BackIsmael Maestre

The photo does not illustrate the narrator of the story.*

• Name
• Ismael Maestre
• 
• Age
• 45
• 
• Sex
• Male
• 
• Profession
• Peasant farmer
• 

The town where I was born, Aracataca (in Magdalena province), is a very beautiful place. But I didn't only grow up there. We're from a very, very poor background. My dad was a rural labourer and my mum a washerwoman, and there were 14 of us children. So pretty much none of us got an education at the time. We had to work just to keep things going. As each one grew up, he had to work to provide for the younger ones.

So when I was 12 we had to pick cotton, go to the rice fields and harvest the rice, that kind of thing, and that meant we went to go and live up in the mountains, in the Sierra Nevada, away from Aracataca. Later my dad left there and went to La Guajira, and he took all of us with him. I lived in La Guajira, in Mingueo, between the ages of 12 and around 17, 18 - that's where I finished growing up.


Back to topWe all got split up

When my mum died, we brothers and sisters got split up, separated. Each one went their different way. Some stayed in La Guarjira, my oldest brother went to Cesar, some of my sisters went back to Aracataca, another one went to Puerto Berrio, others went to Barranquilla. It was around 1980, and I set off for Bolívar with a friend.

I went to Bolívar because I'd heard lots of good things about it, and I wanted to go to the place where they held the beauty contest (1). People were talking a lot about the champion Kid Pambelé (2), who was from Palenque. I was young and I was anxious to leave, to get to know the city, and so one day myself and a friend went to Cartagena, to a beauty contest.

When we got to Cartagena, we'd been there about three days when a girlfriend of my friend took him to a municipality called María la Baja. I liked it so much there that I stayed, and I made a lot of friends there. I got to know some people from Palenque too, and I started to work with them. "Hey, Guajiro, let's go and do some work!" and off we went.

I said to the man: "Mister, I want to go to Palenque!"

And he said: "Why not? If you want to, let's go to Palenque. What kind of work are you good at?"

"I can do all kinds of work, whatever you like. Anything to do with the countryside, I can do it!" I said. So we went to Palenque and I liked it there even more.


Back to topThey were very fond of me in that town

It's a very humble place, but it was and still is really lovely, it was great for me at that time. It's a story I really like telling: I arrived there in 1981, around December, and we spent about a week there, getting to know people, partying, having a few drinks. There was lots going on there. After about 11 days we went up to the mountains, where the farm was, and on the very first day I got there, I met María, and when I saw her I said: "Wow!" Let's put it like this: María really impressed me, she bowled me over. So with the chance of being near her and winning her over and all that, I set to working with lads from Palenque. I went harvesting corn with them, clearing fields, putting up fences, and they paid me every Saturday. And we had some great parties in which I spent the money they paid me!

I worked with them for eight years - it was great. There were no problems there, the people were lovely. So there we were, working away, and I got what I wanted - my woman, and that kept me there working even longer. They were very fond of me in that town.

Palenque comes under the jurisdiction of Montes de María. The town is part of the municipality of Mahate, and Mahate is part of Montes de María. Montes de María is made up of a number of municipalities which are all part of Bolívar province. Strategically it's an important place, and guerrilla fronts operate there. All the different guerrilla groups were there - the ELN, the FARC, the EPL, in Montes de María and right across the province. And Palenque was no exception - they came through there too.

They made their presence felt, doing checks, coming down from the mountains as far as San Pablo, San Cayetano and all those other towns. They came down to Palenque too, but there were no problems, no worries. Things were calm.

When I first got there, you never heard mention of anything like that. But then in '85 and '86 they started kidnapping people from the area itself. You began to hear that they'd taken so-and-so, they'd got money out of so-and-so, they'd got money out of who knows who else. But you also got to hear that there were lots of common criminals and that criminal gangs were doing the same sort of thing. The guerrillas were always up there in the hills, they came down to keep a check on the things, to keep order, let's say. They kept order, they got people together, had group meetings, gave talks, all that kind of thing. In the schools, the villages - like La Bonga, Cativa, all those places. But there was no killing, no bodies, nothing like that.

We farmed alongside María's dad. The lads had nothing to complain about, and there was always plenty of work because we had lots of cattle, lots of land. María's dad had about 120 hectares of mountainside ... no, not hectares but "cabuyas", a local term equivalent to two hectares. We also had a patch of land up there and we all worked together up there - my brothers-in-law, my cousins and my nieces. We were all thrown in together up there and there was always loads to do. Each one made their clearing, and in the clearing you planted everything - sugar cane, rice, everything. And you have a son, and you say to the son: "OK, I'm not going to the clearing - go here or there and collect a sack of yuca (cassava.)"

The people had their farms there, but the land had been reduced by the state. The area round Palenque has been reduced, because from what I understood when I was there, it used to be enormous, taking in the municipalities of San Juan, San Jacinto and Carmen de Bolívar as far as the doors of the church in Ovejas. From there, it bordered San Onofre. Some of María la Baja was also part of Palenque. All that Palenque's land, including the territory of Mahate. From all that land, all five of the municipalities have been shrinking, because of new legislation from the government, and, moreover, new people moving in, rich people, landowners who've been buying up people's land, eating away at it. So Palenque is smaller than it was.


Back to topThere's a committee giving out plots of land

When I realised that three of the same guys I went to Palenque with were brothers and between them they had three plots of land - one plot each - I asked them: "How did you come by them?"

And they said: "We joined a committee of peasant farmers in the municipality of Malagana, we went to their meetings." Malagana is a town right there near Palenque.

So I asked them: "Why didn't you invite me along?"

And they said: "Because we didn’t realise what was going on."

So I said: "Well, seeing as you didn't invite me, I'm going to find out for myself how to get involved." Of course, I was anxious to get a plot - I wanted to have my own land too. So I said to my father-in-law: "I can bring up my children here, but my children won't be able to bring up their families here, will they? That would be too much, so I need to sort something out for myself." So I went and joined a committee in Malagana. Peasant farmers from various areas took part, from other villages such as San Joaquín, Mandinga, Evitar and Mahate, and we had our meetings.

We participated as representatives of Palenque. People began to notice that I went off to the meetings every Tuesday and they asked me what I was up to. So I began to tell the story to people and said: "The thing is, those other guys got a plot of land - there's a committee that’s giving out plots." So people from Palenque started joining the committee, and then there were nine or twelve of us. Twelve people who joined the committee and went to the meetings every Tuesday. The meetings were at eight in the evening, and we walked home afterwards at 11 or 12 at night, which took an hour. We walked an hour there, and an hour back again.

The committee took 200 pesos from each of us for the meetings, and one day I thought: "Why do we walk all that way each time and come to the meetings just to bring them 200 pesos? Why don't we go and talk to the people, we can collect the fees in our villages and then just one person can bring it to the meeting, so we all don't have to go. So everyone agreed, and the people from the committee agreed and they said: "Why don't you start a committee and affiliate yourselves directly with Mahate?"

I said: "Sure, let's do that," and we called for a meeting and had it. I remember that 12 people came to the first meeting, and among them was Primitivo Pérez. Primitivo was a teacher, one of the lads, and son of one richest families in town. He'd received some training through the national scheme of technical education (Sena) and he knew a lot of things, so he helped us form the first committee. He was secretary and they elected me as president of the Palenque committee.

So I started to call meetings, and we had them every week, on Sundays, but I still went to Malagana every Tuesday too, so that I would know what they were saying and I could report back to our people. By our third meeting, there was no longer 12 of us but 30, then 40 - the committee kept growing. I began to see that the people from Palenque could organise in "kuagros" (3) (old people, young people, everyone) so I began to lead that. I said to them: " The solution here is to reclaim the land, Palenque's land. We're going to reclaim Palenque's land!"

People began to organise themselves under that slogan, and not only the men but the women too. We had 170 people affiliated to the committee - the working men and the women all joined, all the saleswomen too and I began to say that they should start a cooperative for selling sweets (4).

How could we get credit or other things for our men and women? The rainy season on that part of the coast was really harsh in '87 or '88, a rainy season that destroyed the whole harvest, the hills ran with water and many crops were flooded, and many people had loans from the Caja Agraria - it's called the Banco Agrario these days. As people had loans and they'd lost everything, officials from the bank came to the town to sort things out with the defaulters, those who couldn't pay their debts. As we already had a committee and I was president, we called a meeting with all the peasant farmers - we got them all down into town from the villages for a meeting at which the officials put forward a proposal that the government would give people new loans to pay the old loans off with so that they didn't lose their harvests and all that. As I was their representative I stood up in the square that day and I told them that we couldn't sign the agreements because it would put people even further into debt. I said to them: "Can't you see? If you've got a loan for 400 and they give another 400, how much will you have to pay? 800! And you've lost your harvest. Who's going to buy it? Have you got any crops left? Haven't you got cattle that drowned? So who's going to buy it? This can't be."

The officials asked: "So what kind of solution do you want?"

