Catch-22

Illegal Colombian immigrants face deportation to a war-torn country.
But they can't get amnesty because Colombia is a US ally in the war on drugs.

by Kristen Lombardi

THE FEAR SET in a decade ago. Lucas Cardona, then a community advocate in the Antioquia region of Colombia, awoke one day to find a note tucked under his front door. On it were scrawled two simple words that sent a chill up his spine: Beware, revolucionario. Cardona (not his real name) had been branded a traitor, accused of sympathizing with the wrong side in the complicated civil war that has raged in his country for nearly half a century.

Months after receiving the message, Cardona and his friend Luis headed to a popular night spot. As they waited in the packed lobby, Cardona noticed two men slowly cruising by on a motorcycle. Soon after, the festive ambiance of the evening was snuffed out by gunfire. Cardona felt the pain; he saw the blood. A bullet had ripped through his right thigh, and then pierced his left leg.

The attempt on his life left Cardona terrified that his attackers would return to finish the job. So he paid $2000 for a fake visa to work in the United States. He arrived in Boston 15 days later.

In the seven years since his desperate flight, Cardona, a 36-year-old illegal immigrant living in Chelsea, has fashioned a rather normal life for himself: he works as an artist in and around Boston; he met and settled down with his wife in this area (she is a Colombian immigrant with temporary protected status); they have a three-year-old son, Mitchell. To this day, however, Cardona is haunted

by fear -- not of being killed, but of being sent back to a place where he will be.

"At first, I come here and think I'm lucky," he says. His friend Luis, he explains, was shot dead at close range just six months after Cardona left Colombia. "But," he adds, "I know it's hard to make a life without the amnesty. Amnesty is future for me, future without the fear."

THE COLOMBIAN immigrant community, in general, consists of people like Cardona: young, educated men and women who could afford to flee the violence. According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Colombians rank 11th among the top 15 groups of undocumented immigrants. (Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans are listed as the top three.) It's almost impossible to determine how many live in Massachusetts. Using figures from the 1990 US Census, the Office of Refugee and Immigrant Health at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health estimates that 27,500 Colombian immigrants live in the Bay State -- most in East Boston, Brighton, Lowell, and Chelsea. But that number probably doesn't include all those who are here illegally.

Given the conditions in Colombia -- where 200 people are kidnapped every month, 3000 are murdered every year, and more than 1.5 million have been displaced from their homes by political violence -- you might expect Cardona to receive amnesty. He thought the same thing in 1993, when he applied for political asylum. But although his life remained in jeopardy, his application was denied. "It's very hard for Colombians to be defined as political refugees in the United States," he says.

That's because the US government has aligned itself with the Colombian government in its fight against Marxist guerrillas and drug traffickers. Colombia, in other words, is a democratic ally. For the US to regard Colombian immigrants as political refugees, it would have to acknowledge that their homeland's government is a repressive regime -- an inconvenient detail that gets in the way of America's war on drugs.

A bill filed in August 1999 by US Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Florida) would offer relief to Cardona and the 60,000 others like him now living in the US. The Andean Adjustment Act of 1999 -- HR 2741 --would protect the tens of thousands of Colombians (and at least 20,000 Peruvians) who arrived in this country before December 1995 by granting them permanent-resident status. As Martha Soto of the Cambridge-based advocacy group Colombia Vivé explains, "The amnesty bill is a first step toward forcing politicians to recognize the plight of Colombian immigrants."

The prospect of ending their daily nightmare has sparked unparalleled activism among this long-silent and isolated immigrant population. Colombians have taken to the streets in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami to voice support for HR 2741. An October 14 rally for amnesty at the United Nations in New York is expected to attract 5000 immigrants, including many Colombians. In Massachusetts, they are blanketing Greater Boston in an attempt to mobilize fellow immigrants, many of whom fear taking direct political action because, in their home countries, speaking out often means putting your life at risk.

Despite their lack of political clout, these advocates have managed to gain attention -- at least in Massachusetts. Seven of the state's 10 congressmen have signed on to HR 2741 as co-sponsors. US Representative Michael Capuano (D-Boston), for one, maintains that politics never factored into his decision to champion the legislation. After all, he says, "most of these immigrants cannot vote." For Capuano, HR 2741 amounts to what he calls "basic fairness." There is no doubt that Colombians have left their homeland because of persecution, violence, and strife -- the very conditions bringing countless political refugees to the US. "Immigration law must be fair," he says. "We should not be treating immigrant groups differently."

