Begging for peace amid so much death - violence, death and destabilization in Colombia for the prizes of natural resources such as bananas, rubber, cattle, oil, and uranium - Cover Story

National Catholic Reporter, Jan 24, 1997 by Tom Boswell

The fire of a wild white sun has eaten up the distance between hope and despair. --Thomas Merton

APARTADO, Colombia -- Everywhere I go in this place that is called The City of the Sun, I ask a simple question: "Is peace possible soon?" The answers are disturbingly blunt.

"Yes, in 300 years," a teacher responds. "Yes, in 2,000 years," a nun replies. When I pose this question to the young mayor of Apartado, she answers flatly: "No."

Yet it was clear, during a mid-November visit, that people here still hope. It is a city of light and sounds -- it is hard to imagine that death lurks all around.

Children shout and laugh. Music plays long into the warm night. Dogs howl. Vendors hawk their wares from every street corner. There are horses, carts, cars and buses. Motorbikes abound.

And yes, soldiers everywhere, with rifles in their hands or slung casually over their shoulders. It is a city of contradictions in a country full of contradictions.

Colombia is in the clutches of a life-and-death struggle between three principal forces, often indistinguishable in their aims and tactics: a floundering national government with a massive military and police apparatus; the oldest guerrilla insurgency in Latin America; and a vast network of armed civilians that has sprung up since the early 1980s. The clash of these forces has meant mayhem and murder on a scale without precedent in the hemisphere.

The Bogota-based Inter-Congregational Commission of Peace and Justice sponsored by over 55 Catholic religious orders, points out that 2,700 cases of political murder and disappearance were registered during the brutal 17-year reign of Augusto Pinochet in Chile. Yet, horrible as this was, the commission says it is far less than the number of cases it has counted each year since it began documenting deaths in Colombia nearly a decade ago.

10 murders a day

The Andean Commission of Jurists, a prestigious human rights think tank with chapters throughout the Andean region, estimates that four out of 10 victims murdered each day in Colombia in 1995 were targeted for their involvement in political, labor or social causes. Of the perpetrators identified, 45 percent belonged to paramilitary groups, 27 percent were left-wing guerrillas and 24 percent were with the armed forces or state security. The commission claimed that 97 percent of all violent crimes go unpunished and that the impunity rate for politically motivated crimes is even higher.

In its report on human rights in Colombia for 1995, the U.S. State Department said that while extrajudicial killings by police and military had dropped, "killings by paramilitary groups increased significantly, often with the alleged complicity of individual soldiers or of entire military units. These groups targeted teachers, labor leaders, community activists, mayors of towns and villages, and, above all, peasants." Human rights monitors and government attorneys have documented ties between the paramilitary groups and officials in Colombia's army and police forces.

Apartado is located in the region of Uraba, in northwestern Colombia, a strategically located point for Colombia and for the rest of the region because it links Central and South America. Uraba borders the Pacific Ocean, the Caribbean, and Panama. Bananas grown here netted $400 million last year. The region also boasts resources of rubber, uranium, cattle and a substantial oil supply.

"Uraba is very rich," said Sr. Carolina Agudelo, who works with the hundreds of widows and orphans who are among the victims of violence in Apartado. "There are a lot of things here that provoke some people to kill."

Hundreds of millions of dollars in contraband leaves Colombia each year through the Gulf of Uraba. "Arms come in and drugs go out," said Apartado Mayor Gloria Cuartas Montaya during a recent interview.

In their fight for control of the land and its resources, the guerrillas have relinquished control of other conflicted regions of Colombia to the paramilitary, but analysts say the rebels- will not let go of Uraba as easily. The left-wing guerrillas and the right-wing paramilitary groups are strengthening their positions, Cuartas says. The military, she said, turns a blind eye, pretending that nothing is happening.

"The paramilitary says they've crushed the guerrillas, but it's not true," said Fr. Leonidas Moreno, who coordinates human rights work for the Apartado diocese. "The guerrillas are systematically going to other places, but they don't consider they have lost Uraba."

Preparing for civil war

"The conflict we have now is going to divide the country in two," Moreno warned. The ultra-rightist paramilitary will control the north, and the guerrillas the south. There are more than 170 paramilitary groups in the north, he said, and they are preparing for civil war.

Fidel Castano, a wealthy landowner who roams free despite a 30-year sentence against him for his involvement in the massacre of 53 peasants in the region, is said to be the godfather of the paramilitary movement in Uraba and its neighboring department. He and his brother Carlos are reported to command an army of over 1,000.