04447
October 8, 2004

Day 118

Jailed Colombian church worker awaits government investigation

by Alexa Smith

 BARRANQUILLA, Colombia — Mauricio Avilez gets slightly choked up as he talks.

     “For me, the hardest thing about being here is the suffering that it causes my family,” he says, his voice catching somewhere deep in his throat. “For me, personally, this is the way I’ve chosen to spend to my life and I knew there would be consequences. But my family is paying the price.”

      He stares at the floor for just a second.

      Government officials estimate that more than 70,000 refugees are crammed in makeshift camps or dingy apartments on Barranquilla’s fringe.

      Sister Crisanta Cordero, the nun who visits Avilez almost daily in his prison cell, reaches for his hand and holds it tightly as he begins talking again.

      “To defend life in any country in Latin America implies this kind of risk and worse. I assumed these consequences,” he says, gesturing at the peeling paint and dingy lighting inside the prison where he’s been stuck for nearly five months, accused of crimes against the State.

      “I didn’t realize how much my family would suffer,” he sighs, “and how that would add to my own suffering.”

      The room goes quiet. Or, at least, the conversation stops.

     But the background noise here never subsides. Now, at mid-day, iron doors are slamming. Men are hollering as they head into the walled courtyard for some sunlight, or, to meet a wife or a sweetheart if they’ve been granted visiting privileges. Catcalls ricochet off the concrete walls as other men pace back-and-forth in their cells, their voices rising and falling.

      The noise inside is a perpetual dull roar.

It is quiet only at night, Avilez says. That’s when he reads books that his family brings to him, mostly on theology and poetry. Or he writes the poems where, these days, he stashes most of his dreams.

      Avilez shakes his head and smiles. He’s 24 years old. He looks 19, maybe younger.

      Yolanda Sarmiento Amado, director of international affairs in the attorney general’s office, told the delegation that the vice president has asked that the case be handled quickly. It is what she calls “a high priority.”

      UN officials said they had assurances that Avilez’ case would be dispatched within the week, but that was three weeks ago. And there is no word yet on whether he will be tried on formal charges or whether he will be released.

      The oddity here is that Colombian justice presupposes guilt, not innocence. The system is slated for overhaul, but not until 2005.

     So for now, Avilez is under arrest while the government investigates whether there is enough evidence to turn the accusations made against him into formal criminal charges. A paid informant, who is apparently part of a federal amnesty program, alleges that Avilez is part of Colombia’s clandestine guerilla network and has accused him of terrorism and murder.

      The testimony reportedly links him to the bombing of a Barranquilla department store last December, where one shopper was killed and more than 50 others were injured. The store is owned by a prominent politician.

      This is day 118.

      Mejia worries about both Avilez and the church that he serves.

      “Mauricio is accused of being a terrorist. I am absolutely convinced that is a baseless conviction,” Mejia told Amado during his meeting.

      But the arrest tipped off the church to other frightening realities. During interrogations by government agents, it has become obvious that the denomination’s Barranquilla office is under video surveillance and its ministry — particularly to displaced people — is under intense scrutiny.

      Human rights work, the interrogators say, is tantamount to subversion. And the people who do it are just guerrillas in disguise.

      “There’s nothing illegal going on,” said Mejia. “But it appears there is an attempt to link the activities of our office with the FARC (Colombia’s largest and oldest guerrilla group).” And if the church is connected to the guerrilla, it not only puts church workers like Avilez at risk, it also  scares needy people away from getting the help they need at the church.

Mejia, and lots of people like him, think that is the point — to stop the church’s human rights ministry.

      SCARED HARDLY describes the feeling inside the Avilez household.

      Mauricio’s mother, Eli Maria Alvarez, seldom leaves the house now, except to visit the jail and to go to church. A car with darkened windows to conceal its occupants has passed slowly by the house. A similar car followed Eli Maria from church one day, easing up to the sidewalk as she walked and then slowing down, keeping pace with her steps.

      She put her head down and kept going, her heart racing.

      Her daughter, Renata, says the same kind of not so subtle intimidation happened to her.

