Contents GL 46:

• No end to the Nightmare : more details of the Murders emerge
• Lots more bad news about FARC crimes
• Ordered to leave our farm for the THIRD TIME
• Local peasants ordered to kill us
• Trying to crawl out of the cesspit of Mourning

The nightmare does not subside, but deepens, worsens. An English reporter went with Anne to Icononzo; he was willing to go with her to Hoya Grande, where our boys were killed. But she was met with the stunning news that the LEADERS OF THE MURDERING GANG ARE BACK THERE and have declared war on our commune. So the supposition they were executed by the FARC was wishful thinking on the part of our informants when the two militia-men were taken away for questioning.

Anne was also told more of those little details that put us in Hell for more days and nights on end: that Tris and Javier saw the thugs approaching and ran into the middle of the village and on to a football pitch where a match was in progress. The ‘brave’ footballers quickly cleared aside - and the murderers caught Tris and Javier. and tied them up. Such information transforms us temporarily into frustrated mass murderers...

Tris and Javier were taken to a room. We will probably never know what happened there. Then out and further down the road. Tris was crying. Then his crying was silenced forever.. Javier instinctively reacted in a movement, hopeless, to save his friend, and was slain in like manner..

Our reporter friend hypothesizes logically that as Tris was well known and the accusation of spies is a ludicrous excuse, the real reason was probably alarm on the part of the gang at Tris discovering that they had parceled out our land and were charging rent for it. It would be absolutely in keeping with Colombian mentality, because of the massive poverty, to kill for money - it happens all the time, for just a few pesos. They also stole the pathetic 50,000 pesos (just enough for their busfares) that the boys had on them at the time.

Murder’s OK in Colombia..

I was once on a Bogota bus when a man got on to ask the passengers for money. He declared that he was just out of jail, “but it's alright,” he said, as if to reassure everyone, “it wasn't for thieving.” I blankly wondered what would follow, then my mind eclipsed as I heard words I would never forget. Coolly he said, “It was for homicide.” There wasn’t a flicker of a reaction on the bus.

Anne also heard that the Sanabria brothers, two of the murderers, are in La Modelo, one of Bogota's main prisons. But not for the murder of our boys - for another crime. She quickly went back to Bogota to make an official statement and was told the authorities would do their best to engineer a face-to-face confrontation for her with the men, in the Governor’s office. The trouble is, eye-witnesses to the murders will never dare speak to the authorities, and Anne can prove nothing.

Anne goes to meet regional FARC leaders

After trying to come to terms with the horror of what the boys went through, the worst news for me is that the FARC ACTUALLY LET THOSE MEN GO. This is a whole new ball-game with far-reaching implications. Anne at this moment, on the previous advice of the FARC high command, has gone to the Planadas area to meet the commander of the Bloque Central which takes in Tolima. Planadas is precisely the place we - with Tris - were doing many theatre performances in August 1999 when we heard of our enforced removal from Tolima. . we have dozens of friends there who phoned me up in sorrow after they had seen our tragic news announced on TV. With Anne went 15 year old Laura and her guitar to sing Katie's latest heart-gripping songs about death and silence and fear.. and the need for a huge change in Colombia.

It now remains to be seen what attitude the Central Block of the FARC take - because if they stand by, for reasons unimaginable, their freeing of our boys’ murderers, I am afraid WE will have to declare war on the FARC. The sequel to this will have to come in another Letter when Anne returns from Planadas.

Details of Another Murder: Eduardo Rincon’s

Recently when Anne was in San Vincente, she finally discovered the WHY and the WHO of another murder in our lives: that of Eduardo Rincon, our friend the Green councilor in El Pato - also killed by his throat being slit, but we were never sure which side did it.

I am becoming accustomed to the ghastliness: it was the FARC, specifically, a killing ordered by a commander called Julian for the most despicable of reasons: that Eduardo was about to disclose a corruption scandal going on in the San Vmcente council. The councillors who were involved in it told the FARC who also had some kind of cut in the shady dealings of Eduardo’s ‘interference’ - and so Eduardo lost his life for being straight. That same Comandante, it turns out, also ordered the death of my friend, the local Caqueta FARC commander Enrique, who used to support our environmental work. Enrique was executed for trying to escape from the FARC, taking a lot of their money with him.

Lots of bad news about the FARC The next part of the story leaves an old-time left-winger like myself with very little to hang on to: whilst Anne was in the guerrilla HQ town of San Vincente, this same Commander Julian suddenly disappeared, taking with him several sack-loads containing thousands of ill-gotten dollars of FARC money. He was extremely high up in the command structure, evidently a friend of the famous hard-liner Mono Jojoy. I hate the cynics being right. I have wanted to believe and I still want to. But Tris's death will now leave us no alternative but to dig to the bottom of this cesspit.

WE ARE TOLD TO LEAVE OUR FARM FOR THE THIRD TIME

It does not end. A week ago I received another debilitating blow: a phone call from a loyal woman friend in Popayan saying Ned (our man holding the fort at our farm in Purace) had phoned her urgently to say the FARC down there had TOLD OUR PEOPLE TO LEAVE. This would be almost funny if it didn’t come in the middle of a hideous tragedy. This particular order to leave, our third, hit me harder than the other two. We need some kind of security while our lengthy investigations into the boys' murders take place. The lovely new farm and gardens we have on the edge of Purace National Park and which we have spent months of hard labour working on, are this for me.

However, unluckily for the new brutish commander of the area, at the very moment of his order, Anne happened to be talking to his higher commanders in San Vincente. She was contacted, stormed into a meeting of the High Command to complain, and probably the quickest reversal of an order in FARC history then occurred.

But I did not feel better. The very fact that it had happened was enough for me. And then, days later, I got details of the event from Ned. No wonder I hadn't felt better:

The commander had called a meeting of all the local people and was ranting about us gringos being in HIS area and said that if we did not leave, the people should kill us and bury us and plant banana palms on top of us...

Ned's latest reports are that after receiving the message from the top, the commander retracted his order and is now very friendly.. He is also, like all the FARC, very hot on green matters. Nice that the FARC care so much about TREES.

Hauling Ourselves out of the Cesspit

I am thinking maybe this letter comes across as speedy and glib, given its subject matter. This is because, after endless days and nights of the blackest pit of the soul, I simply had to force myself up and out, down to the freshly rained-upon garden, then into the long music-playing sessions with Katie, reading of other tragedies like last century’s history of Ireland - anything, to bring myself back into a functioning world, to be active, to break out of the cycle of vivid pictures of the boys’ terror and hopeless horror. People’s very beautiful letters have helped so much. Some are religious or spiritual, I don’t mind, I need everyone; all are human, hugely generous, massively comforting. Here is just one quote sent to me by a lady acupuncturist I have never met, Annie Hlbbert:

Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room... Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by my old familiar name, speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference in your tone, wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh, as we always laughed, at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me... Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effect, without trace of shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant, it is the same as it ever was, there is unbroken continuity... Why should I be put out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you.. somewhere very near, just around the corner.

Oh, Tris, I am far far from this kind of calm. The way you and Javier died prevents it, for a very long time.

Dear people, keep writing; never think your words can't help, can't heal. They do, they can. We need you. Also we need to keep the practical side of our lives going and are completely out of seed for our gardens. We would be very grateful to receive seed at this time. We have to keep on living the lives that Tris and Javier loved. But how the horror will heal, I do not know.

With love to you all, and to them, forever.
Jenny James.

