Anarkismo.net: One, two, hundred Buenaventura throughout Colombia ... by Jos? Antonio Guti?rrez D. (fr, pt)

What is really distressing is that despite its apparently exceptional nature of the 
situation the Buenaventura is not so. Just think of Soacha or Altos de Cazuca, not too far 
from the capital. Or see pictures of the massacres of Medell?n. The paramilitaries have 
worked to create a two hundred Buenaventura throughout the Colombian territory. ---- "They 
discovered a series of disfigured bodies scattered throughout the resort, remains a blind 
social antagonism and eradicator. This scene could match something absolutely chaotic and 
messy, insofar as the bodies were dismembered, scattered and piled everywhere. But it was 
also possible to find scenes where there was an intentional order, a true staging. (...) 
This procedure was designed primarily to terrorize the villagers who were fleeing 
abandoning everything. "
Mar?a Victoria Uribe Alarc?n, "Anthropology of inhumanity," 2004, p.92

Once you arrive at Buenaventura, one feels a sense of unease. It seems that all the 
buildings are on the verge of falling prey to mildew and rot. Unlike other regions of 
Colombia, one breathes distrust and fear ... a sense of abandonment is immediately 
obvious. It is amazing that most of the international trade in Colombia pass through this 
port, which indicates the contradictory nature of capitalism in which investment and 
dispossession are inseparable terms. Poverty is a relative concept and becomes more odious 
it is surrounded by wealth.

What happens to Buenaventura, which appear daily dismembered human bodies floating among 
the mangroves or scattered in the streets, is not something unknown to the vast majority. 
Suddenly, everyone began to talk of Buenaventura in Colombia. Of journalistic accounts and 
full of indignation television programs describe the plight of the city facing the 
paramilitary beam (now operating under the names Urabe?os, or Rastrojos Empresa). A horror 
outcry was raised by the "casas de pique" (slaughter houses), real butchers for humans, 
everyone - except the police, the army and the authorities - knows and sees. But the 
treatment given to such information, as always, is very poor, sensationalist, 
decontextualized. It is no different treatment periodically receive other humanitarian 
scandal in Colombia. One day, the media are outraged by the false positives, one by 
forcibly displaced people, then it is the turn of femicide, they stomp, accuse, are 
outraged, and then nothing happens. It is as if through the low coverage range of these 
facts we wanted to exorcise the horror and soothe consciences, by trivializing the same 
time terror. Now it is the turn of Buenaventura.

It is as if these media spasmodic waves sought to concentrate all the terror that exists 
in Colombia on a single point, converting the conflict that consumes the country in one 
single event, isolated, identifiable on the map. But the reality is that the 
dismemberment, which bear the undeniable mark paramilitaries - tolerated by everyone 
except those who suffer - occur in many parts of the country, wherever the economic 
interests coexist with the (para) militarization . What is really distressing is that 
despite its apparently exceptional nature of the situation the Buenaventura is not so. 
Just think of Soacha or Altos de Cazuca, not too far from the capital. Or see pictures of 
the massacres of Medell?n. The paramilitaries have worked to create a two hundred 
Buenaventura throughout the Colombian territory. And they did so with a chainsaw, machete 
and ax, always under the complacent gaze of so-called security forces.

One might think that the tragedy of Buenaventura is recent, but in fact it goes back a 
long time: there nearly 10 years that there is more guerrilla areas in Bajamar [litt. "Low 
Tide" area of the island Cascajal reclaimed from the sea by the Afro-Colombian population, 
who live in houses on stilts; 3500 families are threatened with eviction by a proposed 
port expansion and creation of a "Malecon", a seafront boulevard, NdT] and total control 
of paramilitary coincided with the worsening of cruelty. Paramilitaries who, according to 
all official reports do not exist, but are there. Buenaventura belies the repeated ad 
nauseam that the paramilitaries are a response to the so-called "horror" of the guerrillas 
and that, in the absence of guerrillas, they disappear for lack of reason to be lying. It 
is no coincidence that a boy confessed to me nervously, when I asked him during a bus trip 
to Buenaventura, when things had gone wrong: "It's when they turned guerrilla Then there 
began the brothel. "

Directory means of spreading terror is an old story: the desecration of the body of the 
victim is something that comes from the era of "violence" in the 40s It's that time exists 
one. rich to describe the terms of the horror lexicon: bocachiquiar (prepare fashionable 
fish "bocachico") picar pa 'tamal (cut to a tamal), the semilla matar (kill the seed), 
corte de corbata (cut- tie), of franela (cut flannel), mica (decapitation) of florero (cut 
flower pot etc.).

