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On march 12,1999, THE ÍNTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS of the Organization of the American States published its Third Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Colombia. In the fifth chapter, it states Ver documento completo en archivo adjunto (formato PDF)

A couple of years ago, I gave a talk about my country’s situation to a mainly Christian group, in Zaragoza, Spain, and when I finished, a woman scolded me, quite angrily, because I had left in the group a sensation that there would be no improvements and that the situation would continue to worsen. According to her, I had failed in my duty to give a lecture about the situation from the perspective of Christian hope and therefore leave a sensation of hope with the audience.
I (...)

Molti anni fa, quando esposi la situazione del mio Paese di fronte ad un pubblico in maggioranza cristiano a Saragozza, in Spagna, al termine una signora protestó, molto alterata, perché avevo lasciato nel pubblico la sensazione che non c’era rimedio e che la situazione avrebbe continuato a peggiorare. Secondo lei sarei venuto meno al mio dovere di fare un’analisi della situazione secondo l’ottica della speranza cristiana e di lasciare negli ascoltatori una sensazione di (...)

To understand paramilitarism and how it functions in Colombia, it is useful to look at the root meanings of the term. Crisostomo Eseverri Hualde, the author of an erudite Dictionary of Etymology of Spanish Helenisms, published in Spain in 1944, notes the significance of the Greek preposition “para,” used as a prefix in numerous Spanish language words. According to him, there are three meanings of this preposition: 1) approximation; 2) transposition; and 3) deviation or (...)

n the spring of 1986, I was invited by the Catholic Development Committee Against Hunger to take part in the Lenten celebration in France. Before I began to speak, I asked members of the audience what kind of images they associated with my country. Invariably, they associated Colombia with drugs, coffee, cyclists (the annual Tour de France bicycle race is held there) and volcanos (where the November 1985 tragedy of Armero took place, a small town in Colombia that was almost totally buried (...)

A telephone call I received last February 23 left me shaken and confused. Luis Eduardo Guerra, one of the first and most tenacious leaders of the San José de Apartadó Peace Community had disappeared. Another of the community‘s leaders told me that from what all they had been able to find out, it was likely he had been murdered. Groups of people from the community had set off to look for him but held out little hope of finding him alive. More and more calls came in that day and the next until, early on the 25th, I traveled to San José with Gloria Cuartas, the former mayor of the town of Apartadó. I went with a heavy heart. I knew the bodies of Luis Eduardo, his companion Bellanira and 11 year old son, Deiner Andrés, had been found. Another of the region’s leaders, Alfonso Tuberquia, who I knew and whose son Santiago I had baptized several weeks earlier, had also been murdered alongside his wife and children.