And I replied: "That you cancel these peoples' debts, that you let them off the interest and you wipe out the debt. If you wipe out the debt, then we'll take out new loans, but if the debt isn't wiped out, we're not going to take on new loans. Why? Why should we take out new loans and put ourselves even further in debt?"

So the officials asked if everyone agreed, and the people said: "Yes, what Ismael says, goes. He's our representative." They didn't come to any agreement, but from that day, I was the town's representative.


Back to topEverything started to go wrong

As the motto was to reclaim Palenque's land, we got together with other peasant farmers from San Juan, San Cayetano and San Jacinto and we began to retake land, take it back from the landowners who had it. When that started happening, the landowners started to get organised too.

When the M-19 and EPL guerrillas demobilised in '88 or '89 - in San Pablo, San Cayetano, all over the place - that's when paramilitary groups started appearing and they began to kill the peasant farmers' leaders.

On one of the operations to retake land - we did several at the same time - I went into a farm called Todosonrisa, Palenque land that a drug trafficker (5) had taken. We went there to take back the land from that trafficker.

At the time I was still representative of the Palenque peasant farmers' committee and we pushed on with the struggle for Todosonrisa. At the same time, we took part in something called the black communities' process. That was something else that the people of Palenque organised themselves in , something more academic - they worked towards the education of the community in official matters. All our companions were there. There were lawyers, teachers, all that kind of thing. That was at the beginning of the '90s, when law 70 (6), the collective land law, was passed. They began to work on the process of awarding land and that strengthened our committee because the law was providing a way for the people of Palenque to get back their land. So our campaign intensified - everyone in Palenque got involved and we went for the land.

At the same time, a dissident group of the Corriente de Renovación Socialista (the Movement for Socialist Renewal) demobilised in Flor del Monte. The EPL went higher up, to Arenitas, which is really close to Montes de María. So what they did, or so it's said, is intercept them in the mountains, and they went off to Urabá. But a few people stayed, and that's when everything started to go wrong. "Why did it start to go wrong?" I'd say it was a problem of social breakdown of those same groups, because ever since then they have massacred people, the leaders, the peasant farmers.


Back to topEver since then they've been after me

I had a dose of that same medicine, because we had a process going in our village at the time. Under the presidency of César Gaviria [1990-1994] they passed a law offering rewards for guerrilla leaders. If someone caught a guerrilla leader or gave information about them, they got a reward. And because of the reward, people started saying: "You're this or that." And so they'd arrest you, and put you on trial and then lock you up as a guerrilla leader. That's what happened to me. They organised an operation, they set us up there on the farm and they captured me and five other peasant farmers, and none of us knew why. They accused us of rebellion, of terrorism, of murders, assassinations and kidnaps. They told the people all kinds of things. When we were never involved in those things!

The army, the police, the F2 (7), all the forces were involved, and they tied us up and took us away. They deployed more than 200 armed men to arrest six unarmed peasant farmers! They took us from our houses, they beat us up, they slapped us around, they mistreated us and they brought us to Bogotá. They tied us up and put us on a plane and put us in La Modelo (8) for three months. After three months, we were let out.

I don't even know who got me out, I don't know how I got out of there, whether it was the lawyer or what, because the truth was no one owed me anything. But they got us out and we were left to go free. So we went back home to our plots. Where else were we going to go? We went back to our plots, but life wasn't the same! Nevertheless we carried on trying to organise the community, the community's process, and strengthening community work for the people.

But then the army was all over the place. The military began running checks and inspections, they wanted to come and do training in the community. So I made a statement and I sent it to the armed forces and the Fiscalía (9) and everyone else. In the statement I asked how it could be that when there were lads in our community who'd finished school, but because they didn't have the money they didn't go to university and were working the land instead, when there were people who'd done a semester at university and because they didn't have the money they had to withdraw, why didn't they give money to those people. Or why didn't they train people as teachers? Why did it have to be the military who tackled illiteracy and educated the local people. I said it wasn't lawful, because the military had a specific mission which was to safeguard the national sovereignty and that they should leave the area.

So from then on, they were after me and I suffered my first displacement. I left because they were persecuting me, and the people were frightened. "They're going to ruin us, how about that?" So I left. The first time I left, I went to El Copey.

That was in '94, something like that. I went to Aracataca and left María there with the kids and then I went to El Copey to work picking cotton. I found myself a good boss there, and later I brought María and I worked there with her. From there we went to a town called Ciénaga (Magdalena) and I worked there for three months and then with the same boss I went to a farm and worked there for seven months. While I was working in El Copey, people from Palenque, people from the community, came to look for me. They asked me to go back, so we could continue with the process. They said they needed leadership and that I should go back. So I paid them heed and I went back again, I went back.


Back to topBut the area had been spoiled

But the area was in a mess, it was ruined. There was death everywhere. I blame the politicians for the damage to the area. For example, Mahate is a municipality with a population of around 50,000. It has access routes, but only tracks - not paved roads. That's also breakdown, because there's raging poverty, but it's not a poverty of production. The land is good and the people are productive. It's a poverty of investment. The people who administer the resources, steal them! So there's no investment and that's why there's poverty and that leads to social breakdown, which divides the community.

Another source of breakdown - although that depends on how you look at it - is the military control carried out by the Colombian Army. This military control also leads to social breakdown in some way. No one in Palenque really knew what a policeman was until around '89 or '90, when they stationed a battalion there. They were meant to bring more security, but what they actually brought was insecurity. Although they bring control, that control generates a lot of corruption, violations of all sorts. You can't really say of the soldiers ... no, they're not saints, they're human too, so they dip their hand in and steal and abuse their power too. So that leads to certain breakdown in the area.

And the other thing is that there is no social investment. What's been done in Palenque, has been done by the people. It's not the work of the state or government, but because we've found other ways of getting some investment. Palenque's education programmes, for example: it's been a struggle by the blacks, by the people supported by other organisations, not only the government.

So because of the campaign we had to reclaim our land. I went back again to the community, and I'd got a bit more experience by then, a bit more guile, I said to my partner: "We're going back to Palenque again, but we're not going to live in Palenque itself - we're going to Cativa." Cativa is a village near Palenque, it's about an hour above, and there's a lovely little farm there that was, or is rather, her grandfather's. All kinds of fruit grew on that farm.


Back to topThey killed all those people

So we went to live and work there. I had a horse and I went down to town and we had meetings and talked to people and brought food. We left by way of San Pablo and lived in Cativa. As it turned out there were - as I said before - groups of Farc guerrillas in Cativa. All the groups are there, though mainly way up high in the Maco hills. So we came down from there because that's where the incursions were, and one day I was at home with my little kids and a group of armed men in uniform passed by. I didn’t make out whether they were guerrillas or which group they were from that day, I just saw them pass. You get used to seeing them every day. They pass by your farm, and you just say: "Hello'" and that's it. You say “hello” to everyone who passes by.

The next day I went down to town, and a neighbour said: "My friend, didn't you know they can't find that man called Flórez?"

So I said: "Which one?"

And he replied it was Aurelio. "Yes, some group or another passed by and they took him and killed him." Then I went to another neighbour and found out something else. They'd gone to the farm of a family, people you had to draw the words out of if you wanted to speak to them, people from out in the wilds, who didn't know a thing - they'd turned up, taken them all and killed them. Killed them, and from what I could find out, the vultures ate them, because there wasn't anyone to go and collect their bodies.

That's how I found out that there were groups going round killing people. And you presume that, because you're used to seeing the guerrillas around, that it was the guerrillas doing the killing and everyone kept quiet.

So I'm out and about, and about three days later, they pass by with a lad they've taken. As the lad knew me, he said: "Ismael, give me water!" And I gave him some water, I gave the lad water, and as they saw me give him water, they said: "You too, come with us! Get your shovel and your pick, and come with us!" So I got my shovel and my pick, and I followed them. When we'd gone about a hundred metres, they said: "Dig there!" So we started to dig, me with the pick and the lad with the shovel, and when the hole was about knee deep, they said: "Stop there!" When they said "stop there", I wanted to ... my stomach ached ... good grief, I tell you, my hair stood on end. I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. They had two guys there, two here, another one there, and we were just two standing there. In front of us there were two of them, and one said to the other: "Put yourself over there." So I grabbed the pick - I already had it to hand - I grabbed the pick and whack! I hit one of them with it. The man fell and I, well, I started running. I was off like a shot, doing somersaults as if I was a ball. I ran and I ran, and they fired three times and me running, running - bang! bang! - I kept running ... and I lost them. I didn't stop running for three or four hours, and then I felt I'd run enough. I was tired, dog-tired, and so I kept still. I couldn't hear any more shots or anything, so I just kept still.

And then it started to rain, a big storm with lightning and blowing a gale. It was about six in the evening, and bit by bit, making lots of detours, I made my way home to find my kids. I got there and I took my children, I got the donkey I kept there, saddled her up and put them in the saddle. María wasn't there, so I grabbed a pair of rubber boots and said: "No questions, we're leaving!" So we left in the midst of the storm, and we had to cross the swollen river, and open up paths in the jungle through the rocks, through everything, with this donkey until we got to the road. We got to town about one in the morning, dirty and exhausted and the kids soaked all night. But I didn't tell anyone anything that had happened.

