During this quarantine, we have all been going through a difficult time of worries and concerns about our families and our future in the workplace and in the social sphere. Many people went into mourning for the loss of one of their loved ones, robbing many families of the chance to say a final goodbye. It is very painful to find out this powerlessness for ourselves when dignity, affections and economic security are being taken away from us. We felt close to each other, empathic and heroic because everyone had had the same fate. Or, as Pope Francis put it, ‘in the middle of the storm, we are all on the same boat’.
Yet we are very much aware that in our country boats are not all the same: some people are going through all this on a raft. This is why those who could tried to help people living with great difficulties during the quarantine. At the same time we are aware of what this additional huge burden has caused in areas where people were already experiencing precariousness, violence, war, injustice, and hunger. Yet no one has been hearing anything from them.

"Hacer memoria es un compromiso por el futuro".
(Remembering is a commitment for future)

This sentence can accurately sum up the intense days we lived among the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, Colombia, during the commemoration of the killings of Mulatos and Resbalosa, which took place on February 21^st, 2005. Since then, the Community gathers every year to engage in an active and vivid remembrance, so fundamentally essential for their nonviolent resistance.
From the very first hours of the early morning in La Holandita, on February 19^th, one could already hear some voices attending the preparations of the first of four days dedicated to hacer memoria of Luis Eduardo, Bellanira, Deiner, Alfonso, Sandra, Santiago, Natalia and Alejandro. Luis Eduardo’s son, Sebastián, who was two years old at the time of the killings, climbs up the Community’s main gate to hang up, with extreme care, a banner reading: “WE RESIST FOR LIFE, FIGHT FOR JUSTICE AND WALK FOR DIGNITY”.

“Called by name and as a people, we walk together careful to the last of history, to the bloodiest parts of creation"

Together with another volunteer, today we accompanied a man to do his job in the field: picking up cocoa pod, the fruit of the cocoa tree.
Once the pods were opened, the man going extracted the beans, which he then stored to be able to sow them, thus creating new cocoa seedlings, which will bear new fruit within three years.
This man is a humble peasant.
What he desires is simply to be free to work his land and live his life happily in his Country, Colombia.
This man has been repeatedly threatened with death.
An international presence is therefore necessary to guarantee him the security of not being killed during his work in the fields or his movements.
His life, like the life of the others men, women, old people and children who make up the "Comunidad de Paz" of San José de Apartadó, are threatened.

Every year the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó commemorates the massacre of 21 February 2005 (VIDEO).        
That day Luis Eduardo Guerra, among the founders and main leader of the Community, was killed, together with his partner Bellanira, his son Deiner (only 11) and other 5 people including 2 children, 5-year-old Natalia and 11-month-old Santiago. It was a very hard blow for the whole community.
After 14 years from that brutal massacre, after the signing of the Peace Agreement with the FARC, the situation has not improved at all.
On 29 December 2017, some paramilitaries tried to kill, without success, German and Roviro. Since then, together with other leaders / members of the Community, they are constantly threatened with death and forced to live without being able to move freely, but only by planning their (few) movements in detail and always "escorted" by international volunteers, among them those of Operation Colomba.