“Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people.” Kingian Nonviolence, Principle 1 

When I was growing up in the 1960’s, my ideas about courage came primarily from television. The nightly news showed clips of soldiers facing violence and death in Vietnam and Wide World of Sports showed athletes performing dangerous feats. I saw these examples of people in dramatic and frightening situations, and it never occurred to me that courage could be a part of everyday life. Even farther from my mind was the idea that courage had anything to do with love, an idea which would be introduced to me decades later at the University of Rhode Island’s Summer Nonviolence Institute.

With its tree-lined walkways, its peony gardens, and its sunlit multicultural center, the University of Rhode Island campus in June of 2018 was a welcoming and uplifting environment in which to study Dr. Martin Luther King’s approach to nonviolence. During the two-week training program, we studied the six steps and six principles of Kingian Nonviolence. In the context of the first principle, “Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people,” we discussed the Latin root “cour” which means “heart.” We talked about the important implications that this link to the heart has for our understanding of our own capacity for courage. Could courage be motivated by love? Could conflict be processed by a loving heart that does not divide people? Could loving courage forge stronger bonds through the difficult, honest work of seeing with empathy? With this kind of courage, the goal of engaging in conflict might shapeshift from winning (and avoiding losing) to the sixth and final step of a nonviolent campaign—reconciliation between former opponents. 

I wanted to write about Dr. King’s legacy. Dr. Bernard Lafayette, who once served as Dr. King’s National Program Director, put me in touch with Luis Botero, a Kingian Nonviolence trainer who brought King’s principles to governmental office. Governor Guillermo Gaviria Correa of the province of Antioquia, Colombia, appointed Botero to the position of Nonviolence Advisor to the Governor of Antioquia in 2001. As far as I was able to ascertain, this was the first time in history that a political appointment included the word “nonviolence” in the title. The purpose of the position was to help the Governor integrate the philosophy of Kingian Nonviolence into his government institutions and into his own decision making. I interviewed Botero by phone about the nonviolent campaign in Antioquia, and he encouraged me to travel there in order to experience firsthand the people, the places, and the cultural context of Dr. King’s legacy in Colombia.

In October of 2018, Botero and I arrived in the remote village of Caicedo, a town of 7,000 people high in the Andes Mountains. A handful of Caicedo citizens pulled up white plastic chairs and talked with us around a table in a small café for hours. During the 1990’s, their town suffered from a series of terrorist attacks by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC guerrillas. Some were pulled from their beds at gunpoint during the night. Some stood in execution lines as the guerrillas asked them their names, checked a list on a clipboard, and shot the people whose names were on the list. One man described diving under a table at the bar he owned as machine gunfire roared outside. After the village police station was bombed, the government informed the town that it was too expensive to maintain a police presence, and these people were left defenseless in a jungle region controlled by the FARC.

Amidst this terrible violence, citizens wondered: “What should we do?” They came to an unexpected and courageous conclusion: “Until we disarm our hearts, the war never stops.”

They could have chosen to lay down their weapons while still hating the guerrillas. They could have continued to fear the guerrillas, fear for their lives, and fear losing everything they loved about life. They could have shielded their hearts with a tough and divisive attitude and with sharp-tongued, hurtful comments. Instead, the literally defenseless people challenged the FARC and refused to submit, all while refusing weapons and disarming their hearts.

The Governor saw their courage. He announced he would lead an unarmed march with no police or army escort over the 60-mile route from Medellín to Caicedo. He led more than a thousand people and walked for five days, calling the march a “great effort” to meet with the FARC leaders and negotiate a nonviolent solution to the conflict. Lafayette, Botero, the Governor’s wife, Yolanda, the Governor’s Minister of Peace, Gilberto Echeverri Mejia, and a Priest named Father Yepez were among the marchers. Instead of accepting the offer to open negotiations, the FARC guerrillas chose instead to kidnap the Governor, the Minister of Peace, Lafayette, and Father Yepez. While they released Lafayette and Father Yepez in less than a day, they kept the Governor and the Minister of Peace hostage for more than a year. On May 5, 2003, the Governor and the Minister of Peace lost their lives during a failed rescue attempt by the army. Many other hostages, all of them soldiers in the Colombian army, died along with them. Had disarming the heart failed?

