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Reporter's Notebook: Paul Silvester

Are all middle class Colombians self serving?

Posted by Paul Silvester - February 16, 2005 at 9:01 pm
To bring something a little different to the table tonight I have just recieved the following email from some friends of mine, a teacher and a lawyer, both born in Cali, telling me of the work they are doing with the Nasa Indian community and with the people of Bajo Calima. This touches on the Uribe/violence/re-election debate a little, but more importantly it is a clear indication that not all middle class Colombians are just self serving, out to trample on the poor in order to make more wealth. They are Christians, I am not sure how that sits on the shoulders of some of the more marxist amongst us, but I wanted to take the advice of a fellow contributor and share a little good news!!! Even if they do on the surface seem to see some good in President Uribe!!!

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In November, Leopoldo Lobo and Angel Sánchez from FESTIPAZ-Spain (International Festival for the Peace of Colombia) came to visit the Nasa Indian Community that we are working with. They came to give a basic course on Agriculture. The purpose was to help them to discover the potential of the things that they already have.

Another goal was to increase their self-image and to instil a spirit of gratitude in them. They were blind to all the resources and riches that they already possessed. The seminar was held in the town of Toez and lasted for 4 days. Many classes were taught of which included learning how to set and carry out projects to improve their standard of life.

NEWS FROM BAJO CALIMA

On October 17, we travelled to the main village of Bajo Calima with the purpose of working together with a group of government officials. This group was involved in mapping out the area to identify which ones were most affected by violence. As well, as to discuss and to try to find solutions to amend this crude reality. What is reality? Caught in the crossfire, local people were massacred. Others were threatened and forced to abandon their land. This created new problems for them as they now had no food, no home, no job, and an uncertain future. Learning of this situation, we were very touched and determined to take part in the process of bringing love and hope through friendship, and physical supplies.

On our own, this was an impossible task, but at Christmas we watched as God in His great power brought people and plans into action. We were surprised at the response of our friends, in how they came together in solidarity to share the things God had blessed them with. Bags full of groceries, clothes, shoes, toys, and presents flooded our house. It was encouraging to be able to bless others with material things.

At this time, people are beginning to return home as a result of ceasefire promoted by the government. However, the problems still remain. People are still very fearful of the threats and impending conflict between the different groups that are involved. Another situation that has been brought to our attention is that there are well-developed countries with invested interest in obtaining the riches of this land. Rumours are circulating that foreigners are coming to buy this land. Anyone who resists these plans will be killed. As missionaries, we are at the same risk as these people. We trust that God is in control and that He loves the people of Bajo Calima.

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Where will you bury your heart?

Submitted February 17, 2005 - 2:04 am by Bill Conroy
Paul,

You seem to be a reasonable guy. First, I’d ask you to lay off the term “Marxist,” which you throw around quite liberally for someone who seems to be rather conservative on economic matters. Marx has been dead since 1883 and socio-economic-political theory has advance quite far since those days – wouldn’t you agree?

Even if you don’t, labeling people as “Marxists,” is a bit of a red-baiting tactic; no one in this discussion has called you a “capitalist pig,” right? Those are outdate labels, so we should leave them in history where they belong.

But just so you know, I don’t discount history completely – including the forces that led to the writing of Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” and “The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith (1723 –1790). But remember, history is about perspective.

So, from your perspective, in truth, would Jesus be a capitalist or a socialist? And more importantly, does being “Christian” and believing in “God” make you automatically a better person, or even necessarily on the side of truth and justice?

Take a look at some history here to get a glimpse of what I’m trying to get at:

From “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West” by Dee Brown, published 1971 (The Wounded Knee massacre, by the way, occurred on Dec. 29, 1890 -- seven years after Marx died, 100 years after the death of Smith and 1,890 years after the birth of Christ.)

When the madness ended, Big Foot and more than half of his people were dead or seriously wounded; 153 were known dead, but many of the wounded crawled away to die afterward. One estimate placed the final total of the dead at very nearly three hundred of the original 350 men, women and children. The soldiers lost twenty-five dead and thirty-nine wounded, most of them struck by their own bullets or shrapnel.

After the wounded cavalrymen were started for the agency at Pine Ridge, a detail of soldiers went over the Wounded Knee battlefield, gathering up Indians who were still alive and loading them onto wagons. As it was apparent by the end of the day that a blizzard was approaching, the dead Indians were left lying where they had fallen. (After the blizzard, when a burial party returned to Wounded Knee, they found the bodies, including Big Foot’s, frozen into grotesque shapes.)

This next account of Wounded Knee (below) is take from the 1890 diary of Father Aemil Perrig, a Jesuit missionary at Holy Rosary Indian Mission in South Dakota. The mission is located about 10 to 15 miles from Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Dec. 30: At once order was given to the soldiers to advance. About ½ of an hour after their departure beyond the bridge near Big Wolf some shots were heard and soon all across the valley the firing began. Soon the cannon was booming….”