I still thought it was the guerrillas and I asked myself: "How could that be?" But anyway, I went to town and I fell ill. The pressure, something to do with stress, I don't know, but I got thinner and thinner and the people kept asking: "What's wrong with you, Ismael?"


Back to top"Where do I go from here?"

Things kept ticking along, and I relaxed. That same year, I left the mountain and stayed in town. I concentrated on finishing my schooling and I had no desire to go back to the hills. I said to myself: "I can't go back there, but where can I go?" I'd got six children by then, all of them small. "Where could I go from here?" My work was in the countryside so I said: "Good grief, is it a good idea to go back to the wilderness with all my animals now dispersed? So I went to work on our plot of land. I went back to our plot. I got a loan from the bank for four million pesos and I bought some cattle. I started working again with cattle, keeping my clearing, and finishing my schooling on Saturdays in San Pablo (Bolívar). It was about forty minutes by car from San Pablo to Palenque. That was in 1997.

So I said to María: "You can finish your schooling here too, so we'll be properly trained. I 'll do mine first and then you do yours. It'll be better that way. And there we were, in harmony, living amid all the things that were going on, but not paying it any attention, because it wasn't affecting me, it was nothing to do with me. Well perhaps it has to do with you, but you tell yourself: "It has nothing to do with you." That's the dilemma you find yourself in.

In August 1997, I was in school in San Pablo: the coordinator at the school from Carmen de Bolívar and a teacher from Sucre who was also a coordinator and myself went out together. The coordinators had come from a meeting with the mayor of Mahate. I don't know what it was about, but they'd been in a meeting. At the edge of Palenque there's a neighbourhood called Palenquito - all along the main road there are kiosks, run by people who live there at the side of the road - and so I left school and I saw them at one of the kiosks, and they shouted: "Come here, Ismael, come and have a beer!"

But I said: "No thanks, if you had food you wouldn't invite me, but no beer for me. I'm really hungry, so I won't have a beer. I'm going home." And off I went. I paid them no attention, and I didn't wait for the car. I sent off calmly on foot. And it turns out that group turned up and they took the coordinators and the teachers with them. They took them away, they took them away ... and they've never been seen since.


Back to top"Who could those armed men be?"

So I was at home in Palenque. I didn't go to the classes on Saturdays, I didn't go out. That year I made a good clearing, right there in town, because someone gave me some really good land to work and I worked it. I sowed corn, yuca (cassava) and ñame (yams). I tell you no lies, that was my year, my lucky year. That was the year I might have settled down. I had a loan, I had cattle, I had my plot of land and a house. I had that great clearing I'd made good and everyone admired it.

When I got up one morning - as my mother-in-law lived a way off, I'd get up in the morning and head over there, and suddenly I saw a guy coming the other way. He was wearing white shorts, trainers, a t-shirt without sleeves and had a sack over his shoulder. I got close to him to take a look, because he was odd, he was from the interior. In Palenque everyone's black, but this guy was completely white. I got closer and I realised that under his sack, he was carrying guns. I went and sat on the edge of the path. I kept alert, I went to work and the guy left. That night, about seven in the evening, a Toyota came into town, a red Toyota. I wasn't at home, I was at a neighbours and I saw that there were six people in the vehicle, all of them in shorts. And I said to myself: "These people, armed to the teeth, who are they? It must be the army on an operation!" The vehicle went up towards La Bonga, behind it went an army truck and that night we slept peacefully.

The next day I went in to town, to the square, and I got there and I saw that there were notices on the lampposts that read: "Infantry Battalion No. 3. Members of the community, if you'd be so kind: we are pleased to inform you that if you see anything suspicious in the community, please telephone this number or that." And I said; "What's all this about? Then, on top of that, the guerrillas appeared in force and paf! They kidnapped some people from the town. And so the whole thing got really screwed up!


Back to top"You're top of the list!"

But as the saying goes: "If you don't owe anything, you've got nothing to fear." It was August 3, and I was at home, when one of the richest men in town turned up and he said: "Mr Ismael, you're a really good man, a hardworking person, honest and serious. From the day you arrived in this town, you've worked for its people. But I'm sorry to tell you something - there are many people in this town who don't like you. You think that I'm one of them. You suspect me and I can’t stand it. I have to tell you. Why don't you do us a favour and leave? Get out of here! Take your family if you want to. Or leave them if you prefer. Do what you like, but get out of here! I tried to ask him why, but he just said: "Don't ask me why. I'm just obeying orders by saying this to you." So I started to think, and I said to myself that this was someone who was jealous of me, who saw me as an obstacle, and wanted to see the back of me. So I didn't leave. I stayed there.

Despite what the man had said, I stayed, and as always I went to work early each morning. So it was about eight in the morning, and I was having a walk when my father-in-law came along. He said the same thing, and I said: "But what's going on, Mr Niño?" But he didn't want to say. Then someone passed by and said the same thing again. So I said: "What's going on? That guy said it, and then another one and now you're telling me the same thing. What's happening?"

And he said: "Well, the thing is, a group of men came into town and they got everyone together. They were asking for information and they were talking about you ... and you're on the list!"

"What do you mean? What list?" I asked.

"Yes, they had a list, with a load of different people's names on it, and you're at the top of the list!" he replied.

I went straight to María and said: "Guess what?" And I told that this and that had happened. "We're not going to be silly about this," I said. "You're not going to let yourself be killed and nor am I. We know the score, we've already been warned and we're not going to allow ourselves to die a miserable death here. Tonight, take the kids and put them to bed at your mum's and then go and wait at someone else's house. I'll stay here until seven o'clock and then I'll go and we'll leave the house empty. I'm going to leave, but let's sort out some money and a way to protect our things here, and then I can go."

So what did we do? The clearing was nearby, and at seven o'clock I went there as if I'd been coming from town. From there I went home and then left in a different direction and went up into the hills. From there I could see everything that was going on. And of course! They came by night, the army and the paramilitaries. The paramilitaries were armed but dressed in civilian clothes. The army went first and behind them the others. Then the army pulled back, and the paramilitaries started attacking people, and killing them and ... all quiet on the front! The army hadn't seen anything or participated in anything!


Back to topI'm off. I'm going to be next!

The next day, I said to María: "I'm leaving on the third." They'd already killed a lot of people in town - they'd killed the two teachers, another guy in San Pablo, and two friends who had been with me. They killed Maneco - the guy with the kiosk - on August 3. When they killed Maneco and I heard the news that they were heading out of town, I said to María: "I'm off because I'm next. You stay here - I'm going to leave under their noses, through town."

So I made out as if I was going to the clearing with my machete, as if I was going to work somewhere else. I left at seven, eight in the morning, and I said to María: "You leave by , a different way, and take the container you sell the sweets from with my clothes in it. We'll meet at the Amparo petrol station in Cartagena, and from there I'll leave. I'm not going to stay in Cartagena, I'll go to Barranquilla and once I'm there I'll think about where we can go next. Whether we move on or stay there. We'll see how it works out." So that's what we did, and on the way I sold a cow. I went to a slaughterman and said: "Go and find the cow. I'll tell you where it is, but give me the money here." So he gave me 70,000 pesos. I gave María 50,000 and I left with 20,000.

I got to Cartagena and after a little while María turned up. We said our goodbyes, I went to Barranquilla and she went back again to the kids. I said to her: "OK, we're not to ring each other or anything. We'll have to wait until you can send me a message with someone, or I can send you one." So I arrived in Barranquilla. I had a brother there, but I said to myself: "I'm not going to my siblings' place. What would I do there? Bring them problems. How about María's siblings? No, not them either. So where shall I go? Well, I suppose there is María's brother, and I've got to go somewhere." So I went to María's brother's place. He's called Lázaro. I didn't need to tell him my story. They already knew what was going on - they'd seen it all on TV, in the papers. They asked me: " Where are you going to go, mate?"

"I came here to spend a few days and then I'm going back home." I said. And so I spent four or five days there. On the fifth day María came to Barranquilla, to see whether she was going to join me or not and we spent the night there. They lived in a little house made out of planks in the Nueva Colombia neighbourhood. That and the Me Quejo neighbourhood are both part of Barranquilla, but they are colonies of people from Palenque. Lots of people from Palenque went there. So there we were, and then one of María's sisters turned up and she said to her brother; "Why have you got María's husband here. You know he's got problems - maybe they'll come and look for him here and then they’ll kill everyone."

Shit! That made me feel pretty bad. You come here with problems, and you can’t even find refuge here. So what am I meant to do? There was another of María's sisters there so I told her what was going on and I said I had to find a way of bringing María here: “she has to come here because back at home everyone is leaving.”

