Spirit in Action
International Peace Observatory in Colombia
Kelly has served one year in Colombia, South America, as part of the International Peace Observatory (IPO), and is heading back now for further volunteer service doing human rights accompaniment. She shares stories "from the ground" in Colombia, the people, the violence and the causes.
- Broadcast on:
- 24 Jun 2007
- Audio Format:
- other
I have no hands but yours to tend my sheep. No handkerchief but yours to dry the eyes of those who weep. I have no arms but yours with which to hold. The ones grown weary from the struggle and weak from growing old. I have no voice but yours with which to see. To let my children know that I am out and out is everything. I have no way to feed the hungry souls. No clothes to give and to give the ragged and the morn. So be my heart, my hand, my tongue, through you and will be done. The enders have I none to help and die. The tangled knocks and twisted chains that strangle fearful minds. Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeade. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action and progressive effort. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Above all, I'll seek out light, love and helping hands, being shared between our many neighbors on this planet, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. I have no way to open people's eyes, accept that you will show them how to trust the inner mind. My guest for today's Spirit in Action program is Kelly Lundeen. I was fortunate enough to schedule a visit with Kelly here in Eau Claire, Wisconsin before she was scheduled to fly back down to Columbia, South America, where she serves as part of a group called the International Peace Observatory. Kelly and other nationals from Spain, USA and Italy worked to document and publicize the facts on the ground in Columbia, and by their presence, attempt to increase the safety and security of the people of Columbia. Kelly was a founder of Just Peace from the Chippewa Valley before moving to Milwaukee to be part of their Casa Maria Catholic Worker community. She's just completed some time working in the USA to provide some funds for her return to volunteer service in Columbia. Kelly, thanks for taking time during your whirlwind visit to Eau Claire to spend time with me on Spirit in Action. You're heading back to Columbia very soon, a few weeks. What have you been doing down there? I've been working with International Human Rights Organization doing what's called a company meant observation, documentation, witness, or other words for it, with International Peace Observatory, which is a Colombian organization primarily made up of people from the US, Spain and Italy. I was there for just over a year, a return to the US in December, and what it is is having a physical presence in a war-torn country alongside the civilians, communities, organizations, seeing what it is that they're dealing with in the middle of a war-torn country, and also getting that information out to the rest of the world, or at least attempting to clarify a little bit of the Colombian situation. You say it's a war-torn country, but our news doesn't tell us that there's a real war going on there. What's the history of that? Why aren't we getting that news, and what kind of war is this? It's sort of a relic of the Cold War. After difficult political power-sharing between the liberal and conservative parties, there was an emergence of the guerrilla along with due to a lot of increased poverty and political exclusion of any third parties. Something that if it happens in the US, maybe we have one, maybe we have two parties here, but when that happens in other countries, it tends to lead to social unrest. The guerrilla took up arms in the '60s, and really, it's been a history of, aside from political exclusion, having the government, especially lately, open the doors for international companies, multinational companies, to come and exploit the resources. It's kind of a similar history to a lot of countries in the world. In doing that, there's people in the way, there's guerrilla in the way, and that has led to not only confrontations between the armed actors, including the guerrilla, the Colombian National Army, and the paramilitaries, but also having the civilian population be put in the middle of that war a lot. I guess you didn't say this expressly, but does that mean that the conservatives won control all of the government and the guerrillas, the liberal, the advocacy people that those folks got kicked out of the government, or maybe they voluntarily left? There was actually a political power sharing between the conservatives and the liberals, which still left a large sector of the civilian population out of having a political voice, so it wasn't even the liberals. It was what we would call a third party here, or what some people might call a second party in the United States, an alternative to the liberal and conservatives, because their solutions, political solutions, still exclude a lot of people. The guerrillas took up arms asking for agrarian reform, asking for healthcare, asking for schools for everyone. In Colombia, there's a legal requirement for students to attend school until ninth grade, but there are a lot of areas where school isn't available until ninth grade, maybe fifth grade if they're lucky. So a lot of people have been upset about this for a long time, and that is manifested