Home of Parrish W. Jones

Don Petro
By Parrish W. Jones, Ph.D.
©2005. All Rights reserved.

Last week (November, 2005) Mary Ellen and I providentially became hosts to two Colombian men. They arrived on Monday of last week and have stayed in our apartment that happened to be vacant. They leave on Thursday.

Jose Raphael is a tall, handsome, 26 year old attorney who works for the Center for Peace and Justice in Bogotá and is Roman Catholic but searching. Enrique Petro is a short, 67 year old farmer from the state of Chocó where paramilitary and rebel activity is high. Don Petro and his family are among the displaced and presently live destitute in the northwestern part of Uraba a neighboring state to Chocó. Don Petro is a member of a church that is like the Four Square Gospel Church in the U.S. The two had some interesting conversations about the Bible and the church.

They spent their week in Washington talking with various senate and house staffs and with several groups in DC and Baltimore who are involved in working on human rights in Colombia. They left here on Thanksgiving Day for Chicago. They will return to Colombia on December 9.

On Monday night we invited Chess and Gary Campbell and Ivan and Susan Herman to join us for dinner. Herman’s parents were missionaries in Colombia when he was a child. He is presently a seminarian and interned in the Washington Office last year.
Jose shared with us the context of the struggle in Colombia. While drugs play a role in Colombia and people from the United States know little about Colombia except its part in the drug trade, it is always amazing to me that seldom do Colombians speak of drugs. That is to say, they begin and end with the present injustices to the people of Colombia and the role of armed groups in those injustices. Drugs come up as one of the means that all armed groups have for funding their operations. Drugs are not processed in Colombia for Colombian consumption. They are processed for export to the U.S. and to Western Europe. The majority of the earnings goes to buy weapons and other support for the armed groups.

Farmers are often forced on pain of death to grow cocaine instead of coffee. Just one of the injustices.

What happened to Don Petro has happened to millions of Colombians. When I was in Colombia with the Peace Fellowship delegation (May, 2004), I heard many stories like that of Don Petro. His story goes like this.

He and his family farmed about 320 acres of land that included pasture, forest and jungle. As was the case in most of the traditional areas of Colombia, the land was held in common by a collective of Afro-Colombians and indigenous groups. Until 1992 there were no titles as such to the land. The constitution of 1992 changed that and provided for the titling of land.

To us that sounds like a good thing. However, it changed everything in Colombia for the traditional rights of indigenous and Afro Colombian tribes. Now a farmer or his collective can sell their land in the past land was passed to someone who would work it.
Don Petro’s experience is unique from many I have heard. At first, he had to leave his land along with hundreds more from his village because of the fighting among the guerillas and the paramilitary groups that often drew in the National Army or police. (For the uninitiated, paramilitary groups of today are descendant from the original ones set up by large land owners, corporations and drug cartels in the 80’s. As often as not, their leaders are retired National Army or Police Officers and they work in coordination with the government forces.) While Petro was gone, a corporation took over about 250 acres of his land and began planting European Palm trees for the purpose of biofuels. Note that the company has no title; they just took advantage of his absence.

He and his family returned after the violence was reported to have subsided to discover these strangers on their land who tell them they can farm the part they aren’t using, needless to say, the poorer part of the land. Don Petro does that until the violence in the area forces him to leave. By the time he returned his horses, that he used to work the land, and cattle and other live stock had been stolen and sold. He learned that one of his horses was sold for $2,000.00 by the paramilitaries. That’s some horse even in the U.S.

When he was able to return the second time, the company offered him a deal to take or leave. He could pay them for the palm trees they had planted without permission and they would leave or they would pay him for the 250 acres and he could get the title to the other acreage. He has to make a living, so he figured he had to take the deal and invested the money from the sale in the rest of the farm. He went back to farming only to be force off the land the third time at gun point by paramilitaries.

He still has the title to the 70 acres that are left but because of the violence cannot return. That is where Jose Raphael comes in. His job is to help farmers who have been displaced assert their rights in the courts and Don Petro is a client. Despite court order after court order in favor of the displaced peoples, Don Petro and others have not returned because the government lacks: 1) the will to do anything because all this is beneficial to many in government, 2) the capacity to enforce court orders even if they had the will.

Why do they lack the capacity? (This comes from me) The government of Colombia finds itself in a peculiar fix. Under President Pastrana, the government asked the U.S. to provide some assistance to Colombia mostly for developing health, education and public welfare institutions believing that doing so would respond to a major concern of the guerillas and thus end the insurgency. Pastrana had good reason to believe so.

President Clinton introduced legislation to that effect in Congress that added some things. One was that Colombia had to liberalize its economy, which is to say, open all sectors of Colombian economy to the predatory nature of global corporations. The second was that Colombia would increase its efforts to eradicate the drug trade. Congress then passed the highly touted Plan Colombia that included about 20% for social needs development and 80% drug eradication and military training and aid.

Back to Jose and Don Petro: They are here because one day in their work for property rights, they were stopped and a colleague, Orlando Valencia who accompanied them, was questioned by the police for 10 minutes or so about what he was doing and where he was going. Orlando also worked with displaced people on asserting their rights. The police left and not long thereafter a group of paramilitaries came and kidnapped Orlando right from their presence. They could do nothing as the Paras were heavily armed.

Orlando had been invited to come to the U.S. to speak to a Colombia support conference in October. His VISA had been denied because of his work and his visibility. Two days before the conference where he was supposed to have spoken, he was found assassinated.
The Presbyterian Church of Colombia asked if Jose and Don Petro could come to the U.S. for a respite from the violence and the threats on their lives. The PCUSA was able to assist in obtaining passports and VISAs and with assistance from other groups they flew to the U.S.

I wish you all could meet these two men. Don Petro is one of the most humble persons I have met. He does not whine about his situation, but he clearly is in great pain over going from a person of humble wealth and relative security on his farm to being a pauper depending on the handouts of others. Obviously, at 67 he is hardly able to start over. He should be sitting on his porch watching his children work the farm and his grandchildren play in the yard. Instead, he lives in a squalid displaced persons camp with thousands others like him.
What can we do? We can call and write our congresspersons and senators and ask them to change our policies toward Colombia. Specifically to change the military aid to aid for social system development.

Secondly, you can visit the website of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship (www.presbypeacefellowship.org) and learn about our work in Colombia and our Accompaniment program. You will also find links there to other who are working on Colombia and have much information.

Third, pray for the ecumenical movement in Colombia that is working for peace. Nearly every denomination is represented in the movement. And, pray for the Presbyterian Church in Colombia whose leadership is under constant threat from paramilitary threat and government surveillance.

Fourth, join Presbyterian Peace Fellowship or give a contribution to help us send people of accompany church leaders. They are convinced that the presence of accompaniers from the U.S. reduces the threats they face.

[NOTE: Since this report, Don Petro won title to his land. He has granted permission to a group of about 40 persons to return to his land and start life there anew. The journey back to Chocó was difficult as the government and paramilitaries put roadblocks along the way. It is hoped that the settlement will be safe and productive.]