In Colombia, Solidarity Is Fundamental
by Judith Kelly

Published in EPICA, Fall 2006

When I met Hector Aristizabal, a performance artist and Colombian torture survivor at the School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) lobby days last April, I asked his advice on going to Colombia for the first time. I think he could tell that I had some reservations, but he gave me unequivocal encouragement. ” Go! You will have a great time!” he said. “You will dance all night!”

Intriguing. Go to a country considered a human rights disaster, and dance?

From July 7-17, 2006, I did go to Colombia on a human rights/labor rights
delegation, sponsored by Witness for Peace. Dr. Lesley Gill, an American University anthropology professor and Christy Pardew, communications coordinator with SOAW, co-led our seventeen-member group. Professor Gill had written The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas on the inner workings of the infamous “school of assassins.” She is currently researching a book about labor organizing in Colombia.

I am very involved with SOAW activities, an extension of my work with
Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service. I facilitate nonviolence trainings in the
Washington, DC area. In November of 2002, as an act of conscience, I walked onto the grounds of Ft. Benning, GA, the site of the US Army School of the Americas (SOA, renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation — WHINSEC). I was arrested by military police and held overnight in Muscogee County Jail with over 90 others. After a trial before a federal magistrate, I served a three-month sentence for a misdemeanor trespass at Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia.

As a former SOAW prisoner of conscience, I wanted to experience Colombia with other activists involved in trying to close the SOA. On our delegation, there were lawyers, anthropologists, activists and students from all over the U.S.; two activists from Germany volunteering in the U.S. also joined us. Two good friends of mine were able to go: Theresa Cameranesi, a nurse from San Francisco very active with SOA Watch West’s research and lobbying activities, and one of my SOAW co-defendants, Vera Leone. She and I had been in Alderson prison together. Back then, she told me she had met a Colombian unionist in 2002 who she considered a hero. For all three of us, and most of the others on the delegation, it was our first visit to Colombia.

Two Witness for Peace international team members, Amanda Martin and Kath Nygard, arranged a thorough, two-day orientation in Bogota. Colombia is a very complicated reality and Colombians have struggled through a long and brutal civil war. The U.S. government provides billions in aid, mostly military, in an attempt to curb the drug trade that continues to fuel the conflict. Two key factors resonated with us: Colombia is the biggest customer of SOA/ WHINSEC training. And Colombia also has the highest incidence of human rights abuses in Latin America.

After two days in chilly Bogota, we traveled to hot and steamy Barrancabermeja, about an hour’s flight north. It is an oil refinery center with a long history of human rights abuses due to military and paramilitary attacks. Barrancabermeja, also known as Barranca, is considered a high-risk location. We took all precautions –always walking in pairs during the day, or in groups of four at night — to avoid becoming targets ourselves.

For the three days of our visit, we wore our bright blue Witness for Peace tee shirts to visit offices linked to the human and labor rights situation. We also met with members of the Colombian military on a base outside of Barranca. All of the people we met with – labor leaders, union organizers, women’s group leaders, teachers, lawyers, and even the military –have learned how to live right on the edge. Activists endure constant death threats, kidnappings, harassment, and humiliation, most often from paramilitary groups closely aligned with the Colombian military. They are constantly being watched. Their homes or offices have been “visited” as a warning that the dark forces can eliminate whoever they choose.

Jackeline Rojas, co-founder of a prominent women’s group in Barranca, broke into tears at the beginning of our meeting. She had received death threats in the weeks leading up to our visit. Portraits of her colleagues, with their recent assassination dates, hung on the meeting room wall. Her partner is a union activist. Her husband was a victim of the violence.

As we learned of this reality for activists in Colombia, many used exactly the same words: “For us, international solidarity is fundamental.” Fundamental. Activists believe they survive because someone outside Colombia has taken an interest in their welfare.

Our simple presence, fundamental? Like Woody Allen’s line that 90% of life is just showing up? Why had I not gone to Colombia earlier if just being present meant so much?

A “Chance” Encounter

On our first day in Barranca, our delegation met with representatives of the National Food and Beverage Workers Union (SINALTRAINAL) at their office, guarded by a man with an automatic weapon. Many of their members have been threatened or killed throughout the country for trying to improve conditions for themselves and Colombia. At great risk, they organized an international “Killer Coke” campaign to expose the brutal labor practices of the Coca-Cola Corporation. Posters of bodies floating in a brown soda are meant to shock, and they do. As we began the circle of introductions in the SINALTRAINAL office, Vera Leone went first. She smiled and, to our surprise, told the group, “In 2002, at a Witness for Peace retreat in North Carolina, I met William Mendoza.” She gestured towards a big, burly man across the room. He handled the human rights reporting for the union and often traveled abroad. In 2002 he had had to leave Colombia for his safety. “I listened to his story and the risks he lived with every day, ” Vera said. “It is because of William Mendoza that I decided to cross the line and risk arrest at the School of the Americas.”

The translator informed all the Spanish speakers in the room of Vera’s words.

