Sarah Saunders’ Journal

“Sarah is also a student at Oberlin who I met in May at the student action at Ft. Benning.”

Beth Lehrman
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Dear family and friends,

Last week I cried in public for the first time. I was on a delegation to Colombia to see for myself the effects of U.S. foreign policy on the people of Colombia, to hear their sides of the intricate web of violence that is their struggle, our money and their lives. I traveled on a two-week delegation with the nonprofit organization Witness for Peace, which was founded in 1983 and has brought thousands of North Americans as human rights observers and activists to the countries of Central America during the past 18 years.

The situation in Colombia today is as dangerous as traveling to Nicaragua or Guatemala was during the contra wars of the 80s. At our two day intensive training and discernment process in Miami, before flying to Bogota, I wrote a letter to my family that they will never see. It was a letter they would receive if I did not come back.

I traveled on a delegation of 23 - at 19, I was the youngest, and technically below the age limit of 20 for this delegation. Luckily, my passion was evident to one of the founders of Witness, Gail Phares, who read my application and knew that the struggle was my own and that I was ready to make this journey. Maybe I wasn't ready to experience the dangers - maybe I didn't know exactly what I was getting myself into. But I do know I have taken a fork in the road that is heading for a life of struggle, a life of human rights work, a life of living in community. And if facing danger has helped me to see this a little more clearly, then at least I know that I am on the right path.

I traveled with college students, pastors, human rights activists, environmentalists, a journalist, a drug policy expert and a Congressional aide. From Alaska to North Carolina, we came as the first ever Witness for Peace delegation to Colombia. The dangers we faced were great - everywhere we went, every member of the delegation carried a "crash pack," filled with a passport, water, tampons or whatever few items we'd need in case of kidnapping or a similar emergency. Luckily, there were no emergencies - but the volatility of life for every person in Colombia is an ever-present collective consciousness. Massacres happen every day - there were over 500 massacres in 1999 alone. As you read this, a massacre is being committed in Colombia.

But the risks we faced were nothing compared to the risks of Colombian human rights workers and activists. We met with one activist, Hector, who cannot sleep in the same bed two nights in a row due to threats of violence. He spoke passionately about the truths of violence and the peace process and was one of the most insightful of our contacts, and yet he has a family and cannot ever be with them. The sacrifices he makes daily are immense - and yet, somehow, in the midst of such intense violence, his smile is genuine.

We met with representatives of many NGOs who are working tirelessly to further the peace process, to try and secure representation for the voices of Afro-Colombians and indigenous people, who are being both disproportionately affected by the violence and silenced by the government. They are also the people who are being displaced the most, a horrible practice where a literal threat of violence leaves a family or an entire village homeless. Yet the displacados, the displaced people, are not considered internal refugees, and have little if any institutional support from the government. A representative from the U.N. High Commission on Refugees told us that the ideal situation for an internally displaced person was three months of support. Ideal? And what after three months? And still, the majority of displaced people receive nothing.

I learned that no side is the winner in this violent conflict, or can even be supported. I learned that the drug war is not a war on drugs at all - it is a counter-insurgency war against the people of Colombia, for want of oil, valuable land and natural resources, waged at the high price of thousands of human lives. The Colombian government claims that Plan Colombia is an effective way to end the cycle of violence that began when coca began to be grown in Colombia in the early 70s. The U.S. Ambassador told us that Plan Colombia is focused militaristically because Blackhawk helicopters, supposedly used only for transport, are expensive, and besides, we need to fight the insurgent groups to defend democracy.

To defend democracy? The campesinos, small peasant farmers, told us they think their government is waging a war against the people of Colombia. Both the guerrilla and paramilitary groups are being financed by the coca production, but the cycle of violence began over 40 years ago, and has only been heightened, not begun, by the coca.

To end the production of coca is something the campesinos want. The campesino is not the enemy - they are not drug traffickers. They are small, poor farmers, many of whom have agreed to manually eradicate their own coca crops, because they know the coca has brought violence and death to their communities. They have begun to sign pacts to pull up their coca by hand, yet the Colombian and U.S. governments still push fumigation as the most effective way to eradicate.

* Fumigation is the spraying of glyphosate by airplane on a field. The Colombian and U.S. governments claim that a satellite imaging system ensures the fumigation planes spray only large coca farms, but we met with campesinos whose entire farms had been fumigated, some who only grew 1 hectare of coca, some who grew no coca at all. Their cases are completely ignored by the governments. The U.S. State Department claims that glyphosate is as safe as salt, yet we met people whose entire food crops had been wiped out and whose fish ponds had died.

Once an area is fumigated, the soil is dead. We met with people whose subsistence is on the line, yet they have agreed to manually eradicate their coca crops, even though it may be their only source of income. We met with people who told us they will be literally starving in a few weeks, due to the fumigation. Starving.

