Notes on Colombia Free Trade Agreement

Before leaving for Colombia, we heard and read a lot about the Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CFTA).  As you may know, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Presbyterian Church of Colombia both publicly and actively oppose the Colombia FTA.  President Obama signed the CFTA into law this past October, and it went into effect on May 15, about half-way through Craig’s and my time as accompaniers in Colombia.  

Not many people in the US talked about or even knew about the CFTA, so I was somewhat surprised at how many people knew and talked about it in Colombia.  We went to eat lunch at the house of one hermano who works at a banana finca and also harvests rice on the side who was very excited about the CFTA because he said it would make kitchen appliances much more affordable.  Others we talked to were excited about it because they said it will be easier to get a visa to go to the United States (which is somewhat true in that Colombian business investors and traders will be eligible for a special type of visa available to citizens of countries with trade agreements with the US, but most of the people we talked to would not be eligible for that type of visa).

The Presbyterian Churches of the USA and Colombia oppose it for several reasons, one being that small-scale farmers will no longer be able to earn a living from their crops because prices of crops, especially staple crops like rice and corn, will be driven down by the FTA.  I saw this while I lived in Guatemala (part of the Central America Free Trade Agreement)--US corn sold in Guatemala was cheaper than local corn grown in Guatemala because subsidies in the US make corn grown in the US so cheap.  Basically, as has happened in other countries, the Presbyterian Churches of the USA and Colombia predict and fear that the CFTA will serve to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.  Several individual pastors, church members, and community leaders we spoke with also expressed the same concerns.

We will have to wait and see exactly what the effects will be in Colombia, but I might predict that if we visited that same hermano in a year or two that, while he will probably still have his job at the banana finca (since it is a larger operation and already exporting almost all of its product to the US) that it will no longer be profitable for him to harvest, dry, and sell the rice that helps supplement his income and support his family of six.  For others who do not have jobs at the larger banana or pineapple fincas and depend almost entirely on their earnings from the crops they are able to harvest from a few acres of land the situation will probably be even more difficult so that even if some products are cheaper, they will not be able to afford them.

Roles and Expectations

This was the report my accompaniment partner, Craig, wrote about our first week in Urabà (The prayer is a Nicaraguan prayer):

Before lunch we prayed these words together: "May those who hunger have food, and may those who have food hunger for justice".

After lunch we were taken on a tour around town to see the neighborhood and its inhabitants.  It was not striking to me that some of the houses had dirt floors and were hand built out of scrap wood.  It was not striking that most of the plumbing was "outdoors."  It was not striking that many of the inhabitants were displaced and had lost family members in the violence.  My training had taught me to expect many of these things.  What was striking was how normal it all seemed.

Coming from a middle class U.S neighborhood with every convenience and security imaginable, I had somehow believed that this would be a sad, shattered place.  How could people go through so much and be any other way?  And yet this was not the case.  Children were playing or going to school, adults went to church and work, and life more or less went on.  I listened to stories of horrible tragedy and loss, while in the background unsuspecting neighbors laughed and played music.  The experience contradicted my every conception of the situation.  Having watched many of my peers and role models in the United States fly into a rage over congested traffic, I couldn't understand how a community could take such hardship in stride.  Perhaps, I began to believe, that things were not really so bad.  Maybe all the stuff I had read about displacement was exaggerated or just spoke of isolated incidents…

But then I looked around myself.  I listened to the stories of displacement and witnessed with my own eyes and ears what was going on.  Things were not exaggerated, we had not heard only of isolated incidents; the displacement was bad and it was all around us.  And yet everyone and everything still seemed so normal in context.  How could this be?  

Suddenly the lunchtime prayer came back to me, but reformulated to fit the reality of this community: "May those who have been displaced from their comforts find peace, and may those who have peace be displaced from their comforts".  It was all so clear to me.  The Colombian people had overcome incredible adversity in order to carry on with life.  Each day they grapple with the trauma they had experienced, but, true to our prayer, they were finding peace in their hearts amidst the violence around them.  Now the onus fell on me.  As a person who had always taken peace as a given, I wondered if my words at lunch were a real prayer for change, or mere flippancy?  At the end of my trip here I will have to decide whether to go back and sit on my comfortable couch, or to displace myself into action.  Now the only question that remains is 'Have I, as a U.S. citizen, finally found a problem greater than my own apathy?'

Craig and me with the youth group on our last night in the first town we stayed in.

Our Soul is Divided

This is the report I wrote for our second week here. If you receive the Accompanier reports this will be a repeat.

Craig and I spent the second week of our month in Urabà as accompaniers in the least urban place we’ve been so far with the pastor and his family in their house behind the church.  It was a hot week.  Often, as we were lying in the hammocks in the heat of the day, digesting the huge lunch we had just eaten and trying to stay cool, an hermano from the iglesia would come to the house to bring some fruit or a chicken to the family and would stay and talk a while with us.  

One afternoon, a man rode up on his bike bringing some mangoes for the family and sat down beside me in a plastic chair in front of the fan on the porch.  We exchanged the usual “Hello, how did you wake up this morning?” “Very well, and you?” “Very well, thanks to God.”  I asked him if he had been born there in that town, and he began to tell me part of his story of how he came to live in that town.  

He used to have some land and some cattle in the mountains until one Friday at lunch the guerilla came and stayed in his house for several days.  On Sunday morning, before he went to church, he got up the courage to ask them how long they would be there, because iif it was much longer he would leave and they could have the house since he was afraid what would happen if the paramilitaries found out the guerilla were there.  When he got back from church they had gone.  

