COLOMBIA:
Death Cannot Defeat Life
in War-Torn Guaviare
By Constanza Vieira
SAN JOSÉ DEL GUAVIARE,
Colombia (IPS) -
Halfway along the 28-km
stretch of road between
the towns of San José
and El Retorno in the
war-torn south-central
Colombian province of
Guaviare, there is a
young "ceiba" tree that
emerged after a
venerable old ceiba
tree, which had grown
there for decades, died.
According to popular
history, the old ceiba
dried up after a
prominent community
leader, "El Profe"
(professor) Noé Carrillo
was murdered under its
branches.
That was 12 years ago,
in 1996, when Carrillo
was leading massive
marches in southern
Colombia against police
spraying of the coca
crops of local farmers.
The protests died down
when the government of
then president Ernesto
Samper (1994-1998)
signed agreements sought
by the local
communities, under which
the farmers promised to
abandon coca (the raw
material of cocaine),
even though it offered
them a bigger profit
margin than traditional
crops.
The farmers were seeking
support for a gradual
and voluntary
replacement of coca
crops with legal
alternatives, as part of
what they hoped would be
a comprehensive
development plan that
would enable them to
insert themselves into
the legal economy, by
means of access to
credit and markets for
their products, for
example.
Under the agreements,
the government also
pledged that it would
not eradicate coca
plantations smaller than
three hectares.
But it failed to live up
to the commitments it
assumed. And Carrillo
was just one of numerous
community leaders killed
as a consequence of the
protest marches.
The displacement of coca
farmers from the
country’s most fertile
regions has continued
since then, with many of
them heading towards the
Amazon jungle, which
extends southward from
Guaviare. In the
rainforest, they clear
land -- and many plant
coca again.
The U.S.-financed Plan
Colombia, launched in
2000, was initially
presented as an
anti-drug trafficking
strategy. But in 2002,
at the urging of the
government of President
George W. Bush, the
focus changed and it was
increasingly referred to
as a counterinsurgency
plan.
Drug crops were declared
a military objective,
with spraying mainly
carried out in areas
under the control of the
Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC),
an insurgent group that
emerged in 1964 from the
still smouldering embers
of a civil war that
officially ended in
1957.
The U.S. and Colombian
governments consider the
FARC a "terrorist" group
and "the largest drug
cartel" in the Americas.
But in 2006, Colombia’s
Attorney-General’s
Office recognised that
the origins of the rebel
group lay in conflicts
over land that date back
to the mid-20th century.
The FARC argues that it
taxes all economic
activities in the
territory under its
influence, which also
includes the buying and
selling of cocaine
paste.
In the view of rightwing
President Álvaro Uribe,
who has governed
Colombia since 2002, any
farmer who grows coca is
a "drug trafficker,"
even though small coca
growers earn a modest
income, and legal
alternatives would
condemn them to extreme
poverty.
The main goal of Uribe,
Bush’s chief ally in
Latin America, is to
defeat the FARC.
Colombia is the
third-largest recipient
of U.S. military aid in
the world, after Israel
and Egypt.
The central tool used to
eliminate drug crops is
still aerial fumigation,
although manual
eradication is
increasingly relied on.
Both mechanisms are used
in the context of
military
counterinsurgency
operations.
These practices end up
forcing peasant farmers
off their land, because
their food crops tend to
be destroyed along with
the coca bushes.
Many believe that the
real aim of the
authorities is to clear
these areas of local
people who might be
sympathetic to the
guerrillas.
As a result, the rural
communities are deprived
of their livelihoods
from one moment to the
next, which gives rise
to a general sense of
insecurity and
vulnerability, Walter
Kälin, the U.N.
Secretary-General’s
special representative
on the Human Rights of
Internally Displaced
Persons, said in January
2007.
Since 1985, nearly four
million Colombians have
been forcibly displaced
from their homes by the
civil war and aerial
spraying, according to
the Consultancy on Human
Rights and Displacement
(CODHES), the leading
non-governmental source
of information on the
question, which bases
its estimates on
Catholic Church
statistics.
COCA SPRAYING - A FAILED
STRATEGY
"Intensive aerial
herbicide spraying of
coca crops in Colombia
has backfired badly,
contributing to the
spread of coca
cultivation and cocaine
production to new areas
of the country and
threatening human health
and the environment,"
says a report released
early this year by the
Washington Office on
Latin America (WOLA).
The study, "Chemical
Reactions: Fumigation -
Spreading Coca and
Threatening Colombia’s
Ecological and Cultural
Diversity", which was
drawn up in conjunction
with the Bogota-based
Institute of Studies for
Development and Peace (INDEPAZ),
says that "fumigation is
part of the problem."
"The aerial spray
operations tend to
reinforce rather than
weaken Colombian
farmers' reliance on
coca growing, prompting
more rather than less
replanting, thereby
contributing to coca's
spread into new areas of
the country," it states.
