Too often, those of us immersed in Colombia get lost in the sheer magnitude of the horrors of the five-decade-old armed conflict: over 31,000 civilians murdered in just the last 10 years; almost 3 million people driven out of their homes since 1985; more than 1,350 massacres perpetrated between 1994 and 2004; at least 134…

How can U.S. policymakers and taxpayers know the truth if Colombia’s victims aren’t allowed to speak to them? Dany is a 28-year-old husband, father, and banana vendor from San Onofre, a poor, rural municipality along the Caribbean coast. In the past seven years more than 3,000 people have been killed there. Many of them were…

I’ve gotten a couple of requests from people wanting to know how to contact soldiers. Manhattanville College in New York has a really good My Soldier Program that matches civilians and active duty soldiers for letter exchanges and support. Manhattanville is a college with a strong social justice bent and the program was developed by…

The 50-year Colombian armed conflict pits government armed forces and right-wing paramilitary groups against leftist guerrillas. Church people, part of the unarmed civilian population struggling to stay outside the conflict, are caught in the cross-fire. Since 2000, the United States has provided nearly $5 billion in aid to the Colombian government, roughly 80% of it…

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