At age 16, José Jairo Galindo Cardozo left his parents and siblings in Tolima to find a place that would guarantee his fortune in Colombia. He toured several towns in the Colombian Caribbean, went to Cúcuta and went to Venezuela, in search of a fertile land that will help him build a comfortable life for him and his children who were arriving in those years.
After 16 years of running between the two countries, decided to settle in Tibú, a municipality located in the east of Norte de Santander, on the border with Venezuela. In this town, which is part of the region known as the Catatumbo – in honor of the river that runs through it – he worked first as a laborer on a farm and then as a rice thresher.
It was only at the end of the 80s that the dream began to be fulfilled. His desire to have a little land was supported by Incora, which for those years was awarding land to farmers in the region. José Jairo managed to get a few hectares and began to become a rice grower.
He was already an owner. He had his farm, his land and everything began to improve for his family. However, happiness lasted until groups outside the law came to the area forcing those who did not accept their orders to flee their homes.
“They started killing the neighbors. First it was Jairo García. His coffin was loaded with Gotardo Parada and that day he jokingly commented: and now, who will be next? A few days later they killed him. There was no reason, we only knew that they were killing everyone there”, recalls José Jairo, at 63 years old.
“After the murder of Gotardo”, he added, “I packed up and left with my wife and two children, over there in 1993. We left everything lying down, nobody looked back. We took what we could, it was dangerous. The first stop was in Cúcuta, then we continued to Tolima, where my wife and my children stayed and I continued to Bogotá looking for a job. I got it at a dry cleaner’s, where I stayed for a while. Then I went back to Venezuela, to work in farms and it went well, they gave me up to nationality and I retired after a few years”.
José’s Venezuelan era occurred during the government of Hugo Chávez Frías commander, when many Colombians were assigned with little paperwork. “I was happy with my pension, my family also came to Venezuela, but from one day to the next they took my pension, it did not come to me anymore and then we went back to Colombia, to Cúcuta, again, to see where we started”.
The return of Galindo family coincides with the approval of Victims and Land Restitution Law, 1448 of 2011, created to protect, assist, attend and fully repair the victims of armed conflict in the country that, like them, had been displaced from their homes and their daily lives.
José Jairo decided to take advantage of the law and started the application for Land Restitution, from the Villa Nueva farm, where he dreamed of being an entrepreneur in the rice sector. Without ceasing to be afraid of everything that happened, the process followed accompanied by the professionals of Land Restitution Unit, and in 2014, by means of a ruling issued by the Superior Court of Judicial District of Cúcuta, they restituted their land. After the delivery, the territorial professionals of the Unit continued accompanying him in the integral reparation.
“They compensated us on the side of the Victims Unit and the Land Unit supported us with a productive project, which served to start with the first harvest, in 2015. Now we are going little by little. I have several hectares cultivated and one that another fruit of support. The strong one is rice. I also have cachama in a pond. You can work well if there is tranquility”, he says.
Two or three days a week, he makes a one-hour trip between the city of Cúcuta and the town of Villa Nueva, to see how the water level is going, if there is plague and if the grain is germinating well. Looking at his eight cultivated hectares, he now has another dream: a thresher to take white rice to the market and continue to improve his company. Now, with peace in these lands, it is easier for you to continue making your dreams come true.
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Unit for Victims
compliance status
We strongly believe that the Internet should be available and accessible to all, and we are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To accomplish this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at level AA. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide range of disabilities. Adhering to those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: people who are blind, people with motor disabilities, visually impaired, cognitively disabled, and more.
This website uses various technologies aimed at making it as accessible as possible at all times. We use an accessibility interface that allows people with specific disabilities to adjust the user interface (user interface) of the website and design it according to their personal needs.
In addition, the website uses an AI-based application that runs in the background and constantly optimizes its accessibility level. This application repairs the HTML of the website, adapts its functionality and behavior for screen readers used by blind users and for keyboard functions used by people with motor disabilities.
