www.pedalingforpeace.org

Lowell Sun Article

2008-01-14T12:01:00.001-05:00

Her 'moral imperative': Stand up for justice and rights in Colombia

By Bridget Scrimenti, bscrimenti@lowellsun.co

Article Last Updated: 01/14/2008 11:31:00 AM EST

They planned to harvest cocoa beans.

About eight men, women and children were going to work in the fields. Some even started a seven-hour hike into Colombia's countryside.

But their attempt to gather food came to a sudden and violent end.

The families were viciously attacked and killed by men yielding machetes.

"They killed eight people, three of whom were children, with machetes," said Janice Gallagher. "For me as a U.S. citizen -- if I could do anything to stop that from happening again, I felt a moral imperative to do so."

The murders prompted Gallagher, 30, to spend the past year as a human-rights activist in Colombia, working for the nonprofit and interfaith organization, Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Click here to read the rest of the article

returned.

2007-12-13T14:34:00.000-05:00

I landed almost two weeks ago in Boston, and am finally writing what I guess is my last official blog. I was prompted, finally, to do this because I wanted to let people know about the NPR program On-Point, which today discussed the drug war. I called in, and talked really briefly about Colombian human rights at the very end of the show - I am the last caller. The show is interesting, in that it takes as a given the failure of the drug war, and mulls over some interesting alternatives:

For a list of NPR stations that broadcast the program with the time that it will be re-broadcast (most stations will have it sometime this evening) go to:
http://www.wbur.org/syndication/?program=On-Point

To download the podcast, or listen to it on-line, go to: http://www.npr.org/templates/rss/podcast.php?id=510053 - Today's program is not uploaded yet, but should be soon!

Janice goes back to school...
Transition times are inherently tough: changes of job, friends, home and language can each be taxing, and all together it feels like I am ripping up some pretty delicate roots right now that I carefully laid this year in Colombia- though returning to the US feels like returning to some old growth forest support as well.

This transition has been particularly strange for me, as I landed and immediately had to throw myself into brushing up on my high school math and learning arcane vocabulary in preparation for the GRE: the graduate school entrance exams. I am applying to PhD programs for next fall in Political Science in order to continue to study NGOs, human rights, and particularly the Colombian road to peace, and to try and answer some of the many questions that I have generated this year.

Unlike my last blog, I will not try to make larger meaning of what my entire experience meant here - perhaps that will come later. But I did want to share some of the images and snapshots of my life from the past couple of months:

Return to Promisión:
After being away for an average of ten years, this September about 25 former residents of the small village of Promisión, located several hours drive and a five-hour walk from the city of Medellín, made their first ventures back to the land and homes they had left beinhd. They had been forced to leave when paramilitary violence claimed the lives of several members of their community. It was made clear to them that if they stayed on their land, they too would suffer the same fate. Most of the residents had fled to the outskirts of Medellín, where they encountered violence and poverty. Despite the fact that there is little left of their former houses, almost all of the families that were forced to leave now want to return to their land. One resident explained to me that she had already lost one son to the violence of the displacement slums outside of Medellín, and even if it was still dangerous in La Promisión, it was worth the risk to return.

The local and regional government officials have been cautiously supportive of the return: the land officially belongs to the families, and after much work on the part of the ACA (the Peasant Association of Antioquia) they now have the documentation to prove it. Local government officials have given money for the reconstruction of homes, and there is hope that they will have electricity by January. There have not been reports lately of paramilitary presence in the community, but the community is carefully waiting to see whether it is indeed safe to return. FOR accompanied this first "preparatory visit" to the land, where the residents concentrated on clearing paths to the community and planting some subsistence crops so that when they return, they will have something to eat. It has taken me a while to post these pictures partially because I got very ill after spending this week in houses with no running water, toilets, beds, or mosquito nets. That said, it was a privilege to be with people whose perseverance in finding a better life for their families brought them to this place.

Clothes hang outside one of the houses that the community hopes to return to live in.

A woman in the "city," a five-hour walk from the community, peers out her window at the campesinios walking with all their belongings on their backs to Promisión.

Below, a group of Medellín residents protest the lack of public services (electricity, drinking water, plumbing) available in Medellín's poorer neighborhoods where displaced personas are concentrated. This rally, which is conceptualized as a carnival in celebration of resistance, was organized by the "Red Juvenil," or Youth Network, of Medellín, one of the groups FOR accompanies.

Here, the ACA participates in an international tribunal on displacement. At the tribunal, held in Colombia's Senate, international judges condemned the Colombian government's role in causing people to have to leave their land, and asked for the Colombian government, multinational corporations, and the governments of developed nations to cease the actions which have caused displacement. Further, they asked the Colombian state to bring to justice those that have caused the displacement of about four million Colombians - nearly 10% of the population.

Walking for Human Rights
There is a common form of protest which feels distinctively, if not uniquely, Colombian called a caminata, or walk. This October I did my second caminata with the Peace Community of San José de Partadó: we walked from 8am until the late afternoon (about 18 miles) in order to commemorate the community leaders and the friends of the community that had been killed recently, mostly by paramilitary forces. Many residents of the community couldn't come because of the torrential downpours and subsequent rising of the river, but several hundred of us, including a large number of representatives from the neighboring indigenous community crossed the high rivers on horseback, and came together to walk to the small city of Apartadó. We convened at the bus terminal, where two of the four killings occurred: the killings were allegedly carried out in full daylight by paramilitaries while the police turned their back. The marchers then held a memorial service for the victims in the middle of the day in the center of this busy market and terminal, presumably in full view of the same police and paramilitary members that had caused the deaths of their friends.

The picture below is of a community leader attaching flowers to the fence of this bus terminal in memorium of a friend of the community who was killed at the terminal this past July.

On the left, the banner reads "No more killing by the paramilitaries. No more killing by the public forces (police, military). No more killings by the guerrilla." On the right, children from the community pile into one of the buses that accompanied the caminata to get out of the rain and rest their feet.

One of the boys from the Community looks out the window of the bus on the road from the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó on the way to the small city of Apartadó.

Fútbol and Beer:
I finally went to a Colombian soccer game. Colombia is turning heads by performing better than almost anyone expected in the preliminary round of the two-year long competition for a spot in the next World Cup. I saw the second half of the Colombia-Venezuela game, which Colombia won 1-0, and learned the only three expressions one needs to intelligently reflect on a Colombian soccer game, none of which I feel comfortable putting into print here. Here, a giant beer tarp is released on top of fans.

...and this is the Central Plaza in Bogotá at sunset.

What's Next?
My future plans are uncertain as of now - I will spend until the end of January based out of Boston, where the generosity of friends and family have given me a place to say and a warm welcome. I plan to finish applying to graduate school, and to do some organizing for the upcoming Colombian Conscientious Objectors' visit to the US, and the American Youth Delegation to Colombia - which hopes to bring American youth involved in Conscientious Objection or resistance to the war to Colombia. I will be sending emails out about these upcoming events.

I hope to be back in Bogotá in late January for a vacation, and to perhaps continue work I have begun in Colombia during April and May. I will be posting to this blog again in the near future. Thanks so much to all of you who have accompanied me on my journey this year. Please do be in touch: janicekgallagher@yahoo.com

Por fin!

2007-11-04T14:19:00.000-05:00

Well, my recuperation and getting back to this blog has taken longer than I planned. The good news is that I am finally healthy, except for a constant sniffle brought on by the mold lurking in all of the corners of my current abode, FOR’s house in La Unión. The other exciting news is that today I played soccer as a member of La Union´s team, and it was really fun. It´s been years, and with my hiking shoes slipping and sliding all over the place, I proudly played boot ball with the ladies of La Union. We won: 3-1 against the indigenous team from down the road.

I have less than a month left in Colombia, and feel like it is time to make Big Insightful Realizations...so bear with me. I feel like I don´t know much about how I will view this experience in retrospect - What I do know is that I am looking forward to having time to process this experience. That I leave here in awe of most of the people I have met – from my tireless co-workers who somehow keep their energy and determination up in spite of sickness, robberies, scarce resources and trying circumstances, to the Colombian activists we work with who manage to get up every day and push for structural change, peace and justice in a country where the only certainty is that working for these things will endanger your and your family’s safety. I leave this year with a stronger faith in the human spirit - with a conviction that we can’t help but struggle for a better world for our children and our neighbors.

I also leave with a deeper understanding of how US foreign policy, drug consumption and lack of awareness about what is going on in Colombia make people’s daily lives here harder. I read a darkly-titled book recenty, “More Terrible than Death,” by Robin Kirk, a former Human Rights Watch employee who spent over ten years in Colombia. She encapsulated, for me, the impact of the drug trade in Colombia: the profits from cocaine are “astronomical - $53 billion annually, calculated on the basis of the average US street price of $175 per gram of cocaine. That was five times the amount of foreign aid spent on the entire African continent” (Kirk, 240). That money fuels and arms both sides of the conflict, and makes the price that innocent civilians pay here astronomically higher.

Some other ruminations…

Continuing struggle in the community
After community leader Francisco Puerta was killed in May, we accompanied community leaders in a series of high-level meetings. I was nervous about how we and the community leaders would respond, interested in what the embassy and government officials would say, and honestly a little bit excited about meeting with high-level diplomats because I hoped they could really help the situation. After about ten meetings, most of this excitement, anxiety and interest wore off. The meetings were almost scripted, with everyone expressing concern but not committing to any action. After FOR was robbed in June, and another community Humanitarian Zone leader, Dairo Torres, was killed in July, we did other rounds of high-level meetings, visiting embssadors and Colombiam government officials. This time, I was tired of making the multitude of phone calls and emails necessary to set up these meetings. They hadn’t prevented Dairo’s murder, and I didn’t see what good they would do without a different strategy, or some more political capital. And then we had the meetings, replayed remarkably similar scripts many times with the same people. and maybe it made some difference. And maybe it didn’t.

To me, this is a little bit of what I’ve learned about working for peace amidst war. It is a grind in the way almost any job can become. What seems like it could never become routine or rote – like the reaction to the killing of a community leader – becomes routine because of necessity. The meetings are a vital part of keeping the community alive when seen as a whole, and the community has been having them for ten years and will keep having them indefinitely. The ability and energy it takes to keep up this struggle – from the grueling work of farming, to mourning leaders while orchestrating a political reaction to them – are incredible, and I have so much respect for the leaders who do this year in and year out.

Che’s gone...yup. For 40 years.
We had gone to a meeting on the morning of October 9th, and we returned to our neighborhood restaurant for lunch. It is a small, cheap place about 3 blocks from the entrance of the Universidad Nacional. We heard papas (directly translated as potatoes but in this context small, homemade bombs that anarchist, hooded students and hooded other people like to throw at police) going off when we were several blocks away. We proceeded to the restaurant without thinking too much of it. While we were eating, we started to itch our eyes and tear up as the tear gas from the protest wafted into the restaurant. We finished up, walked home, and struggled to open our door as the tear gas flooded the first couple floors of the apartment.

So...that’s the story. We went upstairs, didn’t wash our burning eyes (water makes the effects of tear gas worse), and tried to work in our apartment/office and ignore the constant bombing sounds and tear gas remnants.

A couple notes, though: First, like the boy I photographed earlier this year eating a sandwich right next to where the police confronted student protesters with high-powered water hoses, we did not stop our lunch or consider leaving the area, nor did we run to interview students about why they were protesting. This has now become fairly common for me and my office-mates, and I was more annoyed by the inconvenience of the tear gas and interruptions of the bomb sounds than curious about the roots of the social dissent. Second, when we did ask what was going on, we were told that the students were commemorating the 40th anniversary of Che’s death. Hmmm. OK. Not to diminish the importance of Che or his death, but it’s hard to imagine 1) how throwing homemade bombs at police could possibly accomplish anything, and how it is an appropriate commemoration of Che’s death. 2) It is hard to imagine why, exactly, the police find it necessary to confront the students. What are they fighting over? The students aren’t going to storm the city, and if they were, they could just go out another exit of the university. Why have both the police and the students chosen to stand at the main entrance of the university and throw small bombs, tear gas and water at each other? A Colombian friend we were with responded that it was tradition. That that’s simply what is done.

For me, that goes a long way in explaining the Colombian armed conflict. It has become simply what is done. Although at first, as with commemoration of Che’s death, it may have been about Big Ideas and actual questions about the equality of the distribution of wealth and democratic representation, it is now a tradition of war. For 40 years, the two sides have been fighting. It doesn’t seem like either side really thinks they can win, neither side is really interested in negotiating, so they keep fighting. In the meantime, the average Colombian pays a high price for this tradition, and the US – with its military aid, and more than anything with the money that it pours into Colombia through its consumption of cocaine – ensures that both sides are armed to the teeth.

Here´s what Robin Kirk, author of ¨More Terrible than Death, had to say about the causes of Colombia’s ongoing conflict, p.212:
In my notebooks, I have written down dozens of possible motives I have heard for Colombia’s war, none completely convincing. One farmer once said to me that the war was rich people’s way of grabbing poor people’s land. For him, the terror waged by the paramilitaries was an immense and nefarious real estate swindle, meant to force people from their farms, drive prices down, and grab land for agribusinesses. He described guerrillas as his only hope, since with their weapons they could resist these efforts by threatening and killing land speculators...A police major in the Colombian Antinarcotics Police told me that the blame lay with the drug traffickers. They wanted to control Colombia, to convert it into a narco-state tailored to their business needs...A noted Colombian economist and politician, Miguel Antonio Caro, once wrote that in reality, Colombia has no authentic political life, only ‘inherited hates’... The point of Colombia’s war eludes me.”

217: Writer Antonio Caballero once write that despite a war that intensifies each year, nothing actually happens: Nada de nada. Because of that, things worsen day by day. ‘The country aflame, rampant misery, the putrefaction of the political class, the disintegration of our institutions, the complete lack of security for our lives and possessions, flooding rivers, the proliferation of criminal mafias, the extinction of our wildlife, all are inevitable consequences of our stubborn conviction that here, nothing happens. The country comes apart in our fingers, over our heads, under our feet, because of us, precisely because we want nothing to happen, and when it happens, we deny it, saying ‘It’s over, it’s finished, ya pasó.’”

Now to go back up the mountain…I expect to be in Bogota sometime in the next week, and will write more then.

Vivo!

2007-09-27T20:31:00.000-04:00

Where to start? I have not given up on this blog...I have simply been on the roller coaster that is life in Colombia. After a month in the community, a blissful and busy couple weeks visiting friends and family in the US, a week in the CAMPO accompanying a group of campesinos returning to their land after almost 10 years away (and, consequently, returning to a place with no drinking water, mattresses, walls per se, mosquito nets...) and a full week in bed drenched in sweat and shaking with a combination of bacteria, parasites and amoebas pecking at my insides (during which I completed three decades of life and on my Big Day my body went into full rejection mode and made the Big Event of my Big Day crawling from bed to the living room, and falling asleep during Scrabble) I AM OK! Thanks everyone has sent me get-better wishes. They have been received and seem to be being heeded by the sickness Gods and Goddesses after much debate. I am behind on all work and play after vacationing, accompanying, and sickness, but will write again in the next couple days. with pictures. promise.

muddy

2007-08-12T13:39:00.000-04:00

I am gifted with many strenghts, I suppose, but remarkable in just a few. I am a getting dirty superstar, as I was reminded yet again this week as I slipped and slid through the Urabá mud. I got to accompany in the campo this week - the thing most like what I imagined I would be doing in Colombia. This week I accompanied one of the weekly community work days, where about 50 community members transformed into human lawnmowers, machete-ing down about 25 acres of brush in an afternoon (so that grass could grown, and the community´s animals could graze). And despite my efforts to clean myself in the river, I came home with mud from feet to face. And I ran down the mountain from La Unión to La Holandita, trying to prove that all my hard-won Appalachian Trail-hiking skills hadn´t dissipated. With the help of an old mop transformed into hiking pole, I didn´t fall...but rather glided, squished and stomped my way through the high rivers and muddy downhills. I found mud inside my ear.

Obviously, I am enjoying my time in the campo. Next up: a group of embassies are visiting the community this week as a response to all of the recent attacks in order to raise the profile of the situation there with the Colombian government. I am heading home to visit friend Nikki Tim´s new baby, Charlotte Jane, in a little over a week!! Internet access is sporadic here, but I will try to post some pictures soon.

off again...

2007-08-02T19:43:00.000-04:00

Well, what to say. It has been quite a change in...everything...since I last posted about my wonderful vacation. There was another policeman killed by the guerrilla in the area near the community this month, and three days later, on July 13th, another community Humanitarian Zone leader named Dairo Torres was taken off a public tranport vehicle and killed by paramilitaries. Since then there has been a high level of paramilitary activity reported in the area. There have also been police checkpoints right outside the community, and some hard interactions with the police around the rights of the community. In the meantime, the investigation into the robbery has stalled. I am headed out there now for a couple weeks, and then will return to the US for a quick visit to spend time with my childhood best friend's new baby and drop in on my family.

There continues to be interesting and stimulating work to do here in Bogotá, but I am ready to be back in the community for a while. City life everywhere is a grind, I think, and I am longing to be outside without so much pollution and to sleep and rise with the sun, rather than the beeping of cell phones and computer alerts.

I finally wrote up the piece I did about my accompaniment of the ACA, the Antioquia Peasants Association, which I will paste part of here. Hope you are all well - send some postive energy/prayers Colombia's way if you're so inclined...

Constructing a Peasant Movement: How to grow worms to make healthy soil
By Me, Janice Gallagher

How can small, rural farmers respond to the forces of global trade and climate change?
How is a campesino (peasant) movement built amidst war and threats of displacement?
What does economic solidarity look like in rural Colombia?

These were some of the many questions that led the Antioquia Peasant Association (ACA) to organize a week-long combination conference /tour /exchange in June with the Archdiocese of Santa Fe de Antioquia, a neighboring municipality. The ACA has worked for two years with farmers from seven different communities in Eastern Antioquia, an area that has been especially hard-hit by guerrilla and paramilitary violence, to figure out how to provide for themselves and their families in the midst of war. Part of the ACA’s strategy for assisting these farmers is to bring them face to face with other farmers who have faced similar circumstances to discuss how they have moved forward. The Archdiocese of Santa Fe de Antioquia has worked with farmers for 11 years in 26 communities and during this trip the two groups explored their answers to these big questions.

“With the FTA [Free Trade Agreement between the U.S. and Colombia] everything will be harder, which makes our struggle for self-sufficiency all the more important.”

