|
San José de ApartadóCSN Home |
Background & History | Origins | Basic Principles & Organizational Process | Return to the Hamlets
San Jose de Apartado, a small village in the region of Uraba, is located approximately 12 km from the city of Apartado, Antioquia, and is situated near the Serrana del Abibe, bordering Cordoba. San Jose is comprised of 28 hamlets and has a population of nearly 3000. The land is apt for raising cattle and for cultivating corn, cocoa, avocado, yucca, plantains, rice and coffee.
Since its foundation in 1970, San Jose has been characterized by its inhabitants struggle for better living conditions in a zone that has lacked the presence of institutions of the State. The guerrilla entered in the region in the 1980s and steadily gained force, due to State's absence.
In the beginning, the inhabitants had to walk 12 hours to Apartado to purchase food, which they themselves had to carry on their backs in order to arrive to the hamlets. With the Patriotic Union, a political party which represented an option for the working class, we were able to build schools and health centers, we had teachers, health promotors, and road improvements. On one hand, leaders emerged who represented the interests of our communities. One the other hand the authority in the region was the guerrilla, who committed abuses, assassinations, and submitted the peasant¥s autonomy its own will.
As for the army, it entered to strike at a population that it considered collaborators of the guerrilla. In the 1990s the conflict escalated and we the civilian population suffered the consequences and the attacks from both sides.
In September of 1996, a group of armed men accompanied by civilians entered San Jose and forced the leaders of the Communal Action Council and of the Women's Committee out of their homes and assassinated them. Curiously, the army, which had been occupying the town since August, had retreated that night.
Following this first massacre, the majority of the inhabitants of San Jose abandoned their residences for fear of another attack; the few who remained went to the mountains at night to sleep, in order to avoid being victims of the paramilitaries who acted together with the army, a fact to which we the peasants in the zone have been witnesses.
That is how the population lived until 1997, when one day at six o'clock in the morning, a group of 40 paramilitaries arrived, th majority of whom were recognized as reinserted former members of the EPL guerrilla group (Popular Liberation Army). They made all the inhabitants of the town go to the main sport plaza and, after threatening them, they proceeded to tie up several persons who were found dead one day later on the road that leads to Apartado.
From this moment, the paramilitaries took absolute control of the
road that led from San Jose to Apartado. Their presence on the road was
permanent; they controlled the entrance of food to the town, they
continuously stopped the vehicles that passed through and checked the
people's identification documents, with a list in hand. They proceeded to
assassinate anyone who appeared on the list, or anyone else who appeared
suspicious. All this produced terror, death and hunger among the civilian
population. The few inhabitants that had remained in San Jose had to flee
the village, since the situation had turned more difficult still for the
peasants who found ourselves in the hamlets.
The Origins of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó
Since 1997 the peasants of the hamlets of the village of San Jose de Apartado began to work with an idea of Monsenor Isaias Duarte Cancino, the Bishop of Apartado at the time, to create a neutral zone in which the civilian population would be respected. We began to have workshops with CINEP, the Intercongregational Commission for Justice and Peace, and some community leaders and we discussed the idea of declaring San Jose a neutral zone.
We all agreed, in spite of the fact that the then governor of Antioquia, Alvaro Uribe Velez, had taken the term neutrality as a politic of his own in order to involve the civilian population in the conflict. We had to replant the idea, because the policy of Uribe Velez consisted in declaring by decree in territories dominated by paramilitaries or in which the army remained present. This policy presented a danger for us and lacked credibility among the population. For us, the meaning of neutrality is different. We decided, then, to change the name while keeping the same objective in mind: to remain neutral towards all the armed actors in the conflict.
On March 23, 1997, we declared ourselves the PEACE COMMUNITY OF SAN JOSE DE APARTADO, with the hope that the armed actors would respect us and that we would not have to abandon our lands. Pax Christi, the Diocese of Apartado, Cinep, the Commission of Justice and Peace, and the media were all present at the ceremony.
That same week, on the March 28, army troops and paramilitaries arrived to the hamlets of Arenas, La Union, Las Nieves and El Guineo and, after assassinating several peasants and entering into combat with the guerrilla, they submitted the zone to heavy bombardments. We peasants were forced to leave the hamlets under the threat that, if we did not leave within two to five days, the (head choppers) would come.
