Article 18 of Colombia's 1991 constitution clearly states: "No one shall be obligated to act against their conscience." Yet this same constitution includes a 1993 law that mandates military service to all those over 18 years of age. Service may be avoided for those who pay a fine, which is ultimately used to finance Colombia's ongoing 40-year war, leaving little room for conscientious objectors not to take up arms or contribute towards war financially, and forcing those with little-to-no resources to enlist. This fundamental contradiction, and the forced recruitment of youths by paramilitary and other armed groups, served as a springboard for a three-day discussion held at Bogotá's National Library from July 18 through 20.
The Asamblea Nacional de Objetores y Objetoras de Conciencia de Colombia (the Colombian National Assembly of Conscientious Objectors-ANOOC), a Bogotá-based network of conscientious objection and antimilitarism groups, organized the International Meeting in Solidarity with Conscientious Objection in Colombia, focusing on political, juridical, and social alternatives for the support and recognition of COs in Colombia. Participants included representatives from within Colombia, including organizers from Medellín (Red Juvenil), Cali (Colectivo Objetarte Cali), and Cauca (Artesanos de Vida), as well as Arauca, Villa Rica, and the Comunidad de Paz San José de Apartadó. Representatives attended from CO groups in Ecuador (Grupo de Objeción de Consciencia de Ecuador-GOCE), Paraguay (Movimiento de Objeción de Consciencia- MOC-PY), Serbia (Campaign for Conscientious Objection-Serbia), Spain (Movimiento de Objeción de Consciencia- MOC-ES), and the United States (War Resisters League).
Europe-based international organizations such as War Resisters' International and Conscience and Peace Tax International also sent representatives. Moderating the discussions were representatives from Colombia's Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights; the Inter-American Platform on Human Rights, Democracy and Development; and the Colombian Ombudsman Office.
The event concluded on July 20, when Colombia's independence is commemorated with elaborate military parades and demonstrations throughout the country. Some of the 300 conference attendees added their own finale to the miles of parading tanks and thousands of uniformed youths filing down Bogotá's main Seventh Avenue: a nonviolent direct action involving street theater and costumes depicting the negative impact of militarism, followed by a "Carnival of Life," complete with dancers, jugglers on stilts, and face paint, that celebrated conscientious objection to war. Organizers handed out literature to the onlooking crowd and engaged individuals in a critical dialogue about the celebration of militarism they had just witnessed. The response was overwhelmingly positive.
More sobering, however, was the worry on the faces of the participants traveling back to their homes in the department of Valle del Cauca, where paramilitary forces are an intense presence. On Colombian Independence Day, it is routine for paramilitaries to conduct forced recruitment raids, snatching civilians from buses traveling through conflict-ridden regions. "They have already knocked down two transformers in our area in a show of power today," one Colombian conference attendee told me. "That means at least two months without electricity for our entire town."
Burgeoning Movement
The conference highlighted parallel struggles for the recognition of CO status across borders and was a reminder that Latin America's CO movement is active and fast growing, a fact that is rarely acknowledged in activist communities outside the region. Activists exchanged strategies and skills that went beyond simply supporting and creating legal paths for individual COs, focusing on a more holistic social demilitarization and nonviolent resistance to it.
In a region where obligatory military service is commonplace, where CO status is legally indefensible, and where the transitions to "democracy" of the 1990s were carried out by the same politicians that had been in power during the region's military dictatorships, not serving one's mandatory military service can jeapordize one's basic civil rights such as higher education, employment, and freedom of movement across national borders. Currently, conscription is mandatory in Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Paraguay, Argentina, Bermuda, and the Dominican Republic.
As a response to the permeation of militarism into everyday cultural practices, grassroots organizations including activists in youth, women's, indigenous, and environmental movements have organized for conscientious objection rights, societal demilitarization, and the removal of U.S. military bases in the region through nonviolent action and popular education. A major player in coordinating demilitarization organizing in Latin America has been Servicio Paz y Justicia-America Latina (SERPAJ-AL), which has worked in the region since 1974, supporting grassroots organizations in their struggle for constitutional recognition of CO status.
CO movements in Chile, Paraguay, Ecuador, and Colombia are particularly strong, having the most international recognition, support, and access to resources. Chile's military culture largely stems from its colonization of parts of Peru, Bolivia, and indigenous Mapuche and Patagonian territories in the 1880s, a time when service in the National Guard became mandatory for all men age 18-45. The armed forces participate heavily in the senate and even have the power to appoint senators. Since the mid 1990s, Chilean youth-led groups such as Ni Casco Ni Uniforme (Neither Helmet Nor Uniform-NCNU), Movimiento de Objeción de Consciencia-Chile (Movement for Conscientious Objection-MOC-Chile), and Grupo Antimilitarista y Objeción de Conciencia Rompiendo Filas-Temuco (Breaking Ranks Antimilitarism and Conscientious Objection Group-Temuco) have organized against conscription. Chile currently has three conscientious objector cases pending in the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights.
Paraguay's Movimiento de Objeción de Consciencia (MOC-PY) formed in 1994 following the collective and public declarations of Paraguay's first five COs. Today there are more than 115,000 COs in Paraguay. The group works on campaigns against conscription, and forced recruitment, and, along with SERPAJ-Paraguay, has worked to uphold articles in the country's 1992 constitution that recognize conscientious objection.
