Colombia: ’Why did they kill my son, take my husband away?’
Colombia: ’Why did they kill my son, take my husband away?’
Monday, May 12, 2014
Caroline O’Doherty visits Colombia and finds that communities viciously displaced from their lands are fighting back
THE place where Manuel Ruiz and his youngest son disappeared throbs with the sounds of bird calls and insects. Only the occasional struggling vehicle intrudes on the rhythm, creaking over the bumps and dips of the dirt road, engine panting in the intense heat. But on a late March day in 2012, as the air pleaded for rain to lift the leaden humidity, the pulsating soundtrack was stilled by sudden cries of terror and pain.
That’s how the Ruiz family picture it as having happened because nobody saw or said anything to soften their fears. For a long time, nobody saw and nobody said anything at all. That’s the way it is in Colombia at its worst. A helpless, harmless farmer and his young son can be dragged from a bus at gunpoint and taken to their death with near certainty that nobody in authority will ask anything but the most cursory questions.
The family of Manuel, 56, and 15-year-old Samir didn’t find their bodies for five days, and only then it was after they faced their dread and went to the nearby bridge over the Rio Sucio where they saw with agony the blood stains in the dirt.
Rio Sucio, or dirty river, is so called locally because of the muddy bed that turns its waters the colour of scarcely milked tea, but its name could just as easily derive from the terrible deeds it has witnessed. During the height of Colombia’s purge of small farmers, the campesinos, in the mid-1990s, the river was a dumping ground for the remains of those who resisted or got in the way or were simply used to illustrate the fate that awaited their neighbours if they didn’t flee — as they did in their millions.
More:
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/colombia-rsquowhy-did-they-kill-my-son-take-my-husband-awayrsquo-268223.html
