22/05/2006
stampa
invia
An unending view of huts, hovels and boxes made out of red bricks covered with
sheets of metal surrounds the southern outskirts of Bogota. Thousands and thousands
of buildings crowd together on the plateau at the foot of the central cordillera,
where the capital is situated. This is Ciudad Bolivar, the most dangerous place
in one of the most dangerous countries in the world. A landscape that reeks of
violence and poverty, a land of invasion. The patch of sky above the town is criss-crossed
by electric wires that connect every individual habitation to an electricity pole,
a visible sign of how the people fend for themselves. The confusing, improvised
streets are dotted with potholes and cracks, while the lanes are full of open
sewers and dirty, smiling children. These are the children of the war, of the
forced evacuation, of the fear. Colombia is the scene of an internal war that
has been going on for over forty years. Guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (RAFC) and the National Liberation Army (NLA), inspired by
a communist vision of society, are engaged in a war against a State they consider
to be guilty of iniquity, injustice and corruption, which is defended by the regular
army and right-wing paramilitary groups. And the price for all this is being paid
by the country’s civilian population, caught in a crossfire that doesn’t spare
anyone. The result of all this is 300,000 dead and over 3 million internal refugees,
although the toll increases every day.
The arm of invention. The inhabitants of Ciudad Bolivar are all desplazados, kicked out by men in uniform, chased off their land and out of their houses
in an attempt to stay alive. They are farmers of a pleasant, far-away land, blessed
with plentiful water and fertile soil. But since those areas are too attractive
to be left in the hands of simple families of campesinos, they are cleared. Threatened by Kalashnikovs and pitiless, stony stares, these
people had no choice but to take to their heels. The three million or so desplazados provide Colombia with the sad record of being near the top of the IDP (Internal
Displaced Persons) chart. Among these people are those who are attached body and
soul to their own identity and try to start all over again from scratch on agricultural
plots hacked out of the thick jungle in remote areas, while others, tired and
frightened, choose the city. There, in the hope of blending in, of being left
in peace, they invade a few metres of land, throw up a stack of timber and sheets
of metal, and that’s that. In Ciudad Bolivar new dwellings appear overnight. In
a few hours people carve out a space in between thousands of other people and
then trust to their powers of invention. Improvisation is their only hope of survival.
Some people sell fried pasta to passers-by, other set up stalls selling strange-coloured
soft drinks while some reinvent themselves as bricklayers, electricians or carpenters.
Precariousness and poverty go hand in hand in the lives of almost a million people.
Recruitment camp. "Are you Italian? Wow, it’s really far away". 28-year-old Amador is black as
coal, with piercing eyes and a disarming smile. “I come from Turbo and I’ve been
living here for two years. Did I escape? As fast as I could. They wanted to kill
me”. He was a farmer who was raising his family of a wife and three children thanks
to hard work in Choco, the Colombian region on the Panamanian border that has
the good fortune to be flanked by two different seas. In fact this is the reason
why it is so appetising, and this is the reason why it is condemned to being the
scene of a perennial battle fought out between powerful economic interests. This
is the reason why it is unliveable. The idea is to make it into a strategic viaduct,
which means drilling the earth and destroying the ancestral equilibrium. And then
there’s the fact that the ground is full of minerals, with gold and a biodiversity
that would make Amazonia jealous. So the farmers are a nuisance and represent
an annoying obstacle, just as Amador was an unwelcome hindrance to be got rid
of. “They either kill you or force to leave”, the young Colombian explained, with
a blank expression. “You either lose everything and are reduced to living in misery
on the outskirts of a metropolis of cement and smog like this one, or you can
choose to wander from village to village so as not to give up being a farmer.
The alternative is always the same: death”. These people are marked, but their
eyes are full of a veiled hope, clouded by so much death that undauntedly follows
them here as well. Ciudad Bolivar is the hands of paramilitary groups who decide
the good times and the bad times, regarding it as a recruitment camp. The State
is absent, impunity sovereign.
Slaves of violence. “If you want to be safe you have to act like the three monkeys: see nothing,
speak nothing, hear nothing”, we were informed by Jorge, from the Afro community,
wearing a blue woollen hat and rosary beads round his neck. “ If you raise your
head even just a little bit, you’re dead”. “Are there paramilitaries here, Giovanni?”,
we asked a child who had been following us from a distance. “No, I’ve never seen
any”, he replied, looking away for a minute with eyes that for a minute had lost
their childish brilliance. “Do they kill people her?”, we insisted. “No, nobody”.
