“The risk of writing about violence and doing fieldwork and research in Colombia.”
Lerber Dimas Vásquez, a Colombian anthropologist and an expert on urban violence and organised crime in the Sierra Nevada region, shares his experience of threats and intimidation that forced him to leave the country in 2020.
Give us a brief introduction of yourself and your work in Colombia.
I am an anthropologist from the University of Magdalena and I have been working on issues of memory, urban violence and organised crime in the region of the Sierra Nevada for more than 12 years. The Sierra Nevada is part of the Colombian Caribbean and is formed by three departments: Cesar, Magdalena and La Guajira. This area has two particularities, as it was the site of two processes that are important to understand violent phenomena: the first is the marimba bonanza and the coca bonanza, and the second is the arrival of guerrillas and paramilitary groups in this mountainous massif.
Both processes involved thousands of murders, massacres, extermination of families, disappearances and multiple violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.
Lerber Dimas
I belong to the research group La Oraloteca of the University of Magdalena, where we have carried out important work on visual anthropology involving the reconstruction of 4 massacres that occurred in the department of Magdalena. In the Sierra as a whole, there have been 540 massacres in the past 50 years, with a peak between 1996 and 2006.
I am also a qualified expert on security issues and I write for some local and national media about these phenomena and the ones that emerged from the Peace Processes with the AUC and the FARC.EP guerrillas. I have been defending social and indigenous causes (Human Rights Defender) for over five years and I am a professor of anthropology at the University of La Guajira.
Why did you have to leave the country? What happened?
The rearming of the paramilitary groups began almost on the day after their demobilisation in 2006. This means that what would be known as “the post-conflict phase” after the demobilisation process of paramilitaries quickly became a resurgence of a new paramilitarism that continued to violate human rights and international human rights law.
Together with the Research Group La Oraloteca, we began to bring attention to this issue in public events: talks, radio programmes, academic events and publications in local newspapers and indexed journals. Likewise, we started to show documentaries on these events and on others such as the so-called “False Positives” (the name of “False Positives” in Colombia refers to an illegal repressive practice by the Military Forces through which they killed many young people and peasants and presented them publicly as guerrilla fighters killed in combat in order to obtain privileges and promotions). At the university, we began to reconstruct memory and talk to the victims and, at the same time, we produced publications about these violent phenomena of paramilitarism, their impact and how they continued to be linked to political and economic processes in the different regions. Paramilitarism had taken over the universities of the Sierra Nevada and had even modified the academic curriculum so that all ideas related to socialism and communism would be annihilated.
These academic spaces of debate began to cause discomfort since paramilitarism is still active in these regions and almost everywhere in Colombia.
I had to leave Colombia because I dared to support the defence of human rights and to participate in academic events in which we discussed crucial political problems linked to the cases of “false positives,” the responsibilities of paramilitary groups in political violence and the so-called “parapolitics” (parapolitics is a term that refers to the very close relationship and even mutual support between politicians, such as mayors, senators and city council members, and paramilitary groups).
How and why do you think that your work as an academic relates to the situation of risk to which you were exposed?
The Demobilisation Process which took place in Colombia with the AUC under the Uribe administration has four components and goals: truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition. To this end, the Justice and Peace Law of 2005—a transitional Justice mechanism—established that those who agreed to its terms and complied with the four requirements to advance the above four goals could benefit from an alternative prison sentence (a maximum of 8 years for all crimes committed) and deprivation of liberty in special detention units instead of regular prisons. All of this sought to contribute to the reconciliation scenario.
The first problem was that those who postulated to this alternative prison sentence realised that they could manipulate the truth and change it. There was no way to refute it and this greatly benefited third parties, who, in exchange for money, asked the beneficiaries to assume full responsibility for the relevant crimes—without naming others—because the penalty would be the same. This meant that many criminals who were at liberty continued to enjoy impunity. In our work on memory and symbolic anthropology and rapprochement with the victims, we found that the Demobilisation Process was not being conducted as announced or achieving the promised goals and we thus immediately raised our voice in protest. This led to the expulsion of several postulated paramilitary members from the Justice and Peace Law Process when it was proven that they were not complying with the requirements to benefit from the alternative legal framework. In this way, they lost the benefit of an eight-year sentence and were transferred to the ordinary justice system, which envisaged a potential sentence of 40 years’ imprisonment for the crimes committed.