As MOC-PY member Edilberto Alvarez said, "In the context of the dictatorship, everything military becomes a force that impregnates the social fabric of all groups such as family, school, politics and other spaces of interaction," Cases of forced recruitment in public spaces have been reported, with missing youths reappearing months later as soldiers, unbeknownst to their families and communities. To this Alvarez adds, "The practices of the armed forces and the institutionalization of violence through obligatory military service has made the country, especially for youth, a place with fear of forced recruitment, where youth ultimately reinforce this culture of violence, sexism, and submission, ending in psychological trauma and death."
Grupo de Objeción de Consciencia de Ecuador (Ecuador's Group of Conscientious Objectors-GOCE) based in Quito, emerged in 1994 in response to the increased militarization of life and the mandatory conscription faced by all men over 18. In 1996, the group, supported by SERPAJEcuador, proposed an alternative civil service presented as a constitutional reform. Although it was passed in 1998, the reform has yet to be implemented. GOCE works with COs, women, youth and environmental groups in 12 provinces throughout Ecuador, conducting trainings and workshops against conscription, nuclear testing, and U.S. military bases.
Xavier León, a member of GOCE and a declared CO since 1999, currently has his case pending in the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights. COs in Ecuador are not able to attend public universities, work in the public sector, or leave the country. They face fines of up to $500 for every year of military service refusal or one day in jail for every ten cents owed in fines, with all civil rights suspended for two years.
In Colombia, Red Juvenil de Medellín (Youth Network of Medellín), a 12-year-old collective, works to create nonviolent alternatives to the more than 200 armed groups in the city. Despite constant persecution by state police, Red Juvenil works in collaboration with Antimili Sonoro, a social initiative begun in 1998 to distribute information on conscientious objection and demilitarization through concerts and music venues; La Madeja theater group, whose pieces focus on critical political reflection within the context of nonviolence; and Aeroteatro Pulsaciones Coloridas, an acrobatic and dance project that aims to socially sensitize and incite social transformation through art and body movement; as well as providing legal support through a network of lawyers and counselors.
Red Juvenil also recognizes the struggle of objectors who have not declared themselves publicly. As declared CO and Red Juvenil member Jhony Arango states, "[We support] all those objectors, women and men, living in this country, and that without declaring themselves and without organizing, assume their positions as an individual way of life."
Caribbean and Central America
While the countries mentioned above appear to have the strongest CO movements in the region, grassroots mobilization around antimilitarism and conscientious objection is happening in many other Central American and Caribbean countries. Despite its colonial relationship with the United States-or perhaps because of it-Puerto Rico's antimilitarism movement identifies strongly with CO movements throughout the Latin American region. The Proyecto Caribeño de Paz y Justicia (Caribbean Peace and Justice Project-PCJP) has been working on the island since 1973, particularly around the negative impact of U.S. military presence in the region.
"This year marks 20 years of our campaign and festival against war toys," says Iván Broida from PCJP. "We feel we were a part of the success in shutting down the U.S. Marine base in Vieques by helping to internationalize the struggle and popularizing concepts of demilitarization and a culture of peace on the island." Within the next five years, PCJP hopes to develop a permanent counter-recruitment campaign inside the Puerto Rican school system. "We want total demilitarization for the island of Puerto Rico and the entire Caribbean region," Broida says.
In Guatemala, the participation of indigenous women's grassroots organizations in the conscientious objection movement is also strong. René Godínez García of the Associación Tejedora de Desarollo Integral Maya (Mayan Weaving Association for Integral Development) a group that addresses issues of conscientious objection and revolutionary nonviolence through textile work, says that the participation of women in their movement has been essential.
"Throughout forced recruitment, it has been the women, the widows, the mothers, and single mothers who have reclaimed their partners and sons as victims of militarization," Godínez García says. "It was the women who organized and demonstrated in the streets to defend and demand their rights."
In Latin American and Caribbean countries where conscription is not written into the constitution, is not enforced, or has been abolished, other antimilitarism work such as war tax resistance campaigns, resistance to the poverty draft, and campaigns against the use of war toys, has flourished.
The World Ahead
For the first time ever, there are more U.S. military personnel in Latin America than personnel for major aid organizations. U.S. military installations currently operate in Cuba, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Honduras, Aruba, Curação, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, with unofficial bases in Bolivia, and U.S. military exercises being carried out in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and soon to be carried out in Paraguay. The U.S. military apparatus in Latin America will be the focus of the International Network Against Foreign Military Bases (Red Internacional Contra las Bases Militares Extranjeras) world conference, to be held in Quito and Manta, Ecuador, March 5-9, 2007.Though regional networks such as the Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Antimilitarismo y Objeción de Conciencia (Latin American Coordination for Antimilitarism and Conscientious Objection-CLAOC) and the Campaña por la Desmilitarización de las Américas (Campaign for the Demilitarization of the Americas-CADA) exist and remain as active as possible, given the lack of resources available, the task of creating and sustaining strong, long-term links between CO struggles throughout Latin America and the Caribbean remains. For this to happen, an all-inclusive regional articulation of the movement that can facilitate communication and coordination within the region's organizations and activate international support is critical. Having such a network or body will ensure that budding antimilitarism projects in the region are nurtured, existing programs are strengthened, and the possibilities for a demilitarized Latin America-free from foreign intervention and internal violence-appear on a not-too-distant horizon.
The Colombian National Assembly of Conscientious Objectors (ANOOC), urgently needs a computer for its Bogotá office. If you would like to donate a new computer or contribute towards the purchase of one, please contact the WRL National Office at (212)228-0450.
