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A Nobel Nominee
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San Jose de Apartadó is a small hamlet located 7 miles from Apartadó where peasants from neighboring areas sold avocados, cocoa beans and other products. The town had organized a cooperative called BALSAMAR to market and process the cocoa beans, and the Colombian army believed the town was under the control of FARC guerrillas.
In February 1997, the paramilitaries came in and ordered everyone to leave, shutting down the market, forbidding the selling of food except for small amounts, and accusing the villagers of running a supply post for the guerrillas. To make their point, the paramilitaries dragged out of their homes the 4 elected board members of the cooperative, and killed them, and threw their bodies into a shallow grave.
The community responded. On March 23, on Palm Sunday, after high mass, the inhabitants of San Jose and its rural settlements declared themselves a Comunidad de Paz, or Community of Peace.
The civilian population committed itself :
* Not to participate in the war in direct or indirect form
* Not to carry arms
* Not to manipulate or give information to any of the parties involved in armed conflict
* Not to ask any of the parties to solve conflicts
* Each one commits him/herself to search for a peaceful solution and to a dialogue for solving the conflict of the country
This is an alternative of the civilian population to express resistance, autonomy, a dignified life and a peaceful expression of opposition to the status quo. It is a novelty in Colombia because it redefines popular power focusing on exercising fundamental rights as citizens in a democracy and breaks the dynamics of war and injustice, creating a space to survive. Since it declared itself a Comunidad de Paz, San Jose has seen the death of 35 members--33 executed by paramilitaries and 2 executed by FARC guerillas.
Nobel Prize Nominees
In the middle of the injustice and the continuous aggressions of the State and others on the population in Colombia, the Community of Peace was nominated the Nobel prize by La Paz the 2007 along with Association of Indigenous Town halls of the North of the Cauca - ACIN as examples of non-violent resistance by extraordinary women and men and their efforts to construct to a different country based on justice and dignity.
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Thanks to people like you the International Peacemakers Fund funded the building of a living memorial for the community, last year.
The community says:
"The sense of memory in the community is something that goes deep in us and our principles because this memory is founded on the search to construct to a community of dignity and solidarity. The memorial allows us to remember our former members and from them learn about society that they wanted to construct and for which they were killed.
The memorial becomes something intrÃnsic in our daily lives, with it we do not lose our sense of community and in it we remember our hope for justice. It is the motor of our common life.
We thank for the national and international support to our process and know that many will be united in this construction of the memorial and the dignity it brings our struggleâ€
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Please give to us today today and support nonviolence as an alternative basis of community in Colombia. There are many ways to give and all donations, large or small, will make a real difference and we guarentee that every single penny you donate will go directly to support inpirational peace projects such as San Jose de Apartado. 100%- Guaranteed.
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