Columbia: Village Massacre by Paramilitaries
James Chamblee
Eighteen villagers were rounded up and shot in
front of a small church built on a floating island.
Others died in their homes or were hauled off and
found later. Bodies turned up for days, floating in
blue-brown waters or discarded in narrow, marshy
inlets.
__________ ===================================================
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Friday, 1 December 2000
Paramilitary Massacre Stuns Village
-----------------------------------
By Margarita Martinez
NUEVA VENECIA, Colombia -- Ten days ago this village, with its wooden
houses perched on stilts in a vast inland sea, was a bustling fishing
community: The hum of outboard motors filled the air as men worked to rig
their nets. But then the gunmen came, dragging villagers from their homes,
shooting them and leaving their bodies to turn the water red as neighbors
fled in terror.
Now the residents of Nueva Venecia are mostly gone, driven away by what
was one of the deadliest single massacres in Colombia's decades-old
guerrilla war at least 37 people killed, most of them poor fishermen.
Other than water lapping up against stilts, the cackle of a few chickens
and the barking of dogs, the village is silent.
In Nueva Venecia on Tuesday, Daiver Yanez, a 20-year-old fisherman whose
uncle and cousin died in the Nov. 22 attack, hurriedly unloaded two
rocking chairs and other belongings onto a wooden canoe docked alongside
his two-room stilt house.
"I never thought something like this would happen to us, this kind of
violence," he said before pushing off in the direction of the nearest
town, Sitio Nuevo, where he planned to live with relatives until it feels
safe to return.
The attack here was allegedly carried out by members of the United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC. The right-wing paramilitary
group, which some here say operates with the support of the Colombian
army, has spent years fighting left-wing rebels in the country's bloody
civil conflict.
Roughly 3,000 people die in the vicious fighting each year, most of them
civilians caught in the crossfire. Colombia is receiving $1.3 billion in
mostly military aid from the United States as part of a plan to battle the
cocaine trade that fuels the conflict, but any progress could take years.
The Nueva Venecia massacre was the second in the area this year by alleged
members of the AUC: The group raided another fishing village an hour's
boat ride away in February, killing about a dozen people. They had warned
Nueva Venecia considered by the AUC to be a support base for the leftist
National Liberation Army, or ELN _ that it could be next.
Survivors interviewed in a church shelter in Barranquilla, the nearest
city, said death came swiftly to the struggling 150-year-old settlement,
located 420 miles from Bogota.
According to their accounts most spoke anonymously for fear of retribution
some 50 AUC gunmen converged by boat just after midnight the morning of
Nov. 22, rousing villagers from their sleep. In trademark paramilitary
fashion, they called out the names of men they were looking for and then
dragged them and others from their homes.
"I was awake and felt the gunshots," said a 30-year-old man who sells
drinking water in the village. "I took out my family in the darkness in a
canoe. We stayed (away) until they told us the paramilitaries had gone."
Eighteen villagers were rounded up and shot in front of a small church
built on a floating island. Others died in their homes or were hauled off
and found later. Bodies turned up for days, floating in blue-brown waters
or discarded in narrow, marshy inlets.
Nearly a week after the attack, bloodstained clothing still lay on the
dirt outside the red-and-white church.
Ironically, survivors said, many of the young men targeted by the AUC
water taxi drivers said to have been offering transportation to the
leftist guerrillas escaped by starting up their boats and fleeing into the
night.
The attack, fresh evidence of degradation in Colombia's 36-year war, has
made a ghost town out of this tiny village located in the Grand Cienaga, a
breathtaking nature reserve just inland from the Caribbean sea.
A week after the killings, only about 200 of the village's 3,000 residents
remain. All the others fled, joining the ranks of the nearly 2 million
Colombians displaced by violence during the past 15 years. of Amed
Gutierrez, whose father-in-law, a shopkeeper, was killed, called the
attack a devastating setback for the area. Environmental protection
efforts had helped restore dwindling fish populations here, and two years
ago the government extended electricity to Nueva Venecia for the first
time.
The AUC has not claimed responsibility, but villagers have no doubt they
were the ones. "They've catalogued us as a guerrilla town," Gutierrez
said.
