Equal Opportunity Evil

A family's memorial to their daughter, who, along with her boyfriend, was murdered, chopped to pieces and thrown into a river by paramilitaries.

A few of the disappeared, who number in the tens of thousands.

A photo exhibition on now in the Centro de Memoria on Calle 26 beside the Central Cemetery makes a simple point: In Colombia's long conflict, there are no good guys. The leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and even the government forces have all committed terrible crimes.

The victims of all sides, and the only good guys, are Colombia's civilians. Kidnapped, 'disappeared' and driven out of their homes and off their land, civilians have been attacked by groups which often claim to be defending them.

Displaced Embera indigenous people.

Today, the FARC guerrillas, Colombia's oldest and largest guerrilla group, are turning in their weapons and demobilizing. However, where the FARC go away, other illegal groups try to move in to take over the guerrillas' drug trafficking, extortion and illegal mining businesses.

Displaced Emberá Chamí indigenous people.

The Centro de Memoria, off of Calle 26 near the Central Cemetery.

Sadly, the Centro de Memory, including its exhibitions, is usually vacant.

Female guerrillas. Young people in parts of rural Colombia may join illegal groups because they know no other authority.

Girls and women in guerrilla groups may be exploited sexually and forced to have abortions.

Indigenous guards, who have struggled to exclude other armed groups from their territories.

Burying a pregnant woman, apparently murdered with government collaboration.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Our Home for Used Tires

Displaced people wait on a Median Strip.

You'd be angry, too, if you were out on the street and your potential home was occupied by...discarded tires.

Displaced people tossed tires onto the sidewalk.
(Photo; El Tiempo)

That was why a group of people who said they'd been displaced by Colombia's violence occupied a vacant building behind the Central Cemetery today and tossed the used tires stored inside out into the street.

Workers move tires out of the building.
Where will they take them? To an illegal dump?

The situation captures the intersection of two Colombian disfunctions: the lack of solutions for people displaced by the internal armed conflict - some say that Colombia has up to six million displaced people, perhaps the second-largest number in the world. And Bogotá's inability to find a solution to the problem of used tires, which are tossed onto sidewalks, median strips and parks. In this case, this vacant building had been filled with old tires, which waited there for some homeless person to crawl inside, light a fire and start a viciously polluting conflagration. Other cities have found ways to reuse, or at least responsibly dispose of, used tires. But that costs money, and Bogotá officials don't want to offend the tire companies by forcing them to charge deposits.

As for the displaced people, they charge that the government has failed them on promises to provide new homes, and are demanding a solution.

Much of the building is still packed with tires, which generate huge pollution when burned.

A displaced man from El Chocó tells how he was driven from his home by paramilitaries.

Used tires wait on a sidwalk along 26th Street, near the National University.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Displaced - Yet Again

A displaced man holds his son on Plaza Bolivar this evening.

They were campesino farmers, living all over Colombia, raising cows and chickens and planting and

A displaced man uses a piece of cardboard as shelter from
the rain on Plaza Bolivar today.

harvesting potatoes, yucca, maize and tomatoes. Around them swirled Colombia's half-century-long armed conflict, involving guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, drug gangs and the Colombian Army. Then one day, an armed group appeared and ordered the farmers to abandon their land and their lives.

The guerrillas "killed my father and brother and took the land for themselves," said Ligia, who fled her farm in Tolima eight years ago.

"One group arrives and demands something," recalled 78-year-old Pastor Oyuela, who was driven from his farm near Villavicencio a decade ago; "then others arrive, and if you don't give them what they want, they kill you."

Pastor Oyuela, 78, left, was driven from his land more than a decade ago.

Oyuela found refuge on the Caribbean coast, where he worked as a scavenger, selling recyclables he scrounged from the garbage.

The terrified campesinos gather a few belongings and run, usually to cities, where they struggle to survive in these strange and frightening places.

"In the city, a campesino is lost," said Alberto, who fled his land a decade ago and has since sold empanadas and washed cars.

Displaced people huddle under plastic
sheeting in the rain on Plaza Bolivar.

According to a recent United Nations report, Colombia has 5.7 million displaced people - the second-largest number in the world, after only Syria - and some 150,000 additional people are displaced every year.

A few days ago, displaced men set up another
tent on Plaza Bolivar.

Over recent months, displaced people have gathered in Bogotá's Plaza Bolivar, forming a growing tent community demanding assistance from the government. Colombia has aid programs for its millions of people displaced, but those people often complain that the assistance is too little or doesn't arrive at all.

Late Tuesday night police arrived on Plaza Bolivar and knocked down the tents and took away mattresses and other other belongings, which were thrown into a garbage truck, the displaced people said. Wednesday evening, under a cold rain, many of the people were still on the plaza, huddling under plastic tarps and wondering where they could go next.

When presidential election voters go to polls on Plaza Bolivar on Sunday, they won't be reminded of this huge tragedy. Presidential candidates have barely mentioned the problem of forced displacement during the campaign.

The encampment that was.

The peace talks in Havana, Cuba between the government and FARC guerrillas hold out the hope that a deal will at least reduce the violence and free up money to aid the victims. However, the guerrillas, who have caused tremendous suffering, may get off with little or no punishment.

