• The murder of Luis Arenas

Luis was 62 years old, strong and healthy. Ironically for me, he was a Conservative, an ex-police officer, a straight, firm, determined, highly educated man. His crime: efficiency in leadership of green community work in the little river port of Milán, Caquetá, and the massive surrounding coca-growing area.

Three hours before his death, Luis wrote to me, telling me he was now President of the Association of Community Action groups (Juntas Comunales) in his area and very busy working on the issue of crop substitution, that is, teaching people alternatives to growing coca; reforestation, and concentration on rubber-production. He was delighted to hear that members of the Irish green Party might want to visit and offered his home 'unconditionally' to anyone who comes. (This offer remains open with his family)

He then left his house to visit some friends. At 8.15 p.m. an unknown man (a 'sicario' - hired killer) entered the room with a machine-gun and filled Luis with 19 bullets. He died instantly.

His wife, my friend Dolly Arenas, fled from Milán. His large family of sisters and brothers fear for their lives. Days before his death, Luis had written to the Mayor of Florencia saying he had been threatened and asking for a transfer to continue his work elsewhere. The letter 'disappeared', then reappeared after his death.

Luis's death is an extraordinary blow to all things green in Lower Caquetá, as well as a huge sorrow personally to his family and friends. It means that the only person brave enough to try and stem the tide of get-rich quick environmental destruction in that huge region, has been wiped out, precisely because he was working effectively. It is obvious he would have been elected Mayor of Milán in the next local elections and that this could only increase his effectiveness.

And so to the huge question, who killed Luis? This is where my small English brain was in for a shock. 'The narcos', I naturally thought. Wrong. The guerrilla? Highly unlikely: they support all community work. The next sentence you're not supposed to say in Colombia (It's OK to kill people, but not to mention who did it). Everyone suspects that the present Mayor of Milán, one Ricardo Leyva of the Liberal Party, planned Luis's murder in conjunction with others. A reflection of the old political battles that caused the death of thousands in the Fifties' 'Violencia' in Colombia.

It seems the long-standing, self-seeking political club of Milán, seeing Luis was a clean, honest, ideological man, chose not to argue or compete but to resort to the 'easy' Colombian way of the gun. I see my task as making sure it doesn't turn out so easy, and that his green work does not get disrupted.

Much as they loved him, Luis's family feel scared, paralysed. They want something done, but they certainly don't want to risk the assassination of further members of the family. They don't dare to return to Milán and they have little faith in DAS (Security Police) investigations - there are tens of thousands of unpunished murders in Colombia. They brighten up enormously however when I say, “But I'm not afraid and nor will my friends be, and we intend to do something.” They have a touching, almost disturbing faith in the “international community” whence, it seems, all magic emanates. Certainly, those who murdered Luis rely on this common Colombian terror, and they would never have suspected that Luis has foreign friends not prone to the understandable but paralysing Colombian disease of fear.

What they say they want is for 'investigators' to come in from outside and get something printed about Luis's death in a foreign newspaper, and that this report would then be picked up by the prestigious Conservative Colombian daily “El Tiempo.” How this results in the assassins being apprehended, I don't quite understand, but will certainly work to get them what they want.

In conversations with the family, we have worked out some daring plans of action, which we will report after they have - hopefully – worked. A dangerous business maybe, but not as cancer-producing as cowering in fear.

So why are we communicating all this to a 'green' European audience?

Because the death of Luis is much bigger than Luis, great as he was. And busy as he was, his work was only a tiny drop in a great ocean of indifference and cynicism. The only drop in that enormous hot, flat area. Luis's death means all green work in Lower Caquetá stops. Unless we make it not stop! We must make sure that those who saw murder as the way to create SILENCE, find that what they have brought about is the most unholy NOISE.

PLEASE HELP US TO CREATE THIS NOISE!

1. By sending letters of condolence and support to Luis's family. His wife's name is Dolly Rendon Arenas, and one of his sisters is Beatriz Arenas. If you use our postbox, A.A. 895 Neiva, Huila, we will make sure all letters get passed to the family with translations attached.

2. If any of you have connections with Amnesty International, please ask for their advice and help in this matter.

3. If you have contacts with any newspapers or magazines, however small in circulation, and can get something printed, please do so and send us a copy so that we can try this mysterious route of 'international disapproval' to force the hand of the Colombian authorities who should already be doing something to do it.

4. If any of you are adventurous enough to want to come out here and to do something yourself - make concerned enquiries on the spot for example, brilliant! We will combine efforts and give all the support and advice we can.

Please don't let his be yet another useless Colombian death.

It seems almost irreverent to end on a positive note, but Luis would be delighted: News from El Pato is that the guerrilla force have definitely put a stop to any more tree cutting! and that they are taking our vegetable-growing, seed-donation programme very seriously, sharing out the packets amongst the population and regularly checking up on them to see that they are using them well. All our presently available gift seeds are used up. We could distribute endless amounts: please send whatever you can!

Steve Thompson, Unwin's and B&Q seeds - thankyou!

Love to all,
Jenny James

What follows is a literal translation of an Open Letter from Luis Arenas' brother-in-law, Diogenes.

To Amnesty International and all International Organisations working for the Green cause, ecology, the environment and human rights:

In Colombia, to defend biodiversity, the environment, can mean death.
This has happened in the Department of Caquetá, a region situated in the Southeast of Colombia in the wet tropical jungles of the Amazon Basin.
There lived Luis Erasmo Arenas Hurtado, a community leader who took on the fight for the Green Cause, after observing how the cocaine-traffickers of the region pitilessly deforested the jungle, causing the rivers to dry up, filling the countryside with desolation and death.

And so, at the age of 62, he gave up a conformist life to organise the rural districts of Port Milan, a small town on the river Orteguaza. With the participation of the community, he worked out projects of rural electrification, reforestation of the basin of the River Orteguaza and the introduction of large quantities of fish-spawn into Lake Guaicochará. His dream was to bring back life and contentment to the inhabitants of the region. The fisherfolk would return to the river, rainfall would regulate itself, and with it, the harvests, the grain-stores would be full again and tranquillity would return to the region. The old people would have a place to rest in an old people's refuge Luis built on land he donated.