In an environment where it is already incredibly difficult for small farmers to make ends meet, the ACA and Archdiocese believe that the approval of the FTA currently before Congress would make the situation of these small farmers infinitely harder. Resisting the passage of the FTA has been central political work for both the ACA and the Archdiocese. Yet, as one of the 22 campesinos on this trip said, “We can spend millions of pesos and hours protesting the policies of the state, but we also need to focus on how to feed ourselves.”

So what does this mean for them? Rather than changing which crops are planted based on the whims of the international market, the organizations believe that campesinos should produce the food they need to feed their families. Basing what to produce on the price of the crop is dangerous because prices might be high one year for, say, coffee, and by the time the crop yields fruit, the price might be half of what it was – not even enough to cover the cost that it took to produce it. Instead, the campesinos from both organizations focus on how to produce the staple crops they need to feed their families from very small plots of land. With the space left over, they produce things to sell locally. One farm we saw had every other terrace filled with onions to sell at a local market, and the other terraces held rice, beans, cilantro, tomatoes, and a cabbage-like green.

This idea that farming should benefit the farmers may seem simple, but it is a revolution in the way most agriculture has been carried out in this country and others. An integral part of this idea is that farming needs to be done sustainably. In this part of Colombia, this means growing worms in vitamin-rich food scraps to aerate the soil, using pig feces inside of a giant long and skinny plastic bag with a pipe attached to produce energy for the stove in the house, and making organic fertilizer from things already on the farm, rather than using harsh, expensive imported chemicals.

[To read the rest of Janice’s letter from the field, click here.]

cardboard boxes, a door, and the luxury of toilet seats

2007-07-11T00:50:00.000-04:00

I hadn't downloaded my photos for a while, and so after doing so I realized that the last month or so is appropriate for my second installment of "Janice's life in photos." Here goes...

Alternative sledding

I love this country! No snow? No sled?...well, make it work! In one of the central parks of Cali, a favorite past time is sledding down a closed-off road on top of cardboard boxes.

Pride in Colombia

This was the 11th anniversary of the Gay Pride celebration in Colombia, and my family was here to witness it. The struggle for gay rights in Colombia is in some ways much more advanced than I would have imagined: The 1991 Colombian constitution guarantees equality before the law for all Colombians regardless of their sexual orientation, and a bill that would have guaranteed same-sex couples some legal rights was nearly passed this year. Over 10,000 people participated in the Gay Pride parade this year, and many noted that for the first time, most people were not wearing masks to disguise their identity.

the banner says: Equality for same sex couples

Rebuilding

We continue to recover from the June 2nd robbery of the FOR house, and to take steps both politically and practically to make ourselves and other huiman rights organizations safer. There are now three of us human rights organizations that have been robbed in the past month: us, JustaPaz, a Mennonite peace organization, and Yira Castro, a group of lawyers that work to legally support victims of state-sponsored crimes).

We now have a door fit for a bank.

We also bought a new chair in hopes that we will soon have a new computer to use while we sit in the new chair. I carried the chair on my head for over 1o blocks and received surprisingly few strange looks.

Puente?

In Spanish, puente means bridge. It also means long weekend, of which there seems to be at least two per month. On this puente we headed to Suesca to go on my favorite walk on the way to my "country house" (a half-camping half-cabin place I co-rent outside Bogotá). Every time I have crossed the river to get to the house there has been a different manifestation of the bridge/puente: a log bridge, two cables strung across the river (one to hold, one to stand on), and a log and a cable (same idea). This time, we crossed on the most, ummm..., difficult "bridge" yet: one log, no cable. And then we braved barb wire. Anyway, it was fun.

Salty

On my parents' first day here we went to the salt mines. No rest for the weary. But these were special salt mines: 200 meters inside of a mountain made of rock salt, a team of architects, miners and engineers built a Catholic cathedral and 14 crosses which each illustrate a station of the cross entirely out of salt. Never mind that the Colombian government footed the over $20 million for this which could have, say, helped out the 10% of the population which has been forced off their land because of the violence - point is that this was really cool.

one of the stations of the cross - it was dark down there in the salt mines, hence the eerie lighting that my camera flash produced.

the cathedral. mass is held every sunday.

Providence.

After a blissful week with my sister and Allyson, my whole family headed to the islands of San Andres and Providencia which lie about 150 miles off the eastern coast of Nicaragua. Providencia has about 4500 people, and to quote Lonely Planet, it fulfills your every expectation of paradise. Water the color you imagine it should be, reggae clubs which are sometimes wet from the crashing surf, endless deserted white sand beaches, interrupted only by occasional piña colada and fresh seafood restaurants, and lovely, friendly people everywhere who mean it when they say slow down and enjoy life.

Providencia was initially settled by English Puritans around the year 1630 - who for some reason decided to move to a blissful tropical island rather than to join their compañeros in settling in Massachusetts. Because of this early encounter with Brits, English is still the native language of most islanders, though by now it has picked up a melodious mix of Caribbean, African and Spanish rhythms which made it hard for my dad to believe he could really understand what people said.

Our shared Puritan heritage, the island's proximity to my favorite country Nicaragua, and the fact that it still is Colombia which I also really love, made Providence the ideal cultural mix for me. To boot, there were enough tourist facilities that my whole family was comfortable, while at the same time the island seemed remote and not commercialized.

However, my father pointed out that the islands hadn't yet taken the tourist-friendly step of putting toilet seats on top of their toilets. I tried to get the hotel to transfer one of three toilet seats they had to my parents' room, but apparently the seat only made it as far as the front steps of the hotel.

layovers can be fun

On the way to Providencia, we had a couple hours of layover in San Andres, which we weren't looking forward to, since looking forward to a layover would be weird. This layover, however, broke the mold. A 5 minute walk from the terminal in San Andres was a beautiful beach. So we had a swim, mom did some yoga, we waded and a walked on the beach, and then hopped back on the plane.

Another new flying fave? The airport in Providencia. This is the "waiting room," or gate, where we waited for our 19-seat plane. The airport boasts an airy lobby (there are no windows, or walls really), caution tape separating those who have gone through security and those who haven't, and a convenient flight departure notification system whereby you know you should get ready to board when you see a plane land and people get off...because that's the only plane in the airport, so it better be taking you.

Familia

Of course, the best part of the past couple weeks has been having my family here. While life is already hectic back here in Bogota (partly because I need to catch up after a week away), I feel deeply rested and ready to do this work. Here are happy pictures of the family:
My parents dancing in the Botero museum. Botero is the most famoius Colombian contemporary artist who is known for paiting and sculpting very round humans, animals and fruit.

Off to San Andres!

2007-07-02T09:07:00.002-04:00

Thanks to all of you who continue to hang in there with this blog! I am now going to part with my computer for a week and head to the coast for some down time. I am looking forward to reading, relaxing and being with family. I'll post beachy photos in a week!

Things, knock on wood, seem to be settling down here, though another NGO was robbed a little over a week ago called Yira Castro, which is a lawyers' collective that works with displaced people and victims of paramilitary and state violence. We continue to both pray (in our own way) for and advocate for the Colombian government to get to the bottom of what can now be called a rash of break-ins at NHOs who work with threatened people, but no measurable progress has been made in theinvestigations yet. Thanks again to all of you who sent letters to the Colombian government and US Embassy asking them to pay special attention to this case.

Big abrazos...

gracias! y progress?

2007-06-22T09:07:00.000-04:00

The past few weeks have been unrelenting in pace but, at times, hopeful in content. We have had a whirlwind of Colombian Senate, press, Embassy, police and Attorney General meetings in response to the June 2nd robbery at our house/office. Since FOR is the first international NGO to have an apaparently politically-motivated break-in, and since the timing of the beak-in dovetailed with Uribe's visit to the US lobbying for the support of the Free Trade Agreement, national and international organizations have taken notice in a way that has surprised us, and which we hope will make us, other international NGOs and the people we accompany safer. Click here to read about my alter ego, Yanisse Galagher's, response to the robbery in Spanish)

After this intense response, we were hoping to get back to the work we would like to concentrate on - working with Colombian peace organizations, supporting the peace community, and trying to improve US foreign policy towards Colombia. Instead, there was another break-in at an organization we work closely with. The offices of JustaPaz, which are about a 20-minute walk from our offices, were robbed. Again computers were taken and other valuables were left in plain sight. This same building also houses Witness for Peace, where most of my good friends in Colombia work, and which brings US delegations to Colombia to learn about US foreign policy here.

The computers taken from JustaPaz
contained sensitive information on people and churches that are active in work for peace and human dignity, and on people from churches that are victims and witnesses to human rights violations...The perpetrators passed by 9 other computers, telephones, a safe, etc., and removed two specific computers located at the other end of the office. They also broke into the desk of the coordinator for a program for protection of persons at risk. (For JustaPaz's complete statement, go to their website)

That this happened 12 days after our break-in is troubling. We had brought our last delegation to JustaPaz and have had contact with them since coming beginning the program, so this felt like another indirect attack on our work here, and against the people we all work with. Because of this, the letters people wrote to the Colombian Vice President's office and to the US Embassy are all the more important!! And they do make a difference - this week, we got a meeting with both offices which are usually hard, if not impossible, to get (OK, the VP's office cancelled at the last minute because he is traveling, but we will reschedule!). For those of you who wrote to the Embassy, you probably got this response
Dear Mr./Ms.xxx,
Thank you for writing.
?? Yes. That was it. No signature - nada. But we are meeting with human rights officials within the US government that we haven't before, and that is a result of the pressure that has been brought regarding this case and others. So thank you to all who wrote.

Conscientious Objector Hip Hop
This past weekend, Camila (my co-worker and superstar roommate) and I took a needed break from all the craziness and happenings in Bogotá here, and we headed to Cali, the salsa and party capital of Colombia to visit/accompany a hip hop group called Suporte Klan that we met at the Conscienctious Objectors conference in Medellin. They live in an AfroColombian community Villa Rica, about an hour outside Cali, and they do innovative skits about resisting participation in the war, US imperialism, and the lingering effects of racism in Colombia. The rap, really well, about pacifism, and have gained immense popularity in Colombia. And, to boot, they are good guys.

Vacation!
My sister comes today with her partner, and my parents come next week, to visit me in Colombia. I am beyond excited, and am looking forward to a break after a long, intense stretch of work. We are heading to the island paradise of San Andrés, closer to Nicaragua than Colombia, for some blissful beach time.

US Policy Update: From teammate AJ's blog
I was gooing to write abouit this, but AJ already did! Here is what's up:
More news from the land of the free indicates that the Foreign Affairs subcommittee of the House (the very same subcommittee I bemoaned in this here web space back in April) has decided to shift money away from Plan Colombia military aid and towards humanitarian aid. The house bill now contains a 55%-45% military-humanitarian aid split. Once taking into account the extra $150 million that goes to Colombian military aid out of the Defense Budget appropriations, that scores: Military Aid 65%, Humanitarian Aid 35%. Last year, also taking into account both the Foreign Ops and Defense appropriations, the military percentage was up at 83% and this year the administration requested 81% military aid. This seems a good time to reference the title of my blog. This is, I guess, some form of justice, limping very, very, very slowly. I remain skeptical and hesitate to call this piddling offering any kind of victory for human rights in Colombia.

For those of you back in the states, keep your ear to the ground as this legislation under the Foreign Aid Bill is set to hit the floor as early as today. Call or email your Representative and urge them to keep the 55-45 split intact. Republican Representatives are already rumored to be preparing a counter-amendment to rectify the perceived “imbalance”. In fact, my old pal, Dan Burton (R-IN), ranking republican of the Foreign Affairs subcommittee is at the front of the line, probably planning on introducing just such an amendment.

robbed

2007-06-06T10:00:00.000-04:00

In the midst of our team retreat in paradisical Santa Fe de Antioquia this weekend, we got a call early Sunday morning that jarred us out of whatever tranquility we had found in the charming colonial town: our compañera Sarah called us from Bogotá to let us know that she had arrived at the house, and that all was not well.

She found the door to the apartment carefully splintered around the now-broken lock, and upon entering the apartment realized immediately that the two office computers had been taken, while curiously my passport and credit card had been laid carefully on my bed, almost as if on display. The television, the computer monitor, the fax and printer and other valuables were left, and at first we thought no valuables were taken...until we realized, curiously, that most of Camila's clothes and some US dollars were also stolen. All suitcases and smelly dirty clothes had been emptied throughout the house, and things were generally chaotic. Sarah related the scene to us, and we left our retreat immediately and headed home (we flew!).

This is scary for many reasons, primary of which is that it doesn't seem like just a normal robbery - they found and displayed valuables on my bed instead of taking them, they stole the things (computers) which clearly had the most information about FOR and our work, and they took a lot of care to steal very little of value - they disconnected the doorbell, took out the light bulbs from the hallway, and came at a time when almost no one was around the building...all presumably to lessen the possibility that they would be interrupted.

Because it appears that this was politically motivated, this has to have a political reaction. We, as FOR, need to respond in a way which shows whoever did this that there are large political costs to attacking an international human rights organization in this way.

So...what now? The theory behind our work here is that there is a large political cost to harming internationals, and specifically harming international human rights workers. Now is the time, then, to demonstrate that. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe arrives to the US tomorrow, and we want him to hear about this case during his visits with Congress people. We also want him to hear from US citizens that this type of attack on international human rights organizations is unacceptable.

So please, if you have a minute, send an email to Colombian Vice President and the US Embassy expressing
- your concern for the attack on FOR and for the security of the Colombian groups FOR accompanies;
- your desire for the authorities to carry out a prompt and complete investigation of the violation and to punish those responsible;
- the necessity of having the Colombian government publicly support the work of national and international human rights organizations in Colombia by issuing a presidential directive on human rights organizations (which would update an older, similar directive: Directive 7 of 2001 issued by President Andrés Pastrana.)

Their email addresses are:
Francisco Santos, Vice President of Colombia: fsantos@presidencia.gov.co
Milton Drucker, Chargé d' Affaires at the US Embassy in Colombia: AmbassadorB@state.gov

If you are a cut-and-paster, below are sample emails to each of them. These are two of the key contacts for FOR here in Colombia and therefore for improving ours and others' security, and receiving emails from everyone who reads this blog would really make a huge difference to our work here.

Thank you for your support...
Janice

To US Embassy:
Dear Milton Drucker,
I am writing to express my grave concern for the US-based Human Rights Organization FOR, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which works to support human rights in Colombia. This past Saturday, June 2nd, their house/office was robbed in Bogotá. Although all burglaries are troubling, this one is particularly so because computers with sensitive information were taken, specifically about the work FOR does to support the peace community of San Jose de Apartado.

As a concerned US citizen and support of human rights, I would ask you to to urge the Colombian government to:
1) Do whatever possible to ensure the safety and respect for the work of FOR, their partner
organizations and the other national and international groups in Colombia who are working for human rights.
2) Carry out a thorough investigation into the FOR robbery.
3) Publicly support the work of national and international human rights organizations in Colombia by issuing a presidential directive on human rights organizations (which would update an older, similar directive: Directive 7 of 2001 issued by President Andrés Pastrana.)

Thank you for your attention in this matter,

To Francisco Santos:
Dear Vice President Santos,
I am writing to express my grave concern for the international Human Rights Organization FOR, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which works to support human rights in Colombia. This past Saturday, June 2nd, their house/office was robbed in Bogotá. Although all burglaries are troubling, this one is particularly so because computers with sensitive information were taken, specifically about the work FOR does to support the peace community of San Jose de Apartado.

As a concerned US citizen and support of human rights,
I would ask you to:
1) Do whatever possible to ensure the safety and respect for the work of FOR, their partner
organizations and the other national and international groups in Colombia who are working for human rights.
2) To carry out a thorough investigation into the FOR robbery.
3) To publicly support the work of national and international human rights organizations in Colombia by issuing a presidential directive on human rights organizations (which would update an older, similar directive: Directive 7 of 2001 issued by President Andrés Pastrana.)

Thank you for your attention in this matter,

Here is FOR's statement:

Action Alert:
International Human Rights Group Records Stolen in Colombia

The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) denounces what appears to have been a politically motivated attack on its offices on June 2 in Bogotá, Colombia.

According to people who live in the same building as FOR, unknown persons forcibly entered the FOR house/office in Bogotá between 6 pm and 7 pm on June 2, breaking the lock and part of the door. The individuals stole the FOR’s two central computers that contain the organization’s records, including information on the accompaniment of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. This community has been the target of attacks by the all the armed groups and is covered by protective measures issued by the Inter-American Court for Human Rights.

Recently, FOR has worked on delicate issues such as the murder of a member and ex-leader of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, Francisco Puerta; the use of demobilized combatants in army operations; and the presence of and threats by paramilitaries in the San José de Apartadó district. Additionally, given the documented collaboration between Colombian military and civilian officials at the highest levels and paramilitaries, FOR has led efforts to end United States military aid to the Colombian Army, and has been active in opposing the Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Colombia.

The individuals destroyed electronic equipment, including part of a satellite phone, stole clothing and cash but took out and did not steal a credit card and the passport of an FOR team members; as well as a television and other items of value that were in plain sight. In the days before the break-in, individuals had been observed watching the house on several occasions.

This incident constitutes a serious violation against an international human rights organization that gives protective unarmed accompaniment to threatened Colombians. The violation occurs in the context of threats against other human rights organizations working in Colombia, such as the Corporation for Juridical Liberty, which resulted in an urgent action alert issued by Amnesty International. Such a climate of intolerance is reflected in statements issued by Vice-President Francisco Santos at the Council of the Americas during his recent visit to Washington. According to the daily newspaper El Tiempo (May 25, 2007), the vice-president accused human rights organizations of being motivated by purely economic interests. The organizations refuse to recognize the Uribe administration’s efforts “perhaps because if they do the donor will withdraw large amounts of money. This is a business too and they would be without a job,” Santos said.

FOR continues its work of accompaniment of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, the Antioquia Peasant Association, the Youth Network of Medellín, and other Colombian groups that work for justice and peace using nonviolent means.

Click here for more info on who to contact, or here to see this in Spanish

CO article

2007-05-28T23:00:00.000-04:00

Struggling to have the Freedom of Conscience respected amidst civil war:
The Colombian Conscientious Objectors’ movement

By Janice Gallagher

Carlos Andres Hincapie, 18, had gone out to the store to buy eggs for his family’s breakfast when he ran into the military, who asked for his military identification card, certifying he had completed his military service. He told them he didn’t have one, and didn’t agree with military service. Without returning to his house, he was loaded onto the back of a military truck, and taken to the military barracks. He could not call his parents, and the next day was whisked off for “training” several hours away. Within two weeks, he was engaged in active duty military service. He signed a statement two months later certifying that he was a Conscientious Objector, and in return received harsh physical treatment at the hands of the military.