It was around the time of the campaign for the mayoral elections, and Father Hoyos was a candidate, and so María's sister said to me: "There's a woman who's giving out plots of land for votes. If you've got the right to vote, let's register you with your ID card and then we'll go and see her and sort out a plot and you can build a little house on it."

"Well if you guys can get me the vote, I'll go for it!" I said. I worked out that there were seven people and with those seven people I could get a plot, so that same day I went to find the woman and register my ID card.

So I went with my two sisters-in-law and while we were sitting in the woman's house a lad turned up who's called, or was called Iván Gómez. "Brother, what are you doing here?" he asked.

"Mate, things have been happening, this and that ... " I said, and I told him what was going on.

"Don't worry," he said. "Now you've met me it will be OK."

He was part of the campaign, as a candidate to become an edil (spokesman of the community). So we got to know each other and started going round together.


Back to topHow can I bring María here?

I'd been in Barranquilla about two weeks, when news came that the "paras" [paramilitaries] had gone into Palenque. They'd taken Emeterito the shopkeeper and killed him. He was just a lad from the interior who had a shop. They turned up, grabbed him and killed him in the town square. They were looking for El Mono too, the son of the man who had warned me about being on the list. He had a shop too. He escaped because he wasn't there at the time, but as they found one of his uncles, they took him instead and killed him in the square too. They apparently killed three people there that day.

They went looking for me too at the house where I used to live. María was there when the paramilitaries turned up and she stood up to them. She said: "Yes, he lives here. He was my husband, but that man left a while ago, because he wasn't from Palenque. So he doesn't live here with me anymore - he just left me with all these kids. Look at all these kids. He left, and I don't know where he went! I don't know where he is." And in the end they left her alone, because she was crying as she spoke to them.

When I heard about it, I said: "If hadn't come here, I'd be dead now." That motivated me even more to find a way of getting María here, and I stuck close to that lad, my new friend. I went everywhere with him, because he'd said he was going to help me get a place. One day he took me out on the campaign and he took me to see some plots.

Every day I got changed and went to his house, in the morning, in the afternoon, whenever I could and I began to work on his programme, coordinating things, helping with the campaign. One day we made a date to meet on Sunday at the Rincón Latino at nine in the morning. The Rincón Latino is in the Rebolo neighbourhood. It's where Father Hoyos said his Masses, where he gave political speeches and every Sunday, people, his supporters, flooded to the area. So Iván said: "Let's make a date to meet at the Rincón Latino."

We'd spoken just the night before. He'd given me the 2000 pesos to pay for my travel, and I was going to wait for him there. I got up the next day, had a wash and set off for the Rincón Latino. I was one of the first there. I got there around nine and the Mass didn't start until nine thirty. So I got myself a seat. They were still empty, so I took one at the front because I liked the speeches Father Hoyos gave and I wanted to be able to hear him properly.

So the place was filling up, filling up with people. Ten o'clock passed and then eleven, but Iván didn't show up! I looked all over the place for him and I thought: "Well, isn’t he coming or what?" And then I saw a man get up onto the stage and say that the day's events had been cancelled, because they'd just killed the man who hoped to become the leader of Nueva Colombia, Iván Gómez.

"What!" I said. It felt as if I'd been lifted up in the air, and then dropped to the ground ... whack!

I jumped up and ran with everyone else, the people from the neighbourhood, running back home. When we got back, they'd already collected his body. It was at the funeral home. They killed him at about eight or nine o'clock in the morning. They killed him.

So I went to the funeral home. Everyone was there, going in, coming out and then one of his brothers pointed at me and said: "It was he who killed him!"

"What do you mean?" I said.

And he replied: "It was a black man, he looked just like you. You're the one who went looking for him every day."

"Yes," I said. "I'm the one who went looking for him each day, because he was helping me and I was campaigning with him." And then he started fighting with me. So I had to go the DAS (10) and the Fiscalía [Attorney General’s Office] and go through that whole process, because those people were trying to implicate me in Iván's death. We got everything cleared up, sorted matters out. We got over it and we buried Iván.

I took part in the wake and then we buried him. I was all over the place, really messed up. "Now where was I going to go?" I had nowhere to go - my brother-in-law didn't want me there, and neither did my sister-in-law ... and then I hooked up with another friend, a guy from Sucre who was a friend of Iván's too. He made a living selling "tamales" (11). We made "envueltos" (12) and we sold milk, butter and sour cream. I got really, really thin. I was all over the place. After all that had happened, with no work, and with my friend quarrelling every day to get me to go out and sell. My friend was all over the place too, thinking about what happened to Iván and all that ... you come here to get away from that kind of thing, and you get caught up in something else in the city!


Back to topWe'll give you a plot of land for your family

So I met up with another friend, a friend of the guy who sold sour cream. They were both friends of Iván and they knew about land. So they said to me: "Look mate, you're all over the place and we've got some land ... if you like we'll give you a little plot. Because of what you've told us - I told them the whole story - we've give you the land so that you can bring your family here." So they took me to the place and gave me a little plot of six by twelve metres. The lads gave it to me. It was an invasion, but I didn't realise that. I just saw the land and thought it belonged to the lads.

I sent a message to María telling her to come and see what it was like. And then a few days later I was round at my neighbour's house, a friend of mine, which was only half built. I was talking to a girl and I had my back to the street. She was facing me. I don't know why but I turned around and saw another girl go by. I paid her no attention and carried on talking to the other one. But then something made me get up and go to the door and I saw her talking to a guy. It didn't look like María, I didn't recognise her! Afterwards she said she'd seen me too but didn't recognise me either. I said to myself: "Wow, that looks like María," and I went out into street and walked towards her. I was about ten metres away, and I thought: "I'm going to walk past and see." So I walked passed, and it looked like her, but at the same time it didn't. I thought: "I know her," and then: "No I don't." So I went up to her and I said: "Hey, aren't you María?"

"Yes," she said.

And I said: "Oh, María, look how we've ended up!" We were both so thin. María had always been a bit plump, but we were just skin and bones, so much so that we didn't recognise each other. We gave each other a hug, and we started crying, crying there in the street. We were both wasted away. So I told her everything, and I told her about the little plot, and she said: "Take me and show me where it is." So I took her, and she told me how things had been back home, the persecution, that they'd killed this lad, and that one, and another one.

Shit! "We can't go back there," I said. So we started to make plans.

"What shall we do?" we asked ourselves, and I said: "OK, as we've got this plot, let's sell two cows and we can use the money to build something here. You can come straight away. Bring the kids and take them to Yudi's house. Get all our things together and tell Basilio to remove everything for you, so it doesn't look as if you're moving house, as if you're coming here. That way you won't leave a trail.

So that's what happened. María left, and I stayed behind, calmer now. About three days later, María came back with the six kids. By then I'd been in Barranquilla nearly five months - from August to December. It gets really windy there in December, and we didn't have a roof over our heads or anything! But María brought the money with her from the cows, and so we said: "Let's go down to our new place." I told the kids it was a farm, so that they didn't feel as if they'd been displaced, so that they felt as if they'd come from one hillside to another and they could run around freely there.

María and I cleared the plot, dug a trench and built a shack. We slept there for five days out in the open. We put down our sheets, put sweaters on and we slept under the stars. It was summer in Barranquilla, so there was lots of sunshine. And as it didn't rain and there was lots of wind, we woke up in the mornings dusted in sand. There was lots of gossip around, but no one bothered us. I carried on putting up our walls. I brought timber, and working on it all every day. Then one day, a friend made us some blocks, and I befriended an old lady who gave us 300 more. I collected rocks with the kids, and bit-by-bit we built our house. We bought cement and made a room and then bought roofing and put it on and so on ...

"So what were we going to do? We had to work, but at what? So I said to María: "Since I've been here, I've been selling 'tamales' and 'envueltos'. We'll make 'tamales' and sour cream, and I'll sell them." So María made them, and we started to look for shops to sell them in. We bought a big pot, and after we'd set up there we didn't work the land any more because we were running our own business. We made the 'envueltos', a hundred, two hundred, up to three hundred and then we sold them for 100 pesos each. That gave us enough to get by. María and I milled the corn and made the 'envueltos' and sold the sour cream in the afternoon, and in the mornings we got up early and cooked “the envueltos.” As we had good firewood, we used that and they cooked quickly. And by eight o'clock in the morning, we had cash in our pockets. We were putting in 10,000 pesos and getting 20,000 - 25,000 back out, so we had enough to feed the kids and no one had to go hungry. We were dedicated to that.


Back to topI realised I'd been displaced

So we kept going like that until January, and when January came round there was the question of enrolment at school. I began to think: "Aren't there any schools round here? Where can I enrol the kids? What am I going to do?"

And the others, my friends, said: "Well, go to the town hall, mate! Go to the town hall so you can secure a place at school for your kids." So I went to the town hall, and I met a friend who worked there, and I explained the situation to her and she said: "No problem, you need to tell me where the nearest school is where you want them to study and you'll have to make a declaration (13). As you're displaced you'll have to sign a declaration." She helped me organise it all, and said that once I'd given the declaration, I had to bring the document to her and with that she could reserve places for the kids in school. She worked for the education department, and it was only really then that I realised I'd been displaced!

