Newsletters

Date: December 16th 2009

Not so complicated
by Phyllis Stutzman

"Es muy complicado" is a semi-humorous code to denote "there's more than meets the eye in this situation" or the presence of particular risks in particular places.

"I'd like to go for a walk." Response: "It's very complicated."

However some things are not so complicated. Here are two:
1. Regions with the highest displacements are the areas that have strategic natural resource wealth. Coal, for example.

In La Guajira, Cerrejon, a consortium of 3 international partners operates the world's largest export open pit mines. In César, Drummond, headquartered in Arkansas, is on course to be even bigger. Both operations are expanding at breakneck pace in the Caribbean region of Colombia. Simply put, paramilitary forces have ways to move people and communities who are in the way of large scale resource exploitation.

Both Departments have significant indigenous and Afro-Colombian populations who for generations have lived in traditional ways, relatively isolated from national influence, practicing small scale agriculture. They are the displaced of Colombia.

A growing number of threatened groups are organizing to resist all manner of pressures and tactics to leave their land. Several communities are acting to reclaim their land after fleeing violence. They are designated as "Peace Communities" and "Communities of Resistance." They prohibit armed individuals or groups –Police, Military, Paramilitaries or Guerillas to enter their communities. At great cost they are beacons of Peace.


2. US and Colombia governments signed a pact for US military use of 7 Colombian military bases. There is not a shred of evidence that military force solves the deep socioeconomic problems that beset Colombia or the US. Simply put, the US greatly underestimated the continent-wide outrage against more US military operations in Latin America. The history of US military intervention is long and horrific. Latin America governments, with the serious exception of Colombia, no longer trust military forces to resolve longstanding injustices. Much less to bring peace.

The Teusaquilla Mennonite Church hosted a 2 day Study and Vigil of Indignation for the Installation of US Military Bases in Colombia. (Análisis y vigilia de indignación por la instalación de bases militares estadounidenses en Colombia.) Many are speaking out against the military plan imposed on both Colombia, Latin America and the US without official involvement of either Colombian or US Congress or Courts.

How do you think peace can be achieved with more than 4 million people displaced through violence? Even as displacement, as a terror tactic, continues?


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