Javier Giraldo and “community ways of thinking”

“The killers did not seek to kill individuals, but rather to destroy community ways of thinking.”

Javier Giraldo, a Jesuit priest, was speaking of the paramilitary death squads and their allies in the official armed forces who did most of the killing during Colombia’s decades-long civil war. “This was their project since the sixties.” The paramilitaries were created by forces of greed – the large land-holders and industrialists – who demanded the land and fealty of impoverished people who had learned over centuries to support each other in community.

We had gathered on a Sunday evening in November 2019 to witness the presentation of a report to the chair of Colombia’s Truth Commission, Francisco de Roux, also a Jesuit. We met in an auditorium of the seventeenth-century Colegio San Bartolomé. It sits on a corner of Bogotá’s Plaza Bolívar, roughly between the national congress building and the cathedral. This was three years after ratification of the peace agreement between the government and the largest guerrilla army. 

The event mourned the victims of war but also celebrated decades of work for peace with justice and the investigations then underway into past crimes. The report, “Blood of Martyrs, Seeds of Liberation,” was prepared by the Mesa Ecuménica por la Paz (MEP), an ecumenical peace movement supported by The United Church of Canada and the KAIROS Canada ecumenical coalition.

Padre Javier died Tuesday (Aug. 25): 82 years of age, 61 of them among the Jesuits, 50 years a priest. After surviving countless death threats, he died quietly in hospital.

“Arm yourselves, leave, or be killed”

Javier Giraldo was partly responsible for my first visit to Colombia in 1993. He led a group of Roman Catholic religious communities called the Inter-Congregational Commission for Justice and Peace (known as Justicia y Paz). Later, after tension with conservative bishops, the group became the Inter-Church Commission for Justice and Peace. 

Months before our 1993 visit, Justicia y Paz had presented a report on the growth of paramilitary activity in the mountains of Santander department. It compiled testimonies that showed how paramilitary groups – backed by the Colombian armed forces – were imposing control in the region. In the early 1990s, I was working with the Canadian Council of Churches as its ecumenical education and communication secretary. My colleagues at the Inter-Church Committee for Human Rights in Latin America (ICCHRLA) invited me to join a small delegation that would show solidarity with affected communities and amplify the findings of the Justicia y Paz report.

From people who had been displaced from their land, and from people who lived in fear of displacement, we learned of the paramilitary strategy. People were given three options: join the paramilitaries, leave or be killed. In 1993, the number of displaced in Colombia was around 200,000. 

Over time, the paramilitary strategy we witnessed in Santander was imposed on most of the country. My work with the United Church brought me back in 2001 and the number of displaced was two million. (During that visit, I met Fr. Javier again; because of threats, he was sheltered within a maze of connected churches and schools in central Bogotá.) By the time of my last visit in 2019, more than eight million people had been displaced.

In 1986, large land-owners had thirty-six per cent of the land; by 2011, they controlled 53.6 per cent of the land.

The violence

Media depictions of Colombians, with the drug lord Pablo Escobar as an archetype, have not served its people well. Yes, the violence is real. I think each of the Colombians I know has been touched within their immediate families by war and crime. A child watches a man be murdered in their father’s apartment. A teenager is witness to the killing of another teen and the whole family flees to Venezuela. A middle-class family surrenders its modest savings to extortion after a parent is kidnapped by one of the guerrilla armies. A local bank manager becomes aware that the security firm that delivers cash to the ATMs is pilfering money, and that senior management allows them to do so; he and his family leave for Canada. While I talk with a human rights defender in Bogotá, I am distracted by the bullet hole in her office window. 

But Colombia also produces countless stories of people who work for justice, peace and reconciliation within and among communities. Against all odds, they restore “community ways of thinking.” At all stages of my decades of travel in Colombia, there was time for friendship: a coffee, una cerveza, a conversation, dancing, or a hike in the hills above Bogotá. And now, after more than sixty years of war and despite a new crop of hard-right politicians, they’re still working toward “total peace.” 