But then, dark designs of hate and violence truncated these dreams. On 5th August 1995, Luis's life was cut off in a treacherous and cowardly manner, simply for wanting to do good, for organising the community to prevent so much destruction. His death has its roots in a local government that has never been interested in satisfying the needs of the people; nor has it shown the slightest interest in punishing those responsible for this monstrous crime. Here in these latitudes, to be honest and conscious of the need to defend the environment is penalised with death, because such policies work against administrative corruption and complacency towards destruction of the jungle.

Luis Erasmo Arenas was killed by the indifference of the local government who, knowing that this community leader was in danger, nevertheless provided no protection for him; on the contrary, they left him on his own, thus ridding themselves of the control and supervision which the sacrificed leader would exercise over the activities of the administration. (see note below)*

Members of Luis Erasmo Arenas' family, his friends and all defenders of biodiversity in Caquetá, call upon the International Green Community to condemn this political crime and to continue to support Luis's ideals so that to defend Life in Colombia does not mean to lose one's life, and so that the flora and fauna become an expression of a healing bond amongst Colombians.

* This is a reference to the fact that the Mayor of Milán and his group conveniently absented themselves on the day of Luis's murder. The day before he was killed, Luis was elected by the community to be overseer of a project for which the Mayor was granted £50,000 (a very large sum here). This would have stopped the usual stealing of funds.

Speech read at Luis's funeral by his brother-in-law, Diogenes, Translation followed by Spanish original.
Florencia, Caquetá

Sadly and silently, our pain and rage bottled up inside, we - your wife, your children and all your brothers, sisters, relations and friends - have brought you here, Luis Erasmo Arenas Hurtado, to your final resting place.

A hand fossilized with fear cut short your amazing life.
A cruel, visionless mind put an end to your dreams.
But just as water is stronger than rock, love is stronger than violence.

We know, Luis Erasmo, that a cunning hand cruelly slaughtered you in the autumn of your life, but we declare that for each bullet that shattered your bones, new flowers will bloom along the river, and the millions of baby fish that you planned to seed in the Lake of Guaicochara will feel your presence. Your projects to give warmth and shelter to the old people of Milan will not die. When the electrification of the local villages becomes a reality, your name will stand out clearly in everyone’s memory.

In this final resting place, we hand over a life so that others can germinate. We are not here to say goodbye to you, my friend, we simply bring you to an unavoidable meeting, an encounter with eternity.

God will already have pardoned you for any sins and misunderstandings; in our memories will remain only the presence of a community leader, of the son who returned to his land to follow in the footsteps of your parents by continuing the cultivation of the seeds of love they left behind them.

Luis Erasmo, rest in peace and forgive from your lofty kingdom your murderers. Do not forget you are an Arenas and from the heavens, side by side with your parents, help us to build the peace which all us Caquetenos are crying out for.

To build joy, one needs far more courage than to deal out death.
Rest in peace, brother.
October 18th 1995 Colombia

Tristes y silenciosos, con el dolor y la rabia apurando por dentro, Luis Erasmo Arenas Hurtado; tu esposa, tus hijos, todos tus hermanos parientes y amigos te hemos traido al “lugar para siempre”.

Una mano fosilizada de miedo segó tu vida asombrosa.
Una mente cruel y sin esperanzas trunco tus sueños.
Y así como el agua puede más que la roca, el amor es más poderoso que la violencia. Los Arenas no abrigarán ningún rencor. Quienes regaron sin piedad tu sangre, equivocaron el camino, ellos ignoran que Don Erasmo Arenas Badillo y Mercedes Hurtado, tus padres; habrian sembrado senderos de paz, alegría y servicios a la comunidad por todo el valle del rio Orteguaza.
La nobleza heredada de tus padres, le impide a los Arenas, abrigar en sus corazones las bajas pasiones.

Sabemos Luis Erasmo, que una mano artera se ensaño con tu otoñal humanidad, pero lo contrario de toda verdad, es también verdadero, por eso desde ahora lo pregonamos, de cada impacto que estremeció tus huesos, brotarán nuevas flores en el rio y los millones de alevinos que querias sembrar en la laguna de Guaicochará sentirán los caprichos de tu presencia.
No morirán tus proyectos de darles calor a los ancianos de Milán. Cuando la electrificación de las veredas sea una realidad tu nombre emergerá con vigor desde lo profundo de la memoria.
En este lugar de siempre, entregamos una vida para que germine otra. No venimos a decirte adiós amigo, te traemos a la cita obligatoria, al encuentro con la eternidad.
Dios ya te ha perdonado los yerros e incomprensiones; en nuestros recuerdos quedará la presencia del lider comunitario, del hijo que retornó a su tierra para seguir los pasos de la siembra y la semillas de amor dejadas por sus padres.
Luis Erasmo, descansa en paz y perdona desde lo más alto de tu reino a tus victimarios. No te olvides de tu condición de Arenas y edifica desde el cielo al lado de tus padres la paz que clamamos los caqueteños.
Para construir la alegria se necesita mucho más valor que para propiciar la muerte.
Descansa en paz amigo.
October 18th 1995 Colombia

Contents of Green Letter No. 7:

• Tree slaughter at Ricardo’s
• FARC policy on drug crops
• Statement of our own attitudes to drug addicts

Dear Friends in Europe,

My last letter brought you news of the murder of my friend and colleague Luis Arenas. Your response has been magnificent. Many people have written personal letters, simple, strong and eloquent, to his wife and family. These letters are tremendously valued: please don't think it is too late to write. Everything except death and destruction moves very slowly in Colombia; every drop of positivity coming our way is deeply appreciated: a word, a feeling, a packet of seeds, a small donation, a letter of caring. Nick Osborne of England sent out SEVENTY-SEVEN well-written press releases about the situation here - that is one example. But it is not about Luis I want to write today, until I have very concrete news from this end.

My preoccupation today is trees. Not surprising, considering the nature of this campaign. But these are some very particular trees, belonging to our nearest neighbour, trees that we hoped would one day belong to us if we could raise the money to buy his farm. Now it is too late. I am typing to blot out the sound of the chainsaw next door.

Yesterday morning I spent transplanting some baby nitrogen-fixing trees I had grown from seed; my 10 year old daughter Katie spent the morning filling little bags with compost and planting local tree seeds in them. By midday we were very tired (our day starts at 5.00 a.m.) and I lay on my 'log', the beautiful fallen body of some ancient giant - this one died a natural death. It is there I rest and think and plan and regain strength.