Dec. 31: All quite – It looks as if we were going to have a blizzard. A little before noon Father Jutz went with Frank Martinez to the Agency. … News which F. Jutz brought back:
1.    At Wounded Knee 90 men of Indians were killed.
2.    About 30 wounded women and children were brought to the Agency and lodged in Mr. Cook’s church.
3.    26 soldiers were killed and about 30 wounded.
4.    Yesterday 1 soldier was killed and two wounded – The Indians are reported to boast, that not one of them was even wounded.
5.    F. Kraft is stabbed in the back, the knife passing through the lungs.

(Father Perrig’s diary is among the thousands of documents found in the Catholic Indian mission collection located in the Marquette University’s Department of Special Collections and University Archives.)

OK, both of those accounts are history; one even includes a “Christian” point of view. I guess Father Perrig was doing as you said, by showing that not all Christians, (or middle-class Colombians in your example) “are just self serving, out to trample on the poor in order to make more wealth.”

As you say, “They are Christians, I am not sure how that sits on the shoulders of some of the more marxist amongst us, but I wanted to take the advice of a fellow contributor and share a little good news!!!”

Well, as a fallen Catholic, I feel comfortable in making this observation about Father Perrig’s perspective on history – even if his was only a day old at the time.

First, he served the interest of the soldiers that massacred the men, women and children at Wounded Knee by simply being at the “Indian mission,” which was anything but a place of salvation for Native Americans as you know.

Second, he obviously identifies more with those soldiers and his fellow Catholic priests than he does with the Native Americans. After all, he is a Catholic priest doing missionary work in an internment camp (a mission, guarded by soldiers) seeking to teach the “heathen Indians” some “Christian morals.”

The email you received seems to show a similar Christian compassion for the natives:

“Another goal was to increase their self-image and to instil a spirit of gratitude in them. They were blind to all the resources and riches that they already possessed.”

No, they weren’t blind. More powerful people in history robbed them blind; that’s a better way to put it.

So, where do you stand in that history? Are you working from inside the mission, or are you with the Indians at Wounded Knee?

Take care my friend; not all perspectives are about finding truth. That is something each of us can only find in our hearts.

What does self-serving have to do with it?

Submitted February 17, 2005 - 3:29 am by Joel Wiens
I'm a little confused about the title of this post - if it isn't facetious, then it must be rhetorical.  I'm not sure how anyone could answer such a question sensically.  Is any group simply one thing or another?  It should be patently obvious that they aren't.  Individuals in a group rationalize their status in all sorts of ways - some care about whether they can perceive themselves as being selfless and some don't.  

As to the actual question, I have some serious reservations about whether it really matters whether individual members of the middle class of any society are "self-serving" or not.  The point is that the maintenance of their lifestyle, which is done on their behalf by the politico's and their military arms, is achieved at the expense of the lifestyles of the majority of people.  It's insulting to then have those same people administer classes to those less "fortunate", in order to show them to be more grateful for the crumbs left over after the fortunates have successfully protected what their ancestors (or they themselves)  took.  I don't care what philosophy the teachers come from - atheist, Christian, Muslim - or what special affective experience they have as they administer their gifts, sensing the "love of God" as they give of themselves so "selflessly".

"We were surprised at the response of our friends, in how they came together in solidarity to share the things God had blessed them with."  What kind of clumsy arrangements are made such that the God-blessed middle class is perpetuated at the expense of the majority?  What are we to think about God's economy?  That people who have benefitted from plunder (or the plunder of their ancestors) are especially blessed, and the plundered are cursed?  That is repugnant theology, in my opinion (God forgive me...) and it is the same theology that was used to justify the development of Apartheid in South Africa by the Dutch Calvinists.

I have no problem with sharing, and true Christian charity.  I have a problem (with a good dose of self loathing as a middle class Christian Canadian) with charity that is aimed at making the giver feel selfless rather than expressing the very biblical concept of Jubilee, redistribution of wealth that recognizes our fundamental equality.

Thanks Paul for your contribution here - this is an area I feel sore about, sorry if this feels directed at you.

Middle class Colombia. Is it represented fairly?

Submitted February 17, 2005 - 12:25 pm by Paul Silvester
This story was originally posted largely as a reaction to one or two contributors who have implied that middle and upper class Colombians are usually self serving who support Uribe because he improves their lifestyle at the expense of the oppressed. This story was just to illustrate that maybe some people, whatever their motives are prepared to take risks to show compassion. And I, for one, won't knock that!!! It was to illustrate that to generalise however well intentioned can end up as a misrepresentation of the truth.

