What Colombia could be like
Life inside the demilitarized zone
By Teresa Gutierrez
I had the good fortune to travel with an International
Action Center delegation to Colombia in November 2000. Our
delegation, headed by former U.S. Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark,
visited representatives from various sectors of the movement
for social change.
We spent some time in Bogotá as well, and the "zona
de despeje"--the demilitarized zone. This zone is currently
very much in the news as the administrations of U.S. President
George Bush and Colombian President Andres Pastrana present a
bellicose ultimatum to the rebels who have been operating in
the zone for almost three years.
Our delegation spent a couple of nights in San Vicente de
Caguán, a small town inside the zone. We walked the
streets, ate dinner at the plaza and talked to residents. We
also spent a couple of nights at the encampment of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP),
just a few miles from San Vicente.
When we first arrived in San Vicente the atmosphere there,
compared to that of Bogotá, immediately struck me.
Bogotá was tense, people cautious, afraid to talk
about the political situation.
But it is different in San Vicente. There, people are very
open. As you walk the streets, the air is festive as music
rings out all around you. The youth play basketball in the
park. The hotel and restaurant workers, taxi
drivers-everyone--carry themselves differently. They do not
appear to be tense or watching their backs at every moment.
And they were eager to talk with us about the political
situation.
A different way to live
One of the most important comments repeatedly made by the
residents of San Vicente was that now that the FARC-EP was in
the area, the brutal and horrific atrocities that had been
carried out by the right-wing paramilitaries had ended. The
death squads could no longer carry out their war of terror.
Residents no longer feared that at any moment they find that
their husbands, wives, children or other loved ones had been
massacred.
Drugs were no longer allowed, youth informed us. The only
complaint one 17-year-old had was that the rebels proposed that
motor scooters--which seemed to pleasingly overrun the town--no
longer be allowed after 10 p.m. so that people who rose early
to go to work would not be disturbed late at night.
Residents we stopped on the streets told us that the town
was very different than it had been two years earlier. Now
there was more solidarity among the people. Issues such as
domestic violence or so-called common crime were handled in a
totally different way than they had been before.
All the people we spoke to back then understood that the
number one problem facing them was Plan Colombia. They all knew
that if the U.S. continued to escalate intervention in their
country, the situation would only get worse. No one wanted war,
but they feared the government had sold them out.
When we spent a couple of nights in the rebel encampment of
the FARC-EP, we had a chance to hang out with some of the
rebels. Those not busy at their turn washing clothes or
preparing food or studying economics talked openly and freely
with us.
I talked a lot with Pablo, a 17-year-old who had been born
in the area. We videotaped some of our conversations. He had
important things to say about the Pentagon's Plan Colombia and
the war waged against the Colombian people in the interests of
the elite. He had a lot of knowledge of the political situation
around him as well as a lot of passion.
But it was through my conversations with him off-camera that
I understood the real sense of why he had joined the rebels. It
was off-camera that we talked more about San Vicente.
It is hard to describe in words the feeling that Pablo had
for San Vicente. But his pride at what had been accomplished
there in just a short time was unmistakable. With a smile so
bright it could have lit up the necessarily dark encampment, he
asked me what I thought about the area.
I told him how impressed I was. How safe we felt there, and
how safe the residents also seemed to feel. How it reminded me
of Cuba, that it felt like a place with people who had a sense
of fulfillment, a sense of their destiny.
It did not feel like most places on earth: that beaten-down
sense people get when life is so very hard. In San Vicente you
did not feel that horrible sense of alienation that comes from
a society that is divided and oppressed.
Pablo smiled wistfully and said, almost to himself, "If only
all of Colombia could be like San Vicente."
Today, the danger of the U.S.-backed Pastrana government
unleashing a wave of terror on the people of San Vicente and
all of Colombia is very real. Now more than ever solidarity
with the people in the zone and all of Colombia is needed.
Organizing to stop U.S. intervention is an urgent task.
But the people of San Vicente have had a taste of a society
free of death squads. They have seen what the future might look
like. It is not likely they will go back to the way things
were.
Reprinted from the Jan. 24, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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