Since 1998, some 202,300
hectares were sprayed
with herbicides in
Guaviare, a southern
Amazon jungle province
of 53,460 square
kilometres, according to
Adam Isacson, an analyst
at the Washington-based
Centre for International
Policy.
But, with 9,477 hectares
of coca -- the figure
provided last year by
the U.N. Office on Drugs
and Crime (UNODC) --
Guaviare is still one of
the four Colombian
provinces with the
greatest coca
cultivation.
More than half of
Guaviare’s 96,000
inhabitants are
concentrated in and
around San José del
Guaviare, the provincial
capital.
San José, where 20,000
counterinsurgency
soldiers are deployed at
a nearby military base,
is no longer the "coca
capital" of Colombia.
But one out of every
four people in Guaviare
have been displaced from
their rural homes by the
armed conflict, compared
to a national average of
eight out of 100. And
14,000 of them have fled
to the town of San José.
"In the context of the
national figures on
forced displacement,
that doesn’t sound like
much, but it has had an
enormous impact on the
city," San José Mayor
Pedro Arenas, who stood
out as a vocal opponent
of coca crop spraying
while serving as a
member of the lower
house of Congress from
2002 to 2006, told IPS.
THE WHITE CARAVAN
Arenas was one of the
organisers of the "White
Caravan" that called for
peace and negotiations
of a humanitarian
exchange of hostages
held by the FARC for
imprisoned guerrillas.
The mobilisation had the
backing of 70 social
organisations from
around the country.
In buses and all-terrain
vehicles, around 400
people from different
regions drove the 479
kilometres between
Bogotá and El Retorno
along heavily
militarised roads
through war zones on the
third weekend of May.
El Retorno, a small town
of 2,500 to the south of
San José, was the site
of the unilateral
release by the FARC of
six hostages early this
year.
The six former
politicians formed part
of the group of 45
hostages, including
former presidential
candidate Ingrid
Betancourt, who have
been held for years in
remote jungle camps by
the rebel group with the
hope of swapping them
for imprisoned
insurgents.
Besides Arenas, the
organisers of the White
Caravan included the
city governments of
Calamar, Miraflores and
El Retorno, in the
province of Guaviare;
the municipalities of
Mapiripán and Puerto
Concordia in the central
province of Meta, both
of which border on
Guaviare; Villavicencio,
the capital of the
enormous province of
Meta; and Bogotá, the
Colombian capital.
After Villavicencio, 86
km south of Bogotá, the
Caravan enters the vast
Orinoquia savannah,
which is crisscrossed by
rivers lined with
gallery forests in which
native palm trees stand
out. Farther along, the
landscape shifts from
level to slightly
rolling terrain.
In Puerto Concordia, a
town of 1,500 in
southern Meta, just
north of San José del
Guaviare, Adriana
Villarreal, an activist
in her mid-thirties,
tells IPS that "no one
is helping us."
As the Caravan arrives,
she holds up a placard
that reads "Welcome to
Puerto Concordia",
signed by "the
displaced".
Villarreal is the head
of the Life and Hope
Association. "As long as
there is life, there is
hope," she says,
explaining the name of
her organisation.
The group represents 137
families displaced from
different parts of the
country since 1999. A
recent count showed that
each family has at least
three children, says
Villarreal.
Later, she leads this
reporter away from the
crowd, towards the banks
of the Ariari river,
where she says "people
might soon be displaced
from the other side of
the river, because
they’re spraying. There
are only guerrillas over
there. On this side, all
of the groups are
present."
By "all," she means
far-right paramilitary
militias that work in
collusion with
government forces and
armed drug trafficking
gangs.
"We want peace for our
country. We are united
with your noble cause,"
Puerto Concordia Mayor
Luis González says,
welcoming the Caravan.
Listening to the mayor
is 80-year-old Jonás,
who holds up a white
sheet of paper glued to
a stick, which reads,
simply, "PEACE".
"The worst problem is
the poverty," he tells
IPS.
THE SHRINKING AMAZON
On the other side of the
wide Guaviare river can
be seen the edges of the
world’s largest tropical
rainforest, the Amazon
jungle, as the air
becomes more humid.
"Here we are, watching
all of you go by. No one
ever comes through here.
We’re all alone out
here," a soldier posted
on a curved,
heavily-guarded
940-metre bridge that
runs into the province
of Guaviare, told IPS.
Stretching away from the
foot of the bridge is a
naval base. Two Piranha
speedboats are
patrolling the river.
Sandbags force our
vehicles to drive slowly
in a zigzag pattern.
Until recently, the
Amazon jungle started
here. Today, only small
patches of rainforest
can be seen here and
there, in the middle of
large pastures where a
handful of cows graze.
The road narrows as we
enter Guaviare. San José
is just up ahead, and in
the blink of an eye, the
Caravan, which was one-kilometre
long since it pulled out
of Puerto Concordia,
doubles in size.
In San José, it looks
like the entire town has
come out to receive the
Caravan.