    Millions of the city’s residents go about easily observable daily routines. Vendors hawk fruit on rickety push-carts that they trundle through the streets. Little girls march off to school in trim, plaid uniforms. Old men sit on benches, watching the passersby and catching up on the gossip. The traffic is always noisy. Loud music blasts out of restaurants and pool halls. And the streets are always packed with people, even after dark.

      But there’s another, less observable world, whose purpose is terror.

      Its occupants lurk around corners, unseen until it is too late. Or they drive by on motorcycles with a gunman riding on the back. They issue telephone threats. They cut up union organizers with chainsaws. Emerging out of nowhere, they visit their destruction and disappear, leaving behind desperation and death.

      Eli Maria never imagined she’d be watched like this.

      “She’s nervous, and she wasn’t like that before,” says her oldest son, Moises, 29, who is also studying law and who has assumed the work that his brother was doing before his arrest. “Our family always had economic problems, but it was always very calm in our house.”

      When Mauricio was arrested, that changed.

      His father — who already has a heart condition — just sits in his chair and stares. He seldom speaks.

      Eli Maria wakes up at the slightest sound, so sleep deprivation escalates her anxiety. Her blood pressure is up. She has stopped hawking catalogues on the street — the way she earned money to support the family and pay for her boys’ law school educations.

      Watching the dream of a better life for her children dissolve breaks her heart.

      “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she says, her head dropping wearily on this reporter’s shoulder.

     Moises is more practical. Right now, he’s focused on getting the charges dropped, and then, on getting his brother out of Colombia. That’s just the way it is and he’s in a hurry to get it done

      “We are all of us more spiritual,” he admits, adding that the family prays more than ever. “Something good always comes out of the bad.”

      He says that Mauricio is the upbeat one in the family. “That’s what he’s like,” says Moises, talking in a presbytery conference room one block away from the spot where the store bomb went off that changed their lives. “I admire him a great deal for his ability to do this. I think if I were in Mauricio’s situation, I’d be going crazy.”

        Moises visits Avilez in jail every Saturday. He listens as his brother “gets things off his chest.” He marvels that his brother’s girlfriend still visits and still imagines a future with his brother. He thinks they are naïve, too young to know what they’re up against.

      If Avilez is released, he will definitely have to leave the country, his friends and family agree. Otherwise, he’ll risk ending up as dead as his old cellmate, Alfredo Correa De Andreis, a university professor and human rights advocate who was also accused of guerrilla activity.

      Correa was gunned down on a Barranquilla street last month, his bodyguard murdered at his side. Ufford-Chase spoke briefly at his funeral.

      FOR NOW, Avilez rises at 6:00 a.m. for roll call. He bathes and then has breakfast. Lunch is at 11 o’clock. There’s another roll call at 5 p.m. and he’s locked in his cell shortly thereafter.

      He seldom leaves his cell. He eats there. He exercises there as best he can. Mingling with other inmates — some of whom would be after him on the outside — is too risky. His mother brought him a rollaway cot, so, unlike some others here, he at least has a bed.

      Sometimes other prisoners seek him out for bits of free legal advice. Otherwise, he thinks and writes poems.

      “When I was first captured … I felt that my life was over, that I had no future. I thought I’d bury all of my dreams in this place. But when I found so much solidarity, I realized that (my work) is still being carried on, that there is still a way to build a new country that is more human,” he says, describing the support he’s gotten from the U.S. church, from friends in Colombia and from strangers who’ve sent books and other notes.

      He insists that human rights work isn’t wrong. It is legal. And he isn’t sorry that he followed his conscience.

      He felt so passionately about the work, he says, that he’d forgot to do other things. He’d forget to eat. “It is what made my life worth living …

      “I know that I have even more to give to those who suffer,” he says, the sweat sticking to his forehead, his back and the back of his knees. He’s wearing baggy below-the-knee-shorts. Kind of hip for prison attire, but the temperatures here are stifling.

      An admitted idealist, Avilez grins. He acknowledges that he’s more pudgy since he’s been jailed, a combination of too little exercise and too many carbohydrates. He’s very focused on the present: how to survive it and not be embittered by it.

      The future is harder to ponder.

      “If I should stay here in Colombia, I could very easily be assassinated. And all my family,” he says, his voice catching slightly. “I do not like to think about leaving Colombia. That causes me real pain.

      “ … This is my country.”