Then came a terrible crash, then another immediately, another and another. I jumped up in horror. Ricardo's farm. He has been waiting to sell to us as long as we've been here, but the £4,000 asking price was beyond us. Now, he claims, someone has offered £6,000. His farm is 500 acres, most of it beautiful high forested mountain. But the bit below us, he is clearing. He plants maize to hide the real crop: amapola, opium poppy. He does not replant cleared land, because he is not interested in living on his land or making compost - a ridiculous idea to him. He simply cuts down the next bit of beautiful forest, ready 'composted' by Nature herself - it will last him one year. And then on to the next bit.

In spite of all the good news about the guerrilla force preventing large logging operations, these 'small' - over an acre will be cleared this morning - operations do not come under the ban. In Europe, you will hear negative reports of the Colombian guerrilla force 'supporting' drug-trafficking - the latest phrase coined is 'narcoguerrilla'. The actual situation is very different: the guerrilla supports the peasants. If the Colombian government responds to American pressure and sends in planes to spray crops with lethal pesticides, or sends the Army in to bully the population, needless to say, the guerrilla cannot support such aggression and is therefore seen to be on the side of the coca or poppy-growers, whereas in reality they preach against these things and encourage change to other crops. What they won't do is use force against their own people to prevent the growing of illegal crops.

Nor can I. I feel impotent, legless. The trees are crashing. Ricardo is overweight, he is not a poor peasant, he owns a discotheque down in Rovira. And he is a friend. He has waited two years for us to buy that land; we didn't have the money for a postage stamp.

Outside the sun is shining, it is an exquisite morning, fresh from the night's gentle rain. Officially it is the dry season, but as we live so close to the forest, we often have rainfall that twenty minutes down the deforested mountain they do not have. So our gardens stay fresh and green all the year round, whilst elsewhere it is parched. The farmers don't mind, they use this season for burning the fields and woods. Ricardo will be burning soon, when the chainsaw man has done his work.

When we first heard those fatal thuds yesterday, Ned (a permanent member of our community) and my children ran down to see what was going on, and to try and persuade Ricardo to stop. But our position is untenable. We cannot make Ricardo feel what he does not feel. He wants money to go and live in Bogotá. To us, Bogotá is synonymous with Hell, but that's what Third world campesinos (country-dwellers) want.

I am writing to you to stop my world caving in, to try and find hope and steadiness and common sense. I lay with Alice (12) last night, she was desolate after having watched the trees fall. All I could think about was that in many parts of the world, it wouldn't be trees that were falling next door, but people. As I lie with her, I remember the pains that my own mother went through trying to protect me from the unfaceable realities and cruelties of life.

Then I lay awake half the night wondering if there is anything in this disheartening situation that can be done, given that money can't be magicked out of thin air. Here are some suggestions I have come up with which I now throw out to the green network to see if any of you have the contacts or resources necessary:

1. Although there is no electricity in this area, Ricardo has a generator-run video machine. I am wondering if any anti-drugtaking institutions have videos available showing the effects, perhaps on young people, of this pretty-looking flower they grow round here: the opium-poppy. Likewise, videos which bring home the global effects of cutting these forests. Whether a gift or a loan, any material of this nature, and most especially if it could be dubbed in Spanish, would be well-used. I would personally see to it that it was shown all over the region. Betamax is the system used here, they don't have machines that take VHS. I believe there is a video available about the work and death of Chico Mendez in Brazil?

2. If any of you work in, with or for anti-drug campaigns, or know of people who do, there is a simple, urgent message that needs getting across to drug-users: YOU ARE NOT ONLY KILLING YOURSELVES, YOU ARE SLOWLY KILLING THE WORLD. THE LAST FORESTS ARE BEING DESTROYED TO SUPPORT YOUR HABIT. I feel very strongly about this: it is in vogue today to 'worship the victim'. But I believe the intrinsic aggressiveness of self-destruction should be pointed out clearly. The position of the United States is particularly violent: first, they refuse to look at the Devil within, the empty, meaningless life-style they have created which leads people to the dead-end of drug-taking. Then they blame Third world peasants, impoverished through the stranglehold of the US and its allies, for growing the cocaine and heroin. And then they give 'aid' to countries like Colombia to attack the peasants and their crops, as if that is going to make life in American cities any more meaningful. I am not aware of the drug-and-deforestation issues being linked in 'green' literature. If I am wrong, please send me any literature available, particularly if drug addicts themselves are being shown the global meaning of what they are doing. COLOMBIA IS NOT KILLING THE JUNKIES: THE JUNKIES ARE KILLING COLOMBIA! Meanwhile any available visual aids to 'guilt-trip' the campesinos here about what they are growing, I will gladly use!

3. On the North-West coast of Ireland - County Donegal - I own a huge house, 18 rooms, an ex-hotel; old-fashioned, not modernised - open fire-places; it stands on about half an acre of land. It is in the little fishing port of Burtonport, population a couple of hundred; and is five minutes walk from untouched rocky, sandy beaches. The house is up for sale for over ninety thousand pounds I believe (my daughter Becky is managing the sale). If any 'green-minded' group or individuals would be interested in purchasing this building for use in some ecological fashion, or for running as a business which would provide funds for environmental organisations or activities, we would consider a much lower price, and with this guarantee: whatever is paid for that house will go directly to purchase and save as much endangered forest in this area as possible. Alternatively, if any group or individuals would like to run that house to provide an income to buy forest for the Caquetá Rainforest Campaign, as well as maintaining themselves and the house in good condition, we would be very interested in hearing any propositions. Ditto if anyone is interested in renting the house, and all rent-money would be used exclusively for saving trees. The house can be visited at any time: contact Becky Garcia, An Droichead Beo (it meansThe Living Bridge in Gaelic), Burtonport, Co. Donegal, Eire.

4. Another underused resource we have in Ireland is a 1911 ex-fishing boat, a beautiful old vessel, moored in Co. Cork. We are looking for help to fit her out, sail her, and use her as a floating green-campaigning home. Anyone interested in this project, please contact Becky at above address.

Meanwhile, I will close: I am going to write to the Colombian Government's anti-illegal crop campaign (PLANTE) to demand they help sort out the horrors going down in this region. They won't of course - they quietly leave all that to the FARC guerrilla force! - but never let it be said I leave any stone unturned...

