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Recycling amongst the bullets in San Josecito de Apartadó, Colombia; An Invitation... by Anne Barr
I have just spent a week in the new settlement of San Josecito, Urabá, where the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó moved to when the police and army moved into their village 3 months ago. They left their comfortable houses to build a new village from scratch because they refused to accept as their 'protectors' the same armed forces whose most recent crime, in a very long list of crimes, was the massacre 8 members of the Community including a baby and two kids. They also moved out because they knew that the presence of police and army was bound to attract guerrilla attacks. And of course it did. When I arrived there on Monday morning I just missed the last bursts of machine gun fire of a night-long battle between soldiers and guerrilla that left 3 soldiers injured, and the people of the Peace Community shaken by a sleepless night of 'fireworks'. The new settlement is less than a mile from San José where the army and police are barracked. I thought 'thank goodness, I missed it!' and got on with greeting old friends and getting to know the new village that they have managed to create from zero in less than three months. It's built in a bend on the river, surrounded on all sides by forest, idyllic. They've built over 40 wooden houses, each with a space mapped out for a garden, and kept dry by miles of drainage trenches and stone- and gravel-paths. They dismantled the cool, breezy, straw-roofed round-hut that was their community centre in San José and moved it to the new village green. The dozens of pigs, chickens and mules are happy as there's more mud and more grass here and the kids love the river which has excellent rapids and swimming-holes. I went there to follow up on the course on gardens and compost-making that we did last August. The people of the Peace community have created 6 gardens in the village of La Union, 2 hours walk from the new settlement but I never got to see them; the constant outbursts of shooting and bomb-dropping, the 100s of new police and army members who were brought into the region and most of all the huge workload at the new settlement, all made travel impractical. After a day of nosey-ing around I figured the most useful thing I could do was sort out the rubbish problem as they are determined to recycle and make compost and had already dug 2 enormous pits for organic and inorganic rubbish. But many people hadn't understood the concept of separation, so both were filled with smelly mixtures of plastic and rotting vegetable scraps, and one had flooded and turned into a malarial mosquito breeding ground. I don’t know who invented this idea of making compost pits, I suppose it would work in a desert where it never rains but in a normal climate the pits just fill with water and make a horrid smell. The next day I went to each house to talk to each family about recycling and compost and we had a village meeting about it. The following day I started working with the kids as it was obvious that the adults were all too busy. I was a bit nervous about how they would take to collecting and sorting out the community's rubbish as it's not everyones cup of tea. But I figured the best way to teach them was to actually DO it so we borrowed 2 wheel barrows, organic and inorganic, and went to each house to collect and sort the rubbish. The kids took about 15 seconds to become enthusiastic recyclers and another 30 seconds to figure out an excellent working system; we tipped out each bag of rubbish in front to the householders and showed them how they should have separated it into categories. After collecting half the villages rubbish we began a new above-ground compost pile and collected lots of sawdust, horse-poo and leaves and made a pretty, clean compost heap. I had thought I'd manage to get them to work for an hour or two at most, but they worked me into the ground until I suggested we finish the day with a swim in the river. Over the next days, when the nearby shootings and bombings allowed us out, we repeated the collecting and teaching process with the rest of the village, two young men made a corral around the growing pile to keep the pigs and chickens from dismantling it, a huge group of adults and kids cleaned up the festering pits, keeping one open for plastic and tins, we held a rubbish- tip meeting showing everyone how to manage the compost and the kids decided to organize themselves into a work group and ask each household to pay them a little (about 10 pence) each month for their collecting service and I made a big poster to show simply which rubbish goes where. We also dug and planted a vegetable garden, cooked lots of good vegetarian meals (including some very high class Italian cooking from the one of the International Peace Brigade men) and swam a lot in the river. Most nights were disturbed by the 'fireworks' (called so because the army bullets are accompanied by a little red light, something to do with differentiating between enemy and 'friendly' fire, I think). For us theses lights showed how many bullets 'strayed' into the settlement. We were very lucky that no-one was hit. We sat around talking and drinking tea till the shooting died down. These people keep their sense of humour even in these situations and usually we ended up laughing at rude stories about who threw up/pissed/shat themselves during past bombardments. There is nowhere to run to in these situations as running into the forest would mean running into even more danger and being shot 'by mistake'. I asked them what plans do they have for a direct hit... We'll dodge the bullets and catch the bombs and throw them back, said one man laughingly, to show me how there is no solution. The safest place in a direct bombardment would probably be under a bed. Adults and kids talk openly and naturally about their terrible losses in the past and their fears in the present. In the river one day a beautiful little girl told me that she was 7 when her mother was killed and 8 when her father was killed. I asked her name, she is the daughter of Luis Eduardo Guerra who was killed alongside his eldest son, Deiner, in the February massacre; his wife was killed by a stray grenade last July. The little girl lives with her baby brother, 4 cousins, a few stray babies and her aunt in a one roomed house, they cry when we talk about Luis but the rest of the time the house is filled with love and laughter. In February when we were struggling to get back what little remained of Luis Eduardos body from the morgue in Apartadó, another aunt appeared and wanted to take this little girl to the city away "from the danger", but she made us all angry as she would not even take the one hour trip up the road to San José to see where the little girl lives as 'they're all guerrillas up there' and wanted the girl ripped away from what was left of her nearest family at this traumatic time and delivered to her. She could never understand the kind of love and real community that this girl is growing up amongst. She could only see the poverty and danger; these are real of course but in the end they are secondary factors. this aunts misguided attidtude is common amongst people who don’t know the community well, as the powers-that-be in Colombia have deeply vested interests in making sure the guerrilla reputation sticks. This is because 1) If it were to become commonly known that a small and utterly defenseless group of dirt-poor campesinos have managed to take an effective stand against the horrors committed on a daily basis by the state forces/paramilitaries (and by the guerrilla groups too, although less so) in spite of suffering terrible cruelties for doing so... well that would be really dangerous. As one man said 'President Alvaro Uribe says worse things about us than he does about the FARC'. This is true, because they represent a true ideological opposition to the armed, drug-mongering forces that rule Colombia more each day. 2) Calling them guerrillas ensures less public outrage
when there is a massacre as in: "ah well sure who knows what those
people were up to, they probably deserved what they got". (A woman
here said this to my face and got rapidly educated for doing so). The only 'protection' they have are the voices and actions of support from Europe and the US. The men and women of International Peace Brigades and the Fellowship for Reconciliation accompany the community as much as they can but their lack of resources combined with the restricting rules and regulations imposed upon them, don't allow them to do as much as they would like to. So I would like to end this report with a call for help: Anyone of any age who would like to come out here to help, work with and accompany these brave people would be welcomed. The company of foreigners gives great moral support and is a real buffer between them and the war. But you'd have to be aware of the following factors: 1. that it is a war situation and therefore dangerous. 2. that the climate, being hot and humid, is not easy for people from temperate zones. 3. that the conditions of bed and board are extremely basic and as people are extremely poor you would have to contribute towards your own living costs. 4. that life here is tough and physical and the daily agricultural work is hard but gratifying. 5. that psychologically you'd have to be patient. calm and willing to listen, learn and observe without imposing your own views. 6. that you'd need to have a fair grasp of the Spanish language. 7. the use of alcohol is completely prohibited inside
the community, drugs even more so. All the best to everyone, Anne Barr |
