Delegations
Visit Colombia to See for Yourself!
Delegations
FOR periodically sends delegations to Colombia, allowing participants to gain a greater understanding of what is happening in the country beyond what the mass media portrays.
On these trips, which combine travel with education, delegates meet with Indigenous, Afro-Colombian, Youth and Women's organizations, Colombian and U.S. government officials, and travel to the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó.
By participating in these trips, delegates come to have a greater understanding of the peaceful resistance growing in Colombia, the "drug war", and U.S. military intervention. Our permanent and growing accompaniment work allows FOR to assemble a unique and rich delegation experience. Your chance at meaningful formation awaits you!
Building Justice Across Borders
DelegationsCommunity Nonviolent Resistance to Impunity in Colombia
August 2nd-16th, 2008
2008 FOR Delegation to Colombia:
Program Highlights:
• Travel to the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó
• Meet with people whose family members have been killed by the US-funded Colombian army and are non-violently working for justice for these crimes.
• Meet grassroots activists who courageously and creatively advocate for truth, justice and integral reparations.
• Experience unparalleled access to understand both impunity and advances to justice for a massacre in San José that shocked the international community.
Math, Mac and Cheese in Colombia
DelegationsYouth and Arts Action Delegation, March 2008
By Liza Maytok Smith
Hurricane Katrina was what did it for Escenthio. At his school in Oakland, he was enrolled in a JROTC program (an army prep course given in high schools) and would have been on his way to joining the military. But one of his teachers invited him to a benefit event about the victims of the hurricane and it made Escenthio question his involvement in the class and our country’s priorities in general. As he said, “why are we over there killing people in Iraq when there are people in need right here?” Soon afterwards, he decided to organize a debate in his school around these issues and invited the JROTC army officers to the table alongside Pablo Paredes, a well-known conscientious objector. The debates created quite a stir -- and Escenthio became one of the central youth activists of BayPeace, an Oakland-based organization doing counter-recruitment work in high schools.
Dispatches from April 2007 Buddhist Delegation
DelegationsThe Buddhist Peace Fellowship has posted dispatches written by participants in FOR's April 2007 delegation to Colombia.
An excerpt:
We went to a displaced settlement with community leaders and ate a delicious lunch in a cinder block house with a partial roof. Leaders described many of the challenges of their new city life here and the lack of implementation and enforcement of laws guaranteeing displaced people's rights. Hunger and unemployment is much worse in the city for them - one leader described how their rural life had always sustained them, even large families, but in the jungle of concrete that is their new city life, they can barely eat, much less buy the notebooks needed to attend the "free" schools. We were amazed to learn that the poverty we saw there was a "2" on the Colombian stratus system, which ranges from 1 (or 0) to 6. One delegate commented that our perspective on the situation here (because of our working environment, something we've discussed at length) was evident in how livable we felt this dirt-poor settlement was, compared to others we had seen. You know your point of reference is unusual when a cinder block house project with no sources of income and a few tin roofs seems not so bad.
On a mission of peace: April 2007 delegate in the news
Delegations
by AnnMarie Cornejo
San Luis Obispo Tribune
June 18, 2007
Among cacao trees and tear-filled soliloquies, Shell Beach resident Judi Martindale searched for peace in a volatile land where civil war has raged for decades.
She joined a 12-member peace delegation that traveled to Colombia in May. Her goal: to witness the struggles and to pledge support for the ongoing human rights effort.
Martindale plans to share her story with local residents by speaking to service clubs throughout San Luis Obispo County.
"Remembering is a commitment to the future," article by August 2006 delegate
Delegations | NewsOtanga Daily Times, 9/24/2006
by Elizabeth Duke
Children and adults carry smooth stones up from the river. They paint them in bright colours, and write a name on each. The Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, in northern Colombia, commemorates its murdered dead - over 150 from a rural community of around 1500.
For half a century Colombia has suffered internal violence, much of it directed at control of its natural and mineral wealth. Today a right-wing government is fighting left-wing guerrillas, with the aid of paramilitaries, who are nominally independent "self-defence forces", but with close ties to the army. The stakes are heightened by the huge profits from the trade in coca, the raw material of cocaine, and by United States intervention to cut off cocaine at its source, and to control this strategically vital region.
"Voices From Colombia": article by August 2006 delegate
Delegations | NewsVoices from Colombia
Otago Daily Times, 18 September 2006
by Elizabeth Duke
"We women do not bear or rear sons and daughters for war." "Our association of lawyers tries to bring human rights violations to trial, with the goal of truth, justice and reparations." "Women united in the power of love, building scenarios for life." "We are trying to make an inventory of available native seeds, and to restore the historical memory of traditional agricultural practices. The soil is the patrimony of all communities and of all humanity." "May the life and the sacrifice of our brothers and sisters take root in us as a ferment of humanity, to impel our world towards truth, justice and love." Amid the fierce violence which possesses Colombia, these are the voices of people and organisations who stand for humanity and peace.
