CPTnet
12 June 2009
COLOMBIA: Cimitarra Valley leader liberated after seventeen months in prison


Magdalena Medio Region, Colombia

On 9 June 2009, after seventeen months of imprisonment and an eleven-month trial, Miguel Angel Gonzalez Huepa was declared innocent of belonging to a guerrilla group.  In September of 2007, authorities detained six leaders of the Campesino Association of the Cimitarra Valley (ACVC) and issued arrest warrants for twelve more ACVC leaders.  After six months, the courts released four of the detained leaders—Ramiro Ortega Muneton, Mario Martinez Mahecha, Oscar Enrique Duque and Evaristo Mena Rentaria—while Huepa and Andres Elias Gil went to trial on charges of rebellion.   Andres Gil remains in prison as the process against him continues.

Eight days after Gonzalez’s arrest in 2007, members of the Calibio Battalion of the Colombian National Army extra-judicially executed his son, Miguel Angel Gonzalez Gutierrez, as he was walking a jungle path on his way to charge his cell phones in a neighboring village.

In 1998, the ACVC led a mobilization of campesinos (small farmers), to the city of Barrancabermeja.  The mobilization lasted three months and ended with agreements signed by the then-President Andres Pastrana.  Since that time, paramilitaries and the Colombian state have persecuted ACVC leaders.  Several leaders have been assassinated or have sustained attempts on their lives.  Today persecution against the ACVC takes a judicial form, through the imprisonment of leaders in order to weaken the organization’s projects and work.

The ACVC has struggled to defend campesino life and culture, threatened by mega-projects and landowners connected to multi-national industries.  One of the unfulfilled agreements signed in 1998 stipulated that the government would recognize a protected reserve for small farmers, as a measure of environmental protection and rural community development.  The ACVC continues striving to make this reserve a reality for the more than 15,000 small farmers of the Cimitarra Valley.

Christian Peacemaker Teams has accompanied the communities of the Cimitarra Valley since 2001, and the ACVC was one of the team’s first organizational partners.  In a recent release, team members wrote, “We celebrate the liberation of Miguel Angel Gonzalez Huepa, and we continue hoping for the liberation of Andres Gil.  We pray that all leaders who work for justice will be able to pursue their work in peace, free from persecution.”