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The Refugee Voice 1-1 - Voices of Colombia's Displaced
In this, a companion piece to the first issue of The Refugee Voice, JRS/USA marks its return to a series of occasional papers describing forced migration and refugee crises and the major issues that underlie them. More than simply presenting abstract problems, we will provide you with first-hand experiences from the refugees, internally displaced people (IDPs), and other vulnerable populations with whom JRS works around the world.
We begin this series by addressing the plight of refugees and IDPs in Colombia, a country that has been ravaged by 40 years of civil strife between the Colombian government and opposing armed groups. Over the course of the long conflict, millions of Colombians have been forcibly displaced from their homes. Currently, of the 40 million people living in Colombia, over 3.5 million are internally displaced and hundreds of thousands have sought refugee in neighboring countries.
I thank Alejandro Olayo, SJ for his dedicated service in collecting these interviews as well as Sara Kane and Shaina Aber for making the first edition of The Refugee Voice a reality.
We hope this small window into the losses of these displaced peoples will inspire you to act and motivate you to support JRS’s work to remedy these tragic situations.
The following is a compilation of the life stories of twelve IDP families whose experiences exemplify various elements of the Colombian conflict; whose struggles for survival and justice motivate our continued work with the people of Colombia.
Related article: Hope on the Horizon
Clara's Story
Some of Clara’s earliest memories are those of interactions with armed groups on her father’s farm: “When I was very young, the army arrived at the house where we lived. They said, ‘You come with us.’ I told them, ‘Wait a second, I need to tell my papa.’ They then told me I must be a member of the guerilla…Not long after, the guerilla appeared in our community. They came to my house and I was afraid. So they started by saying, “No comrade, no, we are not the army, we are not the army.” I was alone in the house at the time cooking lunch. They said to me, “Comrade, you don’t want to go with us, but we aren’t going anywhere, comrade.” So then they entered the house, unloaded their guns from their backs and began to clean their weapons on the kitchen table. I was very confused. I didn’t know if they were guerilla or army soldiers. The guerilla dresses just like the regular army, with the helmets and revolvers, and green uniforms.”
Clara’s family was ultimately forced from their land because of armed conflict in the area. Her family’s desperate circumstances led Clara to begin offering her services as a cook to other families in the area. Clara came to like the work of a cook and took pride in her abilities. Eventually she met and married her husband and the two settled down, building a life together and trying to avoid contact with the armed groups.
Clara and her husband were farmers in the Magdalena Medio region, in the town of Cantagallo, where they lived as sharecroppers, raising their children and eventually a number of their grandchildren.
Living in the rich agricultural valley meant the family had to have constant interaction with armed actors. Clara recounted, “The army would arrive and say ‘do this,’ the guerilla would come and say ‘do that.’ Give me three hens, they would say. And you do what they tell you to do. You run to do what they say. What else can you do?”
One of Clara’s sons used to sell fruits and vegetables from their farm. Frustrated by the conflict and demands by armed groups to pick sides, he told Clara that he felt he had no choice but to enlist in the army. But the guerillas found him first, Clara says, and “They held him up at gunpoint and took the money he had gotten from selling goods that day. They took his identification papers and gave him 24 hours to leave the area. Now he lives in Bucaramanga.”
Yet troubles for Clara and her family continued. Planes came to fumigate the zone of the coca crop grown by some of the neighboring farms. The aerial spraying was indiscriminate and deadly for even the law-abiding farmers. “Everyone in the farming community lost all of the crops they had. We were starving. I had to leave my two grandchildren alone in the house and go down to the village to beg for something to eat.”
When Clara approached the office of the Village Advocate, a government office established to give relief to displaced Colombians, she found her family could not receive benefits, even though their land was wrongfully sprayed. At first “they told me that they would resolve our problem in five days time. But when I returned five days later, they told me they could not offer me assistance; that since my problem stemmed from the fumigations and the armed conflict, I could not seek benefits from the government.” Clara was referred to the Catholic Diocese for support. She waited two months to receive only “two-pound bags of rice, a liter of oil and a bag of cane sugar,” before returning to her family in Cantagallo.
Shortly after returning home, fumigation planes again decimated the area. Clara explains, the tumultuous “it was nine in the morning on the 6th of August. Four trucks arrived, followed by helicopters. They told us we had to leave the farm in Cantagallo. We left for about a month and stayed in Barrancabermeja, waiting for the poison to clear out of the area... We lost all of our animals when we were forced from our home... I returned on the 30th of August, arriving at the farm with my children, hoping to begin to plan a way we could start over. But when we tried to enter our land, the guerilla was there and they would not let us stay.”
Yet again Clara and her family were forced from their land. They left the same day they had arrived, eventually ending up in Barrancabermeja. Clara hasn’t been able to get any help from the government this time. Clara now says she doesn’t even want to go back to try to rebuild her life on the farm—“We lost everything and there is nothing to go back for. We have to take the bitter with the sweet. I would like to go back to my home just to look at what my life used to be.”
