En los Filos

At times, fear has kept community members from exploring the mountain ridges above their farm. In May, 2004, in spite of the signs they’ve posted around the border of the farm asking all soldiers to respect the peaceful nature of the community and stay off of the property, more than one hundred paramilitary soldiers came over this ridge, forcing the community to flee their land and live once again in a city shelter for six weeks. Today, the ridge-top pasture feels serene and unthreatening.

A beloved patriarch, speaking at one of the community’s first organizational meetings in 1998, said: To tell the truth is not a sin, and if one must die to tell it, we will die. Thanks to the denunciations we have made, the injustice that is taking place in Colombia is known. We need to educate our children for work, not for war.