He stayed there with his family for a few more months, hardly sleeping at night, worrying every minute of the day, praying to God to protect his family.  Finally, he and his wife felt that the violence was all around them and they left one night, carrying the two youngest children through the forest.  He has never been back.  

Now, his daughters are around my age, in their 20’s and 30’s, and he has several grandchildren, thanks to God.  Even after leaving their home to escape la violencia, though, one of his sons-in-law was killed about two years ago, leaving his grandchildren without a father and his youngest daughter a widow.  

When we arrived in Colombia, our hosts told us that there is hardly anyone who hasn’t been affected by the violence, even if they haven’t been displaced.  I sometimes forget, though, because when we go to church, the services are much more joyful than an average Sunday morning in a Presbyterian Church in the States, and the hospitality and welcoming with which Craig and I have been received is overwhelming.

During Communion that Sunday, several of the women led a hymn with a line that has stuck with me: “Està divida, nuestra alma, entre gozo y dolor”--It is divided, our soul, between joy and pain.  It seemed to speak not only to the sentiment surrounding the sacrament of Communion around the world, but also and especially of the small piece we have seen of the lives of a few Presbyterian herman@s here in Urabà.  Whether it was recently or many years ago, no one has been left untouched by la violencia.  Yet everyone who has shared stories of pain and loss with us has ended by saying they are grateful to God for the church or their family or their home.  The pain is deep and tangible, but so is the joy and the hope.

Quick Update

Just a quick update - We're now halfway through our month here in Colombia.  We haven't had as much internet access as I had expected, but I'm hoping to be able to do a more detailed blog post later this week.

For now though, I'll just say that everything has been going really well.  We have been well-taken care of and very well-fed. Lots of plantains and delicious tropical fruit, and last night we ate armadillo for dinner, which is a very expensive and rare treat here.  The hospitality we have been shown is overwhelming and humbling, as are many of the stories we have heard.

Thanks to all of you for your prayers and support - and I hope you know that every time we go to church (which is about 5 times a week) the hermanos and hermanas here are praying for you all as well and send their "saludos."

We made it!

Just a quick update that my partner and I met yesterday at the airport in Miami and we made it today to our final destination. We are meeting with some more church folks this afternoon to talk about our time here but it looks like we'll be traveling most of he month I will try to do updates whenever possible.

It is really hot here but I've liked the food (so far), we have been well taken care of, and there is all kinds of delicious fruit to try. This region is especially known for its banana industry. As we were flying in there were just acres of banana trees as far as we could see with the bananas themselves all covered in plastic bags to protect them from insects and make them prettier for exporting, which is what most of these bananas are for according to our hosts.

Thank you all for the prayers and thoughts and support. Will keep you as updated as possible! The picture is of a part of our apartment here but we'll be traveling so much it doesn't sound like we'll spend much time here.

¡Vamos a Colombia!

I'm going to Colombia in May.  Here's why and how:

Here's the link for more information about the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship's Colombia Accompaniment Program.

If you're interested in making a donation on-line click here (just be sure to specify whether you want it to help my fund-raising specifically if possible).  Or e-mail me if you want instructions on how to donate by check.  ¡Gracias!

A Good Friday kind of Easter

I don't feel like Easter came this year.  It still feels like Good Friday for my family.

We lost my Uncle Don, my dad's brother, in February of this year the week before Lent began.  Even though Lent is often a time of disciplines or renewed commitments, it also feels like a season of slowing down, of self-reflection and contemplation.  It has been a good time in the liturgical year to grieve.  The Ash Wednesday service that came just 4 days after Uncle Don's funeral was especially poignant--"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."  And throughout the 40 days of Lent I felt permission to grieve and to contemplate the significance of those words--ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

The number 40 is significant in other parts of the Christian story as well--the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness and the 40 years that the Israelites spent wandering in the wilderness.  This year the 40 days of Lent definitely felt like a wilderness.  I have never lost anyone close to me until now.  Many people my age have already experienced the death of a grandparent, but I am lucky to have four living and healthy grandparents who are very much a part of my life.  I also know too many friends who have lost siblings or parents or significant others, and while my heart broke, I was hurting for them--it wasn't really my pain.  And even in the loss of my uncle, I miss and am grieving for him, but my heart breaks even more for my grandparents, my aunt, my cousins, and my dad and his other brother.  Don was a part of their daily lives at different points, in so many of their memories and experiences and plans for the future, and his absence is profound.

I know that the Easter story tells us that death is not the end, and although I don't know what happens after death, it certainly feels final from this side of things, like the last words of the Good Friday service-- "It is finished."  I love Good Friday services, because even though we know what happens a few days later, in this service we don't say "oh this is so sad, but at least we know it'll all be over in a couple of days."  Jesus dies and it is finished.  There are no radiant beams of light, no Easter bunnies, no resurrection.  The grief just hangs there.  We are given permission to grieve without looking forward, without trying to "move on," because you never get over the death of a loved one.  You keep on, but I don't think you ever move on.

So when we gathered two days ago for Easter dinner at my aunt's house it still felt like Good Friday.  I felt like Easter was trying to rush through the grief, and we're not done grieving yet. How could we be joyful and celebrate the hope and new life that Easter represents when it was our first family holiday without Don?

But even in the tangible absence of Uncle Don on Sunday, two of my cousin's children who were there--Uncle Don's grandchildren--reminded me of the joy of new life.  The sadness of death and the joy of new life exist together, in the same moment even, without canceling each other out.  The joy of new life does not make the grief of death less, but neither does the grief of death make the joy of new life any less.  So while we grieved during this first Easter without Don, we celebrated Hayden's first Easter with our family and gave thanks for the life of the youngest members of our family as well as Don's life.