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Imagine that your mother, or your
daughter, or your sister, or your friend refuses to be silent about
the violence in her neighbourhood.
Imagine that, one night, just after you've finished supper, three armed men come to your door.
Imagine that they force your mother into a waiting taxi. Or your daughter. Or your sister. Or your friend.
Imagine that when you call the police, no one answers.
Imagine that, when you do talk to the police less than an hour later, they tell you that she has been found, dead.
In Barrancabermeja, Colombia, this mother, daughter, sister, and
friend was named Esperanza Amaris Miranda. She was 40 years old.
On Thursday, October 16, she was taken from her home and assassinated.
Many here believe her killers belong to one of the paramilitary
organizations that control this city. We may never know who they
are, as those who commit such crimes are
rarely brought to justice.
Esperanza was a member of the Women's House just around the corner from where we live, run by the Organizacion Femenina Popular, or OFP. She had recently reported death threats to the local authorities. The day of Esperanza´s death, Erin and I had lunch at the low cost cafeteria at the House, as Team members do regularly. There´s a sign on the wall saying that members of legal or illegal armed groups are not welcome, but it hasn´t stopped paramilitaries from coming.
"Is your heart a house with open doors?" we sang at Esperanza's funeral. With this question came a challenge. Could we let our hearts break with the pain of a woman assassinated, of organizers threatened daily, a city under violent occupation, and a country stained for generations by its people's blood? Could we let our hearts break, and yet continue to work for peace and justice?
This is the work that the OFP have done for almost 30 years, and that they continue to do. "Better to live with fear than to die because of fear," they say. Within hours of Esperanza´s murder, Carmen and I were at the OFP headquarters in downtown Barranca to accompany seven trucks, loaded with everything from cement to roofing to toilets, downriver to San Pablo. We were joined by two members of Peace Brigades International, who told us that those grieving the news of Esperanza´s death had only gone home an hour earlier.
Yet here were two OFP organizers, at 4 a.m., getting on trucks, driving for hours on dirt roads, and negotiating prices with reluctant ferry operators for the river crossing. When the ferry pulled up at the dock and the trucks rolled off, a crowd of women and girls was there to greet us. "We are building a life with dignity", said their signs.
We followed the trucks on foot, up the dusty road to a neighbourhood clearly lacking the resources of some other parts of town. Here, the organizers supervised the unloading of the goods and conferred with local leaders. In a final meeting with the whole community, women and men, they encouraged folks to get the construction and renovation of homes underway. Thirty families would benefit.
Back in Barranca, other women had organized a press conference and demonstration denouncing Esperanza´s murder and calling on the authorities to find her killers. Three hundred women dressed in black wove through the streets of the city behind a banner saying "No to arms, no to war." Esperanza´s funeral was the next day.
When OFP Director Yolanda Becerra spoke at the funeral mass, and
vowed that the OFP would struggle yet harder for the transformation
of Colombian society, I believed her, for I had already seen them
at work. When women made symbolic offerings of resistance, justice,
dignity, solidarity, and life-- placing a burning candle, flowers,
bread, wine and water on the
alter-- I knew that they were recommitting themselves to breaking
the unwritten law of silence here, just as Esperanza had done.
I knew that, in these women, Esperanza would always be present. And I pray that she will be present with me, as I continue to open my heart to everything our work for peace and justice here might ask.
For “Esperanza” means Hope.
By Robin Buyers, member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, Colombia Team.
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