© 2006. Used by permission
BARRANQUILLA, Colombia – Eli Maria Alvarez Jimenez has persistent dark circles under her eyes.
She looks tired and anxious. And she is.
Her youngest child, Mauricio Avilez, 26, left Barranquilla two years ago for safety’s sake and hasn’t yet been able to return. He cannot resume his life there without renewed death threats from right-wing paramilitaries who want to stop his efforts to help some of Colombia’s 3.6 million displaced poor in the name of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia (PCC).
So now she is telling him to go: To leave Colombia and to stay away until he is no longer hunted. And she has no idea when that may be. Neither does he.
Determining where to go, and then how to get there, are both easier said than done. Not to mention how he will fare in a strange place once he is gone.
“I used to support Mauricio’s (cause) very much,” she says now, with resignation in her voice after nearly two years of non-stop trauma. “It is beautiful work that he is doing, but as long as Mauricio is in Colombia, he is in danger.
“Things here are horrible.”
A law student, Avilez directed the PCC’s outreach to Colombia’s displaced poor as they poured by the thousands into Barranquilla, casualties of Colombia’s violent civil conflict. Avilez’ organization, CEDERHNOS, helps the refugees file paperwork with the government to claim negligible benefits and to document the threats and abuse that forced them off their farms and into shantytowns here.
When a bomb exploded in a Barranquilla department store owned by a prominent politician in 2004, Avilez and several displaced persons were accused of the crime. They faced allegations of subversion, murder, and guerilla activity. He was jailed four months and was released only after international pressure by the United Nations, the international church, and other human rights organizations.
The allegations against him were never officially leveled as charges and were dropped on April 16, 2004, his 24th birthday as he was meeting with the United Nations and the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland.
His mother called him with the good news.
But his troubles weren’t over then, or now.
Avilez’ name turned up on a clandestine “most wanted”š list” last October, along with the names of three other Barranquilla human rights activists, including Milton Mejia, the former executive secretary of the PCC who is now in America under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
An informant said he had been offered $1,000 to testify that Avilez and MejÃa were linked to Colombia’s guerilla network, which has been waging a low-intensity war against the government for the past 50 years. The decade-long struggle has displaced massive numbers of civilians in a fight over turf.
The man also said that both Avilez and MejÃa were named on a death list. Both say the church uses only democratic processes to seek social change.
Avilez’ mother can always find a new worry.
She takes pills to sleep. She can’t rest for ruminating, wondering if he is all right or worrying about what will happen next. She was so certain that her telephone was tapped that she took it out. She hasn’t seen her own mother in more than a year, since she is afraid she may meet an armed stalker on a lonely stretch of highway.
Just weeks ago, a neighbor saw a man taking photos of the Avilez house. She first assumed that the landlord must intend to put the house on the market, but he insists that it isn’t for sale. So she has a whole new set of worries to ponder: Who was the man? What does he want? Who does he represent? Is he looking for clues to find and hurt her son? Are people waiting and watching, keeping the family under surveillance?
The PCC office was under video surveillance two years ago, when Avilez was arrested. The tapes were shown during interrogations. It isn’t yet clear if cameras are still watching the goings-on there.
Sending Avilez away two years ago was unthinkable for Alvarez, now 52. Then she clung to him tightly enough to persuade a prison guard to let her spend one night in his cell, accompanied by her daughter, Renata. It was a maternal twist on a conjugal visit that caused havoc the next morning when she was discovered there at roll call.
But nothing is working here to keep him safe. Not the move to Bogotá. Not time.
So she thinks he needs to go now. Even if he is far away, he is still alive, she reasons. “Better to be away from here than dead here,” she says, her voice dull. Her mind dredges up what might befall him someplace else where she can no longer help; what obstacles prevent him from going.
He doesn’t have a visa, if he wants to leave. He has no job to go to, no way to earn money. He speaks only Spanish. And what if he is lonely there? What if he is too emotionally overwrought to start over? To fit in? To make a new home? Her mind is whirling, anticipating problems that may stop him from going, while she simultaneously worries about what happens to him if he leaves.
“You worry,” she says, her eyes welling up with tears. “You know, children and mothers and he is the baby. But here in this place, he is in a lot of danger.”
ALEXA SMITH is a freelance journalist living in Louisville, Ky.
