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Columbian Woman Details War’s Effect on Women

By Cassidy Randall, Guest Writer, 4-16-07

Yaneth Perez, president of the Dawn of Women for Arauca in Colombia, will speak and present photos in UM’s Gallagher Building room 123 on Wednesday, April 18 at 7:30 pm. 

For more than half a century, Colombia has been gripped by a vicious civil war.  It becomes more complicated and entrenched with each passing year, and with each U.S. administration that continues to funnel money and training to Colombia to fuel the conflict.  Colombia is the seventh-largest supplier of U.S. oil, and the target of a long and largely useless U.S. effort to wipe out coca production.

Colombian women bear the brunt of the violence.  They are forced to watch their husbands and sons disappear and die, and flee their homes for a semblance of safety in the war-wracked country.  Alone and surrounded by loss, they must support and care for what remains of their families in dangerous conditions.  Women who speak out against the war run the very real risk of being threatened, arrested, or killed.

Yaneth Perez is a single mother of three children.  She lives in Arauca, a state in northeastern Colombia that suffers high levels of violence and government repression.  Occidental Petroleum owns and operates a massive oil field and pipeline in Arauca, both of which are protected by the U.S. and Colombian military. 

Yaneth comes to Missoula on Wednesday as part of her speaking tour across the northwest United States.  She speaks about her work to promote women’s rights and social justice, and to call on the American public to pressure their government to cease fueling a horrific war that brutalizes women, among other atrocities. 

“We don’t need any more weapons in Arauca,” Perez has said.  “There are already more than enough guns and bombs to kill all of us.  Instead of sending arms, we ask the U.S. government to provide support for schools, health clinics, housing, and small families so that we can take care of our families.”

Yaneth is the president of the Dawn of Women for Arauca, an association that works to protect and promote women’s rights in an increasingly volatile region.  More than 100 social leaders have been killed and an equal number have been imprisoned on false charges of “rebellion”.  The Colombian war is one that fails to differentiate civilians from drug runners, guerrillas, or government military.  These atrocities are repeated all over the country; social organizing or unionizing is a crime.

The U.S. government provides $1.5 million a day to Colombia in military aid, under the auspices of fighting a war on drugs.  In reality, these funds are used to purchase killing tools for the merciless paramilitaries that keep oil flowing.  The “war on drugs” consists of spraying a form of Round-Up from the air, allowing for a high dispersal rate that kills subsistence crops and coca alike, and dissipates dangerously into the groundwater.

Amnesty International USA has repeatedly documented and publicized the Colombian military’s involvement in human rights abuses and has called for a complete severance of military aid to the country.

Yaneth is joined on her tour by Scott Nicholson, a Montana activist who has been in Arauca since July 2006 documenting human rights abuses and accompanying social leaders.  Scott and Yaneth are touring the U.S. for one month and will give more than 15 presentations.  The tour is sponsored by Community Action for Justice in the Americas (CAJA), and the Montana Human Rights Network.

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