Are we there yet?

Winnipeg, Manitoba

When does a journey begin? Is it when one steps out the door, suitcase in hand, or before that? I think my journey to Colombia started long before this Saturday when I will head for the Winnipeg airport. It is hard to pin point when it started, but it was perhaps last summer when I started working part time at the Refugee Program desk of MCC Manitoba. I heard that a trip to Colombia was in the works for those workings in MCC’s refugee network. Back then I did not expect to still be doing this job this summer so I did not expect to be going to Colombia. That was fine with me.

I sometimes question the value of short overseas learning trips. This attitude in part comes from my involvement with hosting learning tours while we were in South Africa. While we enjoyed hosting people and saw it as an important part of our jobs, we were sometimes left with the impression that a short visit to another culture can only serve to give one a false sense of understanding a situation. I left South Africa in 2005 with a profound sense of how difficult it is to understand another culture, and so I have maintained a healthy skepticism of learning tours. Having said this, I think that MCC works very hard at doing learning tours well, and it seems that MCC Colombia has a lot of experience hosting learning tours. They probably have worked out what works and what does not.

As months marched on and I continued to fill in at this job, I was encouraged to go on the trip and so a few months ago, I reluctantly booked a plane ticket.

I hadn’t thought much about Colombia until I started working on refugee issues for MCC Manitoba. I knew that it was a dangerous place known for coffee and cocaine. I also knew that there was a strong Mennonite Church there that works hard to promote peace, and has written challenging letters to the Mennonite Churches of North America.

As I started preparing for my journey to Colombia, I learned more about the nature of the conflict and violence in the country. As I understand it, the conflict can be thought of simplistically as the “left vs. right” conflict that we in North America think of when we think of Latin America. On one side are the wealthy land owners who want to maintain control of the situation and engage paramilitary groups to do this. On the other side are Marxist rebels who are trying to liberate the people. In Colombia this has being going on for at least 40 years and some would say even longer.

Of course it is not that simple. Conflicts which go on for decades can develop their own inertia and original motivations can be lost. People in Colombia point to corruption as part of the problem and many groups terrorize though political assignations, and kidnapping and they raise money through the drug trade.

As I have done some reading in preparation for the trip, I have discovered that Canada is connected to the country in a few significant ways. First, there are a number of Canadian resource companies that are active in mining and oil exploration in Colombia. Because access to the land is important they side with the right-wing, or at the very least are seen to side with them. Their desire to control the land has gotten them tied up with the violent political struggle within the country. Related to this the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) also helped to re-write the rules around royalty payments for natural resources in the country that heavily favours foreign based extraction companies at the expense of the Colombian people.

A second problem that Canada is tied up in, is the negotiation of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Colombia and Canada. Human rights groups, labour leaders and the Mennonite Church of Colombia all oppose this deal for a number of reasons. Basically they say that this deal would reward the Colombian government at a time when human rights violations have continued and perhaps even escalated. On the other side, the Canadian and Colombian governments point to successes and suggest that things are getting better, so this is a good time to remove impediments to trade and investments to help grow the legitimate economy in Colombia. This issue has become a political football in both the US and Canada and that has made it difficult for both sides on this issue in the US and Canada to move from their traditional positions on FTAs.

Finally, Refugee issues are a part of the Colombia Canada connection and that is of course the reason I am going there. There are by some accounts 3.8 million Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in Colombia and another half million Colombian refugees who have fled to neighbouring countries. Since 2003, 15 to 20 percent of refugees coming to Canada are Colombian and Canada is planning to accept nearly 2,000 Colombians in 2008. The Mennonite Churches in Colombia are involved in identifying people who seem to have no other alternative.

As I travel around, I will be interested to see how Colombians feel about these issues and what we in Canada can do to lessen the violence of this place. Are the heavy handed tactics of the US backed President Urbie and his assault on drugs, kidnapping and corruption making a different that should be lauded and rewarded with an FTA? I have read a number of op-ed pieces in Canadian and US papers which suggest this. Or is all of his work not making a difference in the drug trade and the violent political conflict? Does a different approach need to be tried to bringing peace need to be tried? My working hypothesis is the latter, but I hope to be open to learning.

So, I am somewhat reluctantly leaving for Colombia this weekend in order to continue my journey. I think my destination (or goal) is not so much a place, as it is an understanding. I hope to be able to come back to Manitoba and in some way bring others on this journey to better understand. I hope to see how the church there works with refugees and how the church here can be more involved in sponsoring these refugees. Ultimately we do this to bring peace in a conflict that has shaped more than a generation of Colombians.