That was in August of 2006. Today, Carlos Andres remains in the military, where he has been forced to perform his military service despite his moral objections to the use of violence.

His case and hundreds of like his have inspired a youth movement in Colombia which is challenging the State’s right to force them to participate in Colombia’s bloody civil war. This May over 70 youth from all corners of Colombia, along with international supporters from 7 different countries, came together for a week-long conference in which they debated, danced, organized and educated others about the prospect of resisting military service based on a personal commitment to non-violence.

Sandra Grisales, an organizer with the Red Juvenil, or Youth Network, of Medellín explained “We are here as a group of young people imagining that a different world is possible...because we think the same way, and because we are celebrating our right to think freely. For me, injustice doesn’t help me at all, and I will not be part of continuing it.”

The reality for youth in Colombia today
In Colombia, forcibly recruiting youth to be involved in the over 40-year civil war has been regarded as just another tragic effect of the armed conflict. Over the past several years, however, an organized youth movement has emerged to challenge this aspect of the war. The movement’s premises are simple: they want the right to say no to participating in Colombia’s cycles of violence. Or, as Katedrá, a dancer with the Villarica Conscientious Objector hip hop group Soporte Klan explained “for me, liberty is the most important thing. I am awakened to do something in spite of all the difficulties we will face because today we are not free.”

Forced recruitment, or obligatory service, is carried out by every armed group within the Colombian civil war – the paramilitaries, the guerillas, and the “official” state army. While resisting recruitment by the “illegal armed actors” (the paramilitaries and guerrillas) is difficult, since by definition the groups and all of their activities are already illegal, the Conscientious Objectors have begun to seriously challenge the Colombian government’s right to obligate men over 18 to serve in the military.

Currently, all men over 18 must serve in the military unless they are displaced, indigenous, high school students, physically incapable of serving, heads of family themselves or the only child of their parents. Despite regulations guaranteeing youth the right to prove they are exempt from service, the most common form of military recruitment entails rounding up boys at places where they are likely to meet: at schools, parks, or dance and billiard halls, and whisking them off for their service without the opportunity (or, most likely, the information) to file for an exemption form service. Youth may “buy” their way out of military service for about $200, but this is not an option for many poor youth, and accordingly, poor youth make up the bulk of those that actually serve in the military.

Those who don’t succeed in obtaining the coveted libreta militar, or military service card, are denied opportunities for education and employment. Without the libreta, one cannot graduate from University or get a job with any private or public company, leaving only informal or illegal sector employment open to them.

As is true with many things in Colombia, there are written norms, regulations and laws, and then there is the way things really work. Often, youth never have a chance to prove that they are exempt. Often officials can be bribed into giving over the coveted libreta militar. And sometimes, officials decide to make an example of one person: In one case, a youth was displaced, the primary breadwinner in the family, a declared Conscientious Objector, and he was recruited illegally. He was recruited in November, and remains in the military despite numerous legal challenges on clearly valid grounds. After linking up with a local CO group to push his case, his mother has since asked that it be left alone, for fear of further repercussions against her son and her family.

Conscientious Objection in Colombia: A legal right?
There are two contradictory provisions in the 1991 Colombian Constitution: Article 18 in the section on fundamental rights guarantees that “nobody will be obligated to act against their conscience.” Article 216, in the section on the state forces, states “All Colombians are obligated to take up arms when the public interest necessitates in order to defend national independence and public institutions.” The Colombian Constitutional Court has ruled that there is no right to Conscientious Objection under Colombian law, citing Article 216. While this has obviously closed doors in the Colombian legal system, it has led the Colombian COs to look towards international law.

The UN’s Commission and Committee on Human Rights have long recognized the right of conscientious objection to military service “as part of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion enshrined in Article 18 of both the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. ” In January of 2007, however, the UN Human Rights Committee, the legal body that rules on UN human rights, more strongly affirmed this right than ever before: they decided that South Korea had violated Article 18 by not providing for conscientious objection to military service for two Jehovah’s Witnesses (in the case of Mr. Yeo-Bum Yoon and Mr. Myung-Jin Choi v Republic of Korea),

Why should Colombia listen to the UN? Well, Colombia is a “party to both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ratified 29 October 1969),” it recognizes in its constitution the legitimacy of international law over domestic law when they contradict, and it also signed something called the “First Optional Protocol” with the UN, which means individuals can bring cases directly to the UN when they feel Colombian law is contradicting international law.
Since the Colombian Constitutional Court clearly demonstrated that there are no more legal remedies in Colombia, the door is open at the Committee on Human rights to consider the Colombian case. In 2004, they already indicated what they thought about Colombia’s view of COs stating “The Committee notes with concern that the legislation of the State [Colombia] party does not allow conscientious objection to military service.
The State party should guarantee that conscientious objectors are able to opt for alternative service whose duration would not have punitive effects. ”

At this CO conference, participants discussed possible test cases to bring to the UN Human Rights Committee. In one case, a declared Conscientious Objector has been denied his diploma despite finishing his university coursework because he has not completed his military service. According to another recognized UN statute, this is discrimination based on CO status, which is illegal. The hope is that with a ruling against the Colombian CO position, Colombia would be pressured to change its legal ruling.

CO movement in Colombia:
What everyone at the conference recognized, and what officials said the next week when faced with the clear legal case for the recognition of Conscientious Objection in Colombia, was that without a strong Colombian and international lobbying effort for this right, there would not be sufficient political will to push this change. It was with this knowledge that last week’s conference participants shared their individual organizing strategies, developed ways for expanding their movement, and took to the streets on the final day to spread their message.

Conference participants told of how they were creatively spreading the idea of conscientious objection in their home communities: In Sincelejo, the CO group has succeeded in using a government education department provision requiring that students be educated about alternatives to war to attain a permanent presence in four high schools. They give weekly classes educating students about their rights in the face of recruitment, and ask them to think critically about whether to serve in the military. In Villarica, a group of young COs have come together in a hip hop group where they sing, rap and dance about their commitment to non-violence and non-participation in the armed conflict. In Barranca, I heard about their efforts to assist youth who have been recruited illegally or against their will, and their legal and political fight to have them freed from service. In Medellín they told of courageous young men who have gone to the local army Brigade, presented their declaration as Conscientious Objectors, and are putting themselves on the line in order to build a legal case and precedence for the legalization of CO status.

As a group, the COs choreographed and performed compelling street theatre on some of the busiest corners in Medellin: they first walked around freely, and then silently paired off. They joined hands with their partner and pulled opposite ways, both desperately trying to go their own way, to symbolize forced military recruitment against their will. . They then let go of each other’s hands, both falling to the floor, demonstrating that after this recruitment against their will, everyone falls, everyone loses, and suffers. After a rapped mantra narrating the injustice of forced recruitment and the right to conscientious objection, the 70 corpses of the participants were simultaneously resuscitated, and they broke into song and dance, celebrating the life-giving power of the freedom of thought and the right to follow their conscience. They danced and sang their way down the streets of Medellin to the next metro stop, where they repeated their performance, and then publicly read their mission statement.

The Conscientious Objector Movement was born in 1988 in Colombia, and has started to build steam in the past several years, hosting four national conferences, and hosting their first international conference in June 2006. They have met since to arrive at their legal strategy and to bring together the thinking of the diverse group that makes up the COs.

Their hopes as a group are diverse, but nearly all of them recognize that it will be a long struggle. Freed Molina, a declared Conscientious Objector from Sincelejo said “I knoiw the struggle will be long, but I would like for Conscientious Objection to turn into a way of life...I hope that the demilitarization we are advocating for isn’t only legal, but that it extends to all acts and creates a pacifist revolution in a person’s being.”

They have realized as a group how vital international support is to their movement, and are arranging for international trips for many of their members. The idea is to find groups of people who will support their struggle for the recognition of CO status from outside the country by applying political pressure when a youth is recruited. If you are interested, please send an email to FOR Bogota at presenciaparalapaz@yahoo.com. We are currently gathering signatures to try and get Carlos Andres Hinacapie released from his unwilling military service.

colombian anti-privatization, buddhist poem, and COs

2007-05-24T08:00:00.000-04:00

As has started to be the trend, the last couple weeks have been more intense than any to date. The Buddhists left, and that same day I flew up to Medellin and attended a weeklong Consciencious Objector conference (thanks to the generous sponsorship of one of the Buddhists who is also a Veteran for Peace and supporter of Consciencious Objectors). Consciencious Objection is not a recognized right in Colombia, though under the Constitution it should be. I am working on a long article about their efforts which I hope to have done in a couple days.

In the meantime, I returned to Bogotá, had lots of meetings with Embassies and Colombian officials concerning the safety of the community, particularly the humanitarian zones, and our concern about ongoing paramilitary-military cooperation. I droppped in on a HUGE national protest against privatization (specifically of the educational system and the TLC) and then Sunday I go to Medellín, where I will be doing a week-long accompaniment of the Campesino Association here.

This is a compilation of a series of poems the Buddhist delegation wrote. Have I mentioned that you should come on the August delegation?? Email me for more info.

Colombia is searching for a way of peace
Roosters make themselves known all day and night.
I was expecting rain but not this! Not this crash-bang-flash-smash-gush-rush or a flood-storm!
And after, it’s that horse sweat-river water-human-mud smell again
Slimy mango dribbles down my chin and I’d let it stay there forever
These fingers and eyes so open, softer than the rain
Still feeling the heat of the sun on my face, rain falls once more
I won’t forget that I speak this language, this world, with my whole heart
“I won’t forget you,” I said, “I swear”—and I don’t know her name or remember her story but it was not a lie.
Crumbling brick, shiny new high-rises
I learned that nothing is black and white.

Sign online Petition against Colombian Free Trade Agreement! Please

2007-05-21T18:25:00.001-04:00

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/no_way_us-colombia_fta/index.html

found photos

2007-05-10T19:29:00.000-04:00

Symptom of how hectic this month has been: My camera ran out of batteries two weeks ago, and today I had time to buy and put new batteries in, and discovered I had some pretty good pictures of things I had almost forgotten I had seen. For example, I saw crabs for sale on a rope while in Apartadó. So, gracias to my camera, here are some more memories from April...and a little of May.

Villavicencio: About 3 hours South East of Bogotá, gateway to the plains, home to my friend Toni, and famous for carne janera, a special tender kind of slow-roasted meat.

Mireille and I eating raw cacao, the seed you make chocolate out of. You actually just suck on the white fuzzy stuff on the outside of the seed, and then spit out the seed, because it is really bitter until it is roasted, ground, and then combined with sugar.
The Peace Community makes amazing cacao, and if anyone is, by any chance looking to import tons (literally) of cacao which is awaiting organic certification, or knows anyone who is, let me know. seriously.

A river crossing in Suesca, the paradise about an hour north of Bogotá where I try to go on the weekends.

A really really big ant in the Peace Community. There were lots of them, and they were as big as quarters. I don't think they bite, though I didn't test this theory.

A cross overlooking La Unión in the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, where I have spent a total of about two months.

As promised, crabs on ropes waiting to be sold in "downtown" Apartadó. The crabs are caught in the very dirty river that runs through town. I don't know if they are good...I have somehow restrained myself from trying them yet.

Cute puppies at Toni's house.

buddha rocks, uribe doesn't

2007-05-09T18:11:00.000-04:00

a zen delegation

Of all things you might imagine me doing here...this blog update finds me in the middle of the amazingly quaint and historic Colombian town of Villa de Leyva on a Zen Buddhist retreat. Former FOR team member Sarah Weintraub organized a Buddhist delegation together with her mother, who is the former Abbess of the San Francisco Zen Center, and they have been here for the past couple of weeks meditating in the mornings and having a whirlwind of meetings and intensive exposure to the many sides of the Colombian peace movement and conflict for the remaining 12-16 hours a day. Meeting with the different groups, especially the families of victims of the violence, has been, as always, overwhelming, terribly sad, inspiring, confusing and educational all at once.

Buddhists eating at Crepes and Waffles, my favorite restaurant

For me, it has been a wonderful opportunity to learn from Sarah, who was in Colombia for over three years, who founded the Bogotá office almost two years ago, and is an experienced delegation leader. It has also been amazingly positive for me to have the opportunity to meditate and process this experience with the delegation. I have now been here almost six months, and especially in the last month of running around, I feel I almost haven't had time to breather, bathe, and sleep, much less really take time to process, integrate and feel all I am experiencing. For me, meditating has been like going out to coffee with myself many days in a row - I have taken time to really listen to what I am thinking for the first time in a long time.

I also have been missing the Unitarian Church and community, and after an attempt at the Mennonite church (good people! looong service, with an evangelical feel that felt very, umm, foreign to me), being with Buddhists has felt surprisingly like home. Their focus, at least in my eyes, is on being present and mindful, and on doing what you can to make the world a

Sarah at a restaurant in Bogotá. She
is indeed sitting under a converted
salon hair dryer, now lamp, facing a picture of Jesus

better, more peaceful place without needing to be attached to the results. The Delegation also met up with welcoming and warm Buddhist sanghas, or communities, in Bogota and Medellin, and I plan to stay in touch with these sanghas, and even go once in a while. Having a bastion of peace and serenity seems like a good thing while I'm doing this work.

During this retreat, I have finally had some time to write and reflect. A couple things in particular have stuck with me:
((This picture doesn't really fit here...but I took it while at the top of Montserrate with the delegation. It's Jesus. Holding a cross. On a mountain.))

Knowing enough to know you know nothing...
At a visit at the Canadian Embassy, the head of their Political Section told us that when he was training to come to Colombia, he was reading a lot, getting briefed by country experts, and that after about 18 hours of this one day, his superior said to him “you look a bit overwhelmed.” He nodded, and his superior said something like: “Remember this feeling. This is the height of your confidence about your knowledge of Colombia.”

I have found in these past two weeks how much more I knew than I realized I did, and how I know almost absolutely nothing about this conflict and this country. I know now that the big issues are...
*displacement (of over 3 million Colombians, mainly Afro-Colombian, indigenous and rural communities to the cities, and then the multitude of issues that come up around what to do with these millions of people),
*the para-political scandal (ie, the ties between government officials and terrorist “para-military” groups that have come to light recently. Paramilitary groups have brutalized the entire country since the 1980s, but especially human rights activists, community leaders, progressive politicians, and labor union leaders),
* the demobilization process <-- click here for a really interesting Amnesty International cartoon illustrating the basic flaws of this process. (the process of former paramilitaries receiving immunity in return for supposedly disarming and telling the truth, and the questions that have been raised about whether they’re really disarming, really telling the truth, and really going to stop brutalizing the country)

...but I have little grasp of where actual power lies, who is directing the violence, and which side or sides people/organizations and groups can be lumped together in. I don’t understand how the interrelationship between all the various groups and armed actors were formed, and I have no idea if anything is really being done or can be done to break the ties of people who for so long have conspired to spill so much blood. And finally, I don’t really understand how people – who look, feel, act and feel pain like the rest of us – have systematically kept up such staggering levels of violence.

In terms of my actions in respect to what I have learned, my belief that the protective and political accompaniment work FOR does is vital to the situation here has been reaffirmed: I am more convinced that in a situation as complex and historically entangled as the Colombian situation, my role as an American can not be to come here and tell people, in any way, how to fix their situation. However, if there is a way that I can make “space” for groups committed to peace to do their work more safely, and to also let people in the US know about their work, I am also convinced that these are important ingredients to an eventual peace. It feels right, in other words, to act by simply being present – to bear witness to the situation here.

The importance of good friends...again:

I have already written the blog entry where I talk about how the people really make the experience, that without dear friends to experience and talk with, it is hard for me to make meaning of some of what I am seeing...blah blah blah. But, it bares repeating. A good friend of mine, Toni, has recently moved to Colombia, essentially because the planets aligned and the world is good. She had planned to go to Chile, but at the last moment, ended up working with a new UN Refugee Agency in Colombia, not too far from Bogota. So, I have managed to see her almost every weekend during this crazy month, and shared good time in Villavicencio, another beautiful colonial town which sits on the edge of the mountains and the plains, and which is famous for it's rockin' special brand of Colombian music...which is characterized by harp plucking.

URIBE: Loved or Hated?
Uribe was in the US recently, as you may have heard, and he received some serious questions from Democrats about the para-political scandal, an appropriately chilly reception from Nanacy Pelosi, and also particularly received some flac regarding the veracity of his favorable poll numbers. One thing we have been talking about a lot on this delegation is how polling is done: Polling in Colombia is done by telephone, usually within the three biggest cities: Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali, which inherently leaves out a considerable chunk of the rural and non-telephoned city dwellers...all of whom are statistically not as economically well-off, and relatedly not as pro-Uribe, as the telephoned urban residents. Uribe seems stunned that with poll numbers "as high a 75%" (as the US Embassy quoted to us this week) in Colombia, he is getting such a hard time in the US. But since those poll numbers have a flawed base...clinging to his impressive poll numbers as evidence of his success and popularity seems to make a less compelling case for him that it might first appear.

My (kinda lack of) fears
Before coming here, I did an exercise with my minister to address my worst fears about being here: I talked about my fear of being physically harmed doing this work and what that would do to my loved ones, I talked about not being able to prevent harm being done to those I worked with, and about seeing atrocities happen in front of me.

After six months here, the delegation I have been helping to lead brainstormed their fears, and I also took time to think about what I was scared about. I said I was scared of not being able to translate well during meetings, of not being able to provide people deep enough insight into the conflict, and scared that I/them would be too sick to be fully present on the delegation. These are, of course, a far cry from the fears I had coming in here.

Why? Most obviously, Bogotá, Medellín and the Peace Community have been, knock on wood, experiencing a relatively safe period, compared with things even a year ago. In my last entry, I talked about there being a logic behind almost all of the violence that happens here, (save common street crime) and according to that logic, I am not a target. I am not living in one of the “hot” zones in the country, and so I have not been near combat, and when I do travel to these zones, all the military (and, it can be guessed, paramilitary leaders) know I am coming as a member of FOR, and I think this makes a difference. When I came I was reluctant to go to the community because of safety concerns, and now I am trying to figure out how to get back there for more time.

The current FOR team...the fabulous female five. Men are allowed...they just didn't make the cut this time!

