Circle Tour: Communities Constructing Peace
Bogotá-Buenaventura-Popayán-Bogotá
October 9-11, 2025
Warning: there is some description of cruel violence in the below text. The reason Compazcol exists — to transform this.
We’re late! After an interfaith gathering at our old friend Amparito’s house we jump into Bogotá traffic. Then just sit there. I don’t know when I’ll ever learn to let my panic-o-metre turn off and just know that somehow everything will work out fine. In my mind I start making new plans. I don’t think Maru and her gang will wait for me. Certainly not miss their bus. I suppose I could get to Buenaventura alone. But I sure don’t want to.
It’s raining. It is rush hour. There’s a Guns ‘n Roses concert in the Bogotá stadium. Suddenly our stuck rush hour looks out onto a bunch of wet people, all in black. Their eye liner must be running, I think. I bite my lower lip, then look down at my phone map for the fourteenth time. Nope. It has us getting to the bus station 15 minutes late.
Janeth calls Maru. They’re late too! Hurray. At least we’ll miss the bus together. Our car arrives. The bus is still waiting. We beg them to wait even more, which they do. Maru is coming with eight others. Here they are! We all pile in, without hellos, a quick see you soon to Abilio and Janeth. We’re choosing seats. I plop down at a window. A woman with a fuzzy white sweater and a giant tri-coloured Colombian straw hat sits beside me. We nod. The bus rears and charges into the rain. I pull the hood of my ruana over my eyes and sleep soon, to the thump thump of the wipers. I wake up 12 hours later in Buenaventura. Its still raining, or raining again, when we stumble off the bus.
Maru takes charge. We go to a store at the gas station and buy eggs and arepas. Coffee and sugar. I don’t know anyone, and Maru just barely. The first time I saw her was in 2016 and she was in a canoa, a wooden boat, going up the Atrato river. That was the time I limped through the Darien Gap to the border with Panama. She was on that pilgrimage. Then I spent nine hours with her going by speed boat through the ocean, and up the Naya river to its end, or beginning, where we gathered and sang with the Afro-resisting community. (If anyone wants a printed copy of the Darien Gap story, or the Naya river story, please let me know. My dear friend Margaret M. arranged to have them printed nicely into little chapbooks.)
Every time I am with Maru (Maria Eugenia) — this time too — she is sending off capable, fearless, fighting vibes. No kidding. There is an enormous target painted permanently on her back. Colombia had more human rights and land defenders killed in 2023 than anywhere else on earth. In 2022 Maru was given the Women Building Peace award by the US Institute of Peace. Last year — not for the first time — she received direct death threats, had a gun pulled on her. Like Abilio, last time I was with her she had state-appointed bodyguards. Not today. Just us. She is travelling with Candelaria, from Choco, and Martha (my seat-mate with the fuzzy white sweater). Also returning from human rights meetings in Bogotá are four other local Buenaventura folks. And a wandering Chicano-Puerto Rican-Chicagonean who was supposed to be working here with the communities, until the USAID money collapsed.
I know Buenaventura because I have a dear family in my parish from here. Luz and Luis and kids. We have been on each other’s speed dial for more than eight years. I love them. Last time I was here Luz’ mother, Benita, made me the best fried fish I’d ever eaten. Now, coincidentally, Benita is in Vancouver. Buenaventura is rough place. It is Colombia’s major port. There has been a history of violence here, and also of government abandonment. This is the largest city on the Pacific coast, and it is also the city with the most Afro-descendant people, descendants of the some 1,000,000 Africans enslaved and brought through the Caribbean slave port (now wedding destination city) of Cartagena. Buenaventura, and the departments of Choco and Valle de Cauca are also sites of thriving Afro-Colombian culture, music, religious practices. And political organizing and resistance.
We get to the Compazcol (Communities Constructing Peace in Colombia) house and start to make breakfast. Patacones (squashed platano disks) are flying in and out of the hot oil. All around on every wall are hand-painted signs and posters outlining the work of the community: Sexual Freedom is Not Optional; Ancestral Knowledge is the Ground for Future Leadership, an entire giant whiteboard diagraming safety instructions and civic rights for community leaders.