Rumpelstiltskin
<jim-ch...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>A week after the killings, only about 200 of the village's 3,000 residents
>remain. All the others fled, joining the ranks of the nearly 2 million
>Colombians displaced by violence during the past 15 years. of Amed
>Gutierrez, whose father-in-law, a shopkeeper, was killed, called the
>attack a devastating setback for the area. Environmental protection
>efforts had helped restore dwindling fish populations here, and two years
>ago the government extended electricity to Nueva Venecia for the first
>time.
>
>The AUC has not claimed responsibility, but villagers have no doubt they
>were the ones. "They've catalogued us as a guerrilla town," Gutierrez
>said.
This reminds me of Guernica, subject of a painting by Picasso,
perhaps the most powerful painting ever painted. Guernica
was the center of Basque resistance in Spain. Franco got the
aid of the Nazis. Nazi planes bombed the town, and other Nazi
planes shot down the citizens as they fled.
Rumpelstiltskin
wrote:
>On Fri, 01 Dec 2000 15:47:09 -0800, Rumpelstiltskin
><PleaseDonot...@nowhere.com> wrote:
>
>
>>
>> This reminds me of Guernica, subject of a painting by Picasso,
>>perhaps the most powerful painting ever painted. Guernica
>>was the center of Basque resistance in Spain. Franco got the
>>aid of the Nazis. Nazi planes bombed the town, and other Nazi
>>planes shot down the citizens as they fled.
>>
>Guernica is indeed a powerful painting, but it took me many.
>many viewings to fully appreciate it. I have always enjoyed
>art since my teens -- at age 15 I was taken with Grant
>Wood's American Gothic and Picasso's The Lovers
>(classical period) in the Chicago Art Insitute. I went on to
>revere the Impressionists, but now am quite a fan of Rothko
>and Jackson Pollock and all sorts of abstract art. Picasso
>has painted in so many genres and they all are simply
>marvelous. I download paintings I like from the net and keep
>one on my computer desktop at all times to enjoy. Right now
>I have a shimmering Rothko in white, green and a band of
>red.
It's interesting you mention Rothko. He came up in the
long talk I had with the woman seated next to me on the
plane back from Europe last month. I mentioned that I
just didn't "get" Rothko, and that it was strange since I
love Mondrian. My seatmate was a big fan of Rothko.
Doris Carter Ford
: On Fri, 01 Dec 2000 23:02:09 -0800, Rumpelstiltskin
: <PleaseDonot...@nowhere.com> wrote:
:>
:> It's interesting you mention Rothko. He came up in the
:>long talk I had with the woman seated next to me on the
:>plane back from Europe last month. I mentioned that I
:>just didn't "get" Rothko, and that it was strange since I
:>love Mondrian. My seatmate was a big fan of Rothko.
:>
: I don't think one "gets" Rothko. Rather, I have learned to
: simply somehow absorb the paintings and there is a feeling
: that emerges. Rothko eventually killed himself and there is
: a body of work in black that reflects his despair, but some of
: his work floats and shimmers and is truly marvelous. I
: didn't "get" Pollock either, until I sat in front of a couple of his
: huge paintings in the Met and got drawn into the energy he
: generates. Pollock's energy led him to drink and drive like
: a maniac and eventually kill himself and a woman in a car
: crash. Quite a pair!
Years ago my appreciation of abstract art was quite limited.
There were several steps in my changing viewpoint since then.
First in Chicago while viewing a show and finding that I
'liked'about one out of twenty paintings. I came to the conclusion that
perhaps the artists was not aiming for a huge, general audiance to
communicate with perhaps even individuals.
Seversl years later while having coffee at the kichen table I observed
the 'abstract patterns' form by the light from the patio doors and the
showdows it cast. Reacheed the conclusion that the artist, as usual saw
reality with a clearer eye than mine.
Twenty years ago I married a man dedicated to modern art.
a large Rothco print was over my pc for years. Now I have a bright
color mass that could be interpeted as a seascape or landscape there.
The exposure to modern art has been an education. I especially enjoy
watching the changing lights of the day and the seasons as it developes
the art of the sculpture.
Presently I don't have a great deal in the way of material goods
but an excellent, eclectic collection of art, originals, prints, odd
attractive inexpensive pieces mixed with a stray rock, branch ot rusted
reject that had 'something'.
We grow and change. Thank goodness.
Doris F/
James Chamblee
Thieves and swindlers everywhere.