"DEVELOPMENT IS ABOVE ALL DIGNITY FOR THE PEOPLE"

An interview with Father Francisco De Roux, S.J.
By Manuel Alberto Ramy
Mar@ip.etecsa.cu

He is a quiet mannered man. But undoubtedly the fire is inside and for quite some time. For almost 40 years he has been a Catholic priest, a Jesuit --"I entered the Company when I was 17". Father Francisco De Roux, 57, a Colombian, got his degree at the London School of Economics, and later at La Sorbonne. He lives in the midst of his country's drama committed to the poorest, in the city of Barrancabermeja. In this oil territory there are violent clashes among the different actors of the Colombian drama: guerrilla, paramilitary and the army. And in the midst of gunpowder and death, there is the civil society and the efforts of this priest and the church to build an island of peace, a model that proves that another Colombia is possible. This is my interview with "Pacho", as he likes to be called by his flock and his friends.

Progreso Weekly (PW): ¿What is the work of social activism in Barrancabermeja and what are the consequences for the pastoral activities
of the church and laymen in the situation of war in Colombia?

Father De Roux (FDR): We began this work in Barrancabermeja seven years ago, in a territory of more than 40,000 square kilometers, with almost 800,000 people in 28 municipalities. We decided to start a program with the communities that we have called "Program for Peace and Development in the Middle Magdalena". That program tries to achieve two basic goals: to have the participation of citizens in a civil community, into institutions transformed by the citizens themselves so that they are fully transparent and be at the service of the people, and also accountable to the community. And on the other hand, to have a sustainable development, a just one, done by the people themselves, based on the agroindustrial products that we have in the territory. It's not a confessional program, we are not preaching with the program.

It has been a sustained effort and we have incorporated different educational and development processes. For us the basic goal is to consolidate peace in the territory. It has not been easy. Our group, which is a group of very enthusiastic people, has paid a high price. Ten of us have been murdered, the last one on a Sunday, March 24. Last year five were killed. Precisely on the 4th of July a comrade that we all loved very much, Alma Rosa Jaramillo, was killed. She was a lawyer dedicated to the defense of the farmers.

We were consolidating a land grant for displaced farmers, a project that is already under way of an important cooperative in an island on the Magdalena River, but she was murdered by the paramilitary. It is important to call attention to the fact that all these persons have been murdered by the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (known as AUC, the Spanish acronym for the paramilitary).

We also have had difficult moments with the guerrilla. On four occasions the guerrillas have kidnapped or "retained" people, but they never have attempted on the lives of our comrades. Those "retentions" --or rather, kidnappings-- we consider that are a great mistake on the part of the insurgency, because it is a gross violation of a humanitarian right, and we always have repudiated it. Nevertheless, they ended through very serious conversations with the lads from the guerrilla, and the talks influenced their manner of thinking about what the transformation of the territory should be in order to be able to construct peace.

At the moment we are having conversations with the European Union, and on April 4, on Easter Week, all the ambassadors from the EU will be in Barrancabermeja --and of course, the governors and mayors of the area, and the communities-- for the start of what will be called "Laboratory for Peace on the Middle Magdalena", which is a first intent on the part of the EU to assist to the consolidation in that territory of a strong regional process to demonstrate which is the Colombia that we want to build.

PW: In that ideal island of peace that begins on April 4, what is the role of the EU?

FDR: The EU begins what they have wanted to call Laboratory for Peace in the Middle Magdalena, because they made a thorough analysis of how Europe could collaborate directly in the peace process, and they found out what we were doing in this territory, where there is organization, a capability for handling resources, transparency, a great trust, constant conversations with the actors in the conflict. They said: "we want to act fast and we see that you are in a condition to have an influence on the communities."

For the EU is was also important our position in the middle of the territory where the National Liberation Army (ELN) made a proposal a year ago for a meeting zone with Colombian civil society in order to further the process, and the European ambassadors are part of what has been called the Group of Friendly Countries, of which Cuba is also part, and which makes an effort to help Colombia leave armed confrontation behind.

PW: This territory of the Middle Magdalena has been ELN territory. Have you been able to convince the ELN to support the project?

