I am a former governor of Choco, the most impoverished department of Colombia. In 1998, I tried to declare Choco a neutral zone, a territory of peace, free from the combat ravaging my country. Because of my work for peace, I was kidnapped by people who identified themselves as paramilitaries. Death threats were leveled at my family and me. Fearing for our lives, we fled to the United States in July 2000. We now live here in exile.
But most Colombians do not have the option of exile. They have no- where to run from the violence in our country. The Bush administration’s announcement that it plans to expand the Clinton administration’s $1.3 billion aid package to Colombia and its neighbors will make matters only worse for many of my fellow citizens.
The aid package, supposedly intended to help bring a “peaceful and sensible resolution” to Colombia’s conflict, is a grave mistake. It will force Americans to pay with their checkbooks, and Colombians with their lives.
Sixty percent of the aid that the Colombian government receives will go to the Colombian military, notorious for having one of the worst human-rights records in the world. According to Human Rights Watch’s most recent annual report, “Colombia’s armed forces continue to be implicated in serious human-rights violations.”
Paramilitary groups, working closely with the Colombian military, often harass and terrorize the people. Just last month, right-wing paramilitaries entered the village of Chengue in northern Colombia and herded the men into the town square. The paramilitaries then killed at least 25 of them with sledgehammers and rocks, as their families watched, before setting fire to houses and shops. Survivors told The Washington Post that the Colombian military provided safe passage to the paramilitaries and sealed off the area to facilitate the massacre.
There are now more than 1.8 million Colombians who are refugees within our own country. Left with no other option, some move to the large cities and join the ranks of the urban poor. Others, desperate and destitute, join guerrilla organizations or the paramilitaries for survival. The cycle of oppression and poverty continues, and the conflict deepens.
But peace, for so long a distant prospect, has begun to light the Colombian horizon. In October 2000, the long-ignored Colombian people met with representatives of the Colombian government and rebel groups in Costa Rica in a conference named Paz Colombia (Peace Colombia). This conference was an attempt to begin a democratic dialogue that will bring a political and peaceful end to Colombia’s civil conflict. Only two years ago, such a meeting between the intensely divided sectors of the Colombian people would have been difficult to bring about.
Extend olive branches, not weapons, to Colombia. Even the left-for-dead peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC, Colombia’s largest rebel group, have been resuscitated. Colombian President Andrés Pastrana and FARC leader Manuel Marulanda have revived the talks.
Despite these overtures, the Bush administration unwisely has decided to extend weapons, instead of olive branches, to Colombia. As a result, the glow of peace dims in the darkness of this 40-year war. The Colombian military, newly trained and armed by the United States, is planning major offensives in the south.
The guerrillas, battle-tested after four decades in the jungle, are digging in, preparing for the coming battles. And the Colombian people are caught in between. They desperately want – and deserve – to live in a country without war.
Luis Gilberto Murillo is a former governor of the department of Choco in Colombia. He and his family now live in exile in Washington, D.C