Ultimately, though, HR 2741 is about much more than basic fairness. After struggling to come to this country -- fleeing political violence at home that is perpetuated by the US -- Colombians continue to struggle for legal protection here. Theirs, then, is a fight for the right to live.

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Diego Velez waiting for asylum DIEGO VELEZ DOESN'T know how to feel anymore. The 22-year-old Colombian immigrant has experienced more violence, trauma, and loss in his short life than the average 80-year-old. "After seeing so much pain," he says, "it's hard to touch me." Velez (not his real name) grew up in the mountain village of Cisneros, where his father, Ernesto, ran the family's coffee, sugar-cane, and pig farm. But by the 1990s, the FARC had seized control of the surrounding Andes mountains. Packs of rifle-toting guerrillas started crossing the farm and demanding money -- a tax -- from Velez's father. "My father tried to keep peace," he recalls. His father would refuse to hand over his earnings, but would offer crops instead. Then right-wing militias moved into the region, hot on the guerrillas' trail. At first, the paramilitary death squads remained quiet, barely noticeable to the Cisneros community -- until the killings became routine. Every few weeks, paramilitaries would torture and murder civilians because they were thought to sympathize with the guerrillas. Paramilitaries branded Velez's father a sympathizer too. In July 1995, while he was towing farm supplies, the paramilitaries sought their revenge. Four men on two motorcycles passed Ernesto's car as he drove with his wife, Gilma, and their son Julian. The men fired a hailstorm of bullets. Both of Velez's parents were wounded and died within days. Only his nine-year-old brother survived. After three years of watching his back, Velez experienced his own nightmare. In October 1999, close to 100 paramilitaries descended on the farm, held him and 20 farm hands hostage, and then stole his truck. The day his vehicle reappeared with the message "tenga cuidado" ("beware") written on it, Velez said goodbye to his family and fled his country. "The Colombian situation is terrible," says Velez, who now lives in East Boston and has applied for political asylum. "The campesinos are being torn apart on all fronts. They can only take so much." -- Kristen Lombardi

VIOLENT DEATH has been a fixture of the Colombian political landscape for the past 40 years, as a civil war fought by factions of bad guys -- there have been no good guys -- has engulfed the country. Today's conflict stems from a guerrilla insurgency that arose in the 1960s. As legend has it, a group of poor farmers appealed to the government for assistance. Instead of receiving help, they were butchered. Survivors stole into the Andes and then re-emerged as homegrown mutineers. They called themselves the FARC -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Yet what began as a fight for democracy has turned corrupt and fearsome. Through extortion, kidnapping, and drug dealing, the FARC has grown into the oldest, largest, and most powerful guerrilla organization in Colombia today. (The other guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army, or ELN, entered the fray in the 1980s with Cuban backing.)

Guerrilla warfare was further stoked during the 1980s, when the Cali and Medellín drug cartels took hold. The drug lords are a vicious breed, murdering anyone who stumbles into the wrong place at the wrong time. Rich landowners organized a self-defense movement -- one that evolved into the ruthless paramilitary death squads that commit 80 percent of the human-rights abuses today.

The government, likewise, has long wrestled with corruption, neglect, and gross human-rights violations. Like its predecessors, the current administration, led by President Andres Pastrana, has not stopped the generals from colluding with the right-wing militias. Human-rights organizations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have amassed mounds of evidence that the army continues to look the other way when its paramilitary allies massacre civilians. Last August, the army itself was responsible for a deadly, unprovoked assault in Pueblo Rico, where soldiers gunned down six children and injured four more. "The government has no legitimacy," says Matthew Knoester of the Colombia Support Network, a Boston peace group. "It is equally bad."

For the average Colombian, life is dominated by the violence of the war. Civilians are shot at by soldiers; kidnapped for ransom by guerrillas; stabbed, strangled, and slaughtered with impunity by death squads. Colombia, which is the size of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi combined, has a murder rate that's nine times that of the United States. Ten civilians -- mostly campesinos, or rural peasants -- are killed every day because of the political clash. In the past 18 months alone, more than 2500 people have died in 500 massacres by illegal militias. And in the past decade, as many as 40,000 civilians have perished.

That all three military forces represent a threat to civilians is a fact the US government has overlooked since 1988, when former president George Bush funneled $39 million into the country to help wage the domestic drug war. Today, Colombia still supplies as much as 80 percent of the cocaine consumed in the US, and 65 percent of the heroin. "Narcoguerrillas," as a result, have become a huge factor in US drug policy. Because the Colombian army says that it needs help fighting the guerrillas, and that beating back the guerrillas would quell the drug trade, the US has boosted the scope of its aid at a record pace. By 1999, Congress had allocated $300 million in antidrug funding to the Colombian police and army, making Colombia the third-largest recipient of military aid after Israel and Egypt.

