Bridges Across Borders is very excited to announce the creation of a new BAB Student Group at the University of Florida in Gainesville. After a year of paperwork and headache, BABUF has finally become official on campus! Complete with four officers and a growing base of members, BABUF is quickly becoming well-known on the UF campus as well as in the community. But even though the process of becoming official was long, it didn’t take them long to get into the swing of things! They have already put on three yard sale FUNdraisers and played an integral part in planning and working our 2nd Annual Viva La Mujer event!
We are very excited to share this slideshow with you. It contains many pictures of people and places in Jaque, Darien, Panama that are near and dear to our heart. This is where we do the majority of our work and we hope that someday you can join us here!
Colombia officially became a state in 1810 when it gained independence from Spain. In the late 1840s the Spanish elite who had remained in control even after Colombia’s separation from Spain formed the Liberal and Conservative parties which to this dominate Colombia’s political and social institutions.The Liberal party was formed on the platform of a secular federal state, whereas the Conservatives were interested in developing a stronger centralized Roman Catholic state.These two political parties have fought each other throughout Colombia’s history resulting in the death of thousands of innocent civilians and indigenous peoples, and catalyzing much of the instability and warfare that still present in modern day Colombia.The elite’s desire for land has resulted in the mass oppression of social and human rights movements, causing the displacement of hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples and peasants, as well as the murder and imprisonment of union leaders, indigenous leaders, human rights workers and the exploitation of the working class.This is not a situation of the past as people continue to be murdered within the state of Colombia for working with and advocating for human rights and social reform. The constant struggle involving the needs of the peasant and indigenous peoples versus the power of the wealthy and elitist government has resulted in the formation of right-wing paramilitary and left-wing guerilla groups that have been participating in civil warfare in Colombia for over forty years.
Guerilla Groups:
In the mid-1960s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) arose as a peasant movement in reaction to their oppression by the elite, demanding land redistribution and social reform. They use kidnappings and violent intimidation as a way to publicize their various campaigns.“The FARC is an 18,000-strong guerrilla force that controls large territories in Colombia.Its demands revolve around issues of social welfare, economic development, agrarian and judiciary reform and reorganization of the military.” However, the FARC’s overall political platform is murky especially since their involvement with cocaine production and trafficking.Although the FARC has a strong support base in some areas and are acting on behalf of the peasant and working class, they lack overall credibility because of their brutal tactics, including massacres of civilians.
Paramilitary Groups:
Paramilitary groups later formed in reaction to guerilla attacks and kidnappings targeted at wealthy land-owners and drug cartels. At the time these groups were endorsed by the government as essential for civilian protection, but over time their tactics have proven so inhumane that they can no longer legally claim to be interested in the ‘defense’ of the people.“Colombia’s 19 paramilitary groups are under the central command of the United Self-Defense Units of Colombia (AUC). These forces use extreme violence to protect the interests of various elites, including US-based corporations, large landowners and drug traffickers.” Because paramilitaries are no longer formally linked to the state, the government has continuously avoided any accountability for their violence, yet the paramilitaries operate with the silent approval and sometimes open support of the military. They have been involved in the massacre of hundreds of indigenous peoples and have a direct hand in the millions that have been displaced from their cultural lands and forced to move into shanty towns which ring Colombia’s most populated cities. Because of the action of the paramilitary hundreds of cultural groups within Colombia are losing the right and the ability to participate in their own cultures and yet the government does nothing often denying these people even the most basic access to social services supposedly provided by the state.Human Rights Watch reports that half of the Army’s 18 brigades have clear links to paramilitaries and yet the US continues to send millions in aid to Colombia which often goes directly to strengthening military forces within the state. Although the US government has publicly admonished Colombia’s high level of internal conflict the rise of paramilitarism in Colombia can be traced directly to the United States who has encouraged Colombia’s officials to use paramilitary terror as a means of controlling their own citizens. The ongoing conflict within Colombia has resulted in the displacement of millions of people with no end in sight, while indigenous groups are more alienated from their right to their cultural knowledge on a daily basis.