If you have found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we would be happy to hear from you. You can communicate with the operators of the website using the following email servicioalciudadano@unidadvictimas.gov.co
Screen reader and keyboard navigation
Our website implements the ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) attribute technique, along with several different behavior changes, to ensure that blind users who visit with screen readers can read, understand, and enjoy the features of the website. As soon as a user with a screen reader enters your site, they are immediately prompted to enter the screen reader profile so they can effectively navigate and operate your site. Here's how our website covers some of the most important screen reader requirements, along with console screenshots of code examples:
Screen Reader Optimization: We run a background process that learns website components from top to bottom, to ensure continued compliance even when the website is updated. In this process, we provide screen readers with meaningful data using the ARIA attribute set. For example, we provide accurate form tags; actionable icon descriptions (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guide for form inputs; roles of elements such as buttons, menus, modal dialogs (popups), and others. In addition, the background process scans all images on the website and provides an accurate and meaningful description based on Image Object Recognition as an ALT (alternative text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology. To activate screen reader settings at any time, users just need to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen reader users also receive automated prompts to activate screen reader mode as soon as they enter the website.
These settings are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the HTML of the website and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website work with the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdown menus with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, activate buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio items and checkboxes using the arrow keys and complete them with the space bar or the Enter key. In addition, keyboard users will find quick navigation and content skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first site elements while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving keyboard focus to them as soon as they appear, and not allowing focus to drift away from it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as "M" (menus), "H" (headers), "F" (forms), "B" (buttons), and "G" (graphics) to jump to specific items.
Disability profiles accepted on our website
Epilepsy Safe Mode: This profile allows people with epilepsy to use the website safely by eliminating the risk of seizures resulting from flashing or flickering animations and risky color combinations.
Visually Impaired Mode: This mode adjusts the website for the comfort of visually impaired users such as impaired vision, tunnel vision, cataracts, glaucoma, and others.
Cognitive Impairment Mode – This mode provides different support options to help users with cognitive impairments such as dyslexia, autism, AVC, and others to focus on the essential elements of the website more easily.
ADHD Friendly Mode – This mode helps users with ADHD and neurodevelopmental disorders to read, navigate, and focus on the main elements of the website more easily, while significantly reducing distractions.
Blind Mode – This mode configures the website to be compatible with screen readers such as JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, and TalkBack. A screen reader is software for blind users that is installed on a computer and smartphone, and websites must be compatible with it.
Keyboard Navigation Profile (Motor Disability): This profile allows people with motor disabilities to operate the website using the Tab, Shift+Tab, and Enter keys on the keyboard. Users can also use shortcuts such as "M" (menus), "H" (headers), "F" (forms), "B" (buttons), and "G" (graphics) to jump to specific items.
Additional UI, layout, and readability tweaks
Font Settings: Users can increase and decrease its size, change its family (type), adjust spacing, alignment, line height, and more.
Color Settings: Users can select various color contrast profiles, such as light, dark, inverted, and monochrome. Additionally, users can swap title, text, and background color combinations, with more than 7 different color options.
Animations: Epileptic users can stop all running animations with the click of a button. Interface-driven animations include videos, GIFs, and flashing CSS transitions.
Content Highlighting – Users can choose to emphasize important elements like links and titles. They can also choose to highlight only focused or suspended items.
Audio Mute: Users with hearing aids may experience headaches or other issues due to autoplay of audio. This option allows users to mute the entire website instantly.
Cognitive disorders: We use a search engine that is linked to Wikipedia and Wiktionary, allowing people with cognitive disorders to decipher meanings of phrases, initials, slang, and others.
Additional features: We provide users with the option to change the color and size of the cursor, use a print mode, enable a virtual keyboard, and many other features.
Browser and assistive technology support
Our goal is to support the widest possible range of browsers and assistive technologies, so our users can choose the tools that work best for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all the major systems that comprise more than 95 % of the user market share, including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (readers). screen), for both Windows and MAC users.
Notes, comments and feedback
Despite our best efforts to allow anyone to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of being made accessible, or lack an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we're continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating, and improving its features and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this to achieve the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advances. For assistance, please contact servicioalciudadano@unidadvictimas.gov.co