I mean, it had been more than six months, nearly a year, and I didn't realise I'd been displaced because I didn't know that displacement existed. I think there were lots of people who didn't realise that displacement existed. When I was displaced, it was just after the Salado massacre, the first one. So I went to the Defensoría (14) in Barranquilla and I started hanging out with people and I realised there were other displaced people too. So I asked them: "Where have you been displaced from?"

Some said: "From Carmen," and others: "From Chocó." Someone else said: "From Villavicencio."

And I said: "Ah, it's happening all over the country!" Cesar was more affected than anywhere else.

That's when I started to get involved in organising things again. I kept on with the woman from the town hall. She was in Father Hoyos's party, and she invited me to go to his events. So I kept going to them, and I invited another friend along. And then I realised that there were loads of displaced people! There were five or six hundred people displaced from all over the country. How did I not know that before!

So with the declaration I managed to get the kids enrolled. And once I'd enrolled them, then every so often, pretty much everyday, they'd complain that the others, the other schoolkids, kept saying they were displaced people and because they were black with curly hair, they gave them a hard time: "What are those curls all about?" So my kids starting fighting with the others, and then the teachers said that they were violent because they were displaced, that because they'd been displaced by violence that's how they'd learned to cope with the war, that's why they behaved like that. And the kids came home crying. Why did they say things like that to them?

So I had to go to the school to bring the situation to the attention of the rector. Of course, I stood up and asked how we could be to blame, how were we - the peasant farmers - the guilty ones, when we'd been forced to leave our land where we were doing fine. That was enough to stop it happening, but my children still suffered that shock, and they hated it when people said they were displaced people. I felt bad to. I said: "Why do I have to be displaced in my own country? Why can't I go back to my own land, not even think about going back? Because you think you're going to die!


Back to topHelp from the people themselves

Despite all the things that have happened to us, there is also one good thing. When you arrive in the city, you feel bad because you don't know where to go, you don't who's going to take you in, you get treated really badly ... but there are some people who, when you arrive and explain the situation, they give you strength, they welcome you, whether out of pity or generosity. And who is it that gives that welcome? The poorest people of the city, because you arrive in the poorest neighbourhoods. You turn up and you find good people there, people who give you support. They show solidarity with you.

That's a good thing. If it wasn't like that, more to the point, what would happen to displaced families? There are others who turn up in the city centre. I've seen them - displaced companions, families with their small children begging, because they haven't got any relatives there or anything. I've seen so many cases, so many cases, but in each one, the family's drama unfolds in its own way. I sorted things out the way I did because, without realising that I was displaced, I concentrated on resolving my own problem with my family, working on it myself.

It means scraping a living together, selling things, finding a way to get by, and that way you don't burden other people with your problems. You take responsibility for your own things! I never went looking for food packages at the Red (15). They never gave me those kits (16) or anything like that because I didn’t know they gave you provisions. The declaration and the kids' school places are the only favour anyone did me. Nothing else.

In the letter - I'm reading the letter now - it said we had a right to good health, but I said: "Each one looks after their own health here. The kids are never ill, nor María or I either. We've never gotten sick in Barranquilla, we don't worry about it. But I did still worry about the process of getting organised, because there were displaced people everywhere ... There were displaced people everywhere, and they were complaining: "Give me some provisions!" That's when I realised that there was a Pastoral Social (17) and that people went there in search of provisions. I know my way around the city now and I've started to get to know what Barranquilla is like, from going to the centre with the "envueltos". As our neighbourhood is out on farmland, I didn't realise what the centre was like. I went out selling with a bucket, and just walked. I walked and walked, to get to know the place. Sometimes I'd get lost for three or four hours and to get back I'd have to ask directions. So with the business of the "envueltos" I got to know the city, and we had about 20 shops who took them.


Back to topDisplacement should be acknowledged

The round that I did to distribute the "envueltos" allowed me to get to know the city and what the atmosphere was like. I distributed the "envueltos" and by nine in the morning I was free. I gave the money to María and kept 2000 pesos and I went to the centre to encourage the displaced people. I went to the government, to the town hall, to the Pastoral Social and I realised that the Red existed.

In the town hall, I realised that although there were so many displaced people in Barrranquilla, the city didn't acknowledge that it had them. They didn't know about law 387(18) either. With other displaced people from other parts of the country, I began to meet leaders and lots of people began setting up organisations for displaced people, and I realised that those kind of organisations existed, that they had meetings and got things done.

So at the Rincón Latino, I set up an association with people from Salado, from San Jacinto, from the same Montes de María region. The first association I set up we called Acudevio, Displaced Citizens of Colombia. And that’s how we called it, without knowing anything about anything. But we gave it that name so we could organise ourselves, and we made a lad who said he came from Urabá the president, and with some others from round there, from Cesar, we started getting it going and we said: "Right, as part of this process we have to do something that gets recognition at the national level of the problem of displacement here in Barranquilla." From what I knew there weren't any displaced people in Barranquilla, you didn't get the armed conflict here, that was in other places and Barranquilla was a receiver city. It wasn't known as a city where there was any displacement, it was supposed to be the “oasis of peace” on the [Caribbean] coast.

So we started to campaign and we went ahead with the election of a spokesman to represent us on a committee at the district council (19). There was a big meeting - about 900 people participated. We did the vote at the Rincón Latino and the people elected me. I gave a speech that day and they elected two of us. I was the first representative of the displaced people on the district council and as such I began to campaign for recognition, for help for those affected, but as there wasn't an agreement or anything, there wasn't any help. Something had to be done.


Back to topThe start of direct action

'97 and '98 went by, and in 1998 we took over Plaza de la Paz (20). We organised it saying: "OK, all the organisations are going, but we're going to unite them all together." So we set up another organisation called Asodeta - the Association of Organisations of the Displaced People of Atlántico - and it was from then that we started to win recognition of the fact that there were displaced people in Atlántico province. And why did they start to acknowledge it? Because of the pressure we applied.

We didn't really get anything out of the takeover of the square, but as a result of it they killed two companions from Urabá. They killed Víctor, and another guy nicknamed Tribilín. They killed them right there and then. Everyone else was still there, and I said: "Yes, it's two more deaths, but we must keep going!" The people were trying to disperse and they didn't do anything else, but no! We must keep going, we will keep going!

That year, in June, we did another takeover, this time of the Pastoral Social, because there was still no acknowledgment of the need for humanitarian aid in Barranquilla, and housing even less so. And people were coming from all over - from Sur de Bolívar and a town called Las Palmas (Bolívar), which is in San Jacinto. That place became a ghost town and more than 4,000 people were displaced. In 2000 there was a new displacement from Salado and a few more people arrived. And none of them received any help or anything, no one would attend to them, they just fled. They fled and looked for refuge where they could find it, tried to unwind and put their lives back together. Each one had to find a way of resolving their own problems!

So we organised the takeover of the Pastoral Social with the aim of securing humanitarian aid for the people, but further than that, we wanted to find a solution to their housing problems. But nothing came of that either, so a group of us organised a get together of seventeen organisations. Of the seventeen, six agreed with our plan for more direct action, so we reclaimed a piece of land, a shanty town for displaced people, and we renamed it Ciudadela de Paz (21). We saw that we could build our own little houses there, and with them we started to attend to the housing problem. There were sixty-six hectares of land and we had about 300 families, each one with their own problems, and each day more and more families arrived, more and more families.

The land wasn't in a great location - it was good for building but not for cultivating. The soils of Atlántico are very salty, and whatsmore it was just behind the oxygenation pools of the AAA (22), where they process the waste water and sewage from the city. So the district council didn't want to accept our being there, because we were in an area of risk, the environment, the air was very polluted, and it smelled really bad. But by forcing the issue, the district council gave us another piece of land further away for us to relocate to and we built another shanty town called Pinar del RÌo. So went to live there, but it was tough. We saw worse things than we'd seen before. There were 280 displaced families, each with their own problems, their troubles, but at least they managed to save themselves having to pay rent and could establish themselves. But they lived in terrible conditions, really really bad.

When we began to negotiate so that the district council would accept us, the organisation split. Some said they would go and live in Pinar del Río, but others not, which caused some controversy within the organisation. And things were made worse because the armed groups began to infiltrate the place, and gain influence there. The "paracos", the paramilitaries came and did checks, and there were pamphlets and guidance and orders from the Farc. There was uproar, a "tutti-fruti", as they say on the coast there.

There were people from all over the place, and even common criminals began operating there. In 2001 there were five killings in the shanty town in one night, on top of the struggle for power that existed among people from the community. So when those people were killed, in July 2001, we disbanded the Asodeta organisation and created the Barranquilla branch of Andescol. At that time there loads of checks and control, but we planned various projects.

