COLOMBIA: 'We Will Never Recover Our Standard of Living'

• by Humberto Márquez (caracas)
• Thursday, July 02, 2009
• Inter Press Service

She earns a living cleaning houses, catering and as a seamstress, while her husband Jaime* has a job fixing cell-phones, and their children attended school. But although they have made a go of it, their experience as uprooted people is still an open wound.

'Back home in Tolima (southwest of Bogotá) we had some small farms with coffee plantations, pastures, some cattle and riding horses. We marketed our produce in the city,' she told IPS, recalling her life before 2001.

'But we had to leave everything behind. Relatives and acquaintances divided up our property, it's all lost to us. We will never recover our standard of living,' she said sadly.

Most of the 200,000 Colombians who over the past decade have fled the civil war in their country and taken refuge in Venezuela are people of more humble origins, small farmers fleeing violence and threats by the far-right paramilitaries or left-wing guerrillas. They usually settle in rural areas in the western and southwestern Venezuelan border states, mingling with the local people.

Amalia, who talked to IPS at the Caracas office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), came with Jaime to Caracas, 1,000 kilometres from the border with Colombia, because they had relatives in the Venezuelan capital who helped them get established.

Why did they flee? 'One day in November 2001 my husband and father-in-law were intercepted by a FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) patrol, and guess what? Youngsters who were our neighbours and worked on one of our farms were among them,' said Amalia.

On that occasion the FARC kidnapped a dozen local landowners and businessmen. Her father-in-law was freed to go and raise the ransom of 300,000 dollars at once, while Jaime was held hostage.

'They made him wear a guerrilla uniform, so they could use him as a human shield if the army attacked. They stayed put during the day, and hiked long distances at night, going through farms and national parks, in constant danger,' she said. 'Jaime says he always expected to be shot dead with a bullet in the back at any moment.'

Members of the FARC frequently called Amalia's house to tell her to pay up quickly or her husband would be killed. They said if she went to the police - which she did not - they would chop Jaime up in pieces and send them to her in a black bag. Her elder son, a diabetic, was suffering a health crisis. The younger did not eat or speak for days.

Amalia says they were the worst days of her life. She still keeps a scrap of paper, folded in four, where Jaime scribbled a few lines to let her know he was still alive. She opens it, holding back tears. In the note he asks the boys to behave themselves, study hard and obey their mother.

By a stroke of luck or the fortunes of war, when the FARC patrol was taking Jaime to join kidnap victims held by another guerrilla unit, they were attacked by the army and the guard nearest to him was the first casualty. He made it home 10 hours later.

But he was not free from harassment. 'The FARC called again, saying they would avenge his escape and kill us unless we paid the ransom they demanded. They tapped our telephones, they knew all about our bank accounts and even what we ate,' said Amalia.

While Jaime answered telephone calls from radio stations wanting details about his kidnapping and liberation, Amalia resigned herself to leaving everything behind in exchange for living long enough to see their children grow up.

They called the Ombudsman's Office and Cáritas, the social department of the Colombian Catholic Church, and left the country, joining the over four million internally displaced Colombians and refugees.

Every year between 2,000 and 3,000 Colombian refugees trickle into Venezuela, often saying they are merely looking for jobs or a better life, according to John Fredrikson, the UNHCR representative in Caracas. Forty percent of them are children.

For security’s sake and to avoid reprisals, most of the refugees keep a low profile.

Only 13,700 Colombians have requested formal refugee status with the government's National Commission for Refugees, whose chairman, Ricardo Rincón, said that 4,500 applications have been analysed and 2,300 approved so far.

When Amalia and Jaime decided to leave Colombia, 'we were given the choice of going to Canada, Spain or Venezuela,' Amalia said. 'We didn't want to go to a far-off country, or to somewhere that they spoke a different language, and since we had some relatives in Caracas we decided to come here.'

She has regretted that decision a number of times, because she believes that in Canada, for example, they would have had a better chance to rebuild some of their former prosperity. 'Here we have been able to work and study, but it's been very hard, although you can't expect everything to be handed to you on a platter. You have to work hard and make your own way.'

However, she and her family feel trapped. 'We can't live as well here as we did in Colombia, we can't go back to our land because it's too dangerous, and we're not eligible for resettlement in a third country,' she lamented.

Canada is one of the 14 countries taking part in UNHCR resettlement programmes, along with the United States, Australia and the countries of Scandinavia.

But the U.N. agency only refers about one percent of the world's refugees for resettlement to a third country, and focuses particularly on families who are still at grave risk in the country where they sought protection.

Amalia occasionally gets together with other refugees and catches up on UNHCR news. She participates in community chores in the housing complex where her family lives, and holds on to her dream of resettlement and a better life. But for the moment, she is concentrating on encouraging her elder son to go to university.

* Not their real names, for safety reasons.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service