Good wishes to all green workers; please send your thoughts, suggestions, and practical help.
Jenny James

Contents of GL No. 8:

• Mr. and Mrs. Bullough send money to save Ricardo’s forest.
• The magic hamlet of Chorreras: introducing Cliomedes, Camilo & Roberto.
• Green activities in the unlikely cowboy town of Guayabal
• Hugo, a Green government-man arrives.
• JJ introduces him to the local guerrilla commander.

Greetings to all Green Workers in Europe!

If I tell you lots and lots of good news, will you all promise not to go away and say, 'Ah well, she's alright now,'?!

My last letter was written in agony as a next-door neighbour aggressively chain-sawed down part of his forest near us. His aggression worked, and so did my plea for help. Two wonderful unknown friends in England, Mr. & Mrs. Bullough, immediately sent £4,000 for the farm, and after much hassle with Ricardo, our neighbour, we have finally come to an agreement whereby he keeps the part of his land already opened and sells us every single inch where there are trees - this includes a huge mountainside above us where you can actually see the damp mist and clouds forming just before it rains on us. To Mary and Colin Bullough, 'thankyou' is a weak word for what we feel. You have just shown a hardened atheist that well-directed and deeply-felt 'prayer' works! You have taught us once again that positively-handled, loudly expressed despair works! And you have proved that there are certain issues - specifically an acheing empathy with the natural world - that can unite people, anywhere. So not only 'thankyou' on behalf of the trees and all the creatures therein, but thankyou for renewing hope and vigour in this campaign.

Some of our first and strongest supporters in England, Steve Thompson and Cynthia Dickinson, both of Yorkshire, have also continued to respond magnificently at every turn, establishing a fund for small donations, publicizing these Green Letters in a dozen newssheets and sending astonishing quantities of seeds - huge thanks here also to Unwin's and Fothergill's who have been amazingly generous. Steve sent out £660, which was what had accumulated in the fund so far. This translates as one million pesos. Although not enough to buy any more forest, we have put the money to very exciting use. This is the story:

Two hours down the mountain and then two hours by bumpy bus, there is a tiny little settlement called Chorreras ('river rapids'). I do not understand the alchemy that is at work in this region, but I know what it feels like and am constantly humbled by it. Chorreras consists of about 15 shacks along the roadside. It has grown up exclusively for the cutting down of forest. Now the lorries no longer trundle along that road with their cargo of wood since marketing in timber was recently banned by a combination of unlikely forces: 'Corpoamazonia', a government organization for the preservation of the Colombian Amazon region; a green councillor called Eduardo Rincon and his friends, including some 'gringos'on a mountainside, and the FARC guerrilla force. But most importantly, with the agreement and co-operation of the people of Chorreras itself, who have understood they are destroying themselves by destroying their environment.

But what do they do now for a living? No more wood-cutting. So they have to plant amapola - opium poppy - to survive. At least, that's how their thinking has gone up to now. But a very quiet 31 year old man in Chorreras made contact with me one day via my children to ask for some comfrey roots to plant. My ears pricked up. Someone in the depths of this decadent region knows about comfrey? He has to be a special person. I met him. He is. His name is Cliomedes and he is the person I have needed to meet ever since the founding of this campaign. Rooted totally in his community, with a supportive wife and four very small children, completely without resources, working every day to subsist, sharing completely all the difficulties of his neighbours, he is a self-educated man who laps up with tears of gratitude in his eyes every little gift of written material I am able to take him: a book on acupuncture, one on hypnosis, an excellent ecological manual produced by the Colombian government for school-teachers, posters from 'Amnesty International'; booklets produced in the '60s by the Agrarian Bank (Caja Agraria) on self-sufficient farming (now they pretend you need poisons and chemicals to grow anything); second-hand clothes for distributing amongst the neighbours - and weekly English classes for the community.

Our friendship has grown subtly, strongly, deeply. Knowing how much I wanted to find a local leader who wasn't interested in being a 'leader', but who cared deeply and sensitively about the way of life of the people, I didn't want to hope too much. So I held my breath and kept listening to him. And then, recently, I got my Irish friends Alan McGrath and Anne Barr to visit Chorreras and check out my perceptions. And then I knew I hadn't dreamed Cliomedes up. Whatismore, he is not alone - part of the magic of the region is that there are so many individuals miraculously collected in the one place, all joined by the same spirit of intense desire to bring about a quiet green revolution in this area. Also in Chorreras are Camilo, the school-teacher, hungry for any environmental education we can help him provide for his children; and Roberto, president of the community action group, a chainsaw man whose life's work has been cutting down trees. The day after tomorrow, he and Cliomedes will be making the gruelling trek to this farm to come and stay for two days to learn as much as they can about organic gardening, to take the knowledge back to their community and teach.

Listening to Cliomedes talk last week about all the things he'd love to be able to do in Chorreras, I was overwhelmed with the desire to help. But what with? Then I remembered the money Steve had sent, specifically to 'save trees' and I thought, if helping these people isn't saving trees, then I don't know what is, and I decided with the other people on our farm that we would offer the Chorreras community one million pesos to get on the way any projects tending to swerve peoples life-style away from destructive agricultural practices and attitudes and towards a more enthusiastic and joyful appreciation of their lovely environment. I wrote to them as a group, saying that many unknown people in England, themselves of scant resources, had donated small sums of money to make up that million and all with the desire to help Colombian farmers look after their forests, I said I wanted to be able to trust completely that the money would be used well but that I definitely didn't want to intrude or act as overseer in any way. In spite of this, Camilo the schoolteacher when I next met him practically begged me to oversee the projects; in the end, I said I would become part of the group as a friend, not a judge.

Anne was in Chorreras two days ago; the last thing she saw was the schoolkids being organized to clear up the banks of the exquisite river which had been used for decades as rubbish tips. I had expressed horror several visits ago at the fact that the toilets of the hamlet tip into the stream - used further down no doubt for cooking water for other communities - and that such a beautiful place should be turned into a garbage dump. This gesture on their part gives me a liquid feeling in my heart chakra and seals my trust after a long period of bumps and disillusions!

