Dominga: an unknown victim of EU "free" trade agreement

News is just coming out that in the EU “free” trade negotiatons with Colombia, the first victims are to be the small scale milk and cheese producers. The Andean price band, a system that stops the price going too low or too high, will be elimiated and Colombian milk will have to compete with subsidised milk arriving from Europe. This will have an effect on 450,000 milk producers

“Thousands of small milk producers, that are not able to access loans nor do they have leverage in high government, will suffer from an avanlanche of 5500 tonnes of powdered milk, 2310 tonnes in cheese and 1100 tonnes of other milk products those arrival in the country will increase by 10% annually until this vital part of the peasant economy disappears. Is this not about the human rights of thousands of peasant families?”[1]

Photo: Dominga leaving to take her cheese down to the main road, one hour away.

One of these families is that of Dominga, who I first met and wrote about in October 2008. I have been to stay with her several times since then. Darian is now living in the nearby small town where he can continue his studies. There is no secondary education in his hamlet. Cheese production pays for his transport, food and accomodation costs.

The last time I stayed with Dominga was in January. I told her about my good friend who has recently been sentenced for a year and a half after being found with two kilos of cocaine on him. He was doing the more risky job of carrying out the region as his two babies had rashes and he needed to buy medicines urgently.

She wasn't that sympathetic. “those lads in the

se coca areas just want easy money without having to do much work” I remember her saying. An interesting conversation around the kitchen table followed where we chatted about why we each thought that there had been a big increase in coca production in Catatumbo:

- paramilitaries imposing it as got 70% of their national revenue from cocaine in that one region

- twelve hour walks from many farms to just get to the road makes transporting yam or plantain very costly (you would need a lot of donkeys) for the price you would be able to sell it at while a kilo of cocaine in the rucksack is practically actually possible
- lack of State support for peasant farmer agriculture

Photo: Milking her cattle, the daily morning work.

I wonder if Dominga will remember this conversation as she hears news of this threat to her livelihood. Will she have to turn to coca looking for a way to get food on the table and an education for her kids as the neoliberal policies continue to destroy peasant farming?

[1] RECALCA (Colombian Action Network against Free Trade) http://www.recalca.org.co/

In your country, is there also war?

Helicopters overhead, vallenato tunes reaching my ears from all direction, children squealing as they bathe together, the cluck of chickens searching for any sign of food in the bare yard, soldiers pass through the village, buying lunch, just an average day here. I go to use the toilet at 6am to find a solider showering there. His helmet on the wall where I wash my hands. I am in the municipal of El Tarra, one of the most heavily militarised municipals in the region, with an estimated one thousand soldiers present.

Two weeks ago the Colombian government gave the USA permission to use seven military bases for US soldiers from which they will carry out military operations both inside and outside of Colombia. The argument given for this unconstitutional agreement is anti-drugs and anti terrorism. In Catatumbo I have met young people with far smarter answers to these arguments than foreign military in their territory. 

Yesterday I watched a group of children and young people prepare small sketches. One of the groups portrayed the paramilitary invasion in to their community ten years ago. As the armed men broken into the house shooting, the daughter feigning death, heard her parents being slaughtered. Filled with revenge she escaped and went to join the guerillas. Filled with bitterness, knowing the army had allowed the paramilitaries to carry out many massacres, she fought against the army. And yet in her improvisation, the desire for no more deaths overwhelmed her in a moment and she took out the white t-shirt, held it high above her head and cried out “why cant we just have peace, peace for my country?”

And in this piece she told me a simple reason for why many young people continue to join the guerrilla groups. One of many. 

Another is the near impossibility to learn new skills, get good work. Fighting is one current option to get paid work: army, police, paramilitary, FARC, ELN. Another popular option is raspando, picking coca leaves to make cocaine. 

Bullet Holes and Aguilas Negras Graffiti: Classroom occupied by the paramilitaries in 2002 in the village of Filo Gringo. 

While in a shop the owner immediately started asking us if we knew of opportunities for his son to become a professional solder. His son had heard there was a shortage and wanted to train. Did we know of any veterinary courses that had programmes to support students from poor backgrounds. His nephew wanted to work with cattle. Did we know of a way to get on a mechanics course. Another nephew thought he could make a living if he got good qualifications. 

We did not know. 

If the Colombian government really wanted a anti-drugs policy they would know where these sons and nephews could get support to study. They would be trying to open doors for young people so they can follow dreams and not get drawn in to the conflict and coca.

They are not.

They are permitting a foreign army to become involved in the internal armed conflict thereby exacerbating the confrontation and diminishing the possibility of peace. They are giving military bases to the USA from which attacks could be launched on neighboring democratic and progressive governments. They are giving US soldiers full impunity for crimes that they may commit.

After the rehearsal, one of you teenage girls asked me:

“y en tu pais, hay guerra tambien?”

“in your country, is there war as well? ” 

The following day a boy asked me:

"el conflicto alla, donde vives, es mas fuerte que aca o menos?"

"the conflict there, where you live, is it worse than here?"