The people from the Presbyterian church, who worked a lot with us, and the people from Justicia y Paz (23) helped us with a project. And we had another project to provide free-range chickens, laying hens. One day when I was there taking care of the chickens and the hens, they (armed men) went looking for me in the shanty town, and there was a shoot-out there, but I wasn't there. I was spared again that day. So I kept on with the process, with the struggle, but when they brought out the dead, I decided I didn't want to stay full-time in the community, that I'd live in the city, but I wouldn't go so much to the neighbourhood.

I spent my time in other neighbourhoods, because of the situation. But as I had commitments with Andescol, with the process of organisation in Barranquilla, it was good. Apart from the shanty town, we also had work organising people in other neighbourhoods such as La Central and La Candelaria and in Loma Roja, in various parts of Barranquilla. And that allowed me to work with displaced people, but at the same time I didn't go so much to the shantytown.


Back to topThe children escape your clutches

So we continued our struggle to keep going: families looking for projects, the women looking for something to do, for work. Some did washing, others made sweets and others did cleaning - whatever was going, but always managing to put food on the table. But the children were the problem, a headache for the families because they think life's all about dancing, playing, going out, jumping around and listening to champeta (24) and all that music. They don't take any notice of anyone, and any bit of money they get is for partying on Saturdays ... and that partying causes problems!

I even had clashes with the people from Bienestar Familiar (25), with people from the university, because it made me angry the way they told the kids, the young people, our children, to - as they put it - look after themselves! It didn't seem right to me that they told them to look after themselves, told the girls to not let the boys get them pregnant, not to let them touch you there, and if they were going to do anything to use contraception, condoms, the pill and I don't know what else. It made me angry ... it made me angry because back at home that kind of thing didn't happen to the kids. Back home, when you were old enough, you did it and that's it - it all got sorted out ... if it happened, it happened. So that didn't seem right to me. There were vices all over the place in the city, marijuana and all that, but back at home you never saw those kind of things. If someone wanted to smoke a bit of marijuana - if they wanted to! - they kept it hidden. But in the city they get the youngsters hooked, telling them not to get involved in that kind of thing, but it turned out that because the kids had never done it publicly before or they didn't even know about it, it became a chaos in the shanty town - the kids want to smoke marijuana and drink liquor. And then things degenerate, and they start attacking buses and cars and that causes an awful lot of breakdown among the displaced people. It became a huge problem, a constant battle for everyone, for all the families, not only with their own children but with those of the other families that had been displaced. That meant that I, at least, clashed with some of the institutions.

One of the things that was toughest for me, really tough, that made me really sad was that since we'd arrived in Barranquilla, one of my children I'd taken with me, when he was 11 or 12, started behaving like a calf loose in the field. He started walking all over the place, and he'd come home late at night. As we lived in a shack he could get out and I had no way of controlling him and he was out in the street - it frightened me. I had to get up at 10 or 11 at night and look for him. I took him there, and enrolled him in fifth grade. But once he'd finished sixth grade he didn't carry on studying. He didn't want to continue going to his classes anymore, he said he wasn't going to do any more studying, that he was through with it. He became a real rebel. He did bad things at school, to the teachers and in the end they wouldn't have him there anymore and he stopped studying. That really brought me down.

The two girls carried on studying and they finished their primary school. Then, when they'd finished fifth grade and were in sixth, one of them fell in love with one of those lads from Barranquilla, one those who wore big baggy shorts and had a ring and that was it - she left. That was another big blow for me. I was left with the other children, looking desperately for a solution, and then one day I went out to go to a meeting and when I came back, the other girl had gone! She left with a guy from Carmen de Bolívar. I don't know whether he was a displaced person or not. All I know is that she chucked in school and she left.

My kids really defeated me. It was the cruellest thing that could have happened to me, because I never imagined that my children would go that way, choose that fate as people say. I'd wanted to bring my children up on the farm, bring them up and educate them in same way as me, as a child who was obedient and worked hard. But no, there your children escaped your clutches, they became disobedient, they did the same as everyone else in the city and they didn't obey anyone. They came and went, and it seemed like a bad thing - too much liberty - a really bad thing. That's been the toughest thing for me, the thing I've hated most. It made me feel bad, and I think it'll affect me as long as I live because I wasn't able to do what I wanted to for my children in life. That’s what hurts me most still.

But life goes on, it rushes on. So I kept going, continued with the process of organising displaced people, displaced people with families, having trouble with their own families.


Back to topMy work with the displaced becomes more difficult

So we carried on working with displaced people. It went well, there were lots of people who helped us, who collaborated with us. Many churches showed solidarity with the displaced, the Presbyterian church helped them a lot, along with some regional institutions from Atlántico. A woman gave our organisation a house to look after, so we took it on and set up a centre there which received families who had been recently displaced. We let them stay there until we could help them find somewhere to live.

Displaced people's organisations in Barranquilla suffered persecution, and especially ours. I don't know if it was because of the shanty towns or what, but there was harassment and many accusations. Many displaced people were disappeared, many were killed as well. For example in 2003, they killed five fellow displaced people in the shanty town and left the women widows and the children fatherless. That's the kind of thing we've lived through. Many displaced companions have been put on trial. They came from somewhere else and when they arrive, they have a record it turns out. Many were detained too.

In 2004, a really good thing happened, because people from the Simón Bolívar University had launched a project working with displaced people. They made friends with us, and we suggested that they worked on the displacement observatory that was enshrined in law, because we wanted an end to displacement in Colombia, to find a way to prevent it from happening, to make sure people knew about it so it could be stopped. Those were the things that interested us, and, in the university, we got support from the professor of sociology Alfredo Correa de Andreis (26).

The professor began a project with us, which he called: "Meetings and misunderstandings of the displaced population." If someone had been displaced, he wanted to know where they'd come from, where they'd arrived and when, how they been received and how they got to the neighbourhood, where they were living. So I told him that you arrived in the most neglected neighbourhoods, and he went there to find out about displaced people, to see what it was like. He got so involved that they cut him down too. They put him on trial for some problem, they sent him to prison and when he got out, about a month later - bang! - they killed him! He worked with Andescol in Barranquilla. Professor Alfredo had some university students working with him too to help displaced people, and they were put on trial too and made to leave. As it stands, they've fled - they've become displaced people themselves.

Because of all that, in 2004 there was a victims' meeting in Bogotá and my displaced friend said that I should go to the meeting. As I didn't have any money, the church was going to help me with the cost of the travel. When I went to the Presbyterian church to pick up my tickets, the doorman asked: "What's your name sir?"

"My name's Ismael," I said.

And he said: "Oh, some guys on a motorbike came by."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

And he said: "Yes, go inside and I'll explain. A man came looking for you and asking after you. He had your ID card number and everything. I said I didn't know, that there was no Ismael working here, but they said they'd come back because they knew Ismael would come back."

When he told me that, I grabbed my ticket and left. I came to the meeting in Bogotá and while I was here, they told me that they'd taken this guy, that they'd killed that other guy ... so, of course, they were looking for me too and I couldn't go back. I had to stay in Bogotá.


Back to topBad times in Bogotá

They were after me in Barranquilla, so I couldn't go back. I'd come to Bogotá and luckily - these things just happen - I met a friend who was friend of Professor Alfredo. As it turned out that there'd been all that business of the detentions, he advised me not to go back and he offered me somewhere to stay. I stayed in his house for six or seven months, in this cold place, in a city so big, without having any idea where to go. And alone! At least my family weren't up in the mountains. At least they were in the city, in Barranquilla. Occasionally, when I could get a bit of money together, I'd give them a call, I'd call my partner. It was really tough, her alone there and me alone here, stranded and not doing anything. I spent a year like that, and after a year she sent a message that she couldn't keep going like that. How can a household live like that? We couldn't carry on living like that!

So I talked to Acnur (27), to the high commissioner, to see if they could help me bring my family here and I got tickets for María to come here with the five children. The other two children stayed there. One of my daughters already has two children. So I brought one here - four of my children and a little grandchild, and we ended up in bad straights, having a really bad time. Honestly, we had no work to rely on, we've had to, we have to go to bed on an empty stomach. Sometimes I have to come from where I live in Ciudad Bolívar to the centre to do an errand, and it takes me two hours to walk there and back.

And the situation with my children was pretty much the same, although it was a bit easier here, because we arrived and we were always able to get a bit more because we had better advice and we knew what was what, how to enrol the kids in school. So we enrolled them. and there weren't so many problems. But there was still discrimination against them in school. To get their students' card, they were asked whether they were affiliated to the EPS (28) or the ARS (29), and because we'd never wanted to join a healthcare plan through Sisbén (29) - that way you lose your right to preferential treatment - they had to show the displacement document, the document they gave me when I made the declaration, and it shows on their card: "EPS: displaced". It was an embarrassment for my son, because the other kids asked: "What kind of EPS do you displaced people have?"

And I tell him: "Tell the other kids that it's also called ARS, and that's what you've got." Yes, my children often have problems like that.

