Finca

November 7, 2006

The posting of what is happening here onto the blog I think is going to be slow going, but I´ll keep working to get stuff up as soon as I can!

Today we went to a town on the outskirts of Barranquilla called La Central in the providence of Soledad. It was explained to us that this is a barrio, and that there are many displaced people, los desplazados, living there. There is a constant and growing number of displaced persons in Colombia, prior to the Iraq War many human rights groups put the number of internally displaced persons the highest within Colombia. Getting to La Central was a long process. We took a bus from town, then walked through the barrio until we got to the home of a friend of one of our guides, and waited there for about a half hour for a Jeep to take us overland. While we were waiting we were offered someone´s front porch to sit on to keep out of the hot midday sun. There we got the unusual entertainment of watching two young boys capture a baby lizard and then struggle with him to get a small piece of string tied around the lizard´s body! After a couple narrow escapes the poor little lizard didn´t stand a chance, and the boys succeeded in tying him up. They brought him over to visit us and we talked some with them. I kept waiting for the lizard to shed its tail and make that final escape, but it never did and so the boys let us snap a couple photos of them with their new pet. It was wonderful to interact with a few children and to share with them this little adventure with the lizard, I even had a go at hold it, but the lizard kept trying to get up and I´d already watched it try to bite of the kids, so I was not very good at holding onto it!

The jeep arrived and we climbed in the back and took about another 10 minute drive overland, a very bumpy ride out to the area that was our final destination, a swath of land outside of the La Central barrio where some of the displaced persons were trying to create a small farm, finca, to grow food for sale. This group of men are engaged in a struggle with the local land office of the Colombian government to get the land so that they can permantely grow and cultivate crops on it. Once we arrived out near where the finca was we had another 10 or 15 minute walk out to it which included walking through a cattle grazing area, with the big cattle stopping to watch us as we passed by. The finca is about 2 hectacres in size and about 8 or so cooperative farmers are growing their first crop of corn and beans. Many of the people in Colombia who are displaced have come from rural areas where farming was their livehood. Now many of them find themselves in more urban areas where they need to continue to make a living, but their way of doing so, oftentimes for generations is no longer available to them or viable. This lack of work, and lack of similar kinds of ways of making money and supporting families is one of the major issues that is facing the displaced population in Colombia. The other, as highlighted by the finca we visited is receiving help and assistance from the government, and being given a fair hearing. The men who worked the finca were very proud of their work and the progress they had made thus far. They were very eager to have us visit and to document their work and to photograph what they were doing. One farmer says he was told by the Colombian government, ¨There is no free land in Atlantico.¨ He waved his hand around and said, ¨So, what is this¨ The other part of their work on the finca involves making charcoal to sell at market. They reported to us that they make about 4500 pesos a bag at market, which is about 2USD. Making charcoal from the surrounding trees is backbreaking, dirty, and very hot work. The men at this farm are working so hard, to make so little from our point of view, yet there was a deep sense of pride in their work, and they were so eager to have us come and see it.

In La Central there is a great deal of poverty, small homes and many small children who had little to wear. For me, that was probably the most difficult part of the day. As we rode back to the camp we passed some Colombian army patrols, walking through La Central on foot. One of the community organizers who took us around said they were there to watch the people. After that we toured a large open air market in the Soledad providence, and discussed some of the violence that had occurred there over time, especially in regards to paramilitary activity.

As I was walking around a passage from a book I have just finished reading came to me in which the author describes a feeling that he often has. He describes it as ¨…a chronic restlessness, an inability to appreciate, no matter how well things were going, those blessing that were right in front of me. It´s a flaw that is endemic to modern life…¨ Isn´t that how we are, I am certainly guilty of this much of the time. I worry about what I don´t have rather than focus on what I do have.

When we got back to our apartments in the evening I sat down to read the peacemaking reading for today. As I read it I was struck with how much it reflected back onto the work we did today: ¨…They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore, but thy shall sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.¨

As I read this passage I was thinking about how fitting it was to what we saw today, that these men are actively choosing to not participate in violence, actively choosing to make something their own, despite the odds stacked against them, actively choosing to focus on what they have and what they can do rather than what is absent from their lives. It is a powerful witness.