by Stewart Vriesinga

Threats to the security of campesinos (subsistence farmers) living in Colombia's Cimitarra Valley continue.  While the campesinos insist that the government has an obligation to protect them, most believe that government interventions actually promote their forced displacement as part of an effort to expropriate their farms and territory to make way for a number of mega-projects - new highways along the Magdalena River, huge multinational mining projects, a hydro-electric dam and expansion of the bio-fuel industry (African Palm plantations).  Two rival paramilitary-run drug cartels also threaten the local population in a battle for control of local coca production.

In March, CPTers joined a human rights verification commission that travelled to the region at the request of the Association of Campesinos of the Cimitarra Valley (ACVC) to document past and ongoing human rights abuses and threats.  The commission comprised local non-governmental organizations (NGOs); representatives of the Organization of American States; national, regional and local (municipal) governmental representatives, and three international accompaniment NGOs.

Local residents and community leaders painted a bleak picture of ongoing security risks and the immediate likelihood of more displacements. They recounted military operations in which community members were assassinated and then dressed up and passed off as guerrillas who died in combat.  They explained that demobilized guerrilla and paramilitary informers were travelling with the military and pointing out their community leaders, who were subsequently accused of treason and arrested.  They described how U.S.-sponsored aerial spraying wiped out their food crops and the cacao (chocolate) trees they had planted as an alternative to coca (from which cocaine is derived.)

They explained that community residents had agreed to manual eradication of coca plants on the condition that the government provide an economically viable alternative.  However, the army troops involved in the coca eradication were also burning down their houses!  In addition, the leftist FARC guerillas were targeting the military personal by planting landmines on the paths and in the fields, thus preventing farmers from working and moving about.

They went on to describe collaboration between the military and right-wing paramilitaries.  They told how the soldiers used them as human shields and stayed for days in one of their villages.

The residents of these communities welcomed the commission, but expressed skepticism about whether our presence there would increase their security.  They informed us that when community leaders make official complaints about how the armed groups are treating them, these armed groups target their leaders.

Even so, they are determined to struggle on as a community.  Applying for "Displaced Person's Status" might entitle them to some government funds to relocate, but they would end up dispersed, and the likelihood of their being able to return to their lands would be greatly diminished.  For most of them, the prospect of permanent separation from their land is unthinkable.  As one community member put it, "We are all already displaced people.  That's how we came here in the first place!"