Symbolically, disrupting the body of the victim, it disrupts the community. It is not only 
to kill, but to complete the death, as if it feared the vengeance of death superstition, 
as Uribe Alarc?n says in his "Anthropology of inhumanity." According to her, the victim is 
animalized to create the spiritual to the physical distance shredding and space ad hoc 
ritual sacrifice is created. But even in the "casa de pique" model slaughter is 
reproduced, it goes even further, because in the real butchers, the animal is not tortured 
to death, it does not use axes or chainsaws, we do not live on the attached table for 
carving wood with cries of agony.

Here paramilitaries people do disappear partially. Sometimes we find the torso or head, 
but you can always find something, even if it is only your fingers. The horrible message 
is transmitted by physical evidence of torture at the same time that the ritual process 
described by Alfredo Molano vengeance is prevented: "The body is prepared by putting one 
of the clothes in which he was killed, it is attaches the big toe with a lace of a pair of 
recently purchased black shoes and put his mouth on a piece of paper with the names of the 
murderers. few days after the perpetrators are murdered or die of fright ". [1] Media 
which reproduce the event sensationalized, morbid and decontextualized, disseminate and 
amplify the terror and paralyzing fear of transmitting fully functional manner with 
respect to the objective of the paramilitaries.

What is the purpose of dismemberment to Buenaventura? Exactly what dismemberment aimed in 
the first cycle of violence: people flee, abandoning everything. Activists Process of 
Black Communities (PCN), told us during a visit to the port city, as part of the 10th 
Asturian-Irish delegation of human rights, the purpose of this was to turn the local 
population to pave the way for a large remodeling project cherished by local and national 
authorities. To make way for the airport and modern megaports that will match the 
requirements of free trade agreements and the Pacific Alliance, should evacuate the area a 
good number of poor blacks. It is easier to move than reinstalling people or reach a 
satisfactory agreement for them, especially when the "progress" is not intended to benefit 
them.

This violence is neither chaotic nor free, but answers too familiar pattern of widespread 
terror to move people and gain ground in the name of progress. This is a very ritualized 
violence: "The technique of terror requires that people realize, but do not speak them see 
the capture of victims in the neighborhood, how they are caught, they hear appeals. with 
the cries of mercy and leniency and finally screams of pain Then silence. terrible empty 
cries continue to resonate in the minds of people all afraid of being the next person on a 
list.. establishes. neighbors hear, hear the neighborhood, the area is known, the city is 
aware. authorities do not agree, do not see, do not know "[2]. Nevertheless, there is 
still resistance. The people of Nayero Puente, La Playita, have declared their 
neighborhood "living space and humanitarian", openly defying the paramilitaries. [3] Since 
February, there is massive popular protests against the paramilitaries, which joined even 
traders generally despised because we remember that it was they who funded the arrival of 
paramilitaries in 2000, but now " they are tired of being accused. " Local authorities, 
the police, military, merchants, all fueled monster skinning. The pencil with which the 
people writing his story has no gum. And thus build barriers confining the death machine.

It is now that people are trying to overcome their fear that the government responded by 
militarizing the port city. This militarization of course not intended to benefit many 
poor forever, but to accelerate the port and industrial project Buenaventura. Buenaventura 
seems to be the most desolate place on earth, and yet, even then, the Colombian people 
proved that he has moral reservations to build a better future: it will create a two 
hundred points of resistance from which to resume Buenaventura merchants of death. They 
shall not pass: nor their or their paramilitary megaports or antisocial development model.

Jos? Antonio Guti?rrez D.
04/16/2014

Notes

[1] http://www.elespectador.com/noticias/nacional/leones-y-bufalos-articulo-481022
[2] http://www.elespectador.com/opinion/remilitarizacion-buenaventura-columna-482425
[3]http://justiciaypazcolombia.com/Por-nuestro-presente-y-futuro-de

Tr Machetera http://www.tlaxcala-int.org/article.asp?reference=12250