CONFLICT UPROOTS MANY IN COLOMBIA

Shantytowns Grow As Refugees Seek Safety

Cartagena, Colombia-The snapshot tacked on the wall of the one-room shack
shows two little boys mugging happily for the camera.

Just looking at her sons, with their dress-up clothes, shiny shoes and
slicked-back hair, makes Selta Machuca, 24, smile. "That's a picture of
them at home," she says.

Moments later, a group of children sidle into the sweltering enclosure.

Filthy and shorn of all but a stubble of hair, most are barefoot and
shirtless, dressed only in ragged shorts. "Who is that on the wall? Does
anybody recognize them?" prompts a visiting priest.

"That's us. That's us in Colorado," say Carlos, 6, and Ruben, 5.

Two years ago, the family was driven off its farm in Colorado, in the
southern part of Bolivar state, by fighting between right-wing paramilitary
groups and guerrillas of the leftist National Liberation Army. In the heart
of Colombia's lucrative gold-producing region, the area is coveted by both
sides, and life for its rural residents is one of constant fear of being
accused by one armed group of aiding the other. Punishment for suspected
sympathies is swift and lethal.

Like other displaced people from their region, Machuca, her husband and
three children abandoned their property and headed north toward the coast,
traveling mostly by river to the state capital of Cartagena. Now, with one
more child and another on the way, their home is a muddy, muggy shantytown
atop a swamp at the edge of El Pozon, an outlying Cartagena slum.

Within a few miles of the graceful, colonial center of this 16th Century
city where President Bill Clinton visited Colombian President Andres
Pastrana last month, there are more than 41,000 internal refugees who have
fled their rural and village homes in fear of violence, according to the
Roman Catholic Church. Across the entire country, there are many, many more
refugees, congregated mostly around large cities, especially in the north.
Pastrana's government puts the figure at 300,000; the U.S. Committee for
Refugees says there were 1.8 million at the end of 1999. The Church, which
has tried to do a comprehensive census in some areas, estimates the number
at 500,000.

"Nobody has the figures," said Nel H. Beltran, the Catholic bishop of
Sincelejo, the capital of neighboring Sucre state, who heads nationwide
Church programs for the displaced. The government tends to underestimate
the total, while human-rights groups tend to overestimate it, Beltran said.
And it is difficult to separate refugees fleeing violence from the
migration to cities.

"What we do know is that the problem is very, very bad," Beltran said. "It
is the most difficult human problem that Colombia now has." In El Pozon,
the displaced are at the very bottom of an already low social and economic
stratum.

"A lot of people here threaten us," said Elina Vargas, 30, whose family
came from their southern Bolivar farm in October, 1998. Tainted by the
circumstances of their flight, they are shunned by their neighbors. "They
think we are guerrillas," Vargas said.

Huddled on the outskirts of the slum, the lucky ones live in shacks like
the Machucas', which is constructed of boards and newspapers with a tin
roof over a dirt floor. The rest take shelter beneath cardboard and plastic.

Toilets are holes dug a little way off the muddy paths. Although there is
electricity, few have anything to plug in. Water for drinking, cooking and
bathing must be purchased at about 10 cents a gallon from a donkey cart
that occasionally wends its way through the encampment, and food supplies
are sporadic donations from the government and the Church.

As the men of the camp cluster in groups and stare out over the nearby
swamp, the women listlessly watch their malnourished children. The vast
majority of the children do not attend school. Charges for uniforms and
books, along with the small matriculation fee required by public schools,
put it far out of reach.

Eighty percent of the U.S. aid money of about $7.5 billion is to be spent
on military equipment and training to help the Colombian army eliminate the
production and traffic of cocaine and heroin. Both the guerrillas and the
paramilitary groups derive substantial income from the traffic, and the
guerrillas have said any group receiving U.S. aid will be targeted as the
enemy.

"It's better if it's not known that we are financed by U.S. aid," said the
head of one Colombian organization receiving USAID money to work with the
refugees. "There is a lot of fear among the nongovernmental organizations."
According to Beltran and Cartagena Archbishop Carlos Jose Ruiseco, the
Catholic Church has refused to participate in U.S. aid plans, objecting to
both its military emphasis and use of aerial fumigation to destroy coca and
poppy crops. The Church is not concerned about guerrilla threats, Beltran
said, but "our ethical consideration is that the ends don't justify the
means." Instead, the clerics said, wealthy countries should concentrate
their efforts on controlling drug imports and use inside their own borders,
halting the shipment of arms to Colombia, and providing better conditions
for trade.

"Do you know what it means to a country like Colombia when the price of
coffee drops?" Beltran asked. "We need justice, not vengeance."