I did not realise that using the word Marxist was inflammatory and I apologise if this was how it seemed. I have believed that socialism and socialists sometimes believe that the Church (whichever brand) was a tool of the state and an equal oppressor, even if only of the mind. As it appears that, amongst the contributors, a predominately socialist philosophy was held, I used the term a little tongue in cheek' trying to say, look past your feelings about the dogma and look at the motivations of the hearts involved.... are they trying to oppress or help, even if it comes with a dollop of godliness!!!

I have a great many reservations about the merits or not of evangelising, but I have to say, the ONLY people I have met in Colombia who, in a humanitarian sense, reach out in any way to the poor and especially the indigenous people tend to be the Christians. And a very large percentage of them are middle class. They don't worry about the risks they take, (and they are huge, one group I know tried to evangelise to the guerrillas, three weeks in the mountains, and they all came back safely!!) they believe God protects them. So the risks are worthwhile. I have argued with them on many occasions, that their faith is not enough, they have to change the system as well and this sadly  tends to fall on deaf ears, they truly believe that God will find a solution. I have asked myself many times, does this philosophy makes them indirect, unintentional supporters of the system? A question I have yet to answer fully.

I think that you have to look a little behind the rhetoric as they are not writing in their first language. I agree completely with Bill Conroy that to say "the people had been robbed blind" is a better way to express the history, but I don't think they were looking from a historical perspective (rightly or wrongly). They were trying to show (I think) that the people had assets they were not aware of..... assets that they could use to improve their lives.....

The accounts Bill gave of the Indian massacre are fascinating, if that is the right word, but I have trouble equating the actions I reported with either version given. Firstly, the Christians were not there, like Father Perrig, to help the oppressors, and in doing so ending up also tending to the oppressed. The Christians were there for the oppressed. I am not aware of any sympathies for example with the paramilitaries although they would, given the opportunity, undoubtedly try to turn them to God. So I see the Christians as like Father Perrig but different in that they are there for the indigenous not the 'cavalry'.

I also feel that the Christian perspective is a little different today. I think in their hearts they genuinely believe that only good can come from evangelising. And it is not white oppressor Christian teaching indigenous heathens Christian morals as they are both Colombian. But surely what is important is that, for whatever reason, they are showing they care and that will give a sense of personal inner value that is sadly missing in such a high percentage of the poor.

Bill Conroy asks whether Jesus would be a socialist or a capitalist. Well certainly not a capitalist, socialist maybe or maybe a liberal.... after all he also healed (if one believes the bible) Romans, the oppressors, as well as the Jews.

Bill goes on to ask about whether being a Christian makes you a better person or automatically on the side of truth and justice. Absolutely not!!! I cannot state that sufficiently. I have witnessed self serving Christians and I have been in the home of a pastor of extreme wealth in Cali, whom I consider to be exploiting his flock on a daily basis. First class air tickets back home to the USA, big house, big car etc etc. For over 20 years this 'Gringo', and I use that word deliberately and without any humour whatsoever, has been exploiting Colombian people......... However, no thanks to him, his 'flock' do wonderful work within the community off their own backs. One girl in her twenties runs a project for pregnant street children which I have witnessed change tens of lives for the better. I support her with all my heart, she comes from a very poor background herself, she lives in a village called Montebello 20 minutes up in the mountains from Cali, were she lives in a shack with her mother, sister and baby nephew all sleeping, living and eating in one room. No running water, they use rain water collected in a bucket to shower and drinking water is delivered once a week. I am proud to say that I am godfather to her nephew, Santiago, even if I am not sure that I believe in God myself.

Bill goes on to ask, am I with the Indians or the mission? I hope I am with the Indians, but sometimes I find that I have moved closer to the mission than I would like. That's my honest answer!! And what is the truth? 48 years and I still every time I think I find it. it slips through my fingers.......

Joe Weins has reservations about the relevance of whether individual members of the middle class are self serving or not. In one way I agree with him. On one level the people I speak of are self serving, but the reward they believe they will receive is apparently not of this world. To that extent we are ALL self serving! If you helped to bring about real political change in Colombia you would, I suspect, feel pretty good about it, even proud to be a part. That is self serving too.

As I wrote earlier, the self serving I am referring to is that expressed in the story by Laura del Castillo when she writes;

"But so that those sectors of the middle class (generally made up of “social climbers”) and of the upper classes (generally made up of ranchers, industrialists, businessmen and high society folks who are simply trying to safeguard their property and wealth)"

This sentiment has been expressed in more forthright terms by other contributors, but I have chosen to express it as 'self serving'. Please Laura, correct me if I am wrong, but the impression I get is that you believe these groups of society are looking for the state to serve their needs at the expense of the poor and oppressed. So that to me is self serving, no?