My visit to Caicedo was fifteen years after the Governor and the Minister of Peace died. The café where I met the citizens of Caicedo doubled as a small museum which displayed posters, photographs, and memorabilia of the March to Caicedo. The people told me that although the Governor and Minister of Peace did not survive, their sacrifice marked the end of the FARC terrorist attacks against the village. Caicedo was never attacked again.

“Never?” I asked.

“Never,” answered Edila Gonzalez Cano, one of the citizens who had refused to cooperate with the guerrillas, “Never, ever again.”

Before I left the village, the people of Caicedo gave me copies of the books they had written about their experiences. After I returned home, I kept their books beside my bed, and when I would wake in the morning I would flip through the pages, contemplating the extraordinary courage of the people I had met. The books include photographs of the townspeople gathered around large sheets of paper taped to a wall. With crayons and magic markers, the people drew pictures of their violent history. Several stuck in my mind, even to this day: A green figure holds a rifle spewing brown dots of gunfire into the face of another figure with a triangle for a skirt whose brown paint stroke of an arm touches the hand of the figure beside her, who also touches a third, child-sized figure. Above their heads, lines of blue paint represent the sky; beside them is a rectangle topped by a triangle to represent a simple home; below them are three animals and some trees. On another page, a man lies on the ground, a red hole in his heart, red blood on the ground beside him, a yellow sun shining above. At his feet stands a figure defined by black paint strokes and a long black gun; at his head stands a similar, someone bearing a rifle. But the picture that I find most compelling is one labeled “After.” The landmarks of Caicedo have been drawn: the church at the center, lots of small houses, a stream and a small bridge, and lots of red flowers. Some people seem to have tears on their cheeks; some seem to be lying on the ground as if they are dead. But around the whole scene are drawn three hearts, like rings of a tree. Courage.

The transformation of terror, grief, and anger into love is extraordinary, but meeting the people of Caicedo left no doubt in my mind that they had achieved this spiritual reality. They had no bitterness. On the contrary, their voices were warm and gentle, their treatment of me was open and generous, and the very air around them seemed to have a sweetness and a strength that bore testament to the power of their spiritual disarmament.

In my own life, my personal conflicts are small. They seem trivial compared to confronting terrorism, extreme violence, and the loss of friends and family. Still, they are the material I have to directly put my nonviolence skills into practice as a way of life. Recently, a friend cut herself off from me without explanation, and I felt shamed and hurt. Drawing upon Caicedo’s example, I drew a picture of the two of us as stick figures, and I drew a heart around us both. Although I hadn’t acted, my internal perspective shifted. In my mind, I saw her warm smile; I heard her laugh. 

A way of life is deep work. It’s not fancy and it’s not dramatic, and that is its own challenge. But does it matter? Does it matter to draw a picture of a small interpersonal conflict? Does it matter if I do the internal work to disarm my heart in this minor situation?

I decided to believe that it does matter. It may not change anyone or anything else, but it means that I am living in alignment with the principles and steps of nonviolence. I am living my life according to my values, and that has integrity.

A week later, without strategizing or planning, I ended up in a crowded room standing next to my estranged friend. She looked me in the eyes and smiled. She squeezed my hand. It was not a flashy moment, but would it have happened if I had held onto my hurt feelings and my anger, or would my body language have sent a message that led my friend to turn around and find another place to stand? What do we really understand about the power of love and how it works in the world of cause and effect?

Caicedo’s example indicates that disarming the heart may have more potential than we have yet to imagine. My own example is small, but meaningful. I know that I will continue working to bring this lesson forward with me into the whole of my life and all of its conflicts, both big and small. If we disarm our hearts at every opportunity, if we partner with our leaders and they with us, we may yet discover that Governor Guillermo Gaviria Correa’s slogan for his 2003 March to Caicedo stands the test of time as we face both ordinary conflicts and extraordinarily violent and complicated situations: Si . . . Hay un Camino: La Noviolencia. Yes . . . there is a way: Nonviolence.