"Things are moving again
in San José del Guaviare,
after 12 years of
inactivity," says Mayor
Arenas who, like so many
other residents, is
determined that the name
of his town should no
longer be synonymous
with "coca" and "war,"
and that the town should
become "a territory of
peace and
reconciliation."
A rainbow of colourful
signs, as well as live
music, welcomes us. One
of the innumerable
hand-painted signs
carried by the people
lining the streets
reads, in green, red,
yellow and blue letters,
"We Demand Freedom, by
Dancing". Couples of all
ages dance on either
side of the street as
the Caravan slowly
drives by.
"We have defeated the
fear for the first time.
We have thousands of
victims in this region,"
says Arenas in the
town’s central square,
as he calls on the
Attorney General’s
office and international
human rights bodies to
step up their presence
in the area.
On the way south from
San José to El Retorno,
the Caravan passes the
Joaquín París army base.
From the road can be
seen powerful U.S.
radars, installed since
2000.
Some 20 Blackhawk and
Huey U.S. combat
helicopters, used by
Plan Colombia, are
stationed here, along
with two mobile
brigades.
To the west, in
Barrancón, is a special
forces school where
Colombian troops are
trained by U.S. army
Green Berets.
In 1997, two planeloads
of paramilitaries armed
to the teeth were flown
in to a military-guarded
airstrip in San José
from their stronghold in
Urabá in the north, and
drove along this road to
commit one of the civil
war’s most grisly mass
killings, in the town of
Mapiripán. At least 30
local townspeople were
hacked to death there
with machetes, or
disembowelled and
decapitated with
chainsaws, over the
space of six days.
Because of the
complicity of the armed
forces, the case was
brought to the
Inter-American Court of
Human Rights, which
handed down a ruling
against the Colombian
state in September 2005.
The Mapiripán massacre
was the paramilitaries’
way of announcing their
arrival in Guaviare.
Over the next two years,
"between four and seven
bodies on average
appeared every day at
the same spot on the
side of the road --
killings that have never
been investigated,"
Giovanni Gómez, a
regional lawmaker for
Guaviare who like Mayor
Arenas belongs to the
independent Partido
Verde Opción Centro
(centrist green party),
told IPS.
Ciro Castilla, an
adviser to the San José
city government who held
the post of provincial
ombudsman from 1995 to
1997, said that between
1997 and 2003, more than
5,000 civilians were
killed in Guaviare.
"San José del Guaviare
was full of military
troops, but the
displaced were being
killed anyway. The only
way to explain this is
that there was collusion
(between the killers
and) the security
forces," Gómez told IPS.
Townspeople say the
killings virtually
stopped in 2006, after a
visit by President Uribe
in October 2005, when
prominent local leaders
denounced the widespread
human rights violations
in a live TV broadcast.
After the broadcast,
both Gómez and Arenas
were "declared military
targets for speaking
out," said the regional
legislator.
In 2006, a local
paramilitary chief
apparently demobilised
with his troops, after
negotiating an agreement
with the government.
Since then, "things have
been calmer. The
killings have been
‘selective’ or
targeted," said Gómez.
The victims now are
mainly demobilised
paramilitary fighters
who know too much, or
who run drug and weapon
dealing businesses --
activities in which the
paramilitary militias
are heavily involved.
Meanwhile, extortion has
decreased, and community
leaders from surrounding
villages can travel more
safely to San José.
"The White Caravan has
helped the people of
Guaviare break the
silence and free
themselves from fear and
from the oppression of
the paramilitaries and
guerrillas," Gómez
added.
HOW TO WIPE OUT A
POLITICAL PARTY
The Patriotic Union
(UP), a leftwing party
that emerged in 1985
from peace talks between
the FARC and the
government, won a
landslide victory in the
1986 elections in
Guaviare, taking seven
of the nine seats in the
regional legislature.
But the UP was only
active in Guaviare until
1994. Its members began
to be killed off in
1987, until "the party
was completely wiped
out," said Gómez. Today,
it is difficult to find
one single survivor of
what was once the
strongest party in the
region.
The UP attempt at a
political solution was
cut short nationwide.
The extermination of the
party at a national
level is the focus of
the largest collective
lawsuit ever faced by
the Inter-American
Court.
Today, most of Guaviare
is a conflict zone. When
the army withdraws from
a certain area, the
guerrillas move in.
But there is no longer
any coca growing near
San José, and in El
Retorno, people are
considering switching
over to cattle ranching.
The stretch of road
between San José and El
Retorno is marked by the
scars of the armed
conflict. "That hill is
a cemetery," a taxi
driver tells IPS on the
way back from El Retorno
to San José, pointing to
a nearby hill.
Next to a school near
the road there are
graves where people
killed by the
paramilitaries are
buried, says the driver.
Passing the young ceiba
tree, the driver, who
has lived in Guaviare
for only five years,
merely says that there
was "heavy fighting"
around the tree, years
ago.
And as we approach San
José, he remarks that
all of the land in front
of and on one side of
the military base
belongs to Guaviare
Governor Oscar López.
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