Gabi, one of my dearest friends who I have traveled with and lived with on four continents, warned me about letting my guard down after being here for a while. She emphasized that when you live for long enough in a dangerous context, you can become desensitized to the danger. I think that, unavoidably, this has happened to me to some extent. That despite her warning, I am getting comfortable. I hope I am also becoming better-informed and more able to make decisions that will keep me and my teammates safe. What I know, however, is that I am not walking around scared. I feel aware and alert, especially in new areas or areas I know to be difficult, but I am not spending sleepless nights...even when I am in the community. I hope that this comfort is not numbness. knock on wood.

sickness

2007-05-06T17:28:00.000-04:00

Get your shots:
I ended up staying in the community and/or Apartadó for almost an extra two weeks in order to accompany my teammate AJ while she made daily visits to the hospital for injections to treat leptospirosis, typhoid fever and bacteria. AJ has been in Colombia since mid-November, about two weeks longer than I have, but has spent nearly the entire time in the community. She appears to be on the mend, and is now on vacation in the US, but her sickness was a reminder that simply surviving in the community is a major task. Mayra, who arrived just over a month and a half ago and has been in the community for just a month, now also has leptospirosis.
(here are the women of FOR representing at AJ's bedside. That is an iv of leptospirosis-typhoidfever-fighting-rehydrating-stuff in her arm)

Political Violence:
When I first got here and started to read about the almost never-ending violence in Colombia, and to talk with those most affected by this violence, the mothers of the disappeared, people who have had to flee their homes, I often thought: well, at least the US doesn’t have this level of violence. This was reflected in my father’s column he wrote about my work here, where he commented that though there had been some mud-slinging in the Hilary Clinton Senate reelection campaign, a least no one is physically harmed.

When I read Stephen Dudley’s book “Walking Ghosts,” which details the genocide conducted in the 1990s against the leftist political party “Unidad Popular,” or Popular Unity, in which over 3,000 members, organizers and politicians were killed, what struck me was that when the genocide started, the party didn’t notice what was happening, because political violence has become so common. Can you imagine in the US it going “under the radar” that 10s then 100s of, say, Green Party members are being killed?

It is an easy, and I think almost natural, gut reaction to think that something must be wrong with Colombia and maybe even Colombians, that this violence is so rampant. It feels like the value on human life has been degraded so thoroughly that there must be something broken in the social fabric of the country.

But then...you dig a little deeper, read a couple articles, and turns out that this source of this violence, those who literally contracted killings, sold arms, provided trainings to these killers, are Americans. The most recent revelations indicate that two American companies, Drummond and Chiquita, are behind much of the violence. Chiquita, formerly known as United Fruit Company, is implicated specifically in Urabá, the area where San José de Apartadó is located. They are accused of paying to have union leaders disappeared, and directly paying off the paramilitary groups to do their bidding. So, though our soil goes largely untouched in terms of political violence, we are effectively exporting it.

Reflections on Virginia Tech
Almost a month ago I started this blog entry contrasting the violence in Colombia to that in the United States, and talking about how the US, while peaceful overall, has actually introduced and escalated much of the violence in Colombia and in other parts of the world, so that why we don’t have to see it on a daily basis, we have participated in it nonetheless. And then, just as I was about to post it, I heard about the tragic Virginia Tech massacre, and decided to wait.

In Colombia, there is a war that causes the staggering violence, so even though there is no end in sight to the violence here, it does feel like it at least has a logic. That there is political pressure that can be mounted to end the violence, that systems of accountability can be designed by strengthening institutions - somehow makes it feel ultimately surmountable. The Virginia Tech massacre feels scarier in some ways because it is not clear how or if the causes can be addressed.

Ultimately, though, the violence in these two places does feel linked to me. To me, US policy both actively and passively promotes violence, and exacerbates already difficult situations. Would the Virginia Tech massacre have happened if we had strict gun laws which prohibited the gunman from attaining those guns? Maybe, but his easy access to so many weapons and ammo certainly facilitated the carnage. Would Colombians still be engaged in a civil war without the US government funding and training one side? And without Americans’ consumption of cocaine, which gives money to both sides of the conflict? Probably, but again the levels of violence and the loss of human life would certainly not be as devastating.

technological oblivion

2007-04-28T09:55:00.000-04:00

somehow, time has gotten away from me in the past month...and if I have faithful readers, I apologize profusely for the dry spell in blog entries. It has been a long, frustrating month, punctuated by every technological gadget I touch turning to dust. Upon returning from the community to Bogota, I found I had no hot shower, no phone, no internet, no gas to cook with, that my computer no longer connects to the internet, that my cell phone wouldn´t charge, and that my ipod only liked to play 2 songs before ¨resting.¨ And why you ask did all these things happen? For absolutely no discernable reason. I am reminded daily that there are much worse fates than the gods and goddesses of technology telling you not-so-subtley that it is time to take a technological hiatus, but it has been frustrating to be cut off from friends and family...and has been made worse by the fact that this month we have been in high gear planning for a delegation of Buddhists. This means that if you had been in Bogota in April, you would have seen Janice and her teammates wandering fairly aimlessly between internet cafes and telephone places setting up a a 2 and 1-2 week trip for this group. They are here now, I am again camped out at an internet cafe, and will write soon when I have more than 5 minutes to spare about the many many things going on here. Big abrazos...

Progress(?) in 2005 Peace Community Massacre Investigation

2007-04-03T19:54:00.000-04:00

A journalist and photographer from the Chicago Tribune visited us right before the international encuentro in the peace community. They wanted to know whether peace community members hailed the tentative steps forward the Attorney General had taken in the investigation into the 2005 massacre as a sign that impunity is coming to an end. Here is what they found...

Click here to see the photo essay the did with teammate AJ!

Fighting impunity in Colombia
The massacre sparked international outrage and could jeopardize U.S. aid. Will security forces finally be brought to justice?

By Gary Marx
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published April 1, 2007

LA UNION, Colombia -- Two years ago, 17-year-old Bellanira Areiza and seven other peasants were hacked to death with machetes in the lush hills outside this picturesque hamlet in northwest Colombia.

Community leaders say five residents saw men in Colombian army uniforms take away the victims, and nine others later heard soldiers bragging about the killings. But, until now, the Colombian government's investigation into the massacre went nowhere.

Atty. Gen. Mario Iguaran announced in late February that 69 members of the army's 17th Brigade were being called in for questioning about the killings, which continue to spark international outrage and could jeopardize U.S. aid to Colombia.

Some observers hailed the announcement as a tentative step toward ending the near impunity enjoyed by Colombian security forces that have committed murders and other crimes during this nation's decades-long civil conflict

"We've always kept hope that one day justice will be served for all the blows that we've had to endure," said Renato Areiza, 28, Bellanira's brother and a community leader in La Union. "But we are afraid that this will end in impunity, as always."

The investigation is complicated by the fact that witnesses are in hiding and refuse to cooperate. At least four residents who provided information to investigators about other atrocities have been killed, Areiza said.

Iguaran acknowledged the community's distrust but vowed to press ahead. "I can't say what this means for the country, but at least for the attorney general's office it's a sign that we are trying to demonstrate that we have clarity and determination in the fight against impunity," he said in a recent interview.

The investigation comes as Colombian President Alvaro Uribe suffers his worst political crisis since taking office in 2002.

To read the entire article, click here

10-year Anniversary Celebration

2007-03-30T11:11:00.000-04:00

In the short time I have spent in the community, I have become accustomed to seeing members of the community on an everyday basis. I talk with them about their cacao harvest, when their next trip down to San Josesito will be, their health and how their children are. Sometimes people tell me their stories of what they have been through during the war, giving me one person´s perspective through which to see the community´s history of nonviolent resistance. Our awareness of this history in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds has brought me, to some extent, to Colombia to do this work.

During the international celebration of the 10th anniversary of the peace community, however, this history lived in a way which I have not seen before. The community came together and invited the participants to join them in remembering ten years full of both triumph and almost unimaginable loss and violence. They held a silent march through downtown Apartado, an eight mile walk from the community. On this march, each community member and some internationals carried small coffins with the name of one of the 178 community members that has been killed in the last ten years. They left these coffins at the foot of the Attorney General´s office in silent protest of the fact that every one of these murders has remained unpunished. The night before, they held a mass and candlelight vigil over these same coffins. On the return from the march, the 50 or so internationals and the other Colombians, together with the community members, mounted crosses along the road from San Jose to Apartado to mark places where community members had been killed.

Along with memorializing those that have died in this stuggle, the community celebrated what they have accomplaished and imagined what the future will hold. During the 5-day event, they talked about how they, together with 15 other communities who are committed to non-violent resistance to the armed conflict, will continue to build the “Universidad Campesina” which will focus on developing an educational model that liberates the children of these communities and sharing best practices around agricultural production, the possibilities of producing for the fair trade market, and marketing amongst other things. They had a workshop on better understanding the so-called “Justice and Peace” Law, which in fact guarantees that the vast majority of paramilitaries will never be punished for the human rights atrocities they have committed, and talked about the implications of this. And then the children danced in celebration of their culture, others played the anthem of the community, and we all ate the rich, wonderful food made in the community from crops they themselves had raised. And throughout, the community members talked, to the representatives from Colombian indigenous communities, to the Belgian government officials, to the international accompaniers, and to the other rural communities, about how to build on what they had already accomplished.

The team felt that we were privileged to be accompanying this event, and also to be part of the process of thinking through how we will continue to support the project of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado in the future.

Community Members in front of a school in San Jose de Apartado, the community which they had to leave in 2005 when a police post was established here. The
sheet they are holding says:
"The principles: The Community Freely commits to:
1) Participating in Community Work
2) Saying no to injustice and impunity
3) Not participating in the war directly or indirectly, nor carrying any weapons
4) Not giving any information to any armed actor

Anniversary of Peace Community

2007-03-18T14:57:00.000-04:00

A week after Bush's visit, and things have settled down. I am off to the Peace Community to accompany their ten-year anniversary. A new teammate, Mayra Moreno, has arrived, and after exciting meetings in Medellin this week and in Bogota, where we met with youth organized to be consciencious objectors, we are happy to be in Apartadó.

Bush comes to Bogotá

2007-03-12T00:29:00.000-04:00

Bush came to Colombia today for six hours to meet with embattled Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. In the midst of scandal over many Uribe political allies' involvement with paramilitary groups, who are accused of horrendous human rights violations, Bush met with Uribe to discuss the Free Trade Agreement pending in Congress and the "progress" that has been made under Plan Colombia.

Bogotanos, in return, took to the street. From Wednesday through today protests took place throughout the city against Bush's visit. This week has demonstrated to me the broad-based opposition to Bush's policies in Colombia, and also brought into sharp relief how a small number of violent (anti-Bush) protestors can undermine and endanger collective peaceful resistance. What perhaps you have already seen on the news are the images of protestors kicking, throwing things, etc. What I saw today were about 2,000 non-violent protestors, including kids with their mothers, a man who is about to lose his job at a telephone company because of neoliberalism, a 24-year old who talked to me about the natural and cultural richness of her country, and a high school teacher who objects to Uribe, Colombia's president, being put into power by paramilitary forces and the US, not by the pueblo - the people. There were also a 100 or so violent youth throwing rocks amidst the rest of the non-violent protestors. As a result, police dispersed the protest after less than two hours with tear gas, and then later water hoses. Here are some pictures of what I saw:

Bush out of all of the galaxy

Do you know why he came? He came to "mess with" you

street theatre, enacting the misery that Bush causes in Colombia, following the tear gassing and dispersion of the march

Demon Bush, Assassin & Terrorist: Out! Out! Out! of our Colombia! We want to be free!

Bush out of Colombia and out of Latin America

Anti-Bush protests day 2

2007-03-08T18:37:00.000-05:00

"Out of Colombia...Bush is a terrorist to liberty."

The protests picked up today, with at least 5 tanks, 300 police and 200 "hooded" students throwing rocks and small explosives at the police around the corner from my apartment. I live next to the National University, the largest and best university in the country and, I was informed, Latin America. After seeing a friend to the airport, I took the bus back only to find the road to my house closed and teargas spilling down the street. I know now why they call it tear gas...as I teared for a while at the fumes. There was no confusion today at what was being protested, as students chanted "resistence! down with imperialism," and American flags were burned in downtown Bogotá. Things reportedly will only continue to pick up until Sunday, when Bush arrives.

It is intense, and I would say inspiring to see so many students out protesting (though the rock-throwing is, well, the opposite of inspiring). The vast majority of students attending the rally were peaceful, and unlike some protests I've been to in the US, when I "interviewed" protest onlookers for this blog, all students at the National University, they all knew why they were there, and wanted to let me know: some excerpts:

- We are here protesting the TLC (the pending Free Trade Agreement with Colombia) becuase it will destroy our economy, use up our natural resources, and eliminate indigenous communities.

- We know that Plan Colombia is really a counter-insurgency plan more than having anything to do with helping our country out socially. The money goes to help the armed forces, who 1 year ago killed a student, Oscar Salas, in one of these demonstrations. We are indignant that Bush is coming to a place where he is just destroying society, which is what the US has always done here...

- Diana, 18, National University student studying law: We are against the policy of armed conquering that the US carries out in colombia, against the repression that is carried out here.

- Christian, 18, National University student studying law: This is also a protest against Uribe [Colombian president and close Bush ally], who is in the middle of selling this country, and worsening the existing inequality

Bush comes to Colombia

2007-03-07T19:57:00.000-05:00

Well, today was a nice and normal day in the office. I woke up early and finished a translation about how the Free Trade Agreement, or TLC by its Spanish acronym, would hurt the working standards and environment of Colombia. Then I finished some notes about the meetings we had been in last week, and then I went to lunch with a friend. On the way back from lunch, I noticed there were students lining my street, tanks in front of the entrance to the National University, which is the largest university in the country and also around the corner from my house, and that people all had their faces covered because they were running away from tear gas. Hmmm...not normal to me, I noted, but after speaking with several people, who looked amazingly unperturbed at what was happening, they assured me that this was nothing; that it was a relatively small, tranquilo protest.

See, the 50-or-so students, all wearing hoods to cover their faces from the tear gas but also to hide their identities, were mainly throwing rocks, not “papas,” or potatoes, homemade small bombs, and the riot police were using a high-powered hose and tear gas to control the student protesters, not live ammunition. There were no injuries reported on either side.

I then spent a surreal hour standing with the gathered students. Apart from sometimes lobbing more rocks and cement over the fence of the university so that the students inside the fence would have more ammo, they just looked on, occasionally running if the police came closer and threw tear gas our way, sometimes hooting to let the students know that the police were sneaking around the back of the tank to get nearer to them and throw tear gas grenades (not the technical term) at them. I asked a couple people what was going on, and the first answer I got was that tomorrow is International Women’s Day, and this was a...protest/celebration of that? Didn’t make sense to me either, so the next three people confirmed that this was in anticipation of President Bush’s Sunday visit.

This picture reads "The United States provides the money, Colombia provides the dead - No to Plan Colombia"

Bush will be in Colombia for about 6 hours this Sunday, and there are said to be at least 21,000 Colombian police preparing for his visit, which will entail army checkpoints and closing down some of the roads in Bogotá. There is a large protest planned in central Bogotá by the opposition political party. Colombians are particularly focused on opposing the Free Trade Agreement right now, as it will be voted on by Congress in the four months or so. Among other issues, like NAFTA and CAFTA (the Central American version), the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia would make small farmers unable to compete with US agrobusinesses, make medicine unaffordable to all but the very richest portion of society, and have the effect of futher concentrating wealth in the hands of the few. Here are some excerpts from our website which give some details of why it is so bad for

Farmers, indigenous people, Afro-Colombians...
*Agriculture is the third most important sector in terms of employment in Colombia, with 22.7% (almost double the figures for employment in the industrial sector, which generates 13.%), and provides 11.4% of GDP. Given that 12 years of NAFTA and the resulting flood of low-cost corn, wheat and beef imports from the U.S. that has been a major contributor to the displacement of 1.7 million small scale Mexican farmers, the potential negative impact on Colombian peasants, indigenous and Afro-Colombians is real. For example, significantly privileged under the agreement is Colombian palm oil -- the very same crop that is promoting violence and displacement among Afro-Colombian communities in the Chocó region. Since opening Colombia’s market to compete with the U.S. will actually lead to more human insecurity, U.S. trade policy in Colombia is inconsistent with the stated goals of the U.S. government’s drug war policy.

Human Rights... The picture below reads: Yankees out of Colombia, and out of the whole world! See, everyone hates the Yankees

* The U.S.-Colombia FTA lacks meaningful provisions to strengthen human rights protections. With regard to labor rights, the FTA only requires countries to effectively enforce their own labor laws, with no incentive to bring weak laws and enforcement up to the International Labor Organization (ILO) core labor standards. The enforcement and penalty mechanisms in the labor chapter of the U.S.-Colombia FTA are so weak that they provide no credible influence over the multinational corporations or Colombian government. Meanwhile, Colombia continues to be the most violent place in the world for trade unionists. According to the National Labor School (ENS) in Colombia, 70 trade unionists were murdered in 2005. Wages and working conditions in all countries will be hurt if trade pacts continue to encourage corporations to race to the bottom in workers’ rights.

People who think differently than Bush/Uribe...* In this picture, to the right of a crossed out Uncle Sam, President Bush is drawn with Colombian President Alvaro Urbe's head on his knee.

The conflict in Colombia is deeply rooted in economic, social, and political inequalities. Wealth and land remain concentrated in the hands of a few and Colombia’s political system neglects the needs of the majority of the population...Political and economic marginalization has already stoked widespread protests and political insecurity. However, dissent has been met with harsh repression. For example, on May 15, 2006 a national summit was called by Afro-Colombians and Indigenous leaders across fourteen provinces in Colombia to protest against the FTA and militarization. Tens of thousands of people who came out were met with severe repression, resulting in many deaths.

A Colombian eating a sandwich, taking in the protest and awaiting some movement by the riot police.

Conflict, Coincidence & Inspiration

2007-02-26T11:27:00.000-05:00

Greetings all, and sorry for the delay in posting! As you will see, things have been hectic, and I am grateful to be back in Bogotá, where, with the visit of our Co-director Susana Pimiento, I am feeling a new sense of purpose and direction for the work here, and am excited to kick off new work with the amazing groups we accompany. I am sad that co-worker Gilbero departs today, but excited to welcome new volunteers Camila and Mayra!

Living in the midst of conflict
Well, here it is: the scary blog from Colombia detailing how I came close to conflict, survived, and accompanied those who were in danger. I ask disculpes, or pardons, if this seems sensationalist...but the truth is, this is all totally new to me.