And it is an important point for a number of reasons. Firstly, one of the reasons that many individuals I approach in England decide not to help the people of Colombia preferring to give aid to other countries is because of the image of the Colombian people themselves. So, continually repeating these comments about the richer classes solicits the reaction, "they can do it themselves then can't they". Which although true, does not put food on a table or vaccinations in a child’s arm TODAY. So am I suggesting that you cover up the truth? Absolutely not, but I do suggest that the words in parenthesis were a sweeping generalisation, particularly about the middle class and were in any case unnecessary as the story would have had equal impact without them. What I am trying to do is address the balance. I am not pretending that all middle class Colombians care, far from it, or that the government of President Uribe is even close to making the changes necessary, but I want to try to show that there are decent socially minded people at every level. And the world needs to know about them.

Interestingly all Servibanca cash machines in Cali offer the opportunity to make donations to a foundation for children and in the Supermarket Exito, shoppers, middle class and above, are asked if they want to make a donation to foundations for health and education. I have never seen this here in England or in the United States. It's not a one day fundraiser; it's 365 days a year. Corporations trying to do something and the people responding. Sure you can argue, it's too little, it's the responsibility of the state, it's appeasing consciences, these corporations do way more harm than good, whatever... Those responses are ALL correct to a greater or lesser extent, but on one level part of me doesn't care really..... those donations make a difference faster than ANY government will (left or right) and that speed saves lives.......

Secondly it is an insult to a huge number of people who make huge personal sacrifices. People like the woman who owns a large chain of hairdressers in Cali. She earns an awful lot of money, even by our terms. She lives in a very modest house her only luxury, in our terms, is that she has a 4 wheel drive vehicle and a driver, as she cannot drive. The reason she has a four wheel drive is because she spends a huge amount of time in the poorest barrios where she supports single handed five schools to my knowledge along with countless other projects. In short she gives almost all her money to the poor. I believe she has a right to be represented fairly!!

Now if I have come across so many different people helping as best they can, how many more are there I haven't met? The wealthy classes are about 5 million out of 50 million and I have found that maybe 5% of the 100 or so people from this social group that I know sufficiently to be aware of their motivations are not self serving. So if that 5% is multiplied across the country......Hell forget 5 lets look at just 1%.....Well you do the maths........... It's an awful lot of people being misjudged......50,000 to be exact. Only 0.1% of the total population agreed but interestingly that is possibly more than the total number of people reported to being in the paramilitaries and the guerrillas put together. But bear in mind using these statistics 45 million of the 50 million are not in a position to really help anyway. So 0.1% is misleading. The bottom line is that for any one person who is really oppressing, not just closing there eyes to the oppression, there is someone, however misguided you feel they are, trying to help!!

What Joel are you suggesting, that the indigenous people have to wait for ideologically correct political change? They will all be wiped out before that happens. If I found socialists in these communities I would want to praise them from the rooftops. But they, in my experience, are not there!!!! Why... I don't know. I would relish the opportunity to hear of politically motivated projects with the poor, working in these very dangerous communities. I would want to support them immediately. So, however patronising it seems, surely something is better than nothing!! And what is wrong with teaching them to use what assets they have left. Is it better to just fill them with anger and hate? Angry people still need to eat. They still need medicine. They still need to feel that someone cares about them.

Joel forgive me, but I do not understand why you feel that people who endanger their own lives to do what they believe is helping their oppressed countryman is on a par with Apartheid. Maybe they should just stay at home?? They, I believe, are trying to share as they can, they do not see the indigenous as cursed. They are not, at this time, able to carry out a more fundamental distribution of wealth. I do share your beliefs on the charity of giving/sharing and I am sure that they do get some feeling of inner goodness from this sharing, but I must try to convey my feeling that the people I originally wrote about are doing this because they have an obligation to give back!! They believe the bible tells them this. I am not a theologian so I do not know how accurate it is, but I have seen with my own eyes, children happier and healthier as a consequence, so I can't knock it, sorry!!

The mainstream press does not tell the world about these kinds of works, nothing of the positives. Recently I wrote to channel 4 in England complaining how in a documentary they were again painting Colombia as full of thieves and murderers. The trouble is many people then believe that represents the entire population. And you and I both know that is not true of any country in the world and certainly not, in my experience, Colombia. Laura in writing her article is, in spite of my misgivings, bravely trying to make a difference, all be from her perspective, and I have to acknowledge that equally loudly.

Maybe, just maybe, Narco News can help to redress the balance, without watering down its philosophies and without selling out to Bush, Uribe or any other politician or government. Political change can come from many directions.

Sorry to be so long winded.... but this is all very dear to me.

I think we all have the same dream..... it’s just that we see the road there a little differently.

Middle-class Christians and jumping to conclusions

Submitted February 17, 2005 - 11:10 pm by Dan Feder
Paul, let me say first that I appreciate your contributions here, and that your honest, contrarian viewpoints have generated some of the more interesting discussions on this site lately.

