Columbians recount war

www.goshen.edu Contributed by Tim_Nafziger on Thursday March 20, @ 10:55PM

Since Luz Marina Gomez is on the paramilitary death list in Colombia for her work with the most impoverished people in the province of Arauca, she and her family have taken refuge in Venezuela.

Gomez is on the paramilitary death list because of her work with the poor, including her work with Human Rights Commission of the Colombian Council of Evangelical Churches (CEDECOL). Since she is on this list, if she passes through any of the many paramilitary checkpoints scattered across the province, she will be taken away and murdered.

Gomez and another religious leader from Columbia visited GC to speak in Professor Jo-Ann Brandt’s biblical themes of peace class Thursday afternoon and to an audience of community members that evening. Father Luis Teodoro Gonzalez Bustacara, a parish priest, joined her.

The two focused their talk on the situation in Arauca, which is where U.S. Special Forces arrived in January 2003 to train the Colombian army to protect a pipeline carrying oil owned by the Occidental Corporation to the coast. Guerillas in the oil-rich region have repeatedly targeted the pipeline with bombs in attempts to sabotage oil production. “The armed conflict in Arauca is mainly because of land, power and oil,” said Bustacara. “The guerillas claim to be fighting for social justice, but we don’t see the concrete results.”

“Over the last year, the war has shifted from a focus on anti-narcotics to a focus on anti-guerillas,” said Gomez. The two main left-wing guerilla groups are the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). In the last decade, wealthy landowners, with support from the Colombian military, have created a paramilitary army. This right- wing force, claiming to be acting in self-defense, does the dirty work that the Colombian army cannot, targeting human rights workers like Gomez. Both groups have been declared terrorist organizations by the U.S. government and both are involved with the drug trade.

One of the results of the 40-year-old Colombian civil war in Arauca is a skewed age distribution among the population. Children make up 44% of the population, youth 31%, adults 24% and senior citizens 3%, according to Bustacara. Gomez works with children who are at-risk of being targets of guerillas and paramilitary recruiting. Government social services are unreliable and church-administered agencies are often the only ones available to work with the 50% of the Colombian population below the poverty line.

In the midst of their stories of pain and violence, Bustacara and Gomez spoke of a vision of peace, forgiveness and hope for the people of Colombia. They pointed to the church as a central part of this reconciliation. CEDECOL has been involved in providing conflict transformation. “We feel we can contribute by constructing a culture of peace,” said Gomez.