Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, October 16, 2025
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
Once more our Peace Community turns to humanity and history to make a record of the barbarity to which we are constantly being subjected as part of our Community’s daily life.
The defense of our lives and of our land through nonviolent means is the essence of our being. However, they are trying to subject us to a way of life that is different from our universal principles, values, and convictions. Defending our lives and our land through ethical and moral principles is getting more and more complicated. Not only because there is a conflict between armed groups in this area, but rather, on the contrary, the institutions that make up and represent the Rule of Law are tolerating it. They allow paramilitaries to act freely to increase their control in a new culture which legitimizes that which is illegal.
Death, displacement, the constant threats and persecutions against our Community and its members demonstrate the incapacity of the Colombian government to control the paramilitaries. The destruction of dignity in our lives perhaps shows that the goal is a future without campesinos, without a clean environment, and where the only beneficiaries are the same businesses that have financed the war by means of their economic interests.
We hereby record the following events:
On Thursday, July 24, 2025, at 8:40 p.m., we could see a parked black SUV escorted by men dressed in black and carrying pistols. It was near the Roncona property, which belongs to our Community. Close by, a delegation from our Community was heading for our principal settlement on their way from the center of Apartaadó. This led our Committee to go back and change their plans and arrive later.
On Thursday, August 7, 2025, at 1:30 a.m., we noticed the presence of several well-known paramilitaries, dressed in civilian clothes and carrying communication radios and firearms in the Community property La Cabaña in La Resbalosa.
On Friday, August 22, 2025, we learned of the decision by Civil Branch 3 of the Specialized Circuit for Land Restitution With Ethnic Focus in Apartadó on the civil action filed by Colonel Luis Enrique Camargo Rodríguez of the 17th Brigade of the Colombian Army headquartered in Carepa. He had sued Dra. Gloria Isabel Cuartas, Director of the Unit for Implementation of the Peace Agreement (UIAP in Spanish), The Court found the action for protection of his constitutional right to honor and good name by Colonel Luis Enrique Camargo Rodrígueaz was impermissibly filed and not admissible, for the reasons set forth in the Court’s statement of reasons for its decision.
On Monday, September 1, 2025, a helicopter flew over the town (vereda) of Mulatos Medio, specifically over the Luis Eduardo Guerra Peace Village.
On Tuesday, September 16, 2025, we learned of an illegal toll installation near the place where there’s a trough in the road that goes from the urban part of Apartadó to the urban part of San José de Apartadó. They’re only allowing free passage of vehicles when they receive payment of the illegal toll.
On Thursday, September 18, 2025, we learned of the first official statements between paramilitary groups and the government of Colombia in Quatar. These will advance the demobilization process. While they are talking of peace in Quatar, here in our territory the threats against our Peace Community and the people that live around here are increasing.
On Friday, September 19, 2025, once again the Apartadó section of the Attorney General’s Office subpoenaed Germán Graciano Posso, the Legal Representative of our Community, and Fr. Javier Giraldo who has accompanied us historically. It’s shameful and disturbing the way the Attorney General’s Office is harassing us by trying to get our members to testify before agencies made up of those same officials that cloak themselves in legality in order to hide the hundreds of crimes committed against our communitarian humanity for more than 28 years and permitting impunity by furnishing dressed-up license to criminals so they can do their crimes. Enough already!
On that same Friday, September 19, 2025, radio stations around the region reported the alleged capture of a paramilitary known as “alias Cachorro”, charged with criminal conspiracy and carrying out territorial control in San José de Apartadó.
On Saturday, September 20, 2025, around 7:00 p.m. we heard several shots or volleys with long guns firing next to the military base in San José de Apartadó. In spite of the fact that there were several witnesses to what was going on, the military had the nerve to insist that it was only fireworks.
On Friday, September 26, 2025, we learned that some people in the region are attempting to obtain personal security services that the government provides through the National Protection Unit (UNP). Their request is based, they say, on death threats they are receiving from our Community. Nothing could be more stupid than an argument like that for people who are wanting protection because of threats or risks, because the only violent actors are the paramilitaries. They’re the ones who ought to leave for good.
On Saturday, September 27, 2025, we were told during the day that the paramilitaries would be demonstrating in the towns of Mulatos, La Resbalosa, and La Esperanza, and that they were very well aware of all the movements of the leaders of our Community when they are in those areas.
On Sunday, September 28, 2025, we learned that in some of the towns, Mulatos among them, people were using FM frequency radios (radios used for private communication). Those pieces of equipment, which are being used for communication among campesinos, have also been used as a formula for making the paramilitaries invisible, so that they are free to exercise their control because nobody can tell the difference between a civilian and an armed actor.
