I'm Back in Colombia

After four days of travel (included being sent back to San Francisco for two days!), I made it to Colombia on the 22nd, greeted by mariachis-for-hire at the Bogota airport. (Ok, so the mariachis weren't for me, but it was an amusing welcome admist the chaos that is the Bogota airport at 10pm on a major holiday travel day.)

I have returned to work with FOR, the organization I worked with the last time I was in Colombia. I will be here for at least a few months to help out with a gap in staff and to train new staff. I'm excited for the opportunity to dive back into this meaningful work, to see friends, to conduct interviews for some articles I'd like to write, and to gain a new perspective on the place and the work after 10 or so months of being in the U.S. And to write more blog posts!

This marks my third holiday season in a row spent in Colombia. My first I spent in the Peace Community, eating bunuelos and dancing vallenato with campesinos in rubber boots. Last year, a visiting college friend and I traveled to where the desert meets this Caribbean ocean, La Guajira, and were treated to the traditional Christmas meal of goat cooked in goat fat (I tried it...).

The Hidden Side of Violence in Ciudad Juárez: Student Shot by Federal Police

This article was published today on The Women's International Perspective, where I have previously published several articles about Colombia. It's similar to the previous post, but geared at a wider audience. Enjoy!

• A mural worked on by Juárez artists during the Foro. The left side is a depiction of civil society. The right depicts death and destruction by the federal forces and other violent actors. Photograph courtesy of the author. •

“Ciudad Juárez won’t be a big deal. You spent two years in Colombia!” my friend reassures me.

“Yeah,” I reply with nervous knots in my stomach, “but isn’t Juárez one of the most dangerous cities in the world?”

The violence wracking Mexico, largely fueled by the country’s drug war, is magnified in the border town of Ciudad Juárez, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. So even though I spent two years as a human rights accompanier in Colombia visiting some of the country’s most dangerous regions, the concentration and apparent randomness of the violence in Juárez left me apprehensive about my upcoming trip.

Just days before my departure the last weekend in October, four maquila factory workers were killed and fifteen more injured when gunmen shot up three company buses carrying the workers home. The following weekend, 20 more were killed. Since 2008, the murder rate has surpassed 6,500 in a city of about 1.5 million.

My trip to Ciudad Juarez: A glimpse into the hidden side of Mexico’s violence

I wrote this piece for the latest Colombia Update from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the organization I worked with in Colombia.

A mural painted by Foro participants

When FOR staff asked if I could travel to a conference on civilian resistance to militarism in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico during the last weekend in October, I jumped at the chance to visit a country often compared to Colombia, where I recently spent two years as a human rights accompanier.

However, as my departure date grew closer, I became more and more nervous. The violence wracking Mexico, largely fueled by the country’s drug war, is magnified in the border town of Juarez, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, and often vies for the dubious title of most dangerous city in the world. So just because I spent two years in Colombia as a human rights accompanier, and knew that the mainstream news stories about Mexico I had read didn’t tell the whole story, the concentration and apparent randomness of the violence in Juarez, at least as portrayed in mainstream media, worried me.

Just days before my departure for Ciudad Juarez, for example, four maquila factory workers were killed and fifteen more injured when gunmen shot up three company buses carrying the workers home. Since 2008, the number of murders has surpassed 6,500 in a city of about 1.5 million. New York City, with a population of 8.3 million, had just 1,570 murders in a similar period.

Latin American Peoples Organize to Resist Increased Militarization in the Region

My article, originally published on War Times

Image courtesy of Alliance for Global Justice

When President Barack Obama was inaugurated, people in Latin America, as in many parts of the world, expected  a shift towards a more peaceful U.S. foreign policy. Those hopes were soon dashed by a series of bellicose U.S. policy moves in the region. But now civil society throughout the Americas has responded by organizing against increased U.S. militarization. 

Organizations from Colombia to Honduras to Argentina oppose the further intensification of U.S. military presence in the region, and have been spurred to action. In January in Paraguay, during the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the World Social forum, more than 75 international and national groups launched the Continental Campaign against Foreign Military Bases. Modeled after the Continental Campaign against the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which successfully derailed the US government's plans for a region-wide free trade agreement, the campaign seeks the removal of U.S. and other foreign bases from Latin America and the Caribbean.

 The Campaign has already been active. In August, for example, Colombia hosted the International Summit of Women and People of the Americas against Militarization. The Summit brought together organizations and activists from all over the Americas under the slogan, "We do not birth sons and daughters for war."

Increasing U.S. Militarism Evokes Civil Society Response
When President Obama spoke at the Americas Summit in April 2009, he declared that he would seek a new, more inclusive and less-unilateral policy in the Americas. These pronouncements fueled expectations of a new direction for U.S. Latin America policy. Reality soon began to set in, however, with the signing of an agreement between the Obama administration and the Colombian government in October 2009, which would allow the U.S. military largely unfettered access to seven Colombian bases. Shortly thereafter, plans were announced for two new U.S. naval bases  in Panama. Then the January 2010 earthquake hit Haiti, and the US military was sent  to the ravaged island in large numbers to help with “recovery” efforts. In July of this year, 7,000 U.S. marines landed in Costa Rica–a country with no standing army–for a six-month tour of duty.