Something I’ve noticed in your comments here, though, is an unfortunate tendency to read what you want into a text in order to support a point. In the email published above from your “middle class” Colombian friends, President Uribe is not mentioned at all, either explicitly or implicitly. And yet you present it as an example of good people who “on the surface seem to see some good in President Uribe.”

Similarly, in your comments on Laura del Castillo’s article, you write:

“To conclude that all middle and upper class people are self serving is an utter insult to many thousands of decent people.”

This is what we call a straw man argument, Paul, in which you make up something that was said in order to bash it down. Nowhere in Laura’s article did she claim that “all” middle and upper class people are self-serving. Yet you insist on seeing something that isn’t there and attacking it. In a more serious example, you write in your other recent post:

“The two main guerrilla organizations, The FARC and the ELN are clearly no longer political in motive; their political agenda was lost a long time ago but reading between the lines this article, and others like it, seem to paint them almost like some kind of later day Robin Hood.”

Like Ron said, you are looking so far between the lines you are looking at some other text. Laura doesn’t even mention the FARC or the ELN in her article. I challenge you to find anything Laura has written for Narco News that romanticizes the current guerrilla movement in Colombia. But in your quest to challenge what you see as left/anti-imperialist orthodoxy in this site, you read assumed stances into peoples’ writing that often do not exist.

This type of thinking is along the same lines as that encouraged by Uribe and Bush: that the government is fighting “terrorism,” and any opposition to government policy must mean support for terrorism.

This type of groupthink is oppressive in the U.S., and deadly in Colombia. I am not trying to say that you support paramilitarism, but this knee-jerk association of any principled opposition – to government policies, or to the kinds of commercial “investment” in Colombia that bring sickness, unemployment, homelessness, and hunger, rather than jobs – with guerrilla sympathies and therefore terrorism is one that you should be much more cautious to make.

Your distress over whether or not the middle class is treated “fairly” in the pages of Narco News, is, I think, quite misplaced. If your middle-class friends from Cali are truly concerned for the people of Bajo Calima and places like it, then they will also be concerned with denouncing the policies that have driven these people into poverty and given impunity to the death squads who threaten to drive them off their land. (You can accuse the guerrillas of many things, I suppose, but clearing campesinos off their land to make way for corporations and foreigners is not one of them.) If their priorities are with the oppressed, they will not be offended by critiques of the political direction of the more comfortable classes, which is the root cause of much of the suffering they have seen. (Just as the gringos who seriously sympathize with or fight for those who suffer as a result of U.S. policies will not freak out when someone says something critical of gringos in general.)

On a slightly different subject, your friends conclude by saying, “We trust that God is in control and that He loves the people of Bajo Calima.” I have no wish to disparage the many worthy projects that Christians carry out around the world, especially those that take political stands against things that are wrong by any moral code – the movement to shut down the S.O.A. comes to mind. I am suspicious, though, of affluent Christians (I don’t know what your friends’ economic situation is but it is obviously much better than that of the people they are working with) who lament the suffering they see around them and just “trust in God” to end it.

I have a friend in Mexico who works with a religious organization. She does great things and I have a lot of respect for her work. She told me of an experience she had where she went into a very poor neighborhood in a Mexican city where her church had been operating for nearly 20 years. The people in this neighborhood, despite all of the wealth that flowed through that city’s downtown businesses (including a pretty big tourist industry), had no running water, and sewage flowed in the streets. The people from the church were angry. Why? Because the city would not provide services? Because the church didn’t have enough money to fill in for the city and start projects itself? No, because after all this time they had spent in the neighborhood, the people still wouldn’t give their lives to Christ. Meanwhile, the church hadn’t done a damn thing to change the situation.

As I said, I see how faith can give people the strength to struggle, and how religious organizations can be a force for good and applaud those that are. But I feel that in other cases such efforts have more to do with making middle-class people, as Joel put it, FEEL selfless and charitable, rather than making them look at their own privilege, and work to change the social dynamic that allows such great disparities to exist. I hope your friends are of the former school of thought rather than the latter. If there is a God I’m sure she does love the people of Bajo Calima. But the decisions that decide their future and ours are made here on Earth.  

Getting into semantics.

Submitted February 18, 2005 - 9:52 pm by Paul Silvester
I accede to a number of your points. Firstly, I do read between the lines and I will accept that possibly I misread or over interpret what I read on occasions. But how we interpret anything is a personal matter based on our conditioning, our experiences and our biases I guess and I have as many as the next man!