Oyuela puts little stock in the peace talks.

"That's great that they're negotiating," he said. "But what kind of peace can there be if people are dying from hunger? If they're searching for jobs and there aren't any?"

A cross rests against a tent on Plaza Bolivar
a few days ago.

The violence reduces many hardworking people to beggars.

"Here we are begging for help from the government," said Oyuela, "I was never like this before."

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Tents and clothes hanging on Plaza Bolivar, under Garcia Marquez's portrait.

Lining up for soup by City Hall.

Receiving soup by City Hall. They said it was donated by neighbors.

Dislodged people with their mattresses beside the Simon Bolivar statue on Plaza Bolivar.

Packing up to go.

Police watch over recently dislodged displaced people.

The Displaced People, an Endless Tragedy

"The guerrillas left my town a ghost town," she said. Guerrillas and paramilitaries had been fighting to control the region. 

Colombia's armed conflict has made fewer headlines recently - except for incidents like the two policemen murdered by the FARC the other day. But in the countryside, where armed groups still terrorize campesinos, the conflict remains very real.

Displaced people camped on Plaza Bolivar,
in front of City Hall. 

These people camped in Plaza Bolivar walked for 40 days from Valledupar to Bogotá to demand assistance for displaced people which they say the government owes them. The 13 adults and 3 children come from different parts of Colombia, and were driven from their homes by various armed groups, they said. This woman is from Cesar Department, and said that the guerrillas attacked her town, driving out all the residents.

Displaced women. 

"They left a ghost town," she said.
Guerrillas and paramilitary groups were fighting to control the region, she said.

Colombia's displaced - often the nation's poorest, most humble people - receive very little attention, despite the fact that Colombia may have the world's largest number of displaced persons, according to human rights organizations.

With FARC-government peace negotiations advancing in Havana, Cuba, stories like this woman's also make one ask whether the guerrillas really deserve a role in politics after any peace treaty. But they also provide the hope that, if the conflict ends, perhaps displacement will too.

A mural on 26th St. near Bogotá's Central Cemetery memorializes Colombia's millions of displaced people. 

Photos in the Centro Memoria illustrate the sufferings of displaced people.

Displaced people carry their belongings as they seek a new home. 

A girl amidst the wreckage of her town. 

Boats and violence.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Mariana's Story

As a sort of unintential counterpoint to Carlos Castaño's human rights exhibition criticizing the government, right across the street I met Mariana, who was begging with a sign telling her story of being displaced from her farm in Forencia, Caqueta.

Castaño condemns Colombia's government and right-wing paramilitaries for its human rights violations and lets the leftist guerrillas off scott-free. That's not surprising, since Castaño's was a guerrilla himself.

But Mariana's story, which is all too common, gives a different and more complex perspective. Mariana said that a few weeks ago her family were campesino farmers living happily enough in Florencia, in Caqueta Department.

But the region was used for growing coca leaf, the base ingredient for cocaine, and various illegal groups fought over it, Mariana said. And they wanted the peasants driven out, she said.

One day without warning, she said, a guerrilla group burned the family's house. Soon after, she said, her oldest son, 24, was murdered by paramilitaries. And after that, the family recieved anonymous threatening notes pushed  under their front door. She and her four children fled to Bogotá, where they are seeking government help.

It was impossible for me to be certain that Mariana's story is true, altho she sounded honest enough and gave a detailed, realistic account. But, true or not, her story is typical of the tragedies which continue happening in Colombia's countryside, with little notice from the majority of the people. Her story also shows the complexity of Colombia's conflict, in which there's blame enough for leftists and rightists.

And, sadly, as long as drugs are prohibited, violent groups like these will keep profiting from them, and victimizing people like Mariana.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Displaced from South Tolima

Today I had another reminder that, even with peace negotiations with the FARC guerrillas starting up, organized violence continues preying on civilians in many parts of Colombia's countryside.

These displaced campesinos from the southern part of Tolima Department were protesting on Plaza Bolivar today, demanding that the government provide them with new farmland and other support.

The people either didn't know or feared to say which violent group had driven them from their farms. South Tolima is a fertile region which produces coffee, cacao, sugar cane and other crops, they said.

Unfortunately for its residents, however, the region is also an export corridor for cocaine headed toward Colombia's Pacific Coast and ultimately the United States.

The men chained themselves together,
if only symbolically. 

"Over there there are FARC guerrillas, paramilitaries and narcotraffickers," one man told me.

As for the FARC, who claim to no longer hold any kidnappees, continue recruiting children to become guerrilla fighters, according to news reports.


By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Plight of the Embera People

'We demand dignified, safe and voluntary relocation NOW!'

Embera indigenous people protested on Ave. Septima today demanding the government help them return to their lands in the Chocó region, or find them new lands to live on somewhere else.

The Chocó region, near the Pacific Coast, is chronically poor and has been ravaged by drug-generated violence. Violent drug cartels, guerrillas and paramilitaries all roam the region and have forced residents, including indigenous people like these Emberas, to flee to cities for refuge. But for many indigenous people, used to an unsophisticated existence close to nature, find the move to the city jarring, and fall victim to addictions, disease and prostitution. They are often seen begging or selling small handicrafts (often an excuse for begging).

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours