CPTnet
17 July 2006

COLOMBIA REFLECTION: Seeds of Hope II--Colombia's harvest of terror

by Emily Parsons

[Note: Emily Parsons is a student of Latin American Studies in Vancouver, BC
and member of June CPT delegation to Colombia.]

The air is hot and heavy, thick with humidity and weighted with sorrow.
Across the table I link eyes with the president of ACVC, an association of
campesinos (peasant farmers) in Barrancabermeja, Colombia. His head rests
against the lime green wall in this small room, which is crammed with too
many chairs and cooled by a single fan. His eyes look as if they have been
crying for years.

Seated with me around the table are seven other members of a short-term
international delegation to Colombia, organized by Christian Peacemaker
Teams (CPT). After the extreme violence of the 1990s, the Colombian
Mennonite church invited CPT into the country, and since 2001 they have had
a full time presence in Barrancabermeja (Barranca), an oil refining city in
north central Colombia. There, they accompany rural communities who have
returned to their homes after the threats and violence from paramilitary and
guerrilla forces displaced them.

Through meetings with human rights workers, labour union members, embassies,
state officials, and Colombian people, we are exposed to the realities of
this intensely complicated conflict. As the meeting with ACVC continues, I
jot down my thoughts in a journal: "Forgive us our ignorance Lord." I cannot
help but wonder what these men, who have suffered such oppression, see in my
eyes: the eyes of a woman who comes from a wealthy and powerful nation that
allows the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Colombians to continue for
close to five decades. "Forgive us our ignorance Lord."

The fear created by threats, whether written or verbal, permeates the lives
of so many in Colombia, but only now, as I sit with these men, do I begin to
understand the terror. I feel physically ill as I listen to a written threat
these men, and other social organizations, have received only the day
before. "From June 1-15 there will be a cleaning of revolutionaries.
Revolution only belongs in textbooks, not in our streets. There will be two
coffins--one for your tongue, and one for you. Death to the SOB's of
Barranca. Clean the guerrillas."

Organized groups of "social cleansing" for a Barranca clean of guerrillas.
The feeling inside me is overwhelming and paralyzing. The "revolutionaries"
they speak of are union members, activists, social workers, human rights
defenders, community leaders, and people working for peace and justice in
Colombia. These are the people who are being "cleaned up" in this country,
and whom the state is doing little to protect.