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Cristian's Story
“To live with my wife and daughters and to have a job with which I can support them.” This is the tragically elusive dream of 34-year-old Cristian, derailed time and again by the violence of armed conflict.
Cristian grew up in a village where, like his father, he made a living through fishing and subsistence farming. As a young man, Cristian’s entire fishing community was overtaken by guerillas. He remembers that the guerillas “made us attend meetings where they instructed us on the rules of the town. If anyone left the meeting he could expect that the guerilla would arrive at his home and threaten him into ‘cooperation.’ Observing this made us afraid…it taught us all we had no real freedom of choice.”
The guerillas in Cristian’s village manipulated and abused the fisherman, asking them for “favors” that everyone knew were orders—noncompliance was met by death. Some orders included forced collaboration with guerilla tactics.
Despite fleeing his fishing village after witnessing the murder of his friend and fleeing yet another town after being accused of traitorous cooperation, Cristian could not evade the manipulation of armed groups. In one episode, he was ordered to drive a group of militiamen out to an inlet, as they held a young boy at gunpoint: “That day they tortured and killed the boy in my presence. That’s why I left Ciénega.”
After suffering more displacements, Cristian made the painful decision “to leave the life of a fisherman and move to the city of Barrancabermeja as a displaced person.” Yet, registering as a displaced person did not really improve his situation. He was told he had to wait 20 days to receive any aid. In the interim he recalls. “I had no way to live or feed my family. I had to beg for money in the city streets.”
Cristian was “given 40lbs of rice, a little milk, a pitcher, a pot, two mattresses, and sheets.” Not surprisingly, those supplies were insufficient to keep his family alive, and with very few jobs available, Cristian remembers supporting his family by “recycling trash that people leave on their stoops in the neighborhood and in front of my church. I was very grateful for whatever money people give me for the recycled goods.”
Cristian is still threatened by armed groups today, simply because he officially registered as a displaced person. He yearns for his former life as a fisherman, before the armed conflict dictated every step along his life’s journey. He says, “I have secretly visited my old fishing village to see what the situation is like. I realize the violence has not gone down and I can’t return there. But neither am I safe in Barrancabermeja…I have prayed to God for a life of peace and tranquility.”
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Deshila's Story
Deshila was born in Rio Negro, in the northwestern province of Antioquia. She was raised by a single mother, who encouraged her to focus on her education. After high school Deshila studied community development. Influenced by her mother’s interest in politics and her own training, Deshila became a community activist, despite persistent threats and intimidation from armed groups.
Deshila described her early experiences with armed groups in her town, “Some groups treated us badly. They would steal our animals, steal food, heads of cattle and other farm animals. If we oppose the intrusion, they would take things by force, or take things away. So who would say something?”
She says, “One can tell one group from another by the different manners in which they behave. But know this: they all carry guns.”
Deshila moved to Monterrey because of pressure from armed groups, but still determined to continue her community activism. This determination, while admirable, ensured the attention of armed groups whose mission inherently demands submission. People like Deshila, who encourage campesinos to assert their rights, are frequent targets of persecution from armed groups.
She explains, “In Monterrey…the guerilla would not only demand thing from our farm, but from all the farms in the region. This situation generated the targeting of civilians, especially those who refused to cooperate.”
Deshila was part of a farming protest, organizing 210 families in an effort to earn a meeting with the governor of the Bolivar region. The farmers were protesting the way of life they were forced into by the conflict consuming their region, and the resulting lack of social services. The governor never showed, but the paramilitaries did. They silenced the campesinos, killing those who most brazenly challenged them.
Displaced once more, Deshila moved to Pozo Azul, which was supposedly safer but still attracted the attention of repressive paramilitaries.
“The FARC arrived in Pozo Azul not long after we relocated to that community,” she explains. “They made us meet with them and they asked me and other campesino leaders to a meeting…they gathered us in an area, not even giving us time to bring clothing. They gave us an order, reading a directive that said what they needed from us. One couldn’t say no and one couldn’t say yes. It wasn’t a choice—it was an order.”
Deshila’s situation, and that of her fellow campesinos, forced them to acquiesce to the group’s request and eventually act as a mouthpiece for FARC’s political objectives. “I didn’t want to be there identifying with FARC, but I was afraid that if I told them I didn’t want to be there, they’d kill us...In San Pablo, one of the FARC commanders, who called himself commander Guevara, told us that we had to be clearly aligned with one side or the other, ‘He who is in the middle dies.’”
Still in Pozo Azul a few years later, and pregnant Deshila found out that the paramilitaries had an order to kill her. She was again forced to flee the area, leaving behind a women’s cooperative. Her husband also faced death threats from the paramilitaries. Deshila was encouraged to publicly denounce the intimidation her and her husband suffered, and when she did, she was given a meager sum to resettle in another region. Unfortunately, her husband did not support her decision and his painful criticism lead to the end of their marriage.
“I arrived alone with my children in the town of Barrancabermeja and I realized that the public institutions are not set up to help the displaced population. They routinely reject giving aid to the displaced and everywhere you go, the answer is no.”