Contents of GL 47:

• Unbelievable Sadism from the British Press
• Anne’s letter to the ‘Independent’
• Plans for Healing at the Site of the Murders in Hoya Grande
• Yet another Journey to Meet the FARC
• Louise’s painful Dream of Tris
• Remembering Javier (by Ned)
• A poem for Tris by Jenny
• FARC commander wants to give us more land…

There is something about the deaths of our two boys, Tristan and Javier, that brings out the most beautiful and most shameful in people. Struggling daily - and nightly - to come to terms with our loss, we are suddenly having to cope with a psychic nuclear war from the most unexpected of quarters: the British Press.

Having left England in 1975, I am deeply shocked at the degradation of reporting - and some reporters - there. It seems that the mere fact of living in a community or tribe rather than in a neatly-boxed nuclear family, arouses the wildest of fantasies, that the fact we began as a therapeutic community is somehow a heinous crime - and that the hideous murders of two innocent lads are some kind of punishment for daring to step outside the urban consumerist norm, and most definitely signal the final demise of our group. If anyone in England has been disturbed, puzzled, or baffled by the lurid content of some of these articles, we will be more than happy to correspond at length on any issue and will not be in the least offended by your honest (and natural!) curiosity.

Here is what Anne has replied to quite the most sadistic and vampiric of all the papers: the ‘respectable’, English Independent (whose unhealthy reporter Andrew Brown we had the misfortune to give hospitality to in the early 90s):

“I would like to express my sincere thanks to Mary Braid, Jan McGirk and most especially to Andrew Brown for removing any last vestiges of doubt I may have harboured regarding my choice of country – Colombia. The extremely arrogant, uncompassionate, bitchy, untruthful (full of downright inventions and lies in many parts), unprofessional and hate-filled articles these journalists wrote, taking advantage of the tragedy of the brutal murders of our boys to vent their venom (especially Andrew Brown) has brought it home to me that there are worse forms of violence than guns and machetes in the hands of psychopaths.

“Since the deaths of our boys, we have constantly questioned whether we should stay in Colombia or not, giving all our kids the choice of going back to Ireland if they want to. Few have chosen that option and it seems that their instincts are 100% correct if those journalists are representative of the prevalent mentality in Britain. Let us hope that that kind of vampirism, feeding off the pain of a very frank and open group of people at an excruciatingly vulnerable moment in our lives, was an unfortunate accident on the part of the editorial staff of the Independent. Or perhaps I simply didn't realize that the Independent is part of the gutter press, in which case I apologise for having bothered you with intelligent criticism.

In case anyone up there is interested in reality, we are about to go back to Icononzo, with guarantees of security from the FARC. If there are any journalists connected to the Independent with the mental capacity to live up to its name, they would be most welcome to come along and witness our attempt to create a new, more human way of dealing with the violence and pain caused by such horrific but commonplace brutality.”
Anne Barr

Our Plan (by Anne)

We plan to go into the village where the boys were killed between 2nd-4th December. Four members of the Atlantis Community will be returning to Hoya Grande where, on 9th July two of our young men were cruelly murdered... We plan to use all the many decades of experience we have in creative confrontational encounter group therapy, theatre and music to clear up and clean up the blackness, trauma, fear and violence left in us by the murders of our lads and the unpublicized murders of many more local people by the same group of psychopaths. We are inviting the Press to be our bodyguards and to witness what we hope will be powerful but peaceful forms of protest and psychological vengeance. We will be asking the local people to talk openly about what happened to our boys instead of swallowing what they had to witness so that it will have to come out in other more twisted ways later.

We will be asking the impossible, for whilst we are foreigners and therefore slightly more protected by the media and the institutions, our campesino friends have to live amongst the murderers and their families and accomplices. However, the nightmare that is Colombia begs impossible solutions. Certainly the USA and its Plan: Massacre Colombians and Poison the Forests and Rivers, and the inert Colombian government who could have solved the whole conflict easily with a few simple social reforms, are not offering anything except escalation, whilst the FARC are too busy fighting off the US-backed paramilitary death-squads to be of much use to the civilian population and have in many areas made things worse by arming the kind of brain-dead psychopaths that killed our boys, in a chaotic attempt to protect local people from the same paramilitaries.

We do not know what will be the outcome of this plan, we only know that not to take the risks implied would be to kill our boys all over again with our silence.

Some Journalists are a little different

Some journalists who have visited us here in Colombia or talked to Mary and Louise in Ireland have been extremely human, notably Karl Penhaul, an English journalist who had to leave Reuters for ‘getting too close to the truth in Colombia’. His report was NOT printed by The Times because the story was "OLD". We heard that Mick Clifford of the Irish Sunday Tribune was also most fair. And Anne is corresponding with another English journalist who visited us, Jason, who whilst sharing the cynicism of his profession, has been very open and communicative. Here is an excerpt from a letter of Anne's to him:

Yet Another Journey to the FARC

“Laura (Mary Kelly's 15 year old daughter) and I went to seek the command of the 25th Front of the FARC which is supposed to control the area where our lads died. After several days' journey and much help from other commanders, we found Comandante Tito in the mountains of Tolima. He totally shocked me by telling me that Gonzalo, the brute commander responsible for our exile and, we suspect, for Tris and Javier's deaths, had been promoted and was now head of the Front, along with Tito and one other man. It now became clear that the chief murderers had been freed from FARC custody and were back in Hoya Grande through intercession from Gonzalo - a sure sign of his guilt.

“Tito promised a full investigation; he was a good man, but obviously limited by the internal politics of his army and by the stresses of being forced into a full-scale war by the United States’ Plan (Anti-) Colombia. I told him that we plan to go back to Hoya Grande and, as I put it, sit on the football pitch where the boys ran to beg for help from the locals playing football when their murderers were chasing them with machetes. The "brave" footballers dispersed in panic leaving them to their awful fate. I said we'd sit there and send out a challenge to see how brave the murderers really are. His eyes opened wide in amazement. I don't think he'd ever heard of non-violent confrontation.

Combatting the Conspiracy of Silence

“What we actually plan to do, insofar as we can plan such a risky and unpredictable event, is simply to use all our many decades of experience in running intensive encounter groups almost daily in the attempt to sort out the violence that each of us carries inside us, the heritage of the destructive culture that we came from. Before we came to South America, we were aware that we’d have to face a different kind of violence here, more up front and more physically dangerous than the European variety. We knew it and accepted it in theory - the reality has been harder. Yet it is a violent reality that a lot of people in the Falls Road or the Creggan Estate or in Yugoslavia, as well as practically any poor part of Colombia, know well.

“It is true, as some of the sensationalist English papers have said in their own twisted fashion, that we have been shaken out of our European middle-class dream-world, but our response is different from anything they could possibly imagine. We accept the cosmic kick up the posterior, excruciatingly painful though it will continue to be for years to come. But we do not accept the gratuitous stupid violence done to two beautiful young men. We have fought openly (an unthinkable strategy in fear-ruled Colombia) since the very beginning against the elements of the FARC that caused our boys' deaths. We have won the respect of the higher command of the guerrilla movement, just as we have won the respect of the right-wing media here and of the people who run the government institutions. (The Attorney General of the country has promised me access those of the assassins who are in prison). Now we intend to win the respect of the murderers themselves and of the local people who have been paralysed by fear of them and who let our boys die. As one of our best friends there, a former leader of the village and himself exiled by the same gang for speaking out, said to me on my last visit to Icononzo: "You have to get rid of these people for us. We can't, but you can."

