Only 34 out of each 100 Colombians believe they live in a democratic country

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Semana International edition (Colombian newspaper)

Only 34 out of each 100 Colombians believe they live in a democratic country
Headline
March 18, 2009

According to a survey done by the Colombian Administrative Department of National Statistic (Dane) only 34 out of each 100 people consider Colombia to be a full democray. Ten out of 100 assured it is not democratic at all, and the other 55 said it is relatively democratic. Even though less than half of the people interviewed said they lived in a democracy, 78 out of each 100 agreed they prefer this form of government rather than any other.

15, 744 people older than 18 were interviewed from September to November 2008 in 24 capitals of several Colombian provinces.



Read more: http://www.semana.com/noticias-headlines/only-34-out-of-each-100-colombians-believe-they-live-in-democratic-country/121882.aspx

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Colombia is the THIRD LARGEST FOREIGN AID recipient of U.S. taxpayers' funds in the world.

[Judi Lynn]

1. The deadly fight for land in Colombia

The deadly fight for land in Colombia
Armed ConflictVictims, who are reclaiming their land, are being assassinated, tortured, and threatened. Redress is failing and a bloody reversal of land distribution is occurring.
March 17, 2009

With pistol in hand, for almost two decades paramilitaries expelled rural people from their farms, usurped lots and pressured so that they would sell their land at low prices. It all seemed legal. Through violence they wanted to impose a reverse land distribution scheme to launder the assets of the territory, to politically control regions and to substitute the local land-owning elites. They still fight to the death in order to achieve it, and if something is not urgently done, they will prevail.

Over 5.5 million hectares were abandoned, taken over or transferred through spurious business deals, from which 385,000 families were expelled who are today trying to recover what they had lost. But instead of land, many of them have found death. Ten assassinations, 563 threats, rapes of women and children, beatings and flyers from the paramilitary Águilas Negras group in which they announce new massacres, offices of victims organizations that have been burned and looted. The harassment continues.

Just in Urabá four leaders who sought to recover their assets, stolen by paramilitary commanders but in fact are being held by frontmen, have died. In Córdoba many have given up reclaiming their property where today there are illegal crops. In Valle drug traffickers are killing peasants who received seized farms from the government.

How did it all happen?

Five types of plundering used by drug traffickers, paramilitaries and landowners who take advantage of forced displacement have been identified.

The most serious cases are those in which, with a pistol at the head, people had to sell at low prices. This is what happened in areas such as Urabá and in the areas where “Jorge 40” had his empire. Vicente Castaño, Raúl Hasbún and other paramilitary heads in the area used an ample network of frontmen to force the transfer of lands. There victims are reclaiming the return of 30,000 hectares.

Another form of stealing is that people, who although they have deeds for their land, they cannot return to it because it is occupied by armed groups, by frontmen or by squatters. It is the typical case that Salvatore Mancuso used in Córdoba. An example of it is what happened in Costa de Oro, where a farm of 885 hectares was awarded by the government to 59 small land owners in the early 1990s. They could never make use of the land because Fidel Castaño had installed himself there with his men, who let some of them stay as peons or tenants.

Later, Carlos Castaño “sold” the farm to Mancuso, who sent the message to the peasants who held deeds that either they “sell to me or I will buy it from your widow,” which was his battle cry. Some sold. But those who refused to do so were not able to return.

More:
http://www.semana.com/noticias-print-edition/the-deadly-fight-for-land-in-colombia/121871.aspx

[fascisthunter]

2. That's What Happens when Right Wingers Run Things

they hate democracy because democracies empower the citizenry with an equal amount of influence on their government and country.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Colombian women only find empty graves

Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Colombian women only find empty graves

Norah, Irleny and Marcela have been searching for the bodies of loved ones who were assassinated by paramilitaries. SEMANA joined them for two days when they were convinced that they would finally find the bodies.
March 12, 2009

http://www.semana.com.nyud.net:8090/photos/generales/ImgArticulo_T1_60467_2009312_212553.jpg

They say that the earth changes color when it contains bones and human remains. It becomes brown, almost black. It’s easy to know when one is in front of a mass grave- no matter whether the bodies have been there for two months, four months or 15 years. “Also,” says Norah Tamayo as if she were talking about a formula for seeking the dead, “if you touch the earth, it’s soft, as if it’s been broken up into pieces.” She is a small woman and uses rain boots five sizes too big. She is on the edge of a desolate mountain in the Magdalena Medio region of Colombia looking for the body of her husband. She is convinced that this time she will find it. Her two children, who had stopped praying, hope that their mother brings them good news.

Today the women aren’t there alone. One behind the other are a prosecutor, three investigators, four agents of the technical investigation unit (CTI), four soldiers, an Army captain, an informer and, behind them, Irleny Valencia, who, like Norah, has been searching for her brother in law’s body for nine years.

It’s possible that this is the most important hike of their lives. An informer and a demobilized paramilitary who don’t know each other agreed on the location where Byron Velásquez, Norah’s husband; José Yandú, Irleny’s brother in law and Gonzalo Serna, Marcela’s husband could be buried. Marcela could not join them because she didn’t have anyone to watch her two daughters on that day.

They have been waiting for this exhumation since the paramilitaries stopped a bus in San José del Nús and took the three men because, according to them, they were guerrilla collaborators. Their wives say that that is not true. They were street vendors in Medellín and ticket scalpers. In fact, that weekend they were coming back from a Shakira concert in Bogotá and were preparing a trip to Cali for a horse fair. “They did very well with bull fighting and horse events,” says Norah. “My Byron would come home with 700,000 pesos from just one weekend.”

At nine in the morning, when they arrived in San José, Captain Lozano, in charge of security, told them to wait until one in the afternoon because there had been fighting between soldiers and guerrillas in the area. While they waited, Norah began to tell her story. The first thing that she did was to find out in which town they had stopped her husband and a week later she went there. She sat in the waiting area where they parked the buses and began to ask about Byron. “After a little while a man came up to me and said ‘I am Commander Arrieta. I’m sorry, but your husband was executed.’” She says that she became full of rage and of questions that she posed to Arrieta. When? Why? Where is his body? Arrieta told her that they didn’t return bodies and ordered her to leave the town.

More:
http://www.semana.com/noticias-print-edition/colombian-women-only-find-empty-graves/121669.aspx

[Vidar]

4. I'd be interested in similar poll results for the US.