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Fiorella's Story
While living with her husband and baby daughter in the Santander area of the Magdalena Medio region, Fiorella and her husband experienced many encounters with different armed groups. Fiorella remembers how the presence of the armed groups silenced dissent. “You don’t talk about it, but you live with the danger on a day to day basis. You see what happens and realize that it’s better to stay silent and not get mixed up in problems.”
For farming families like Fiorella’s, one aspect of the struggle is the constant issuing of ultimatums about loyalty. “The groups always say, ‘You are either cooperating with our group or you are working for the other group.” Fiorella emphasized that the Colombian regular armed forces use that same rhetoric to force the aid from the civilian population, even when such assistance places the lives of poor farming families in considerable danger. “Different groups arrived at the farm, continuously. They would stand in the farmyard. They came and would set themselves up there on the farm. And how could I tell them to leave? They would stay and feed off of us for eight to fifteen days at a time.”
Fiorella’s family was caught between the demands of the various rebel groups and the army until three years ago, when they were ousted from their land. “They demanded the majority of the people to leave the area. They arrived and told us, ‘You have two hours in which we will allow you to leave here.’ They wore uniforms and they came armed. They told us we had to leave because we were complicit with the activities of the other group. They told us they were the ones who gave the orders. The people who didn’t obey would be killed or disappeared. This made us afraid to refuse to comply….That was the moment in which my husband told me, ‘It’s time to leave. Are we going to wait for death? So, well, we left for the city.”
The city didn’t provide enough resources for both Fiorella and her husband—they had to separate in order to obtain employment. Fiorella explained, “I live here in Barrancabermeja with our daughter while my husband works on a farm, because we don’t have the possibility of employment in the city….The separation has been so hard.”
Fiorella has been displaced since 2004 and she has yet to receive any aid from the government institutions that are supposed to render assistance to the displaced.
Fiorella says, “I have none of the help I have the right to. I get social subsidies for my child only, not from the offices for the displaced. The government makes many political promises that it never keeps. Also, much of the aid is only given under certain conditions. If we had good jobs we would not live like this, in these conditions. If we had help, we would not be separated.”
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Fiorella's Story
While living with her husband and baby daughter in the Santander area of the Magdalena Medio region, Fiorella and her husband experienced many encounters with different armed groups. Fiorella remembers how the presence of the armed groups silenced dissent. “You don’t talk about it, but you live with the danger on a day to day basis. You see what happens and realize that it’s better to stay silent and not get mixed up in problems.”
For farming families like Fiorella’s, one aspect of the struggle is the constant issuing of ultimatums about loyalty. “The groups always say, ‘You are either cooperating with our group or you are working for the other group.” Fiorella emphasized that the Colombian regular armed forces use that same rhetoric to force the aid from the civilian population, even when such assistance places the lives of poor farming families in considerable danger. “Different groups arrived at the farm, continuously. They would stand in the farmyard. They came and would set themselves up there on the farm. And how could I tell them to leave? They would stay and feed off of us for eight to fifteen days at a time.”
Fiorella’s family was caught between the demands of the various rebel groups and the army until three years ago, when they were ousted from their land. “They demanded the majority of the people to leave the area. They arrived and told us, ‘You have two hours in which we will allow you to leave here.’ They wore uniforms and they came armed. They told us we had to leave because we were complicit with the activities of the other group. They told us they were the ones who gave the orders. The people who didn’t obey would be killed or disappeared. This made us afraid to refuse to comply….That was the moment in which my husband told me, ‘It’s time to leave. Are we going to wait for death? So, well, we left for the city.”
The city didn’t provide enough resources for both Fiorella and her husband—they had to separate in order to obtain employment. Fiorella explained, “I live here in Barrancabermeja with our daughter while my husband works on a farm, because we don’t have the possibility of employment in the city...The separation has been so hard.”
Fiorella has been displaced since 2004 and she has yet to receive any aid from the government institutions that are supposed to render assistance to the displaced.
Fiorella says, “I have none of the help I have the right to. I get social subsidies for my child only, not from the offices for the displaced. The government makes many political promises that it never keeps. Also, much of the aid is only given under certain conditions. If we had good jobs we would not live like this, in these conditions. If we had help, we would not be separated.”
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Josefina's Story
Josefina was raised by poor parents who couldn’t afford to educate her. They put her to work in various domestic jobs until her marriage at 22. Once married, she moved to a rural area with her husband, where they raised 7 children.
Armed groups were active in her area, and even though Josefina was not challenging their presence they still disturbed her attempts to live a peaceful life. Josefina and her family were consistently inconvenienced by requests for food and supplies from fighting factions on all sides of Colombia’s conflict.
“The armed groups go through the area. Sometimes they identify themselves, sometimes they ask for things or they tell us to sell them yucca or chicken…the army is just the same. If you don’t sell them or lend them what they want, they will kill you and take what they want anyway. That’s why it’s better to sell.”