So that's one thing. Another is the cold, and another is the cultural change. Back there you get used to being free, but in Bogotá it's different - you're a bit more shut in. The habit of shutting doors that they have here, of course, because it's cold. That also puts people in a bad mood, and the kids don't like it. And then there's the music. You barely hear the music from the coast here. It's all ballads and country and western. And that puts you in a bad mood! Because you're used to listening to vallenatos (30) and champete, so the atmosphere is different. The other day, the kids said to me: "No, it would be better if we went back, it's not worth it here, it's really miserable. We don't agree with our being here!" And so that becomes a problem, because the truth is, that's what it's like.

We've adapted a bit to the city of Bogotá, but it hasn't been easy. It wasn't easy at all for us, especially at the beginning. Money is everything. If you haven't got money, you can't go out, you can't use the Trasmilenio (31), the buses and all that. And it's difficult to get work. To be honest, I don't like construction work, I've never liked it. I'm alright at selling, at business, but it's in the countryside that I feel good. If I'm in the countryside, I spend my time farming, I produce stuff and I enjoy myself. I don't like it here, it's really difficult to get work.

I didn’t like studying or anything like that. I like the countryside, the mountains, the wilderness - it gives me life, as we say. I feel like a peasant farmer still, but not any old peasant farmer - a professional one, because I know my profession well, I know how to sow yuca (cassava) to eat.


Back to topI know I'm only here temporarily

I know that my name is Ismael, Ismael Maestre, and I'd say I was a person, a human being that came to live in the world and I know without a doubt that I'm only here in passing. I know that I'm here temporarily, and I try to do the best I can, to behave well and to do things well because it seems to me you define yourself by what you are, the things you do.

I thought that life was wonderful, that you could have as much of a family as you wanted, but when all this happened to me and things got tough, I had to resign myself to having the six children. When I was forced, forced to separate from the children ... sometimes you leave your children and go and work for a few months and then you come back, no problem, but I had to explain it all to María and sneak away scared, the kids didn't even know I was going, well ... mate! I left, but it made me nostalgic, it made me sad, I had this yearning as I went on my way. At least, thank God, I've got a good wife who stood by me and I managed to get ahead.

I don't think people get displaced out of fear, but out of concern that they might die for something that they didn't want. You don't want to die in a war that you don't support, and if they come looking for you or threatening you, it's better not to let yourself be killed if you don't agree with it. I've asked lots of friends whether when you're displaced, you're cowardly or brave, and some say that we're cowards because we fled. I say that we're not cowards, because by fleeing we're trying to preserve life, not your own life, but your family, your children who don't know anything about what's going on or why. You have to look after them. People are displaced simply so they can protect their families. And if it's a question of protecting your family, it doesn't matter losing everything that you've worked for in life.

Lots of displaced people, many of them, many people in this life have been massacred or assassinated. I think they were killed for being obstinate, for wanting to keep hold of things they'd worked for in life. "Oh, but I've got my little house and it pains me to leave it!" An armed group comes along, two or three people, and they say: "Leave, because we're going to kill you. We've got information about you." And they give you the opportunity to leave, to be displaced, but you say: "No, I'll get myself killed here. I'd rather not leave!" So they come another day and they kill you. Many times they threaten you but you don't take it seriously, and then another day they come and kill you.


Back to topA policy constructed by the state

We say that displacement is a policy constructed by the state. That's what they say, and I think that's how it is, just how they say. You realise that displacement happens where there are riches, like gold; where there are coal mines; where there is good, fertile land where they plan to create palm plantations; where there's a landowner or an influential person who's got a certain amount of land that no ordinary person -- that no small or poor salaried worker -- dare approach, because if anyone complains, they end up displaced too. They contract what today are called paramilitaries, organised self-defence groups, to kill one or two people so that the rest get scared. That's what happens. Look at the banana workers, for example, both in Urabá and in Magdalena - they're just poor banana workers, but who owns the plantations? The people controlling the production are influential people, people with money, industrialists, and if anyone complains, they are displaced.

I believe displacement is a structured policy, because the government is involved one way or another, because it tolerates it happening. There are ways of stopping it - having the freedom to complain. A worker or peasant farmer has a grievance, and their grievance should be resolved in a just way. There's no reason to turn it into a problem! But if they don't want to resolve things except with bullets, there will be more displacement every day and it will never end.


Back to topIt's impossible to repair your dignity

If someone's been displaced by violence, displaced by the conflict, I reckon they're a humble person. In the sense that that they aren't aggressive or violent, I describe them as people of peace, a gentle person who rejects violence, who doesn't want to be part of the war, who flees from the war. That for me is a displaced person.

A displaced person doesn't stop being one until they resolve their socioeconomic problems. I agree that everyone should have socioeconomic stability, whether it comes from the government or not, or they achieve it themselves. Displacement becomes part of their story, what they've been through, and it becomes part of their children's story too, that they fled here and there, that they were displaced, that they had to suffer the hardships of war. For me it's by becoming established that you stop being displaced.

But there's a problem: if you end up settling in a place that you really feel is home. In my case, for example, I've been forced to settle here, I could die here, but then perhaps I wouldn't die satisfied, I wouldn't die as I would have liked, as it would be if I died back there in Palenque: "The lad's died, let's organise his 'kiyauya' (33) and we'll perform all the right ceremonies as they do round here." But if you die here in this city? You'd die resentful, you'd die a displaced person. That's a problem, it's a problem. But you should leave that aside, and as you become settled, your situation should stop being that of a displaced person.

You'd be happy if you could die on your land, go back to your land and be there. That would be the best thing, the most important thing - but you can’t! It would be awful to die here.

I know that being displaced means you've had to leave, that you've lost many things, and that it would be really important for them to help you put everything right and help you get back what you've lost.

There's one thing that's impossible to repair, and that's your morale, your dignity - it's irreparable. Many people have said to me that you don't lose your dignity, and I say: "It's true, you're still alive!" But, for example, sometimes I wonder how it would be if were to go back tomorrow: I've never killed anyone there, I've never robbed, I've never done anyone any harm. But I was displaced, and there are families there who stayed, and sometimes I think that when those people see me and remember me, they'll say that for some reason or another I left. And that's it. Well, that one phrase: "He left for one reason or another" is in itself a loss of morale. Because who is going to erase the fact of having been displaced. Who? No one. You have to face it on your own.


Back to topHow can things be put right?

There are other serious harms, and one of them is the harm done to people whose family members have been killed. This causes terrible harm, lives are lost amid the displacement, and no one can pay you back for that! That doesn’t have a price.

I'm one of those who believe that you can't put a price on life, and as life doesn't have a price, what if the government does offer twelve million pesos to a relative? The person who died is dead. Perhaps he would have earned more than twelve million in his life, much more, or maybe less, but at least he would have lived his life. But they took it away. How does that affect those left behind? Look at my case, for example - they killed my brother, my oldest brother. We were fourteen children, seven boys and seven girls, and then they killed my oldest brother. But I didn't think about revenge, I never thought about it. But it hurts in my soul. It hurts, because when I was a lad, I thought you were born and you lived your whole life and then you died of old age. I thought some of us would die first, and others later, that the oldest would die first, then the next one and the next one. I thought we'd die in the order that we born! But it didn't turn out like that. They took away our oldest brother, and left all those kids like orphans. That was really tough for me, and it can't be put right, even though I've got 20 nieces and nephews that are his children!

It's very unjust. Where's the compensation, the justice? You ask yourself: "Who's going to put this right? How are you going to put it right? If the truth is told, if there's justice and compensation, I think you can manage to forgive. But who are you going to forgive? Who? No, I don't think forgiveness exists here. There's just an acceptance, a passiveness on behalf of the person who's been harmed.

You look at the situation, and if it's not a policy constructed by the government, then what can it be? Where are the victims? The government hasn't acknowledged displacement, it still hasn't recognised it, despite the fact that we had to acknowledge the war for 10 years already. For the perpetrators, there are programmes, preferences, all kinds of things. That's why it must be a government policy. We can struggle to put things right, we can struggle for reparation and for the truth, but I don't think it will come to anything in this life, it won't come to anything. You have get people to consent, to live together harmoniously, but how can you do that with the victimizers all over the place, when you're rubbing shoulders with them, bumping into them?

I experienced something in 1977, when Alfonso López was president [1974-1978], at the time of the marijuana boom in La Guajira. All the money caused problems - people killing each other because they felt like it, because of money, of rum, of vanity, anything! So they established a law - anyone who killed would be killed. That didn't seem like a solution, because if someone kills and then you kill them, and someone kills you because you've killed that one, well there won't be anyone left! And yet these days in La Guajira, people don't kill each other anymore. The people know now that they can't go round killing each other. If someone does something wrong and they killed him, well to put it bluntly, he was asking for it and he paid the price. But one should try to stop that, calm people down, sort things out with the other family so that kind of thing doesn't happen, and so that the person in question acknowledges that they've done wrong too. Because if we just kill him, we'll all end up killing each other and there'll be no one left ... that's doesn't mean that you're cowardly or fainthearted, it's just that you have to be reasonable in life. It doesn't mean getting down on your knees and begging for forgiveness. I don't think there will be reparation for me, I don't see it. Where's it going to come from? I don't like money!

