Fr Ariel Ruiz is playing a dangerous game as he campaigns against a slum being turned into a cocaine haven, writes KAREN COLEMAN
THE SHADOW of violence seems ubiquitous in Colombia, a litany of abuses against the poor in villages in the jungles and along rivers which are increasingly strategic battlegrounds in the frontline for the cocaine trade.
Assassinations and disappearances of trade unionists and human rights activists, and of those who speak out against the corruption and abuses, are common. Bodies are dumped in jungles and in mass graves where their corpses rot in the thick undergrowth while their assassins continue to operate with impunity.
The illegal cocaine trade is at the epicentre of Colombia’s banditry. The country supplies more than 70 per cent of the world’s cocaine. And 90 per cent of cocaine consumed in the US comes from there. Right-wing paramilitaries, frequently supported by the Colombian armed forces, are engaged in constant turf wars with Marxist rebels, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), to control access to coca-growing regions
Almost four million Colombians have been displaced because of the armed conflicts. When paramilitaries or guerrillas move into these areas they frequently order villagers to leave. Refusal can mean torture or murder.
“The drugs cartels have been infamous for using extreme violence as a way of controlling both the money and the people who are producing the drugs. And anyone who steps out of line will be subject to the most horrific brutality,” says Sally O’Neill, Central America programme officer for Trócaire.
“They are not just shot with a gun to the back of their head. Usually what the drug cartels have done is that they have raped women. They have chopped up people’s bodies into pieces and left them out in public to scare the community,” she said.
The seaport town of Buenaventura on the west coast is strategically placed on the Pacific, making it one of the cocaine exporting capitals of the world. An intricate lattice of rivers feed into Buenaventura from the jungles where the coca plants are grown and ground down into a green paste which is later processed into the addictive white powder. The drugs are then transited through the rivers into Buenaventura, loaded on to the ships anchored in its port and then taken into the US and out to the rest of the world.
The drug cartels are getting more sophisticated in transporting cocaine to market, even using state-of-the-art submarines with GPS navigation systems.
From a slum on the edges of Buenaventura, El Lleras, cocaine is said to be loaded on to boats at night and brought to ships docked in nearby ports.
El Lleras is one of the most dangerous slums in that part of the country, having fallen to Farc guerrillas. Unemployment is more than 70 per cent, and its young men are easily drawn into the drugs trade. They can earn around $100 a month, a fortune in a Colombian shanty town.
It is a mean-looking place exuding menace. A hotchpotch of ramshackle buildings with tin roofs meanders along uneven dirt roads. Men lounge against open doorways or lean back on plastic chairs like watchmen on duty scrutinising the neighbourhood on behalf of the criminals running the place.
Women saunter around in flip-flops and sleeveless tops in the tropical heat. Kids kick up dust as they run to school in the makeshift classrooms, their smart uniforms washed and ironed by mothers who desperately hope their children won’t end up as hoods for the drugs lords.
Afro-Colombians make up 10 per cent of the population, many of them victims of the armed conflict, having been forced out of their homes by the rivers and coca-growing regions.
Now they may face eviction again because the government wants to expand the port into El Lleras, knocking down the slums and building fancy shops, hotels and boardwalks. There is a strong suspicion of drug lord involvement and of the intention to turn the area into a massive cocaine exporting blackspot.
The parish priest of El Lleras is campaigning against the development. Fr Ariel Ruiz is not what one expects. A 29-year-old in a white T-shirt and casual trousers, with no sign of religious garb, looks more like a rock star than a man of the church.
He is engaged in a very dangerous game in trying to stop the paramilitaries from turning the slum into a cocaine haven, and trying to educate the children to understand there are alternative ways to make a living.
One of his projects is aptly titled “Exchange a Bullet for a Book”.
“The trouble here is that the children and young people have been exposed to extreme forms of violence for most of their lives and they replicate a culture of violence in their own relationships which gets another vicious circle going that’s unending,” says Fr Ariel.
The parish community centre is open to all. The offices have several computers with access to the internet and a library of books and educational material. Fr Ariel is also involved in an initiative to help the locals grow medicinal plants in community plots.
Does he ever meet the paramilitaries he knows are living in the slum? He says they certainly don’t come into his offices but that they wield huge influence and have a network of informers who keep them abreast of what’s going on there. Asked if he is worried about his personal safety, he shrugs.
“It is a tense situation and we have to be careful,” he says, adding that the church has made a deliberate decision to work with people to raise their understanding of their own rights.
Walking around the slum with Fr Ariel, some of the men standing around greet him. Others do not acknowledge him but stare suspiciously. The next night, two priests from his order, the Redemptorists, are murdered in another part of Colombia. Like Fr Ariel, they too were working with the poor.
Karen Coleman presents ' The Wide Angle'on Newstalk106-108 every Sunday morning. She was in Colombia courtesy of Trócaire. www.karencoleman.com