Dan Felder wrote that as President Uribe was not mentioned by name in the email I presented to you, that I therefore was reading way too deep in between the lines when I commented that they "seem on the surface to see some good in President Uribe" This comment was made because of two very specific pieces or rhetoric in the same email and written directly by my friends

  1. On October 17, we travelled to the main village of Bajo Calima with the purpose of working together with a group of government officials .......
  2. At this time, people are beginning to return home as a result of ceasefire promoted by the government ......
They are pretty clear unambiguous statements. Therefore we have the evidence that they are working with a government agency to some degree and they then went on to reporting a positive result of a Uribe Government policy. Or is the people going home not a positive result? I find it pretty difficult to believe that they would work with government officials if they did not believe some good would come of it. Or that these officials, Uribe's officials, were not predisposed to help.

I fail to see how anyone can see that this does not show, or at least give credence to the belief that they see some good in the government, ipso facto Uribe. I don’t even think it's reading between the lines at all, it seems pretty obvious to me. Also, I must confess that I know full well that they both voted for Uribe in the last election and have pointed out to me a number of positives as well as negatives over the last year or so.

Dan Felder continued;

Similarly, in your comments on Laura del Castillo’s article, you write:

""To conclude that all middle and upper class people are self serving is an utter insult to many thousands of decent people.” This is what we call a straw man argument, Paul, in which you make up something that was said in order to bash it down. Nowhere in Laura’s article did she claim that “all” middle and upper class people are self-serving".

I have copied and pasted Laura's exact words;

"But so that those sectors of the middle class (generally made up of “social climbers”) and of the upper classes (generally made up of ranchers, industrialists, businessmen and high society folks who are simply trying to safeguard their property and wealth)"

True, she didn't actually use the term 'self serving', I created that to abbreviate what I believed were her sentiments,  but I consider that it is reasonable to conclude that 'social climbers' are self serving. To be a social climber and community minded would be, to me, an oxymoron. Likewise anyone who is 'simply' trying to protect their property and wealth can, I feel, be reasonably described as self serving. They are protecting 'the self'. But we are into semantics now! Likewise she didn't say 'all’, she softened the blow with 'generally' and that implies what? 9 out of 10, 99 out of 100, it is certainly some kind of majority, who knows what Laura's definition of generally is. My interpretation is 'the overwhelming majority' and although that is not ALL, and you are right to critise me for using the word 'all', it is pretty damn close.

Laura goes on to point out in the next paragraph, how the police and the paramilitaries will be stronger if Uribe is re-elected, and I don’t argue this, however the proximity of this statement is open to the conclusion that the same middle class and upper class she describes will benefit from and even approve of these strenghenings. Therefore I feel she does clearly imply that, to use her terminology, 'generally' these classes support these organisations as serving their 'social climbing' and 'wealth preservation'. Sorry, but that's how I read it!

You are right that Laura herself does not state any specific support for the FARC or ELN, however her arguments are similar to those I have seen and heard from those organisations. Which drew me to the conclusion that she tacitly agrees with their 'policies' and therefore indirectly their behaviour.

I do accept that my use of Robin Hood in relation to this particular article was probably clouded by other articles I have read and I do, in hindsight, regret using that term of phrase in relation to Laura's writing. I am also prepared to accede to the idea that she may and only may agree with some of the 'policies' of FARC or ELN without agreeing with the majority. Only she can answer that question.

But this is why I bang on about balanced reporting. One thousand people could have huge differences of opinion about Laura's article, her motivations, biases etc and I clearly have mine, largely due to what I saw as misrepresenting some of the population of Colombia and a sense of clear fear mongering due to the fact that she A) failed to report that the Colombian Constitutional Court may well not allow Uribe's planned changes anyway and B) wrote "“undoubtedly, things will get better for Uribe, who by 2007 will believe himself to have become some kind of demigod, and will be thinking about his next strategy, to create a law that will let him become president for life, and then his children, and his children’s children…”. Which is, unless she has a crystal ball, clearly hypothesis. Those inflammatory few sentences coloured my view of her entire article. Not ideal I accept and some could argue that I should be more 'politically mature' but I am human and just as you all have your own 'trigger points', I have mine. For the past four years I have fought the negative feelings held about ordinary Colombian people. And I intend to go on fighting it.

Ironically some of the most balanced and interesting opinions have come from the dialogues I started with my original comment and this, to me, is the 'power' of Narco News. It has actually made ME think and it has changed my mind on a number of issues.....  I don’t wish to hide behind it, but I have found, the devils advocate approach has stimulated the best responses, the best 'news' and has ended up altering my perspective.

Dan then goes on;

"Your distress over whether or not the middle class is treated “fairly” in the pages of Narco News, is, I think, quite misplaced. If your middle-class friends from Cali are truly concerned for the people of Bajo Calima and places like it, then they will also be concerned with denouncing the policies that have driven these people into poverty and given impunity to the death squads who threaten to drive them off their land".

Dan you answer that yourself in your other posted comment and I repeat it here verbatim;

"You ask why more “socialists” aren’t out working with the people. There is a 20,000-member assassination squad spread throughout the country led by right-wing fanatics obsessed with smashing anything that smells even remotely “socialist,” which in this case means doing anything that threatens the privilege and power of the elite".