“How many corpses have you seen in the street?”, and without thinking even for
a minute the little one replied, “Lots of them, but I’ve never counted them”.
They learn the rules of omerta from an early age, but the smallest ones don’t
know how to keep it up and their contradictions illustrate the whole brutal truth.
Here, the adolescents who don’t agree to be recruited, who want to keep away from
guns and brutality, or at least try to, are condemned to death. “If a paramilitary
asks you to join a group you’ve got no choice”, Jorge told us in a low voice so
as not to be overheard. It’s Saturday afternoon and the leaders of the groups
are wandering around, playing cards or dominos. “It’s more an order than a question.
There’s no liberty”.
Escorted by respect. In the middle of these chaotic streets and masses of people and objects, the
one thing that really stands out is the daily work of Father Gianfranco Testa,
a Consulate missionary linked to Liberation Theology. He’s the one who humbly
opens the door for us to that living hell. No stranger is allowed to poke his
nose into what happens here and nobody would dare do it, but walking with Father
Juan makes us special in the eyes of these people. In every area of this huge
expanse crowds of children come running to meet him, throwing themselves into
his arms and climbing up around his neck. “You’ve been to Ciudad Bolivar? "It’s
the most dangerous part of the city. How did you manage it? And you even had a
camera with you?” This is the reaction of every Colombian we spoke to about our
walk. How did we manage it? Escorted by respect and the love that these people,
who are usually prepared to do anything because they are desperate, feel for a
man who gives them everything he has. Never a moment of discomfort or fear. The
fact that we were with him meant that even our indiscreet questions, intended
to violate their privacy, were accepted. “Help them to not lose hope, that’s our
mission”, the priest told us in a room in the small support centre where he organises
cutting and sewing courses for the mothers and training games for the children.
“Here fragile young people either commit suicide or are murdered, while the others
join the armed groups. Life is very difficult here. Fear accompanies you everywhere.
Every week these children play next to corpses that sprout up by the sides of
the roads like mushrooms. Violence is their normality. This is the reason I came
here”.
stampainvia
Ciudad Bolivar: a jumble of houses and refugees from a war that continues to follow them
From our correspondent
Stella Spinelli
Stella Spinelli
An unending view of huts, hovels and boxes made out of red bricks covered with
sheets of metal surrounds the southern outskirts of Bogota. Thousands and thousands
of buildings crowd together on the plateau at the foot of the central cordillera,
where the capital is situated. This is Ciudad Bolivar, the most dangerous place
in one of the most dangerous countries in the world. A landscape that reeks of
violence and poverty, a land of invasion. The patch of sky above the town is criss-crossed
by electric wires that connect every individual habitation to an electricity pole,
a visible sign of how the people fend for themselves. The confusing, improvised
streets are dotted with potholes and cracks, while the lanes are full of open
sewers and dirty, smiling children. These are the children of the war, of the
forced evacuation, of the fear. Colombia is the scene of an internal war that
has been going on for over forty years. Guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (RAFC) and the National Liberation Army (NLA), inspired by
a communist vision of society, are engaged in a war against a State they consider
to be guilty of iniquity, injustice and corruption, which is defended by the regular
army and right-wing paramilitary groups. And the price for all this is being paid
by the country’s civilian population, caught in a crossfire that doesn’t spare
anyone. The result of all this is 300,000 dead and over 3 million internal refugees,
although the toll increases every day. The arm of invention. The inhabitants of Ciudad Bolivar are all desplazados, kicked out by men in uniform, chased off their land and out of their houses
in an attempt to stay alive. They are farmers of a pleasant, far-away land, blessed
with plentiful water and fertile soil. But since those areas are too attractive
to be left in the hands of simple families of campesinos, they are cleared. Threatened by Kalashnikovs and pitiless, stony stares, these
people had no choice but to take to their heels. The three million or so desplazados provide Colombia with the sad record of being near the top of the IDP (Internal
Displaced Persons) chart. Among these people are those who are attached body and
soul to their own identity and try to start all over again from scratch on agricultural
plots hacked out of the thick jungle in remote areas, while others, tired and
frightened, choose the city. There, in the hope of blending in, of being left
in peace, they invade a few metres of land, throw up a stack of timber and sheets
of metal, and that’s that. In Ciudad Bolivar new dwellings appear overnight. In
a few hours people carve out a space in between thousands of other people and
then trust to their powers of invention. Improvisation is their only hope of survival.
