Words That Do Not Intend to Conceal the Truth
Translated for CSN by Ramon Stern, a volunteer translator
Humanitarian zones, Nueva Vida y Esperanza en Dios, September 1, 2003
In spite of the difficulties, in spite of the lies and persecution of our process of popular civilian resistance, in spite of the campaign of misinformation by the media, there are different voices that support us because they believe in the truth of our words, because they know and because they are, people who act in solidarity, ethical people. To these human beings we pass some different words from the columnist Lisandro Duque, that is also a director of Colombian cinema, who wrote his opinion on Sunday, August 31 in the newspaper El Espectador.
Lisandro Duque Naranjo, CACARICA
It is going to be difficult for the Army Commander, General Jorge Enrique Mora Rangel, to prove his accusations against 320 families from the Choc region that inhabit the Cacarica river basin. The high official should be more selective with his informants, because the person that encouraged him with information about the supposed conversion of that community into a subversive epicenter, is someone who was sanctioned by the community for his lack of honor. The settlements "Esperanza en Dios" and "Nueva Vida", against which General Mora has filed complaints, house the families from the Choc region that returned to their place of origin two years after surviving a bloody operation of the XVII Brigade in 1997 and a merciless paramilitary incursion in the same year. This pair of towns, of mystic and utopic names like the name of the attack against them is biblical: "Genesis", take up only 24 hectares. The community, however, because of its degree of cultural cohesion and its ancestral will to defend its rights and dignity, receives from the Colombian State, from several of its ministries, from the Ombudsman's Office and a network of international organizations of a humanitarian character Acnur, Doctors of the World, Brigades in solidarity from 24 countries, Christian churches from the United States and Europe, NGOs like Justice and Peace, in addition to many others - resources to live, productive projects and ecological preservation. But above all, these entities from so many places fulfill with the 320 families the majority of whose members are minors and children - a task of accompaniment to protect their decision to remain on the margins of the armed conflict. It is worrisome, thus, that an authority of the level of General Mora Rangel, accepts and divulges with such certainty stories which expose these families, who hold onto the illusion of working quietly or at least staying alive, to a predictable danger. Can a group that still remembers clearly the bombings, shootings and machetes, which caused so recently the loss of loved ones and the flight through the countryside to humiliating places of refuge, be tempted by weapons or sympathize with armed organizations? Definitely not. The people of Cacarica did not return for revenge, nor to lend themselves to plans of war. The culture of the Chocó region black and indigenous - has other ways of processing its mourning and rituals. This region has never been violent, at least never in the way of those who enter it from the side. Furthermore, it is worthwhile to imagine how such a small community could work with an armed group, hide weapons and people for them, without national government workers and members of foreign organizations who spend time there picking up on these mysteries. General Mora will then see if he extends his accusation to those guests. Furthermore, not necessarily where there are barbed-wire fences, can it be said that it is a concentration camp into which one must penetrate to save the prisoners. The fence that surrounds those settlements is symbolic and receives the name "the mesh of life." It is there to inform any armed group, those that rove about, anxious to get inside, that the inhabitants on the inside do not even carry a needle and are working. The ironic aspect of this situation is that this community owns 103,024 hectares, of which they have been allowed to occupy only 24, from which now they want to expel them. For being subversive. In whose way are those returnees, so few in number and such good people and in such a small space, in order to deserve such stigmatization? Maybe the timber companies that are predatory on the forests, corrupt government workers, finance criminals and of course consider an enemy of their greed the conscience of of the natives the forest? Cacarica is the proof that the expulsion of entire communities from their territories is not a massive collateral damage provoked by the supposed confrontation of paramilitaries with guerrillas, rather a principal objective of those who want to do good business on lands that do not belong to them.
COMMUNITIES OF SELF-DETERMINATION, LIFE AND DIGNITY OF CACARICA - CAVIDA