This year, President Bill Clinton raised the stakes further by pushing through an unprecedented $1.3 billion package -- a four-fold increase over just 12 months. Invoking "national security," Clinton later waived the human-rights conditions that Congress imposed on his plan -- even though the Colombian government had failed to comply with six of the seven requirements, such as directing the US secretary of state to certify that the Colombian government is vigorously investigating and prosecuting human-rights violations by military personnel. Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), who led the congressional effort behind the conditions, said last June in the Senate that "the protection of human rights should not be a `waivable' foreign-policy objective. It should be enforced with the same vigor as our antidrug goals." But by waiving them, Clinton has enabled the money to flow faster and without restriction.

The controversial aid package is devoted largely to arming the military against the guerrillas. This has set off a wave of criticism among American and Colombian activists alike -- and not simply because the funding has heightened the United States' role in another country's civil war. What especially bothers critics is that the money puts the US in league with a military that maintains long-standing ties to drug-dealing paramilitary thugs. "This isn't about the drug war," Knoester says. "It's about a counterinsurgency campaign against the FARC."

Right now, the war is set to escalate in Putumayo, a main coca-growing region in southern Colombia. US special forces are training Colombian troops, who will spearhead an offensive to drive the FARC out of its stronghold -- and, by default, the 200,000 coca farmers living there. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has already alerted Ecuador, which shares a border with the region, to prepare to take in as many as 40,000 refugees. Even in Boston, the local Colombian community is gearing up for the migration wave. As Soto of Colombia Vivé says, "US policy is creating refugees. Colombians are desperate to go places where they feel safe."

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Walter Giron living in exile. WALTER GIRON LIVES for the pursuit of science, for unraveling the mysteries of life -- not for tearing them down. Which is why the 36-year-old was forced to flee Colombia. "I am an enemy of the guerrillas," he says, his face pinched with pain, "because I respect all life." In late 1997, while working as a chemist in the cartel-dominated city of Cali, Giron was visited by the FARC guerrillas. Members made him an offer: he would manage the lab at their cocaine- and heroin-producing plant; they would give him $5000, a car, and a personal bodyguard. "I stalled and said, `Let me think,' " Giron recalls. "I thought maybe they forget." They didn't. Weeks later, when Giron was in Austin, Texas, studying English, he received a call from one of the guerrillas, who informed him that the FARC had American contacts eager to speak with him. Giron hung up. He called his mother in Cali, who told him the guerrillas were throwing money at neighbors for information on his whereabouts. Giron decided he couldn't go home. He spent one more week in Austin completing his class and then moved as far from the Lone Star State as possible. He arrived in Boston in January 1998, and applied for political asylum. Last year, his application was denied. "I feel defeated," Giron says. "The guerrillas do not take no for an answer. If I go back to my country, I live maybe 36 hours." Here, he adds, "I have no papers, nothing." Out of desperation, Giron joined Voices In Action. He now works with the group to spread the word about what he calls his "ticket to freedom" -- congressional bill HR 2741. "Amnesty, for me, is like I'm free from persecution and paranoia," he says. -- Kristen Lombardi

THOSE COLOMBIANS who are now safe in the US have embraced their new home in the most American of ways -- by becoming political activists. On a brisk September morning, just six months into the Colombian amnesty campaign, a crowd gathered in the dimly lit basement of Parroqua Nuestra Señora Del Carmen Catholic Church in Lowell. They had come for information about HR 2741, otherwise known as "la amnestia." Close to 75 men and women, roughly between 20 and 60 years old, milled about speaking in Spanish, their faces flushed with anticipation.

Raquel Matthews, a community organizer at Voices in Action, a Malden-based immigrant-advocacy group, stood before the throng, clutching the tools of the campaign -- HR 2741 petitions, AMNESTIA PARA COLOMBIANOS pamphlets, letters addressed to the state's congressmen. "This is your chance for a better life," she told the group as they filed inside. "Only you can keep this federal bill alive."