Mendoza, in a “Killer Coke” campaign tee shirt, looked up, puzzled.

Vera was a junior at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, when she trespassed onto the base at Ft. Benning. Because she had also “crossed the line” at a prior vigil, she had a ban-and-bar letter. She knew the sentence would be harsh.

Mendoza asked, “And did they detain you?”

Vera nodded yes.

“For how long?” he asked.

“Six months,” she said, still smiling.

When the translator said “Seis meses,” there were gasps and murmurs throughout the room. William Mendoza, now smiling, shook his head, incredulous.

Their reconnection was pure luck. Vera had no idea she would see William on this trip. And I doubt that William had any idea that Vera had made her decision based on meeting him. Witnessing their mutual wonder, admiration and gratitude, my eyes filled with tears. Here was William, thank God, still alive four years later and able to hear of Vera’s prison witness. And Vera, now 23, could honor her hero in his own hometown with his colleagues present. The Zen saying, “The seed never sees the flower” is usually true, but at that moment, the blossoms smelled sweet.

Prison Solidarity

The Witness for Peace international team had arranged for our group to visit two high security political prisoners. I never imagined we would be visiting anyone in a Colombian prison. Lawyers from the Political Prisoners Solidarity Committee, themselves a threatened group, accompanied us. We split up and my group visited Samuel Morales, a former teacher and union leader, in La Modelo Prison in Bogota. He had been detained since August 5, 2004.

Five union activists from Arauca, a highly contested area near the Venezuelan border, were found in an early morning raid by the Colombian military. Soldiers shot and killed three of the union leaders. Two others, Raquel Castro and Samuel Morales, were also present. One of the military said to his companions, “Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this,” and Raquel Castro responded, “No! No more killing!” That saved their lives. They were taken into custody and have been held on trumped-up “rebellion” charges ever since.

Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world to be a union activist. The Colombian military suspects all union activists of having links to leftist guerrilla forces. According to the Political Prisoners Solidarity Committee, anyone in Colombia can be taken in on suspicion of terrorist links. Human rights advocates are considered terrorist sympathizers. In essence, anyone working for change of any kind is suspect.

Vera and I walked into La Modelo Maximum Security Prison together, remembering our time at Alderson Federal Prison Camp. It stirred up angst and trauma for both of us. The bars, the guards. One of the men in our group who had done a year in prison as a young man broke into sobs during our pre-visit orientation. We tried to support each other.

After multiple layers of draconian security checks –more than I’ve ever experienced— we found Samuel Morales, 34, in a separate wing set aside for political prisoners. “Hello, I’m Samuel,” he said, as he smiled and shook hands with each of us. We gathered around a white plastic table in a common “patio” where the men on his wing cooked their meals. At one point, one of his inmate friends brought out a plastic jug of Colombian soda. Samuel poured out some pink fizzy drink into plastic cups. Hospitality. Even in prison.

Samuel Morales is an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience and has support from a number of advocacy groups. He looked healthy and appeared to be in good spirits. When Vera and I introduced ourselves, we shared that we were former SOAW prisoners of conscience. Samuel nodded and smiled, knowingly. “I have been to the vigil at the School of the Americas,” he said. Though our sentences and situations were in no way comparable, we sensed a bond. He referred to us as presos politicos. Political prisoners.

As we sat there, Samuel conducted a teach-in about solidarity, activism and the development work he wants to continue back in Arauca. We hung on his every word, impressed and uplifted, but without pens or paper to take notes. We could only carry what was etched on our hearts. As we left, some of us were in tears, but tried to sing a verse of “Courage, brother, you do not walk alone.” He gave us address labels cut from his support mail and embraced each of us at the metal bar door. “Adios, madrecita,” he said to me. Goodbye, little mother.

As is so often the case in solidarity work, in the darkest places, the brightest lights appear. Everyone we met in Colombia made a deep impression, from union members to peasant farmers, from lawyers to flower industry workers, from the Mennonite pastor who prepared our meals to the woman who asked us to help find her missing 12- year-old son.

Vera’s hero, William Mendoza, the SINALTRAINAL unionist leader, ended his presentation to us by paraphrasing a quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. “Like King, I don’t worry about the bad people who do bad things. I worry about the good people who don’t do anything,” he said. ” I think you are good people and that you will do good things.”

We all took in what we heard and felt humbled. How do Colombians keep going with so much pain, so much despair? Amanda Martin, the Witness for Peace international team co-leader, shared her theory about the capacity for pain and the capacity for joy, rather like an index one can measure. From her experience, the people of Colombia who have suffered such tremendous pain throughout their violent history also have an amazing ability to find the joy in every situation. “The more pain,” she said, “the more joy when it’s possible.”

Such as dancing all night in the middle of a civil war? Hector said I would have a great time, and I did. I personally didn’t dance all night, but many of our beautiful, young delegation members had the energy to stay up and party. Makes me smile. May we all keep on the solidarity road, dancing when we can, crying when we must. It’s fundamental.