FDR: Quite right. The Middle Magdalena is where the ELN was born, in the mountains of the Yariguíes Range, on the east side of the Middle Magdalena. And that's where they had their first famous armed confrontation, when they took Simacota, one of the towns where we are working now. At present the ELN is strong in the San Lucas Range, on the western bank of the Magdalena River, and a territory of the Program for Peace and Development. We have been constantly talking with the ELN and they have great respect and great interest in our advances with the communities. The ELN indeed have a great interest in working alongside the people and in respecting the processes that the communities are furthering. That's why the ELN has backed this process that we have with the Europeans.

We hope that this process can be a contribution to the peace process. And what we want for the men that for historical reasons took up arms in Colombia is that they can find a space to make the radical transformations without which there can be no peace in Colombia. If we can't redistribute land in Colombia and grant land to the farmer; if we can't end administrative corruption; if we can't make the army and the police to stop giving support to the paramilitary, but to be at the service of the people; if we can't make farmers give up the coca crop, caused by the anxiety and the madness of the farmer in their quest for food; if these radical transformations do not take place, then it will be impossible to attain peace in Colombia.

PW: You have just mentioned coca. In your program, do you raise the issue of coca with the farmers? What is their reaction and what alternatives do you offer to coca growing?

FDR: That is a very important matter for us, and I would like to share it with the US community. Last year, in the month of May, farmers' groups in a region called Mico Ahumado in the San Lucas Mountains invited us to a meeting. There were nearly 3,000 men and women, all of them coca growers and "raspachines" (croppers). The farmers had made big posters to tell us what their goal was: "No to coca. Yes to dignity". What the farmers wanted to tell us at that moment was: "Coca has given us money, because of the possibility of demand, an international demand that pays for a product, that gives us the revenues that no other product gives in Colombia at the present time, and least of all on these mountains where it's very complicated to send out any other product. But the coca that gave us money has destroyed our families, has destroyed our towns, has destroyed our food crops, has destroyed the traditions that made us proud, and it has made us destroy our environment. And finally, it has placed us in the eye of the storm of the war." That is because at present where there is coca it is controlled basically by Carlos Castaño's paramilitary or by the FARC guerrillas (Spanish acronym for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).

I would like to say that the ELN have always been against coca growing. They have tried to motivate the farmers to leave coca growing, and at present they have motivated the farmers into coming into the program that we are proposing, which is an alternative development that little by little can transform the coca crops into an integral development where dignity is recovered and joy returns to the family, and the dreams of the farmers become a reality.

PW: Colombian authorities have informed that at least ten dignitaries of the Catholic Church have received death threats from the paramilitary or drug-related groups, and among those threatened is the Archbishop of Barrancabermeja, Monsignor Jaime Prieto. What is the situation at present? And also, how do common citizens in Barrancabermeja live in the midst of this tragedy?

FDR: Unfortunately the news about the threat to Monsignor Jaime Prieto is true and it corresponds to what a man dedicated to the defense of the rights of the people must face in Barrancabermeja, because he has taken a stand with great determination against the presence of the paramilitary in the city. Monsignor Prieto also has been a builder of peace, inviting all armed groups to lay down their weapons and search for other ways to build our country. The city of Barrancabermeja that traditionally has been a left-leaning city, of strong struggles on the part of workers in Colombia, a city with a radical spirit that has been emblematic in Colombia, was invaded by the paramilitary on December 23, 2000, and from that day on paramilitarism penetrated the city taking it house by house, between December 23 and April 7, 2001. I remember that us priests had to officiate 5 to 7 funerals a day in Barranca, due to the great number of murders. At present the situation in the city is the following: the city has its formal authorities. It has a mayor, the presence of the army and the police, but all of us who live in Barranca know that the real power is in the hands of the paramilitary groups. And the paramilitary decide who can stay and who has to leave the city. And that's the scenario we have, where civil liberties are restricted, where the possibility to express yourself --for example, in a situation of a political campaign, of running a campaign in complete freedom-- is limited. We are talking about popular communities, people of modest means or poor, and the people submit to the actor that is dominating the city, they submit or will be displaced. People then end up by accepting the presence of the armed group, which in turn removes the possibility of democracy, the possibility of participation and freedom. That is at this moment the situation in Barranca.