Despite a lack of interest in community activism, and with no political ties to the conflict, Josefina’s family still suffered immense losses at the hands of armed groups. Josefina’s son was accused of being a guerilla and kidnapped by the army. As the army pulled her son away, she recalls, “Alonso yelled, ‘Good-bye mama, good-bye mama,’ and my soul left me.”
Later that afternoon she learned that her son had been taken along with several other boys. The blast of five gunshots caused her to realize her worst fears had become reality: “I had a premonition,” she says, “I knew they killed my son for sure…two days later I came to Barrancabermeja and his body was already in the ground. Someone told me that there hadn’t been a report; the army had just covered him with planks. So they made me a casket and we buried him. He was only 19 years-old.”
Ultimately the army confiscated Josefina’s land, telling Josefina and her family that they’d be killed if they tried to stay. Whenever they tried to return, her sons and husband received threats and in 2001 they had to leave for good. Up until recently, Josefina had been too afraid to denounce the actions of the armed groups, and thus had not been eligible for government assistance. In 2006, at the age of 66, she finally decided to register as a displaced person in an attempt to receive necessary aid.
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Julia's Story
As a child, Julia’s family was very poor and lived nomadically in search of food. They ended up in San Pablo, but Julia left at 16 when she met and married her husband. The young couple left San Pablo for a farming community in Pozo Azul, where they hoped to be able to earn a living as farmers. They rented land for a while, but Julia’s husband had to leave her to help his parents and care for his disabled brother. Whether together or apart, the couple worked tirelessly. Julia explains, “He worked as a field-hand, laboring with a machete on other people’s farms. I cooked for the laborers and sold them food. Our family survived in this way, living off of what we could grow and sell. When we could, we raised and sold hens. A big hen could get us as much as 22,400 to 26,000 pesos (10 to 12 USD), and with that money we could buy something to eat.”
Colombia’s growing concern with the illicit crop trade coincided with a worsening economic situation as fumigation damaged the local ecosystem. Julia reports, “All of the crops would be poisoned; the hens, the pigs everything died from the poison until coca was the only thing left. Because we were starving, one of my brothers gave us a cow, and with that we managed to survive. The milk was for the children and sometimes we had cheese or milk curds mixed with yucca or plantains.”
Julia’s life in the small farming community of Pozo Azul also became dangerous as the armed groups began to fight over control of the territory. She explained, “While living nearby us in Pozo Azul, my brother-in-law was kidnapped by the paramilitaries and disappeared. The day that happened, paramilitaries appeared on my husband’s parents’ farm and told one of my brother-in-laws that they needed him to come with them, giving no other explanation. My mother-in-law was frightened for her son and asked if they would allow her to accompany her son and the paramilitaries refused her request so my husband’s brother was forced to go alone. After a few days passed, my in-laws received news from the paramilitaries that my brother-in-law was dead and they gave directions to where his corpse had been disposed. My in-laws contacted us and my husband had to go and collect his brother’s body, and retrieve him from the shallow grave where he had been laid. My husband told me his brother had been dismembered and his body was barely recognizable. The paramilitaries warned my husband’s family that if they didn’t leave the area they would all be killed. After that my husband decided to bring his family to our home farther up in the hills. My husband worked on a farm and while I cared for his grieving parents and their handicapped son.”
Eventually, Julia’s parents and their other children, who were left behind in San Pablo, also began to have problems with the AUC paramilitares. Julia related the story of the slaying of one of her brothers at the hands of the paramilitaries: “One of my brothers was unwell mentally. At times he heard voices and saw things that weren’t there. Sometimes he would get drunk and take off his clothes in public. My brother would hide money on occasion keeping it to buy things like hens and ducks. One time the paramilitaries stopped him in town and demanded money. He refused to give them the money, saying it was his money and he wouldn’t give it away. The paramilitaries then took him away, up the river to Monterrey. It’s there that they killed him. When my parents learned the location of his body to recover him for a proper burial, my brother’s body had already rotted through.”
In spite of the death of one brother, Julia’s family continued to be threatened and intimidated. She recalls, “A few years later my little brother was forced by the guerillas to scout for them on one occasion. He was terrified to disobey, knowing how my older brother had been killed by another armed group. They told him they needed him to go and see if the army was stationed nearby. My little brother and another little boy were sent down the road by the guerilla. My brother didn’t see anything and he told that to the guerilla. But the army was hidden and when they attacked, after the battle the guerilla blamed my family and said they were on the side of the army.”
Julia relates a sense of constant insecurity as a campesino—“…you don’t know who is who, which people are loyal to their neighbors and which are parties to the armed conflict. The campo is the battleground of the armed groups here.”
The paramilitaries abused Julia’s family and the other rural farmers without hesitation. Families often had nothing left to eat after satiating the demands of armed groups, but they had no leverage to deny any requests—they were expendable and they knew it.
Julia always tried to avoid contact with the armed actors, but she found it impossible: “On one occasion, I found myself in the middle of an engagement between the guerilla and the army. I was with my two daughters living on our farm in Pozo Azul when I realized what was going on. I asked the guerilla for permission to leave the farm. They told me they would give me ten minutes to vacate the farm. But there I was in the middle of the fighting with my two girls, and I was pregnant. It was impossible to leave. We hid in the house, listening to the sounds of the shooting, and explosions of grenades and bombs.”
