Message from the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó
December 20, 2024
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
That’s what’s been going on here ever since the very beginning of the Peace Community, just as it is in the whole country. We’re immersed in two contradictory dynamics:
On the one hand, after 27 years of receiving messaging and documents excusing every crime committed by the government and its agencies, now the government is starting to admit that it has been monstrously cruel to us and that they can’t keep denying and hiding their thousands of crimes as they have done to an Olympian extent; now they need to attempt some kind of compensation. What they’re doing through the National Agency for Legal Defense of the Government is pushing a search for an “amicable solution” with us, using mediation by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
On the other hand, the reality of power that’s actually in effect here looks to us as if they want to exterminate us, and that they have found effective ways to do it: first is the territorial consolidation of the paramilitaries commanded by the Clan del Golfo. They have de facto executive power, unchallengeable. Theirs is an armed organization with the contours of a guerrilla force, but directed by a heavy load of capital from drug trafficking and conditioned on of the neutralization of the Armed Forces, of the legal system, and of the mafias of political power. Inside this scheme, they can continue to claim that if there are crimes there is also “justice”, that if there’s violence, there is also a policy of peace, and if there are injustices, there are also mechanisms for citizen participation. They manage all of those remedies with their mastery of fiction.
This year in March, they killed our members, Nallely and Edinson, after many weeks of screaming at us that we had to submit to their plans and criteria for development, and if we didn’t do it, they were capable of tearing down our fences; they would spill our blood if we opposed their bulldozers. They finally did it with malice aforethought, and they also demonstrated that they were capable of manipulating the media so that people would believe false and depraved versions of the events and on top of that, they were able to neutralize the “justice system” and co-opt many community-based organizations that are beneficiaries of their crumbs of bread. We have also been able to confirm that some people that had challenged their orders or their business activities have been found “killed in accidents” or in “strange circumstances” far away from the towns where they lived.
We were nearly convinced that a surge of “Colombia Humana” would never be able to function in politics with a caricature of “judicial power” like that of Colombia for so many decades, saturated with filth. But what a surprise to learn of the paper that on October 10, 2024, Colombia’s Foreign Ministry had sent to the office of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in response to a joint communication that the U.N. Special Procedures had sent on August 2, terrified by the crimes that sought to annihilate our Peace Community. There the Foreign Ministry enumerated the 11 legal proceedings that appeared to demonstrate that the murders of Nalleli and Edinson were being investigated and punished with exceptional diligence and impartiality. However, those of us who have lived through these investigation proceedings, we cannot accept that the inspection of some corpses, none of that done at the scene of the crime, or the interrogations of some neighbors, could contribute anything to finding the truth. Meanwhile they have offered the killers all the time in the world, plus circumstances favorable for them to manipulate their lying coverup any way they want.
The pseudo-judicial bells and whistles that besieged our most recent funerals reconfirmed for us, as a Community, our long-ago decision to break with an entrenched justice system in our profound and radical CONSCIENCIOUS OBJECTION, supported by Article 18 of Colombia’s constitution.
We want to make a record of the events we have experienced in recent months:
On Saturday, September 16, 2024, the lifeless body of Juan de Jesús Graciano, a resident of the town (vereda) of El Cuchillo, in San José de Apartadó, was found under strange circumstances. Some of his close relatives had been victims in the first case that we registered that included illegal searches, tortures, collective disappearances and murders by the Colombian Army in July of 1977, when the Peace Community did not even exist yet. The Colombian legal system still owes this country and all humanity some elementary justice in these cases. With regard to the murder of Don Juan de Jesús, it’s rumored that it had to do with the sale of some land belonging to him that some relatives of his had sold to the paramilitaries, and where the paramilitaries had demanded that he register the sale, which he had refused to do, and so they killed him.
On Tuesday, October 8, 2024, residents of the town of La Esperanza announced a new threat against the family of Germán Graciano, the legal representative of our Peace Community. They are claiming that the illness that Sr. César Jaramillo, the Director of Fedecacao and promoter of persecution against our Community, is suffering right now, is the product of witchcraft that Germán’s family is practicing against him. In case Jaramillo dies from the illness, they promise to kill Germán’s mother.
On Wednesday, October 9, 2024, the Community was informed that some paramilitaries are hoping that people who know Germán Graciano will warn him that the plan to kill him has not been forgotten but is still on track.
On Tuesday, October 15, 2024, at least ten paramilitaries dressed in camouflage and carrying long guns came close to our private property, La Suerte in the town of Arenas Altas. It was said that they were headed for the town of La Uníon because at that time there was intensive movement of paramilitaries between Arenas Altas and La Unión. It seemed to be related to supplying food for their troops.
On Friday, November 1, 2024, at about 9:00 p.m., a number of subjects carrying firearms were seen near our private property La Roncona which borders our primary settlement, San Josecito. They left after a while, but they were seen by people who were traveling in private vehicles in this area.
On Sunday, November 3, 2024, at 8:00 in the morning, when a committee from our Community was traveling from the town of Mulatos to San Josecito, along the trail we met the paramilitary alias “Chimenea” (“Chimney”). Right out in the open, he was talking with his bosses on a high frequency radio.
On Monday, November 4, 2024, in the middle of a session at Campesino University, we learned of fierce death threats against José Roviro López, a member of the Internal Council of our Peace Community. During the last three days, we could see people carrying weapons very close to our private properties La Roncona and La Holandesita. Before this threat, José Roviro had been threatened in the La Resbalosa Humanitarian Zone while he was coordinating Peace Community activities there, and he was threatened to get out of the area. These new threats are even more serious.