So, it was a scary final week or so in the community for me. Things had been relatively quiet for the last five months or so, meaning very few armed actors (including military, guerrillas, and paramilitaries) had been seen in the “zone,” or the area near La Unión, one of the villages of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. That started to change during the military retén, or checkpoint, that I talked about a couple blogs ago.

A couple days after this retén, AJ & I were enjoying a lovely day in town (Apartadó), eating ice cream, interneting, and having a long night talking with PBI volunteers who also accompany the leaders of the displacement community of San Josesito, which displaced in 2005 after the government set up a police post in their “home town,” about twenty minutes up the road from where they are now. In our lazy, hazy enjoyment of some dairy and air conditioning, our phone rang and the Co-director of our program, John Lindsay-Poland was calling to tell us there had been combat in the zone. We have strict security protocols which dictate that we don’t communicate sensitive information over the phone, since we are pretty sure they're tapped, especially when it could give away to one armed actor or another where the other is (thus, perhaps, provoking more conflict), so John couldn’t tell us where the combat was, who it involved, or how serious it was. AJ & I, of course, worried that it could be in La Unión. That our friends had been hurt. That if we had been there, instead of interneting and indulging, things maybe would have been different...

This guilty line of thinking was, in retrospect, clearly irrational: we had to go to town to get supplies, we had to pay the electric bills (and, while we were down there, the electric bills of most people in the community, who would have lost a day of work on the 6-hour journey to pay a $2 bill), and we needed to make the two-hour journey down the mountain to meet with PBI. But there really was guilt – we are supposed to be accompanying the community, and here we were, getting a call from John in San Francisco (who had gotten a call from Colombia) telling us to get back home to be with those that we are there to accompany in the time of conflict.

Since John’s only instructions were to get back home, we did the Colombian version of
high-tailing it back to the community...which meant getting to the chiva, or jeep stand, right after an earlier one had already left, and waiting for over two hours for the next one to fill up with the remaining 8 people. After a top-of-the-chiva ride (we got to sit on really comfy rice bags) we arrived in San Josesito at dusk, and learned that the combat had been about an hour’s walk outside the peace community, in what is called a humanitarian zone. In the humanitarian zones, small groups of residents are trying to band together and designate a safe, home base that civilians can go to in case of conflict, that has a phone, and whose neutrality armed actors would respect. In this case, the designated safe space was a school. As it happens, the combat was right near the school – but thankfully there were no students there at the time, and no civilian was injured. Obviously, the idea that this should be a safe space still has a ways to go.

That evening, we decided against walking up the mountain to La Unión when there had been combat nearby, for obvious reasons. Walking up the next morning, people seemed tranquilo. They have heard combat before, it has been closer, and it was time to work. Several days later, AJ & I tried to get some work done on the Women’s Report, and were chugging along until AJ’s well-trained ears heard a helicopter. At first, I couldn’t hear or see anything. But it came closer...and closer, until it seemed like it was hovering right over our house. It was close enough that I ducked inside, in case it started dropping...things (not sure that being inside would help...but that’s what seemed right at the time). Though we had binoculars, it was close enough that we didn’t need them. The helicopter then circled the community, and then departed south, in the direction on San Josesito and towards where the combat had been the day before.

(This next paragraph is stolen from AJ’s blog, www.limpingtowardsjustice.blogspot.com because it’s really good)
“This was most likely a US Black Hawk Helicopter. Of course, my only reference points for this are the previews for the movie “Black Hawk Down” and the fact that I know that the US sells these helicopters as part of the Plan Colombia aid package. I’ve heard that in past years more time has been spent in Congress arguing over the number of Black Hawks to be purchased as opposed to real debate on the validity of fueling this war. US involvement on the ground here is actually heavily infused with private contractors to do things like pilot said Black Hawk helicopters. According to the Center for International Policy’s Colombia Program: hundreds of civilians working for private US corporations work with Colombia’s security forces as spray-plane and helicopter pilots, search-and-rescue personnel, mechanics, logistics personnel, radar-site operators and instructors among other duties. Due to concerns over their proximity to the armed conflict, a provision in the 2000 “Plan Colombia” package restricted the number of US Contract Personnel on the ground to 300 while at the same time setting a cap of 500 military personnel. So, there is a good chance that the helicopter hovering over my head was piloted by a fellow US citizen – I might have shouted up to ask his opinion on bubble teams for the NCAA basketball tourney. But I didn’t.”

This same day, it was reported that 40 army soldiers were seen on the path right outside the community. That night, our neighbor was very sick, and eight men from the community put her in a hammock, which they attached to two sticks for a makeshift stretcher , and they decided to carry her the two hours down the mountain to San Josesito, where an ambulance met them, and then hike back up. We called the Army to let them know that there were civilians coming up and down the path where their soldiers were camping, and they said that no harm should come to them as long as they had flashlights. Sigh, not so comforting, but the men made it there and back fine, and the army departed from their path-side position the next morning. All of this army activity made us more cognizant of not leaving the community alone, and so I ended up staying in the community 4 days longer than scheduled so that we could do the health promoter accompaniment (see below) and not leave the community without a volunteer.
I have mixed reactions to these experiences: a gratefulness that we were there, not being as scared as I imagined I might be, having a feeling that despite the proximity of “danger” we were never really threatened, and an increased respect for and understanding of the daily threats that community members live with.

High Profile Coincidences
All of a sudden, San José de Apartadó, the community we work most closely with in Colombia, is front-page news. First, we received the wonderful news of the AFSC-sponsored Nobel Peace Prize nomination. (For more info: http://afsc.org/news/2007/2007-Nobel-Peace-Nomination.htm)

A week later, Brígida Gonzalez, a respected community leader who had stopped by the house in La Unión last week when I was in community, was accused in the most widely read and respected news magazine in the country of being a guerrilla collaborator. This article inevitably puts Brígida and the community at risk, and was untrue in its most important details. Brígida was not interviewed for the story, and the only source cited was two computers confiscated from the guerrilla by the army.You may remember Brígida as the lovely older woman from Hasta la Ultima Piedra who worked with community children to represent the conflict and process their grief through art. This picture of Brígida with her daughter was published in the magazine, where it was said this daughter was killed since she was a member of the FARC. In fact, this daughter was killed in her sleep, and was not a member of the FARC.

Later that same day, it was announced that the fiscalía, the rough equivalent of the Attorney General’s office, had accused 69 soldiers and military officers of the 2005 machete massacre of 8 peace community members, including community leader Luis Eduardo Guerra and 3 children. As the next article in this same magazine said, this is one of the most serious human rights accusations against the military in its history.

So why the first article? Why the coincidental timing and the deligitimizing perspective of the first article? Hmmmm....so this is what freedom of the press can look like in Colombia...

Health Promoters
In the midst of all this activity, I don’t want to lose sight of an amazingly inspiring experience I had last week, and which I will write more about in the future. Curt “Alan” Wands is an incredibly dedicated, long-time US activist, who would object to me beginning this section talking about him. He is a deeply humble man who has been on the ground doing solidarity work in Latin America for at least the past 25 years. He was in Nicaragua in the 1980s, and his best friend was folk hero Ben Linder, an American engineer who was killed by US-funded contra forces while trying to help the Sandinistas build sustainable water systems.

After working in different movements and in different capacities, he realized one desperate need in conflict areas especially was basic health care. In many conflict zones, any doctors have left, are too costly, or are targets. Curt saw this, and decided to get himself trained in basic medical knowledge, and then teach community members the specialized set of skills needed in Latin American conflict zones: basic wound care, malaria and pneumonia diagnosis, the treatment of parasites and worms. He also scared up funding from wherever he could, enabling him to equip the newly trained health promoters with desperately needed basic medicines. The people he trains have an average of a sixth-grade education. He only accepts people who are living in under-served isolated communities who plan to stay there, and he won’t treat or work with anyone who is armed. In this way, he has enabled thousands of people access to life-saving medical treatment in otherwise inaccessible communities, and given community members access to education and training otherwise completely out of reach. This model, of training community members to address their communities’ needs, stands in stark contrast to the work of well-funded and visible organizations like Doctors with Borders, whose work I had always idealized. Curt pointed out that coming into a community for a couple months and doing mass vaccinations, surgeries and treatments is not only unsustainable (Doctors without Border doesn’t guarantee that they will return to a region), but it in fact leaves a hole: after seeing the modern medical equipment brought in by highly professional foreigners, it is hard for people to believe that their neighbor’s modest advice to, for example, boil their very dirty water in order to help them get over chronic intestinal issues, is worth listening to.
**Curt is always accepting donations, and I, honestly, can’t think of many more worthy causes. Please go to my website, www.pedalingforpeace.org and donate with the note “Health Promoters” if you are interested.**

AJ and I accompanied two women from San José de Apartadó to this training. It was both of their first time on a boat, or visiting the nearby city of Turbo. After a two-hour motorboat ride up Rio Sucio (or Dirty River) we were met at the docks by Curt. The river lived up to its name, as Curt pointed out that the tiny houses we had seen lining the river were, in fact, latrines. There were shorter houses, which were actually pigpens with holes in the floor so that the filth fell into the river. we saw people washing clothes, their hair, and getting drinking water from right next to these little houses.

The women are now eligible for a four-year course, in which they will make the long trip to Rio Sucio once every two months or so for a week of intensive classes. They will take home aspirin and anti-diarrheal medication from their first week of training, and will need to start treating patients immediately.

Embarque: The process of preparing bananas for export
Last but not least, I had the opportunity to accompany a group of women in the community as they cut, carried, washed, sorted, bagged, boxed and transported baby bananas for export to the US. Seeing this process changed the way I think about food, and gave me an appreciation for the monotony and difficulty of working land. I was with a woman who was my mother’s age (Yeah mom! My amazing mother just entered into the sixth decade of life!) and was able to lift 4-5 banana branches, each weighing at least 15-20 pounds, at a time. After she asked how many children my mother had (she has nine, I think), she asked, of course, how fat she was.

A Try at Justice? Colombian Military finally charged with massacre of Nobel Prize-nominated Peace Community Members

2007-02-24T01:20:00.000-05:00

So much to say...it is hard to know where to start. The news that I have translated below, however, takes precedence over all interesting Janice life vignettes for now. To me, it is the most step forward that has been taken in regard to the Peace Community in years, and is a reason to have hope that things can get better in Colombia. Although it is completely uncertain where this investigation and judicial process will lead, that the investigation of the Peace Community massacre has gone forward at all, and on top of that that the Fiscalia (Prosecutor's office) has put itself on the line by accusing the Army of this massacre is hugely significant. I'll keep talking about this case in the future, but wanted to give you the facts first. The stones pictured have the names of some of the 180 peace community members that have been killed since its inception ten years ago.

This article draws heavily from, and at times directly translates, an article from the well-known Colombian weekly news magazine, Semana. http://www.semana.com/wf_InfoArticulo.aspx?idArt=101167

A Try at Justice? Colombian Military finally charged with massacre of Nobel Prize-nominated Peace Community Members

It was announced today that 69 members of the Colombian Army are being formally accused of the February 2005 massacre of eight Peace Community of San José de Apartadó residents, including the community leader Luis Eduardo Guerra, 4 other adults and 3 children ages 1, 6 and 11. Among those being accused by the Fiscalía (roughly the equivalent of the US Attorney General) are two military high-ranking officials, nine sub-officials and 58 professional soldiers. The eight community members were killed with machetes, some were dismembered, and placed in two communal, unmarked graves.

This is one of the most serious accusations against the Army in its history, according to the well-known weekly news magazine, Semana. The accusations are made even more serious by the fact that the Colombian government had been ordered to provide special protection to the Peace Community by the Inter-American Court on Human Rights.

The government, from the Army to President Uribe, has denied responsibility for the massacre for the past two years. Despite being in the first stage of prosecution, the action taken by the Fiscal today clearly indicates that the version of events the Army gave at the time of the massacre, in which they accused the leftist FARC guerrillas of being responsible, is false.

President Alvaro Uribe appeared on television shortly after the massacre and rather than condemning the massacre, he focused on his assertion that the Peace Community was infiltrated by the guerrillas saying “In this community there are good people, but some of its leaders, supporters, and defenders are seriously accused of assisting the FARC and of using the [Peace] Community to protect this terrorist organization.” Now, with the measure taken by the Fiscalía, it appears that the reality is, in fact, quite different.

The Fiscalía clarified today that there are not 56 soldiers, as was initially reported, but 69 soldiers that are accused of the crimes of “homicide against a protected person” and “terrorism” for the massacre in San José de Apartadó. This news comes just one day after the two-year anniversary of this massacre, and a month before the ten-year anniversary of the peace community.

Soldiers are charged with the crimes of homicide against a protected person and terrorism, along with the February 21st, 2005 murders of Luis Eduardo Guerra, a representative of the peace community; his partner, Deyanyra Areiza Guzmán; 10-year-old Deiner Andrés Guerra; Alfonso Tuberquia Graciano; Sandra Muñoz Pozo, y her children one-year-old Santiago, six-year-old Natalia.

The Peace Community was nominated for the Nobel Prize earlier this month by the American Friends Service Committee, and has been recognized internationally for its efforts to forge a peaceful path amidst a war-torn region.

Cacophonous accompaniment

2007-02-11T11:52:00.000-05:00

(see end of post for definitions of some italicized terms)
I have never really had an excuse to use the phrase “Cacophony of sound” before. The suburbs where I grew up were sometimes eerily silent. In Littleton there were gentle, distinguishable bird sounds and the occasional fire station horn, but generally it was pretty quiet. When I lived in Philadelphia there were definitely explosions of sounds and fights, but not an ongoing “cacophony.” It is now 5:30am, and there is vallenato (think polka music in Spanish) music blaring from the military radio station in my window, it sounds like there is a rooster on my head, and the cows are fighting? mating? outside my window. A couple minutes ago, donkeys were sad apparently, and so they were braying, which is what AJ tells me it is called when they make this amazingly loud, desperate crying sound. And this all exists over merry chirping sounds of little birds. Curiously, the music is punctuated by station reminders with messages from the army, professing their respect for human rights and duty to protect Colombia.

Amañada? (Settled in, comfortable and happy yet?)
Maybe after some time out here I would get over my joy of hearing and seeing animals everywhere all the time. Maybe I would stop loving that community members stop by unannounced and uninvited starting at about 7 am, to talk a bit about: crops, how we are feeling, whether we are settled in (amañadas), and how much better the climate is in La Unión than in San Josesito (which exists two hours down the hill and is hotter) or in Bogotá (which is way too cold). Maybe I would tire of our diet of quinua in peanut butter sauce with fresh vegetables and lots of maracuyá. And maybe I would even start to tire of having to walk two hours and then wait for the chiva for an hour to get groceries. But I’m not sure.

It is a toss-up of whether I would tire even more of or come to love the local custom of greeting you with an assessment of your weight. Here is the approximate transcript of my introduction to an elderly man, who we’ll call Mr. Gallo, in the community:
AJ: Do you recognize Janice? She was here in August, and is here while Mireille is on vacation.
Elderly Mr. Gallo: Ah, very fat.
Janice: So nice to meet you. And what is your name?
Elderly Mr. Gallo: Very beautiful...and very fat.
Janice: Hmmmm.
(Silence)
AJ: OK, Don Gallo. May you stay healthy. See you soon!

When AJ & Mireille were hanging out with Mrs. Gallo the other week and explaining they didn’t eat meet, she alternately, somewhat lovingly rubbed each of their tummies, ruminating out loud on how amazing it was that two people could be so fat without eating any meat. When I met her, I assured her I did eat some meat, and she nodded knowingly.

Accompaniment
About a week ago I had my first proper accompaniment in San José. The consejo, or governing counsel, asked us to accompany the community and its leaders. Where would we go to on this important first official trip? To the beach, of course, for a day of rest and relaxation. We left the community at 5:30 in the morning, and piled into the bus the consejo had rented with about 40 community members. The bus was a converted American school bus, with the important difference that the distance between the seats, now made of wood, had been halved, the logic being that Colombians are shorter than Americans, or that if they have knees, they don’t really need them. We rolled into a not-so-promising sandy parking lot, and walked the 5 minutes or so up the path, where a surprisingly beautiful beach emerged. As AJ and I scurried off to the shade to hide our pale skin, the community members hung out on the beach and played in the waves. AJ & I lounged in hammocks, and I enjoyed some amazing fried shrimp.

It was easy to forget we were accompanying a threatened community, and on the way home AJ & I reminisced about the Red Sox 2004 World Series victory (she, of course, is a fan too) and relished this beach day with the mostly younger members of the community. And then, we were stopped by a group of soldiers who seemed to come from nowhere, and who seemed to be waiting for the bus. All of the community members were told to get off the bus, and all had to show what was in their bags, the men were patted down, and everyone had their identifications checked, and some rechecked. The soldiers recognized AJ and greeted her by name, since she had ridden up on the chiva with them the week before, and they had asked for Mireille’s number. It was a surreal experience: one soldier was fairly aggressivley and suspiciously questioning community members about their identity and whether they knew a certain woman, who had repeated her identification number incorrectly when asked, while at the same time other soldiers, not any older than my former students, were smiling and chatting us up. For me, it was an intense experience: I was reeling a bit, since everything was happening so quickly, and all I could think about was how glad I was that we were there with community, since I think it diffused the situation and at the same time how humiliating it is, to some extent, that in order to feel safe with their own government officials, the community members have to have internationals with them. We were the only ones whose identification and bags weren’t checked.

On that same road a few days later, a San Josesito resident and community member was detained. Her name is Amanda, and she is a single mother of four, and she works in the fields and often cooks for us and other community members. She was charged with four criminal counts: homicide, rebellion, kidnapping, and being affiliated with the guerrilla. Her name and the charges against her were broadcast all over the municipality. After a visit from the Defensor del Pueblo at the police station, roughly the equivalent of a human rights ombudsman, she was released the next morning, and apparently, all charges were dropped.

Premio Nobel de La Paz: “Vale la pena luchar”
We received word this week that the community has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the American Friends Service Committee. This is an important recognition for the community, as anything that raises their profile makes them (and me) safer, and another reminder of how blessed I am to be living and working here. I was talking with a community member this week about life here, why he stays, and what he hopes for the future. He was born and raised in LU, and talked about the blissful times before the violence began, and then talked about all the work that needs to be done. He talked about how they want to have a high school which draws upon the knowledge that people here have about campo, or country, life, and which would teach young people skills they need to stay here – rather than teaching them things that will only be relevant if they leave. He talked about wanting to explore fair trade and organic certification for their crops and gaining access to new markets. And he talked about how when he was in Europe talking about the peace community, he had thought how boring it would be, because, well, everything is already done. The schools are built, the processes already developed to bring crops to market, and the society isn’t changing anymore. He said “vale la pena luchar” – it’s worth it to struggle, because of the possibility of what could exist here.