The second problem was the understanding of the spaces for memory and the approach to the victims and the support of peace tables and reparation processes: paramilitarism took over the lands and displaced thousands of peasants. This process of accompanying leaders, as well as indigenous communities, resulted in the death of people who were at the forefront of these processes, which in turn brought the processes to a halt.
Thus, academic work began to be dangerous since it started to shed light on a historical and judicial truth, which was distorted or manipulated in order to protect those who benefited from paramilitarism in military, political and economic ways. Then, if an independent academic investigation exposed those links or refuted part of what those actors involved in paramilitarism had done and even turned into a business, it would indeed get researchers into trouble. This is how researching on the armed conflict became a serious problem for scholars working on these issues.
Another factor that implies putting oneself in danger is to support and make visible the denunciations of social leaders whose lives are at great risk in Colombia. Every time they raise their voices in protest, they are killed by people close to the paramilitaries and the illegal businesses that persist in these territories.
Did you report your situation of risk to the institution where you work? If so, what was their attitude and what did they do?
Yes, I did. There was no response at all from the University. At the University of La Guajira, where I am a lecturer in anthropology, there was not even a call or a communication. This was because I was writing a document for the Truth Commission on the role of the University of La Guajira in the paramilitary era. That report questioned the role of the rectors of the University. Because of that, I did not receive any solidarity support from the University.
I feel that the universities of the Colombian Caribbean are very cautious about everything that happens with the truth processes because paramilitarism took them over. They have not told their truth and several rectors are involved. Paramilitarism took control of all public institutions in the Colombian Caribbean.
Did you file a complaint with the local authorities?
Yes, I have filed complaints with the Attorney General’s Office, the Procurator General’s Office and the Ombudsperson’s Office.
What response did you get from the Colombian government?
I received a call from the UNP (Unidad Nacional de Protección / National Protection Unit) to tell me that a security study would be carried out to evaluate my situation. However, these studies are slow—they take up to 6 months—and in my particular case, I am still waiting for a response.
Did you seek support from other people/groups/organisations?
Yes, I sought support from some NGOs (national and international) but it all happened so fast that perhaps they were not prepared to tackle the problem in a timely manner, and this led to a bureaucratic crossover. As most NGOs lack their own support mechanism, they need to articulate actions with the national government, and this creates a bureaucracy that does not help to deal with the situation.
What have been the consequences of the threats in your life?
Well, on an emotional level, it has been very difficult. The first thing is to arrive in Germany thanks to the support of professors and institutions such as the Capaz Institute, the Justus Liebig University of Giessen and the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute, among others, and to encounter a new culture, a language you don’t know and face the emptiness produced by the feeling of fear when you encounter something totally new. I had never been to Germany before. This is very complex and causes fear because here, in a way, you are alone.
On a family level, this created instability because they have had to move to other cities to avoid possible actions by those who want to harm me because they are the “authority” in that territory.
On the economic side, I had to leave my farm and coffee production (the events happened a few months before the harvest). The harvest was thus lost and I had to abandon the property. This is something I am concerned about because it is part of my future. I have worked for this for many years and it can now pass into the hands of those who try to harm me.
On the work level, I had to abandon some research projects, and thus new people will have to take over those projects and new lecturers might have to fill my positions at University.
Do you know of any colleagues who have suffered some type of aggression related to their work or research topic?
Yes, I know people in exile in Spain and Canada who only wish to be able to return to their homeland, even if they are murdered. Not being able to do your work and having to do work unrelated to your professional training and interests leads to great frustration.
What do you think should be done to support and protect people who work in academia and find themselves being harassed and threatened?
I feel it is necessary to create a specific route/protocol for academics that responds to their needs in a timely manner. And this is all the more so in the regions that are far away from the centre (Bogota) of the country. Colombia is a centralist country and the reactions to what happens outside the centre come late, remain hidden and generally do not have any support. This route/protocol or Action Guide should be in line with the conditions set forth by the European Union or donor countries for the Peace Process. In other words, the conditions set by those that contribute the funding must include an effective, fast and efficient protection mechanism.