There is more. Guayabal is the largest local settlement where campesinos from the whole area come at weekends to do their shopping and get drunk. It is a ghastly place, muddy, ugly, dead-end, loud generator-run disco music, a horrible church and ugly FARC slogans sprayed over the whole village. But something is happening there too. After decades of government neglect, with the mediation of the little green movement and the permission of the guerrilla force, representatives of benevolent official organizations such as Corpoamazonia and the National Parks section of the Ministry for the Environment are coming into the region. At a meeting in Guayabal recently, I met many of these officials and was mainly very impressed: simple, sincere, concerned individuals with an obvious understanding of campesino - and guerrilla - psychology. To my disbelief, one man, called Hugo, introduced himself to me and said he was coming to live permanently in the Guayabal police station as a kind of environmental rep. I have to explain what 'police station' means. It is a hideous concrete building with 4 toilets, 4 bedrooms, a huge hallway, a kitchen and an office inhabited by the otherwise homeless school-teachers of Guayabal, used by the local 'police inspector', who is a founder member of the green movement, and belonging to the now-defunct government organization called Inderena (Institute for the Defence of Natural Resources) which seems to have spent all its time giving permits for destroying trees. Corpoamazonia have now taken ownership of the building - I met a man sent by them to paint a big sign announcing that the people of Guayabal are now going to help protect their forests: this sign is huge and dominates the entrance-road to the little town. He immediately took hold of our 'CRAC' logo -Caqueta Rainforest Campaign - and incorporated part of it into his design!

I did not believe Hugo would really come to live and work here, but I turned up anyway, on the Thursday he was due to move into the police station. I jumped, sweaty and muddy, onto the open-sided bus in Rovira, after the long trek down our mountain, and someone tapped me on the shoulder. He was real! The grin wouldn't leave my face all the way to Guayabal. A real live captive government environmental worker, alone and friendless and totally unknown in all this region: someone I could walk with, talk with, plan with, build with. He was as relieved and delighted to see me as I was elated to see him. I said 'I need urgently to talk to you in private'. When we arrived at the concrete nightmare that was to be his home, I came straight to the point: Look, I know you work for the government, but the only way you can even hope for success here is if you have the OK of the guerrilla. 'Great,' he says, 'can you arrange me a meeting?'

Next morning, as Hugo and I walked the 4 hours back to Rovira - he was coming to spend a few days on our farm, I spotted Enrique, the local guerrilla commander and whispered to him who my new friend was, and he said, 'We'll meet in Rovira.' Hugo and I continued our hot journey, he delighted, if a little nervous at the speed things were moving. Arriving in Rovira, a jeep pulled up and Enrique got out. 'Huh!' says I to him, 'social injustice indeed!' and we all laughed - I was referring to the fact that we'd had to walk and he'd got a posh lift.

Would you blame me for a small smirk of delight at thusly organizing an - illegal - meeting between the Colombian government's representative and a leader of its armed opposition? And all in the green cause?!

Hugo had confided in me that he wouldn't be getting paid for another month and hadn't even money for food. So for his first days in the region, I lent him my welly boots, fed him, paid his bus-fares, bought him a blanket, made sure he had a room and bed - the teachers most rudely weren't even going to move over for him - and introduced him to everyone I knew. Then I went on a gruelling two day walk with him and the local police inspector to get to know more of the region. And then I went home.

This story will be continued, but for now, goodbye and thanks to the many people in Europe who provide the backbone of this campaign.

With love,
Jenny James

Contents of Green Letter No. 9:

• Poem on Luis Arenas’ death used as detective device to flush out Luis’s murderer.
• Goodbye to Enrique, the guerrilla commander.
• Anne saves forest by doing astrological charts.
• Saving a wild animal from captivity.
• A brush with the local priest…. And much more.

I write today to ground myself after being blown away by the enormity of the rainforest problem as depicted in Alex Shoumatoff's book on the murder of Chico Mendes in Brazil, called "The World is Burning."

I have to remind myself that I'm actually living in the forest and doing the small bit that I can to save it. As Mr. John Seymour, an organic gardening guru and friend, writes inside the cover of one of his wonderful illustrated gardening books which he has kindly donated us, "I am only one. I can only do what one can do. But what one can do, I will do."

That helps me to hold on and not despair at the enormity of it all. So does looking outside my cabin door. It is twenty to six in the evening. In half an hour, night will fall as it does at the same time all the year round. There is a beautiful fluffy white forest mist, and the trees so peaceful and so near, I could almost believe the whole world were like this..as long as I don't look across the valley at the half-bared mountain-range beyond. Staying centred, and therefore constructive, seems to be a huge part of this work.

Reading about Chico Mendez' murder and the tremendous world-wide reactions to it, made me mourn afresh for my friend Luis, murdered last August for his environmental work - and how many thousands of others, unknown and unsung? Again, I have to remind myself to 'stay small', it is the only way to be effective - if I cripple myself mourning the death of millions, I can do nothing about the death of one.

With regard to Luis, what I did was to write two poems in Spanish, one to Luis himself, promising that his work would not die; the other to the "Assassins of Luis Arenas". These two poems I sent, without further comment, to the Mayor of Milan, the small riverside settlement where Luis was riddled with bullets. The Mayor there is regarded by the local population as the 'intellectual author' behind the murder. On the envelope, I put as the sender the "International Network of Solidarity with Luis Arenas". A month or so later, I received news via the countryside grapevine that the Mayor of Milan was complaining he had received 'death threats' from Neiva - the town in my address. Strange reaction. here is the translation of my "death threats":

Dwarves cannot envisage even the toes of a giant.
Shortsighted men cannot see anything unless it is under their nose.
Cowards cannot conceive of the possibility of bravery.
Selfish men cannot imagine what it means to care for others.
Senseless men cannot understand a universal concept of Life.
Soulless men have no idea of the pleasure of feeling for all that lives.
Blind men don't realize that there are eyes, many eyes, watching them.
Men who rely on the cold force of metal, don't understand the superior power of love.
Men ruled by envy can't imagine the existence of a generous man.
Men who cannot handle their rage except through a paid assassin don't notice that there is a whole world of people who communicate with one another, people who are not afraid, people who won't shut up, people who are watching, people who know, people in solidarity with Luis Erasmo Arenas.
Little assassins of Luis: he is at peace now; his seed has been sown; its first leaves are budding.
And you: are you resting in peace?
Now, why wasn't the Mayor of Milan, who always presented himself as a Friend of Luis, over the moon that there was a mysterious group of foreigners caring for justice for his friend and why didn't he write to us immediately to ask more? But no, he told people he was receiving 'death threats', and accepted that the poem, entitled: ‘To the Assassins of Luis Arenas’, was addressed to him. Interesting.