Julia knows that the consequences of the conflict are far-reaching. She described how the education of her children has been compromised: “If there is fighting, the teachers don’t come, classes are cancelled. Sometimes I would keep the kids home if I heard gunshots. You have to be careful not to expose them unnecessarily to danger. The battles start with the testing of the weapons. You hear the pop of the rifles and everything in the town stops. You try not to leave your house and the students can’t go to school.”
Julia doesn’t think she would be better off if her family registered as displaced and tried to live off what the government might offer them. She says, “People stay in the
campo because it is easier to eat there than in the city. You don’t have the same difficulties there as in the city. There everything is grown, here you must buy everything. But you think you are safer here. You think here your children may starve, but they may also live to see adulthood.”
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Martin's Story
Martin, 44, has spent two decades dealing with armed groups that shook him from his comfortable rural lifestyle and dropped him into a world of unease and unrest. Born in Cantagallo, Bolivar, Martin enjoyed a peaceful existence for much of his youth but the arrival of guerilla conflicts disturbed this serenity.
“My life was tranquil, I fished and raised cattle. But since 1988 there has been so much violence—clashes between the government and the guerillas escalated. There were indiscriminate bombings and here [the farmers] are the ones who suffered the consequences.”
In addition to spreading violence, armed groups pestered Martin with their constant needs. Food, clothing and shelter were demanded, not asked for, and dissent often produced fatal results.
“The guerillas would simply arrive at homes, knock on the door, and ask for something. We would provide it because those who refused to serve anyone were asking for trouble. If anyone rebels against them or says anything against any group, they will tell the person to stay quiet or get killed.”
One of the most painful experiences for Martin was his brother’s death. Accused of being involved with the guerillas, paramilitary forces executed him despite Martin’s claims that his brother was innocent. “There was nothing anyone could do,” he remembers.
On top of the threats of violence and the constant siphoning of resources, guerilla groups in the area brought additional desolation when they began growing illicit crops. Martin explains, “[The guerillas] presence was growing and the farmers were always caught in the middle of the conflicts between the paramilitants and the guerillas.”
Martin, his wife and their three children were soon displaced from Cantagallo because of this brutality, making their way to Barrancabermeja, where after two months in a shelter they were able to obtain was a small house and business that has yet to produce any income.
“When the massive displacement happened, they gave us some supplies but receiving aid isn’t an easy process—you have to fight for it…The decision to come to Barrancabermeja was difficult, but we took it as a family. We had to leave [Cantagallo]. I would not wish this on anyone—the repression and conflict. It would be better for them to try and create a dialogue.”
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Mateo's Story
When Mateo was a boy he lived with his family in Yondó, Antioquia. Hs family’s situation took a drastic turn for the worse when armed groups began to circulate in the farming community. After one of the armed groups visited the family’s house on various occasions, demanding that family members participate in community meetings, Mateo’s parents sold their home and tried to reestablish themselves in nearby cities. The family moved frequently as work was hard to find, and Mateo’s parents had difficulty supporting their large family. They traveled to San Francisco, La Poza, Yarumal, Parasol, Remedios, Caldas, Norcasia, San Diego, Belalcazar and finally settled for seven years in Barrancabermeja, where Mateo lived out his adolescence. It was during this time that Mateo’s brother was forcibly recruited by an armed rebel group and was eventually assassinated by the militia that had kidnapped him.
As a young man Mateo moved to the southern part of the Bolivar province to earn his living working on a farm. In 1998, the guerillas began to use the farming community in their dispute with the government and the paramilitaries. The guerilla group forced the farmers to stage a protest demanding that the paramilitaries and the army stop their campaign in the region. After the demonstration, the farmers were terrified of the certain retribution by the paramilitaries. This caused a mass exodus of the farming families from their lands. “We left behind everything: animals, crops, everything,” Mateo recalls.
Mateo moved to Bucaramanga, a larger city in the region, and met his wife. The two moved to a farm in the Magdalena Medio region and began their lives together, having children and raising livestock and crops.
Near the farm there was a mule path that was used frequently by the FARC guerilla group. Guerillas passed through the zone, “coming through and asking for accommodations when they were tired. Many times they stayed in my home, especially during the harvesting time on my property. Sometimes they told us to sell them food or a chicken. They never paid. Many times I would have liked to have said no, but I did what they asked because I was afraid they would retaliate. You don’t say no, out of fear you never say no. We were like servants or slaves. Their very presence filled us with fear. We saw how they killed many people and this made us afraid. They said that we had to collaborate with them or they would assume we were supporting the other groups.”
When the paramilitaries arrived in the area, the family became more fearful. The tension in the community mounted as the paramilitaries took possession of the land on some of the neighboring farms. The countryside became filled with armed men intent on killing their enemies. Mateo explains, “The paramilitaries took possession of some land a half hour from where we lived. They never arrived without arms, they always had large supplies of weapons and came groups of 300 to 400 people.”