Random Definitions, as written by Janice, to be updated as she sees fit:
SJA=Peace Community of San José de Apartadó: A community of campesinos (see below) in northwestern Colombia near the Panamanian border that consists of several smaller veredas and whose residents have committed themselves to non-involvement with Colombia’s armed conflict. It has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007.

AJ: My FOR teammate & amazing woman, whose blog is www.limpingtowardsjustice.blogspot.com

Vereda: A small village or settlement

Vallenato: The polka-inspired Colombian folk music which is on permanent rotation here in La Unión. The popular vallenato dance is performed by hugging your partner very tight and walking together by taking small, rapid steps forward and back.

LU=La Unión: The vereda of San José de Apartadó where FOR has its house. There are about 125 people living in this vereda, which is a two hour hike uphill from San Josesito.

La Holandita, San Josesita: The largest vereda in SJA, it was formed in 2002 after the police set up a post in the town center of San José. At that time, the entire community “displaced,” or moved, about 20 minutes down the road and built a new community from scratch. It is at least twice the size of La Unión.

Campesino: Derived from the word campo, which means countryside or rural, a campesino is a rural farmer.

Bestia: Literally “beast,” it refers to the horses and mules that bring people and goods up and down the mountain paths in and around SJA, and which Janice is now (in)famous for in SJA because she fell off one during the August delegation when she decided to take the high road and mule decided to take the low road.

La Posa: The swimming hole formed by the river that passes close by LU

chiva: The jeep that meets us in San Josesito and takes us the 45 minutes or so to the “city” of Apartadó.

paradise. take 2.

2007-02-02T13:54:00.000-05:00

It feels funny to be finishing the blog entry below about my vacation, which although only over 2 days ago, is literally a world away. I write to you from La Union, the community which is the focus of FOR’s work in Colombia, the community featured in the documentary “Hasta la Ultima Piedra.” AJ, my teammate picked me up yesterday from Apartadó, the small city located a two-hour mule ride and 45-minute chiva, or jeep, ride down the picturesque mountains in which I now sit. She left at 5 am, in the dark, in order to meet me at the plane on time, which was of course then delayed for two hours. After getting a bite to eat (lots of cheese! since without a refrigerator in the community, I won’t have access to this staple food) and uploading the photos below in the small city of Apartadó (which would take hours if I were in the community), we headed to the bus terminal to get the chiva. The chiva is literally an open-top, American-made Jeep Wrangler into which a minimum of 10 and maximum of 21 people can be squeezed for the ride 45-minute from Apartadó to San José. Chivas don’t leave at any regular time, but rather leave when full. We bought vegetables at another open-air market, got some amazing juice, which is served in a 4-cup measuring cup, and waited for the next chiva to fill up with about 17 people for about an hour. We got to La Holandita, the community farther down the mountain from La Unión, at around 4:30, and readied ourselves for the two-hour hike up to La Unión, most of which I would do on a mule.

Many of you reading this have seen part of the documentary mentioned above, which I showed at least 13 times before and during my bike ride to Washington, DC, and which I subsequently know much of by heart. It recounts the story of the peace community of San José de Apartadó, and features the land and people who I am now staying with. This documentary has supplemented my memory of my trip here in August, so the first things that struck me were of the slight changes in the community from the documentary: one of the leaders of the community that is featured in the documentary had cut his hair, one of the children was about 6 inches taller, and the stream where the stones were being taken from to commemorate the community members killed in the conflict was a little lower. We did about half of the two-hour hike/mule-ride up to La Unión in the dark, and at dusk, I started hearing the sound of the sapos, or frogs, and crickets that comprised the soundtrack of the documentary.

The hike was beautiful, and we arrived in La Unión with an almost-full moon to the sounds of faint radios and frequent barks, chirps and clucks. After unpacking the goodies I had brought to La Union (movies, nutella, tahini, a mosquito-netted hammock!) AJ took good care of me, as the day had tired me out, and we lay out in our hammocks and enjoyed watching “bend it like beckham” on our computer. Overall, I am feeling soooo excited to be here! I have learned already today: that there are distinct calls to turn away the aggressively hungry (but not malnourished) pigs, dogs and chickens that roam the streets here; that a folk-cure for clotting wounds is to pour gasoline on them (though they then still need our non-expert skills and supplies to bandage them); and that amongst our other duties in the community, we are a homework help center for the community children after 6 pm. I am happy to have awoken to the sounds of chickens and an unhappy cow outside, and looking forward to the next couple of weeks.
Jelacy, a dear child who lives in LU and smiles a lot
Update: we haven’t had internet access since I got here (and now that it is up, it is veeeerrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyy slow, so I apologize in advance for not returning emails over the next two weeks), so that is why the date I wrote this doesn’t match up to when it was posted! Since yesterday, we went to the posa, or swimming hole, with the children of the community, and then sat with the kids and ate guama, a cocoa like fruit – you suck the sweet casings off the seeds, and then, of course, throw the seeds at each other. I am inexplicably sleeping a huge amount, but am feeling well, and ready to continue meeting community members. As you might be able to tell, things are quiet here as of now...and we pray they continue to be.

beach bliss, a change in...everything

2007-01-30T08:45:00.000-05:00

Isla Grande, of the Oslas del Rosario

After an amazing amazing week on the coast with wonderful friends, I am off to the community for a couple weeks (see my website, www.pedalingforpeace.org - and follow the links to "Info about San Jose de Apartado" to learn more...OR, even better. follow the link on the right side of this page to my teammate AJ's blog, who has been in the community since she arrived and gives a great overview of it). I am a little under the weather after lots of sun, flying and changes in altitude, but am eager - as I think I've said in my last three entries, to get out to the community and do many of the things that I came here to do. My current teammates think I'm a little loca, I think: they seem quite sick of the mosquitos, isolation, heat and daily routine. For better or for worse, those things are what I prepared myself for, and I am ready to start this next stage of my time here. I don't know how much internet access I will have, but will try to update this more fully later today and at least once during my time there. Please, keep me in your thoughts.

Here are pictures and a little bit of description from our trip...
Cartagena:
Cartagena is the most beautiful city I've ever seen. It is rightly famous for its balconies dripping with bouganvillea, the amazing purple flower pictured in this photo. It is also a city divided...there is literally a wall dividing the wealthy, picturesque "old city" from the new, bustling, skyscraper and slum-strewn part. Alas...we were on vacation, and did spend most of our time in the old city, but also got a chance to see how balconies and flowers gave way to poverty, filth and displaced communities once you stepped outside the walled city.

Santa Marta:
Mis amigas in Santa Marta, where the sea meets the mountains. Santa Marta is supposedly four, but actually 6 or 7, hours east of Cartagena along the coast. It has the highest sea to mountain rise in the world - which means there are breathtaking views of mountains crashing into the sea everywhere you look. It has about half a million people, but quickly breaks up into isolated beaches and fishing villages on its outskirts. We spent three days there, with a lovely guide shepharding us on and off lanchas, or small boats, showing us the area, with a hotel right on the beachfront (where we swam in the mornings). We also visited the beaches of Parque Tayrona, a breathtaking National Park which consists mainly of fairly desolate jungle, we've heard, but we were content to hang out on its beached sea outskirts, where we did some amazing snorkeling.

Bogota:
Us with Francisco, who is a native Bogotano, and who went to grad school with Gabi. He was our gracious tourguide, and showed us the paradasical national library pictured here, with Cartagena-like bouganvillea spilling over its sides. The library is surrounded by water, has gorgeous window views everywhere, and even has free internet. I plan on making this the FOR satellite office when I return to Bogotá.

The mayor's plea for peace: The current mayor, Garzón is from the Liberal party, and the current president, Alvaro Uribe, is from the Conservative party. Their offices sit across from the equivalent of a small National Mall from each other, and so the mayor likes to make huge political banners and hang them outside his office so that the president, and legislature and courts, for that mattter, know how he stands. This banner says:"Peace feeds us - do not kill it," a reference, perhaps, to stalled peace negotiations or the recent para-political scandal which has implicated many high-level government officials of being directly involved in promoting the violent paramilitary agenda.

A real blog from Janice.

2007-01-16T12:12:00.000-05:00

My mom wrote to me after my last post and let me know, gently but clearly, that re-posting others' accounts of an experience didn’t count as a real blog. doh. She has a point...but I have been feeling like my life here is rather unremarkable since the New Year. Which, I realize now, is actually quite remarkable. I am feeling settled in here: I know how to direct taxis to my house, and realize if they’re taking the long way. I know the best place in the city to buy wooden chairs, fresh peppers, and nutella. I have a favorite dance place, a favorite bike ride, and a favorite pizza place. And I have enough local phone numbers in my cell phone to have to tab through them.

So, of course, it is now time for me to go. The next couple months will be hugely different from the past two. Three of my bestest friends in the world arrive on Friday, and we are going to the coast (Cartagena and Santa Marta) for a week of vacation, and will spend a little time here in Bogotá as well. After that, I head to the Peace Community for two weeks. After that, Gilberto departs, and I will be joined by a new team member, Camila. We then will receive visits from the San Francisco staff, and then another new team member, Mayra, comes, and we will prepare to return to the community again.

There is much to say about each of these events, and I look forward to reflecting on them in my blog as they happen. I am particularly anxious about Gilberto leaving, as we have spent every working morning, noon and night together, essentially, since I arrived. This reminds me a bit if my first year teaching at Parker, when Lisa Palaia and I would joke we were married, but since Gilberto and I also live together, it escalates this metaphor! I am excited about Camila’s arrival, but am also feeling the weight of being the soon-to-be senior member of the Bogotá office. Thankfully, it looks like Gilberto will be around the corner working with Peace Brigades International, and that our old teammate Trish will also be in town, so in case of emergency, they have promised to help me out.

January is a strange month to be “working” in Colombia, since no Colombians are working. From the second week in December until...next week, basically everything is shut down. The banks, the government offices, the local restaurant, the laundry place with most of my clothes locked inside it, the yoga place...Colombians are serious about their vacations. I was periodically annoyed about this, until I stopped and remembered that this is one thing I appreciate deeply about this country and this culture: people make time for family, rest and breathing (even if it is contaminated air).

I have had wonderful experiences during the past couple weeks, but they have stopped feeling totally new and foreign. As a result, I don’t have pictures! I have stopped feeling like I want to document and apprehend every moment of this new life- and have started to feel a comfortable rhythm here.

Some interesting things have been/will be:
* After taking the transmilenio (the subway-like bus that has its own lane on the major roadways in Bogotá) all the way to its ends, my Bogotano friend Julio and I took another bus into the hills that hug Bogotá. After our self-guided tour of the city, we went downtown to buy a guitar pick for me (I am taking lessons!) and a cell phone gadget for him. As we exited a technology flea market and rounded onto a fairly nice plaza, he told me that previously, the plaza, and in fact the whole area, had been the most dangerous, drug-ridden, seedy part of the city. To deal with this, the mayor of Bogotá literally bulldozed this 5-square block area, and made a park – called “Park of the New Millenium.” I asked where all the residents and their related activity had gone after they had been bulldozed, and he told me that some had been shipped out to a suburban part of Bogotá, some had been arrested, and some had been relocated to “the L.” we walked half a block, and he showed me a street which was blocked off to traffic. Visible from outside were police guards at the ends of this stretch, and a permeating, muddy brown – the people and their clothes, their goods & worldly possessions lying haphazardly on the street, the street itself – which smelled like it looked. After standing outside the street and watching a few people dressed like us come and go without incident, we decided to walk down this two-block stretch, which at the end turns rights and goes for another block (hence, it’s called the “L”). What I saw on this street was the embodiment of human misery – people passed out everywhere, drug use happening in the open, kids laying beside their stoned parents, and unspeakable filth. Julio and I walked quickly through with our heads down, and though we were called after, didn’t feel threatened. At 11am on a sunny day with a local guide, this felt like an OK thing to do – and though it was awful, I am glad I saw another side of Bogotá, nestled only blocks away from shiny skyscrapers and peaceful church squares.

* I am learning a lot about how the US vets the Colombian military for human rights violations. The Leahy Law, sponsored in 2001 by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, prohibits U.S. military assistance to foreign military units that violate human rights with impunity. In theory, this law should give an incentive for the Colombian military to improve their human rights practices in order to continue receiving aid from the US. In practice, little is known about how this vetting happens, and it has been argued that units avoid being “de-certified” for human rights compliance through loopholes in the law: the US overrides a decertification recommendation if it deems it important enough; once a unit is cleared, new soldiers are transferred in that haven’t been screened; they use private contractors, or mercenaries, who don’t have to be screened; or the few identified human rights violators are transferred out of a unit, which then clears the whole unit without examining their human rights practices as a whole. Gilberto and I are meeting with the US Embassy to learn more about this this week, and I am fascinated to learn how this well-intentioned policy work here on the ground.

* This might seem less remarkable to some people, but I found a wonderful local farmers’ market only about twenty minutes from my house. I love open-air markets all over the world, but this one in particular is enchanting. I love interacting with the people who, oftentimes, produce the food. I love how vegetables stretch out before you, and that it is always noisy, and that I hear “a la orden” (at your service) hundreds of times, and that you have hundreds of options of where you want to buy tomatoes, so you can look for the hard ones that are red but not over-ripe, and that you can get anything in the market – and that everyone knows, in an acres-wide market, where you would find ceramic plates and a basil plant. I love that when you buy meat, you have to really confront what it means to be a carnivore, because the meat stand has a pig’s head for sale. And I love that I got a backpack and two big bags worth of vegetables for under twenty dollars. I feel like this is one of the only times I feel fairly good about being a consumer – I talk with the people selling the vegetables, I am outside, I am supporting small farmers, and I am buying healthy fresh food. I don’t have a picture of it, since I have stopped taking pictures! But will get one soon and update this.

OK – When I next update this I will be on the beach!

An Unlikely Prisoner

2007-01-11T12:21:00.000-05:00

A mural from inside the office of the Red Juvenil

This is an article that Gilberto wrote following our visit to Claudia Montoya, a young lawyer who is under house arrest supposedly for "subversive acts" in Medellín. She has been working with one of the groups we accompany, the Red Juvenil, or Youth Network, for many years. The Red Juvenil works on promoting resistance to the war and promoting non-violent alternatives to youth. As you will read, this was a surreal experience...

Letter from the Field
An Unlikely Prisoner
By Gilberto Villaseñor III

"What were your days like in prison?" Janice asked. It was a little odd talking about prison life in Claudia Montoya's living room with her mother and teenage cousins looking on, all of them busily making Christmas ornaments with beads and string. Claudia, a lawyer for the Red Juvenil (Youth Network) of Medellín who is currently under house arrest, had learned this skill in a prison workshop.

Claudia responded, "Each morning we were awakened at 6:30 am by the guards, at 7:30 am we ate a sensible breakfast. During the day they kept us busy with workshops, anything so we wouldn't think. And we were in bed by 8 pm."

Had you been walking through her quiet middle class neighborhood that day, that topic of conversation might have been the furthest thing from your mind. Claudia discussed the process of her arrest. "There were security forces everywhere up and down my block and people with guns on rooftops. I was afraid that I would be seen being arrested and taken out of my house but I was grateful that no one saw me. There was so much police, you couldn't see me anyway." There is an aspect of public shaming related to being a political prisoner, a way of making you look guilty even if you aren't.

As a lawyer for the Red Juvenil, she has been working with conscientious objectors and political prisoners since 2002. The Red works with youth in teaching about nonviolence and conscientious objection to participation in Colombia's civil war. We were all very excited to finally meet her because she had recently been released from prison where she had been held on charges of rebellion since October 18 – one month and twenty days in all. The Red Juvenil, an organization that FOR accompanies, considers her a political prisoner and someone who has been detained because of her political work on behalf of her organization in search of nonviolent solutions to Colombia's civil war.

"Indifference - Not in My Name"

Her house arrest continues pending the outcome of the judicial process against her - which may last as long as another six months. According to the testimonies of five former guerrillas, she had been seen dressed as a guerrilla and carrying a rifle. She was moved into house arrest when three of the testimonies were considered to be contradictory.

FOR's Colombia team been following her case and issued a letter of support for the Red's work in response to Claudia's detention and threats made against other Red members. We were prepared to visit her in prison on a recent trip to Medellin, when we were told about the good news of her release. On December 12, team members visited Claudia at her house in Medellín.

Claudia isn't the typical image of a prisoner. She is a little more than five feet tall and quite thin. Her face seemed to be chiseled in the way that happens to people when they've been eating less than usual. She is a soft-spoken and articulate person, traits not normally considered to be assets in prison, but in her case made her into an undesirable prisoner. Luckily, Claudia understood very well the legal process against her and knew when her rights were being violated. She protested when she was pressured to submit to being part of a line-up without her lawyer present. Other prisoners with less education or legal experience haven't been so lucky.

Her mother brought us cookies and coffee as we talked. The sun beamed through the skylight in the middle of the house and illuminated the comfortable living room where we were all gathered. Two loud, brusque politicos wandered in, speaking a mile a minute. What was discernable was that they, too, recognized the injustice of what Claudia had been through and wanted to show their support. Family pictures formed the backdrop of our meeting and Claudia smiled back at all of us, along with the rest of her family.

sandbags, rumbas, winter-making, and cat calls

2007-01-02T09:33:00.000-05:00

Sandbags:
One of the difficulties in improving the human rights situation in Colombia is that most people in the cities are immune to the war going on, to the terrible human rights abuses perpetrated by the military, paramilitary and guerrillas, and to the dire poverty that exists in so much of the countryside. Because of this indifference, generating the political pressure necessary to change these conditions is difficult. After being here a month, I get why this urban-rural disconnect exists. Bogotá is a city that reminds me more of a European capital than anything I have experienced in Central America, Africa or even Colombia’s neighbors Peru and Ecuador. I walk around in the evening alone and feel safe (yikes! It’s OK mom – all the internationals and Colombians do it too), I go to the posh swimming complex, then go out for crepes and waffles at a nice local restaurant. I had breakfast with one Bogotano who told me that “I don’t know anything about human rights abuses, but the city under Uribe (the current president) is much safer.” Indeed, in the whole country, the number of reported crimes has fallen dramatically since Uribe took power in 2002 – homicides are down 40%, acts of terror by 66%, and extortive kidnappings by 79%. This coexists, however, with ever-more internally-displaced persons, the continuance of “extra-judicial executions carried out directly by the security forces, as well as the still high number of ‘disappearances’” according to Amnesty International. Most of the violence, however, is now concentrated in the rural areas. This city is huge (8 million people – bigger than NYC) and it can feel like this newly-safe city is the whole world, which makes it difficult to imagine that a starkly different reality exists in other parts of the country.