Conflict is such a part of everyday life that kids assume that it is normal. Twisted brutal reality.

Yet it is staggeringly beautiful that while they improvised much conflict and murders in their sketches, that they also had the vision to improvise peace, performing the possible.

Written on 11th August

  

Coal mining: Conservation and Cocaine at hand to help.

“I remember Trinidad lending me his wellies, as I turned up with totally inappropratie brand new white trainers. He was always taking care of people”

“I remember being in a meeting with him when the paras arrived outside. He kept everyone calm with his soothing words and composed response to the terrifying situation”

The four-day meeting opened with the warm sharing of memories of two members of CISCA, killed in 2005 and 2006. Re-knowing that every action and every word that we make is part of a process that stretches both back and forward is for me a beautiful part of CISCA, the Committee for the Social Integration of Catatumbo. Their aim, as a social organisation, is not just to respond to human rights violations nor in opposing the imposition of a huge open cast coal mine though they do both of these and more. Unlike so many seemingly single issue organisations that emerge and fade in the UK, their vision is none less than the audacious plan to rebuild the social fabric of Catatumbo and to live, as campesinos, on their lands with each other and nature in a deeply respectful and contented way, through their community based development plans, known as “Planes de Vidas” – Plans for Life.

The first paramilitary invasion of their territory in 1999, in El Tibu, left 800 people killed or disappeared and 20 thousand fled their homes. The AUC paramilitary occupation continued until late 2004, when the supposed demobilisation began. In August 2004 CISCA held their first gathering of associations with the necessary accompaniment of La red as paramilitaries were closeby. Faced wth juntas de accion communal (community action groups) in shreds, community shops destroyed, people with little hope, large displaced populations, staple food crops poisoned as part of the ‘war on drugs’, they set about the task of reconstructing the social fabric with a awe inspiring determination.

They are a long way from their aim yet the culture of organising in juntas breathes on. Juntas began to re-organise themselves in associations on a municipality levels and these associations form part of CISCA, a space for regional coordination. Over the past five years they have encouraged more and more communities to rebuild the networks of solidarity economics, rebuild their cultural lives, rebuild their community organising where they can resolve local conflicts, confront corrupt mayors, repair their roads, demand that roads are paved so they are passable in the rainy season; to rebuild the possibilities and dreams of living a campesino culture that has been violently under attack.

My four days in the village of Maracaibo, with the guerilla and the army alternatively making their presence known, eating a combination of rice, yuca, grated cheese and eggs I learnt what I know; I want to breathe my life’s vocation, I want a coherent healthy rich life; I am in awe at the wisdom, humbleness, intelligence and kindness of the people I was with. I am envious of their culture that we are so far from having the capacity to build in the UK.


I love pouring over maps, exploring all the detail that is contained in the illustration; each colour, each different style of line gives me a piece of information with which I build up an image of a reality. This map, put together as different associations shared information with each other, tells of a new stage in history arriving to confront CISCA’s vision and plans for their region.

Conservation International Colombia have recently contacted several associations asking for help in conducting an investigation into the flora and fauna within the parque forestal (area above the dotted green line) related to a plan to change the perimeter of the forestry reserve. As long as the zona de interes minero (mining interest area) is within the forestry reserve it cannot be exploited. Conservation International are not telling the associations what their real motive is. So far, they have been giving conflicting information and trying to get agreement from one association by lying to them about supposed support they already have from another association.

Conservation International public line is that it is ‘real world fact’ that multinationals are going to mine and so best to work with them to preserve biodiversity. What they don’t mention is the role they have played in ensurng this supposed objective fact becomes true. They have been described as “the trojan horse of multinationals” undermining local resistance and alternative community based development plans in order to facilitate their corporate partners entry into rural areas.

The strategies used to get territorial control of natural resources in Catatumbo have been many:
o Paramilitary massacres were the most extensive and brutal in the two municipalities, Tarra and Tibu, where the potential mining area is located.
o The majority of fumigations and manual erradication in Catatumbo has occurred in the potential mining area.
o Detentions of campesinos for growing coca is predominantly in this area.
o And now a Multinational Conservation Corporation has arrived.

I asked why the government did not lift the forestry reserve immediately after the paramilitary violence, when the social organisations were their weakest and the habitants had fled from their lands. Why have they waited and now they have to find a way to displace the same people again in order to extract the coal reserves? I received varying answers; after the horrors that occurred in the area they did not expect people to later return to their lands; people did not leave the area, they hid deeper in the mountains; the quantity of human rights violations reported was very high and multinationals could not have entered in that period as it would have been obvious that they were benefiting from the massacres and colluding with paramilitaries.

So after a first wave of violent displacement, then returning to their homes and beginning to rebuild their lives the people in this area of Catatumbo are facing an uncertain future. The state needs them out. The imprisonment of campesinos for growing coca leaves the wife and children in a precarious situation and Cisca conjecture that families will then be forced off their land through necessity, bullying or physical force.

I knew that coca is used as a convenient pretext already, but our process of collectively piecing together this specific cold calculated horrific plan still made me swear heavily out loud in english.