in some organizations taking up arms, and a lot of others taking the streets without arms, and that in particular is put them in danger, especially human rights leaders, Afro-Columbian movement, indigenous rights leaders, women's leaders. I think if you hear about Colombia here, it's likely to be in terms of drug wars down there. Is that a false front, or is that an additional force for violence in that society? It's definitely a large factor in what's going on there. It's penetrated most areas of society, the economy. It's also used as a distraction, because they'll often use it as a reason or justification for going into rural areas, and a lot of it is simply doing reconnaissance on where the guerrilla is. For example, under one of the agreements that was passed under the Clinton administration was called Plan Colombia, which is continuing today to provide a large amount of money to Colombia, primarily used for military aid. Up until the Cold War ended, we used that as our excuse for our intervention in Colombia. After that ended, it was the drug war, and now it's actual terrorism. We're labeling the guerrillas as terrorists and fighting it on that front. However, a large part of the funding through Plan Colombia is for fumigation of coca plants. Coca is a base ingredient for making cocaine, and the problem with cocaine is not so much in Colombia as it is right here, where the addicts are, where the consumption is, where over 90 percent of the profits are in the United States, yet the U.S.'s answer to that is funding, stopping the production of coca, which is just a bush, it's a plant. It has medicinal purposes, it's sacred to some of the indigenous cultures in Colombia. What they're doing is funding Monsanto to use Roundup and funding helicopters produced in the United States to go and fumigate from helicopters or from small planes, the small farmers' coca productions. Farmers who, if they weren't producing coca, they would be subsistence farming, which means the difference between a subsistence farmer and a coca farmer is the coca farmer might have a toilet in their house instead of having to go out in the woods. They might have a two-story house, they're not getting rich off of it. They still live in a small one house out in a small rural village. So the producers of coca, the plant, are not to blame, of course they have other options, but they are not the people getting rich off it, rather it's the paramilitary organizations in Colombia, primarily, and the people who are selling it here. The other part about the fumigations is their ineffectiveness. There was a farm that I visited in the Department of Bolivar, Colombia, which had been fumigated 30 days before I got there. I was actually able to get pictures of it, where you can see the coca bushes are thriving, green, beautiful bushes, you would never guess that they had round-up sprayed on them to kill them. Alongside of these coca plants are banana trees, which are dead. So the farmers growing coca are able to withstand some of the coca spring, but they're losing their food. So do the gorillas connect with the drug production, or you said that I think it's maybe the paramilitaries make money off this? I'm confused. Who's actually exploiting the drug trade there? What is that connection to the violence down there? I think it was Bill Clinton that came out with a new fancy word that's narco-terrorist, and that word has specifically been applied primarily to the gorilla, which I don't feel is exactly fair. Recently the USDA admitted that the gorilla, the FARC, one of the gorilla organizations there, is not involved in international drug trade. It is part of their financing their military organization. However, the other part is labeling them as a terrorist organization. Yes, of course they're involved in human rights violations, but when we look at the bigger picture, it is the Colombian National Army, the Colombian state, and its collaborations with the paramilitary armies that are carrying out the large part of human rights violations and the grossest human rights violations that are occurring in Colombia, the massacres, the tortures, burnings of villages. So I think narco-terrorist, if anything, would be more appropriate labeling the paramilitary organizations and the Colombian state, which is working alongside of them. In your work with the international peace observatory, you're doing this accompaniment. You're also documenting what's happening. How do you gather the information? How do you get out and do that, and is this a safe thing to do? Mexico has a really bad reputation, and it's actually improved even in the past few years. International organizations have been having a much larger presence than they used to. The first international organization doing accompaniment appeared over ten years ago, and that was Peace Brigade's International. Since then, Christian peacemaker team has arrived, witness for peace, which does delegations to Colombia, a lot of smaller, more local organizations from the US, Europe, other countries, and of course, the United Nations. They also have an office there. They've been doing really good work trying to highlight what is happening in Colombia, a lot more so than what was happening before. What we do, our organization, International Peace Observatory, is we specifically work with communities involved in processes of self-determination, which means they're living their lives, and