Cocaine:
The cocaine industry has added further complications to an already overtly-complex issue. Not only has it created heightened tension between the guerillas and paramilitaries but it has led to a larger gap between the wealthy and poor classes within Colombia and further exacerbated already fractured relationships between the Colombian government and the peasant working class.Up to 90% of all cocaine on American streets comes from Colombia which the US government has used as an excuse to shape and influence Colombia’s political infrastructure. “Since 2000, the US has spent more than $3 billion on Plan Colombia, under which Colombian forces receive training, equipment and intelligence to root out drug traffickers and eliminate coca crops.” The practice of aerial-spraying to eradicate cocaine crops has also put the health of hundreds of thousands Colombians at risk.While the US and Colombian governments are still heralding the safety of this technique evidence from the ground is showing that this practice is more then questionable and is causing an unaddressed health crisis amongst Colombia’s poorest people.“Both the war on drugs and the war on terror exacerbate the poverty and inequality that lie at the root of Colombia’s conflict. For example, drug fumigation destroys food crops and water supplies as well as coca leaves, further impoverishing and threatening the health of Colombia’s rural population. Increased militarization leads to increased displacement and further destroys Colombia’s social fabric.”
Government Policies
Colombia and the United States:
The election of President Alvaro Uribe in 2002 and his re-election in 2006 has led to a further deterioration of human rights conditions in Colombia. Uribe has exploited the climate of the US “War on Terror” to call for an increase in military power and heightened surveillance of human rights and other civil society organizations while failing to properly search out and prosecute paramilitary groups within the state. Since 1997, US military aid to Colombia has increased six-fold making Colombia the second largest recipient of US aid in the Western hemisphere next to Iraq. Under the guise of the “War on Terror”, the Bush Administration has escalated US involvement in Colombia. The US has given over three billion dollars since 2000 to “Plan Colombia”, more than 75 percent of it to fund and increase in the military and police.For the first time since the 1980s, the US is undertaking a counterinsurgency effort in Latin America, giving weapons, training and money to a government that relies on paramilitary death squads.Oil is Colombia’s most lucrative export, bringing in roughly $4.5 billion a year. Indigenous Peoples who have opposed oil exploration on their lands have been killed by paramilitaries said to be in the service of US and British oil companies. Tens of thousands of Indigenous Colombians have been displaced from their ancestral lands, which are now controlled by oil companies including Occidental and British Petroleum.The increase in oil production and exploration in Colombia is heavily endorsed by the World Bank, IMF and the Bush administration, even though it is directly linked to the death and displacement of thousands of Colombian citizens.
1 1/2 lb of guascas (possibly not available in your area, so skip it)
5 tender ears of corn
5 cloves of garlic
Salt and pepper to taste (For vegetarians, add more scallions and garlic)
Directions:
1. Peel all of the potatoes.
2. In a big pot, combine: scallions, cilantro, and chicken (trim the fat). Make it boil, then turn to low temperature. Cook until chicken is tender, and remove the foam constantly.
3. Add the Red Skinned Potatoes and salt, and cook for 30 minutes.
4. Remove the chicken from the pot when it is cooked.
5. Shred the chicken into small pieces by hand and take away bones.
6. Add the other potatoes and keep on cooking
7. Cook the corn on the side.
8. Serve the meal with the chicken and the corn on the side.
(For vegetarians serve it with the tofu on the side and add seasoning to the tofu)
9. Put avocado, cream and capers for people to add to their taste
BAB has been working to create sustainable economic alternatives for the indigenous and refugee communities in the Darien Gap rainforest region that spans across the border of Panama and Colombia. These projects were initiated in 1994 in Choco, Colombia, until massacres in the town necessitated an exodus for a majority of the residents. Since then the project focus has been across the border in Panama to deal with the needs of the refugees and the receiving community. The Darien Projects are now based in Jacque, Panama since the war in Colombia has made it impossible to continue the projects in Choco.
In the United States, BAB gives presentations in order to raise awareness about the ongoing tragedy in this region and how the US policy “Plan Colombia” contributes to the suffering.
As the United States escalates spending for its militarized anti-drug strategy, a growing movement of well-respected Latin American leaders has emerged calling for more peaceful and effective solutions. At the recent Summit of Americas conference in Quebec City, critics ranging from Nobel laureates to former world leaders submitted a letter to President Bush saying that Plan Colombia, while failing to stem the drug trade, will have three dramatically harmful effects:
Worsen Colombia’s devastating war and human rights crisis:
Plan Colombia bolsters Colombia’s military despite its persistent ties to right-wing paramilitary forces who represent the gravest threat to peace and democracy in that country. The paramilitaries commit the vast majority of human rights abuses and actively engage in drug trafficking. In early 2001 the paramilitaries increased their massacres of civilians and violently took control of territory in southern Colombia ahead of fumigation operations. The escalated war effort also undermines fragile peace negotiations, which are widely recognized as the only hope for lasting peace and a reduction of the violence associated with drug trafficking. Plan Colombia has emboldened efforts to solve the 35-year internal conflict on the battlefield while undermining government and civil society leaders seeking a peaceful resolution.
