by Stewart Vriesinga

 When you fast … you bow your heads low like a blade of grass and spread out sackcloth and ashes to lie on.  Is that what you call fasting?  Do you think I will be pleased with that?  The kind of fasting I want is this: Remove the chains of oppression and the yoke of injustice, and let the oppressed go free.  –Isaiah 58:5-6

In solidarity with the struggle of the people of Garzal and Las Pavas communities, Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) held an Ash Wednesday service on 17 February 2010 in front of the Bogota headquarters of the Colombian Institute for Rural Development (INCODER)—the department responsible for land titles.  Despite verbal recognition of the communities’ right to the land under Agrarian Reform laws and many years of community members appealing for its help, INCODER has yet to provide the communities with official land titles.  Instead, INCODER continues to promote concentration of land ownership in the hands of a wealthy few—some with known links to drug cartels and paramilitaries.

The campesinos of Garzal were living on their lands long before Enrique Barreta first acquired legal title to the land in the early 1980s.  In 1989, Barreta abandoned the land following a police raid on his cocaine laboratory.  Subsequently, INCODER granted the campesinos titles to their lands only to revoke them when Barreta showed up again—this time with his own private army of paramilitaries.  Today, title to the land of Garzal and neighbouring Esperanza is in the hands of various testaferros—front-men for the Barreta family—who are trying to sell the land to a palm oil company.

In the case of Las Pavas, Emilio Escobar, uncle of deceased drug lord Pablo Escobar, sold the land to large-scale palm oil growers, including Daabon.  (See Take Action: Daabon evicting farmers in Colombia) When title was transferred to the palm oil companies—illegally because the land was under dispute—they had the community of Las Pavas forcefully removed from their lands by riot police.

 Ash Wednesday is a call to repentance.  Through song, testimony, prayer, bible readings, and symbolism, the crowd of fifty called INCODER to repentance, a just resolution and demanded “Titulación YA para Las Pavas and Garzal” –“Titles NOW! for the people of Las Pavas and Garzal.”  Two community members, one from Garzal and one from Las Pavas, made the sign of the cross on people’s foreheads using ashes collected in Las Pavas from trees burnt by Daabon.  When CPTer Stewart Vriesinga, dressed as a repentant INCODER official received his cross, Mariella of Garzal quietly said to him: “Were you listening?  Give us the titles to our farms.”

 After using the remaining ashes to paint a cross on the sidewalk in front of INCODER headquarters, a delegation of CPTers, community representatives and their lawyer, delivered a letter to INCODER authorities demanding justice and land titles for the people of Garzal and Las Pavas.  INCODER promised a response in no more than one week.

See photos of the action here