posted on 11/09/08 at 11:39 PM

Imagine that you are a poor Colombian farmer who has worked all week in the fields from sun up to sun down. Sunday comes and you head to the nearby small village to relax in the central park with your friends. Suddenly, a military truck pulls up and demands to see your proof of military service. When you can’t produce anything, you are pushed into a truck and driven to the military barracks. I wrote about forced recruitment I witnessed like this a few months ago.

Yesterday I heard about Diego, a member of Red Juvenil (Youth Network in English) who was forcibly recruited by the Colombian military soon after he turned 18 years old. He immediately declared himself a conscientious objector, but the military refused to release him. While Red Jevenil worked from outside for his release, he refused to cooperate in any way with the military. When they handed him a gun, he would drop it. When they told him to fix up his uniform, he left it wrinkled.

In return for Diego’s resistance, the military made an example to the other young men. They would wake him up at all times of the night. They made him do extra exercises. They put him in solitary confinement. Anything to show the other young men not to do what he did. After 20 days, they finally got tired of dealing with him and through him out of the barracks.

I first wrote about forced recruitment in Colombia this winter. But yesterday Paula, the director of Red Juvenil, visited Living Water here in Rogers Park and shared more stories from Medellín, Colombia. She is part of the Drop Beats Not Bombs tour organized by the Fellowship of Reconciliation. You can see their tour date here (including a stop in Goshen, IN).

Growing up Mennonite, concientious objection has been part of my vocabulary from a young age. But its never included been a particularly scary or difficult thing. It just meant filling out a form. Hearing from Paula I learned about some of the harsh realities from Colombian men and women who resist militarism.

Of course, Red Juvenil has also faced threats from the paramilitaries. Despite the supposed demobilization of the paramilitaries in Colombia, the recently recieved a threat naming 8 people who were involved in the organization.They were signed by the Black Eagles, a paramilitary and social cleansing group that has formed since the demobilization.

“We have gone to the government and said that you’ve got to admit and make it known that the demobilization hasn’t worked here.” said Paula “We’re continuing to experience the same things. The paramilitary has just changed their name” But the government claims that it is working and that the problems come from criminal gangs. Furthermore, the Uribe government insists that there is no armed conflict, just a few terrorists and “bad apples” but at the same time, the military says their is an armed conflict and continue to draft young people. During the 4 years since the demobilization, the military has almost doubled in size

Fortunately, Paula’s tale wasn’t just about imprisonment and repression. In fact it was mainly focused on the remarkable and imaginative resistance to militarism from the Red Juvenil. The focus of their work is building a positive alternative to militarism through a wide variety of programs:

• They have classes in art, political economy and communications.
• Each year they organize annual anti-militarism concerts on May 15 in a large park in Medellín.
• On Colombian independence day they showed up at the local military parade dressed as clowns
• They work with families who can’t pay their utility bill to meet their needs
• They have a fair trade shop to sell goods from the country side around Medellín.

At the core of this fertile organization is their relationships with one another. “We work on the basis of friendship.” said Paula “That’s how we all came into the network. It’s more then an organization, it’s a way of life. We aren’t assigned job as part of some hierarchical organization, we are doing what we want to do. We are more then our structures. We are friends.”