So if my friends denounce as you suggest they then potentially, by your own argument, become the victims of these "death squads" And dead men can't feed or cloth anyone!

I too have misgivings about trusting God to end the suffering and do little else. I have berated many Christians for just this. Especially the more voyeuristic who pop up from time to time.

The church in Mexico you site and their behaviour make me want to vomit. This disgusts me entirely.

So out of this we do have some harmony at least!

In conclusion, after a number of excellent comments and much thought provoking analysis, with the notable exception of Benjamin Melancon who made some reasoned suggestions as to policy direction, solutions as to policy questions/alternatives I have posed over the last three or four days are still pretty thin on the ground. It seems to be a case of get rid of the devil we know and replace him with anyone leaning left.... Don't ask why, just as long as we get rid of Uribe....

On apartheid and ruling class christianity

Submitted February 18, 2005 - 12:03 am by Joel Wiens
My comment about Apartheid was based on an overly simple picture that you drew about your friends in an effort to show that there were people of good will in the middle class of Columbia.  The language I reacted against, which I quoted, is a language of entitlement that saturates the evangelical Christian world regarding the good life people find themselves in at this point in history as middle class citizens of their countries.  I grew up in this world and I've travelled widely in it - I find it hard to believe Columbia is all that different.  This sense of being blessed, which is natural enough given how pretty we are sitting up here as middle class citizens, easily leads to identifying havenots with the opposite of blessing, in biblical language: curse. This in turn encourages a sense of "otherness", based in theological reasoning, that prevents any sort of profound identification with the people they are doing "good works" for.  It was this sense of "otherness", in part at least, that allowed Apartheid to become so deeply established in a Christian society.  And it is this same sense of "otherness" that allows middle class Christian citizens to feel OK about systemic disparity in their societies as a direct result of there being a middle and upper class at all.  I think this is a very basic and grievious problem and I think it's necessary to be blunt about it.

As to the much fuller picture you drew in your response to Bill and my comments, it looks like you have some wonderful friends.  I don't find this surprising at all, given the people I have come to know in my own community.  What I find a little surprising is that you feel the need to shield them so much from criticism.  If they are really doing good, that should stand on it's own!  Stand with them and stand with those that criticise the systemic brutalization of those whom your friends are trying to serve.  But you needn't get upset when we rightly criticise a segment of society that is lending support to someone who has distinguished himself as the Narco-Candidate and as a helping hand to the US in their imperial designs in the region.

Where are all the activists in Colombia?

Submitted February 18, 2005 - 2:36 am by Dan Feder
I have a great many reservations about the merits or not of evangelising, but I have to say, the ONLY people I have met in Colombia who, in a humanitarian sense, reach out in any way to the poor and especially the indigenous people tend to be the Christians. And a very large percentage of them are middle class. They don't worry about the risks they take, (and they are huge, one group I know tried to evangelise to the guerrillas, three weeks in the mountains, and they all came back safely!!) they believe God protects them. So the risks are worthwhile. I have argued with them on many occasions, that their faith is not enough, they have to change the system as well and this sadly  tends to fall on deaf ears, they truly believe that God will find a solution.

First off, saying that no one from the middle class outside of the Christian community goes into poorer, threatened parts of the country is simply not true. There are a slew of NGOs and solidarity groups, comprised of both Colombians and foreigners, that do many types of work all over the country. I can’t say for certain if they outnumber the missionaries but I have a feeling they do. With a little research you could plug into one of these.

That said, Colombia's poor and indigenous are not sitting around waiting for charitable members of the middle-class to come help them, religious or otherwise. There is a long tradition of social struggle in Colombia, of people demanding progressive social change, of not “reaching out” to the poor but fighting alongside them. The people who really put their lives on the line are not those that come from privileged backgrounds to help the poor (not to diminish the the very admirable risks that your friends and people like them take), but the people working within their OWN communities, trying to “change the system.” These people are the targets of a campaign of systematic assassination that has been going on for 50 years, and the U.S. has been supplying the weapons and political support for this campaign for just as long.

You ask why more “socialists” aren’t out working with the people. There is a 20,000-member assassination squad spread throughout the country led by right-wing fanatics obsessed with smashing anything that smells even remotely “socialist,” which in this case means doing anything that threatens the privilege and power of the elite.  

The following is a quick translation of a story from today’s El Tiempo, the country's biggest daily newspaper. It is not some strange coincidence that this tragedy happened just as we are having this discussion – such events and headlines are the norm. Thousands have died the same way.

Putumayo leader who reported threats two weeks ago assassinated

José Hurtado had strongly criticized the paramilitary groups that operate in this region on the Ecuadorian border.

