Colombia: a catastrophe -- and a miracle, too

The Kansan Esther Bohn Groves

A pastor in Colombia, Latin America, heard gunshots. Looking out his window, he saw three paramilitary men walking away as a man shot in both legs dragged himself to the pastor's door and scratched on it.

If he opened the door to help, he and the wounded man would both be killed. As he agonized, two of the paramilitaries returned in a taxi, dragged the shooting victim into it, and went off. A local policeman came to the door and asked about the gunshots. The pastor replied someone had been shot and taken away. Then the three paramilitary men returned with the taxi and took the policeman away.

Elsewhere, a youth discovered two brothers and a friend had been tortured, killed and dismembered. The family tried to bury remains, but a helicopter above them began shooting, and they ran for their lives. Warned they had 15 days to leave home or be killed, they fled, and with help from aid organizations, settled in a community for the displaced. But in the tin-roofed, whitewashed church there, two armed men shot a Sunday-school teacher dead in front of the children.

These incidents are only a few describing violence in war-torn Colombia, said Steve Ratzlaff, of Lincoln, Neb. He visited the country on a learning tour sponsored by the Mennonite Central Committee and told about it recently at the MCC warehouse in North Newton. The tour's purpose, he said, was to learn about causes of violence in Colombia and how the United States is involved, and to extend moral support to churches and peace-and-justice advocates there.

With intimidation, assassination, kidnapping and disappearances, the guerrillas, paramilitaries (mercenaries hired by the wealthy to protect their land and responsible for 70 percent of political assassinations), and state army terrorize people. Ratzlaff reported 33,000 persons were killed last year, and 1,000 flee their homes every day. Colombia is first in assassinated labor leaders, first in kidnappings, second to Russia in assassinated journalists and second to Sudan in number of refugees. As a Colombian said, "Sadness is a part of who we are."

Ratzlaff said coca production for the drug trade finances guerrilla and paramilitary operations, while the state army has government money and receives $1.3 million a day from the U.S. through Plan Colombia, much of it used for military support, most of the rest for aerial spraying of coca fields to wipe them out and a small amount to ease rampant hunger and social suffering. But his tour group learned coca field fumigation often harms regular crops and, contrary to U.S. claims, may make land unusable for agriculture for years.

Why is our country so involved in Colombia? It's not just the drug trade, the Americans were told. "Most Colombians told us that they thought oil was the ultimate aim. Colombia sits on large oil reserves," Ratzlaff said. Neighboring Venezuela has huge oil reserves, and U.S. policy is to keep an eye on them and to subsidize security of U.S. oil corporations in the two countries.

Four percent of property owners in Colombia own 62 percent of the land and are taking more, he said. "The rich own the press, the soft drink companies, the oil companies, almost any major enterprise." It disturbs him that the U.S. enables this, and that the U.S. is the biggest weapons-maker and gun-runner in the world. "We cannot continue to increase spending on the military and cut taxes. It will prove to be our economic ruin," he believes.

Yet within catastrophe in Colombia is a miracle, Ratzlaff said. "Churches are strong; without them there would be much more death, and there certainly would be less hope. Despite the fact that pastors can be killed for assisting the poor and displaced, they continue to reach out to those who are hurting." At a Colombian "sister church" to Hyde Park Mennonite Church, Boise, Idaho, children greeted his tour group, holding poster hearts that spelled out, "Brothers & sisters, we love you," followed by singing and a meal. Nearly 300 jammed a Catholic cathedral to worship, Ratzlaff said -- "an exhilarating moment of God in the midst of despair and hopelessness. It didn't solve the problem, but it gave us hope that eventually the God of history would prevail."

Father Jorge told them, "One day, hopefully, the good people of the world will work together for peace in the world so that the evil people can't make war."

Esther Bohn Groves writes occasionally for the Kansan. She lives in North Newton.