*The following are the second and last set of letters and commentaries (3 of
them) regarding the recent death/killing of student and radioperson Oscar
Leonardo Salas Angel and other victims of the ESMAD. They were sent in
Spanish to the OURMedia List by Cesareo Galvez on March 18 th. End of
translation.*
**
*THIRD LETTER:*
*
Requiem for a young poet, communicator and PDA militant – By Pabloé
The lack of hope.
Community communicators are in mourning. As well as students. And the poets,
actors and stilts-walkers. The antiriot forces of the ESMAD carry a new
victim on their shoulders, the forth one in less than a year. OSCAR
LEONARDO SALAS was only 20 years old. OSCAR LEONARDO SALAS studied
linguistics at the Universidad Distrital, and the only thing he had were
dreams and illusions. The students were conducting a protest against the
Free Commerce Treaty (TLC) and they were violently attacked.
They only wanted to stand for their disagreement regarding the Colombia-US
treaty's recent signing, which threatens to sweep with, among other things,
whatever is left of public (and private) higher education in Colombia y the
ancestor knowledge of our communities. An the legitimized protest of a
bunch of students, that lasted 35 minutes of the past March 8th , ended when
one of them fell deadly wounded. He was only 20 years old and he promised
this life and the next.
It was OSCAR LEONARDO SALAS ÁNGEL, who two years ago had returned to Bogota,
were he had lived as a child, with the purpose of studying two semesters at
the Universidad Nacional and transferring afterwards to the Universidad
Distrital. A relatively tough decision if one took into account his
family's precarious economical situation, but not impossible for someone –
that at such a short age – had accumulated undoubted leadership at
Café 98.5FM, the community radio station of Libano, Tolima (Colombia)
his native
town, were he gained the minimum and necessary help to survive in Bogota.
Through cries and pamphlets they were trying to resist Uribe's governmental
deafening advertising campaign in pro of the treaty, after it all
negotiations were closed in Washington D.C, ten days before, giving no one
the chance to be part of it. Trying to make their voices heard, they
attempted to win the 30th Street over 45th Street of downtown Bogota,
probably with the intention to stop traffic and create public harangues,
prohibited during this days because of coming elections (4 days
later). Mockery
of the democratic game.
It was then that they were repelled – as usual - by the public force. But
in the middle of the – all to well-known – stones swapping between students
and the antiriot hordes which is usually accompanied by bobbins and tear-gas
bullets, Oscar Leonardo fell to the floor inside the campus walls, and was
quickly rescued by his classmates. Apparently, some kind of pellet or small
bullet went through his deep blue left eye all the way into his brain,
causing some kind of serious cerebral damage.
We do not know if young Salas Ángel was part of the protest, or he was
working as a reporter for one of the alternative and community media for
which he collaborated from Bogota. But regardless of the circumstances, a
crime like this cannot be accepted.
The death swarm
It seems like an unconventional weapon, presumably triggered by the ESMAD,
caused the death of young Oscar Leonardo Salas, this unit's second fatal
victim in Bogota in less than a year (Nicolás Neira, 15 years old and a
student of the 10th grade died, also as a victim of the ESMAD on May 1st,
2005), and its fourth victim if we include Universidad del Valle, biology
student: Yonny Silva, killed last year in Cali on September 22nd, and Marcos
Soto, a chami indigene killed on March 10th of this year at Remolino
(Municipality of La Virginia, Risaralda) during a Minga Embera (an
indigenous protest) against the TLC.
Coincidence or not, in Bogota, Ciudad Bolivar teacher and cultural worker,
María Luisa Niño was stripped of her freedom rights, exactly one year ago,
also on the eves of May 1st, as part of a montage while part of a forum
against the TLC.