“As all relatives of murder victims must know, neither the death sentence nor life imprisonment can ever satisfy or heal the anger and sadness that such hatefulness leaves behind. We are looking for a new way, and I suppose we'll have to invent it . In Hoya Grande, we will talk, sing, do theatre, knock on the doors of the murderers and their accomplices and their families, talk to their kids, rescue our boys’ remains (we have been told where they are buried), bury them properly and erect a carved wooden headstone and plant a garden of flowers around it. We have lived our lives always according to the natural law of recycling all the physical and emotional excrement that we produce and have successfully built a beautiful lifestyle from it. Now we are faced with the greatest challenge ever, the recycling of the nightmare deaths of our loved ones”
Anne

Louise’s Dream of Tris

My dancing daughter Louise, now 19, sent us this dream of hers from Ireland:

“I dreamt of me and Tristan running away from his murderers. We are still kids in the dream, which starts off lovely and sunny, a carefree feeling, but suddenly running away from the murderers isn't just a game of chase, it's for real. We know we are going to be caught, and it gets more and more terrifying. Suddenly Tristan stops and says: "Look, I can run faster than you. You just hide and I'll make sure they only follow me." I say to him: "No, you hide and I'll make them follow me!" We get very angry with one another, both trying to be the bravest one. We are losing time and I'm panicking, but Tristan looks at me calmly (I'm pregnant in the dream) and says: "You are worth two lives, and you are connected to many people closely. I'm just one life, on my own." I look at him and he has gone white and he is trembling, but he tries to smile, and I think, "Oh no, he doesn't know what he's in for." He looks like a little kid, but then a feeling of arrogance comes off him as he turns away and continues running down the path. “What he really wanted to do was hug me and hide with me. I wanted that too, but he went too soon. I let him go and I felt terrible. I never see him being killed, I just feel terrible and responsible, as if he is a kid that I didn't look after. “Then I just see everyone's shocked faces, white with anger and fear. I see you Jenny and Katie, Alice, Laura, Ned, Anne and Fin and many faces that I don't know, and I ask everyone why? why? why was he killed? but no-one answers, no-one knows the answer. There is no answer.”

Javier had lived with us less than a year, so some of us didn't know him very well. Ned has written us these recollections of him from our Puracé farm where he is looking after the children and growing our future food:

“I spent a few days alone with Javier in Tabio once when everyone was doing theatre in Bogota and I liked him a lot. I appreciated his totally open irrational insecurity about wanting any kind of news of Katie and Alice (he was in love with both of them!) who had only gone for a few days, and he walked hours to our other farm in Tabio and back again to see if Alex had heard anything about them. He was always energetically dependant, always fascinated by any kind of emotional energy, even if it was a row. All the other kids would look the other way and disappear when I was having trouble with anyone, but Javier would ask questions and make fun and laugh.

“Although he was tall and strong, he had skinny legs which, whenever I saw them, would remind me of his poor campesino background, having to work picking coffee when he was a child and being hit and afraid of his parents, and scared of the army and the guerrilla chasing each other. He told me all this. Later he was brought up in a town and looked down on campesino work and would even make a detour round Tabio rather than be seen carrying a hoe! But that didn't stop him working when it was needed. We used to have to carry water up to the house, up an impossible slope, in 20-litre containers and it would half kill us. But he would tie two together and come up at a trot, despite his skinny legs, pouring with sweat. He was like that about everything - cutting firewood and so on. He was always by far the fastest if anyone had to go down to town to get something. He was taking on our bus repair work much more seriously than the other lads did and was going to be our driver.

“He was eagerly learning everything, the guitar, about himself, theatre, despite problems; he’d started to be the conjurer in our theatre when I left for the Purace farm and was very nervous about it he said. But he looked brilliant, and would laugh constantly.”
From Ned

Javier, you said you'd joined our tribe to change your life, and you meant it. Our sorrow and pain go with you forever.

For Our Boys, from Jenny

“Issues of karma, destiny, meaning, guilt
Shattered philosophies, our self-confidence in shreds

Utter disbelief ruling all
Sharing over and over and over again your last shocking hours
Tracing your innocent footsteps.

Betrayal, cowardice, unthinkable brutality
Mind-numbing injustice
Just another death called Tris
Just another Colombian called Javier

On and on, month after month
Our minds seeking refuge
But nowhere to hide
Like our boys that night.

Eyes closed, my hands reach up
Remoulding your face
Remodelling your soft white skin
Smoothing it carefully around the strong bones of your face
Laughing at you for your obsessively short hair
Watching your cheeky grin
Smiling at your even cheekier words
You are tall now, taller than me.

I saw you born,
We all helped Becky that night in her agony
Guitars softly playing
Firelight flickering
The Island winds blowing
The midwife sleeping
As we watched on and on through the long night
Till, just as dawn broke
Becky’s agonised cries
Announced your quiet birth.

We received your blood-covered head in our hands
And a boy was born.

I, your grandmother, but still with milk
From my own year-old baby Lou
I took you to my breast
And while your young mother recovered
I gave you your first feed
And comforted you.

Tris, now your blood-covered head
After only 18 short years
Will haunt us forever
And this time no-one there to receive you
No-one to comfort you.

Tris, in those last moments, you were a baby again
Ripped in pain from a beautiful and a nightmare world
Needing us.
Now we need you
To bathe you and heal you
In the wells of love
Bursting from us.

Tris, a proud young man
Finding your own path
Walking unsuspecting to your death
Your loyal friend Javier beside you
In Hoya Grande, Tolima
On 9th July in the year 2000.

Tris and Javier, our love and agony go with you forever.

I will end with some bizarre good news: Ned reports from Puracé that the FARC commander wants to GIVE us the farm we are living on, and says, “If you need more land, just let me know.”
Oh, Colombia.

Thank you to all our friends for sharing these times with us.
Jenny James.

Contents of GL 48:

• Ned goes alone to Icononzo to test the water and report back
• Local people applaud the way we are handling the tragedy and beg us to return
• The whole village under threat if anyone ‘talks’
• Ned confronts a woman suspected of involvement in the murders
• Two of the murderers out of prison and walking free
• We live as displaced persons in Bogota
• A message from Tris..

Bogota
Hello good people and many thanks for all the moving and inspiring letters we have received after the murder of our boys. These have meant the world to us.

Louise Comes Home

On the last day of November, my 19 year old daughter Louise came home from 2 years away in Ireland helping Mary with campaigning there during which time she became a professional dancer so that our rustic theatre can move to a different level. I took one look at the nervous upset state she was in and decided this was definitely not the time for the whole group to go on the planned mission to Icononzo, where we would be stepping into the unknown.

Ned Goes to Icononzo and Reports Back

So instead, Ned, who is usually the behind-the-scenes pillar of stability on our farm, came up from Purace and went into the front line of battle, going alone to Icononzo. His first news confirmed that the time is definitely not ripe for the whole group to demonstrate there, as there is much more work to be done: first, as earlier reported, two of the murderers were freed by the Guerrilla, now two others, the Sanabria brothers, in jail for further murders, were released by the Government authorities "for lack of proof" (read: 'for a sizeable bribe'). This put us back in a dark pit for days, but as repeatedly happens, amongst the blackness, there is so much humanness and light and love to keep us going.

Ned spent a fortnight in Tolima talking to dozens of people, phoning us sometimes several times a day to report and receive advice. On the second Sunday of his stay there, a big article about our case with a large picture of Tristan, Anne and myself appeared in "El Tiempo", the main Colombian newspaper (rightwing by Colombian standards, but fairly open and reasonable by English standards) which he was able to put to excellent use as described in his report below:

"Many people were guarded and slow to talk openly about the murder of our boys, especially those from or near to the hamlet of Hoya Grande where the atrocity took place. But every person did show their repudiation of it and many asked that we come back to live on our farm again and said that they missed us. A lot of people genuinely only knew what they had seen Anne tell of the murders on the TV news. Some said how good they thought it was that Anne dared to do this and that they hoped we carried on in our struggle. But I could not find one witness who would openly testify to facilitate the issuing of arrest warrants, although it is common knowledge that many saw the boys captured and even witnessed the horrific murders. This is commonly known as the Law of Silence: so many people have been killed, or had their families killed, for speaking up. However, some people, when I discreetly cornered them, after very strongly telling me they knew nothing, would then immediately tell me in hushed voices out of the corners of their mouths and whilst glancing over their shoulders, that they wished us the best of luck in our investigations, that lots of people did see, and that for the good of the region they hoped that all members of the gang would soon be captured by the police - or better, and more likely, - by the guerrilla force. Nobody argues about the identity of the murderers when I name names. The same people have killed many other people and are conducting a reign of terror threatening that if anyone tells on them, everyone in the village will pay. That would be quite a few hundred people and nobody is taking any chances.

