from the Lowell Sun Times
By Bridget Scrimenti, 01/14/2008
They planned to harvest cocoa beans.
About eight men, women and children were going to work in the fields. Some even started a seven-hour hike into Colombia's countryside.
But their attempt to gather food came to a sudden and violent end.
The families were viciously attacked and killed by men yielding machetes.
"They killed eight people, three of whom were children, with machetes," said Janice Gallagher. "For me as a U.S. citizen -- if I could do anything to stop that from happening again, I felt a moral imperative to do so."
The murders prompted Gallagher, 30, to spend the past year as a human-rights activist in Colombia, working for the nonprofit and interfaith organization, Fellowship of Reconciliation.
Gallagher, a former Littleton resident and Devens high-school teacher, rode her bike from Littleton to Washington, D.C., to raise money for the trip in November 2006.
She worked to support peace and influence foreign policy to protect human rights.
Colombia has been devastated by a decades-old civil war between the left-wing groups Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army, and right-wing paramilitary groups, mainly the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia.
Human-rights abuses range from mass murder to torture and kidnapping. Meanwhile, the country remains the world's prime cocaine supplier.
Fed up with the violence, a group of residents declared a neutral zone they called a peace community in the late 1990s. The community of a thousand people, San Jose De Apartado, asked the Fellowship of Reconciliation to have a permanent presence there to promote peace.
During the past 10 years, 180 community members have been killed, including leader Luis Eduardo Guerra, who was murdered in the machete attack while trying to harvest crops.
"It's a huge humanitarian crisis," Gallagher said. "Everybody has lost family members."
In the hustle and bustle of Bogota, Colombia's capital, she met with embassy officials, members of the Colombian government and U.S. delegations of concerned citizens to advocate for human rights.
While Bogota has the amenities of any major U.S. city, including luxury stores like Gucci and Versace, there is also extreme poverty, slums and people living in shacks on the side of mountains.
In the lush, green countryside, Gallagher accompanied displaced farmers back to their land and coordinated the "logistical nightmares" of doing business in a third-world country, which included making sure there was electricity, cell phones, satellite phones and Internet, if possible.
She endured primitive conditions and was hospitalized for bacteria and parasites.
In June, one of the organization's field offices was robbed. The thieves took only computers with sensitive human-rights information.
"It wasn't theft for money," Gallagher said. "It was freaky. They lined up my credit cards and passport on my bed."
Gallagher, who has a master's degree in education from Brown University, used to teach Latin American politics to high-school students at the Francis W. Parker charter at Devens.
She plans to pursue a doctorate in political science, but while focusing on Colombian issues, she now has a personal connection with the conflict.
"The lesson is what it means to be human -- to stand up for justice and demand your rights no matter what the costs," Gallagher said. "I come back from Colombia really hopeful."