Some people sell fried pasta to passers-by, other set up stalls selling strange-coloured
soft drinks while some reinvent themselves as bricklayers, electricians or carpenters.
Precariousness and poverty go hand in hand in the lives of almost a million people.
Recruitment camp. "Are you Italian? Wow, it’s really far away". 28-year-old Amador is black as
coal, with piercing eyes and a disarming smile. “I come from Turbo and I’ve been
living here for two years. Did I escape? As fast as I could. They wanted to kill
me”. He was a farmer who was raising his family of a wife and three children thanks
to hard work in Choco, the Colombian region on the Panamanian border that has
the good fortune to be flanked by two different seas. In fact this is the reason
why it is so appetising, and this is the reason why it is condemned to being the
scene of a perennial battle fought out between powerful economic interests. This
is the reason why it is unliveable. The idea is to make it into a strategic viaduct,
which means drilling the earth and destroying the ancestral equilibrium. And then
there’s the fact that the ground is full of minerals, with gold and a biodiversity
that would make Amazonia jealous. So the farmers are a nuisance and represent
an annoying obstacle, just as Amador was an unwelcome hindrance to be got rid
of. “They either kill you or force to leave”, the young Colombian explained, with
a blank expression. “You either lose everything and are reduced to living in misery
on the outskirts of a metropolis of cement and smog like this one, or you can
choose to wander from village to village so as not to give up being a farmer.
The alternative is always the same: death”. These people are marked, but their
eyes are full of a veiled hope, clouded by so much death that undauntedly follows
them here as well. Ciudad Bolivar is the hands of paramilitary groups who decide
the good times and the bad times, regarding it as a recruitment camp. The State
is absent, impunity sovereign.
Slaves of violence. “If you want to be safe you have to act like the three monkeys: see nothing,
speak nothing, hear nothing”, we were informed by Jorge, from the Afro community,
wearing a blue woollen hat and rosary beads round his neck. “ If you raise your
head even just a little bit, you’re dead”. “Are there paramilitaries here, Giovanni?”,
we asked a child who had been following us from a distance. “No, I’ve never seen
any”, he replied, looking away for a minute with eyes that for a minute had lost
their childish brilliance. “Do they kill people her?”, we insisted. “No, nobody”.
“How many corpses have you seen in the street?”, and without thinking even for
a minute the little one replied, “Lots of them, but I’ve never counted them”.
They learn the rules of omerta from an early age, but the smallest ones don’t
know how to keep it up and their contradictions illustrate the whole brutal truth.
Here, the adolescents who don’t agree to be recruited, who want to keep away from
guns and brutality, or at least try to, are condemned to death. “If a paramilitary
asks you to join a group you’ve got no choice”, Jorge told us in a low voice so
as not to be overheard. It’s Saturday afternoon and the leaders of the groups
are wandering around, playing cards or dominos. “It’s more an order than a question.
There’s no liberty”.
Escorted by respect. In the middle of these chaotic streets and masses of people and objects, the
one thing that really stands out is the daily work of Father Gianfranco Testa,
a Consulate missionary linked to Liberation Theology. He’s the one who humbly
opens the door for us to that living hell. No stranger is allowed to poke his
nose into what happens here and nobody would dare do it, but walking with Father
Juan makes us special in the eyes of these people. In every area of this huge
expanse crowds of children come running to meet him, throwing themselves into
his arms and climbing up around his neck. “You’ve been to Ciudad Bolivar? "It’s
the most dangerous part of the city. How did you manage it? And you even had a
camera with you?” This is the reaction of every Colombian we spoke to about our
walk. How did we manage it? Escorted by respect and the love that these people,
who are usually prepared to do anything because they are desperate, feel for a
man who gives them everything he has. Never a moment of discomfort or fear. The
fact that we were with him meant that even our indiscreet questions, intended
to violate their privacy, were accepted. “Help them to not lose hope, that’s our
mission”, the priest told us in a room in the small support centre where he organises
cutting and sewing courses for the mothers and training games for the children.
“Here fragile young people either commit suicide or are murdered, while the others
join the armed groups. Life is very difficult here. Fear accompanies you everywhere.
Every week these children play next to corpses that sprout up by the sides of
the roads like mushrooms. Violence is their normality. This is the reason I came
here”.
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