"In the town of Icononzo, there is a police presence and the country people come there at weekends for the markets. I did not go to Hoya Grande, not so much because of the danger to my own life, which people warned me of (though I believe the murderers feel on the run from us at this stage), but because I knew that people would be even more unlikely to talk to me there where my very presence would cause alarm and anyone seen talking to me could be accused of giving me information by the murderers. Members of the gang do not dare to go to the town of Icononzo now and have someone permanently watching the road to their stronghold in Hoya Grande, ready to raise the alarm if they see the army or police coming in. Apparently a bizarre rumour is also going around that the "gringos" (us) are about to appear with the army – “ with the permission of Marulanda (the guerrilla army chief)!!" We are very grateful to whoever started this colourful legend.

Ned Goes to Pueblo Nuevo for a Confrontation

”On my last day in Icononzo, I got someone to take me on a motorbike up to Pueblo Nuevo, where we lived for 12 years. It is an hour's drive on an extremely bumpy, stony, potholed road. I felt heartened as some people cheered and called my name when they saw me arriving. I was vibrating all over when I got off, partly from the rough ride, but also because I was about to confront Anita, well known to have been involved in the violence that has been done to us, and also in the murder of Don Pedro earlier this year, a very near neighbour of hers and a very dear friend of ours. A few days before he died, he said to a friend of ours in Icononzo: if anything happens to me there is only one person to blame: Anita. She is the confidante of the worst elements locally in the guerrilla force. She was also the only local person who never once visited us on our farm in all the years we were there.

Standing in the middle of the road with another neighbour present and many others watching from a distance, she coolly denied what I told her people were accusing her of. "I wouldn't have the power” (to get our boys killed) was her curious first reaction (rather than "I wouldn't want to"). Also, without me mentioning the subject first, she said she was not behind us being thrown out of our farm, which everyone knows she was.

Ned hands out ‘El Tiempo’ report of Tris’s murder to local people

I made it clear to her that we won't rest until every detail surrounding the case is uncovered (not the normal Colombian attitude!) and that we have all the support of the local people and of the highest leaders of the guerrilla force. As I left her, I handed her a copy of the article in "El Tiempo”. People started crowding around her to read it as I left on the motorbike and I gave another copy to another group of people who immediately started looking at it. In Icononzo, I also put copies of the article into two large envelopes addressed to the main leaders of the murderers and got the driver of the country bus about to leave for Hoya Grande to promise to deliver them.

Anne then told me on the phone that the Fiscal (Attorney General) of the Nation wanted me to make a statement about all I had heard, so I had to return to Bogota before leaving for Purace. There I found myself in very different surroundings: plush carpets, computers, secretaries (who can't spell), a huge modern building, metal detectors and armed guards. But the lackadaisical, do-nothing attitude is the same as I found amongst the peasants, except that these people in their suits and offices are worse because they are in no direct danger from the murderers.

Two of the Murderers Walking Free

“When I was in Icononzo, people reported to me their alarm at seeing two of the murderers, the Sanabria brothers, free in Hoya Grande. Somebody told me that their family had held a raffle and raised enough money to pay a lawyer to get them out of prison. The 'Fiscal' is unable to explain how this happened.”

What Ned doesn't mention is that he spent most of his time in the office making a complaint about official ineptness and bad attitude and had a big argument about this but finally agreed to delete the complaint in exchange for action (though we all know that with 99% impunity ruling in the country, these are merely words).

The rest of Ned's report was full of small details, fascinating to us because we know all the country people concerned, of conversations, support, constant urges to COME BACK to the area, full agreement with our plans for action in the area, insistence on buying him food and drink, small sums of money handed over for parts of our land they were using (absolutely extraordinary in this country!), hushed Hurrahs! for our speaking out on TV and in the Press and the assertion: "You people never did anything but good here."

One woman in Hoya Grande had some very chilling news: she accidentally stumbled across some shallow graves on her land near the murderers' house, not just two, but "about eight". We wept afresh, not just for our lads, but for all those faceless people who met with the same fate, and for this strangled country.

Lodging in the House of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan…

Meanwhile in Bogota, life took over and has been hectically - perhaps blessedly - busy. We packed up, yet again, and left our quiet refuge in Pacho (3 hours north of Bogota where we still have a fine garden and a dance-teacher friend who now brings us our own produce regularly). Through Anne's extraordinary network of urban contacts, we found ourselves in the almost unreal situation of being housed, as homeless refugees, in the very heart and centre of Colombian history: in the magnificent old-fashioned house of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, the most famous of all assassinated Colombian popular leaders, whose murder (at the instigation of the CIA) in 1948 led to the popular rising which gave birth to the FARC guerrilla force. His daughter Gloria, now in her 60's, is a client and friend of Anne's and is doing her best to continue spreading the words her father died to deliver. He was on the point of becoming president of a truly popular government and met the same fate as Allende in Chile. No wonder the United States is tearing its hair out in rage at its failure to send Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela the same way ..

Darkness creeps in all around
Ghostly shadows, not a sound,
Restless spirits that fill the night
To roam the earth their eternal plight
Then comes the dawn, with a brand new day
Night moves on, 'tis Nature's way.

(a little rhyme sent by an old school friend of Tristan's mother, Becky, in Burtonport, Co. Donegal, with the message "my heart goes out to you all, and my love, Caroline Sweeney.” Mary Kelly also sent us many other moving condolences from the fisher-folk of Burtonport who were our neighbours for over 15 years and who knew Tristan as a baby)

On the Move Again

The Colombian Government, in an effort to 'absorb' the popular pull of Gaitan's memory, cleverly made his house a National monument, which meant that his daughter was unable to allow strange homeless foreigners to stay for very long. So Anne and I said to one another: "We want to live Up There" - pointing to the once-green mountains above Bogota, now covered in the rabbit-warrens of popular settlements such as surround every large Third World city.

Anne knew someone who knew someone who... and we ended up living in the "Sala Comunal" - community centre - of one of these once-illegal suburbs, fighting off dust and pollution-induced illness, preparing to do free theatre to 'pay' for our new lodgings, and agonizing at the noise of the motorway the government have seen fit to slash through the foothills, inches from our door, where once the local people tethered goats.

And now we have moved again, a few yards up the steep incline to live in a communal bakery, at present out of use. On 23rd and 24th December and for a whole week previously we performed theatre, dance, Katie's songs and other activities, often dragging ourselves out of bed, the girls with swollen throats - the pollution here is hideous.

This phase of our lives will continue for a month or so while we continue moves connected with our boys' deaths, earn sufficient money to repair and remove our long-suffering bus which is still stuck in a former refuge, Tabio, and move down to live for a while in the hot-spot of Icononzo, before, hopefully, finally saying a last sad goodbye to Tristan, Javier, our Tolima friends, and moving towards a greener future in the South of Colombia.

