As told to Jim by Matt Wiens. Matthew Wiens has a Master’s Degree in Agriculture, and is one of my best friends on the CPT Colombia team.
The guerrilla leader kept going behind the counter of the Santo Domingo* country store, making arrangements with the woman to buy some goods, while I was trying to pay attention to a farmer telling me his experience of the negative health effects of Plan Colombia spraying program to eradicate coca.
I was so distracted by being so close to such a heavily armed guerrilla that I was no longer able give my attention to the farmer. After agonizing as to what to do, I thought, “Well, I better do something rather than just sit here.” So I went over to him and introduced myself, “My name is Matthew. I am with Christian Peacemaker Teams here working at trying to follow Jesus and his call to love our enemies. I just want to let you know that there are churches in the north praying for peace in Colombia. My prayer is that you never use your gun to kill anyone.”
The guerrilla leader responded with an eloquent explanation of why he is fighting against the government. His basic message was, “The government here is in a war against the poor in this country. How can we defend ourselves without guns?”
I said, “There seems to be a lot of truth in what you say. I have not experienced all that you have seen in your life. It is hard for me to say I have an answer. But somehow I still want to try to hold to the dream that there is another way other than violence to solve this conflict.”
He responded by explaining how the government is on a campaign to drive the farmers off the land.
I said, “I agree with you. From what I have seen in Colombia, the government sure doesn’t seem to be trying to help the people.”
Earlier a local school teacher told me how the paramilitaries had come through the town and took all the food in the store and dumped it out on the street and destroyed it saying, “This is food for the guerrillas.”
I also saw first hand the results of the Roundup spraying program to get rid of the coca plantings. I was most impacted by a 2.5 acre field of yucca (a food staple) completely dead as a result of aerial spraying. I could not see any coca anywhere in the area. The farmer told me that he doesn’t have an argument if the government is going to spray coca fields, but they need to find guys who know the difference between coca and yucca because they are spraying fields of pure yucca.
One farmer told me, “We farmers would much prefer to grow food crops rather than illegal coca. The problem is the low price of food crops. For example, the paramilitaries charge us an illegal tax on our corn that makes the cost of production higher than the corn is worth. Coca is the only way we can make a living. If the government would only help us a little bit with programs to produce alternative crop, we would gladly pull out the coca with our own hands.”
It seems the whole system is working by economics and terrorism to force the farmers off the land. It makes me wonder if it is not a plan to clear the land of people to make resource extraction easier, and to force them to the cities where there is high unemployment, and thus provide cheap labor for industry.
Please join me in praying for a quick peaceful solution to the Colombian civil war.
Peace, Jim
*Name has been changed.
Here are the arms of a farmer visited by a CPT Colombia team member on September 24, 2005. He is suffering from the effects of having been exposed to high potency Roundup used in Plan Colombia spraying. The spraying occurred near the end of July 2005. Clear links have been documented between exposure to Roundup and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of cancer 1
1 Hardell, Lennart, M.D., PhD. Department of Oncology, Orebro Medical Centre, Orebro, Sweden and Miikael Eriksson, M.D., PhD, Department of Oncology, University Hospital, Lund, Sweden, ‘A Case-Control Study of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and Exposure to Pesticides’, Cancer, March 15, 1999/ Volume 85/ Number 6.
The guerrilla leader kept going behind the counter of the Santo Domingo* country store, making arrangements with the woman to buy some goods, while I was trying to pay attention to a farmer telling me his experience of the negative health effects of Plan Colombia spraying program to eradicate coca.
I was so distracted by being so close to such a heavily armed guerrilla that I was no longer able give my attention to the farmer. After agonizing as to what to do, I thought, “Well, I better do something rather than just sit here.” So I went over to him and introduced myself, “My name is Matthew. I am with Christian Peacemaker Teams here working at trying to follow Jesus and his call to love our enemies. I just want to let you know that there are churches in the north praying for peace in Colombia. My prayer is that you never use your gun to kill anyone.”
The guerrilla leader responded with an eloquent explanation of why he is fighting against the government. His basic message was, “The government here is in a war against the poor in this country. How can we defend ourselves without guns?”
I said, “There seems to be a lot of truth in what you say. I have not experienced all that you have seen in your life. It is hard for me to say I have an answer. But somehow I still want to try to hold to the dream that there is another way other than violence to solve this conflict.”
He responded by explaining how the government is on a campaign to drive the farmers off the land.
I said, “I agree with you. From what I have seen in Colombia, the government sure doesn’t seem to be trying to help the people.”
Earlier a local school teacher told me how the paramilitaries had come through the town and took all the food in the store and dumped it out on the street and destroyed it saying, “This is food for the guerrillas.”
I also saw first hand the results of the Roundup spraying program to get rid of the coca plantings. I was most impacted by a 2.5 acre field of yucca (a food staple) completely dead as a result of aerial spraying. I could not see any coca anywhere in the area. The farmer told me that he doesn’t have an argument if the government is going to spray coca fields, but they need to find guys who know the difference between coca and yucca because they are spraying fields of pure yucca.
One farmer told me, “We farmers would much prefer to grow food crops rather than illegal coca. The problem is the low price of food crops. For example, the paramilitaries charge us an illegal tax on our corn that makes the cost of production higher than the corn is worth. Coca is the only way we can make a living. If the government would only help us a little bit with programs to produce alternative crop, we would gladly pull out the coca with our own hands.”
It seems the whole system is working by economics and terrorism to force the farmers off the land. It makes me wonder if it is not a plan to clear the land of people to make resource extraction easier, and to force them to the cities where there is high unemployment, and thus provide cheap labor for industry.
Please join me in praying for a quick peaceful solution to the Colombian civil war.
Peace, Jim
*Name has been changed.
1 Hardell, Lennart, M.D., PhD. Department of Oncology, Orebro Medical Centre, Orebro, Sweden and Miikael Eriksson, M.D., PhD, Department of Oncology, University Hospital, Lund, Sweden, ‘A Case-Control Study of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and Exposure to Pesticides’, Cancer, March 15, 1999/ Volume 85/ Number 6.
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