There's another thing that needs analysing carefully. I could say to one of my relatives: "If I ever find out who killed my brother, I'll want to kill them for sure." Any displaced person could do that. If someone kills a boy's father today, then tomorrow, when he grows up, they tell him: "Hey, it was this guy who killed your father," and then supposedly he knows that guy is a neighbour, well he’s going to want to kill him. He'll want to kill him. He'd say: "He killed my father so I'll kill him and I don't care if they kill me! I'll be satisfied because I've killed him." That's a big problem in this country, and what happens in our country is a structural problem, because that's how the top man thinks. The president says: "They did this to me, so I must do it to them." He hasn't learned to forgive, and that's the problem, it's a big mistake in our country. While there are people like him around plotting revenge, there will always be war in our country, because it's part of our culture.


Back to topBig lessons in the city

I can honestly say that for me, displacement has affected me, it's done all kinds of things to me, but I deal with it thinking that you have to live your life, wherever you find yourself. There was a workshop once when I was in Palenque, I can't remember what it was about, but the teacher asked me how I situated myself in space and time. Well, I looked around and saw that the floor was tiled. I looked at the tiles and then I stood on one and said: "This is how I situate myself," and I stepped onto another tile. "I can also situate myself here, by taking a step to the side, a step forwards or a step backwards. That's how I situate myself in space and time. I believe that wherever you are, you have a purpose, you are creative and active and you are a source of firmness.

I was a peasant farmers' leader, and as their leader I defended their cause. I don't think that displaced people's organisations should exist, because I'm a peasant farmers' leader and I belong to one of their associations, a union, and left to our own devices we would have created all the other peasant farmers' associations and their leaders. But what has happened is a removal of the peasant farmers from the countryside to the city, or rather they've been forced out of the countryside so they could be put in the cities. So being peasant farmers in the city, we should be part of a peasant farmers' association where we are. But as the associations were broken up and their leaders massacred, they don't exist anymore and there are displaced people's associations instead. These days we're part of displaced people's organisations, so from now on we have to set up a process, a process for displaced people.

I feel really good doing that, because social work is what I like doing. Despite the fact that I'm not in the countryside anymore, I still do it in the city. I carry on working as a leader and I've found many people, professionals - especially here in the city - with the same ideas and proposals. To come from Cativa is one thing, but to come from there to this place in Bogotá and keep things going as I have done - that feels to me like a triumph.

I've learned to live here in the city and I've come to realise that you need both city and countryside. It's the same country. I've learned about important things in the city. You see the buildings, get on a plane, travel by car and even learn to drive - those kind of things appeal to me here, because they are also good things in life. To learn to live in the city when you come from the countryside - and the freedom in which you live there - that also feels like a triumph for me, a major triumph.

"What would I like?" I know I'm already really old, but if I'd come here younger I would have enjoyed the city more, I would have been a professional. I'd like my children to study and become professionals in the city. If I had studied, I would have liked to have studied about the world, to have researched things about the world. I would have liked to have studied philosophy.

I'll keep going, as long as I live, I keep up the struggle, working for people, for poor people, and everyone else. I'd like to take my studies further, because I've barely studied at all. Rather I've learned from other people, from life and I don't forget the principles I was brought up with in the hills, in the wilderness. I've not lost those principles. I've learned a lot, and I've come to realise that everything, everything the city has, the countryside has too.

Life there is the same as it is here. It's the same. Perhaps there's more teaching, more wisdom in the countryside than in the city. Think about it: Does an engineer make a plan for a piece of architecture just from his imagination? No, I don't believe that. I think he comes up with it because he's seen it, in something he's been shown, in some image. Look at these doors. What are they made of? Of wood. And where does the wood come from? From the forest. From the wood you can make a painting of an ocean, a river, a building or whatever. The same with the walls. They're made of sand and that comes from the countryside. The houses are made on the land, the same countryside. So everything, everything is from the land. Everything comes from the land. If you go there, you'll become wiser, because you've got everything there, all the images and the colours of life. The wilderness contains all the colours. You can see green leaves, blue leaves, brown leaves, red leaves. You can see every colour in the leaves of the trees, in the rocks, in the water. Everything comes from there. So why study? A peasant farmer, an Indian, knows more than the people in the city.


Back to topI always try to keep busy

On Sundays and public holidays in Bogotá, I see the "ciclovia" (34) and I say to myself: "I'm going to go to the 'ciclovia'." I've been down a couple of times and from where I live, I’ve walked to the Santa Librada neighbourhood, but I didn't think it was anything special. I prefer the El Tunal neighbourhood. Every now and again, I put a bit of time aside, a little bit of time, and I say to the kids: "Let's go! Let's go and have a walk round El Tunal!" So we go out walking round the neighbourhood, getting to know places. Or I stay at home and study, I look at books, I read, I mess around with kids and sometimes I tell them a joke or a story. That way we have a laugh together and pass the day like that.

Although I haven't got a permanent job, I dedicate most days of the week to the organisation. Every day I try to run a few errands, do a few things for Andescol. But when I haven't got anything to do, I start thinking: "What am I going to live off? How am I going to get the money to pay the rent, to set up a business." I make plans. That's normally on Sundays, and on Sundays I see everyone going out for a walk so I go out for a walk too. I walk for a while and then I spend some time indoors, sitting there reading or doing something else.

I go out on those days, but generally I always try to keep busy. I don't have a day in the week that's specially for me. Every now and again I do a bit of work for Andescol, I go to a meeting or I call a meeting. I go to the library - I like going on the internet to read my emails. My sight's not that good, but I do it anyway. That's a normal day for me, but I don't have a day especially for me. In a normal day, I also spend some time with my children, with my family. I enjoy being with my family, with my wife. I like being together with my black lady though it’s teasing her, flirting with her. I don't like being far from her. I like having her near. That's how it is!





(1) The national beauty contest, a highly popular event held annually in Cartagena
(2) A world boxing champion
(3) Social groups in Palenque that care for the elderly, sometimes including housework
(4) According to the interviewee: "The people of Palenque sell whatever you can produce: yams, cassava, rice, and they have a tradition of making 'alegrias' (joys), which are balls of toasted millet held together with cane syrup and coconut and then dipped in ground coconut or cassava. Every day they go out selling their produce on the beach at Cartagena, at Tolú, at Sincelejo, all over the place"
(5) Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, also known as El Mexicano
(6) A law passed in 1993 "which develops transitional article 55 of the constitution" and recognises the collective land rights of the black communities living on the rivers of the Pacific basin
(7) The Police Intelligence Service and the Office of the Judicial Police and Investigation (DIJIN)
(8) A national prison in Bogotá
(9) The Prosecutor General's Office, or the Attorney General’s Office, depending on the translation
(10) Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad, the national security service
(11) A snack made of corn, vegetables meat wrapped in plantain leaves
(12) A sweet snack made from a paste of corn, butter sugar and eggs wrapped in corn cob leaves
(13) A document demanded by the Red de Solidaridad Social, or Social Solidarity Network - known today as Acción Social - as evidence of a person's status as displaced, and which allows access to services and aid
(14) The Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman
(15) The Red de Solidaridad Social, or Social Solidarity Network, known today as Acción Social
(16) Packs containing basic cleaning and cooking equipment, distributed by the Social Solidarity Network
(17) An organisation run by the Colombian Episcopal Conference, and which is part of Cáritas Internationalis, a confederation of 154 Catholic organisations working in 198 countries and territories around the world
(18) Law 387 of 1997, "which adopts measures to prevent forced displacement, and provides for attention, protection, consolidation, stabilisation and socioeconomic assistance for internally displaced people ... "
(19) The Council of the Commercial and Industrial District of Barranquilla
(20) Peace Square
(21) The Fortress of Peace
(22) Aseo de Barranquilla, the city's public service waste disposal company
(23) Justice and Peace, a Bogotà-based human rights organisation
(24) A contemporary dance rhythm that originated in Palenque
(25) Part of the Ministry of Social Protection, Bienestar Familiar - Family Wellbeing - assists in childcare and family matters
(26) A sociologist and university professor, who was assassinated along with his bodyguard in Barranquilla on September 17 2004, allegedly by a paramilitary group
(27) The UN High Commission for Refugees
(28) A healthcare provider, contracted by the state
(29) A professional risk insurance company, contracted by the state
(30) A means testing programme aimed at the targeting of social services to the right people
(31) A type of accordion-based music that originated in the city of Valledupar
(32) A mass transit system of buses running on dedicated routes
(33) A traditional Palenque funeral
(34) Every Sunday certain major roads in the capital are closed to traffic so that cyclists, joggers, walkers etc can use them for recreation
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