"Somehow when the cosmos goes dark, a flame has to be lit in the deepest part of the heart, not in spite of, but precisely because of the otherwise meaninglessness. And the compassionate fight against the horrors of the world continues as long as this flame burns, inextinguishable as it spreads from person to person ... In mysterious ways, Tristan and Javier will live on in ways none of us can calculate. I still have hope for humanity and the planet, in spite of the brutalities to people and to Nature.”

- This comes from David Boadella, my therapist from the late 60's and early 70's who in those days gave me the strength to carry on and to whom I owe, at least in part, the strength we have had to find in our present situation. David, now about 67 years old, lives in Switzerland; he himself 20 years ago lost his beloved 18 year old daughter in a terrible fire in London - and his sister lost her 18 year old son in a car-crash caused by someone else's drunken driving. Strange destiny unites us all.

Light Relief from The Irish Ambassador

And now, some anecdotes from Anne. I hope the Irish Ambassador will forgive me for any indiscretion, but I find his comments too much of a jewel not to report..

”The Irish Ambassador in Mexico rang us, anxious to know that we're alright and not about to do anything foolish that would get us killed. He's an extremely intelligent, highly educated, truly diplomatic man, full of Irish wit which had me in stitches for half an hour; I am genuinely grateful for his very human concern (we won't sicken you with the stark contrast of the British Ambassador's hateful attitude). After I had answered all his perspicacious questions, he said, "Now you know what I have to advise you NOT to do, don't you? And I know you won't listen to me as I'm a very conservative person and you're not.” Anne: "I think you're secretly not that conservative". Him: "What?! I constantly worry about my pension and you don't even know what a pension fund is. We'd have to capture you and reprogramme you to make you worry about pensions"

”When I complained to him about the British Press and their ugly way of taking advantage of our pain, he told me to put it all in our archives, that they're equal to the American gutter press and on the level of headlines like "I married a Martian" and no-one believes them. And when I said the motto of our campaign is transparency and that we tell everyone everything, he scolded me saying, "That's all very well, but it's not a good idea to sit in a glass house when people are shooting at you."

He made me appreciate the best of the country I've left forever.”
Anne

Hugs from Unexpected Quarters..

Further anecdotes from Anne to give a taste of this tragic, magic country:

I met a left-winger on the street today that I barely know. He grabbed my hand and pumped it up and down and hugged me. "I saw the article in El Tiempo about you", he said. “Well said! Well said!” I frowned puzzled, not knowing exactly what he was referring to, as we'd been very harsh in our criticisms of Commander Gonzalo of the FARC who caused our boys' deaths by encouraging a delinquent militia in his area and throwing us out in the first place. But it seems that due to media censorship and the mortal danger of declaring your left-wing politics here, Colombians have become expert at extracting subtle implications and messages between the lines so that they often manage to espy meanings one didn't know one had implied in the first place! "The way you didn't criticize all the FARC, just the brutal ones," he explained - "Very good! Very good! Good luck in your fight!" I walked on, a little dazed.

Then I went to the Post Office I always use. I'd been given a false coin in my change there (very common in Colombia) so I was a bit annoyed. I humorously accused the boss who gave me some real coins and then grabbed me and hugged me in front of quite an audience of customers and workers. "I saw the newspaper!” he boomed. ”El pueblo te apoya!" (The people support you). This time I was really taken aback. We haven't DONE anything! Except name the people in the FARC whose violence and abuse of power has deprived two of our boys of their lives and God knows how many more people they've killed. Not exactly grand heroics. All I'd been after was my 1,000 pesos (about 50p) and suddenly I was being treated like a heroine of the people. "What exactly do you mean?", I asked. "You named the murderers and said you'd talked to the FARC. People are afraid to complain about their atrocities. El pueblo te apoya en tu lucha." (the people support you in your fight). I walked away, bemused.

And just to keep us in touch with our other, greener, life, little Julie, eleven years old and the youngest member of our group, has written a poem in Spanish sent from Purace. Translated, it reads:

Whilst other children study, I work in my garden;
Whilst they travel in cars, I ride on horseback;
Whilst they live in apartment blocks, I am as free as the wind;
When they work in offices, I'll be dancing amongst the trees;
When they are cutting down trees, I'll be trying to protect them;
But I can’t do it alone;
Friend, why don’t you help me?

Juan Mayr, Nature Destroyer

One person who won't be helping her is Juan Mayr, Colombian Minister for (Destruction of) the Environment. On 5th November, at one of the massive Public Audiences held by FARC and Government, in the demilitarised zone in Caqueta where peace talks are taking place, 1200 people turned up for the session on the environment. Juan Mayr defended fumigation as a solution to the (American) drug problem and Plan (Anti-) Colombia as a solution to the war (i.e. by letting the Americans in to wipe out the guerrilla army)

But William Shakespeare is on our side:

And this our life,
exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees,
books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones,
And good in everything.

(From ‘As You Like It, found in a very old issue of Organic Gardening magazine)

And a haunting message from Tristan, written to us when on a lean holiday on April 22nd: "Today is my birthday; there won’t be any cake, but I'm glad to be 18."

Our love to you Tris, and to Javier, and to the thousands of innocent people you have joined.
Jenny.

Contents of GL 49:

• Brilliant Action by Anne, Louise and Laura in Icononzo
• A clandestine approach to us to give information on the murderers
• Confrontations with two women, mother and wife of the assassins
• Javier’s father asks us to buy him a gun…
• Anne finds out later they were watched by one of the boys’ killers
• Information coming in fast on atrocities committed by the same band

The 6th, 7th and 8th of January is holiday time in Colombia, when country people all converge on their nearest market town. It was also exactly 6 months since Tristan and Javier met their terrible end. So we decided it was time for more Action in Icononzo. Anne, Louise, who after returning from Europe was now straining at the leash to do something radical about her nephew's death, and Laura Kelly, all travelled the five hour bus ride to Icononzo, with guitars, determined and in good spirits. For two full days they talked to everyone who would talk to them, which - considering the fear and threats ruling the area - was a very high percentage of the campesinos we had known. Right at the beginning, a local woman approached them fearfully on the street, made a clandestine appointment for her husband to talk to them urgently, and warned them passionately not to go to Hoya Grande, the scene of the crimes, as the murderers, still free there, were 'panting for our blood' after a very outspoken article in Colombia's main newspaper, El Tiempo, in December. Anne of course immediately agreed not to go and anyway there was no shortage of things to do in Icononzo regarding the deaths, as the market town was crowded because of the fiesta.

At Last, an Informant Offers Himself to Us

Later, the woman's husband came to the house where Anne and the girls were staying, petrified but determined to talk. He stayed for two intense, fascinating and disturbing hours; Anne reports it was difficult to hear him as he was so nervous he whispered. Essentially he said he was sick of the killing and of the apathy of the Guerrilla leaders, that he used to be a friend of a former, very good, Commander and hated what Gonzalo had done to the region. He said he was willing to die, but wanted it to be for something worthwhile. He had a contact who was a colonel in the regular army who was out to get Gonzalo and that things had got so bad, he himself wanted the Army to come into the region. He gave the colonel's telephone number and urged Anne to contact him. This is what Anne has to say in the matter: 'I told him immediately that to exchange some thugs with guns for worse thugs with guns is not a solution and that I don't want to get involved. But Jenny who is into a 'social survey' of all aspects of Colombia says she would at least be interested in talking to this Army man and Louise is keen too. Jenny dreams of getting the Guerrilla and the Army together to clean up the area: that would be historic and the beginning of a true revolution! I respected my informant totally and told other people - of course without mentioning his name – of his suggestion to several other people in Icononzo. Everyone was against it as the Army kill indiscriminately and call the corpses 'guerrilleros'. But the man has provided us with a fantastic pressure point with the guerrilla themselves and I have already used it in an e-mail letter to them.

