Letter from the Field:
The View from San José

By Peter Cousins

At the end of May, the Peace Community at San José de Apartadó was subject to an unusual, two-fronted attack. On live national radio, the Community was accused of active collaboration with the FARC guerrilla insurgents, and of enslaving its members into a life of misery, with no option of leaving. Some Community leaders and loyal Colombian supporters were singled out for particular treatment, including Jesuit priest Javier Giraldo, former Apartadó mayor Gloria Cuartas, and – in particular – the academic Eduar Lanchero.

That the Peace Community should be linked to the insurgency is nothing new. Nor is the discourse that the campesinos are living in misery. As accompaniers, we often hear from civil and military officials (as well as the occasional former Community member who must have managed a furtive escape) that there is no progress, no development, in the Peace Community.

What was novel this time round were the protagonists – the ex-Minister of Justice-turned-broadcaster Fernando Londoño Hoyos, and a demobilized guerrilla leader, alias “Samir” of the FARC’s 5th Front, active in the San José de Apartadó area. As President Uribe´s Justice Minister, Londoño Hoyos spoke fervently against “Samir”’s type. But this exchange was cordial in the extreme and, in all probability, highly-coordinated. It was also illegal, as “evidence” of criminal activity must be passed to the Prosecutors´ Office, not broadcast on the radio, jeopardizing due process and the presumption of innocence. It has also been making waves across the Atlantic, where a Dutch journalist quoted parts of it in an article of her own.

The Peace Community has denounced the broadcast, batting back each of the accusations, in a lengthy communiqué. This document speaks for itself, and as observers rather than Community members, it is right that they should take the lead in responding. Nonetheless, as I listened to the interview, I was reminded of Philip Pullman´s Dark Materials trilogy; just as his novels are set in a parallel Oxford, so I became increasingly convinced that this must have been another Peace Community, somewhere else. It is not the Community which I have got to know over the last six months. Of its supposed links to the FARC, one need only say that such ties would violate its most basic raison d´être, that of effacing itself from Colombia’s armed conflict, which rumbles on in defiance of assorted government officials´ diagnoses of post-conflict conditions. There are some other examples, however, which belie the content of Samir´s tales. I refer in particular to the alleged levels of poverty and misery at large in the Peace Community, and the lack of progress/development.

It is true that the campesinos amongst whom we live and work do not feature in the upper quartile of Colombia’s richest people – and neither are they ever likely to. There are also disparities of wealth amongst Community members. Equally, as the most recent communiqué makes clear, they have not adopted a strategy for the economic development of the San José district. Their project, libremente (freely) undertaken as their signs declare, is one of dignified resistance to violence, displacement, malign government interference and hunger, based on principles of non-violence, solidarity and a cooperative work model. (Recently I had sight of a USAID packet of the kind distributed to displaced people, consisting largely of bags of IMPORTED frijoles (beans), proudly bearing the stars and stripes, alongside the logos of the Colombian State and the UN World Food Programme. In these parts, frijoles grow as if there were no tomorrow. The sheer senselessness of importing such products loomed large; it is, to use a phrase from England, like taking coals to Newcastle. One wonders if it speaks to the logic of neo-liberal ´development´ whereby it is cheaper to import products en masse, while keeping the displaced and dispossessed thus. Nevertheless, the Peace Community’s proposal of getting back to work, growing frijoles and other crops themselves, surely benefits from the logic of empowerment and common sense.) Over the years, this has led to progress after a fashion. For some time they have been developing Fairtrade, organic commercial activities around cocoa and baby bananas. Meanwhile, out of a muddy field, fifteen minutes´ walk from San José de Apartadó, there arose a new caserío (hamlet) – San Josecito or La Holandita – as a home for the Community’s displaced. This has become something of a focal point for the Peace Community, and hopefully a site which will provide a safe home for many in the years to come.

But the Community’s work does not stop where the road does. Since the return to the vereda (a sub-division of a rural area) of La Esperanza in 2006 the Peace Community, together with the accompaniment of FOR and other international organisations, has taken to opening up viable spaces in the far reaches of the San José district. In July there are plans afoot for a “celebration of life” in La Resbalosa, eight hours´ walk from San Josecito. Indeed, such has been the success of the Community model that campesinos in the veredas of Naín, Las Claras and Alto Joaquín, in the neighbouring department of Córdoba, have begun the process of signing up. These settlements lie up to sixteen hours on foot from La Holandita. The FOR team completed its first accompaniment to the area this month, when a group of Peace Community teachers went to share ideas and experiences, and build up the Community curriculum. I asked people in these distant veredas why they wanted to join the Community, and the answer was often the same as we hear closer to home in the San José district: that the army has started to back off; that the armed groups show greater respect because of the international accompaniment; and even that the Peace Community’s work model offers a feasible alternative to truly becoming enslaved – to the vicious coca trade.

It is certainly curious to hear accusations of enforced misery on the radio. Such circumstances would surely not lead to the increasing easterly expansion of the Peace Community. But then, there is little doubt that the view from San José differs significantly from that of the authorities in Bogotá, Apartadó or Carepa, where the local army brigade is based and from where we believe that the interview with “Samir” was conducted. Neither does the Peace Community’s outlook coincide 95% with that of the FARC, as “Samir” claimed. The Community is hard at work in otherwise-forgotten corners of this part of Colombia, and deserves the support of like-minded people, support which the improbable combination of Fernando Londoño Hoyos and alias “Samir” set out to undermine.