by Max Schoening and Sibylla Brodzinsky, Voice of Witness
on September 13, 2011
“And the worst of all is when the things happen to you and you can’t do anything,” said María, a displaced woman in Colombia who has endured abuses by guerrillas, paramilitaries and the army. “And you have to just watch and simply be silent. If you say something, it will happen all the same. That’s when I saw that the only real right we have as people is to be silent. Maybe that’s the real right I’ve exercised here, in Colombia. It’s watch and be silent, if you want to survive.”
LAWGEF is pleased to publish this selection from a book coming out in 2012 from McSweeney’s Voice of Witness, by editors Max Schoening and Sibylla Brodzinsky. This will be a powerful collection of oral histories, compiling the life stories of a selection of Colombia’s over 5 million internally displaced people. In their own words, narrators recount their lives before displacement, the reasons for their flight, their personal tragedies and struggles to rebuild their lives. By amplifying these unheard voices through the intimacy of first person narrative, this Voice of Witness book aims to increase awareness of Colombia’s human rights catastrophe and illuminate the human impact of the country’s ongoing war.
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by Andrew Carpenter and Jennifer Johnson
on July 21, 2011
Last month, a congressional report noted that a staggering 70% of the weapons recovered in Mexico in 2009 and 2010— and submitted for tracing— originated in the United States, overwhelmingly from Southwest border states. The controversial and highly flawed ATF Operation Fast and Furious has drawn attention to not just the staggering number of firearms that flow over our southern border, but to loopholes and shortcomings in our policies surrounding firearms purchases that have enabled straw purchasers (people who claim to buy weapons for themselves, but then pass them on to criminal groups) and other gun traffickers in the U.S. to channel thousands of weapons to organized crime in Mexico.
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by Juliana Morris
on August 30, 2011
When Ana Pineda* left her small village in Nacaome, Honduras in 2009, she was full of hope: “I had dreams of going to the United States to get a good job and to help support my mother and father.” But her hopes were soon crushed when she was kidnapped by criminal gangs in Coatzalcoalcos, a coastal city in Veracruz, Mexico that is a frequent transit point for Central American migrants. “They brought me to a house in Tamaulipas, Mexico and had me there for four months, imprisoned along with other Central Americans, South Americans, and Mexicans. I was abused, terribly abused. Many of the others were raped, even the men. Thank God I was able to escape.”
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by Whitley Raney, Guatemala Human Rights Commission USA
on July 13, 2011
Facundo Cabral, a singer/ songwriter from Argentina, was one of the leaders in nonviolent protest music throughout Latin America for over 50 years. Born in La Plata, Argentina in 1937, Cabral grew up in extreme poverty. As he learned to play the guitar, sing, and write, he quickly became known as the voice of the people who could not speak. His dedication to social justice movements and his response to violent military dictatorships in Latin America forced him into exile in Mexico following the Argentine coup in 1976, where he continued writing and performing, and gained wide-spread popularity. In 1996, the United Nations designated Cabral a "worldwide messenger of peace" for his continued commitment to the people and to justice and freedom for the powerless in Central and South America.
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The Latin America Working Group salutes our faith community colleagues who are taking a stance to protect the poor, around the world as well as in the United States. As we said in the attached letter, the budget should protect assistance to the most vulnerable in Latin America—and around the world, and here at home.
WASHINGTON -- Frustrated that their pleas to the Administration and Congress to protect funding for the nation's most vulnerable are being ignored, nearly a dozen leaders from the faith community were arrested in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol Building on Thursday, July 28th. Despite repeated warnings from the U.S. Capitol Police, the leaders refused to end their public prayers asking the Administration and Congress not to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. Over twenty-five other religious observers were present to witness the demonstration as an act of solidarity.
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by Mariel Perez
on April 25, 2011
Last year, 280,041 Colombian civilians were forced to leave their homes, fleeing from the extreme violence of Colombia’s decades-long conflict. This statistic is the centerpiece of a February Spanish-language report published by the Colombian human rights NGO CODHES, a group that has worked tirelessly for nearly two decades to shed light on the human rights crisis in Colombia. As CODHES’ report highlights, almost 33 percent of displaced civilians are forced to flee from zones that are a focus of “territorial consolidation,” the signature program of the Uribe administration that aimed to set up military control of areas of the countryside while also, at least in theory, expanding civilian government institutions.
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