Poison food crops, and damage human and environmental health:
Last month, governors from four of Colombia’s southern states came to Washington to demand a halt to the U.S. backed campaign of aerial defoliation in their region. They described how subsistence farmers – not large coca plantations – were the most common targets of fumigation. Many families in the southern states have lost some or all of their food crops and been forced to leave their land. U.S. and Colombian officials insist that the defoliant chemicals being sprayed do not threaten human or environmental health. Yet the governors, as well as human rights monitors, report widespread respiratory and skin problems among people who have been directly sprayed. Environmentalists warn that defoliation threatens plant-life and animals in the fragile Amazon ecosystem.
Force drug production into neighboring regions:
As Colombia suffers the consequences of Plan Colombia, the economic and social factors will remain unchanged: massive poverty and a nearly inexhaustible supply of cultivatable land that guarantee new supplies will emerge to meet undiminished U.S. demand for drugs. Cocoa cultivation is already moving to new areas within Colombia and across its borders.
Three years later, the critics of Plan Colombia have been vindicated on all accounts. Plan Colombia has worsened the human rights situation in Colombia, poisoned people and the environment and failed to reduce the supply of narcotics into the United States. Take action today by urging your legislators to end this failed and counter-productive policy
Adapted from an article on the Washington Office of Latin America website:www.wola.org
For youth, it is very important to read because it gives them the opportunity to learn about different things. I sponsor a small, one-room library in Bogotá, Colombia. We call this project “Libros Para Soñar”(or “Books to Dream,” in English.)
In this library we have approximately 30 children who use this space to complete their homework and learn about our world. But it is very hard to continue this project because of financial issues.
One simple thing that we need to continue this project is to find sponsors to donate $50 for a month or as much as $600 per year. Or you can help by donating whatever you can toward this reading
WAYUU SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN: We just returned in April from a visit to the Wayuu indigenous community of La Guajira, Colombia, for the Fourth Yanama: Women and Territory. This community suffered a massacre at the hands of paramilitaries and Colombian military on April 18, 2004. For the last three years, BRIDGES has hosted North American solidarity tours by Debora Barros Fince, Founder and Director of Organizacion Wayuu Munsurat and international spokesperson for her people of Bahia Portete, who now live in exile in Venezuela. We hope to host Debora or another representative again this fall.
Our little BRIDGES delegation to the Yanama was a diverse group, including three of “our girls” from various regions of Colombia along with our USA contingent and even a Yaqui woman from Sonoras, Mexico. We went to participate in a temporary re-occupation of Bahia Portete to honor the dead and assert the Wayuu people’s right to a peaceful return to their ancestral homeland. Invite us to speak with your group or class and give a visual presentation of our remarkable journey. We are exceedingly grateful to the RESIST Foundation for their $1,500 grant in support of our international solidarity work here in the U.S.
Thanks to the hard work and deep dedication of Jennifer Sordyl, Michi Regier, and Sujoy Spencer, this program at the Casa Elisabet orphanage in Imuris has expanded to include lessons on recorder and viola, as well as the violins, and these teachers have made great strides in securing the necessary funding for the project by appealing to friends, family, employers, and their fellows at summer fiddle camp. (More about Music Across Borders)
Many elders find themselves alone in Jaque when their children have gone off to Panama City to seek employment. Others have families who struggle to feed themselves and to put sufficient food in the mouths of their babies. Rather than ask you to adopt a particular elder, we ask you to adopt the project for a month. This is a costly program and very much in need of groups and individuals to cover one month’s worth of meals for $100 per month. Maybe you would like to honor a loved one who has gone or maybe one who’s just arrived, or maybe even celebrate the birthday of a favorite elder of yours, by adopting a month that has special meaning. Perhaps your church or social group could raise the funds to adopt a month. Please help us fill up the calendar year with health and happiness for our elders.
Bridges Across Borders is very excited to announce the creation of a new BAB Student Group at the University of Florida in Gainesville. After a year of paperwork and headache, BABUF has finally become official on campus! Complete with four officers and a growing base of members, BABUF is quickly becoming well-known on the UF campus as well as in the community. But even though the process of becoming official was long, it didn’t take them long to get into the swing of things! They have already put on three yard sale FUNdraisers and played an integral part in planning and working our 2nd Annual Viva La Mujer event!
MEALS ON HEELS Elders Food Program