I was on a 10-hour bus trip to Medellin when I was reminded that the Bogotá experience differs greatly from that of most of the country. The road from Bogotá to Medellín used to be dangerous because it was contested between the guerillas and the military. Uribe put a huge amount of money and attention into securing this road, and it is now considered fairly safe. In practice, this means that every mile or so along this journey you see military men, and that there are sandbag bunkers every 5 miles. I have never seen sandbag bunkers before, and something about the sight of them made the fact that there is a war going on hit home for me. The sandbag bunkers are like kid forts – they are about the size of a mid-sized bathroom, about 5 feet tall, and consist of small bags of sand put together like bricks, with space made for the windows. The young sometimes-scared, sometimes-swaggering soldiers that occasionally boarded the bus have to use those "forts" to protect themselves in case of an attack.

I do feel like I need this reminder that there is a war going on to work effectively in the Bogotá office. I know I am doing work that is centrally connected to protecting the lives of campesino peace activists by being here in Bogotá; ready to respond by meeting with officials and sending out international calls to action if anything should happen, and in the meantime supporting our teammates that are living out in the community and forming relationships with other peace groups and international activists. But sometimes it feels a little...dare I say...cushy. I am looking forward to going to the community for a couple weeks in February to be jarred in my perspective of Colombia.
It is illegal to take pictures of anything military-related in this country, including sandbags....so I have put up a picture of flowers instead.

Despedida: Goodbyes
People like to party, or rumbear, in Colombia. And not the have-people-over-for-2-hours-and-more-if-it’s-really-fun type of party. We are talking parties that start at 6 pm, and end at 7 in the morning. We had a New Year’s party that went like this, and it was wonderful and fun, and fantastically exhausting. But I digress. One of the many things I am coming to love about this country is the way people say good bye. And there are lots of goodbyes to say...especially hanging out with the international community. People are generally here for a term of about a year, so in a community of 30 people or so, there are constantly people leaving. And each departure calls for a grand “despedida,” or good bye party. At the despedida, everyone brings food and drink to share, people pass around guitars, and as it gets later people tend to salsa more and more, as dancing is the chosen Colombian strategy of staying awake. There is no rush to...do anything, since the party may last for 12 hours, and sometimes people nap on a couch at the party for a couple hours to refuel for later in the evening/morning. Coming to Colombia, or leaving, is a big deal in most people’s lives – and it feels right that time should stop, that people should spend longer than a working day recognizing and celebrating one’s time here.

“Está haciendo invierno:” It is making winter
Colombia doesn’t have seasons like we think of them. In fact, a season can happen in one morning. A typical day here starts our warm with brilliant sun streaming in through our windows. Around 2 or 3, it often rains. And this is the time when, if you ask a Bogotano how the weather is, they will say it is “making winter.” Making winter means, simply, that it is overcast and raining, and something about conceptualizing seasons as this transient tickles me.
According to my Lonely Planet, we are now in the dry season, which last until March, and it is also fairly dry from July to August. But global warming is throwing a wrench into any semblance of seasons that Colombia thought it had, and in the peace community it has been downpouring for the past couple of weeks, throwing off the planting season and reaking havoc on the crops.

“Mira mira. Pst. pst.” – Look. look. Psst. psst.
I have taken the phenomena of cat calls, where all women, but especially foreigners, are called to – literally as you would call a cat – while walking down the street as part of reality for me in Latin America. In most places I have traveled on this continent, many (maybe even most) men from between the ages of 15 and 90 will stop and stare as foreign women walk by, and often hiss at them, whistle, call to them or in some other way acknowledge their passing – if I’m feeling like rationalizing behavior, I can think of it as their way of saying hi and welcoming us to their country. It can be disconcerting, a little scary, alienating, dare I say occasionally flattering? In any case, it is weird, but I had come to expect that as part of my experience in Latin America. It doesn’t happen in Bogotá. I can hypothesize the reasons why – that it is a more sophisticated, European city; that the population is racially more diverse, and until I open my mouth, I can pass for a Bogotano – but the absence of this low-level harassment on a daily level is a welcome change in my daily life here from what I expected.

Amigos: Friends
I am making good friends here, which is of course is less interesting and novel to write about, but is the heart and soul of my experience here. Here is a picture of me with Gilberto, my house-mate, working partner, and the person I have spent most waking hours with. I am grateful for all that I am learning from him, not to mention his *incredible* cooking.

Here is a picture I took of Amazing Amanda in Suesca, a breath-taking little town on the outskirts of Bogotá, where I plan to go to have a pollution-free, healthy retreat from the city on a regular basis. Amanda and a group of friends, and maybe me in the future, rent this cute little cabin there, which has the best bathroom “door” I have ever seen.

feliz año nuevo!!

2006-12-30T08:45:00.000-05:00

So, I spent the first christmas of my life outside the comfort, plenty and deliciousness of my great granparents' house in Lowell, MA. Thanks to the wonders of technology, I talked to my whole family on skype, a free internet program which allows you to talk to people via computer. I spent christmas eve with a group of mainly international human righs folks, and spent the night at the house of two friends, who made me Swedish pancakes the next morning to eat in their backyard garden, and told me that santa had indeed found me! I got a lovely frog mug, and the knife that Carolina, one of my friends, had "robbed" from me during the Yankee swap of the night before.

We then set out on ciclovia on my new bike: Of all the things I imagined myself doing in Colombia, whizzing along major streets on beautifully-paved and clearly demarcated bike paths through the middle of the city wasn’t one of them. Colombia produces some of the best bicyclists in the world, and though thy train mostly in the Andes, there are also bike paths for them and the general population throughout the city, and on holidays and Sundays, the city shuts down most of the main roads so that bicyclists and pedestrians can enjoy the city without fearing the usually-intense traffic and clogged roadways. Over a million people generally come out. On Christmas Day, we ended up in the Central Park of Bogota, Parque Bolivar, where hundreds of families were enjoying the holiday, renting boats to row around the pond, eating corn on the cob, and pitching tents to have picnics in and protect them from the sun. I biked around the city for hours that day, getting to know people and nooks that I never would be able to without a bike.

The holidays are a strange time for us in Bogota, because things are pretty quiet in some ways. Most offices are closed through mid-January, people are not thinking about work, and no meetings can happen. However, it is historically one of the more dangerous times for the peace community we accompany. There is more drinking, more armed groups sad to be away from home and looking for a way to blow off steam, and therefore more danger. It also means that we can't be on vacation with our families now, and that those team members in the community, especially, are on high alert amidst the celebrations. I am actually really looking forward to going to the community - which will happen, if all goes as planned, towards the beginning of the new year. Being in Bogota is amazing in many ways, but it is difficult to the work to support the community without having been there for an extended period of time.

Feliz Navidad!

2006-12-23T08:20:00.000-05:00

I hope this finds everyone well. I am preparing to spend the first christmas ever not in my aunt's house in Lowell, MA - and it is hard, but will be OK I think. I am off to go hiking for the weekend with some friends after a long week of moving, getting over a tough cold, and doing some interesting interviews and work here. I am safe, blessed, and continuing to learn amazing amounts about Colombia, accompaniment work and myself. Lots more topics to come - but I need to run. Abrazos a todos!

knee-deep

2006-12-14T20:53:00.000-05:00

And this was after the easy, dry hike.

I have entered the Colombian experience I was more expecting, complete with knee-high mud, a bit of sickness, barely-functioning toilets, intense work, and looong bus rides. More to come, but suffice to say I am well, looking forward to being back in ¨home¨in Bogota after some time away, and finally feel like I merit some of the prayers and well-wishes that I know are being sent my way.

My past week in pictures:
Teammates Aj & Mireille eat a leisurely lunch during our team retreat in the mountains outside Medellin. The retreat provided time for the entire FOR Colombia team to be together, break bread..errr...arepas with nutella and peanut butter, and to blaze a new trail into this beautiful farmhouse. Without a road out or any contact with the outside world, we had three intense days of bonding, singing and even working.

Tipping point?
Medellin, Colombia's second-largest city, has really nice public transportatin. Really nice. After experiencing success with a metro system that makes Washington, DC's look dirty, they put in a "metrocable," or Swiss-like gondola system. The high-tech, quiet and immaculately clean cars climb into the hills on the outskirts of Medellin, where for about a dollar they enable the poorer residents who live in the nieghborhoods along its path to descend the hill in about ten minutes, rather than making the treacherous descent on a bus. There are signs placed along the metro and the metrocable urging residents to take the clean, considerate, efficient culture of this public transportation success back to the streets of Medellin. The picture below was taken right below where the metrocable passes over.

Madres Peace Prize
During FOR's August human rights delegation, I was perhaps most moved by the work of the "Madres de la Candelaria." Since 1999, a group of family members of those disappeared in the dirty war in Colombia have gathered outside the largest church in Medellin each Wednesday at noon to ask for their safe return, or as they chant "Los queremos vives, libres, y en paz" - We want them alive, free and in peace. We had the opportunity to visit them, hear their stories, and show our support for their work, and to congratulate them on winning the Colombian Peace Prize.

settling in.

2006-12-06T08:23:00.000-05:00

A rainy view of Bogotá from the top of Montserrat. It rains most days in the afternoon, but hasn't gone above 65 or below about 50.

It's only been 12 days, though it feels like longer. My feet are finding the ground, and I am happy, overall. some highlights...

High-altitude truce
On Sunday, I climbed up Montserrat...the one in Colombia. The mountain is only safe to climb on Sundays - there is a kind of informal agreement between the pick-pocketers and the city residents that if you walk up the almost 2,000 feet to the top of this pilgrimage site on Sundays, you will be left alone. The rest of the week, you most probably will come down the mountain shoeless, peso-less, and a little shaken up! The city of Bogotá resides at a comfortable 8,530 feet, and Montserrat rises up on the eastern side, visible, from almost anywhere at 10,367 feet. I was grateful for my bike “training,” as I could barely keep up with my more-seasoned Bogotá friends. Overall, I don’t notice the altitude too much, except that I am hungrier than I have ever been. The steady rain also helped keep me cool!

The path up to Montserrat, with a Christmas start that lights up at night.

The restaurant at the top of Montserrat. Pilgrims come not for the food...but to visit the "fallen Jesus," whose likeness resides in the nearby church, and who is said to respond to favors from those who make the journey up the mountain. Though you can get up the mountain by cable car or train, we decided that you're way more likely to get your prayers answered if you make the steep, hardcore climb.

Bureaucracy...
wow. This entire country seems to have been trained by the DMV architects in how to make what could be single-step processes not only multi-step, but multi-locational and many-hours-consuming.
1: Last week I said I was off to confront the bureaucracy...and I did so for 7 hours. Before coming to Bogotá, I had already mailed my passport away, done some paperwork, and gotten my visa. Now that I’m here, I need a cédula, or identification card. So, naturally, that took 7 HOURS at the equivalent of the FBI offices...where I had to wait on one line to tell them why I was there, another one to tell me what I needed to do, then I had to go outside the office and get my picture taken, go 15 minutes down the street to a specific bank to pay the fee, go to the hospital, where they took my blood, and I waited 45 minutes so they could record my blood type (B+), and then wait for another hour so I could submit this important documentation. And, I have to back in two weeks to pick up the cédula. The laminating machine was out of order.

2: There is a pool down the street where I have started swimming. It is Olympic-sized, in a modern, fieldhouse-like structure. And it is way nicer than any pool I have ever seen in the US. So...Gilberto and I went to go swimming there. Our miscalculation was that we got there at 2:20, and of course we are allowed in only on the hour. Granted, the pool was empty, but we would need to wait, since that was the system. Upon entering, I was told that I would be allowed to wear only my bathing suit (none of this sarong business), my bathing cap and goggles. Towels have been deemed not appropriate for the pool area. When you have your correct bathing uniform on, you go through a tunnel with automatically-activated showers, then must step through a shallow pool to wash your feet off. You may swim for only an hour, then you must shower before leaving. No exceptions. That said, I had a really nice one-hour swim.

La mujer de la luz
On Tuesday night, I went to help out fellow FOR volunteer Trish, whose place I will be taking on the team. She , along with her compañero, have rented a big performance space in Bogotá to use for just-beginning musicians for night performances, and eventually as a space for NGOs and community-based classes or programs to happen during the day. I helped paint the space, typically getting as much paint on my shoes, nose and elbows(?) as on the wall, and all was well until the lights went out. Luckily, always prepared-ish, I had my headlamp with me, and so enabled the painting to go on, as I followed the painters with my light. They renamed me La mujer de la luz: the woman of light.

Small world
I have met amazing people since I got here. Part of the key, of course, is that other internationals in Bogotá inherently have a huge amount in common. Perhaps unsurprising, then: I was hanging out with a Witness for Peace volunteer, who a friend from the States had put me in touch with, and she took me to meet her friend...who it turns out I met last year at a PBI (Peace Brigades International) information weekend. The whole experience feels a little like college, in that we’re all away from home, a little giddy about the work we are doing and all we have to learn, and we are all looking for community here. Yesterday I attended Fulbrighters’ presentations of their work...and ran into a Harvard grad student who knows my good friend Andrew Kinney, who I have known since middle school. Of course.

I am happily getting into the office work here in Bogotá, enjoying the challenges of starting a new job, and am looking forward to going to Medellín, the second-biggest city on the country, soon. I will attempt to publish this on Sundays or Mondays in the future. Besotes y Abrazotes!

Jan y sus amigas nuevas

¡Llegué a Colombia! Ice cream, cold showers, good people...and thanks.

2006-11-27T07:41:00.000-05:00

The view from my bed of the sun rising over the mountains that border Bogota.

Wow. After a crazy week of transporting my bike from Washington to Littleton (stripped pedals = bike-boxing Amtrak misery), packing up my house with the heroic efforts of my family, a couple wonderful send-off parties (Thank you FCU & Harveys! Thank you Gabi & Sandip!) and an amazing Thanksgiving dinner cooked by my sister...

...I am here. I am in Colombia. I arrived late Friday, and have spent a rather glorious weekend walking around the city, adjusting to the difference in altitude, and pinching myself. After the excitement and inspiration on the bike trip and the crazy hecticness of last week, I had somehow pushed out of my mind that I was actually going to be here.

What are fun tidbits that I have I learned so far about Colombia?
*That Colombians love ice cream. Even in the rain. It's amazing: there are families, couples, all types of people lining up for ice cream everywhere we go. And it's not too warm - maybe in the 50s! What happens when it's hot?
*That wicked high-speed internet can co-exist in the same apartment with an ice-cold shower.
*That arepas are small, thick corn tortillas which taste really good with butter.
*That you can get Dunkin Donuts in Bogota.

As you might sense, right now, the hard work to come seems a bit distant. I am reveling in the excitement of discovering a new city, the process of getting to know my new teammates, and laying the groundwork to stay healthy and well-balanced amidst what I expect to be overwhelmingly intense work. I woke up my first morning here and went to yoga with Gilberto and Trish, my two teammates. In yoga, I stretched and sang (yes, in Colombia, apparently, you sing in yoga class!). Yesterday, Gilberto took me on an urban tour, and we dallied in flea markets, experimented with Colombian food, and saw a movie. Life here, so far, is blessedly fun. The heaviness I feel now is about knowing how much I am going to miss people from home and sadness at leaving a life which has been so fulfilling and nurturing in Littleton.

On the plane and since I got here, I do keep thinking about the last service I went to at the Unitarian Church in Littleton. Fred Small, the minister, talked about being thankful. He said:
"To be thankful is the hardest thing and the easiest thing in the world...It’s the easiest thing in the world for anyone to be thankful when we really pay attention...By being mindful of the present moment, we remember the gifts of life we enjoy just by being alive."

I am humbled and overwhelmed and deeply thankful for all of your support. I have really been paying attention to this support...and it helps me enjoy my arrival here and feel that I am floating on all of your well-wishes in this new stage of my life.

That's all for now - off to meet with the bureaucracy and get my papers in order.

Graffiti in downtown Bogota which reads "Yankees out! No to the Free trade agreement! No to oppresiion!"

On the way home

2006-11-17T07:44:00.000-05:00

a cell phone self-portrait in dc

The rumble of the train is somehow less comforting than I thought it would be. While my legs appreciate the rest, I feel pretty lazy and couch-potatoish after a few days off the bike. This may be due, in part, to my failure to return to my pre-bike trip diet of healthy foods like fruits and vegetables and Trader Joe’s fare, and the continuance of the presence of lots of eggs, cheese, breads and sausage in my system, despite the lack of exercise. While sausage and eggs made sense on mornings that I would bike 50 miles, interestingly that does not hold true for days that I will sit in meetings or on trains.

We took a break from our lobbying to visit Mr. Cerutti’s class at the Maya Angelous Charter School, an amazing place in NW Washington. With small classes (10-15 students), long days (they serve 3 meals a day to the students, and they stay until 7:30!) and attention to the development of important life skills (they start bank accounts for the students and match their savings), it seems like there are really positive things happening. The students were engaged and attentive to our information-intensive presentation, and even stayed with us as we experienced technical difficulties. I always hesitate to talk “at” students, but it’s hard to do otherwise when you have a short period of time and so much you want to convey! That said, they were great...and many of them had even read our blog! I hope to keep in touch with them over the next year.

We finished up our time on Capitol Hill with two more Congressional meetings, where we joined Peace Community leader Renato Areiza and Eric Lopp from Peace Brigades International. Hearing Renato speak about the serious threats to the community brought a weightiness to the work we have been doing. Underneath the adventure, success and fun of this bike trip, the reality of the Colombian situation and the work that I will be doing in the next year is really...hard. At the event on Tuesday night in DC, Renato talked about the importance of PBI and FOR’s presence in the community. I continue to be inspired by the work that the community is doing, and am proud to be part of supporting their work, and of raising some of the funds to permit this work to coninue.

