RACISM FLOURISHES IN COLOMBIA

Oppression: Racial prejudice is rampant in Colombia where 11 million
blacks are social and political outcasts, an exile says.

AFRICAN-AMERICANS and others should know something about the war in
my country, Colombia. It's not about drugs. It's about greed and the
struggle for local control.

Someone who tries to declare neutrality in that situation invites
death, as my story shows.

You don't see black faces in seats of power in Colombia, even though
we number 11 million.

Social discrimination is strong -- it is still acceptable to make fun
of those of African descent in the media -- and few blacks finish
school. More than 82 percent of African-Colombians live below the
poverty line.

Choco, where I lived, is one of the country's biggest states, about
the size of Costa Rica -- but among the least populated, with 600,000
people, about 85 percent African-Colombian. It is extremely rich in
resources.

By the mid-1950s, I was known as a public official active in
community issues in Choco and an administrator of Bogota's
environmental protection agency.

I was named a candidate for governor by a coalition of independent
liberals and the National African Colombian Movement, a political
party. My platform was to defend our province against projects
launched by the country's traditional economic elite -- huge
infrastructure projects such as highways, giant ports and even a
proposed transoceanic canal. We get no benefit at all from such
projects.

We wanted to represent new processes of thought in the black
community. We also wanted to be visible in the national picture.

We won the election in l996, but there was fraud, and I was not
inaugurated until January 1998.

In October, I introduced a plan called "Choco, Territory of Peace."
We asked that the army, paramilitaries, and guerrillas leave our
department, and permit us to exercise neutrality.

This was published all over the country, and the army launched a
smear campaign against us. But this was the only way to avoid more of
the killing and abuses we had seen in Choco.

And it was a way of taking a position in the conflict -- not siding
with any armed groups -- but a solely political position.

By January 1999, an election ruling by the State Council, which
iscontrolled by traditional parties, forced me out of office.

I went to work as a consultant, and in June, I received a telephone
call from people who said they wanted advice about the environmental
consequences of projects in Choco.

We were to meet on a central street patrolled by plenty of police and
private guards in an exclusive Bogota neighborhood. I greeted a
well-dressed man, but then noticed he was standing next to a red
Toyota van with dark polarized windows -- the kind you can have only
with army authorization.

I didn't want to get inside, but somebody opened the door and pulled
me in, and I thought, "That's it, they're going to kill me right
now." It was between 12:30 and 1 in the afternoon on a busy street.
No one did anything.

The men in the van were armed with submachine guns. "Well, we're not
investors," they said.

They blindfolded me, and made me squat on the floor as they threw a
jacket over my head. The car took off fast.

Five minutes later, we stopped and went into an apartment. They took
off my blindfold, and I saw that black curtains covered the windows.
About 10 men, heavily armed, without uniforms, wearing no masks, were
there.

They made me sit in a chair, and told me that this was nothing
personal, that they were completing a mission for the United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a paramilitary group. They said the
people they work with were connected to the government and
economically powerful, and had to straighten out a problem.

Some of my decisions as governor had made these people lose money,
they said. Now I had to pay them back. I told them "No," until they
said, "If you are not going to pay, you'll work with us. We have
financial resources. Many people work with us. We can finance your
campaigns, and soon you'll be a political figure again in Choco."

To remind me of my dependence on them, they were continually handling
their weapons.

They brought me lunch, but I couldn't eat, had no appetite. They
showed me pictures they had taken of my wife and small children, at
school and walking home. "Call your wife. Tell her you're at a
meeting and will be late," they said.

Later, all of them left the room. Then, over and over, someone would
come in, say nothing to me, then leave again.

"What's happening?" I'd say. But there were no answers.

Then they took me to a small room where I sat on the bed, under
guard, until about 6 p.m. Someone came to announce angrily, "This is
no game." They were going to bring in my wife as a guarantee, until I
paid them 500 million pesos (about $280,000).

They put a stack of checks in front of me and told me to sign.
"You're crazy, I owe nothing," I said. They put a gun to my head.
"We've killed others right here." I thought of those pictures of my
wife and sons.

I signed checks. I recorded a statement that I was signing willingly,
but all this took hours, because I kept speaking in a voice that
tried to show I was being forced. They got angry. After what seemed
like a thousand tries, about 3 in the morning, they seemed satisfied.

They took me to the mountains outside Bogota and left me in the dark.
They told me that if I went to the police, they would know and kill
my family first, and then me. They gave me until July 10 to leave the
country.

I walked until 6 a.m., and found a taxi home. I told my wife,
brothers and others, and we decided to make all this public and
denounce it, even though we know the Justice Department is
infiltrated by the paramilitary and the army.

A police official said, "Oh, this is very serious," and called in a
general in charge of kidnappings. He said giving protection wasn't
their job.

So we went to the head of a department like the FBI. He agreed that
protection was among his department's functions, but said not enough
men were available to provide it.

Finally, as many had recommended, we decided to leave the country temporarily.

This happened three months before elections. Without my presence, our
coalition lost.

I believe my kidnapping was part of an attempt to gain control of
local government. The paramilitaries' project is not simply anti-
guerrilla, it's a project of economic "development."

They intimidate so that even local leaders who don't support them
don't attack their plans. Other leaders, whom they cannot neutralize
in this way, neutralize such leaders. Some leaders have been
assassinated.

I want to return as soon as I can to continue my political fight in
Colombia. As an exile you give talks, appear at university seminars,
but the massacres continue, more people are forcibly displaced.

On Easter Sunday, more than 100 were massacred in Upper Naya, most of
them African-Colombians.

The Colombian government worries that if the news of how severely the
black community is suffering gets out, it might call the attention of
African-Americans, or African countries.

I would like African-Americans to note that their tax money is used
to support a U.S. policy, including Plan Colombia, which is
detrimental to African-Colombians. And not just detrimental to their
standard of living, but to their lives. It is a policy that kills
them.