WAR IN COLOMBIA INSPIRES ART, ACTIVISM

Couple Urges U.S. To Aid Colombians

Liza Smith was largely ignorant of Colombia's brutal, decades-long civil
war when she decided to leave Oregon's Lewis and Clark College and spend
her junior year abroad.

But in Colombia's capital, Bogota, where she attended the University of the
Andes from 1997 to 1998, Smith learned quickly. A sociology major from
Boulder, Colo., she talked to local residents and, on foot in the city,
repeatedly ran into marches and protests stemming from the seemingly
endless conflict that pits left-wing guerrillas against right-wing
paramilitary squads and their sometime ally, the Colombian army.

It's an ugly tangle, she learned, with the guerrillas and the paramilitary
squads feeding off Colombia's huge cocaine trade and generating additional
revenue by kidnapping civilians and holding them for ransom.

It was in Bogota that she fell in love with Ricardo Lozano, an artist and
teacher whose dismay over the war infused paintings depicting the horrors
visited on Colombia's people. Though politically neutral, Lozano in due
course found himself the target of death threats by parties unknown. It was
reason enough to get out of Colombia, and so he followed Smith back to
Oregon while she finished college.

The two of them moved to New Orleans in 1999 on the strength of its
reputation as an interesting city that is friendly to artists. Married two
years ago, the couple is contentedly resettled in a French Quarter
apartment. But Smith, 24, and Lozano, 34, have not forgotten Colombia and
its devastation. It remains the driving force in their lives, which they
have dedicated to informing others of the nation's deadly dilemma.

Working For Change

One year ago, Smith, who was teaching Spanish at Alcee Fortier Senior High
School, founded a local group called CAMBIO, the Spanish word for "change"
and an acronym for Colombia Action Mobilization Battling Injustice and
Oppression. CAMBIO seeks to reshape U.S. policy so that less or no military
aid will be sent to Colombia. Instead, it says Washington should direct
money to supporting the farming of crops other than coca, from which
cocaine is derived. At the same time, CAMBIO advocates reducing the demand
for cocaine in the huge North American market by more federal spending on
drug-abuse prevention and rehabilitation programs.

Meanwhile, Lozano has continued to deliver a silent message of peace with
his stark paintings. Some of them show kidnap victims, desperate-looking
people in what appear to be crude cells.

Lozano and Smith support each other's efforts.

Lozano is one of CAMBIO's 15 active members. Another 100 supporters,
ranging from students to lawyers, show up for its bigger events. Last fall,
the group sponsored a local appearance by Piedad Morales of Medellin,
Colombia, the leader of a Colombian anti-violence organization called the
Peaceful Way of Women.

Last month, Smith went to Colombia with a delegation of Americans sponsored
by Witness for Peace, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C.

There, she said, she spoke with many ordinary citizens who are striving to
improve their communities, notwithstanding continual threats from one side
or the other. One woman she met was part of a group that conducted social
action, such as job training, in Barrancabermeja, a town north of Bogota.
She had just survived abduction by paramilitaries, Smith said.

Stark Images

Back in New Orleans, Smith regularly can be found at a table in Jackson
Square, passing out fliers explaining her cause.

Lozano sometimes joins her at the table, but from experience he knows
better than to hang his paintings on the square's wrought-iron fence.
Alongside the genre landscapes and laughing clowns, they are much too
somber to enjoy favor with passing tourists.

The couple's home, by contrast, is jammed with his scenes of violence, such
as the one showing a pregnant woman standing alone, surrounded by carnage.
He has sold a few pieces to private collectors in Florida and is scheduled
to show some of his work in a New York gallery this spring. But to sustain
himself and his wife, Lozano also paints some placid scenes of Vieux Carre
architecture that he sells in two local galleries -- to customers oblivious
to the personal crusade that he and Smith have quietly launched.