they're making the decisions for which direction they want to go. In fact, they are some of the most democratic organizations I've ever seen. We're lucky enough in Wisconsin to have Russ Feingold's town hall meetings where people can go and express their opinions. In Colombia, on the village level, which is a small percentage of Colombia is very rural like this, at a village monthly council meeting, 85% of the village will be present at a meeting expressing their opinions, making decisions from the community level. That doesn't happen in the United States. And so the democracy at work in these villages is really amazing. So for example, at a village council meeting, International Peace Observatory might be invited to see what's going on. They would ask for our presence simply because the army, for example, likes to sabotage events like this. They might show up and say, "Oh, we're going to register everyone to vote," which sounds all nice and like they're doing good work, trying to get people to take part in their civic activities. But what they're really trying to do is collect information from people, often accuse them of being part of the guerrilla. They might snatch up one of the human rights leaders and take them away for a few hours. Meanwhile, they would be interrogating them about where the guerrilla is or simply accusing them of being in the guerrilla. So having an international presence there will help prevent things like that from happening because the army has to take us seriously. They have to have a respect for us because we're coming from another country and because that could affect their funding, which a lot of it's coming from the United States. Other armed actors typically respect our work for similar reasons. Either they wouldn't want to be under the international scrutiny that would involve if one of us were put in a dangerous situation or simply understanding why we are there and respecting that, respecting that we are there on the side of the civilian populations of communities that are trying to carry out their work. So if I understand this correctly, Kelly, the people generally like you, they feel like you're on their side. The government generally keeps hands off because they're afraid of the complications that will arrive for them back in the United States where their purse strings are often held. Yeah, that sounds pretty accurate. Do you have access to the government? How do you know things about the paramilitary? Do you actually get to talk to members of the guerrilla movement? Do you actually see these people or is it all in direct reporting? We have seen members of all of the armed organizations, the guerilla, the paramilitaries and the army. If they knew when we were coming into the region, into some of the rural regions where we work, they would hide, especially the paramilitaries and the army, but we don't let them know when we're coming. And so every once in a while, they get surprised. For example, another volunteer with International Peace Observatory. We had recently come into the region for the first few times, and basically, we usually will stay at a family's house in the rural areas, one of the villages, or at a school. One morning, a farmer came walking up the trail to where my co-worker Nico was at, and he said, "There are some members of the army, some troops over at a Milkaar's house. A Milkaar is a farmer, he has his ranch there, his cattle, his family, he's a member of the village council, he's a member of the human rights local organization, well known, well respected in the community. So it sounds a little fishy when the army is over at his house. Why would there be 30 soldiers at his house? Besides it being against international humanitarian law, which says that having an armed group around the civilian population puts those civilians in danger, if the opponents were to show up, those civilians are in the middle of it. Nico and another volunteer, Max, along with some of the human rights leaders, went over to the house. A Milkaar was nowhere to be found, so they were asking about him. The family is there, scared silent, eventually a few minutes later after some questions are asked. A Milkaar shows up, being escorted by a few soldiers. One of them still had a machete in his hand. When Nico asked again, "What's going on here?" The army officer said, "Well, we just came to buy a cow or actually to get a cow." And a Milkaar at that moment just said, "Yeah, yep, that's what happened. Everything is fine. Of course, it is true, as this army official says. I am giving him this cow that's worth $250, which is a lot of money down there." They left it at that time until the army left, and a week later it came out that a Milkaar had actually been being held in a wooded area a few yards away from his house with these soldiers, who at the moment that Nico and Max showed up was being told by the soldiers to take off his clothes so that he could put on the guerrilla uniform that the army had brought with them. In order to kill him and say he was another guerrilla down in combat, so that's a very dramatic example of what having international presence in Colombia has had. It also shows part of the Colombian national policies of their new program of democratic security, and especially the current president, Uribe, has been trying to produce a lot of really nice looking statistics to make Colombia sound like a good place, to make it sound like a safe place, and to make it sound like the national army is winning the war against the guerrilla. When they say they're winning the war against the guerrilla, they're using numbers like these people, civilian unarmed people, using them as numbers as the guerrilla down in combat, and that's something that we've seen several times in the region that we work in, which is called Magdalena Medio. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I'm Mark Helpsmeet, and this northern spirit radio production is called Spirit in Action. The song you just heard was Ali Primera, doing Madre de jame luchar. Hopefully, some of you listening speak Spanish and understood that, but for the rest of you who, like me, are limited in Spanish, that means "mother let me fight," about a young man who wants to join the struggle to lift up the people and their rights. That's what my guest for today's Spirit in Action program attempts to do. Kelly Lundeen is part of the International Peace Observatory, Spanish, Italian, and American volunteers serving in Colombia, South America, doing accompaniment in the midst of the long-term low-level war in that country. Kelly is just heading back to Colombia shortly to serve the people of that country as a faithful, brave, and compassionate witness. Just how big is this? Are there thousands of people being killed yearly or monthly? How many of them are putatively grella versus governmental? In Colombia, it's a low-intensity conflict. It's not Iraq. There are thousands of people dying every year as a result of the war. And the statistics are something I never really understand myself. They'll say 30,000 people died this year, and then they'll say 5,000 of them were a result of the war. But I don't really know, and I don't really believe those statistics, because I think that a lot of them are related to the conflict. Definitely some of them are related to the drug trade, and just common delinquency, gangs. But how many are actually grella, and how many are actually civilians being killed? There's definitely a large number of civilians being killed, because we know a lot of them. Our organization has been in the region for over two years, and, like the gentlemen, Amil Khan, we've known him, and several of the other people who have been killed in that region, we know who they are. We know that they're farmers. We know that they're miners. We know they have children, wives, families. We've seen them in meetings. Kelly, you said that your group, the International Peace Observatory, has had a presence in this area for some time already. How big a group is International Peace Observatory, and there are, and how many of these other groups you mentioned, things like Christian peacemaker teams and others. How many foreign observers or accompaniment type people are present that are helping out in this major low-level war? International Peace Observatory primarily works in Magdalena, Medio, which is comprised of two or three, what they call departments, which is like a state. The department of Bolivar and Antioquia, and also Santander. There are, yeah, like I said, several other organizations, international accompaniment organizations that work, even in that same region, but also in other parts of Columbia, in the different departments, in the different regions of Columbia. There are dozens and dozens of international workers either doing accompaniment or other international observation work. International Peace Observatory specifically is made up of about six full-time volunteers. We've had probably 50 part-time volunteers come through. Temporary volunteer can come for three months or longer. Of course, you have to know Spanish to work in Columbia and be pretty resistant to some intense situations, conditions. But right now, unfortunately, we don't have funding. I, for example, am a full-time volunteer for EPO. Yet, I've been in the United States for six months. What we do is we'll save up money through donations, through work in our home countries, because it's a lot easier for us to make money there, and then go and spend it off as we're doing our volunteer work in Columbia. I, for example, have been here in Rice Lake for four or five months doing telemarketing. Not something I was really excited about, but someone's got to do it. It's a way to make money so that I can go back to Columbia and spend the money that I made there. We're definitely in need of donations, in need of funding to come into the organization so that we can continue working alongside these amazing Columbian communities to help do this solidarity work. Our international observers like yourself, are you getting support from either side? I have the sense that maybe the Columbian government doesn't want to support you, and the U.S. government isn't very happy with you. You've sought to get your visas from these folks. How do you maintain this presence and do all the mechanics of being there when a lot of the governments have vested interests that they don't want you to contravene? The current president, Uribe, has straight up called human rights workers in Columbia, along with their international supporters, just another guy's for the gorilla, which is really scary because it makes us targets. Yet, because it would not be in their interest to do anything against us. They look for other ways of making our work hard, for example denying visas occasionally. Where do you get your support? Right now