We share breakfast laughing and planning. We eat and each take a tour in the dish pit. One of the young men travelling back with us to Buenaventura slips out and back. He hands me a white stapled chapbook. Testimonies. Drawings. Stories made up to tell our own stories, he says. He shyly turns the page to his. I read a gentle, tough, queer story. My eyes fill with gratitude for the work being done in these communities on the periphery. Maybe we can make spaces where there won’t be so much suffering
I glance at the young man, in his bright red t-shirt and his fussed-over clean shoes. Dear Lord, let everyone be safe, and live in peace, and be loved, in general and in particular, in the way they want and need. May all be tenderly and boisterously cared for. Amen.
Maru, Martha and Candelaria take a chance to wash out their clothes. They’ve been on the road for a while. COMPAZCOL works in 140 communities in 14 departments, advocating for victim’s rights and creating lasting strong structures for peace. I don’t know why I’m the tired one! I take a quick nap. Then we’re out to visit. Maru has got a hand in every pie.
First stop: a displaced Indigenous community camped out at a radio station. For more than a quarter century this community has been under attack. Paramilitaries. FARC guerrillas. Drug traffickers. Time and again, until it was just too much. In 2022 the whole community uprooted and moved here. Twenty-two families, 95 people. All living beside the booming radio station, now and probably mostly playing broken-hearted drinking songs.
“We can’t live,” the Gobernador says, “without our land. That is our whole identity. Where we get our spirit from. We are losing everything. Our language, our identity, our clothes, our children. Our traditional medicines. Our whole way of life. The women suffer especially. There’s no facilities for bathing. The government has made promises. But here we are.”
We hear testimony after frustrated testimony. Apparently, the government has purchased two farms for the community, but movement is very slow. The waiting is agony.
“Why are we, the Indigenous, the Afro and river-bank communities, the ones who suffer?” continues the Gobernador. “We are on the richest land. We have the biodiversity in our hands. We have looked after all this forever. What’s this with the mining, with the coca? We are the bearers of life, not the bearers of arms.”
We sit in a circle and talk for a long while. The women pause to lay out their wares. Beadwork of incredible beauty. I buy a few things and wish I could carry more. While we are wrapping up, who should appear but — Marcia! She and I have been friends for 10 years, after meeting at a conference in Sāo Paolo. She was the one who invited me to visit her community of Joaquincito on the Naya river. Now she has been even busier. She has a new partner, a new little boy, and she has been going to school. Learning to be a popular educator. Every once in a while, I see her notices on Facebook (one reason I can’t give it up!). Sometimes, even, she’s in winter clothes, in the US, or Europe — in the snow.
Now we all pile into more taxis and head to the port. Not the big containership port. This is a neighbourhood, lively and complex. We are in a designated humanitarian zone, says Maru. These are special areas, created by communities, demanded and fought for, supported by CONPAZCOL. In the zone, no guns are allowed, no warfare between gangs, police, narcos, paramilitaries. Maru has her eyes on them all. We pop out at a friends’ house. After a brief check in, what’s new, what’s trouble, what’s working, we head out for a walk about.
It is tense as we first make our way down the road, but then people see who is coming. Many women, and some men run to our group, crying out and hugging Maru. They walk with us for a way, arm in arm, more questions, answers, plans shared and then they drop off. We stop to buy a few baggies of peeled sugar cane. We chew, suck in the sweet juice, spit out the pulp. Repeat. My teeth hurt, or maybe I’m imagining it.
Kids are romping everywhere. Most of them fairly dirty. I’m sure they will get hosed down — like my boys did — before bedtime. No one seems to be watching the kids, and they sure are having fun.
We are making our way to the water. Men are outside in their undershirts playing cards. Lots of shouting. Ladies are in groups too chatting, some are braiding hair.
