See Part 1 before reading this.
There are a few important stories that actually belong with the first part. When we entered the village where the miners were gathered, after climbing up that mountain, for the second time for me since working in Colombia, the campesinos started applauding as we walked in.
It is moving and embarrassing at the same time, and for that reason it made me think. It feels to me that these little towns are so isolated...the only way you can get there is by mule...and that increases their sense of insecurity, and their sense that the armed groups can do whatever they want to them with impunity. For that reason the presence of outsiders brings huge relief. Later, in talking with one of the community leaders privately, I felt that my sense of this was confirmed. He said that before the accompaniment group arrived, the people were really agitated and talking of taking up arms, not able to think of another option to defend their rights. But once the accompaniment arrived, they calmed down.
Another useful bit of information is that the mining region has been used for growing coca as a cash crop for the past number of years, and artisan mining is the community's answer to replacing a cash crop with something else that brings in cash. But now the multinational mining companies have made a deal with the Colombian government, and so the campesinos are being forced out. And, on top of everything else, there are fumigations going on in the same area, which kills off the coca, but also kills off everything else alive in its path.
Like other campesinos I have talked to, these folks just want to be kept out of the government's war. They want to preserve their way of life on the land with their human rights respected, and they would like to do it peacefully. But what they say is that the military assumes that all campesinos are guerrilla, and they use that as an excuse to abuse them, when the real reason for the abuse is that powerful Colombians stand to make lots of money when the multinationals take over the mining operations. Not to mention powerful North Americans.
To continue from part 1: we accompanied about 140 campesinos to Santa Rosa, the regional center, and about 400 more came the next afternoon, and by Sunday there were over a thousand. Sunday night they held a candlelight march and vigil in the central plaza to remember their assassinated leader and other assassinated and disappeared leaders. It was that night when I overheard one of the miners say "Que multitud tan linda," because a group of them that size had never gathered together before to do a public action.
Early in the process they started lobbying high level government officials to come to Santa Rosa for a dialogue about military abuses in their region. The Catholic diocese was heavily involved in these negotiations, and also with accompaniment of the mobilization to Santa Rosa. The miners stipulated that they did not want elements from the military at the table with them. They said that Colombia is supposed to be a democracy, and in a democracy the civilian authorities are in charge of the military authorities, and they wanted to talk to the bosses. When the delegation arrived from Bogota, and it was a high level delegation, there were generals aboard the helicopter. The communities said they would not meet with the miltary, and they took to the streets again. This was Tuesday. The delegation from Bogota left without dialogue.
The miners again marched for justice, and at the end they occupied the central plaza, staying there through Tuesday evening. They decided to draft a letter to the government expressing the urgent need for dialogue and repeating that they did not want military at the table. They said they planned to stay mobilized in Santa Rosa until they get a meeting. As of today, they are still there.
We returned Wednesday night to Barranca, because we felt that they were likely not under threat of violence in Santa Rosa at this moment, and we could be of more help to them from Barranca, where there are functioning computers. We have written our own letter to Colombian authorities, and have put an urgent action out on CPTs listserve inviting others to do likewise.
When think about the miner demand to meet only with civilian authorities, I think of it as them refusing to negotiate with their abusers, but rather holding the abusers accountable to a higher authority. At first I could not understand it, but after thinking of it in this way, it makes sense to me that they would not want to meet with them.
I was at Mass one night in Santa Rosa--they have one every evening at 7:00--with my required CPT shirt on, and afterward two women from the town who were sitting next to me and who had read my shirt followed me outside because they wanted to give me a blessing. They made the sign of the cross over my chest and prayed that the Holy Spirit would stay in my heart so that I would be able to work for peace.