it's been individual donations. It's been a few grants here and there because we have people working that either are in Columbia or in their home countries of Italy, Spain, in the U.S. writing grants. And so, yeah, it's been through our own paid work and also donations from individuals and organizations that support us, people who are doing Latin American solidarity work here that have a lot more access to financial resources. I have a feeling there's a bit I don't understand yet, Kelly, about the major actors involved in this violence. Who are the major players in this low-level war or in this whole face-off in the Columbian society? As far as understanding the armed actors, we have the military, the Columbian National Army, which of course is defending the Columbian state against the gorilla. The guerrilla organizations are leftist armed organizations and the paramilitaries are probably a little more hard to understand. It's an organization that was recommended by U.S. military advisors in the 1960s prior to the formation of the gorillas in case they would be needed for later when the gorilla did actually show up and so then they did have some reason to have these paramilitary organizations. Paramilitary organizations were formed to combat the gorilla and yet it was recommended by U.S. before there was even gorilla. They were legalized backed by the Columbian government and backed by the U.S. government and have gone through different stages of legality since then. They've gotten out of hand because what it is is civilians that are armed to combat the gorilla and yet they have no accountability. So they're working in the interest of the government yet there's no accountability. That's why they have been the ones who have been primarily responsible for the massacres which hit an all-time high in the late 80s and burning of villages. There's a village that I visited that brags that compared to the other surrounding villages. They've never been burned down by the paramilitaries. That's one of their boasting points. I was trying to figure out what the United States equivalent of paramilitaries are. Might it be equivalent to the militias that existed in the early formation of this country? There was George Washington in his band but he drew his fighting men from regional militias that got organized. Yeah, I would say so. Probably our modern day, the closest thing we have might be the minute men down in Arizona along the border fighting in the interest of the United States but an armed organization illegal and unaccountable. The other thing about where their interests are is a lot of times it's not even known by the lower-level paramilitary soldiers is they're actually defending the multinational companies that are trying to make an inn in Colombia. For example where we work in Bolivar and Antioquia. Antioquia has about 80-85% of its municipalities, which are basically like a county, have already granted exploration and exploitation permits to a company whose international name is Anglo-Gold Ashanti in Colombia they're called Kedala. This is a gold company which has already been working with paramilitary organizations in the Congo. And how they do this is basically as I explained about the story of a milka. They'll use terror to remove people from where they're living and that's led to the phenomenon in Colombia making it the second largest country in the world for displaced people. People are forcibly displaced because they have been living in an area where violence has scared them away. If they have been threatened or if their neighbor has been killed or a human rights leader in the area has been killed or threatened or interrogated or kidnapped by the army or the paramilitaries, it tends to make you not want to live somewhere. So they'll go to a large city and hide if they're lucky enough to have someone on the outside of Colombia they'll leave the country. Since Colombia has opened its markets in the 90s, it's been happening more and more. The army and the paramilitaries are making space for these multinationals to come in. In fact, one of the village council presidents, the president of the village that breaks about not ever having been burned by the paramilitaries told us that he was speaking with an army official last November of 2006 who told him straight up the army is coming in, we're getting reinforcements to get rid of the guerilla so that we can make space for the multinational to come in. So it's pretty much straight up admitted that that's why they're there. The problem is they're not only getting rid of the guerilla. Well, first of all, they probably won't get rid of the guerilla because it's a really strong military force but in the middle of trying to do that, what they're doing is scaring the civilian population from their land. And this is art as in gold miners and its farmers, maybe have some cattle, growing crops, growing rice, beans, bananas, yet when your neighbor gets killed and then a paramilitary officer comes over and says, "It's easier to get rid of the husband and deal with the widow in order for them to gain territory in this land." Those threats are common there. People are always offering to buy people's land at very low rates under price. And people will a lot of times sell so that they can avoid being killed. That leads to paramilitary concentration of control of the land of the territory. So getting rid of the farmers who are not only