¡YA! Youth Activism
Red Juvenil, or Youth Network, was founded in 1990 in the poor barrios of Medellin, Colombia, "to promote youth participation in political life," says the Red's Milena Meneses, a political science...
...Red Juvenil is part of a network of community centers in these violence-ravaged districts attempting to promote education, self-help and human rights...
...Days of street fighting left as many as 35 dead...
...Medellin's Zona Centro Oriental, where the Red was founded, was the site of the 1992 Villatina massacre...
...Gaviria and Echeverri were abducted 45 miles northwest of Medellfn...
...Still, Adriana claims the Red Juvenil's efforts are beginning to have an impact in terms of popular consciousness in Medellfn and Antioquia, and mainstream legitimization of the term "nonviolence" has also allowed the Red to assert a dis- sident alternative to the official campaign "Now we are acknowledged as having at least a minority position," she says...
...In May 2003, they were among ten hostages killed by the FARC during an army rescue attempt...
...Like the Peace Communities now dotting rural Colombia, Milena says the Red promotes "active neutrality in the war as a posture for the popular movements...
...In April 2002, guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) detained Gaviria and his peace advisor Gilberto Echeverri Mejia, a former defense minister, as the two were accompanying church leaders and some 1,000 supporters on a cross-country march to promote the "nonviolence" campaign...
...Gaviria has become very popular in martyrdom, and Antioquia's interim governor is carrying on the campaign...
...The families were eventually indemnified after the city government was forced to concede complicity in the massacre...
...And it's especially easy to dismiss us because we are young...
...Every July 20 the Red protests Medellfn's Independence Day military parade, standing along the parade route with signs bearing anti-militarist slogans, such as "Ningdin ejercito defenda la paz" (No army defends peace...
...The Red was among the groups that supported Colombia's first conscientious objector in 1996, Luis Gabriel Caldas, who deserted from the army and served seven months in a military prison the same year...
...One challenge for the Red has been the official embrace of the term "nonviolence" by Antioquia's government...
...Many members of the Red are former gang members who found new direction after experiencing a Red presentation in Medellin's schools...
...Eighteen months of military service is obligatory at the age of 18, and those who do not enlist lose their right to work or attend university...
...The Red also organizes support for Colombia's conscientious objectors to the military draft...
...We promote an alternative youth culture to that of gangs and sicarios," or hired assassins, she says...
...In this and other outlying poor districts that climb the steep hills overlooking the city center, the notorious Metro Bloc of the right-wing paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), is waging a quiet war of extermination against street gangs and urban guerrillas...
...With aid from the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia, Antioquia's Governor Guillermo Gaviria Correa encouraged local community assemblies in the department's 124 municipalities to discuss national problems and promote a "road to nonviolence...
...Says the Red's Adriana Castafio Roman, who recently completed law school: "It puts us in a paradoxical position...
...They certainly do not support the right of conscientious objection...
...October 2002 saw an army sweep code-named Operation Orion in Medellin's Comuna 13 district, which had become a stronghold of an urban guerrilla militia known as the People's Armed Commandos...
...Also in attendance were young draft resisters and their supporters...
...The Red has hosted several national meetings in Medellin, such as the December 1999 Youth at the Millennium conference and concert, and the International Conference on Active Nonviolence and Resistance to War held August 11-16, 2003...
...Nine youths were killed by police in civilian clothing in an act of "social cleansing" against gangs and lumpen culture...
...Because Gaviria was from the same Liberal Party as Colombia's ultra-hardline President Alvaro Uribe, the Red Juvenil finds that the official "nonviolence" campaign has in some ways made their work more difficult...
...We use theater and art to reach out to the city's youth, and we are tied to the larger popular movement of the left in the barrios...
...Red Juvenil, or Youth Network, was founded in 1990 in the poor barrios of Medellin, Colombia, "to promote youth participation in political life," says the Red's Milena Meneses, a political science student at the National University who also teaches inmates in Medellin's prisons about their human rights...
...The communications media are in their hands, so they are changing the popular perception of nonviolence...
...Even if they call us anarchists and utopians...
...Medellin's poor barrios are as much a part of Colombia's war as the campesino communities across the countryside...
...The latter conference brought together anti-militarist and human rights activists from all over Colombia-most of whom were in their twenties, and some even younger...
Vol. 37 • January 2004 • No. 4
