Actualidad Colombiana IN ENGLISH

There Is a Farm in the Heart of Bogotá

The farmers' markets in Bogotá

LILIANA GUARÍN
Planeta Paz

Although it has been around for 4000 years, I was only about ten years old when I discovered it. Although certain care is needed, mainly to treat the bitter parts, it has many wonderful powers. It is like admiring one for being so small, yes, but in truth she is the queen of nutrition and health.”

With a careful movement, which the coarseness of hands accustomed to field work denies, Hernando Javier Camacho, a middle-aged boyacense farmer, revealed between the palms his hands the subject of his explanation: a handful of small, round, yellow seeds of quinoa.

We Rise Up in the Struggle of the Masses

CARLOS RODRÍGUEZ DÍAZ
PRESIDENT OF LA CUT

The historical lessons we learned in 2003 have allowed us to reaffirm the civil and democratic character of our actions. It is good to reiterate that in the history of Colombian unionism, never have we seen social agitation as we did last year.

The 21 national mobilizations confronting government policy, the 6,500 conferences, 700 television programs, 1,600 radio programs and 24 million leaflets distributed show, unquestionably, the high degree of authority in the struggle.

This year, not counting the union protests, we have organized nine extraordinary mobilizations that give account of the union political consequences and that capacity for struggle of the Central Union of Workers (CUT), of the credibility of the union's direction, and the unquestionable political initiative, which extends beyond the nation and exemplifies Latin America.

The Unity of the Indigenous People

"The critical situation in which the oppressed live must be a foundational problem related to the NEOLIBERAL strategy and to GLOBALIZATION, and for that reason any action that we do now will be part of a medium- and long-term fight.... This country is ours and it is time to reclaim it!!!"

ARTICLE FOR ILA
KRISÁLIDA

Summoned by these words, more than 60,000 men and women, indigenous, farmers, the homeless and others, mobilized between September 12 and 18 to reject the policies of the present government of Alvaro Uribe Vélez. In solidarity, they renounced: the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), the continuous human rights violations, the arbitrary constitutional reforms and the repressive "policy of democratic security".

Word of Disarmament

The hearing implied that a real and lasting peace cannot be had, instead reducing justice to ceremonies of generous pardon for those who have committed many atrocities and over many years, as was the case for the paramilitaries

LILIANA GUARÍN
Planeta Paz

“The map of Colombia is full", according to the gentleman, who began to raise his voice, "with the names of assassinated people from the Patriotic Union." He was one of the police officers that was watching the entrance to the National Capitol on September 6, 2004. A woman, also of the monitoring group, typed on a laptop, apparently in agreement with her companion.

Women in the Post-Conflict

Eucaris Olaya y Liliana Guarín
Planeta Paz

"A large part of our efforts has been focused on finding an end to the armed conflict in Colombia, without looking any further – at the post-conflict time period. Are we prepared to construct a country in peace if most of us know nothing different from a country at war?" asked one the one of the participants of the International Conference of Women against War, which met from August 10-12 in Bogotá. The event, organized by the Initiative of Women for Peace and the Ruta Pacífica de Mujeres, brought more than 300 women together representing all regions of the country, plus 30 delegates from Costa Rica, Spain, Russia, Georgia, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, Chile, Bolivia, Mexico, Israel, El Salvador, Haiti, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

Organized diversity

This past June 27th saw in Bogota the most attended march of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people.

LILIANA GUARÍN
Planeta Paz

In the street, in the supermarket, in the line at the bank, in the cafeteria or anywhere she goes and wants to live her life, she causes a stir. She provokes impetuous declarations of admiration for her beauty, acclaims to her bravery, hysterical gestures of solidarity and, though not very often, aggression, insults and outcries that condemn her to an eternal hell. However, in the middle of all this noise, she maintains her impeccable bearing and an appearance of sweetness and calm which seems to soar over a riotous planet.

Samantha, a young transgendered woman, with her single presence can alter any place, but with her work, on behalf of the human rights of people with this sexual condition, she is altering a society that frequently denies, makes fun of or mistreats anyone who is different. She is part of Cotransgénero, one of the organizations which, since the 1990s, has been formed to defend and promote the recognition and exercise of human rights of transgendered people. Also, she is part of the LGBT (Lesbian, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgendered) sector that was organized more recently.

The Relevance of Opinion

Social leaders speak out about the negotiations with the self-defense groups

A group of popular social leaders, summoned by Planeta Paz (Planet Peace) in the so-called Group of Peace, has been developing a systematic reflection on a social strategy which would allow the opinion of popular, social leaders, with respect to the political negotiation of the social and armed Colombian conflict, to be heard.

The government negotiations with the paramilitary or self-defense groups have been the subject of discussion and of political polarization with multiple implications in the scope of national life. Some believe that the Colombian state must generate the policies and actions for the dissolution of the paramilitary groups, given its responsibility, which even the same self-defense leaders recognize. This perspective would have the disadvantage of abandoning the specific vision of those who are in the leadership of the state, which supports a solution that may or may not be acceptable to the whole of society, as happened with the proposals for the Alternative Penal (Punishment) Law.

A political and democratic strike

NELSON BERRIO REYES
Permanent Assemblymember of the Civil Society for Peace

During the 36 days of the strike, the oil workers, affiliated with the union USO of Colombia, displayed great strength and creativity in preventing EcoPetrol from being eliminated by the erratic policies of the current government. This workers' resistance, first seen in Barrancabermeja, very quickly awakened sympathy and solidarity within the social sectors. The student protests, the forums held in different cities of the country and the May 18th national general strike against the ALCA and the FTAA were, to a great extent, encouraged by the example of the strikers who demonstrated that, even in the most adverse situations, it is possible to rise up and fight.

A Movement for Peace, Justice and Reparations

IVÁN CEPEDA CASTRO

The National Meeting of the Victims of Crime and Human Rights Violations met in Bogotá, May 28-29, 2004. The event brought together people from various sectors who had been affected by the processes of persecution and extermination. Attending the conference were leaders from communities in diverse regions of the country, representing victims of criminal action by the state and paramilitary groups; delegates from organizations of farmers, the indigenous, and Afro-Colombians in areas of "security zones"; relatives of the disappeared and members of associations for the displaced; human rights organizations from these regions; as well as spokespeople from political and union organizations which have been subject to campaigns of systemic elimination.

EcoPetrol strike

On the EcoPetrol Strike*

Álvaro Delgado
Cinep Researcher

The most novel aspect of the EcoPetrol strike is that it has exploded at perhaps the most difficult time for its union, The Joint Workers’ Union (Unión Sindical Obrera): the splitting of the company into three separate entities, with the corresponding loss of political and financial autonomy; the general weakness of the Colombian union movement; and the similar loss of a popular solidarity atmosphere traditionally accompanying actions by the oil workers.

You might think that, in the 50-year history of EcoPetrol, there could not have been a more inappropriate time to launch a labor battle. But, paradoxically, this is not an attempt for such a struggle. Additionally, the EcoPetrol unionists, according to a top union leader, had no choice. Not going on strike would have been even worse. The political leaders of the workers’ world learned this long ago: if wage workers (the ‘proletarians’ of Marx and Engels) do not confront capitalist offenses, the social movement would simply disappear. If wage-workers do not demand wage increases (supposedly leading to a rise in prices that would neatly cancel out the wage increases), they are never going to understand and witness the value of social struggle.