Exactly a decade ago, on may of 1996, another visitor from Libano, north of
Tolima, about 180 km (112 miles) from Bogota, was beaten by the antiriot
forces right across from the 26 Colsulsubsidio, 10 blocks away from where
Salas Ángel fell. Fernando Lombana earned his living scratching the earth,
and was part of a farmers protest when he was shot (unofficially) between
his eyebrows, literally speaking. The shot was fired from tank 45 of the
then antiriot forces. Since then, no information has been given of the
"exhaustive" investigations that the civil and military authorities offered
then and still do now.
At the time of Nicolás Neira's death, ESMAD members were only identified by
means of R H on their helmets. As a result of the denunciations, these codes
underwent some transformation. Now a series of numbers repeats on helmets
and thorax shells, numbers of rigorous black color, according to the norms
imposed from the north. This does not mean that they are identified by their
fingerprints or at least their names. They are faceless, because they wear
knitted caps at all times. It is the form of "protecting" the emissaries of
the order and the law, protecting them even from their own excesses.
The national actions of the 23rd
The crime against Oscar Leonardo was rejected by the Multiestamentamentaria
Universitaria, coordination space that is leading the most recent
mobilizations in defense of the public university system in the country.
The University Professors Federation, as well as the Workers' Union ratified
the call to the Universidad Nacional (National University) Protest, which
was going to take place between March 21st and 24th. The protest included a
long walk between Cartagena and Barranquilla, against the closing of the
Universidad del Atlántico (University of the Atlantic). A protest against
the TLC and the war in Iraq had been also summoned for Thursday 23rd.
On their part, the Asociación Colombiana de Estuiantes Universitarios - ACEU
(Colombian Association of University Students) reaffirmed its antimilitarist
campaign for the clearing of the ESMAD, while it simultaneously that
demanded the revelation of the facts that surrounded Oscar Leonardo death.
Breaking the electoral eves imposed prohibitions, March 9th and 10th
Bogotahad multiple street manifestations. During night time, they
carried candles,
cried out for justice and sang to life and love, honoring the poet who was
taken from them. Oscar Leonardo stopped breathing on the dawn of Friday 10th,
after 36 hours of agony. His family decided that all his organs were
donated, including his eyes.
The students clog up downtown, blocked the public transportation system's
main routes, painted the city hall, they broke Plaza Bolivar voting
listings, and then, only then, the troops were permissible and even
accomplices. The silence and the passivity of the culprit, we do not know if
by orders of Uribe or Garzón, the agent chief executive Bogotanians.
Regrettably, the district authorities are still characterized -- in
circumstances like these -- by their indifference to their fellow citizens.
They do not show interest to set themselves apart from the public force
excesses, as they are called to do as an alternative government.
One has to take into account, that Oscar Leonardo, who was -- at some time –
part of the Communist Youths, was now a convincing militant of the Polo
Democratico Alternatico - PDA (Alternative Democratic Group). His relatives,
friends, companions and comrades did not see the highest civil
administration employees' faces, not even for an instant. Nor they did to
the secretary of security, Andrés Restrepo, neither to the Secretary General
of the mayor, Enrique Hut, those who would be more directly responsible. At
the most, they responded one or two questions, that is, through the "great"
means.*
**
**
*FOURT LETTER:*
*
Remembering Nicolás Neira
If this time the name of Oscar Leonardo acquires the status of a youthful
martyr during the celebrations of the Women's International Day, on last
year's May 1st, Working Class International Day, it was Nicholas Neira's
turn, of barely 15 years. The sad paradoxes of our celebrations. Then the
ESMAD refrained from using firearms (conventional or unconventional) to end
Nicholas' life:
He died as a consequence of a cruel beating three blocks away from the Plaza
Bolivar, in Bogota, in plain 7th street.
Since then, life for his parents, Nicolás was their only child, has turned
in the worst kind of misery, it became a real Calvary. Yuri Neira, the
father, denounces that in his failed attempt to continue his procedure
against the ESMAD and the Government, he had had three attempts against his
life, and one of kidnapping.
The State bloodhounds' siege and harassment have been permanent from the
moment at which Nicholas was still transferred alive to a welfare center, to
the point that Yuri Neira had to – with matchless courage, pain and
impotence - go to the media to denounce what he was going through.