Then I look up to see a whole army patrol moving through. One after another, fully armed men. I thought there were to be no guns here? Of course, I ask nothing. But these seem to be there as protectors, not provocateurs. At least not wearing the uniform. I drop my eyes and don’t look directly at a single man. They are so young.
We are heading to the water. A thin sliver of the ocean laps at the end of the road. It is loaded with plastic and styrofoam bits. A sad dog sits on guard. Four of five brightly coloured boats are tied up. Speed boats for going out on the ocean. Each one could carry twenty people or so — plus cargo.
Maru lowers her voice. This is where the chop shop was, she says, pointing to a plain wooden structure at the end of the road. It looks like all the other buildings. Sad, worn, neglected. I don’t know what she’s talking about. We go into a two storied structure, the last building. Bar? Brothel? Fish shop? Everyone here knows Maru too. They call out to her. They embrace. We are climbing a crumbling staircase into the sagging structure. Over the water on stilts now. We are high. Looking out all around at the wide ocean. Nothing there between us and Asia, I think.
Maru repeats pointing sideways now to the ominous building above the cheerful boats: That’s where the murder house was. The chop shop. There they cut up bodies, to take them to the ocean. Dump them far into the water. We don’t know how many died. Thousands?
Then, she said, the neighbours had had enough. They put a stop to it, and she was at the helm of the battle. No wonder they love her. Of all the dozens of communities where COMPAZCOL works, this is the only urban humanitarian zone.
Night falls on us as we carefully climb down. Back up the street, we stopp to embrace a ninety-year-old elder, to give her a new necklace. Then we go around a few corners, into a shop where a woman sells a multiple of things, including homemade medicinal alcohol. We have a few swigs. I have one, and I feel like all phlegm has been chased from my chest forever. Taxi time. Back home
We sleep until dawn, then more coffee, patacones, and plans. Martha and Candelaria and I are now friends, laughing, cooking, talking about our kids. Sharing intimacies of failure and new hope. Maru has a thought. They are heading off in the evening. First to Popoyán, then to the southern state of Huila and a workshop with youth. Something about bicycles. How about I go with them to Popoyán, then back to Bogotá from there? Sure, why not?
Now I have a choice to make: stay in the house and join a theatre workshop for women on dealing with fear and trauma in community organizing. Or go with Gilberto, the Chicanorico, who’s also a photographer, to a nearby community, an albergue, or a shelter. I am torn. Marcia and her daughter, also with us on the day-boat ride up her river seven years ago, are coming to the workshop. . . But the campo?
Before I know we are riding in an armoured car with two bodyguards heading to the community. In the whole journey so far, I have not felt this uncomfortable. Men with guns were taking us somewhere. There are three army checkpoints on the way out of town, but at last, we get there and Ricardo is waiting. We shake the muscle who wait with the car and head off into the jungle. We follow Ricardo along a small stream then up and over a bridge. We made that bridge he says, proudly. We are at the edge of the settlement: the Wounaan Phobor Peace Community.
Here’s their story. They are Neperara people. River Indigenous people. They were displaced from their community, Santa Rosa Baja Calima twice, in 2002, and again in 2004. They returned twice, but on August 30, 2015, they were forced to flee again There was no security, they were under direct attack from armed groups. This time there would be no return. So, they came to the city.
There were no dignified shelters in Buenaventura. So, they formed a search committee. By 2016 they received new members, other displaced folk. CONPAZCOL was always with them. Echoes of the community we met with in the radio station.
Yolanda, secretary of the coordinating committee says: “We couldn’t make it in Buenaventura. Most of all, we were losing our cosmovision. All that our ancestor left us. It was so hard on women, young people. Our traditional medicines, our midwives.”
After much struggle they were able to secure this land, but its far from ideal. On one side is a military base, and on the other, the municipal garbage dump. There is no access to plentiful water, like there was when they lived along the river in Santa Rosa. But it is home. They have welcomed others who find themselves in the same straights in Buenaventura.