Mateo remembers the scene of a clash that occurred the day after Christmas, 2002: “At midnight there were skirmishes between the armed patrols just five minutes from where we were living. The guerillas got involved and there was a massacre of some of the community members. We couldn’t leave until the next day to ask for help because the guerillas had blocked all the roads.” When the family eventually returned to the farm and tried to settle back into the routine of their lives, the targeted harassment of Mateo’s family by guerillas reached new heights.
Mateo was repeatedly beaten by guerillas, who accused him of being a paramilitary and of buying coca paste. Despite such baseless accusations, Mateo and his wife plead for mercy but denied the guerillas’ claims. Fearing further abuse, they fled, spending the ensuing months homeless and penniless, eating only what little Mateo could catch in a gully and some yucca.
Mateo and his family eventually returned to their home, hoping that the guerillas had moved on and that the family could resettle peacefully. But the guerillas resorted to the same harassment, repeating their former claims. In order to receive government aid, Mateo made the difficult decision to make a public denouncement and also to register as a displaced person. “I went to the government authorities on the 23rd of January to make a public denouncement against the perpetrators of our displacement. I was praying day and night because I had heard and read that the guerillas had infiltrated the District Attorney’s office. That’s why no one was making denouncements and registering their displacement.”
Mateo and his family tried to move in to their in-laws house, but they lived in an unhealthy swamp and his children got sick, so they had to move out. Now Mateo does occasional farm work, but he hasn’t been able to secure reliable income. Mateo and his family still have not received anything from the government, and they are unsure about what the future holds for them.
Beyond the material losses, Mateo is quick to recognize that displacement takes a severe emotional toll— “One of the things that the displaced people need most is psychological counseling. I wake up frightened and thinking that the guerillas are invading our home, that they have learned about my denouncement of their crimes in the District Attorney’s office.”
Mateo says the tragedy of displacement is compounded by the fact that society looks down on those who have to register for government aid. He prays for justice against those that stripped him and his family of their future and their livelihood. Summing up his feelings of impotence and frustration, Mateo describes the desolation in the zone where he lives now among other displaced families: “Here there isn’t even yucca, because there isn’t anywhere for us to grow it.”
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Nico's Story
Born in 1955 in San Martin de Oro, Bolivar, Nico earned many valuable experiences in his youth. His first job came at the age of 14 in Pueblo Nuevo and his first love came shortly thereafter in Cienega del Opon. It was in the 1980’s that Nice first noticed the arrival of the armed factions.
“Life was great [in Cienega del Opon]—we got up when we wanted, left when it seemed convenient and returned home when we wanted. This changed with the arrival of the armed groups…when I was young, a guerilla came to try to convince me to become one of them. I told him that when I made a decision, I did it was for myself, not because someone told me to do so.”
For the next decade, Nico remained in Cienega del Opon, putting up with violent militias like FARC despite their expanding assassinations. He recalls the day when 77 year-old police inspector Gilberto Suarez was murdered in front of him and a crowd of his fellow workers.
“I remember we were all fishing when a car pulled with five guys inside. They gathered up all the people fishing in the swamp, putting about 200 of us together. That was when they assassinated [Police Inspector Suarez]. They shot him three times in the head…they just killed him in front of everyone.”
FARC determined that Suarez was an army informant and they used his public execution to send a message to the people of Cienega del Opon. Nico understood the situation, but without any real threat to himself or his family, he initially remained in town because of the relative stability it afforded him and his children.
“When the threats from the paramilitants began,” Nico recalls, “I decided to leave the area... [it was] the sporadic assassinations…some people who were killed we knew and others were strangers but we never went out anymore either way.”
By 1996, Nico left Cienega del Opon for Barrancabermeja, where he was given a plot of land on which to build a farm; however, problems with his wife precipitated his return to Rio Opon four years later. There, large numbers of people were still being killed and even fishing had been prohibited.
The new millennium brought new challenges and hardships. At one point, Nico took part in a community action committee, appealing to groups like FARC and ELN to leave their area alone. They made threats of reporting the offensive groups but they were not taken seriously by either of the armed factions.
In 2000, with a household goods business in his name, he found out that armed groups were storing weapons in his home without his consent—“[One day] I got home and fell into bed and felt something hard. I got up under the sheets and I found three pistols. My family said someone came had told them to keep the guns. I took them and went to the guerilla commander and when I told him what had happened he told me that I was bringing problems upon myself. I told him that in my house I deserve respect and that I was never going to be silenced.”
Nico’s boldness, though admirable, quickly created trouble for him and his family. In March, several men came to his door, calling him by name. Fearing death if he ignored their calls, Nico opened the door for the men only to be snatched up so quickly that he could barely put on his sandals and a sweatshirt.
“I left and they brought me to the commander and as I walked toward the commander he told me to come closer. He pushed me and I fell 8 meters down the river bank before being tossed into the water. All I heard then was the sound of their engines starting and then they were gone. They set fire to my house and burned my store before they came back looking for me with a posse of 16 people.”