Fr. Javier is mourned by many and will be missed, but there are thousands more inspired by his vision who will carry on the labour for peace with justice.

In reading many tributes yesterday and this morning, I am struck by his impact far beyond the Catholic religious communities. Here is what Bishop Luis Andres Caicedo of the Colombian Methodist Church wrote in a Facebook post:

“To follow the path of Father Javier Giraldo is to understand that peace is not built from silence in the face of injustice, but from truth, dignity and commitment with those who have suffered most. 

“May his path continue to engage us and our commitment to peace be also a commitment to justice and life.”

Our season of fire

by Jim Hodgson

Summerland – both my hometown and the site of my so-called “retirement” – made national and global headlines over the past 10 days because of that ultra-fast-moving wildfire that ignited just west of town on Friday evening, August 7.

The fire, frightening as it was and devastating as it is for those who lost homes and jobs because of it, brought out the best among neighbours: from the first minutes, people helped each other. Soon, residents of Penticton and other communities welcomed 20,000 evacuees from Summerland, Peachland and the smaller communities like Faulder and Meadow Valley to the west. I am grateful to neighbours, first responders, and the fire-fighters who came from near and far (gracias, México!) to help control the fire. I’ll say a bit more about my situation below.

Over the summer, I had been pondering the concept of development as I have been using it in my Unwrapping Development blog posts – mostly the international sort that attempts (and often fails) to improve livelihoods in less-privileged parts of the world – and the way the word development gets bandied around in local, provincial and Canadian politics.

By way of illustration, I was going to write about a conflict over a proposed gravel pit mine in Garnet Valley, the northwest part of Summerland. In July, the provincial government of British Columbia re-ignited public debate over the gravel pit. Those of us who opposed the proposal thought we had won when a B.C. Supreme Court judge quashed it in February.

But no. It seems provincial mining laws can override opposition from the municipal council, the regional district (like a county in other places), residents, the Okanagan Nation Alliance and the Penticton Indian Band.

Garnet Valley, like nearby Prairie Valley, Cartwright Mountain and the mountains between Garnet Vally and Okanagan Lake, suffered still-not fully known damage in the recent fire. But the human and ecological concerns about the proposed gravel pit remain. Over time, plants and trees will grow again, and wildlife return. Better, however, with no gravel pit!

Our journey

David and I had left Summerland Wednesday, Aug. 5 before the fire for a visit to Ottawa. When the fire erupted, we talked about whether to try to return early or not. We chose to remain in Ottawa until our scheduled return Tuesday, Aug. 10. By then, it was clear to us that we needed to go back.

Getting there, however, turned into our own Odyssey, or as David called it, our own Amazing Race Canada. Our flights were cancelled, re-scheduled, and cancelled again because of heavy smoke at Kelowna airport. We talked the airline into taking us as far as Calgary, thinking that then we could rent a car and drive to Kelowna, retrieve our car there, and then drive on to Penticton to re-connect with family and retrieve our cat. 

“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans,” as John Lennon sang, and no sooner than the new flights were confirmed, car rented and motel room booked, the plans fell apart. Avis became my Cyclops, and hotels.com my Poseidon. I eventually won both battles, however, and we were able to buy (expensive) tickets on a late-night flight from Calgary to Kelowna. We got the car back and spent the night in a motel in East Kelowna. 

The next day, we made the long detour to Penticton, arriving there mid-afternoon. We got ourselves sorted out with the good people of B.C. Emergency Support Services, recovered our cat Chia, and settled into a hotel in Oliver.

This of course is a story very different from those of people I know who survived the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, or the more recent earthquakes in Venezuela and Colombia. Mine were, as we sometimes joke, first-world problems. We have enough money to absorb some stupid mistakes; we have insurance; we have governments capable of providing assistance.

When I write about development, it has to included capacity for disaster-response just as it must respect the principle of subsidiarity (prominent in Catholic social teaching): community challenges should be handled by the most local authority possible. A higher authority should only assist, support, or coordinate when a lower group cannot do the job alone.