They will be starving because no one is listening to them. The campesinos have the answers - they are willing to manually eradicate, and they know how the $1.3 billion U.S. aid package could be better spent. Right now, it is mostly military aid to the Colombian military, with about $3 million for the peace process. But what the campesinos ask is for local infrastructural development, so they can get other crops to market in order to subsist without producing coca. This would be cheaper than a militaristic plan, and would decrease both coca production and violence in Colombia.

The only way to end this decades-long conflict will be to place hope not in a militaristic solution, which the guerrilla groups have endured for decades, but in representation for all sides at the negotiation table. A militaristically enforced peace is not necessarily peace with social justice. It is the negotiated, just peace that 12 million Colombians voted for in 1998, and that is the solution that I support, as well as an attack of coca not only at its source but also in the U.S., where the demand is.

I know many of you were deeply concerned for my safety, but I also know that risking my personal safety to go to Colombia was a conscious choice that I made and I do not regret it. I learned two days before the delegation left that we were traveling not only within Bogota, but also to the southern department of Putumayo, the epicenter of conflict in Colombia. It is in Putumayo that I experienced deep fear, and also in Putumayo that I heard a campesino say, "Sometimes you have to risk your life to save your life."

We returned to Bogota safely and I felt a surge of despondency, for the lives of many campesinos and displaced people are literally on the line. It was in a debriefing meeting that I cried, surrounded by my friends on the delegation. I cried because I have chosen to walk this path, and it is difficult to realize that people we met with are going to starve, and I may not be able to do anything about it. I have chosen this life of human rights work and activism - but it is dangerous and scary, and sometimes it is hard to have hope.

As I cried, my friends Alex and Elizabeth held my hands. I felt their support, and I think the strength of their hands will strengthen me for a long time. I will know that the impacts I can make will not only change U.S. policy, but also empower other people and increase their awareness. And later that night my friend Jeff, the director of School of the Americas Watch, said, "One hundred years ago, Oberlin College students conducted a stop on the Underground Railroad. In the 1980s, they helped house Central American refugees. And today, and Oberlin student walked into a war zone."

I find hope in the most unexpected of places. Up in the hills (Bogota is surrounded by mountains), above the poorest neighborhoods of the city, there is a place that many children call home. It is an orphanage for children whose parents have been disappeared or displaced, or who can no longer care for them. It is here that we heard the stories of many displaced people. Their stories were so painful that I could not write anymore - I just moved closer and sat and listened.

Afterwards, there were lots of hugs and tears. I took photos of children playing, of the beauty in this most unexpected of places. I saw the sun peek out from behind a cloud, and I watched a little girl blow the seeds off a dandelion.

--

The next day, our last day in Colombia, the delegation held a silent vigil in front of the U.S. Embassy. We lay fruits and vegetables, loaves of bread and peace cranes on the ground, as some of us knelt and others stood holding signs. We stood there to tell the people of Colombia that we do not support the military portion of the aid package called Plan Colombia, that we want to end the violence with a peacefully negotiated solution, that we support the manual eradication pacts and not fumigation. As I knelt, holding my friend Anne's hand, Michael, a Witness for Peace volunteer who lives in Bogota, put his hand on my shoulder.

I opened my eyes and we widened the semicircle - three of the displaced women and six Afro-Colombian men had come to join the vigil. I held one woman's hand, and her young daughter of about 7 stood behind her. There were tears in all of our eyes, as we joined hands in solidarity.

That night we were on the news all over Colombia, and in the newspaper the next day. It was the first time North Americans had ever apologized for the policies of our government in Colombia. I know it will not be the last.

--

I write this from the gates of the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, where I am spending the last two weeks of January participating in a month-long vigil and juice-only fast. On January 17, the SOA was opened under a new name, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. But as one of our signs says, You Can't WHISC Away the SOA. The comandante of the WHISC stopped by to talk to us one day about how the WHISC is going to promote regional stability, but we do not believe that the new school erases the mistakes of the past or will necessarily correct them.

My energy level is high, considering that it is only my ninth day of fasting. We sleep a lot, but the community here is wonderful. Right now there are six of us, plus two great neighbor kids who play with us, and we are fasting to draw attention to the SOA's history of teaching torture and repression, and to say that even though the name is changed, it is still the same school. We have met many supporters, and I think each wave opens people's eyes and minds a little bit more. It is the possibility of empowerment to resist.

I am also fasting for the people of Colombia. Soon, many people we met will have nothing to eat. I cannot give them food, and I know that my role is not to change the Colombian government's policies. But I can come home and lobby the U.S. Congress, and tell everyone I know the truth about what is really going on in Colombia. Our role is to change the policies of the U.S. government, policies that are enacted with our tax dollars, to policies that are helping the people of Colombia, not killing their subsistence crops and families. It is not enough, but it is the only thing we can do.

Su compañera en la lucha,

Your companion in the struggle,

Sarah Ruth Saunders

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