farmers, but they're human rights defenders so that the paramilitary has a lot easier access to this land and the resources. More than one source is called this gold reserve in what's called the Serenia de San Lucas there in Bolivar, the second largest gold reserve in the world. So it's definitely economic resources that are driving this war and putting the civilian population in the middle of it. You know, Kelly, in the course of talking about that, you mentioned that, of course, because there's violence and the threat of violence there, people move away, they displace themselves, get out of the way. So what are you doing there? Why do you go there when this is a troubled violent area? Isn't it safer up in Rice Lake? Yeah, definitely. Although I will say that in the time I lived in Milwaukee, working with the Catholic workers, I heard more gunshots there than I ever heard in Colombia. Even though Colombia is supposedly in this low intensity conflict, I guess I feel a sense of responsibility to work with my brothers and sisters, and I actually have a quote here, a little bit about how I see the work that I do. Although I originally went to Colombia in the interest of defending the right to life, because the civilian population is in the middle of the war that they're being killed, like they're even much worse in Iraq, and feeling like I could do something about that, feeling useful, and feeling like I was helping. I don't look at it that way so much anymore. I'm going back to Colombia with a different perspective on my work, and I'm going for different reasons now. A little bit of that summed up in this quote by Samora Machal, who was the first president of Mozambique. International solidarity is not an act of charity. It is an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains towards the same objective. The foremost of these objectives is to aid the development of humanity to the highest level possible. I guess I don't feel like my pity helps the Colombian people. Why? Because I've seen their democratic organizations be more democratic than those in the United States, where we are supposed to be the pillar of democracy. I've seen people who, despite threats on their lives and escaping death, continue to fight for human rights in Colombia because of their work as human rights leaders are even more the target of it. And they continue fighting. They've seen their colleagues killed, their family members. They don't want my pity, and they don't deserve it. They're fighting. They're trying to make something better for the Colombian people, so I don't look condescending on them anymore. I feel like we're fighting together. We're working alongside of them, and I would hope that if we were ever in that situation in the United States, where we needed international observers, maybe we do right now, look at our electoral process, that people from Colombia or people from other places in the world would be here working with us too, as we are trying to make our country better. So what was it that got you to leave Rice Lake to come to the big city of Eau Claire, which got you to go to the bigger city of Milwaukee, which led you south to Colombia? And are you actually living in Bogota? Are you living out in the rural areas that you observe in? We have two distinct parts of our work. One is being in the office, and yes, our office is in Bogota, Colombia, the capital, where we also have a community house and do the computer work, internet stuff, getting information out, writing letters, lobbying meetings. The other part of it is the physical presence in the communities we work in. And because our organization specifically works with peasants' organizations primarily, those happen to be rural areas. And so, yeah, there's the two different aspects to that work. I grew up not knowing that protests existed, that they happened anymore. I actually went to school in Bloomer, felt like I was always surrounded by very conservative, narrow-minded way of thinking, and rebelled and wanted to get away somewhere bigger, somewhere people were thinking different. Well, I ended up graduating from University of Wisconsin Eau Claire with Latin American Studies degree during that time working on different issues, environmental issues, eventually moving towards social rights, social justice, global justice issues, like economic trade issues, free trade issues, and opposing those being more in favor of fair trade of a smaller local economy. Of course, after 9/11, what my response was, "Hey, we got to work for peace in the United States in the world," and definitely starting in the United States and in our local area. So, I was working with Just Peace here. And after that, we should mention right away, "Just Peace," and working for Just Peace might sound like a regular phrase. You might want to explain what that is. Oh, right. [laughter] Oh, Just Peace was the local Chippewa Valley Eau Claire area organization that was working against the invasions that the United States did in Afghanistan and Iraq, so yeah, we were having weekly protests in front of the federal building and just trying to raise awareness about peace issues and war in the local area. And I decided to step a little further into the causes of poverty and looking at poverty issues in the United States. And obviously, war is a great cause of poverty because over half of our federal budgets going to funding war, current and past expenses of war, and