Nico reported his loss to the ombudsman in Barrancabermeja and fearing for his safety he remained in the city, begging for food and never sleeping the same place for too long. After spending over two decades in Cienega del Opon, he was left with nearly nothing to his name.
“In Cienega del Opon, I left more than just land, a house and a store—I left my home, my customs, my environment... I also lost precious time. Just because social service providers give us a little house and some help, that doesn’t recover the lost time and it doesn’t heal the psycho-social impact that stays with us.”
Though Nico is critical of some of the support he received following his ordeal he recognizes valuable help from organizations such as JRS, Accion Social, the Organizacion Femenina Popular and the local city government: “JRS has helped me see things that I didn’t before—they have really opened our eyes.”
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Ricardo's Story
Ricardo was a shy child, raised by a conservative family that moved around several times in his youth. Ricardo eventually found his voice, with the encouragement of his pastor, and became active in politics and community development. Ricardo took on a leadership role when his family—indeed his entire community—was displaced because of violent conflicts between the ELN and paramilitaries. After traveling through various towns in search of aid, shelter, and safety for his family, he ended up in Pie de Cuesta. There he started a community organization.
Sadly the reward for his leadership was threats from both guerillas and paramilitaries. After receiving several threats of death and suffering other forms of intimidation, and after being caught in his initial attempts to flee, Ricardo was eventually able to escape the region with the help of local nuns and the Red Cross.
His break from the terror of armed groups was short-lived. While living in hiding in the convent, Ricardo says, “I happened to leave to buy some cigarettes, and I encountered a paramilitary member that told me what I had done by trying to leave, [he said] now I was on a list of 32 people who were going to be assassinated, and my wife was on that list too.”
After yet another move, Ricardo, his wife, and their 7 children, now living in Cienaga del Opon, were again unable to live peacefully. Ricardo recalls, “My wife was working as a telephone operator for Telecom, and the guerilla came to her work and told her she was an informant and they were going to kill her…Then the AUC paramilitia came by asking if the guerilla had come by. They said we had an hour to leave because if we stayed there we would die, there was going to be a confrontation between the guerillas and us. Everyone left terrified, we had to leave one of our daughters behind at her aunt’s house.”
Amid the violence and conflicting demands of armed groups, Ricardo and his family suffered tremendous losses. His uncle was murdered right in front of him, killed by an armed group to teach Ricardo a lesson after he complained about their requests for food. He lost his house and land, but for Ricardo the emotional costs of an uncertain future and the prospect of having to leave his homeland are the highest prices he has had to pay. He has requested asylum, and even though he hopes to be able to stay in Barrancabermeja to take care of his elderly mother, if things don’t improve he will seek asylum in Canada.
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Valentina's Story
Valentina is a 29-year-old woman living in a common law marriage with her husband and three children and over the last decade armed conflict robbed them of their livelihoods and sense of place. Valentina reflects on how much her life has changed during her ten years of marriage. “When I was 19, I went with my husband to live a farming life in Monterrey, a town in the Municipio of Simití, north of here. We had a lot back then: 100 hectares of land, a house of our own, and farm animals. We still want to go back there, even after all that has happened.”
Not long after Valentina and her husband arrived in Monterrey, the FARC guerilla group began to circulate in the area, visiting the farmsteads and warning the community of the presence of an opposing armed group in the region. “They said that the paramilitaries were coming to kill all the campesinos. Not long after they had visited the farm, we heard gunshots from a battle. We tried to flee down the mountain to wait out the battle but the guerilla caught us and would not let us go.” Terrified, Valentina and her husband waited out the battle as the skirmishing armed groups invaded their farm.
Frequently thereafter, Valentina says, “The guerilla would arrive at our house and tell me to cook for them. We had so little and I was hesitant. They would tell us, if we didn’t do the task willfully, they would make us. We knew what that meant…. Sometimes, I would find the strength to refuse them, but that would result in my family being held in the house for hours at a time until I gave in.”
Eventually, the presence of the various armed groups became ubiquitous, “At first I was scared,” remembers Valentina, “I lived with constant fear. But one becomes accustomed to seeing the army and the different armed groups. At first I was a fearful person, uncomfortable; I would be afraid to see them, especially when they would be standing in my kitchen with their guns, demanding a meal. When I was young, my brother was murdered by an armed group, and when I saw them I would start to tremble, and feel a lot of fear. But 10 years has now passed with me living in such conditions, in the constant presence of the groups that operate in the Magdalena area. Now it doesn’t scare me to see the guns. Sometimes, when there has been recent terror or fighting, I carry an old pistol with me so I too can feel brave.”
In time, things became too dangerous for the family to stay in Monterrey. “The guerilla would always demand that we do more for them. They told us we had two options: Work with them or leave the farm for good. I got very angry and we had a verbal confrontation. I told them we would not go. Then they accused us of working with the paramilitary groups. I told them ‘You aren’t so brave; you all carry arms. You feel brave because you stand there with your guns.’” After the confrontation the family had to leave their home. Valentina’s outspokenness had placed their lives in peril.