Onthat same Sunday, September 28, 2025, we learned that some residents of the area around Mulatos who are helping the paramilitaries are saying that members of our Community who live in Mulatos are scanning the communications of the paramilitaries in the area. If anything happens to us, we will hold those people responsible. We warn them that our Community is not an agency for the collection of intelligence, nor does it participate in any kind of illegal strategy of war.
On Thursday, October 2, 2025, we learned that the explanations by the soldiers about the shots being heard around the military base in San José warned that there were “hunters that go hunting near the military base”. We’re wondering—could it be that the hunters have homemade shotguns that can shoot in volleys? They go hunting at night? Or is it that there’s something going on that they want to cover up? Already several residents have said that it’s frightening, as there have already been occasions when they’ve said it was going on at night.
On that same October 2, 2025, in the afternoon, the paramilitary alias Refercho had gone to our communitarian Luis Eduardo Guerra Peace Village, taking advantage of the communitarian space that exists there.
On Saturday, October 4, 2025, at 6:00 p.m. in the town of La Unión, two paramilitaries went into the Roberto Guzmán Peace Village in the town of Mulatos Medio, which is the private property of our Peace Community. For several hours the families in the Community were feeling fearful and anxious because of the threats and the noisy confusion.
On Sunday, October 12, 2025, we found out about an illegal invasion by Sres. Braider Antonio Úsuga Tuberquia, Luis Yair Úsuga Tuberquia, Yeferson Úsuga, and Israel Tuberquia Zapata. Apparently this invasion of property of a private nature had been undertaken on Saturday, October 11, when Sr. Luis Yair Úsuga Tuberquia who, in his role as a paramilitary, had called together the families of the town of La Uníon to meet with paramilitary commanders on Wednesday, February 28, 2018 ,and the meeting had taken place on Friday, March 2, 2018.
Although this has been mentioned occasionally in our historical reports, no investigation has ever been done. The responsible authorities give license to criminal activity.
On Monday, October 13, 2025, we learned through local news media of the getaway of at least 17 people in police custody in Apartadó. One of them was a well-known paramilitary who had been operating in the District (Corregimiento) of San José. If this is justice, and if this is the authority to which we must submit, these events speak for themselves; total embarrassment.
On that same Monday, October 13, 2025, a delegation from our Community was present at the property best known as El Palmar, located in the town of La Unión. The delegation recorded the presence of some people staying at the property, using the concept of invasion.
On Tuesday, October 14, 2025, in the town of La Unión, when some laborers were going to work to take care of some cattle at the El Palmar property, they were accosted by Sres. Braider Úsuga and Luis Yair Úsuga who were encroaching on our property. They warned that they would not allow the workers to enter the property to check on the condition of the cattle.
On Wednesday, October 15, 2025, a delegation from our Community, accompanied by a representative of the Ombudsman, entered the communitarian property where the encroachment had taken place. A dialog was attempted, but the invaders made clear that they were not interested in that; they were there and they had no intention of leaving. They offered all kinds of crazy talk about some of the members of our Peace Community, at which the Community remained calm and kept silent and then retired humbly.
On that same Wednesday, October 15, 2025, we heard Sr. Braider Úsuga on the radio making various defamatory statements about our Peace Community, trying to justify his invasion of our communitarian property and also some individual property belonging to some members of our Community. Here’s what he said, “They’re manipulating things, not for sales, they’re manipulating to make us abandon the territory—they themselves have created documents, about us, about how they want to vanquish us, they want us to stay away from the land, so that a judge could continue their possession and award them title to the land . . .” They slandered and defamed us on the radio and stigmatized our communitarian way of life.
It’s true that there is an existing formalization process according to the terms stipulated by the law, for a percentage of the El Palmar property. Those applications were made for the areas of the property that the Community and its members have acquired legally, in strict compliance with Colombian legal procedures, and with the whole assortment of formal processes in that formalization have been carried out. No legal procedure in opposition to the formalization has ever been presented.
It should be pointed out that these procedures for formalization and titling of property are in the agreement for amicable solution signed in 2024 between the Colombian government and the Peace Community under the Inter-American system where the legal action took place.
Nevertheless, the events that occurred recently have been harmful and have been distraction from the compliance with that agreement, and so we have called upon the competent authorities, not only to guarantee the protection of the property of our Community and its members, but also to continue with the required procedures for the constitutional ordering that governs these matters.
On Thursday, October 16, 2025, we learned of new threats against our Internal Council, including against Germán Graciano, Arley Tuberquia, Roviro López, and Gildardo Tuberquia.
In the midst of the harassment and death threats, our Community continues to go on with our lives.
The legacy of our grandparents and our ancestors for the building of a more dignified world calls upon us to make a statement of our principles of defending our lives and our spirits.
Peace Community of San José de Apartadó
October 16, 2025