Matthews, a 54-year-old Colombian immigrant (her maiden name is Rocha), never imagined that one day she would be leading her compatriots in a fight to call America "home." Born the ninth of 10 children in Bogotá, she led a quiet, insular life that revolved around her father's tailor shop -- until her older sister Mercedes, who had migrated to the US, was killed in a car accident in 1970. Concerned for the well-being of her sister's five young children, Matthews, then 25, left Bogotá for the hectic streets of New York City. She later followed a brother to Boston and, eventually, worked as a nurse's aide in and around the city for nearly two decades. Family obligation, not political repression, brought Matthews here.

For the longest time, she paid little attention to her homeland, particularly to the civil war that had paralyzed the country for decades. Instead, Matthews, who is married to an American, focused on life here. But in 1996, her sense of obligation was stirred again when Congress introduced changes in US immigration law -- notoriously harsh changes that prohibit millions of immigrants, including Colombians, from obtaining permanent legal status. The landmark overhaul of immigration procedures included many onerous provisions, such as stricter border checks and new income requirements for US sponsors. The act's broad, draconian measures limited health care for illegal immigrants and sped up the deportation process for millions of refugees.

Matthews discovered firsthand the harmful consequences of this new legislation when several friends and a nephew were deported because of restrictions outlined in the 1996 act. She couldn't stand by and watch people shipped back to war-torn Colombia, banished forever. Nor could she watch idly as families were left behind to crumble. "The injustices of that law," she says, "are very hard to take."

So Matthews called Voices in Action. She trained as a volunteer, learning the complexities of US immigration law, as well as the legal steps for achieving asylum and naturalization.

She also learned the value of political action. As soon as she found out about HR 2741, Matthews began stirring up support for the federal legislation. Not only has she contacted all 10 Massachusetts congressmen, but she has also traveled from East Boston to Brighton to Chelsea to enlist help from fellow immigrants. Her efforts have yielded results: in the past six months, she's collected tens of thousands of petition signatures, each representing another Colombian pulled into the fight.

The campaign has transformed the frail yet feisty Matthews into a prominent leader in the community. Her dark eyes moisten whenever she talks about the plight of Colombians in the US -- how so many live without any legal protection, in constant dread of being forced to return to the violent, repressive conditions that pushed them from their home. This passion for her fellows, and her desire to see them at peace, is what keeps Matthews going -- even in the face of discouraging odds.

"There are big challenges with this bill," she admits. HR 2741 has only 33 co-sponsors; it needs 218 votes to pass. "As long as I'm alive and can help," Matthews vows, "this bill isn't going to die."

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Alvaro Bejarano from riches to rags THE STORY OF Alvaro Bejarano, a 37-year-old illegal immigrant living in Lowell, is the antithesis of the American dream: he went from riches in Colombia to rags in the United States. Seven years ago, he was living the high life in Tulua del Cauca, Colombia, with his wife, Emma, and their two children. Bejarano had made his fortune by building up a trucking and construction company with his uncle. Their luck ran out, however, when they received a letter from the FARC guerrillas ordering them to hand over $2000. Bejarano and his uncle ignored the note. "We needed the money to pay our bills," Bejarano explains. It was a decision they came to regret. One day, Bejarano left the company shop to run an errand. When he returned, he found his uncle lying dead on the floor, shot in the head. The guerrillas caught up with Bejarano just days later. While transporting fruit across town, he noticed two men on a motorcycle pull alongside his truck. The passenger drew a pistol. As Bejarano reached for his own gun, which he had recently purchased for protection, he was shot in the foot. He escaped by driving his truck down a side street. Fearful that the FARC would hunt down his family, Bejarano left Colombia for the quiet, relatively obscure community of Lowell, where his brother had settled a decade or so earlier. Bejarano and his family arrived in Massachusetts on December 23, 1995 -- just weeks after the deadline of December 1, 1995, specified in HR 2741. Even if the legislation passes, it won't help him. "I lost everything," Bejarano says. He lost his business, his house, and even his spare time. Since coming to the US, he has worked 12 hours nearly every day (as a quality-control officer at a Methuen-based power company) to save enough money to pay off the tens of thousands of dollars he owes Colombian banks in overdue business loans. Bejarano may not be rich nowadays. Still, he has realized his own American dream. "In America," he says, smiling wide, "I am happy with my family. At least we are happy." -- Kristen Lombardi

THE ONE thing that American politicians could give Colombian US residents is peace of mind. Which is why Capuano and other Massachusetts representatives have supported HR 2741. They have contacted the Clinton administration and met with countless Capitol Hill colleagues -- all in hope of pushing HR 2741 forward before the legislative session ends. If Congress fails to debate HR 2741 by the end of this month, the bill effectively dies. Supporters would be forced to refile it when the new session begins in January.