Louise’s Report on the Icononzo Mission

“All the long hot journey to Icononzo I thought of Tristan, how he had travelled all that way, just to be killed.

“ Icononzo was preparing for a big festival, with bull fighting, horse parades and shows. I knew I would meet a lot of old friends and very possibly our worst enemies, the murderers. The small town was packed with people and I was surprised at how many came up to us to talk. Most people were incredibly friendly, though nervous to be seen talking to us. In general, people avoided talking specifically about the deaths of our boys, they preferred to talk about how we lost our land, or anything superficial. When we insisted on talking about the murders, they would quickly end the conversation and go their way.

“Sometimes I thought it wasn't just fear, but simply a lack of hope that they could change anything in their region: a feeling of pointlessness and powerlessness. But we also had some extraordinary encounters with intelligent, amazing people who are struggling desperately to do something about the horrifying situation they are living in. Being in Icononzo brought home to me once again the nightmarish reality of how our boys died. Simple details get to me the most, like sitting in the chair where Tristan had sat the night before his death in a friend's house, where he was warned not to go. Or listening to a lady from near Hoya Grande tell us how Tris went to her house to order a sack of cane sugar and how she didn't know for ages why he didn't call back for it.

“I saw a man being knocked down and trampled on by the bull in the ring which I had been avoiding looking at as I passed by. The audience cheered. A culture where torturing animals and getting nearly killed by them is 'fun' is a culture with something deeply wrong with it. No wonder our boys were abandoned by the people in the football pitch when the murderers were chasing them. I felt myself getting very frustrated and angry with everyone. I can't bear to think the murderers are being allowed to continue normal lives. It simply doesn't make sense that hundreds of families go under to a small band of murderers. I would say this to people as nicely as possible, and they would agree. And then continue to do nothing.'

Coralling an Instigator of the Killings

Anne now takes up the story:

'We saw Anita, the woman behind Don Pedro’s murder on the street. We surrounded her and I gave her the full frontal. I said she was responsible for Don Pedro's death. She tried to imply he was killed for good reasons, which is evil rubbish and I told her so. I told her that we have excellent contact with the FARC at national level and that they are investigating. All the local people I later told about the encounter loved it and said no-one had ever dared confront her before and that she IS the root of all the trouble here and it was good to 'spoil her day', but to be careful, she was treacherous as a snake. Someone said one of her delinquent sons has 30 armed men at his command.

The new mayor of Icononzo we knew already - his daughter was brutally murdered on the street by paramilitaries some months back. He gave us a long diatribe about how everything is impossible and we'd better give up, during which Lou and I told him in our different ways that this was a stupid attitude. In the end, he got quite upset and told how he had to risk his life all the time as Mayor (true everywhere in Colombia) and had to maintain contact with both sides (paramilitaries and guerrilla) to try and save people in danger and that he would go in with us to Hoya Grande to look for the bodies. This, however, is far too dangerous at the moment.

A Murderer’s Wife Confronted

We talked to an ex-neighbour of ours who we know was one of the men who ran away when Tris and Javier pleaded for help, and who may even have witnessed the killings. He denies all this, but perhaps to make up for his guilt is now very helpful and supportive and immediately pointed out the young fat, sick-looking little wife of Nelson Parra, the leader of the murderers. I followed her to get a bit of distance from our neighbour so as not to implicate him, then tapped her on the shoulder and introduced myself as family of the boys her husband murdered on 9th July. She denied this angrily. I replied that if she didn't know by now that her husband is a murderer then she must be the only person in Hoya Grande and Icononzo who doesn't and must be blind and stupid.

Just then, Javier's father walked up to us and I introduced him: 'And this is the father of the Colombian boy your husband murdered'. Then, pointing to the little dark boy beside her who was listening fascinated, I asked her if her husband was a good person to have kids with? She claimed she didn't know much about her husband's life as she mostly lives with her father. I told her we were going to visit the Guerrilla HQ with the families of all the people her husband had killed. She began to walk away, shouting at me and shaking with fury (and probably fear).

Javier’s Father

Javier's father and I left her, and he began to beg me to help him get a gun (he is extremely poor) so that he can kill the murderers (whom he doesn't even know by sight). He is a simple, straightforward campesino and that is his solution. He and the rest of his family are in terrible danger yet he is one of the bravest people we met. He accompanied me everywhere publicly. Then we got photocopies of the El Tiempo article and stood where the country buses go back to Hoya Grande where Tris and Javier were killed and Pueblo Nuevo where we had lived (an hour's drive away). We gave out the articles as leaflets and so many people came up to us for them that I had to keep sending the girls off with extra pesos to get more copies. As a result of this success, Louise hit upon the idea of writing our own leaflet to distribute and this we did. It gave a list of the names, where known, of the 14 people we so far know of who were killed by the same gang and stated we were going to gather a group of the surviving relatives together to go to the South of Colombia to see the guerrilla command and make a complaint about the state of the region. We invited people to contact us by telephone in Bogota (a 'safe' number given to us by someone who will 'field' calls) if they would like to join us, or give more information. This leaflet we handed to everyone on the bus waiting to go to Hoya Grande. It was received with amazing enthusiasm, and when I stood at the front of the bus to make a little speech, I was warmly agreed with when I said that we cannot leave things like this and that we will continue to fight till the end and that we are not blaming the people of Hoya Grande, only those directly responsible. Of about 25 people there, only two men scowled.

After this, we were going to sing at the festival, but I suddenly got an enormous dose of nerves, not to be ignored, so we immediately took the bus out of Icononzo to a safe town.

A Murderer Watches

I have one remaining regret from our visit: that I wasn't given the following information while we were there, but only by 'phone when back in Bogota: and that is that one of the murderers, Joselo Sanabria Guerrero, had been standing with a group of men about two yards from us outside a cafe on Icononzo square and had evidently started shaking with alarm as I scanned the faces of the men to see if I knew anyone. Had Laura, Louise and I known, we would have lynched him!

Another Horror Story about the same gang of Murderers, by Anne

I have just been to see one of the refugee men who with their families are squatting the Red Cross Headquarters in Bogota. I had heard when we did theatre there a few days ago for the refugee kids, that there was a family there who had been relocated by the Government on a farm for refugees two years ago between Icononzo and Hoya Grande and who had to leave because they had been attacked by the 25th front of the FARC - i.e. Gonzalo's lot, who had murdered three people, one woman cut to pieces by machete. We recognised the style immediately. My informant was the sole survivor of a paramilitary massacre in the north of Colombia where 7 people died. He played dead and thus escaped, with four bullets in his body. He showed me the scars, desperate to be believed: I've met this before in other refugees - their plight is so ignored by the Government, the media and urban Colombians in general that they don't expect to be believed! This man had done what few do, he had denounced the paramilitary killers, with names. He was threatened and so gladly accepted a government resettlement offer in `Paradise Farm' (El Paraiso), Icononzo, Tolima. He and 13 other families were put on a bus to Tolima with a lorry load of food behind them and dumped in Icononzo. Three of them were soon murdered. He appeared reluctant to name names at first. 'The Chaparrales?' I asked, using the local nickname for the band who killed our lads and so many more people. He nodded. When I asked had he seen the woman macheted to death, he burst into tears. He said the militia-men were insisting that the refugees send their kids to the militia and that they took two of his, but they ran away. One was now working in Bogota and was threatened by the paramilitaries just the day before our conversation. He came to the Red Cross to be with his father, but the police refused to let him in (they have orders not to let any more refugees join as this would swell the ranks of the public demonstration - in a very posh area - which the Government has had on its hands for a year now). The boy jumped the railings and the police threatened to take him out by force. The father retaliated by threatening an international scandal if they did. He won. No wonder I got dirty looks from the cops today when I spoke to him.