The family left Monterrey for Aguas Lindas. But when they arrived in the town, they found no job prospects and a complete lack of opportunity for starting anew. “The transition from the farm to town life where we couldn’t grow our own food proved too hard and we had to leave soon after for Chaparral, el Campo, a more rural community in Alto San Juan. That region was overrun by armed battalions who looked at us with suspicion. They wouldn’t let us build a home in the safer areas and instead offered us deserted land where we would have to live in the middle of the fighting. We had already been through a similar situation and I refused to put my family in such danger again.”
Most recently the family arrived in San Pablo, where they have not been able to receive any type of government assistance or support because Valentina can’t bring herself to make official denouncements. The government offers no special protection for people who complete the denouncement process, and Valentina believes that the government is too corrupt to be trusted; her family isn’t “safe enough to think about legal action.”
Valentina’s family situation in San Pablo is truly desperate. She explains, “I live in San Pablo now, working as a maid when I can find a person willing to hire me. I never make more than one dollar a day and the lack of opportunity has had me contemplating returning to my land to see if the armed groups have perhaps moved on. This is very dangerous, but we have so little here and sometimes I think it was better to live with the terror of the battles in the rural areas than to die slowly in hiding.”
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Walter's Story
Walter is a 35-year-old man who lives with his wife and four children. He has had various experiences and conflicts with the armed actors, some of which resulted in the forced provision of different types of aid. Walter’s displacement stemmed from death threats that he received from various armed groups. Walter and his family have not yet received any type of assistance from government institutions, despite his three years of displacement.
Walter was a farmer for some years in Aguas Lindas, a small community near the Magdalena River. “I farmed various crops on the five hectares I rented. We farmed corn, yucca, and plantains.” To live his life in peace on his rented land Walter was obliged to pay the FARC guerilla group approximately one hundred dollars every three months. “This is the life of the campesino in Colombia,” Walter explained. “The armed groups who fight for control in the region are all the same in their demands. They coerced the campesinos to do different tasks for them, like digging trenches, constructing sheds, and, for those of us who had the talent, repairing things. They kept demanding more money from us for us to continue to live and work in the region. Each new armed group would ask for their share of money.”
Eventually it became clear that merely paying the armed groups and performing the small tasks demanded would not be enough for Walter to guarantee the safety of his family. “The majority of my problems with armed groups come from the involvement of my extended family in politics in the region. Some of my family members are outspoken members of the rightist movements and because of this, people have claimed I am a member of the autodefensa paramilitary unit. The political struggle has caused a lot of problems in Colombia and I prefer to not be involved with those who are involved. But because of my family’s history, the guerillas have come to look for me and harass me on various occasions. They watch me more closely than they do others.”
On one occasion the guerillas visited Walter’s home and demanded that he prove his loyalty by joining them in their war. “I told them, I can’t leave to work for someone else. I am independent. I said ‘No, I don’t want to become part of this conflict. I am a campesino, I work, I have my family. I can’t put my children’s lives in danger by joining your group. I am a free person.’ They responded, ‘Think about it, we would pay you for your efforts.’”
A month or so later the guerillas returned again, bringing with them a list of items they needed from the market. Walter says, “They demanded that I go down to the town and buy provisions for their group. It consisted principally of crackers, aguardiente [a strong Colombian liquor], and various supplies. They made me go because they said they couldn’t be seen in the town. I had no choice but to do what I was told. If one refuses they say, ‘here everyone must collaborate.’ So I completed the shopping for them and when I returned, they gave me another list of things to buy for them.”
Walter voiced the harsh reality of rural life in the shadow of Colombia’s conflict: “It was a choice between completing these small tasks and becoming an actual part of their fighting force. You cannot choose not to cooperate at all. That is not an option.”
In November of 2001, the paramilitaries came to Aguas Lindas and began making their own demands on the people. “The AUC paramilitaries arrived in Aguas Lindas and detained all of us farmers. They told us they needed 20 people to go with them to complete a job. Without any explanations they said, come and follow us. They made us fill sacks with earth and sand for them to use in the making of trenches. About eight days later they detained me once again. I said to them ‘But I have work to get done. They would not let me refuse. They said, ‘If you refuse us, you know what your fate will be.’ They gave me a sealed message and commanded that I go and deliver it to someone on the other side of town. I went and delivered the message and left quickly. I wanted nothing to do with the whole thing. No more than ten minutes after I delivered the message, a battle started.”
Eventually, the paramilitaries’ request escalated beyond the point where it was safer to comply—they damanded that Walter transport their coca for them. When Walter refused, the paramilitaries would not take no for an answer. They threatened his life and the lives of his loved ones. “I decided to leave my home in Aguas Lindas and to move to San Pablo because finally the threats from the AUC paramilitaries became too many to bear.”
Walter’s life in San Pablo has been difficult, though he has tried very hard to support his family through creative recycling of other people’s trash. He worries that the paramilitaries who control San Pablo may recognize him as the farmer who refused the demands of another paramilitary unit in Aguas Lindas.
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