Human Rights Accompaniment, Part 2

See Part 1 before reading this.

Just as we were leaving the last village--the one with all the applause--someone handed us a packet of pictures and said it was proof that they were fumigating in the area. Crop fumigations are part of US drug policy and are US funded to eradicate coca. They do flyovers spraying this toxic chemical which kills everything, including legal crops, and makes people sick. The only thing is, everyone agrees that there is no coca in this area. It is a drug corridor, meaning that coca is transported through there from the mountains to the ocean, but it is not grown there, so why the crop fumigations?

In the famous meeting with officials (more about that below) they vehemently denied the fumigations. But we showed the photos to some other officials, and they said, yep, it looks like fumigations. They killed avacado trees, which is the main cash crop of the region. The officials who denied the fumigations said the trees had been infected with a fungus, and later we learned that, in fact, they are now fumigating with a fungus. So nobody lied. Presumably the military killed the avocado trees in order to target the guerrilla, who are active in the area, and probably own some of the avocado plantations. But by doing so they also target small subsistence farmers.

The meeting came as a surprise to everyone involved. The group of lawyers had invited a small group of civil and military functionaries from the region, and when we got there, about 50 had shown up. They brought with them two truckloads of campesinos to contradict the complaints we were about to present. The lasted all day, and became a shouting match at times, and at times I was afraid it was going to get violent. When we met separately with the campesinos planted by the government, they did not contradict anything we had to present. Rather, they came to make statements that the guerrilla do bad things, too. Apparently the miltary had told them that we were there to denounce the military on behalf of the guerrilla!

It seemed to us that the authorities were doing everything possible to prevent the group from presenting and pursuing the complaints. One of the main points of contention at the meeting (aside from fumigations) was over the presence of paramilitary in the region. All of the civil and military authorities in the room flatly denied the presence of paramilitaries. However, the Defensor de Pueblo, the government authority vested with human rights protection, confirmed to us privately that they know paras are present, despite the famous demobilization program.

And, we know better. We have heard too many horrific reports of paramilitary activity from other communities in the region. People talk about massacres when paramilitaries cut people up alive with chainsaws and use their heads as soccer balls. Your tax dollars at work, because it is widely understood that paramilitaries act on behalf of the Colombian military.