The following is an interview with Cristina Espinal, one of the founders of the Colombia Human Rights Committee, which currently celebrates 26 years of existence and is one of the longest-standing Colombia-focused organizations in the US. The inspiration for conducting this interview was to look back as we look forward: it’s the start of 2008 and another year of Colombia work is ahead of us. There have been successes in 2007, like a cut in military aid… but how do we measure that success in the larger scheme of things? And what are the challenges that lie ahead? As the saying goes…we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors… Cristina is not yet an ancestor, but she has been involved in State-side Colombia work for a quarter of a century! As I.F. Stone said, "If you expect to see the final results of your work, you simply have not asked a big enough question." Cristina has had both the patience not to expect immediate results and the impatience to get things done over the years. Surely we have something to learn from her.

Liza Smith: Tell me about how the Colombia Human Rights Committee got started? What was the political context at the time? Who else was doing Colombia work then?
Cristina Espinel: The Colombia Human Rights Committee was founded in 1981, at a time when no one in the US knew about the human rights situation in Colombia. During those years a “security statute” existed, which meant a person could be detained for 10 days and the government didn’t have to report on his or her whereabouts. Many of them
were taken to the Batallón de Caballería in Usaquén (north Bogotá) and they were tortured there: they had horses that would bite the prisoners and they would hold people’s heads under water. When I came to the US there was a large movement around Central America, but no one was talking about Colombia. So a group of us, Colombians and North-Americans started the Colombia Human Rights Committee and we began to denounce these human rights violations.

After the torture, came the time of disappearances and extrajudicial executions… then it was massacres of entire communities and the assassinations of Patriotic Union members. We continued our work and continued to denounce the violations. Our main job was to put Colombia on the NGO map – as a group of volunteers we began to bring Colombians to the US and vice versa. One of the first people we brought from Colombia on a tour was one of the founders of the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, Alfredo Vásquez Carrizosa.

LS: Were people receptive to these tours?
CE: Yes, people began to hear what they hadn’t heard before. For example, the Department of State had only heard the Colombian government’s information about the conflict, and now they were hearing something else all together, which not only differed from the official version, but was someone’s personal experience of the war there.

LS: As I was talking with Sandra Alvarez the other day, we reflected on the number of activists from Colombia who have eaten at your dining room table over the years!! What are the highlights? Do you have a story to tell about a time when someone came?
CE:Yes, our house has been a nucleus of activity – friends from Colombia like to refer to it as the alternate Colombian NGO embassy in DC! Oh, there are so many stories… I remember Diego Montaña Cuéllar, who came when he was 80 years old (1990). He was a living, walking history of Colombia and it was incredible to spend time with him and hear his stories. He had known and worked with Gaitán, for example. He called himself a “recycled politician” because he returned to politics when Pardo Leal (Patriotic Union’s first presidential candidate) was assassinated in 1987. He came on a speaking tour to the US and in the middle of it, Carlos Pizarro was killed. He had to return to Colombia in a hurry and then came right back to finish his tour.

One year later friends from Colombia called us and said Diego Montaña had died. Our first question was, “who killed him?” But these friends said, no, no, he had died in his bed. This was such an exception to the rule. We simultaneously felt sad to hear of his death and felt happy to hear that it was of natural causes and not an assassination!!

LS: What changed once Plan Colombia was approved?
CE: I remember one day in the late 1990’s, I was watching TV and Congressman Torres from California was talking about Colombia. We had taken Colombian visitors to his office many times, but then one day, there he was, talking about it in front of the whole Congress! I couldn’t believe this was happening in this country–a Congressional representative talking about Colombia! Later, we took a big step when the Colombia Human Rights Committee, with the support and involvement of many groups in Colombia, formed the US Office on Colombia (USOC) in 1998. With the establishment of the USOC and the formation of the Colombia Steering Committee in Washington, we were better able to put Colombia on the agenda of more organizations; we began to receive invitations to the Department of State certification meetings; and Congressional representatives began voting against military aid to Colombia.

LS: What has been the most challenging aspect of this work?
CE: The biggest challenge was that at the beginning nobody paid attention to Colombia. There were uncomfortable situations –one time we were going to make an appointment with another organization during the visit of a Colombian human rights defender. The person on the phone said, “we don’t work for that country” and hung up on me!! I thought to myself, this is crazy – the Congress and Department of State have never turned us away or denied us an appointment, but a fellow non-profit telling us that it didn’t work on “that country.” How is that possible?

LS: And what has been the most rewarding part?
CE: All of the advances we have made–looking back and knowing that we started from zeros and seeing the fruits now which are the results of so many years of joint efforts.

LS: As young activists, sometimes we can become impatient and disheartened quickly. How are you able to maintain a long-term vision?
CE: I’m a process-oriented person, always looking at the big picture. Political moments are good and very important, and one has to learn to take advantage of them, but at the same time one should keep in mind that the day to day work we do (a speaking tour or a visit to Congress) is part of a longer-term process, like achieving peace in Colombia. Right now peace in Colombia looks very complicated and messy, but that is still our vision and hope.

LS: Where did you learn your patience?
CE: I learned it in Colombia, when I was a part of the student movement. I learned it was very important to take advantage of a triumph in the moment, when we had won a small battle. For example, while visiting political prisoners we celebrated the short-term victories when we got them lawyers, but our long-term vision was to get them out of jail. Maybe it’s because my political schooling was in Colombia… There are so many emotions, so many things that have happened. Maybe it’s because you (in the US) haven’t lived through the same history as we have in Colombia, maybe for that reason you tend to feel that if you don’t get what you want right away, then you have failed. But I’m an optimist and that’s what has allowed me to continue throughout all these years.

Best wishes in the new year and until 2034! May the next 26 years be understood as part of a global process, with the patience to see the many ups and downs through and the impatience to say, ¡Basta ya!