San Jose Apartado Massacre: The Murder Of Colombia's Peace Community
First Posted: 03-16-10 02:50 PM | Updated: 03-16-10 05:52 PM
By Nadja Drost
BOGOTA, Colombia -- The bodies of seven civilians were dumped in shallow graves and strewn by a riverbank in northern Colombia five years ago. Most had been disemboweled and sliced with a machete. Four were children.
The brutality of the massacre shocked even a war-weary country accustomed to atrocities. The victims were members of San Jose de Apartado, a self-declared "peace community." Not wanting to be a military target, the community had tried to establish neutrality by refusing entry to all armed groups, including guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary forces and the Colombian military.
Now 15 army officers are charged with murder and a trial for 10 of them is set to resume today. At stake is blame for the gruesome massacre and accountability for the army in a country where military crimes are often met with impunity and many killings go unpunished. U.S. interest in the trials also runs high -- the U.S. has given more than $6 billion in military aid to Colombia since 2000, including to units implicated in the massacre.
While the trial attempts to bring a measure of justice for the killings, much remains hidden behind conflicting stories and efforts to deflect blame. In a two-part series, GlobalPost explores how the massacre unfolded and the involvement of the highest ranks of the Colombian army and the cover-up that followed.
~snip~
The massacre
A pile of stones lies in the center of the village of San Jose de Apartado. Each time a community member is murdered, their name is painted on a stone and added to the mound. There are more than 160 stones.
The community was founded in 1997 by Luis Eduardo Guerra, an internationally known peace activist. On Feb. 21, 2005, the 35-year-old Guerra was returning home from harvesting cocoa, residents told human rights groups and investigators. At his side were his 17-year-old companion Beyanira Areiza and his 11-year-old son Deiner.
As Guerra and his family walked along the Mulatos River, they came across armed men who proceeded to interrogate them, testified commander Uber Dario Yanez of the paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).
The paramilitary fighters were patrolling with army soldiers as part of a joint operation to go after rebels from the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), the Marxist insurgency that has been fighting the Colombian government since the mid-1960s. The army had hired the paramilitary fighters to guide them in unfamiliar territory -- despite the fact that the AUC was an illegal armed group listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.
Dario Yanez said army Capt. Guillermo Gordillo and four AUC commanders decided they "had to finish them off or kill these people because supposedly they were informants of the guerrilla."
In the days following the disappearance of Guerra and his family, more than 100 community members embarked on a journey by foot and mule to find them. They discovered the boy's skull and vertebrae cast aside on the riverbank away from the rest of his body. Areiza's green sweatpants were pulled down to her knees and her body slung over those of Guerra and his son. There was not much left of their bodies, wrote Jesus Abad, a photographer from El Tiempo newspaper who accompanied the group. A machete lay among weeds.
Community members watched over the bodies, throwing rocks at vultures throughout the night and the following day to prevent them from further devouring the bodies until a helicopter with army and police officers arrived.
More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/16/san-jose-apartado-massacr_n_501243.html~~~~~Massacre in Colombian Peace Community
Once again, the trail of blood leads to the SOA:
SOA graduate commands accused brigade
"We have always said, and in that we are clear, that until this very day we are resisting. And our work is to continue resisting and defending our rights. We don't know until when, because the truth we've lived in our story is this: today we are here talking; tomorrow we may be dead. Today we are here in San Jose de Apartado; tomorrow the majority of people here could be displaced because of a massacre." -- Luis Eduardo Guerra, in an interview on January 15 of this year, 37 days before he was assassinated by the Colombian military
On February 21-22, 2005, eight members of the San Jose de Apartado Peace Community in Uraba, Colombia -including three young children, were brutally massacred. Witnesses identified the killers as members of the Colombian military, and peace community members saw the army's 17th and 11th Brigades in the area around the time of the murders.
Among those killed was Luis Eduardo Guerra, an internationally recognized peace activist and a co-founder of the Peace Community. In November 2002, Luis travelled from Colombia to Fort Benning, Georgia to speak out against the School of the Americas and to give a first hand testimony about the brutal impact that SOA training and US foreign policy have on the dire situation in Colombia.
General Hector Jaime Fandino Rincon is the commander of the 17th Brigade of the Colombian army. Like Luis Eduardo, Fandino Rincon also travelled to the School of the Americas -- not to speak out for justice and peace like Luis, but to attend the "Small-Unit Infantry Tactics" course in order to become "familiar with small-unit operational concepts and principles at the squad and platoon level,
receive training in planning and conducting small-unit tactical operations." Fandino Rincon is a 1976 graduate of the notorious School of the Americas. In December of 2004 he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General.
Since the massacre, the Colombian administration of Alvaro Uribe has done little to investigate the murders. No investigation into the military or the 17th or 11th Brigade has begun. All the focus now of the government agencies intervening in the situation is to force the community members to testify at risk of their lives' instead of focusing on the military that was in the area at the time of the murders.
Police and military forces have flooded San Jose against the wishes of the Peace Community, which has taken a fundamental stance against any and all armed actors. Since the massacre, all but five of the 100 families that formed the Peace Community have been forced to leave their homes and land.
Those killed on February 21 and 22 included Luis Eduardo, his partner Bellanira and their son, Deiner, 11. Also massacred were Alejandro Perez, Alfonso Bolivar Tuberquia Graciano, his partner, Sandra Milena Munoz Pozo and their young children, Santiago, 18 months, and Natalia, 6 years old. (Click here for more background information).
The Peace Community sent a delegation to locate and identify their bodies. They found a gruesome scene, with Alejandro, Alfonso, Sandra, Santiago and Natalia in a communal grave. They had all been killed with machetes, with their heads and extremities severed. The community found Luis, Bellanira and Deiner's bodies thrown near a river. They had been beaten badly and had their throats cut.
More:
http://www.soaw.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1024
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