The Struggle for Civil Society

April 28, 2004

 

I do not know if 24-year-old José Luis Talaigua was an army informer.  I do know that when the five shots rang out a week ago today, and his life’s blood drained into the stream, another blow was struck against the fledgling efforts to maintain civilian society in this militarized village, nation, and world.  The subsequent flight of 63 people from his village of Nueva Esperanza (New Hope), into the obscurity of a dark jungle night provides additional testimony to the effects of armed warfare against civilian communities.  But let me put this into a bit of a context.

 

ONE DAYS COMMUTE TO WORK

 

Life in the Atrato River Basin is hard enough without the war.  The trip to Nueva Esperanza is an ordeal in itself.  The Jiguamiandó (pronounced “Hee-gwa-mee-an-doh) river empties into the wide Atrato River in this region, reported to be the second heaviest recipient of rainfall in the world.  The shores of this larger river are largely cleared of the tropical hardwood trees by the “Madederos de Darien” lumber company, leaving seas of green lower lying brush and scrub trees.  The entrance to the Jiguamiandó should be a three-hour boat trip from Río Sucio, the town with the most reliable electric generator (available for 5 hours a day) in the lower Atrato River where we had left before sunrise.  In reality this is often a 4-5 hour or more trip, mostly due to the need of avoiding huge logs that drift in the river and the inability of avoiding the army, police[1] and navy/marine gunboats and river shore checkpoints.  We were fortunate to have only one brief stop by the navy on this morning.

 

The entrance to the Jiguamiandó can lead one to believe the term “river” has been poorly applied to this stream of brown oozing water.  It is 8:30 am on Monday as our 20’ wooden boat has struck mud here.  All seven of us on this team[2] clamber out of the boat into the calf-deep sludge and water, more akin now to swamp than stream.  The 25 horsepower motor is cantered into its resting position out of the water, and with two people pulling in front and two pushing in back we begin to thrust the boat through the stream.  Within minutes, my clothes are soaked.  Jokingly, I tell people that it is raining too hard, but the reality is that I am sweating profusely from the effort and the heat of the tropic environment.  The trees begin to grow taller on the sides of the stream and we begin to see the signs of jungle life emerge; fluorescent blue butterflies, and monkeys, parrots and macaws keep us company for portions of the trip.  A wildcat print is in the mud at one point, each track as large as my fist.  The first hours are filled with much energy and joint effort in lifting, pushing, and cajoling this wooden monstrosity of a boat upstream.  The mid-day downpour of rain comes upon us. 

 

Eventually, the weight of food, fresh water personal gear and medicines become a burden felt step by step.  When the boat is too deeply mired in the mud to be lifted or pushed, temporary dams are built by shoving poles into the mud and a plastic tarp is placed in front to block the flow of the stream until the water is raised a few inches allowing us to shove the boat a few more feet.  When the water is knee deep it takes only two to push the boat while others hike the path that wends through the jungle by the side of the stream.  At one point, Elizabeth, a Catholic nun accompanying this trip steps on a two foot black snake causing her to shriek and jump.  Those beside her run leap away from the snake, which appears to be as afraid of us as we are of it.  Fortunately this was not one of the commonly found, and highly venomous, “Mapaná[3]” snakes.  We laugh and continue our trek.  Trees with 2” spines protruding the entire circumference cause us to beware of stepping upon, or grabbing onto, these deciduous porcupines. 

 

We’ve been pushing for over 5 hours now.  Long ago the difference between sweat, muddy water and rain became indistinguishable on our bodies.  The aching of our legs and arms is now in competition with overall fatigue.  We stop for a brief meal of rice, plantains and yucca.  The rest is a short one, interrupted by the mosquitoes buzzing around and on everyone and everything.  It’s almost a relief to launch into the water again.   Almost.  The two pushing the boat upriver were delayed in meeting us at the next juncture of the path and the stream.  I head into the stream to see if there is a holdup due to low water which is occasionally only up to our ankles.  The water here was up to mid-thigh however.  It took me a while of slogging though the mud and sludge before I hear Simplicio, the priest from the parish and Calvo, the boat motor operator (at least when he can operate in deeper water) pushing toward me.  As I moved toward the bow to relieve Simplicio we greet one another with a couple of words and a shared weary look.  Suddenly he yelled out, throwing himself into the boat as he grabbed his ankle.  I suspected immediately what had happened and in one huge leap was out of the water as well.  Simplicio confirmed what is one of our constant fears; a fresh-water stingray had stung him[4].  As I clambered into the boat, I observed that there was a hole in his rubber boot in the area of his left inside ankle.  Part of his sock was hanging out where the barb from this sting had pulled it out, much as the wound from jerking a fishhook out backwards would cause.  Together we managed to pull his boot off.  The dirty water from the muck of the stream was red with blood.  The sting had penetrated directly into a vein and he was bleeding profusely.  We rigged up a rain poncho over his head and sheltered him from the rain while I put direct pressure on the wound.  The venom from this sting was already causing him agonizing pain.  I got him to apply pressure while I dug my emergency kit out from under the tarp in the boat.  Cleaning off the wound as best I could with betadine I injected the wound with local anesthetic and returned to put pressure on the wound.  The anesthesia worked extremely quickly and the pressure had almost completely stopped the bleeding.  When I got his ankle bandaged I noticed for the first time that the rest of our team had arrived back at the boat.  We were off again, yes, trudging through the stream once again hoping not to have another stingray incident.  Simplicio rode in the boat now.

 

By late afternoon we came to the “palizada”, an area where logs from upriver block the water from entering the lower river.  The water is deep now and we can use the motor in spurts, but this is alternated with various members of our team getting out of the boat, balancing on the floating logs and shoving the boat around or over the various obstacles.  It takes us 1 ½ hours to get through this area.  The rain continues as a steady drizzle while we enter the now wide and swift portion of the river.  We can once again use the motor, but we must now navigate in the dark.  There are trees and logs in the river any of which could damage the motors propeller, and we don’t have another.  A flashlight is used to illuminate the way ahead while another shines on the white flag at the front of the boat.  We are now in a conflict zone where the guerrillas, para-military and army are actively engaged in conflict.  At nighttime we can see nothing on the shore or behind the huge trees and brush.  One has to only trust.  Arriving at night is not desirable but the trip has been longer than we could manage in daylight.  It is after 8:00 p.m. and with our muscles aching and our skin soaked to the bone we can smell cooking fires in the air.  Our flashlight shines on the shore and spots a dugout.  Moments later there are shouts on land and a dozen flashlights come bobbing down the banks as we thud into the mud/sand of the Nueva Esperanza community.  Embraces of welcome are exchanged as both children and adults run down to help us, and to carry supplies.  Food is made for us and we set our mats on the wooden floors and set up our mosquito nets for the night.  My relief feels palpable, and I know this relief is shared by all of our team.  That is, the relief of safely arriving in a conflict zone. 

 

AND NOW TO GET TO WORK

 

In the morning we meet with community members to arrange agreements as to what we will do during our brief stay.  The team offers accompaniment to community members who must go to fields while others will offer courses on “Ley 70”, the law that gives right to collective ownership by Afro-Colombians to their land.  I will work with the village health promoters providing medical exams, and teaching.  Over the next hours I discover that 1/10^th of the community is affected with malaria, some having been ill for weeks without medication.  Hypertensive and asthmatic patients have not gotten medication; some for months, and several children are suffering from malnutrition and diarrheas.  We quickly move into action seeing the sickest patients first.  Our makeshift clinic is a thatch roof hut with a dirt floor.  I insist that the two chickens inside be placed elsewhere for the day and that we have water and soap to wash our hands before and after each patient.  This obviously is not done on a routine basis, I note for our teaching session.  Fortunately, one of the health promoters is quite advanced in his understanding of diagnosis and treatment of the most common illnesses.  His biggest obstacle is that he lacks medications to treat people.  In this community of ~250 people there is not an aspirin, not an acetaminophen, not a single type of pain for fever relieving medicine.  With malarial fevers reaching to 103° F, the only method being used is to cool the patient with water.  This is a good technique, however it is not one that deals effectively with high fevers, nor with the excruciating headaches, muscle and joint pains.  We see 23 patients in the morning, apart from the malaria patients.  I provide anti-malarial treatment to the health promoter who is in charge of malaria.  We stop for a late lunch at 2:00, with plans to return to work in an hour. 

 

As I was preparing medications 45 minutes later I heard the first two shots, nearby, sharp, certain.  Mothers call their children near.  Another three, perhaps four, shots are fired in close succession.  A young woman immediately begins to wail and scream; “They’ve killed my husband!  What will I do!?  What will I do with two orphaned children?!”  The rest of the community is frozen, almost in place.  Children are crying, some adults begin to visibly shake in fear.  This community has a nylon rope around the perimeter, with hand made banners declaring that it is a civilian community, small protection in this moment.  Within seconds, our team has gathered near Luvdis Amasta, the 18-year-old grieving woman, she already certain that it is her husband who has been killed.  We do not question how she knows, but no one is saying a word.  The community leaders begin to meet to decide what to do when someone comes to state that three FARC[5] guerrillas are within the perimeter of the village and want to make a statement.  Our team accompanies the leaders to where the guerrillas are standing, only 50 feet from the house of the distraught widow Luvdis.  Three men who appear to be in their twenties are standing in full military uniform, two with M-16 rifles and one with what appears to be a sniper rifle.  Two are Afro Colombian and one is Mestizo.  Casually, the taller of the Afro Colombian men states to all gathered that they had waited until Luvdis’ husband, Jose Luis, was outside the community boundary to shoot him[6].  They claim to have done this to protect the civilian population from army informers and that all army collaborators would be treated the same.  They asked if there were any questions.  No one in the community dares.  One accompanier asks if the guerrillas plan to remain out of the community (seeing as they were already standing within the boundary.)  None of the three answered.  I asked, “Do you recognize this as a civilian community?”  He did not directly answer the question but stated that the community could recover the cadaver in the stream where he had been left.  And then they were gone.  A community commission was arranged to recover the body, with several of our team accompanying them.  It was obvious that it was a fearful decision to even recover the body of someone accused of this “crime.”  I went along the 450 feet or so to the edge of the stream where José Luis’ body was under the surface of the murky water.  Small fish were nibbling at the bullet wounds in his right chest and right parietal skull.  The head wound had certainly brought him to a quick end.  His hand was grasped and the body of this young man was pulled from the river.  A rudimentary hammock was attached to a pole and his remains carried into the village.  While the body was cleaned and prepared for the prayer service and burial all from this tiny community looked on in silence.  I aided in closing the wounds so that the last blood of his body would not continue to ooze during tonight’s wake.  Adults as well as children observed these open-air final rites.  That evening a Catholic funeral mass was held.  The only prayer I could offer a petition that we continue to be willing to offer our lives as sacrifice, but to never take another’s life in sacrifice. 

 

The assassination of José Luis continues the spiral of violence of civil war that has beset this country for four decades.  I find it hard to believe that those who took his life not realize they have now engendered fear, anger and hatred in hundreds of other people.  Do they not understand that others may be moved to vengeance and take up arms against them for what appeared to be a senseless killing?  While some in this community may be collaborators with one side or another in this complex war, what is exceedingly obvious is that there is no respect for civilian society. 

 

It is all too easy for the guerrillas of the FARC to consider community members of Nueva Esperanza to be informers or collaborators.  Did José Luis give salt to army soldiers camped across the river in December?  Did he sell plantains to them?  Did he have a conversation with them?  Any of these actions would have been considered a sufficient crime to initiate the killing of Jose Luis by the FARC a week ago today.  Just as easily, had José Luis not given salt, or plantains, or information to the army his life would have been in risk from the very same governmental army.  Had the army’s para-military units been in the same area they would have exacted the same price for lack of collaboration with them, or for suspected collaboration with others.