The lobbying effort has been anything but easy. For one thing, Congress tends to become preoccupied with what's been called "the country's business" -- the 11 pending appropriations bills -- as November nears. US Representative John Tierney (D-Peabody), who is a co-sponsor, explains that HR 2741 falls into the non-spending category. "That automatically puts this down a notch," he says. In addition, Colombian advocates have only just begun drawing immigrants into the cause, so the bill still lacks strong grassroots political backing.

And then there are the challenges that come with the Colombian aid package. Unlike the Massachusetts delegation, which led the country in opposing the Clinton plan, the majority on Capitol Hill embraced it. Those who backed what was billed as a crackdown on drugs might be reluctant to recognize the human consequences of their votes -- and the legitimate need to protect immigrants in the US from the ravages of war in their homeland.

"The aid only added to our previously bad policies [concerning Colombian immigrants]," Capuano says. "But most people in the House and Senate don't agree. They think they're doing the right thing."

Lucas Cardona, though, has a different idea about what is right: Congress should help the Colombians in this country. Colombian immigrants haven't just taken refuge here, he says; they have labored hard, raised families, paid taxes, and contributed to society. Only by coming to the US have his compatriots truly been able to live. "In Colombia," he says, "the people have no freedom, no opportunity, no chance to thrive."

Cardona knows that Americans may not understand all that's happening in Colombia -- even his own people cannot quite grasp what's been described as a "sickness," a "Biblical holocaust." But Americans do understand the values of fairness, peace, and freedom, he notes, and Colombian immigrants are learning the values of activism and civic duty. "Colombians can be good citizens in this country -- if we are given the chance," he says.

Like many of his fellow Colombians, Cardona prefers not to dwell much on the obstacles facing HR 2741. "I try to be hopeful," he says -- but perhaps he's overly so. HR 2741 probably won't pass this legislative session, or the next one, or the one after that. After all, it took Salvadoran and Guatemalan immigrants in the US about 10 years of hard lobbying -- and a lawsuit -- before they finally received something close to amnesty: temporary protection against deportation.

That doesn't mean the Colombian amnesty campaign is an exercise in futility. Through their struggle to become legal residents, these immigrants are becoming American. Here, they know that they have rights, that they can influence government, and that they can make a difference. Even if they were forced to return to Columbia, they could never go back home again.

-- Kristen Lombardi

Kristen Lombardi can be reached at klombardi[a]phx.com.

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Nelson Camabarel home at last IF THINGS HAD turned out as planned, Nelson Camabarel, a 32-year-old Colombian immigrant who lives in Revere, might be a politician by now. In his early 20s, Camabarel (not his real name) volunteered for Liberal Party campaigns in the mountain pueblo Dabeiba. (There are two parties in Colombia: Liberal and Conservative.) As he says, "I always wanted to fight for the people." In Dabeiba, however, democracy was a difficult concept to uphold. The FARC guerrillas did not look kindly on popular elections -- especially those happening in the area that they dominate. "They told us, `You run under our ideas, you do as we say, or we kill you,' " Camabarel recalls But Camabarel spent five years working on underground campaigns anyway. By 1994, though, he knew that his crusade was doomed -- that's when people on motorcycles began following him. Shortly after that, one of the more popular candidates for whom he'd worked was kidnapped, never to been seen again. The realization that he might end up in a shallow grave -- as he suspected the politician had -- scared Camabarel into fleeing the country. He took a plane to Panama, then Costa Rica and El Salvador. He later hitched a ride to Mexico City, where he sought what he calls a "contact" to help him cross the US border. Rather than take the cheap route through the desert by foot, he shelled out his savings -- $600 -- for a false green card. As he stood between Mexico and California, Camabarel remembers rehearsing his fake identity in his head: your name is Alphonse Zapato; you are from Mexico; you live in California. He made it past the US border patrol without incident. Arriving in Boston in 1995, Camabarel applied for political asylum. While his case was pending, he married an American. Today, he works as a cashier at a parking garage in Charlestown. Even though Camabarel withdrew his asylum application because of his marriage and is safe in this country, he cannot forgot about the troubles in his homeland. Just last month, he learned horrifying news: one of his cousins had been murdered by members of the FARC as payback for her husband's refusal to join them. "The guerrillas shot her three times in the back of the head," Camabarel says, matter-of-factly. He later adds, "The situation is so violent, it is enemy number one against the regular people of Colombia."