Ricardo says: “We are betting on peace. We are showing people how to do it. Looking after the victims, offering dignity. We have built this place together, one house at a time. And the Casa Grande, where we are meeting. If any family wants to come here, they are welcome. They have the right to dignity. At first, they might have to live in a shack made with planks and plastic, but we’ll help them get started.”
After a chat in the circle for an hour or so, I go with some of the kids for a wander around. We visit the school. It’s not a bad building. One room, open air. Nice little desks — about ten of them — and even a cupboard for storing student’s things. There are complicated math problems on the board. One little girl is happy to see me. She shows me her work. She stays by my side for the rest of the visit.
Before I leave, we chat about about the pilgrimage to Belem, the meeting on the climate crisis. Ricardo shares again:
“We have two seasons here: summer (no rain) and winter (lots of rain). But we haven’t had enough rain in the dry season. Sometimes we go months without water. Our kids get rashes — we do too. And the garbage dump sends off a terrible smell. Then in the wet season we get too much rain. Heavy winds, our buildings can’t cope. Our little plants die, either from drought or flood.”
We are quiet for a while. Here are the ones who have done no wrong, and have paid every price. They know how to care for the earth, each other. I haven’t been to a poorer community, I think, on this trip, but here, they say, anyone is welcome. We will build shelter them.
It’s time to head out to our car and the armed guards. Ricardo walks us down the hill and over the bridge. Near the water he points to this and that plant, and what they are good for. I’m sure he’s remembering when they were people of the river, not orphans, like now. He pulls off one leaf and hands it to me.
”If you chew this one,” he says. “It will shield you from your enemies.” I nod, crumple the leaf, sniff it, but don’t chew it. He’s the one who needs protection. The reason there are armed guards here is because there was an attempt on his life, just a few months ago. CONPAZCOL arranged for them to be here — outside the community, not inside. No arms allowed there.
Back at the house the workshop is wrapping up. I say goodbye to Marcia and her daughter, then rest for a while because before you know it, we are all packed up and heading in taxis to the market bus terminal, buses heading for smaller towns. It is a scary place, dirty and smelly. We wait for quite a while for the micro bus, until it is dark and pouring, but at last, we are onboard, heading to Cali, and then to Popayán.
Two buses later we arrive — at Maru’s father’s house. He welcomes us all, and of course, embarrassingly, I get a room of my own. Maru’s brother stays here when he’s in town. On the wall in the main part of the house is Maru’s uncle, murdered by the army in the 70s. On the wall in my room is a poster of Camilo Torres, the Colombian priest who joined the guerrillas in the 60s (and died in his first combat).
In the morning it is raining (again). We spend the day having fun. Going downtown, eating ice cream, sharing in the Indigenous day celebrations that are underway that day: music, dance, and games. Joy all around. Martha, Candelaria and I are fast friends. We visit the bridge where Simon Bolivar, liberator of Gran Colombia (from the Spanish — 1820s-30s. See Greg Grandin’s book) crossed on his campaign of freedom. This is also the bridge where enslaved Africans were marketed. Ugh. Over on a high hill, too far to us to walk in the rain, is the site I would have liked to see. It is where on September 16, 2020 Misak activists toppled the statue of Sebastián de Belalcázar, conquistador of the Pacific part of Colombia.
The last thing we do in the city is share an absolute feast of empanaditas de pipian. Little fried pockets, stuffed with potato and peanut! We eat several dozen. Then it is rush, back to the house. I am on the 5pm bus back to Bogotá. Abilio and Janeth and their daughters, along with Caro and her niece and nephew, are waiting for me to go on a holy excursion the next day. It is a 16-hour bus ride.
Except Maru wants to feed me tamales, and more things, and goodbyes take forever in Colombia, and I love everyone and want to go with them to their next site. So I actually sneak out. I don’t say a proper goodbye — I run for a taxi, which roars for the bus. We arrive — 15 minutes late. The driver was about to hit the gas when I throw myself on board. He punishes me with loud reggeaton for the rest of the ride in the rain. I don’t care. I’ll sleep through it all.