 

The day after the killing I treated many people from this community for their physical and emotional ills.  In the U.S. we are told to estimate that over 30% of the people who come to for a medical exam suffer from anxiety and/or depression.  Here I would estimate that figure to be 100%.  Those who are not dealing with anxiety or depression would be the ones to worry about.  Dealing with such a diagnosis as “Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome” will only occurs when the stress is “post.”  How does one treat the daily stress of hard life and easy death in this jungle?  Ameliorating the trembling and fear of the moment through accompaniment and compassionate care is but a temporary bandaid, one as necessary as the bandage on Simplicio’s foot, but this is not enough.  There is a need to stop this blight of war on civilian societies.  Army’s such as Colombia’s must stop putting armed personnel in the churches and clinics.  Support for non-official paramilitary/vigilante squads to do their dirty work must end.  The army, para-military and the guerrillas need to stop torturing and shooting people they suspect of not being with them.  They all need to stop using children as soldiers or informants.  Landmines must be stopped immediately. 

 

Just as we tell children in kindergarten, people in governments must “use their words” and use diplomacy to arrive at dialogue to their differences.  Civilian society must be respected and people should be given more alternatives than war as an answer to solving social and political problems.  This is true in the U.S. use of force in Iraqi cities as much as it is in the jungles of Colombia.  Certainly the war would have been resolved decades ago were it not for U.S. aggravation of this conflict by supplying billions of dollars in military training and weapons.

 

Some may critique that we work in areas where the guerrillas work, others that we work where the army and it’s para-military operate.  Others are critical because we work in a zone of conflict where there is not a strong enough request for peace.  I believe that this latter concern is precisely why we need to be in these areas.  While providing service work with and for the people in this area, we must maintain our clarity that we stand for peaceful coexistence.  We need to provide a presence that gives people the breathing space to choose a different future.  Even if…especially if, our governments of the U.S. and Colombia do not take this stand, we must provide a different option for life.

 

ONE WEEK LATER

 

Two days after José Luis was killed we were off to the village of Pueblo Nuevo (“New People”) where the following two days for me were a blur of treating dozens of people.  Several armed personnel were noted entering and leaving this village as well.  Upon our return downriver we stopped at Nueva Esperanza.  We were informed that one third of the village was gone.  Friday, at 3:00 a.m., fearing they may be the next victims of the violence, 63 people in this small almost unnoticeable village in the northwestern Colombian jungle silently gathered all the belongings they could gather and carry and crossed the Jiguamiandó River.  Over half the people were less than 15 years of age.  Seven hours later they arrived in the Community of Brisas, safe now from the FARC.  They are now however in a community firmly controlled by the paramilitary and army.  I was able to visit with them yesterday, having traveled more easily with my team, down the swampy Jiguamiandó now filled with a few more inches of water after days of rain.  Newly displaced among the millions of other displaced people in this country, there you can find Louvdis, now a widow at 18-years-old, and her two and five year old sons.  I join her in her agonizing wail, “What will I do with two orphaned children?!”  The UN High Commission on Refugees and the rest of us are aiding in our emergency assistance work there and as best as we can throughout this zone, which as you can see is difficult enough even when there is no war. 

 

WHAT CAN BE DONE

 

Please tell your senators, congresspeople, and others we do not want their weapons here.  It brings grief, it brings vengeance, it brings more destruction and it brings attacks on civilian communities.  The Colombian civilian population does not need more soldiers trained at the U.S. army’s WHISC/School of the Americas in Fort Benning, GA.  We need more positive aid in this world.  Construction, non-military humanitarian aid and dialogue are what are needed.

 

You can help by:

 

1. Signing the Latin American Working Group Petition at: http://www.lawg.org/tools/petition.htm

 

2. Providing dramatically needed funding for our medical work and training through Concern America: concamerinc@earthlink.net

 

3. Providing accompaniment, development, or health work in Colombia through Non Governmental Organizations.  Contact:

http://www.concernamerica.org;

http://www.forusa.org;

http://www.peacebrigadesorg/usa/html

 

 

4. Working to close the School of the Americas by contacting SOA Watch: http://www.SOAW.org

 

5. Keep our teams and all the people in Colombia in your prayers, meditations and thoughts.

 

 

Curt Wands

Curt Wands practices as a Quaker and currently works as a Physician Assistant in northwest Colombia through Concern America.

 

Please feel free to distribute this letter widely.  Please contact me first if you wish to publish any edited version.