However, the pressures were even economic ones: a month after the crime
against his son, they stole the taxi which helped him gain income for the
family; two months later his mother and wife were mugged entering a
supermarket by several subjects dressed as civilian to those who could not
care less for the cash on the registers: they went both after two million
pesos (approximately 800 US$) with which the ladies would pay their debts;
and, as if that was not enough, Yuri, the mourning father was fired from
Cars, an insurance agency that considered his "crying out for justice
measurements" as uncomfortable.
In memory of Nicolás.*
**
**
*FIFTH LETTER:*
*
"Death is not true, when one has fulfilled the endeavor of life" – José
Martí
Today March 10th, 2006, as a result of the projectile shot by guards of the
establishment during a National University of Colombia student protest of
March 8th, against the imposition and sign of the Free Trade Agreement TLC,
element that had become engraved by a located eye and in its brain, OSCAR
LEONARDO SALAS ANGEL's heart stopped beating, one more victim of the long
list of popular fighters, farmers, workers, unionists, students, educators,
communitarian mothers, artists, journalists and towns in general, product of
the intolerance and the lack of liberties in which the Colombian society
struggles. He is a new victim of the communitarian state that in the name of
democratic security is mutilating the little public liberties and disabling
to ability to build spaces from the difference.
More than a simple Distrital University of Bogota Colombia linguistic
student, Oscar Leonardo, he was a the archangel for: Communitarian
Transmitter of the Lebanon Tolima, Coffee 93.5 FM "an option for the
participation", the Colombian Network of Communitarian Radio ("Recorra), the
Center radial production in Bogota, the Collective Village, the Association
of students of the province of the Nevados, the social gathering friends of
Telesur and others, so many groups and stands that spent overnights on
watches for him.
He was above all, a communicator, a dreaming poet, an artist, a radio
producer, a hyperactive one of new proposals, of new sensitivities, new
imaginary, carrying of dreams by a new humanism, a new communication,
associated foremost to the defense of the human rights.
He called things by his full name, took ideas by the head and not by the
tail, searching in the irreverence of his alternative thought how to
construct a space for all his ideas and all towards a better world. In the
communication and culture field, like good popular social sectors militant,
as well as one of the movement for the right to the communication, and of
the student movement, in which he nourished his thought, his historical,
political and social legacy is present, in spite of his short but fruitful
age. For us, communitarian communicators the fatidic news left us perplex,
with a deep sadness, sunk in the profound orphan hood, but with a great
sense of reflection, to continue the ways initiated by him and in this one
has to include the sincere but the grieving tribute to his memory.
It is an anxious and agitated agenda, like that of the moments of his ordeal
that jeopardizes consciences and actions in behave of freedom of expression,
the blossoming by a new culture, of a new policy, by a new thought and
imagination that allows us to reinvent the world, to make it more
comfortable for the less favored of power and privileges, the popular social
sectors of which Oscar Leonardo proudly showed his humble - but arrogant and
transgressor - origin.
For his family and his companions of the diverse groups in which it
militated, let our voice of solidarity be felt, value and strength to
continue the work of this popular communicator and enjoyer of life that left
us much debt pending. This great one between the great ones is not dead,
because those that measure their thought by the enjoyment and collective
well-being are present in each action and each announced word. Peace in the
tomb of Oscar Leonardo, we will fulfill his legacy.
Do not go to my grave and cry
because I am not there
I do not sleep
I am a thousand blowing winds
the sparkle of a diamond in the snow
the sunlight over a ripe grain
the soft summer rain
In the delicate silence of dawn
I am a fast bird in flight
Do not go to my grave and cry
I am not there
I did not die.
Anonymous American Indian
Colectivo de Comunicación de la Radio Station Café 93.5 FM of Líbano Tolima
in Bogotá. D.C.
Students of Líbano in Bogotá
Center for Radio production for community radio of the social and popular
sectors (Centro de Producción radial para la radio comunitaria y los
sectores sociales populares)*
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