What we do in Barranca as well as in the other 28 municipalities --and that's why we pay such a high price-- is to reaffirm the autonomy of the communities, to proclaim their right of speech, working so that the life of every person is respected, insisting that development is above all the dignity of the people. In this area international solidarity is particularly important, a solidarity no as much in money, in means, but of human presence and togetherness, of will and enthusiasm and of deep friendship.

PW: How do you rate the experience of sister cities between Colombia and the United States? Is that what you mean with a solidarity of "human presence and togetherness", rather than of means?

FDR: Exactly. Thanks to the Colombian Support Network, a US volunteer organization, at least 50 US cities are supporting what we do in Colombia. The 29 municipalities of the Middle Magdalena have their respective "sister city" in the United States. Cities such as Chicago, New York or Madison are linked to cities in the Middle Magdalena, and citizens over there look for relations, support, ways of pressuring our judges and our judicial system so that crimes do not go unpunished, pressuring the US Congress, and such. At present one of our greatest concerns is the possibility of coca fumigation in South Bolívar, which is part of the Middle Magdalena, in the month of May. We are asking our American friends to help us exerting pressure on Congress to stop the spraying. The farmers are very determined, not all farmers, but at least those who are conscious, the ones who are struggling for dignity, who want to overcome coca with dignity to transform the approximately 50,000 acres of coca in the Middle Magdalena in other crops, in food crops and products that can be exported, in education, in a radical transformation. Fumigation may bring us two things: the destruction of peasant organizations that are ready for the shift from coca, an escalation of the conflict, because this coca is in the hands of Castaño's paramilitary and the FARC, and the disappearance of the market possibilities that we have to transform little by little, but also rapidly and in a sure fashion. Contrary to what people who favor fumigation think, it doesn't decreases coca growing, but increases it. The figures that we have, which are well known in the US, are that during the last three years 247,000 acres were fumigated in Colombia, and coca crops, that covered approximately 320,000 acres, grew to 396,000 acres. The land dedicated to coca grew. That means that the problem undoubtedly should be faced with systems of alternative integral development.

We would like to ask to our friends in the United States to helps us to end coca growing by means that are really efficient, which are the means that reach to the hearts of men and women and further development with dignity for all.

PW: Last January a group of American members of an organization called Witness for Peace visited Colombia. Were you in contact with them?

FDR: Certainly. The people of Witness for Peace are of an extraordinary humanitarian spirit, of a great and very deep Christian feeling, with a message of non-violence inspired by Martin Luther King and Ghandi. They mingle with Colombian farmers, accompany them and protect their lives. They have the courage of always telling the truth where they find the problems. In Barrancabermeja they have accompanied the communities of the Lupón Swamps, communities that have been painfully displaced; likewise they have accompanied the peasants of the Cimitarra River valley, who have been harassed and persecuted. Witness for Peace has been at their side all the time. It's a great moral debt, a precious debt of affection that we have with the American people who have reached out to us with their religious spirit accompanying us in the struggle for the construction of human life in Colombia.

PW: A final question, Father. The Colombian government and the ELN are meeting in Havana in a quest for peace. Do you support those conversations? Do you think that is the way to peace?

FDR: I certainly do. I believe that with God's help, and due to the good will of the ELN's lads and the interest perceived on the part of the government, that can be the solution. The ELN can become the group that shows Colombia --from the perspective of men that saw that in Colombia there were radical structural changes to be made so that peace were possible-- a way out so that we don't have to kill each other, we don't have to destroy anybody's life nor exclude anyone, so that together we can consolidate the nation that we have dreamed of. I believe in that process. May we have the wisdom, the patience, the imagination to find the way out, and may the enemies of peace, that are the same that persecute religious people in Colombia, do not hamper the way so that the conversations that are being held now in Cuba --among other things, thanks to Commander Fidel Castro's personal interest-- can go on.

 

Manuel Alberto Ramy is the Radio Progreso Alternativa and Progreso Weekly correspondent in Havana, as well as from Spain's El Economista.

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