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.

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

Hello everyone,

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

project.

Thank you,
Adriana Salinas

BRIDGES Intern, Bogotá, Colombia

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)

MEALS ON HEELS Elders Food Program:

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.

SEA TURTLE PRESERVATION PROJECT: More exciting news from Jaque! BAB Latin America Director Ana Maria Vasquez reports that we have successfully expanded our Turtle Preservation Program’s capacity from 150 to 250 nests. Our program pays local people to preserve and protect the nest sites and aid the little turtles in reaching the sea. The money allows folks to replace the turtle eggs, a staple of the local diet, with chicken eggs, encouraging local small businesses and ensuring that an important food source is not lost in the process of ecological conservation. Each nest in the program releases 100-150 baby turtles into the wild, of which only 1or 2 will survive to maturity to return and breed on the beach at Jaque. For only $20, you can receive a BAB certificate of adoption for a nest, along with an attached tagua (vegetable ivory) carved turtle, while helping to ensure this program’s continued growth. What a great holiday gift! Make someone an adoptive parent.