By: Erick Gonzalez G.
Curiosity and tension mix in the place. The students’ curiosity to know about the Colombian armed conflict, which it is likely they only know about because of what news headlines reveal. The tension of the ex-combatants to narrate their experience, which is like to wage another battle: to knock on the citizen awareness’ doors about the forced recruitment problem. Knock knock, is someone there?
The presentations protocol starts and the question that was lurking is thrown: how difficult is for armed groups to recruit young people? The answer is perhaps a fragmentation grenade for teachers and a ballistic missile for young people.
“Recruiting a girl, boy or teenager is a skill developed in the different organizations because, as I have always said, they are very easy to shape. They are people who can be infused with matters of war depending on the roles to be fulfilled. It is very easy to approach them, for example: creating a friendship, building confidence they don’t find at their home or their close ones, even parents, uncles, friends, or close relatives. In short, if you don’t have a support group of people it is easy to reach you, because that kind of refuge is sought out for in the wrong places, not only in an armed group, but in other things that are affecting our children and our youth today. It’s quite easy to make people believe they’re doing the right thing when in fact it is the wrong way.”
If the answer of Jordan Ordoñez, recruited by the paramilitaries in 2002 in Nariño, at the age of 13, was a ballistic missile with a trajectory that must have fallen on the vertical of the teenage ego, which believes that knows everything, Ana Milena Riveros’ answer, recruited by the self-defense groups at the age of 12, was a remote-controlled Tomahawk cruise missile aimed at the feeling that young people profess as one of their greatest hobbies: leisure; a whole strategy that seems taken from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War: avoid strength and attack weakness, take advantage of the fact the enemy doesn’t know where to attack.
“In the Capital block, which operated in Bogota, young people’s presence in playgrounds was taken advantage of. Boys from eighth to eleventh grade normally went to these places when they were skipping class. Those locations were managed by a guy who normally wore a good cap, a nice jacket and blue jeans, a pair of Adidas, a good motorcycle, with money in his pocket and a gun. Seeing this, boys would ask him: ‘How did you get that? This business isn’t enough for that?’ To which he would say: ‘I do some special jobs and the company I work for gave me the motorcycle. What I earn here is for change money, you cannot live from this.’ So, he left the answer as bait. Then the boys would ask more questions, to which he would say: ‘I have to get some special training for those jobs. I am a small commander, but I command. They give me good money for it.’”
“’Do you think I’m a jackass? I didn’t even finish high school and here I am’. If you said that to a 14-year-old, who would do the math and add five years of elementary school plus six of high school to graduate, and then he might think he would earn less than a minimum wage going out to the world, then the question would appear in his head: ‘What do I have to do…?’ I would tell them: ‘You have to go to a training session, you have to spend a week outside Bogota… That’s not easy, but if I vouch for you, you’ll get in. Maybe they’ll give you a command post! And young bloods believed.”
“Now, the main thing is that young attendees have to create their own experiences, and that is only known after the follow-up work the groups do in these talks.” This is how Milena sends out a ground-air-heart missile.
“I heard cases of young people who got in because they were tired of being nagged at home, they didn’t like their parents telling them: make the bed, wash the dishes, take a bath, go to school. That bothered them, but then, they would submit to a regimen, receive orders, get up early,
After that preventive attack, she throws a bazooka at vanity: Why would any of you need some 500,000 pesos Adidas?!
That question, that seemed more like a claim, almost concluded the verbal attack Milena and Jordan made against social apathy, naivety, and shallowness, but perhaps the best advance is found in their forced resumes.
The curriculum
“What can I say… I was born in Pradera, in Valle del Cauca, 34 years ago. When I was 13, we went to Nariño with my parents because our relatives were from there. In that region, first I saw the FARC guerrillas operate, and sometime later, around 2002, the self-defense groups arrived, and the guerrillas left. I began to bond with the guys from the organization, they were my friends. They would buy me a soda or a beer. That was the initial approach, then they began to hand me the pistol, the rifle and they taught me to handle the weapons, to break them apart, to clean them. That was the strategy”.
“I thought it was just a friendship until they offered me to go with them and become part of the organization. They said that, without realizing it, I was already tangled with them, and indirectly, I was part of the organization, the only thing missing was for them to give me a salary. And the turning point came, they were going to leave, and people had already seen me with them, which meant that when they left and the guerrillas returned, then I could imagine what would happen to me. I talked to my best friend about it, and he said that if I left, he would too. I didn’t tell anyone else. And so, we both went with the self-defense groups.”
“I’m from Nilo, Cundinamarca. I’m 44 years old. When I was 3, my family moved to the north of Tolima. My father was a farm manager and my mother a housewife. One day, Farc’s 21st Front men arrived at the farm, and they kept coming, often they would take an animal as a tribute for the cause, a loss the owner deducted from my father’s salary. One day, I saw how my father refused to pay because of what was happening. When he refused, they hit him in the head with a rifle butt and knocked him to the ground. Then they fired several shots around him, without hurting him, as a warning. Faced with the region’s violence, people began to organize themselves to get resources so they could pay farm caretakers who had been in the Army. That intention spread and some of this kind of people offered help; little by little they were arriving from Magdalena Medio.”
“They pretended to be farm workers and stayed in the area to do recon. They only engaged specific individuals and avoided confrontations because it did not suit them. I heard my father tell employees those were good people who came to guard them from the bad guys. But my biggest problem was another: domestic abuse and my father’s machismo. My mother left me when I was very young, and that’s when I began to suffer. My father gave me five stepmothers over time, and I had to call mom each one of them. I used to say: ‘How come? If they’re not my mom!’ The last one he had got into the habit of strangling me with the belt, hanging me for a few seconds, to which he would only say: ‘You’re too rebellious.’”
