***************************************
"For three decades, violence has forced
Colombian peasants to flee their homes.
While the toll can't be compared to the
uprooted masses of Rwanda in Africa,
Colombia is the leader in the Americas:
It had 257,000 internal refugees last
year and 180,000 in 1996, according to
the independent Consultancy for Human
Rights and the Displaced."
***************************************

Displaced Colombia Peasants Go Home

By Vivian Sequera
Associated Press Writer
Monday, February 16, 1998; 3:00 a.m. EST 

ON THE ATRATO RIVER, Colombia (AP) -- Under the lazy sun of 
approaching dusk, some passengers lean out over the old wooden 
boat's sides.

The dense, brown waters of the Atrato River, gateway to the wild 
northwestern state of Choco, are low from drought. It's slow going for 
the 66-foot, diesel-powered Jhonny Boy.

The voyage upriver takes 11 hours, but that doesn't seem to bother 
the passengers.

They have more serious worries: Are their houses still standing? 
What will they eat while they replant their land? Will they be able to 
live in peace, or will they have to leave again to escape fighting 
between leftist rebels and the army and paramilitary groups 
financed by big landowners?

``I trust in God that nothing will happen to us,'' says Hector Jarada, a 
61-year-old peasant, reclining on deck. ``This is everyone's plan, to 
return to our villages, to our land.''

Nearly a year after fleeing their homes, Jarada and 71 others, 29 of 
them children, are returning in a ramshackle boat hired by the 
Colombian government. 

They spent the past 10 months at the Western hemisphere's largest 
refugee camp, Pavarando -- 220 miles and a world away from the 
national capital in Bogota.

It was at Pavarando that an army sentry halted the first raggedy 
refugees of an exodus that carried more than 4,000 people out of 
villages in northern Choco last March and April. They arrived with 
little more than the clothes on their backs.

Most remain at the camp, a crowded 2 1/2 acres of dry, red earth. 
They live in shacks of banana leaves and black plastic sheeting that 
absorbs heat to the boiling point, and battle daily to fend off flies. A 
nearby stream serves as water source, toilet and laundry. 

There are no kitchens, only cooking fires at the doorless entrances of 
the closely bunched huts. The food -- rice, beans, yucca, pasta -- is 
donated by government agencies. Occasionally, at Christmas for 
example, there has been a bit of meat.

The government created a special refugee affairs office last year and 
earmarked millions of dollars to feed the refugees and provide them 
with health care. But until it deals with the root of the problem -- the 
armed conflict -- nothing will improve, independent aid workers say.

For three decades, violence has forced Colombian peasants to flee 
their homes. While the toll can't be compared to the uprooted masses 
of Rwanda in Africa, Colombia is the leader in the Americas: It had 
257,000 internal refugees last year and 180,000 in 1996, according 
to the independent Consultancy for Human Rights and the Displaced.

Since December, the government has been working with the Roman 
Catholic Church to organize the return of Pavarando refugees in 
groups of 60-70 people. 

Church workers escort the travelers home to villages around Rio 
Sucio, the largest town in northern Choco and the Jhonny Boy's 
destination. Rio Sucio was left virtually uninhabited by the 1997 
exodus. 

Seated on the boat's lower deck, where both river and jungle are 
visible, the passengers travel in silence. Women pass the time 
braiding hair. Children don't stray from their mothers.

The return program began after months of contacts that aid groups 
and the church initiated with leftist rebels and their paramilitary 
foes, trying to persuade them to leave the peasants out of their 
dispute. 

Refugees began agreeing to go home after word filtered back to 
Pavarando from the few peasants who stayed behind that their area 
is peaceful again. Yet no one can promise it will stay that way.

``As long as the war continue we are certain to have refugees,'' says 
Cesar Manuel Garcia, the presidential delegate for the displaced. ``We 
are conscious that the final solution to this problem is peace in 
Colombia.'' 

Colombia's peasants have always been caught in the middle, accused 
by all the warring parties of sympathizing with their enemies.

``Let's hope that won't happen again,'' says Liris Yepez, 21, traveling 
home with her two small children to join a husband who returned 
with one of the first groups to leave Pavarando. ``We raised chickens, 
we planted ... we want to go back to work.'' 

From Pavarando, the returnees' trip began on a school bus. Three 
hours later, they were in Turbo, a port on the Gulf of Uraba, which 
was crossed in the Jhonny Boy on a westward course into the mouth 
of the Atrato. 

Two Dominican nuns, Maria Josefina and Maria Ubdulia, accompany 
this group and everyone stays on the lower deck to keep out of the 
fierce sun.

Just before entering the Atrato, the boat stops. A small skiff 
approaches and delivers two men, with the captain's permission, to 
the Jhonny Boy. They wear civilian clothes but military boots, and 
they appear to have pistols beneath their shirts.

One of the nuns tries in vain to make conversation with the men and 
returns, moving her mouth without making a sound: ``They're paras.'' 
-- paramilitary fighters. 

But it appears there is no danger. They may just need a ride to Rio 
Sucio, or maybe this is their way of showing the returnees who is in 
control of the region. 

Using suitcases for pillows and spreading blankets on the deck, the 
group settles the children to sleep. The boat's lights are extinguished 
and the deafening drone of the motor drowns out the sounds of the 
jungle. 

Rio Sucio is reached at 1 a.m. After sunup, the journey continues, this 
time in five long canoes led upstream by a boat flying the flag of the 
International Red Cross.

In a few spots, the river is so shallow the returnees must get out and 
push the canoes through the muck. Finally, they reach the river 
landing that is the start of a three-hour walk to Villa Hermosa, a 
village with an infirmary, church and a few houses.

The government has promised to provide security for the returnees, 
to give them deeds to their land and to send four months worth of 
provisions to feed them while they clear the earth of weeds and 
plant again. 

For many, like Jarada, the doubts about the return are like weeds. 
He'll just have to pull them out of his mind and trust in God.

``You get used to what is yours, to your land,'' he says. ``And you get 
desperate to return.'' 

(c) Copyright 1998 The Associated Press