I was very sad. Enrique had become a beloved friend. I knew he had to go, as he'd narrowly escaped losing his life not long ago when the army entered disguised as road-workers and shot at him from their lorry. It was Enrique who had provided me with the unforgettable image of a guerrilla commander sitting on my bed amidst a mountain of seed packets sent from Europe, gazing at them in huge reverence and holding up one packet saying: "This will undermine the government more than any bullet."

At the end of our goodbye meeting, I asked him if he had any news regarding the investigation of Luis's death. "No, except that it definitely wasn't the guerrillas." "Yes, I know that," I said, "But what can be done to get justice for Luis?" "But Jenny, he answered, "para que mas muertes? - why more deaths?"

I walked away from our last meeting puzzled and annoyed. Fed up because a guerrilla leader had taken a more pacifist position - a position that would in fact leave yet another murderer walking around free and pleased with himself - than I, who in the sixties saw the inside of several prisons for my part in pacifist civil disobedience. Faced with the murder of a dear friend, I could not stomach such a laissez-faire attitude.

Trying to forget the ghastly statistics on forest destruction in Brazil, measured in hundreds of thousands of hectares in the Chico Mendez book, I offer the humble good news that we are on our way to purchasing another 100 hectares of beautiful forest above our farm. Our method of raising the money for this (about £5,000) must be unique: during the scare over our neighbour Ricardo knocking down forest below us, and before we received the wonderful monetary gift from Mr. and Mrs. Bullough (see last Green Letter), we went into emergency action. Anne, who is Irish, has been in our community since 1983 and has become a wizard astrologess. And because she's foreign and looks like a gypsy, doesn't charge much and has a solid backing in sensible psychology, when she goes to the towns, she is able to earn very rapidly. She tells her clients what the money is needed for - to save the forest - and so her concerned customers find her more clients. The big disadvantage is that she has to be away from the farm and go back to the very life-style we came here to get away from. The last news I had from her, she wrote from Quito in Ecuador saying she was doing the chart of the Colombian ambassadress.

Ricardo, since we managed to buy his forest, has remained a good and close friend. He has a little house and bar in Rovira, the first tiny hamlet on the road two hours' steep descent below us. Even when not at home, we are allowed in to use his shower. One day I walked into it to freshen up from the hot journey and let out a scream. There was something chained in there: an animal I had never seen before, a tree-climbing animal judging by its long tail and splayed toes. It was curled up in the dark, wet, concrete shower place, chained tightly around the neck, in utter misery, looking at me with large round desperate eyes, given up. Tears flooded from me. I asked the young couple looking after Ricardo's shop: "What on earth is this and what is it doing here?" "It's a perro de monte," they said, which translates as 'forest dog'. But it was nothing like a dog, except it had a lead on. And they grinned in that uncaring and bemused fashion to which I have become accustomed when they see me as an odd foreign lady with odd feelings about odd things.

"Tell Ricardo I will buy this animal from him to let it go free," I said, and wrote him a note to make sure the message got through. I knew this was a dicey move, as, if the news got around, all the local peasants would be capturing animals just so the odd gringa lady would buy them to let them go. But this particular creature existed, saving it was in my power, and I couldn't bear to turn my back. I had to take the risk.

We paid Ricardo the £50 he asked for it, and our boys brought it home. When we tried to cut the harness off it, it fought wildly and bit Martyn right through a leather glove. We left it to calm down and later the boys, dressed for battle, tried again. Our 'perro de monte' let them cut him free this time, and he trotted off slowly, dazed by the light and freedom, to climb a tree. I still don't know what it was.

Ricardo came to visit a few days later. "Jenny, I'm going to start a vegetable garden", he said. "Have you any seeds?" To influence large, lazy Ricardo who is not hard up, into such an activity was a feat indeed. All the local schools are also starting gardens - the teachers here, astonishingly underpaid, are more like social missionaries: they are practically the only source of ideological training that children in these country areas get, and a heartening percentage of them are environmentally concerned. One young teacher, called Angel (a normal name round here) has just spent the weekend with us. On his miniscule tape recorder, he taped Fin (a normal name in Ireland!) singing a song of the forest which he wrote in English and which I translated. Angel said, "This is to raise the children's awareness." He wants to return bringing ten selected pupils to stay on the farm, though he's worried some of them won't take well to the extreme 'greenness' of our vegetarian food!

The time I went to the meeting with Enrique, I had to gulp back another huge chunk of personal prejudice. I'm an atheist and I don't like priests. So when, months ago, I was introduced to the rather odd Argentinian local priest (long hair in a pony tail and garish Bermuda shorts?!), I said, "You have just met an enemy of the church." And since then, we have been carefully steering around one another, trying not to meet - difficult in a very small community. The day my 10 year old daughter Katie and I went to say goodbye to Enrique, we were splashing along in the mud and rain on the three hour walk to Guayabal when the priest's car came squelching along. Oh dear, I said to Katie, as I could feel the offer coming . Yes, he stopped and we piled in. The car was full of friends from the Green movement, Hugo of the Parks Commission and Edwin of the local Government Environmental Organization 'Corpoamazonia'. Hugo was playful as usual: he knew of the 'atmosphere' between me and the priest. "Oh Jenny," he said, "Padre Domingo wants to start a vegetable garden round the church, have you any seed?" "Yes, of course," I said, "I'll send you a selection of everything that will grow here." The magic of the colour Green - no prejudices are sacred!

I must end this Letter or we'll have no food planted for next month. But one last anecdote: sitting in the Corpoamazonia office in Guayabal, co-opted on to the Park Committee with all those people who were in the car, the priest included, late that evening, a peasant woman came in, mumbling to Edwin about a 'safe-conduct' - a document needed before any more wood can be taken out of the region.