Continuing his story, he said: 'All 13 families left 'Paradise Farm'. I am very confused,' said the man. 'I know the paras are bad because they kill just to kill. But I didn't think the FARC are like that.' He said he believed their High Command are good willed but that there is no communication between the bases and the top. Exactly what we have found to be the case. I said the only way this can be resolved is if we all complain loudly. He was scared and said that Colombia is a labyrinth, but he agreed to accompany us to the demilitarised zone in Caqueta if we get a group of victims' relatives together to confront the FARC command.

Chance encounters continue to occur, providing a guiding line through the labyrinth: I have a very long-standing devotedly left-wing friend from the near defunct 'Patriotic Union' party - defunct because the government have murdered at least 3,000 of their members. This woman told me recently that whilst working in Putumayo, (the department adjacent to Caqueta in S. Colombia) in the early nineties, giving classes in politics to community leaders, there was a FARC Commander called Gonzalo in her class. She didn't know I knew him, and I kept a straight face and held my breath. She said he and another commander had been sent as replacements for two excellent commanders who had been killed by the Army and that soon they had ruined the social support base of the revolutionary army in the whole area with their brutality. I asked her if Comandante Gonzalo was tall, young and good looking? (very few FARC guerrilleros are tall, because of their racial background). 'Yes,' she said, surprised. I then told her of our tragic connection with Gonzalo and she told me that a female local leader had once confronted him, along with a group of local people, as he had kidnapped the local mayor and tied him to a tree. They achieved his release. Now I happened to know the local leader she mentioned, as she is also a refugee at the Red Cross building and I had helped her in a critical moment when the police were about to attack the place. She had had to leave Putumayo because of confronting Gonzalo.”

Anne has an arrangement to meet with this woman in the next few days.

A little light relief

And now for a little slightly light relief, also from Anne's endless fountain of anecdotes:

Anne's astrological profession takes her into every social corner of complex Colombian life, including the higher echelons of the Police Security Department (DAS). Some ladies of this Dept. asked Anne in hushed voices what is it like in the guerrilla zone and are the guerrilla leaders good looking? A little later in the conversation, one of the ladies whom Anne had viewed as somewhat conservative, exploded into a passionate tirade against the corruption of the official army who, according to her, only had interest in staying safe and getting rich while sending the sons of the poor to the front. Another DAS lady sighed and said the work she would really like to be doing is 'to have an NGO like you and work with campesinos in the countryside.'

“I'd like to be working in the countryside too”, sighed JJ as she ended yet another Town 'green' letter. But there is still much to be done, with more 'Gonzalo' information pouring in practically daily. The next instalment will come shortly. I thank you all for listening to our story.

With love - and in need of SEEDS for our still-mainly-rural community.
Jenny

P.S. From Becky in Ireland

A big thank you to everyone who has written letters to the Government and to the Colombian Ambassador Victor Ricardo. As a result of all this pressure, Anne reports that they have been offered a bodyguard for their protection! All the letter writing works, and we are very grateful that people have taken time and effort to follow up on our requests for help. Also please any of you that still have patience and time, there could never be too many letters written so please keep writing them. Copies to us are always welcome.

Contents of GL 50:

• Massacre in Purace
• Back to Hoya Grande – in an Army convoy
• Jenny makes friends with an Army Commander
• Retracing Tris and Javier’s last footsteps…
• Another visit to the FARC demilitarized zone
• Top FARC commander invites us back to El Pato
• We are offered body-guards. And refuse them.
• And much more…

There is no good reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organisation.
Kurt Vonnegut

This is a goodbye letter - goodbye to Bogota. In a few hours I will be on a bus with my daughter Katie heading back to the mountains and greenery of Purace The reasons for my 'release' from 7 months of soul-death and city pollution are both tragic and hopeful.

Massacre in Purace

A few short weeks ago, catastrophe fell upon the National Park of Purace - this time not our own children, but the loved ones of 9 other families, when a group of hillwalkers were insanely murdered, shot, by the 13th Front of the FARC, that is, the one operating in the area of our farm there. And for goodness knows what ironies of Destiny, a group of our children, six of them, were witness to them being captured and taken away.

There is no way of entering into details in a Letter of this length, nor would it be politically advisable in the ever-more complicated situation of a worsening civil war. Suffice it to say that we are working with the victims' families, sharing grief and militance and determination with them and many hundreds of Nature-lovers and ecologists in Colombia whose protests centre around the theme 'the hills are ours'. A long march of hundreds is planned for Easter Week to retrace the steps of their dead comrades and 'reclaim the Park' from the war. Hopefully we will be able to help in a very practical manner from our farm, which tragically is only a few minutes away from where the victims were taken.

This tragedy necessitated yet another journey of Anne's to the Demilitarized Zone where the Government and FARC leaders are holding 'peace talks', as the Park Director who originally begged us to go and live in Purace to work with the Indians there was hugely alarmed and telling us to leave immediately. However upon further assurances that the Commander responsible for these new absolutely baseless killings was to be immediately called to judgement and that our position there was guaranteed, we decided not to become refugees again just yet.

To Hoya Grande by Helicopter?

Meanwhile there was a second rather large reason for Anne to talk to the guerrilla leaders. As a result of all your letters of protest and pressure to the Colombian Government via various ambassadors, at long last the attorney general's office decided it was politic to take action in the case of our murdered boys. During one particular week, we practically lived in the heavily-guarded government office giving testimony. The Plan - which absolutely horrified us at first - was to drop into Hoya Grande by helicopter with a massive Army backup to look for the boys' remains - and those of many other victims of the same band.

Two of us could accompany this official mission. We chose me and my daughter Louise (19) although anyone more scared of air-transport than myself would be hard to find - and the idea of our helicopter being punctured by guerrilla gunfire as we entered with 'the wrong side' wasn't my idea of a pic-nic. So we did the outrageous. We informed the guerrilla of our intentions (with official agreement for doing so - but that's an 'official secret' in this ever more astonishingly paradoxical country) and asked them please not to shoot at us. To cut a long tale short, they agreed.

We were told to be ready at 3.0 a.m. on 26th February and off we drove to Tolima. My nerves disappeared as we entered the official car: we heard we were not going by helicopter after all but by road, accompanied by lorry-loads of soldiers. And so it was, the most ridiculous theatre: ramshackle lorries, boy soldiers with their legs dangling as they sat in the open backs, us sandwiched in a car in the middle. Anything more inviting of a guerrilla ambush, a grenade, a mine, I can't imagine. Louise and I marvelled the whole way at the massively stupid tactics of the Army and I understood why a handful of peasant guerrillas had been able over the years to get the upper hand, and why so many soldiers are slaughtered.

We trundled in to an 'Army base' - a few flimsy tents in an exposed grove near Icononzo - and met the young colonel in charge of the operation. He proudly assured us we were being guarded by 180 soldiers. I was a little concerned about what all my former neighbours and comrades might think of us invading with the Army. I studiously spoke to no-one and looked at no-one in Hoya Grande, the tiny hamlet where our tragedy took place, so as not to implicate anyone in this somewhat lunatic mission. But one or two former neighbours deliberately searched to make eye contact and beamed total support .. I was amazed.

