Entierron una semilla...

Johnny Silva -

"Creyeron que te mataban con una orden de fuego,

creyeron que te enterraban

y lo que hacian era enterra una semilla."

Ernesto Cardenal

Weve just returned from a funeral. I am back in Cali and sorely reminded of my arrival here nearly a year and a half ago.

I was up early yesterday. A meeting had been arranged some weeks ago with the governor of Cali and a civil servant from the Vice President´s office, the departmernt charged with the pesentation of a governmental concern for himan rights in Colombia. The idea was to meet with the authorities and expres our concern wih the critical human rights sitution in Colombian public universities and to increase international pressure for an end to the impunity shrouding the crimes comitted in the silencing social criticism. Whilst all aware in a somewhat abstract, statistical way of the numerous human rights violations commited against students, academic and administrative staff we had never imagined that we would that morning be demanding an investigation into the murder of a student shot by police that had occured at the University twenty minutes after we had left it the night before.

At approximately 7.20pm on thursday 22nd of september armed riot police entered the lush green campus of the University of Valle. They entered by force, in a riot vehichle resembling a tanque, and on foot carrying firearms and using tear gas to clear the path. There had been a small demonstation that day outside the Uni coordinated with the national university stike to protest against the Free Trade Agreement (TLC) negotiaions going on in the north of country the same day. We had stayed until about 7pm but it was generally quite quiet. The police outside firing teargas and the odd stun grenade and the students inside responding with shouts and odd rocks but all on a relatively small scale. By the time the police entered most people had gone home, Johnny Silva, a 21 year old chemistry student univolved in the protest was leaving the sciences area when the police came in. Unable to run due to polio in childhood he was shot at close range by the police as they stormed the campus.

He died on his way to hospital.

We had left around 7pm and heard the news whilst eating at a pizza restaurant in San Fernando. we were also informed that a good friend of mine was in hospital after having been shot in the head with a tear gas canister at a distance of one metre . He was unconcious.

We were speechless. For a week we have been meeting students and staff, doing interviews listening to speeches, watching videos and presentations about what is happening here, about the assassinations, disappearences, threatening and intimidation of students and staff raising their voinces against the government. But until it actually occurs, even if you are hearing about it first hand it fails to sink quite deeply in.

I spose at that moment we felt powerless, unsure of how to react and of what to do... silence and cigarrettes. One of our group went to the hospital whilst I went with carolina to an internet cafe to write the denunciation report to be sent out over various networks.

We met the authorities the following day, Gladys Fernandez the secretary of the governers office and Diego Arias from the Vice President´s office (incidentally the president in his last visit to the UK invited us to come to see the human rights situation for ourselves if we didnt believe things were improving). The response was as we expected, vague, but they did seem noteably purturbed by our presence - squirming to evade questions as we pushed for a judicial followup, and denounced the police´s aggressive and ultimately fatal tactics.

Meanwhile the students were marching. It was pissing it down so we got a taxi to meet the march which had started at the Uni and was heading down the Calle Quinta, Cali´s main artery, and into town. We overshot at got outside the 3rd Birgade of the Army, a massive army base crawling with military. Playing the bemused tourist card we returned their searching gazes with smiles and treked in the direction of town. We had been split up from three members of our group by the derranged directions we had respectively given our taxi drivers. The others we a few blocks dwn sheltering in a car repairs garage come fresh fish market where they were making makeshift banners to show our support for the students.

We continued and soaking wet encountered the throng of protesters further down the Quinta. The turnout was huge and the atmosphere a tense concoction of rage mixed with grief, the contradictory desire to be peaceful in light of state violence confroting the drive to reply with like force and destroy every emplem of state repression.

Not a single riot cop dared the streets, an occurence unheard of in a country where every expressin of dissent is normally met forceful police presence. It was this above all I think that kept the march peaceful. The crowd chanting united in rejection of state terror, and for a new colombia of free experesion and protest was both canivalesque and solemn turning the despair of the night before into empowerment and inspiration. "For this death" they cried, there would be "not a minute of silence but a life of struggle!".

We marched on the palace of justice, through the run down yet bustling centre of town, past the the mayors office through to the funeral home where Johnny was lying dead awaiting burial.

It was there that we met this morning. Buses awaited morners and we drove slowly through the town to the graveyard. As we marhced slowly into the chapel the protest chants of the day before belowed through the coffin walls carried by those at the front. For someone accoustomed to silence at things concerning death the noise shook me deeply and though a powerful expression of the determination to resist and carry on, I worried for the family who I feared might feel hijacked by the support of so many people. Indeed Jhonny was not political, he was not involved in the protest two days before, but simply a student tryimng to get home. His death however, at the hands of the state, repressing those defending the education he enjoyed was deeply political. This I spose there could be no escape from now.

After a terrible sermon by a priest who´s conception of justice was one only obtainable in heaven there were speeches. First by the familiy, to my relief expressing their thanks for the support of the mourners most of whom Jhonny had never met and then by a number of impassioned students whose moving prose defied the violence that has taken the lives of so many of their friends. To my surprise the Governor gave a speech, recounting and promising that unlike the assaination of his daughter this crime would not remain in impunity and that he would ensure the coverage of legal costs for the familiy, a noble promise but in a land where 95% of crimes remain as such perhaps an empty one. The Vice chancellor also spoke but his facile words filled airspace with the subtle yet offensive insinuation that all were responsible for Jhonny´s death implying indirectly that "certain types" of protest justified death. Their presence, and concomitant media functionaries showed a level of public interest I had not anticipated and that might well anticipate a bigger response than I had expected... perhsps the size of the march had some effect... or perhaps the size of the march was sypmtom of a feeling of enough is enough that was shared by the govenor and VC.

I had never been to a large funeral before, not least the funeral of a youth killed by the state and as the crowd flowed from the church to the burial site it was like another march, a more sombre but deeply moving one. We placed flowers on the grave as the family wept for their lost son.

I felt sad, but as one often does with funerals also somehow settled. The presence of so much support, the political chanting which initially made me uncomfortable, and powerful speeches, fortified the transformation of despair to empowerment sparked at the march. As we now walked silently back to the buses it became clear what the banner hung over the front of the funeral home had said...

Johnny Silva -
They thought they killed you with an order to fire
They thought they burried you
but what they did was plant a seed...