Politely, carefully, and explaining at great length, Edwin, the dispenser of such documents, refused. The situation was awkward. There we all were, planning how best to protect the enormous 'Parque de los Picacachos', the huge National Park we live on the edges of - and here was a worried local woman whose next bit of cash depended on getting her blocks of wood out. This in a nutshell was the whole Third World environmental problem. I watched fascinated, hardly daring to breathe, to see how these people would resolve it.

Edwin explained to her that the situation was very tricky, and that the last person in is job had ended up in jail through handing out illegal permits. Then Hugo delicately and with great feeling gave a down-to-earth philosophical lecture. He said, Isn't it strange how no good ever comes of bad? How nobody ever got rich through destroying trees, because once they were sold - what next? Nothing had been produced, no crop had been sown, no-one had had to grow the tree which was hundreds of years old; that the people were creating a dependency on cutting more and more forest, and when it had gone, what then? That ultimately, we can only live well if we produce our own food and don't expect it to 'fall off the trees'.

It was a hard lesson, but the woman went away knowing that a line had been drawn. I felt split to pieces, between my love of the forest, and my embarrassment at being aligned with Office Types saying No to a peasant woman. But the issue is quite definitely to change people's lifestyles, back to where we all started from: self-sufficiency.

I end by once again inviting anyone out here who would like to come, and by saying that seeds and more seeds are always most welcome. Thank you Jim and Meredith of Ecuador for your hot-country fruit seeds, which have been sent to the flatter hotter areas below our mountain range. And a continuing thankyou for all the heartfelt, encouraging and moving letters we receive - I often feel overwhelmed with the good feelings being sent my way and regenerated in my worst down moments when all seems hopeless. And lastly, to anyone in or near Ireland - my daughter Becky is holding a Caqueta Rainforest festival in Burtonport, Co. Donegal, from August 10th to 17th, with vegetarian food and plenty of accommodation available; there will be Colombians there, plus slideshows and videos, music and dancing. Just turn up.

With love to you all,
Jenny James

Contents GL 10:

• Seeds from China
• Talking of gardens, plants, seeds
• Anne home from Ecuador where she worked to buy more forest, describes our farm and offers astrological services.
• Letter from teacher Camilo describing how they set up their own school.

I can no longer address these Green Letters to our 'Friends in Europe' as the response we are receiving from all over the world increases weekly. And so:

Warm and grateful greetings to Green Workers all over the world!

What an incredible surprise it was for us here last week to receive an extraordinary gift from China! Some unknown well-wisher must have sent our Green Letters to the 'Known-You' Seed Co. in Taiwan, and this is the charming message I received:

“Thank you very much for your...meaningful 'Green Letters' ...in which you introduced C.R.A.C. and many of its decent movements and touching stories as well to us.”

Accompanying this message is the astonishing gift of seven kilos of seeds!

• tomato
• hot pepper
• broccoli
• Chinese cabbage
• watermelon

Mrs. Kathleen Jannaway of the Vegan movement in England has been sending me some wonderful and uplifting literature, including her own personal signed copy of 'Forest Gardening' by Robert Hart: what a lovely, simple, caring, practical book, which endorses so gratifyingly much of what we are doing and teaches us so much more. As a result of reading Mr. Hart's book and other literature, we would love to receive any of the following seeds; soapwort; horsetail; nettle; dandelion; Jerusalem artichokes; quinoa; yarrow; hyssop; lavender. We are also ever on the lookout for information on natural pest control, have received lots, but want to keep on testing everything so we can advise local people with confidence.

And now, I want to ask you all to do something very simple and important: every time you buy an apple, a pear, a plum, a grapefruit, an orange, any fruit whatsoever from any climate whatsoever, would you take out the pips, dry them, and send them to us?! Now that we have decided to work in a wider area - all the way from our cool, wet mountain, to the suffocating heat below - there is practically nothing we couldn't use, unless it requires desert, or very very dry conditions, of which there are none! (yet)

Thankyou Bill, a friend of Cynthia Dickinson, for your giant sunflower seeds - they have all come up in spite of the terrifying rainy season we are in (that goes on for months and months and months). My instinctual desire to have a riot of flowers and flowering shrubs has now been confirmed by my gardening reading to be of health value to food plants, so we will be delighted to receive any flower-seeds - here flowers bloom 12 months of the year. Our method in general is to try everything out in our own gardens, so that we know what we are talking about when we make recommendations to local people.

We receive that heartening newspaper 'Planetary Connections' full of Positive News from around the world, and as a result of seeing the number of essential oils, health foods and medicines on sale, for example grapefruit seed extract, we want to ask a special favour: the constant problem here is how to answer the question from locals, “Yes, we agree with you completely that we shouldn't cut down any more forest; but what shall we live from?” Vegetables will eventually feed people, but how to live while the gardens are being established? And so we thought: how about a 'cottage industry' involving all the marvellous plants that can be grown here - for example the huge aloe vera cactuses. When we need skin cream or treatment for a burn, we cut off a 'finger' of the aloe vera and use it direct; if we want a soul-lift, we go out and sniff the exquisite flower of the passion-fruit; and every day, we drink pints of a range of aromatic tea-herbs. But, how could we preserve the wonderful smells and creams for sale? Is there anyone working in these small industries who would be willing to teach us, by post or directly, how to prepare these plants to a saleable standard, so that we could teach local people? It just seems so absurd that they are living amidst such wealth and don't know it - don't even grow or use these plants for themselves.

And now, a neat little idea from my friend, Anne, who is just back from Ecuador: If anyone wants to come out to see us, but simply can't afford the fare, she says: “A way to cover your airfare is to fly to Ecuador - the same price as flying to Bogota, Colombia - and take the bus up from Quito to Neiva: It will cost you 30 pound more on bus fares but by buying Indian-made items in Otavalo market (two hours from Quito) on your way home, you can recuperate your travel costs when back home: exquisitely beautiful shirts, jackets, waistcoats, hand-woven bracelets, hats, mats and hammocks are all incredibly cheap, especially if you buy by the dozen, and can be sold for 4-5 times the price in Europe and still seem very cheap to a European. Recently a well-wisher bought a big sack full of these lovely goods for about 60 pounds and presented them to Becky in Ireland to sell to benefit C.R.A.C. Example: a beautiful woven woollen jacket with hood, costing 3 pound in Otavalo can fetch at least 20 pound in England and seem cheap. The price of the extra bus-fare is almost evened up by the fact that the airport tax in Bogota is 40 dollars and in Quito it's 20.”