Hours Spent Talking to an Army Commander

The enormous group of people - technical experts sent by the government and a bevy of soldiers - spent the whole day digging test holes over a wide area we'd had indicated to us via a chain of frightened witnesses. Nothing was found, as I had indeed hoped as I couldn't contemplate the idea. The Army Major in charge of the team and myself sat on a log and talked. I was undergoing some quiet inner de-programming. I have spent a life-time shunning police and army as inhuman enemies. But here I was, talking to a very human human being. 'I've got three kids and I only see them once a month and I want this war over,' the army commander told me, and 'Alfonso Cano (one of the top guerrilla leaders) is an intellectual. He likes to drink, he likes the good life. He wants peace, he doesn't want to be stuck there in the jungle. But the hardliners . . .' 'You know a lot about the guerrilla' I said, astonished. 'I have to, it's my job,' he grinned.

Retracing Tris and Javier’s last steps

Then by radio-phone they put us in touch with Julio and Baudelina, the peasant couple who were the adoptive parents of my other grandson, 14-year-old Brendan, for whom Tristan had lost his life - it was to say goodbye to Brendan before going to Ireland that Tris went with Javier on his last fatal journey.

Brendan's stepmother Baudelina begged us to go to her house. 'But won't that put you in danger, being seen with us?' we asked, horrified - she lives next door to one of the murderers and we have feared horribly for the safety of all three of them and begged her to leave often; but her peasant attachment to her land made her refuse. So we spent hours with her, with about 30 army men guarding her house. My grandson Brendan begged to come away with us, and very carefully and tactfully, Louise and I worked on Baudelina to extract her permission for him to go. She was terrified of us taking him away for good, and this time, her suspicions were well-founded, as we were determined to get them all out of there if at all possible. It was horrible having to deceive her, but her stubborn peasant mentality made her stick like glue to her known ways, oblivious to the danger they were in.

This time, she let Brendan go ‘for a week’ and we took our precious treasure carefully wrapped in Louise's protective arms, all of us somewhat stunned by events, home with us under military escort to Bogota. He is now safely on our farm, and we are trying to get his adoptive parents to join us, a very difficult decision for them.

In order not to turn this Letter into a Book, I must now move forward in time to the following weekend, when Anne and Louise returned - without the Army - to Icononzo on a follow-up mission.

Icononzo Again

Anne reports: 'For me this visit to Icononzo was the most satisfying and pleasant and the time people have been friendliest and least scared to talk to us openly. No-one disapproved of Jenny and Lou going in with the Army and at one point a lady approached me and said, 'Thank you very much for everything you are doing for the region; we know that you only do things that are good for the people and you are helping us all.' At this point, our brains die as we fail to understand Colombia ... normally, our actions would have been seen as high treason punishable by immediate execution.

And Another Visit to FARC HQ

And now a report of Anne's visit to the Guerrilla Headquarters in Caqueta the same weekend I went to Tolima with the Army .. She spoke to Alfonso Cano who calls her the 'Warrior Irishwoman' and he expressed great concern that a tragedy be avoided in Hoya Grande (that is, if the guerrilla attacked what we at the time thought would be a helicopter landing). Joaquin Gomez, another of the top guerrilla leaders, gave Anne over an hour of his time (in the middle of peace talks with the Government!). He expressed outrage that the people of Hoya Grande had not clanned together to kill the militia responsible for so many deaths - a sentiment we have often shared but which in his case is actually totally unreasonable seeing that it is because of FARC backing that these local psychopaths dare to wreak havoc with people's lives. Anne repeated the many details of our case and of the situation in the Icononzo area and told of her long walks through the mountain areas to try and get justice via a regional commander. Joaquin humorously requested her to be his guide next time he needs to go to Tolima as she knows the area so well .. and he repeated that he wanted us to go and live in the Demilitarized Zone to help with drug-crop substitution, a request he makes every time Anne sees him. He said we can go back to El Pato, where this campaign started, any time we like.

News of Pending Revenge in Hoya Grande

Meanwhile I have to report that a group of local people in Hoya Grande have had enough of years of killings and are taking matters into their own hands. Our informant also tells us that the day we went to Hoya Grande, the band of militiamen, 10 of them, had the road mined and grenades ready if we were to advance any further 'inland'. It took no more than two civilian women - Louise and myself - to spot the obviousness of this danger. Not however evidently the Colombian Army.

We also heard further intensely painful details of our boys' deaths: that it was initially only Tristan the gang went for. Javier was free and could have escaped. But how could he? How could anyone leave a friend? So he protested and was killed as well.

And at least one man, a 'friend' and neighbour, tall, young and strong, who knew Tris since he was little and whom Tris would have run to for help, was ordered to help capture and tie the boys. He, and others, obeyed.

Louise and I had walked the last pathway our boys walked, to the abandoned house, to the area where they must still be lying. I couldn't feel. Anything. Sometimes life becomes so unreal, you just can't.

NEWS IN BRIEF

The Vice-Presidency of Colombia wrote to us at the end of January offering us body-guards. I declined, but used the opportunity to demand protection for the people who really need it - the peasants of Hoya Grande. This letter eventually brought about our armed entry into Hoya Grande. Not quite what I had in mind.

When Anne was in Icononzo, she met Javier's mother who tried to insist that Javier was still alive. Anne gently but firmly denied this and the woman burst into tears. Anne repeated our offer that she and her husband and children leave the danger of Icononzo and come and live with us in the South. She immediately ennumerated her few possessions - a couple of rustic beds for instance - and asked would they fit on our old bus. It looks like we're going to be forming a refugee settlement.

When the families of the Purace Park victims went to talk to the guerrilla leaders to demand justice, and mentioned us, the FARC leaders acted out 'ducking' in mock fear and trembling at mention of our names ..

Many of us dream about Tristan. I did only once: he came in, white and soft and allowing us all the hold him and give him the love he needed (in life he was a little stiff and difficult). As I held him, he got younger and younger until he was a baby sitting on my knee ..

On February 1st. a radio station in Galway (West of Ireland) phoned me in Bogota and got me to do a radio interview about our situation.

In Colombia, the Press whom I have so often berated, treated the information we were able to give about the Purace massacre with extreme delicacy and caution so as not to bring danger to anyone.

Cristina, one of our long-term Colombian members, returned to her family in Caqueta for some months before rejoining us. During that time, she was kidnapped by the FARC and held for a month chained by the neck to a tree with another girl whilst their identity was 'investigated.' This story we have heard many times and never wanted to believe till it happened to someone we know so well. She has eloquently written up her story and we are working out how best to use it to force the FARC to clean up their act.

One day our children in Purace were on the local once-a-week bus to the market town of Belen. They took with them washed raw carrots from the garden and were munching them. Everyone on the bus wanted one and soon all the peasants, including old men, were munching away on organic carrots and declaring what wonderful pure food it was!

Anne recently had telephone contact with our old friend Camilo the teacher in Guayabal, El Pato. He said there is now a community rubbish-recycling and compost-making project and community garden there .

Life continues. We remember and mourn our boys, but their spirits now are joined in our minds with so many fresh deaths of peasants and students and community leaders; they are part of the phenomenon called Colombia. Last night in the dark heavy tortured hours, I lay in soul-agony, my mind full of the decades of hateful details I had been told of hideous injustice in the countryside, within the jurisdiction of a movement I once had hoped would be revolutionary. And I came very close to hating Colombia. But this morning I awoke, deciding to go home to Purace. Already I feel alive, revitalized, in love again with our long long chosen mission ahead.

My heart tells me
That the time of compromise
Has passed.
Now the work I do
Must nourish me
And heal the earth
And free our common spirit .

(from 'Green Prints' Gardening Magazine, USA)

'I believe we would be happier to have a personal revolution in our individual lives and go back to simpler living and more direct thinking. It is the simple things of life that make living worthwhile, the sweet fundamental things such as love and duty, work and rest, and living close to Nature .'

Laura Ingalls Wilder (ibid.)
With love to you all,
Jenny James.

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