The next week will be a whirlwind of packing, quick goodbyes, final preparations for departure, and some sadness at leaving the amazing life I have in Littleton, and that I had while teaching at Parker. When I update this next, I will most likely be in Colombia. Thank you to all who have read this,
Janice & Fedelma.

Ya! We made it! We're in DC! Yippee!

2006-11-13T23:54:00.000-05:00

Janice and Fedelma smile after many long days.

After two delicious days of low miles while at Pendle Hill, a 77-mile, 3-state odyssey of a day, and a final lap through cold, wind and rain, we have landed safely in DC!!

After much fretting about the route on Friday, I (Janice) decided to take us the “direct” route on Saturday from Swarthmore, PA to Chestertown, MD– which turned out to be 5 miles longer than the “indirect” route which had been suggested to us. We glided through Swarthmore, Chester and Wilmington, and had done almost 20 miles by breakfast, and 45 miles by lunch. Feeling quite cocky and proud of ourselves, we decided to dine in Chesapeake City, and even – gasp – backtracked a bit to go to the perfect lunch place which let us sit right on the water in the 78-degree weather. While the unseasonably hot weather did remind us of impending climate disaster, we still managed to enjoy ourselves immensely, and even celebrated with a mid-day glass of champagne and toasted our 45-mile accomplishment. Predictably, we would come to regret this choice and our early optimism in the next couple of hours, as we struggled through a strong headwind throughout Maryland. We were on route 213 for the remainder of the day, where the mile signs which consistently poked holes in our fantasies of almost-doneness. We stopped twice in the final 10 miles to refuel, gulp the remaining gorp, and to visualize this evasive doneness. When the end finally came, we were met by comfy couches, our staple athletes’ diet of fried cheese and potatoes, and free popcorn at Andy's bar and restaurant in Chestertown. I went to see my former clients at the Kent Center, and Fedelma became one with the couch and her book for a couple hours. After a lovely dinner with old friends, we yet again landed at a warm, welcoming house – though since we got there late, we got to spend much less time with Ford and Marilee than we would have liked. We were there just long enough to infer from the Grateful Dead and “potters for peace” stickers, the amazing views of the Chesapeake bay, and the cozily eclectic house that we would have liked to stay much longer.

My friend Andy picked us up early the next morning and transported us over the Bay Bridge, where we remembered promptly that this biking thing could be hard work. After deciding to willfully ignore the weather forecast - our mutual internal narrative must have gone something like: “low of 44? that can’t be right. looks warmer. yesterday sure was warm...” Doh. It was cold, and our misplaced cynicism forced us to repack our bags in the pouring rain as we began our final day of pedaling. After 15 miles, we decided to take an early lunch at Subway...and then after finding ourselves unready to leave the warmth and comfort of food and heat, we walked next door to another restaurant, sat for another hour and ate some more. Finally on the road again, the hills mercifully returned and allowed us to warm our cold, wet selves on the final leg of the trip. We rolled into DC around dusk, and were treated to a hero’s welcome at my friend Alyssa’s house, where Fedelma got to use the upstairs steam shower while Janice soaked in the downstairs jacuzzi.

Today we met with aides to Janice’s Representatives: John Kerry, Edward Kennedy and Martin Meehan. The meetings were infinitely less stressful and more productive than we both supposed, and I am looking forward to more tomorrow, and also to joining Renato Areiza, a leader from the peace community, who is in DC. We are having an event at Provisions Library - here are the details for any DC folks that would like to come:
Date: Tuesday, November 14th
Time: 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Location: Provisions Library
1611 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington DC, 20009
202-299-0460

Hope to see some of you there!

Caught.

2006-11-10T22:06:00.000-05:00

People, when given the option, are good to each other. Over the past few days, we have been blessed, amazed and inspired by people’s dramatic generosity. As Fedelma said, we have taken a big risk by taking this trip, and have over and over again found ourselves being “caught” by, for the most part, virtual strangers. We have averted disaster, discomfort and isolation by the consistent generosity of those we have met along the way.

On Tuesday, anticipating a long day, our gracious host, Swarthmore parent Jim Brunkard took us out to a lusciously greasy breakfast (he had scrapple, a Pennsylvania specialty which consists of the meat not fit for sausage, in honor of the occasion), and then drove us up the big hill that would have begun our day. For lunch, we were greeted by the amazing Lepoco peace group, who told us that we didn’t need to tell them about accompaniment and the situation in Colombia – because they already knew about it, were supportive of it, and some had even visited! Instead, we were left to enjoy the food, soak up their inspirational energy, receive their donations, and talk to the press they had invited.

We began Wednesday optimistic, after hearing that though it would rain all day, it would be a warm, almost spring-like rain. Wanting to take a more direct route into Philadelphia because of some knee pain Fedelma was experiencing, we opted for the very direct and equally un-scenic route. After about 20 miles of strip malls, shrinking shoulders and 3-inch puddles which disguised curbs (and caused our first official “crash” of the trip, though no one was hurt!) we stopped at a bike shop, looking for a respite from the rain and like-minded folks to commiserate with. We got much more. The bike mechanic spent close to an hour with us, carefully detailing an alternate, fairly direct route into Philadelphia that would save us from the traffic and bad roads. We didn’t know that on the post-it note inside a zip-lock bag was written the map to paradise! Our makeshift map led us through deserted, quaint roads, down a gravel path along a raging creek lined by trees in the midst of shedding their leaves, and finally left us off at a cozy diner at the start of the Schuylkill river trail, a lovely paved bike path which brought us to the regal Philadelphia Art Museum.

On the way to Fedelma’s lodging for the night, Janice got her first of two flats (didn’t quite get that glass out the first time!) just two blocks before our destination. After walking the bikes briefly, we were “caught” once again by the Jim and Janet, and ordered to put on warm, dry clothes while Jim changed Janice’s tire and Janet made us tea and cookies, and then drove Janice and her bike to her friend Ben’s house.

After a quick ride to Swarthmore, and a wonderful event there, we have landed at the Quaker Adult Study Center at Pendle Hill, where we were invited to stay another night, do another screening of the documentary about the peace community, and rest our bodies and minds. Tomorrow we are off to do 72 miles to Chestertown – wish us luck!

MORE ABOUT OUR SWARTHMORE VISIT:
Biking into Swarthmore, I was reminded of the cramped suburban sprawl which suddenly opens up to Swarthmore’s stately, picturesque campus. We rolled into the borough of Swarthmore, and I was unexpectedly, but not surprisingly, totally disoriented by the litany of college-named streets (Which way do I turn on Yale Ave, or was it Dartmouth, to get to Swarthmore?). When we finally got to campus, I was greeted by some new buildings, a transformed Parrish, with dark carpeting (funny what we notice), a career office which had flown to the other side of the building, and a Cornell which had expanded from what I vaguely remember, as a social sciences person, as a quaint, dark corner of campus to an airplane-terminal like modern center of science-learning and fun.

After wandering around the campus with Fedelma, and searching largely unsuccessfully for staff I remembered (sorry I missed you Yvette!) I went to Tarble, where Chris, a long-time Swat employee, and I remembered each other and caught up, and also found my former brilliant student Garth Griffin doing what with his time at Swat? Playing pool in Tarble’s new and improved recreation area, of course. After a quick and unexpectedly steep and rough ride to Pendle Hill to drop our stuff off, we returned to campus to meet Alisa Giardinelli, our Swarthmore host and fellow Colombian human rights advocate. Ken Sharpe had put me in touch with Alisa, and she had been amazingly helpful in setting up the event at Swarthmore, and graciouslessly treated Fedelma and I to hot chocolate and Swarthmore news after a busy day.

Prepared as always for a turnout of 5 people, we were happily surprised by the quickly-filling room. Turns out, both Ken Sharpe and visiting Prof. Lakey(sp?) had pushed our talk in their classes, and Prof. Lakey’s class had read “Unarmed Bodyguards,” the best book about human rights accompaniment work out there. After a gracious introduction by Alisa, David Bronkema, former head of AFSC’s work in the Andean Region, agreed to be put on the spot and gave a history of Colombia...in 5 minutes. We showed 30 minutes of the documentary, talked about our reasons for doing human rights work in Colombia, and fielded questions from the always-on-point Swatties. I talked about political space, a favorite Ken Sharpe concept, and saw smiles of recognition spread across the faces of the students...and felt home in a way I hadn’t with other audiences.

In many ways, this felt like coming full circle for me. Almost ten years before, I had petitioned to get in Ken Sharpe’s Latin American Politic seminar. I was a sophomore, and the seminar was full, and Ken explained that there was simply no room and no way for me to take the class. After repeated petitions, I agreed to go to Haverford to take a Latin American politics class instead, since I was determined to take the class before going abroad in fall of my junior year. After bringing the papers for Ken to sign, he finally relented and let me in the class.

The class affected me in more ways than I, or he, I would guess, could imagine. I dove into the reading list, trying to make up for what I lacked in analytical experience with expertise on every reading on the legendarily dense syllabus. I typed up pages of notes in preparation for every class, and sat riveted and appalled as I read and discussed the US’ misguided and almost genocidal foreign policy in Latin America. After some initial missteps (I double-spaced my first seminar paper! horrors!), I felt I came into my own in the class with my paper on Nicaraguan land reform under the Sandinistas. In Ken’s 1-page written responses to the paper (he really does this!) he saw some strengths in the paper, but also pointed out some arguments which needed further development and analysis. Naturally, I decided that to answer his questions, I would go to Nicaragua and work with the farmers’ union that had conducted the land reform the following semester. And so I did.

While there were of course other things that led me to Nicaragua, I was fundamentally motivated by the seriousness of purpose that I took from that seminar. It felt to me like in those late, late nights in Trotter we were grappling with nothing less than people’s right to struggle for justice and equality, and looking at how our own country’s moral failings had led to the obliteration of these rights, movements and dreams for change. I made a lifelong commitment during that class to never again stand by while the US funded the killing of people in Latin America struggling for social change. Fundamentally, this is what has led me to become a human rights observer in Colombia.

Snowflakes, pumpkin patches, and long flat roads.

2006-11-06T19:24:00.000-05:00

May seem unremarkable. But look close. Real close. See it? Yeah, that's snow alright.

With our sixth day behind us, it seems shocking that the trip has flown by like it has. And then I (Fedelma) think about Connecticut, and I reconsider the word “flown”. A beautiful state, and one of several places I call home, but I don’t think I had actually ever stopped to contemplate how the beautiful rolling hills could hit a biker’s leg muscles like a load of very big, dense bricks. But it was beautiful nonetheless, and at one exhausted and goofy point on a downhill slope of a quaint little Connecticut town, we stopped to chat and stretch, and realized to our surprise and delight (and horror) that it was in fact, snowing. We thought it had felt cold.

But then the cold, rainy, pretty hills gave way to a much-needed day of rest and then long, smooth, graceful fields of agricultural New York. Practically hysterical with delight, we turned around one slow, lazy corner and there were pumpkins. Fields of pumpkins, as far as the eye could see. Co-mingling with our awe of the pumpkins stretching out like Dorothy’s fields of poppies, was a slight discomfort at the thought of anyone actually having to pick those hulking orange behemoths (both Janice and I have worked as farmworker advocates). But the thoughts of pumpkin picking swept past with the landscape and sooner than we expected we were able to roll into our destination, on much-needed, long, flat roads.

In terms of people, apart from the wonderful families we’ve stayed with, and the hospitality, care and enthusiasm we’ve encountered, one of the really inspiring encounters we were caught off guard with was with the small but engaged group of students we met with at Vassar. Partially unexpected because it was the Saturday night of a Halloween party, and partly unexpected because of the spiritual and even (dare I say it) religious depth of the conversation, there in the bastion of secularism: Vassar. So, several cups of hot chocolate down, we had our expectations pleasantly blown away yet again, and talked not only about Colombian politics (one young woman, Ximena, will actually be in Bogotá with Janice...a friend!) but engaging activism, pacifism and international power dynamics and privilege through a spiritually motivated lens. It was great.

Well, more than halfway (I think), and still in one piece, we giddily look forward to Philadelphia, Swarthmore, and eventually D.C.! The weather looks promising, so we’re just sticking to prayers of enough hills to keep us awake, but not more than our poor, destroyed-by-soccer knees can take. (I am now convinced that the old Irish “blessing” that starts “May the road rise up to meet you...” can be nothing but a thinly veiled curse. I would much rather have the road slope gently down at my feet, or stretch out before me, or anything but rising up to meet me! My tires can sink to its level, honestly, its no trouble!)
Thanks to everyone who has kept us warm and fed, and supported us in all those different, good ways.

Janice and Fedelma stop at a "castle" in the middle of Connecticut. ??

2 down...and miles to go before we sleeeeeeppppppp....

2006-11-02T22:10:00.000-05:00

Who knew that south-central Massachusetts and northern Connecticut could be so hilly? Or that pedaling in the rain could be so cold? Well, I guess the second realization shouldn't have been such a surprise...but these are some of the many lessons Fedelma and I have learned during our first two days pedaling for peace. After getting a predictably late start Wednesday morning because of last-minute packing, we biked into the ever-earlier darkness. After 48 miles, an angel (and fellow Swarthmore graduate) by the name of Peggy Collins picked us up in her van and drove us the last couple miles to her cozy house in the pitch black, where we ate heartily and were in bed by 9.

After learning our lesson, Fedelma and I got started, albeit in 40-degree pouring rain, at 7:30 am. But alas, it was not downhill from there, so to speak. The hills which had slowed our pace to a sometimes-crawl the afternoon before continued, but we succeeded in riding 25 miles before lunch. From there, Fedelma got a hard-earned break at her parents' house nearby, and Janice biked on to Ellington, CT to stay with FOR board member Martha DiGiovanni.

We are thrilled to be doing this bike ride for a good cause, and on the seemingly never-ending uphills, it is truly the support of our friends, family and FOR that keeps us going.

Thanks to the many of you who have contributed already, we have raised close to $6,000. However, we will have to pick up the pace to reach our goal of $15,000 (when Fedelma joined, the goal went up!). If you haven't supported the ride already, please do so now by going to my website, www.pedalingforpeace.org

Thanks so much to everyone who has offered to house us along the way - the solidarity of strangers is making this ride possible. We are now guaranteed housing for every night of our journey! We invite you to join us in helping to organize an event in Philadelphia, PA on November 8th, or to attend our speaking event and fundraiser in Washington, DC on the evening of Nov 14th. Please to go to our website, www.pedalingforpeace.org, for more info.

Thank you, and keep those positive thoughts coming our way!
Janice

2006-09-29T11:40:00.000-04:00

Launching...

2006-09-29T10:59:00.000-04:00

wow! People are giving! People I know and love...and just wonderful people from all over the place. I am inspired to keep doing this, and now just hoping I can work out all the logistics beforehand. I guess camping wouldn't be so bad...

I had my first speaking engagement last night, and it was truly incredible. People were so enthusiastic, and they didn't even know me very well!

As for the ride itself, I am eager to buy my trailer so that I can start doing long rides with the wight attached.I alternately think that 50 miles a day is going to be way oo easy, and fairly impossible.

Overall, feeling excited and inspired,though.

Janice with kids in San Jose de Apartado, where she will be living after her bikeride.

2006-09-20T07:28:00.000-04:00

The facts:

2006-09-15T12:46:00.000-04:00

Today in Colombia...
Human rights defenders are being disappeared.
More than 40,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in
Colombia as a result of the armed conflict since 1990 alone*

Campesinos are being displaced from their land.
There are 3 million internally displaced people in Colombia.
Second in the world only to the Sudan*

The military/paramilitaries are killing and disappearing people with impunity.
Colombia has received more than $3.5 billion in largely military aid from the US since 1999, and their forces have been trained at the School of the Americas.

What are you doing to stop America’s other war?
The Fellowship of Reconciliation is working to demilitarize US policy and support peace initiatives in Colombia. Please help support their work by sponsoring me**:

In early November of 2006, I will ride 500 miles in10 days on my bicycle from Boston to Washington, DC to raise awareness about and money for FOR’s work in Colombia.

My goal is to raise $10,000 for FOR. I hope to get 500 people to sponsor me for each of the miles I will ride, at $20 per mile.

*statistics from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
**”Me” is Janice Gallagher, janicekgallagher@yahoo.com. I was a member of the August 2006 delegation to Colombia with FOR, and am a former teacher, and long-time social justice acitivst.

2006-09-14T14:14:00.000-04:00

2006-09-14T13:14:00.000-04:00

In thinking about what motivates me to do this work, more than anything else it is the phenomenon of disappearances: this woman lost her son when he was taken away by men dressed in military uniforms. She has been unable to determine his whereabouts since then.

2006-09-14T13:04:00.000-04:00

Yeah! I am really oing to do this! After being seriously tempted to work crazy hours in order to try to take back Congress from the Republicans this year, I've realized that what I'm really passionate about is raising awareness and support for peace in Colombia, and that I can (and will) volunteer to get out votes, do phone banks, etc. in order to support the dem's in the election.
In the meantime...Alyssa Kelly came up with a great website name last night: PedalFORPeace. FOR because I am raising funds for the Fellowship of Reconciliation. I think it's good, and am trying to buy the domain name now from the personwho owns it. Yeee. So excited - I also got my first sponsors, so I would like to here and now officially thank:
1. Stan from Charlie's
2. David from Charlie's
3. Tia
4. Amy Adams
5. Jen Spingla
6. Scott Call
7. Alyssa Kelly

7 down, 493 to go! Oh - my idea is that since the ride is roughly 500 miles, if people sponsor me for $20 a mile, I will raise $10,000 if I get 500 people to sponsor me for 1 mile a piece. Now to figure out all the technology onvolved in this.

Thinking...

2006-09-10T22:43:00.000-04:00

After traveling to Colombia this August with the Fellowship of Reconciliation, I was tired, sick, and lacked sleep. But, besides from physically ailing, I was moved by the stories of the people I met, and wanted to do what I had said to them over and over that I would do: to bring their stories back to the US and tell people how US policy was affecting them. So after finally getting better, spending a week in the woods meditating on this, and conveniently having some time off from work - I think I know what I'm going to do...
...bike to Washington, DC from home, Littleton, MA.
The pros: I could raise money for a cause I feel passionately about; namely, working to mitigate the incredibly negative effects of US foreign policy and working to demilitarize US foreign policy.
The cons: I did a long bike ride this weekend...and it was only about 25 miles. I have no idea what it would take in terms of gear, training, planning, mapping a route, to ride to DC; I don't know if I could raise a lot of money doing it; and I don't know how long it would take me to plan and do.
Next step is to figure out the answers to some of these questions!