Hurtado, a 45-year-old wholesaler who led a civil resistance campaign against the right-wing paramilitaries known as the Self-Defense Forces, was shot on Wednesday by unknown persons in San Miguel (700 kilometers south-east of Bogotá), said a regional police spokesman.

The victim headed a peaceful three-day protest in January against the pressure from the paramilitaries, the killing of three people and the kidnapping of another in the area.

In the Putumayo, the area where the country’s most extensive coca plantations are found, operate three fronts of guerillas and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), an organization which has been in peace talks with the government for the last two years.

Between the lines!

Submitted February 18, 2005 - 10:03 pm by Paul Silvester
So if I am to be critised for reading to much between the lines, sometimes fairly I might add (I address this more fully elsewhere), I feel It is fair to crisise Dan Felder for the same thing.

Dan Felder writes;

"First off, saying that no one from the middle class outside of the Christian community goes into poorer, threatened parts of the country is simply not true"

Dan, I was very careful NOT to say that no one outside the christian community go into the poorer areas. I actually said;

"but I have to say, the ONLY people I have met in Colombia who, in a humanitarian sense, reach out in any way to the poor and especially the indigenous people tend to be the Christians. "

Dan I am sorry but that is entirely different. I repeat "THE ONLY PEOPLE I HAVE MET". Now as I have clearly not met every Colombian how can this translate into "NO ONE FROM OUTSIDE THE MIDDLE CLASS"? I also used the term 'tend' also indicating clearly that it was debatable fact.

This is not a reasonable interpreation of a theme, mood or bias. If I knew a thousand people in Colombia (and I don't) this would still only be 1 in 50,000 of the population and is a million miles from 'ALL'. Had I said "generally the only people are Christians" that would be a different matter (!!!) But I didn't did I?

I also made it clear that I was refering specifically to a humanitarian sense, so I made it clear I was not really refering to political activity . Politics and humanitarianism are not always comfortable bed mates! So I separate them.

I feel particularly aggrieved as you recently berated me for drawing a conclusion from too far between the lines, and possibly you had a point, then only to go on and do the same yourself.

Dan, I agree completely with your other sentiments.  I consider all those trying to make Colombia a better place brave and I abhor the assasination of anyone, whoever they may be. trade unionist, rights worker or campesino and My heart goes to the family of José Hurtado.

Final thoughts on this...

Submitted February 19, 2005 - 12:26 am by Dan Feder
One of the strengths of this site is that despite often heated debates, our co-publishers maintain a level of mutual respect and never stoop to the “trolling” and insulting that characterizes almost every other community site I have seen or participated in. So, let’s all pat ourselves on the back for that and keep that standard in mind (me included).

Also, I agree this is turning into a semantic argument, which is kind of a waste of energy and not what this forum should be about. So I’ll respond briefly to your comments and let you have the last word if you like, and we can set this to rest.

To respond to your comment above, it is my understanding that humanitarian workers carrying out non-political projects tend to get in there any way they can, and work with any officials they need to, whether or not they support or agree with the politics of those officials or their bosses. Humanitarian workers were in Afghanistan for years before the war and had to work with Taliban officials to deliver food and medicine to people in need. I’m not discounting the possibility that your friends support aspects of Uribe’s policies that they see as making their work possible (obviously, as you explain in your later comment, they do), but I still don’t see it expressed clearly in the letter itself.

As to the second squabble here, let’s get our accusations straight. I was not accusing you of saying no one “outside the middle class” does charitable work, but rather that WITHIN the middle class, it is only Christians who do such work. And all right, perhaps I exaggerated your claim. But you say here:

“What Joel are you suggesting, that the indigenous people have to wait for ideologically correct political change? They will all be wiped out before that happens. If I found socialists in these communities I would want to praise them from the rooftops. But they, in my experience, are not there!!!! Why... I don't know. I would relish the opportunity to hear of politically motivated projects with the poor, working in these very dangerous communities. I would want to support them immediately.”

I interpreted this to mean that in your experience, (and why would you tell us about your experience if you didn’t think it was correct?) it is Christians, and not people of other tendencies, who do projects among the poor.  I don’t agree that, if I misinterpreted this, it is the same as what I had criticized you for doing, but I can see why you feel misrepresented and I apologize.

Meanwhile, in Brazil...

Submitted February 17, 2005 - 10:57 am by Benjamin Melançon
IndyMedia reports:
A large military policy operation with 2,500 men has started this morning (February 16) for the eviction of the land occupation Sonho Real (Real Dream) in the city of Goiânia, Brazil. Two people got killed, over 800 people got arrested and several people are wounded (five were very seriously wounded). Among the arrested, two Indymedia volunteers, one from Goiânia and one from Indymedia New York.

Three thousand families put their lives on the line for justice, and two reporters joined them.  I trust that God wants the people of the world love one another enough that we find a way to stop governments from killing people who claim only a right to a livelihood.

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