The Colombian Studies Group

The Colombian Studies Group

Cordially invites everyone to a poetry discussion and recital.

Contemporary Spanish Poetry Grupo Ánade will be presented by  Antonio César Morón Espinosa, Universidad de Granada.

Friday, May 27.  6:00pm. Room 4116

The CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY.SUBWAY: trains B,D,F,M,N,Q or R to 34th Street – Herald Square

Light refreshments will be served.

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May 9. 7:00pm. Room 5414

The CUNY Graduate

Center 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY.

SUBWAY: trains B,D,F,M,N,Q or R to 34th Street – Herald Square

Light refreshements will be served.

Until the final stone

In the region of Uraba in Columbia, the national army, paramilitary groups and guerrillas of the organisation FARC have been fighting each other since the mid-nineties. As it is mainly the civilian population that suffers from the conflict, farmers joined forces to form a neutral peace community. The warring parties however didn’t tolerate this: families were forced to settle elsewhere, crops were set on fire and innocent citizens were murdered. The government’s only reaction was to dispatch 150 police officers, whose presence only increased the belligerence of the guerrillas. The peace community was no longer prepared to live under such conditions and decided to create a neutral zone with no access granted to anyone armed. In HASTA LA ULTIMA PIEDRA Juan José Lozano portrays the community just as a village on safe ground is being built. The director follows the amazingly harmless activities of the inhabitants and brings several protagonists of the peace movement in front of the camera. Often the camera rests on playing children or adults carrying heavy building materials. Work and pleasure are shared as much as grief through painting the children in particular learn to deal creatively with their horrifying impressions. In addition, they erected a coloured stone memorial in remembrance of the victims. This solidarity strengthens the community’s belief in a better, peaceful world.

Christine Bloch Visions du Réel Nyon 2006

http://www.artfilm.ch/hastalaultimapiedra.php?lang=en
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3768358797247703781#

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Colombian peace community leader Jesús Emilio Tuberquia will be speaking about the experience of community and nonviolence in the midst of war.

Jesús Emilio has far too much first-hand knowledge of just how dangerous it is to work for peace in the middle of a war zone. He is a founding member of the San José de Apartadó Peace Community located in northwest Colombia.

In 1997, he and 800 other small farmers claimed their territory as a neutral civilian community, refusing to cooperate with any armed group. The community has survived threats, killings, massacres, disappearances and food blockades by armed groups, including the U.S.-funded Colombian army.

Earlier this month, a man entered the peace community, went to Jesús Emilio’s house and asked where he was, then walked around the settlement and asked others. On Wednesday, after threatening peace community members together with paramilitaries, the man was picked up by the army and taken to the nearby army base.

Despite the threats and violence, Jesús Emilio and the peace community have succeeded in building a nonviolent community in resistance as an alternative to the war around them. Come hear their story!

(Source: http://forusa.org/blogs/susana-pimiento/struggling-peace-war-zone-courageous-experiment-non-violent-resistance/8484)

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Time: 6:00-8:00pm

Date: 2011-04-06

Room: 5414

Location: The CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY.

SUBWAY: trains B,D,F,M,N,Q or R to 34th Street – Herald Square

Dagua, Valle del Cauca, Colombia

(Picture extracted from: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/35914355)

Colombia is the poster child for neoliberalism in Latin America. Since the 1970s the United States—and the international financial institutions that it plays a leading role in, like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund—have been pushing a development model on Latin America that calls, essentially, for governments to act in the interests of multinational capital. Governments are supposed to invite in foreign investment, and provide it with low taxes, low wages, and low regulation. They are supposed to cut back on social spending, and offer state enterprises up to the private sector. And, they’re supposed to quash any popular protest against these policies, using force if necessary. These policies have gone by names such as structural adjustment, the Washington Consensus, the Chicago Boys prescriptions (referring to the role of Milton Friedman and other economists from the University of Chicago), or neoliberalism. The United States has played a key role in the implementation of these policies—from working for the overthrow of elected socialist president Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, and their implementation there, to Plan Colombia today, by which the United States provides military and economic aid that goes directly to implementing this economic model and crushing protest.

Union leaders have been some of the most visible victims. In the U.S.-owned Drummond mine in northern Colombia, three union leaders were assassinated in 2001. The company is currently facing a lawsuit in the United States for allegedly paying a paramilitary force to carry out the murders. Another U.S. company, Chiquita Brands, admitted to making payments for years to the paramilitaries. They claimed that they made the payments to protect their workers, but banana workers—and especially union activists—were the main victims among the hundreds murdered by paramilitaries during the 1990s and early 2000s.

Aviva Chomsky

(In an interview published at UpsideDownWorld.org on June 15, 2009).

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(Picture by: elespectador.com)

Hollman Morris, a reporter known for his critical coverage of the country’s civil conflict, came under fire from the government after he traveled to southwestern Colombia to interview guerrilla fighters for a documentary on kidnappings. On February 1, Morris said, members of the leftist guerrilla group Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) urged him to interview three police officers and a soldier who were being held hostage. The journalist told CPJ that once he realized the hostages’ answers had been coerced, he simply asked for their names and their time in captivity. The same day, FARC released the four hostages to a humanitarian mission led by the International Red Cross.

As news of Morris’ meeting with the hostages was reported, the government reacted in forceful, rapid-fire fashion. Vice President Francisco Santos Calderón said Morris had acted without “objectivity and impartiality.” Then-Minister of Defense Juan Manuel Santos called him “close to the guerrillas.” And Uribe accused the journalist of being an “accomplice to terror.”

Morris told CPJ that the accusations triggered a string of e-mail threats. On February 5, CPJ and Human Rights Watch sent Uribe a letter objecting to the loaded assertions and urging the president to put an end to comments tying journalists to any side in Colombia’s armed conflict. CPJ research has shown that such public assertions have endangered journalists. The government has often resorted to such politicized accusations, the New York-based group Human Rights First said at a March hearing of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. Colombian prosecutors, the group said, have brought dozens of unfounded and “specious” criminal investigations against Colombians, including journalists and human rights activists.

(Extracted from: http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/07/an-update-on-colombian-journalist-hollman-morris/)

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