And now, some words from Anne about her forest-saving mission to Ecuador:

“I've just returned home from a very long 3 months in Ecuador earning the 4.300 dollars needed to complete purchase of our next patch of forest - Orlando's farm, about 150 hectares. It was an interesting experience - I met lots of good people involved in eco-projects in Ecuador - but one I hope never to repeat. I did about 180 astrology charts in two and a half months and finally collapsed with anaemia. I got treated more than well by everyone I met - thank you Joui, Jean, Douglas, Martha and Murray for your amazing help, support and encouragement. But boy am I glad to be home: breathing car fumes in order to earn money to buy trees somehow doesn't compute!

“Reaching the mountains of El Pato, I felt myself begin to breathe properly for the first time in three months, my eyes and brain relaxed, fed by the greenness of the forests. Certainly I saw many more patches burnt and cleared since I left, but there are still enough tree-covered hills to make my journey and work seem worthwhile. I got off the bumpy bus in Rovira to be met by a big beautiful green notice-board on stilts dominating the otherwise ugly little hamlet saying in Spanish, “Visit Atlantis Ecological Community. Two and a half hours' walk”, decorated with flowers, leaves, butterflies and insects painted by our little artist, 12-year-old Alice, Jenny's daughter. I staggered up the muddy path, arriving in the dark. Next morning, my 3-month absence came home to me as I saw how tall the newly planted trees and bushes had grown and revelled in the mass of flowers. The earth in the vegetable gardens is richer and blacker than ever, there seem to be enough vegetables to feed an army and the chicken-and-guinea-pig ' compost-factory' has become a mini-hobbitland of runways and hutches and piles of rich compost in varying stages of decay. No wonder Jenny is stiff with neck and arm pains from so many years’ gardening. But I don't want our future forest-buying to depend any more on me going constantly to the cities. So I want to suggest the following: I want to do my astrology-work at home by post. So I'm offering you all my services, with the guarantee that all proceeds will be entirely and absolutely for C.R.A.C. I will provide a drawn-up horoscope with a detailed typed interpretation of character, present and future trends in your life and, if you include the date of birth of people important to you, I can interpret the relationship and the lessons, joys and problems that it represents. Information needed: date, place and TIME of birth if possible, plus sex of person; but most South Americans have no record of their time of birth so I've become used to working without it. I am going to ask a basic 50 English pounds for the chart, interpretation and family relationship interpretation, but I will accept less from anyone really short of money; and I would ask anyone who can afford more to send it, knowing that the money will be used only for this green campaign. Please do not try to send money to Colombia, but your details and fee to:
Becky Garcia, CRAC Campaign, An Droichead Beo, Burtonport, Co. Donegal, Eire.

We answer all post immediately, but of course sending and collecting letters in the wilds involves some delay. I hope you will help me to stay at home and work on the garden by using my services! Love, Anne.”

Our contact and work with the local community of Chorreras and its small green group continues, deepens and widens. Here is the translation of a little note Cliomedes sent me some while back:

“Señora Jenny: I want to thank you and all at Atlantis* for caring about our situation, something which even the government doesn't do; quite the opposite, it seems to want to make us even poorer, and it is obvious that just like us, there are thousands of peasant families living in the most absolute poverty.”

(*C.R.A.C., being the English title of the campaign, is too complicated for local people, so they know us as 'Atlantis', the name of our farm and commune).

“My name is Camilo Ruiz Santacruz and I work in the school of Chorreras in a hamlet of the jurisdiction of San Vincente del Caguan, Caquetá. Chorreras consists of 30 families, all of which have come from other areas in the hope of finding in this region a better standard of living for their children. It is a very united community; when something bad happens, we all get together to help as much as we can.
Our climate is neither very hot nor very cold, between 17 and 20°C, and we are at 1.000 metres above sea level. My salary as a teacher is 160 US$ a month; on this I am supposed to exist with my family (wife and two children). (Note from Jenny: he works labouring on the road in the afternoons to make ends meet.) As we are a long way from the nearest town (Neiva), we had to buy even our own chalk and for a blackboard we had to cut some planks of wood and paint them. The children dress very simply, but they all have rubber boots as they have to travel a long way from their homes to the school and the pathways are very muddy. (Note from JJ: they are gruelling mudslides caused by donkey-traffic and often extremely steep.) The child who lives farthest away walks one hour to get to school.
We began by giving classes in individual houses (Note: the 'houses' are ramshackle shacks of wooden planks and corrugated iron roofs.); 2 months in each house and so on all the year round. But last year, the people, the children and the teacher collected rocks and sand so that we could make a proper school. We asked for the help of the district council and they granted us the equivalent of 1.400 US Dollar; with this, we bought cement, building blocks and sheets of corrugated iron. A man from here donated a little piece of land which we adapted to build the school; and in two months, all working together, we built our little school. (Note: It has one classroom plus one tiny room and miniscule kitchen for the teacher and his wife to live in. It is right on the road - a muddy unsurfaced track – and everything has to stop every time a lorry or bus passes because of the noise; also for the dynamite blasts right outside where they are - dangerously - extracting rock from the mountainside to repair the 'road'!)
We have several ecological projects in mind, and a great friend Jenny James from a community called Atlantis gives us impetus to keep going with things like vegetable gardens, running the green group of people who want to look after the environment, encouraging art in the children, etc. We would like to know your opinions and to exchange correspondence; please tell us what you would like to know about our people... I will end with the motto of the school: 'We like working because work keeps the brain alert, conquers laziness and animates the heart.'”

I would like to close today with some little poems my daughter Louise shocks me with from time to time. This one was produced in all of 10 minutes as she was weeding the carrots. I have corrected only her spelling, as although just turned 15, her natural language for writing is Spanish.

GREEN

Green is the colour of vegetation
Green is the colour of hope;
And I hope the next generation
Will be able to see its growth.

Grey is the colour of concrete
Grey is the colour of death;
And death is what will become of us
When there's no Greenness left.

When 14, she wrote:

FLY LIKE AN EAGLE

Through the forest
Across the countryside
I watch an eagle gently glide;
She's going home, just like me,
She's got a nest high in a tree;
She has two babies, maybe three.
One day they'll fly, just like me.

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