Colombia: Human toll of U.S.-backed terror

The Memories Monument is a shrine bearing the name of each assassinated victim of the Afrocolombian Community of Peace in San José de Apartadó. Eight more names will be added to the monument after the atrocious crime perpetrated Feb. 21 in this northwestern region of Urabá, Antioquia in Colombia.

That day, according to residents of the peace community, members of the 33rd Counterinsurgency Battalion Cacique Lutaima, which is part of the 17th Brigade of the Colombian Army, stormed into the community and brutally killed eight people. The dead are four adults, a 17-year-old, and three children—ages 20 months, 6 and 11 years old.

One of the adults, Luis Eduardo Guerra, was a highly esteemed community leader and member of the Internal Council, a process of peaceful civilian resis tance to the armed conflict, since its founding

All were viciously killed with machetes. Some of the bodies showed signs of heavy blows and torture.

The adults’ bodies were dismembered, leaving only the trunk. Both the youngest children had their abdomens cut open. Natalia, the 6-year-old girl, had one arm dismembered. They were found buried with their parents, leaders of the community, in their cacao plantation.

The bodies of Beyanira Areiza Guzman, her husband Guerra, and their 11-year-old son Deiner Andres Guerra Tuberquia, whose head had been severed, were lying on the ground close to the river. When their bodies were found, they had already been partly eaten by vultures.

San José de Apartadó is one of eight Peace Communities in Colombia, composed mainly of Afrocolombians and Indigenous people. The communities are an attempt to establish agricultural developments and communal living. Their main objective is to exist and develop without the interference of any armed sector in the conflict—guerrilla, paramilitaries or Colombian army and police.

However, they have been victims of state terror, especially through the Colombian Army, which works hand in hand with the police and paramilitaries, is trained by the United States through Plan Colombia and aided by the U.S. military and contractors.

For example, the community of Mulatos had 200 families living in its midst a decade ago. Through the army and paramilitaries’ aerial bombardments, arbitrary detentions, thefts, tortures and multiple violations including the torching of houses leading to forced displacement, the number decreased to 98 families a year ago. This year, only 10 families remain.

Although the Peace Community residents have made it clear that they do not collaborate with any armed actor, including the guerrillas, they are systematically accused of being accomplices of the guerrillas, particularly the FARC-EP, and therefore subjected to the most vicious crimes by the Colombian state’s forces and paramilitaries. During the February assassinations, the 17th Cacique Lutaima Battalion wrote graffiti in one of the empty houses that read, “Get out guerrilla, says your worst nightmare, El Cacique.”

Many times the state uses paid informants to falsely accuse the residents of being part of the armed insurgent group.

Since its formation eight years ago the community has been the victim of at least 130 homicides by the Army/Para mili taries and close to 500 crimes, all of them committed with complete impunity to this date. According to the Lawyers’ Collective “José Alvear Restrepo,” when community residents offer testimony to the authorities, they risk their lives, since many people who had testified trying to get justice have been threatened and some even assassinated.

The situation in San José de Apartadó is very critical now, compounded by the public statements of Washington’s closest ally in the region, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe. On March 20 Uribe threatened the Peace Community residents, say ing that some of their leaders were FARC collaborators and that their community could not be closed to the army and the police, which will enter the village within 20 days. Residents oppose this action since those are the very same forces that have been victimizing them.

On March 30, the police began entering the community. The residents, fearing a bloodbath, have already started to leave the area, once again forced to displace and settle temporarily in a nearby community.

They ask the international community for solidarity in order to preserve their communal project of life.

Next: Paramilitary demobilization and Peace Communities displacement—who benefits? Interview with SINALTRAINAL president.