We have a home to go back to and we’ll work with others to clean up and where necessary, re-build. And, more than ever, we must evoke ecological concerns about development. What we do in the name of development continues to affect the climate. Every summer is becoming a season of dread.

Canada-Ecuador free trade deal sparks concern in both countries

by Jim Hodgson

As ministers signed a new free trade agreement today in Ottawa, civil society organizations in Canada and Ecuador repeated their concerns about the deal.

The 26-chapter document was signed in Ottawa today by Canada’s international trade minister, Maninder Sidhu and Ecuador’s minister of production, foreign trade and investment, Luis Alberto Jaramillo.

Ministers meet. Photo: Primicias, Ecuador.

In Canada, Common Frontiers and MiningWatch Canada said the agreement was “deeply dangerous.” From what is known about the deal, it’s clear that it “grants sweeping and undemocratic protections to Canadian investors while deepening Ecuador’s human rights crisis.”

(I have worked with both organizations and their members for the better part of three decades – since our struggles over the North American FTA, opposition to the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas – a fight we won in 2005 – and the impacts of Canadian mining companies in Guatemala and beyond. Challenging as the current situation in Ecuador is, I am pleased to see Common Frontiers and MiningWatch fighting the good fight against these FTAs that only benefit the rich.)

Groups in both countries had previously criticized Ecuador’s ban on its largest opposition party, ongoing criminalization of ecological defenders, failure to consult with Indigenous peoples, and collaboration with the United States in military attacks on supposed drug-traffickers.

Common Frontiers and MiningWatch prepared a four-page explainer on why the deal is bad. And here is a statement on the new FTA from colleagues at Latin America is Better without Free Trade.

Most of what follows is text from the Common Frontiers-MiningWatch news release:

Minister Sidhu said the agreement will “open new opportunities for Canadian companies in a growing market, strengthen supply chains, and provide more predictable access to goods, services, and investment.” But Canada’s own assessment of the agreement projected insignificant growth in trade. Its main purpose is to attract and protect Canadian investment in Ecuador’s mining sector. 

The agreement is massively opposed by a large share of Ecuadorian civil society and Indigenous groups.

Paramount among the concerns:

  • A worsening human rights crisis in Ecuador. Ecuadorian and international human rights organizations have documented widespread, systematic human rights violations, including increasing militarization, repression of dissent, the criminalization of environmental defenders, and the imposition of executive decrees that undermine the rule of law. Much of this is exacerbated by – or in support of – existing Canadian mining investment in the country.
  • No consultation, consent, or transparency. The agreement was negotiated and signed without the free, prior, and informed consent of affected Indigenous Peoples, violating the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Ecuador’s obligations under the Escazú Agreement.
  • Investor protections that violate Ecuador’s constitution. The agreement contains an Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism that is prohibited by Ecuador’s constitution and was rejected in two recent plebiscites. According to former UN Rapporteur David Boyd, ISDS poses “catastrophic” consequences for climate action, environmental protection, and the realization of human rights.
  • No corporate accountability mechanism in Canada. The recent closure of the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) and the lack of due diligence legislation underscore a major accountability gap in Canada. Communities harmed by the operations of Canadian companies in Ecuador will have no standing in investor-state disputes and nowhere to turn for justice and remedy.

The agreement now heads to Parliament to be ratified. In response to repeated concerns raised by Ecuadorian civil society and Indigenous communities and echoed by prominent civil society voices in Canada, the organizations are urging Members of Parliament to reject the agreement.

In Ecuador, the Primicias news site said the trade agreement with Canada will allow almost all of the products that Ecuador exports to that market to enter with zero tariff, once it comes into force. According to the Government, the benefit covers 99.6% of items for Ecuador.

Among the products that will enter without paying tariffs are: textiles, vegetables, roses, sardines, confetti, chocolate and ceramics.

Likewise, some of the products imported from Canada that will reach Ecuador without paying tariffs, including: wheat, cell phones, cleaning products, laptops, drones, fertilizers, medicines and sporting goods.