There were two people from the Intercongregational Commission of Justice and Peace accompanying us when this exodus occurred and many of us, upon feeling accompanied by them, made the decision to stay. During this time, we came up with another alternative: If they did not let us develop our initiative in the hamlets, we would begin to struggle from here in San Jose and organize ourselves into a true Peace Community. That is how our struggle began for an alternative in the midst of a war against the civilian population.
It has not been an easy process, At first, the government did not recognize us as forcibly displaced persons and, for this reason, we did not have access to food nor health care nor education. Moreover, we were controlled by the paramilitary checkpoint that existed for nine months on the only route that lead from Apartado to San Jose, and at which army soldiers were frequently seen together with the paramilitaries. At this paramilitary checkpoint, occassionally set up just one kilometer away from a military base, more than 30 peasants were assassinated. We continuously received threats from the army, who accused us of being a community nest of guerrilleros, and the only presence of the State was the militarization of the village.
The guerrilla, on the other hand, targeted the community for its decision to not sell them food nor collaborate with them in any way. This cost the lives of several community leaders, including Ramiro Correa, member of the community's Internal Council, who the FARC guerrilla assassinated on October 6, 1997. These are clear violations of International Humanitarian Law that guarantees protection for the persons who do not participate in the hostilities.
The most recent violation against our community occurred on the
night of April 4, 1999, when paramilitaries attacked San Jose, in flagrant
violation of our laws against the presence of any armed group within the
town. They murdered Anibal Jimenez, a community leader and member of the
Internal Council, Gabriel Graciano, a 16-year old boy and member of the
Community, and Daniel Pino, a campesino who lived in San Jose. The
paramilitaries also critically wounded two men and a women with grenades
that were thrown at them. In spite of the repression, however, we are
determined to continue in our process of neutrality, since we believe it to
be the only way to resist in the midst of war.
Basic Principles and Organizational Process of the Peace Community
In order to belong to the San Jose de Apartado Peace Community process, each person participates in workshops that explain to them the essence of the process and the community norms that they should respect. Each community member freely and voluntarily makes the decision to assume the position of neutrality as a form of resistance to the war, and to abide by the following norms:
Moreover, we commit ourselves to the search for a peaceful and negotiated solution to the conflicts in our country. These commitments are inscribed on our Peace Community identification cards, which show the symbol of our land, the same symbol that appears on our flag.
Each one of us assumes certain commitments in our respective activities; for example, if I am a merchant and I am part of the Peace Community process, I cannot sell to any armed actor: guerrilla, paramilitaries-army. This is also the case with the drivers who cover the route to Apartado, who attend the community workshops and commit to not transporting any armed actor in the vehicle, since it places in danger all the persons who use public transportation.
Even though we have gained some respect on the part of the armed actors, they have still committed and continue to commit abuses against us. Each time that the guerrilla or paramilitaries-army commit a violation or an abuse against persons that make up part of the process of the Peace Community, we file a complaint before the national and international agencies of control and protection for human rights. The Peace Community also makes pronouncements against any violent action that affects the civilian population, even those who do not make up part of our process, since this we understand to be an unjust situation and before which we cannot keep silent.
Our process is organized into various groups and committees in which the members can participate:
All members of the Peace Community have committed themselves to working in community. This dynamic has allowed us to put into practice the principles of solidarity and union, since one no longer thinks of his own interests but of the community. At this time there are 31 men's work groups comprised of 253 members and 11 women's work groups comprised of 132 members. Each work group has a coordinator who organizes the group and exposes the necessities and the achievements of each group.
There are also committees within the Community health, education, work, sports, culture, formation, and the women's committees. These committees also have their coordinators, who are in charge of distributing the aid that arrives to the communities, be it tools for the working groups or food baskets for the families.
INTERNAL COUNCIL: This is the maximum authority of the Peace Community and is in charge of coordinating activities and resolving conflicts through dialogue. The Internal Council is conformed by eight persons with distinct functions: Coordinator General, Vice-coordinator, Treasurer, Fiscal, and Secretary. Every six months, the members the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado elect the members of the Internal Council as well as the coordinators in a free and voluntary election.
In March of 1998, 240 persons initiated the first return to the hamlet of La Union. We made a visit to Bogota, and the national government committed itself to supporting our return by providing health brigades, by contributing to the reconstruction of the houses that were destroyed, by sending food every 12 days during the first six months, and by reimbursing the funds used for a productive project valued at 82 million pesos. The goverment did not fulfill even one of its promises.
The ultimate objective of the Peace Community is for all the members to be able to return to their hamlets from which they were forcibly displaced.