VENEZUELA:
Colombian Refugees Flee to Lawless Border Region
Humberto Márquez

GUASDUALITO, Venezuela, (IPS) - "The ELN (guerrillas) tried to recruit my 19-year-old son last year. When he refused, they killed him. A neighbour told me where they buried him, and out of vengeance, they killed my neighbour's son," says the peasant farmer under the hot sun on the Venezuelan plains, squeezing his eyes together to keep the tears back.

He is a refugee from neighbouring Colombia, and accuses the National Liberation Army (ELN) -- the second-largest rebel group in that war-torn country -- of killing anyone who refuses to be recruited.

In July 2006, Román* fled the northern Colombian department of Arauca across the border into Venezuela, with his wife, surviving son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter. He said they made it to the town of Guasdualito, across the border from Arauca, over paths through the countryside.

Román has joined a cooperative made up of both Colombians and Venezuelans who work as farm labourers in the area.

In the meantime, his family has survived on assistance from sources like the local offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Jesuit Refugee Service.

"We have always been hard-working people, and it's difficult to depend on charity. It's not what we want; we want to produce," he tells IPS.

"We are campesinos (peasant farmers), we planted crops and raised livestock in Meta (in central Colombia) before I moved to Arauca in the 1980s because of the military operations in the area."

But in Arauca, "the campesinos who complained about injustices were seen as supporters of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas. I experienced that in Tame and Saravena (in Arauca), where the right-wing paramilitaries arrived first, and now" the ELN, he says.

Iván, a burly young man, and Delcy, his tall slim wife, are in their early 20s and have a toddler who is taking her first steps. They came to Guasdualito in January and were taken in by campesino families. In exchange for shelter and meals, they work on the local families' farms. They describe themselves as a rural labourer and a homemaker, respectively.

"Where we came from, in the hinterlands of Arauca, it's impossible to live, because of the day-to-day shooting, threats, danger, humiliations -- from both sides," Iván comments. "They are all there: guerrillas, army, police, paramilitaries. One day you hear about an abuse committed; another morning you hear about a massacre. There's no future there."

Do they plan to return? "No, for now that's just a dream," says Delcy. "What we want is to meet more people, become part of this community, learn and work."

"She has relatives in Bogotá and we were thinking of going there, but we are not city people," says Iván. "What we know how to do is work in the countryside, grow crops, raise pigs, things like that."

In Colombia, a country of 42 million, over three million people have been displaced from their homes by the armed conflict that has dragged on for more than four decades. The displaced have filled up entire neighbourhoods in poor areas of Bogotá.

In addition, half a million people have fled to neighbouring countries. The UNHCR estimates that 200,000 Colombian refugees are living in Venezuela, for example.

The refugees say they have been well-received in the Venezuelan region of Apure, where Guasdualito is located. Like Arauca across the border, Apure is an area of endless plains crisscrossed by slow-moving rivers.

The most pressing problem faced by many of the refugees, including Román, Delcy and Iván, is the question of "papers" or legal documents, without which "it's hard to move around, or identify ourselves; we can't go any farther into Venezuela or travel around because we're stopped at the checkpoints."

According to a report by the Venezuelan office of the UNHCR, as of late 2006, 7,754 people had applied for refugee status, which was only granted to 720 -- less than 10 percent. And in Apure, only 20 of the 2,840 applicants (19 men and one young woman) had been issued refugee identity cards.

In Venezuela, under the law on refugees that was passed in 2001, refugee status is granted on a case-by-case basis by the governmental National Refugee Commission, which answers to the Foreign Ministry.

The lack of legal documents "is the main problem faced by refugees in Venezuela, where they are received well by the local residents, and where they do not risk deportation by the authorities," José Sieber, head of the UNHCR office in Apure, told IPS.

But in that border region, which for years has felt the impact of the violence involving guerrillas, far-right paramilitaries, drug traffickers, cattle rustlers and smugglers of contraband goods, "the question of refugees could be seen as a security issue, which we do not want," said Sieber. "That's why we insist to the authorities that if the refugees were easily identifiable, it would help them improve their job in terms of security."

Despite their lack of identification documents, refugees "can receive assistance from the government's 'missions' (social programmes) providing food, health and education," said Euclides Martínez, an activist with the Catholic relief, development and social service organisation Caritas, which operates in the area.

"That's important, because there are rural communities, small villages of between 40 and 100 people, where up to 30 percent of the residents are Colombian refugees," said Martínez.

In his view, "It's bureaucratic questions that are blocking recognition of the refugees, although perhaps the Venezuelan government does not wish to generate high expectations, to avoid creating a magnet that would attract a huge number of refugees from Colombia."

The UNHCR and non-governmental organisations like Caritas and the Jesuit Refugee Service are behind programmes aimed at supporting the rural communities where Colombian refugees live alongside local Venezuelan residents.

For example, the UNHCR brought Mexican agronomist Daladier Anzuelo and professors from the Venezuelan University de los Llanos to Guasdualito this month to teach local campesinos how to produce organic fertilisers using hydrated calcium and phosphate rock.

"With all of these activities, we feel busier, which is good, because when your son has been killed, your mind goes around and around and you suffer all day long," says Román. "And although we feel safer here, we're not completely safe, because the border is very close by, and very easy to cross," he adds

Guasdualito, a city of around 40,000, is a 20-minute drive from the bridge that crosses the Arauca River to the city of Arauca, the capital of the Colombian department of that name. There is steady traffic and commerce across the border, by road as well as by river.

But by contrast to the laid-back atmosphere in Guasdualito, in Arauca the police and military presence is constant and heavy. Until two years ago, bombs frequently went off in and around the town, "but that's a thing of the past; everything's safer now," a local resident remarked to IPS.

Arauca is one of the three regions in Colombia where the FARC and the ELN have sporadically clashed over the past year and a half, disputing territorial control and sources of financing, and that conflict has leaked over the border, various sources told IPS.

In El Amparo, a Venezuelan town near Guasdualito, ELN and FARC insurgents opened fire on each other in broad daylight on Feb. 22. A four-year-old girl was killed and several passersby were injured in the crossfire, according to the local papers.

The local press has also reported that irregular Colombian armed groups forcibly recruit young people in the area.

* The names have been changed to protect the refugees.