by Stewart Vriesinga
Reverend Salvador Alcántara, from Garzal township, is a remarkable, exemplary
and inspirational man. He is a husband,
father, grandfather, pastor of a local church, farmer, president of the Garzal
town council, and vice-president of ASPROAS – Association of Alternative
Producers of Simití. That he is able to
take on all these tasks and do them well has earned him the respect of both the
larger municipality and his own smaller community of Garzal. His interpretation of his pastoral duties has
led him to become involved in his community’s struggle to stay on their lands
in the face of constant threats of forced mass displacement.
The much-heralded achievements of
Colombian President Uribe’s administration – the demobilization of
paramilitaries and the recovery of large tracts of land once controlled by
guerrilla groups – have failed to provide residents of Garzal with security. Most residents of Garzal have lived there
since the early 1970’s and should have received squatters’ rights after only
five years. When the title-holder –
absent since his cocaine laboratory was raided in the 1980’s – returned to
Garzal in the company of paramilitaries in 2003, he presented local residents
with an ultimatum: leave or die. Some families
fled, and Salvador
as the local representative received both bribes and personal death threats.
Years later, when Salvador ran into a now-demobilized
paramilitary, the man expressed shock at seeing Salvador alive: “I thought you were dead! I had orders to kill you! I knew you were a man of integrity, and I
couldn’t carry out those orders, but I thought another one of my colleagues
would!”
It seems that in addition to the respect
of his local community and parish, Salvador
has also gained the respect of some of his enemies. Salvador attributes his being alive to God’s
providence.