“She had two sons and for them there were Christmas presents, shoes and school. My dad’s motto was that if I was only going to be a mother and wife, why should I study, and I didn’t want to stay with that idea. He only bought clothes for my brothers, while I had to go barefoot. Many times, I was hurt by staples, nails, nails, while they did have flip-flops. The paramilitaries found out about my problem, they offered me a family, respect for my physical integrity, a change of clothes, shoes and three meals a day, so I left with them.”
With the boots on
“I joined the Libertadores del Sur Bloc’s Antonio Nariño Peasant Brigades, which operated in the north of the department through Leiva, El Rosario, Policarpa, Sotomayor, El Tablon de Gomez, Santa Cruz and La Union. The military conditioning was very difficult because of the motto: ‘Let the training be so hard so war can be a rest.’ Three months later, my great friend died fighting the guerrillas, which changed the way I saw the war: I wanted to end them.”
“The group financed itself by collecting a war tax on the coca base processing and its marketing. They charged between 100 and 200 COP per gram; there were toons each week. They also received input rates for processing. Those who didn’t pay were fined and, depending on the offense, the level of punishment increased. I specialized in working urban areas, making surveillance and control among civilian population, mainly to detect enemy infiltrators. However, security was breached by a police mole who worked for the Prosecutor’s Office, who in a few months became the most trusted person of the one in charge of the front’s finances, with access to the computer where our “chapas” were stored, which meant our real names, so we all got arrest warrants. But the mole was found.”
“They took me to a village where they gave me food, which was a huge difference, because I had to serve others at my house. I thought about going back, but just thinking about the beating that my father would give me stopped me. The next day we had to walk for two hours, so they gave me a pair of snickers and pants. We had three very hard training months. In addition to everything related to weapons, I had to learn to form and the commands, when I didn’t even know the Lord’s Prayer. On any given day we had to get up at three or four in the morning to do physical training, then have breakfast, go to the range, things like that.”
“What did I stand out for? I had more endurance than the other women. They even thought I had been in the guerrilla, so they kept a close eye on me. No one attempted sexual assault, neither the interest in making me someone’s partner. I was never feminine. I was always among men, I always had a manly position, today still I stand like a man, I speak like a man, I use a deep voice like a man. I had to learn to be a man to stand out, so I wouldn’t get involved in the type of work that make you go to a whorehouse and be with someone to get information.”
“They said I was a tomboy, that I didn’t like men, and that protected me, unlike many girls who wore makeup, who wanted to appear attractive for the commander to have some kind of privileges. I didn’t like that because I remembered my father’s words: that women are only good for such things. I did have a secret relationship sometime later, as an adult, with someone from the same front. Why secretly? Because I noticed when couples asked permission to be together, a few days later they would separate them by sending them to different blocks. Did I ask money to civilians for the cause? I didn’t do it because I remembered what I experienced on the farm, so I couldn’t become someone like that, let alone recruit. What I liked the most was being on the front lines, gaining ground against the enemy.”
“I was in several blocks: Centauros, which operated in the Llanos, commanded by Miguel Arroyave, a.k.a. Arcangel; in Capital, when I had my first child product of the relationship I mentioned, and finally in the North Block, in La Guajira. I withdrew from these activities on March 9th, 2006, in Cesar (Valledupar), because we were one of the last blocks to demobilize.”
Being a civilian
“I entered the disassociated minors process for the rights reestablishment with Bienestar Familiar, and while I was there, I was able to finish high school. Then, through Cafam and Sena, I studied two technical degrees: Commercial operations and Accounting, all this thanks to the ACR, which today is the Reincorporation and Normalization Agency (ARN).
“Now we are involved with the JEP, where we sent some reports looking forward to being recognized, and to get some programs running for us. I work in a group that seeks to carry out social actions so children don’t fall into this armed conflict, because children and teenagers should be with their families.”
“I demobilized because I had a son, I had left him with a cousin. I felt there was something worth to return, and although I was on the block, I was more cautious, I no longer fought in the front lines. If they needed someone in the kitchen, I would offer myself. My mission was to get out alive, I was tired of that existence, I wanted to put down roots, see my father again, whom I ran into at some point. I wanted to form a family so the story of neglect I lived wouldn’t repeat itself.
Today, Jordan, who was compensated as a victim by the State, takes advantage of that war experience for his new mission: to give lectures in schools and universities. He does this through his own initiative or by different programs such as the one he carries out with the ARN’s recruitment prevention strategy “Mambru no va a la Guerra, esto es otro cuento”. He also works with foundations that monitor these strategies impact, and they reveal a notable improvement in the students’ academic performance.
Milena also shares this interest in avoiding minors forced recruitment when she is invited to speak on the subject by a teacher from an educational establishment, or by the Historical Memory National Center, or when she attends events where ex-combatants from the AUC, guerrillas, and Army, as well as conflict victims tell their story. According to Milena, in these events “the young are highly expectant, and seeing that people from the four fronts work together in a single panel, that we exchange a soft drink, that there is a level of reconciliation, that kind of thing amazes them, because there are many young people with different positions, very polarized, who judge one side as the bad one and the others as the good one. In these events, the picture they have about the conflict is disrupted, and empathy and a true dialogue about our country begins to happen.”
Knock knock, is anyone there?
(Fin/EGG/COG/RAM)
