retreat at a diocesan retreat centre just outside
of the city. The times of storytelling, recreation and worship provided a
needed rest and spiritual refreshment for the team.