meanwhile, we've still got people on the streets here. We've got people without healthcare, obviously. Anyway, that led me to move to Milwaukee, where I was a living volunteer at Casa Maria Catholic Worker House of Hospitality, where I lived for three years. It's basically a homeless shelter for women and children who would stay with us in the homes until they could get back on their feet. While we were doing that direct service work to the homeless families, we were also looking at the causes of poverty. So along with providing a service, we were protesting war because really, I see that as a root cause of poverty in the U.S. and definitely in the rest of the world, too. I was also working with an organization called Compa Global Justice in Milwaukee. One of our campaigns was against Coca Cola because we had invited a speaker, a Colombian man, Louisa del Focardona, up from Chicago. He's living in Chicago as an S.I. Lee, who had been brought to the United States by a program through the Steelworkers Union because as a former Coca Cola bottling plant worker in Colombia, he had been a witness to his co-workers' murder by paramilitary organizations inside the actual Coke factory. His co-worker was a union leader, and Louisa del Foc was a member of the union. Louisa del Foc was kidnapped by the paramilitaries right after that murder, managed to escape. He ran around Colombia this place from city to city until he was finally given a S.I. Lee status in the U.S. and now he's telling his story around the U.S. how the war in Colombia is affecting the civilians and especially the movements, especially the union movement in Colombia. So hearing his personal story, his testimony made me feel like I should take it a step further. I had always wanted to work in another country trying to look at something I could do that wasn't associated with the U.S. government, something that was looking at working with people instead of bringing them something or giving them something, something that would give me the opportunity to learn from the people who were living in these conditions. So accompaniment to me seemed to be the right thing. So that's what prompted me to move to Colombia for just over a year to do accompaniment and partially why I'm still going back now to do another year down there. I was kind of surprised, Kelly, when you made the decision to move down to the Catholic workerhouse because I think you aren't Catholic or haven't been Catholic along the way. Do you have any religious roots and how do you interface with a religious community? My family was actually Jehovah's Witness and they're very interesting. I didn't even understand that I was actually following in some of their traditions. I have two great uncles, even my father was a conscientious objector because of their religious beliefs as Jehovah's Witnesses. Jehovah's Witnesses typically don't say the Pledge of Allegiance because God is a higher power than the state. So we should not be pledging allegiance to a state. And I don't know how if that became ingrained in me somehow when I was little because my family actually left that religion when I was still pretty young, but later joining the Catholic workers. I was surprised to find Catholics who had found a way to balance their reading of the Gospel of the Bible with their work and doing very loving work in support of people who needed it and without judging them. That was definitely what I wanted to be doing and I feel like it is in line with my own beliefs, which I don't currently have any religious affiliations, but definitely feel like I try to carry out my values in every level of my life. Personal interactions all the way to being out in the street, possibly passing time in jail the same way Jesus did, I understand how that all. There's definitely a correlation between living out your values, whether they are from a religious, have religious roots, or simply having absorbed what the religious and spiritual beliefs and values of even our area of Wisconsin hard work of trying not to be a hypocrite, trying to live in an integral way, what we believe, not putting up with lies, being able to hopefully have an opening where we can express what we think. I'm assuming, maybe, errantly, but I'm assuming that Columbia is Catholic. Do you have to interface with religious groups and, for instance, is Catholic Church a force in Columbia, pro or con? Yeah, definitely they identify as 90, 95% Catholic in Columbia. The Church has in small ways been supportive of the people. In larger ways it has not supported the people's movements, human rights movements. For example, when it has manifested in a way of looking at God that we call liberation theology, it's been very supportive of the people as the same way it was in Central America during the wars in the 80s, but it hasn't been a very strong movement in Columbia. Unfortunately, there are a lot of wealthy Catholics in the city. People are very sheltered from the war. They don't understand maybe that what's really happening in the country where the civilians are definitely being put in the middle of the war. So even though a large proportion is Catholic, they definitely have a different look at Catholicism, and it doesn't necessarily lead them to being in support of defending their own people. So it hasn't, they don't live out that action or read it or hear it in the Sunday sermons. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I hope you enjoyed that music. It was Gabriel Romero, Isu Archestra, doing Las Lavanderas, The Washer Women. The musical style is known as "Kumbia" and Gabriel Romero is sometimes known as the King of Kumbia, a very distinctive music of Columbia, South America. Columbia is where my guest, Kelly Lundin, has been volunteering as part of the International Peace Observatory, a group doing accompaniment in an effort to preserve peace and human rights in that area torn by long-term low-intensity war. Learn more about them, mostly in Spanish, via the IPO's website, peaceobservatory.org. You can also get there via my northernspiritradio.org website. I'm Mark Helpsmeet, and let's return to this spirit and action visit with Kelly Lundin about her service with the International Peace Observatory in Columbia. You're due to head back, Kelly, in just about three weeks, I think. I'm wondering if you have particular goals or if you have particular objectives to what you're going to be doing while you're there. As you described what motivated you originally and motivate you now, that's in flux. So going down there now, what's going to make you feel good about the time and effort you've put in? Seeing my friend, a 20-year-old human rights leader, a Colombian, who's still alive, seeing him still alive, and seeing him still fighting, and meeting his new son, who was born since I've been in the United States, going out and having to bear with him, or any of the people that we work with, seeing the people still on their farm. Just seeing some of the same people going out for a ride on the mule, or taking a trip on the mule. Right now, there's a particularly delicate situation in Antioquia that's arisen exactly because of the armies coming into the region to, as they said, get rid of the guerilla. The Colombian National Army came out with a death list of 23 civilians in March, and this is after an increased number of killings over the past year in the region. This definitely struck terror into the people. When the killings are increasing and then they actually come out with a death list and you know who's on it, they've decided to put up a humanitarian refugee camp. In a village that usually has about five families or about 400 people, and this began April 1st, and they've done this before. They know what they're doing. They organize these humanitarian refugee camps in order to protect themselves. They have the human rights leaders there. They have the civilians there. Altogether, in case the army does come in, and of course, international peace observatory is there with a presence for any encounters with the army, especially, or if the paramilitaries are coming in. We typically let the Colombians do everything they can to deal with the armed actors, and then if it comes to a head, we will step in. But just simply having the presence there dissuades a lot of things from happening. So I look forward to seeing those people still alive and fighting and defending their land, because simply staying on their land every day is a victory. Simply farming, doing their daily work, and staying where they live is a victory for them. And for the world, really, it's an example. Those are the things that will be fulfilling me and motivating me to go back and be there. As far as my goals, probably the biggest goal is getting some funding for our organization, so that we can continue to be there along with the Colombian people. And, of course, all my listeners know that I'll have links to your site, to the International Peace Observatory, to Cosmoria House, Donna Milwaukee, and to your blog so they can tune to that. So they should just go to my NorthernSpiritRadio.org website, and they can find all kinds of information and connection with you, and they can help support you. Did you want to mention your website right away before we sign off here? Yeah, definitely. And I do apologize, first off, a lot of it is in Spanish, so you have to look around a little bit and find what's going on in English. You can also make donations over the website. There's a little PayPal insignia on the bottom left. And the website is www.peaceobservatory.org, and you can also write to us from there, too, and be in communication. If you want to write to me specifically, just put English or Kelly in the subject so that I'll get that. And, Kelly, you've been inspiration to me here in Eau Claire, as one of the young activists here. At the time of 911, particularly, it was powerful to stand alongside your clear-eyed and open-hearted stand for peace. For sense of compassion and your sense of quiet determination, Roy's inspirational, I really think the Casa Maria was lucky to receive you. And I think that Columbia is so fortunate to have their Northern Sister down there visiting them, helping them out. Thank you for that work. Thank you very much, Mark. That was a visit with Kelly Lundeen, originally from the Chippewa Valley, currently serving as part of the International Peace Observatory down in Columbia, South America. The theme music for Spirit in Action is "I Have No Hands but Yours" by Carol Johnson. Thank you for listening. I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. You can email me at helpsmeet@usa.net. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. I have no higher calls for you than this. To love and serve your neighbor, enjoy in selflessness. To love and serve your neighbor, enjoy in selflessness. [MUSIC]