by James Patrick Jordan Killings of Colombian social leaders and peace process participants have skyrocketed over the past month to a rate of over one victim per day. As if to underscore the point in blood, on January 21, 2020, two persons were killed, two wounded, and 70 persons displaced in Tarazá, in Colombia’s Bajo…
By James Patrick Jordan by James Patrick Jordan The lack of coverage in the United States of the national strike in Colombia is unbelievable. What little coverage it does receive has been misleading, at best. Colombia is the U.S. government’s closest ally in Latin America. It is held out as a model of democracy,…
Report from James Jordan, with interview of Lorena Ochoa from Lazos de Dignidad Colombia’s machinery of repression started kicking in even though the National Strike for peace, justice, and human rights was still a day away. My partner, Raquel Mogollón, and I arrived in Bogotá at 3am on Wednesday November 20, 2019. After a much…
by James Patrick Jordan Back in 2015, I went with leaders of the Fensuagro agricultural workers federation to observe a series of consultations in the coffee growing areas of the Department of Tolima. These consultations were to ask rural communities about what their hopes were for the pending Peace Accord, and what kinds of…
by James Patrick Jordan Note: Even as I finish writing and publishing this piece, we have received two more notifications of paramilitary murders of activists in the area of Caloto, Cauca. Send an email to Colombian authorities demanding protection and an end to the threats against Gerardo Barona and Andy Murcia Under cover of night…
by James Patrick Jordan I recently visited the Department of La Guajira on behalf of the Alliance for Global Justice. I was with Raquel Mogollón who works with the organization Camino Común. While we were in La Guajira, we were asked to meet with members of the Fuerza de Mujeres Wayuú (FMW, Women’s Wayuú Force)…
by James Patrick Jordan In what may constitute a mortal blow to Colombia’s peace process, President Ivan Duque has defied the order by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) to releaseJesús Santrich, aka Seuxis Hernández Solarte, from prison. Santrich is a negotiator and former insurgent who helped craft the accord to end more than five…
by James Patrick Jordan When corporate media is obsessing on one story, you can pretty much bet that another story is being ignored or, more likely, purposely hidden and obscured. Corporate media, ever beating the drums for whatever war, coup, or intervention the oligarchs are pushing, plays its dutiful and subservient role. The example that…
Live Blogging: Colombia’s National Strike, Venezuela vs. the Empire Simón Bolívar, “the Great Liberator”, had a dream of liberation from Empire and slavery, of just peace, of a united and soverign people throughout South America. Especially he fought for the people of Gran Colombia, today’s nations of Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador. The dream and the…
by James Patrick Jordan UPDATE: We have more news about the killing of Jhon Jairo Noscue. He was killed in crossfire when he responded to a call for help from a person who was being attacked by armed assailants. We have not received word about the motivation of the killers, whether or not this was…
