When Life Changes with a Bang
"I want to provide a house for my children because we live with my
parents. I will do this with the reparation money that I am
receiving from the Government," explains Antonio José
Pinzón during a recent ceremony in Montería,
Colombia.
In 2002, Antonio José was seriously injured by an
anti-personnel mine.
The Bang
Seven years ago, on 20 July, the life of this man was changed
forever. He does not know which armed group planted the mine. "At
that time no one dared to ask, the entire village was terrified; we
all basically did what we were told," recalls Antonio
José.
On that fateful day, Antonio José had gotten up early and
had headed out on his donkey in search of yam and cassava
seeds.
At about midday, as he was returning home with a bag of seeds
and very hungry: "I had left home without any breakfast so I was in
a hurry to get back and decided to take shortcuts to save time. I
was crisscrossing from farm to farm."
He came upon a closed gate and so he had to get off his donkey
to open it. And, as if the donkey knew what was about to happen,
"The donkey did not want to go through the gate," Antonio
José recalls and says he had to force the donkey forward
while he closed the gate. "I ran to catch up with the donkey in
order to remount it. I had advanced about three to four metres when
I felt the bang."
He lost consciousness and when he came round, two people had
come to his aid. Two metres away lay the remains of the donkey. It
appeared that the donkey had stepped on the land mine.
When his parents reached him, it was late and it was raining.
They decided to take him to hospital the following day. There was
no medical facility in the village and the nearest one was several
hours away.
Antonio José remembers that night some men arrived at the
house. They had come to bring some medications and to warn his
parents not to move him from the village. "They told them not to
take me anywhere, that I wasn't going to die and that if they took
me away they would pay the consequences."
In the coming days, Antonio José extracted one by one all
the shrapnel pieces from his body.
It would be several months before he visited a doctor. When he
did, he was too scared to tell him the truth about what had
happened. "The doctors gave me some vitamins and medications but
nothing helped and I got increasingly worse. Eventually I lost
sight in one eye and more than 50 per cent of my hearing. It was
only then that I had the courage to speak," he recalls sadly.
"One day I heard my neighbor talking about a similar case and I
told her what had happened to me," he explains. "It was she who
encouraged me to talk, not only to the doctor but also to
Acción Social. I went to see them two years ago and they
took up my case. They gave me advice and put me in contact with
organizations that gave provided psychological help and gave me a
hearing aid."
Rediscovering Life
With the help of his parents, his health improved and he was
able to leave his village. He says he left because he was afraid,
but also because he wanted a chance to start his life somewhere
else.
Using sedatives and painkillers Antonio José managed to
go back to work in the fields. But news that his wife had left him,
forced him to return to his parents' home to care for his four
children. "I returned to be with them and I am looking for work to
give them the best life I can. It is very difficult; at times when
I am up in the hills, I suffer from dizzy spells and I get severe
headaches. I get tired easily, but then I look at my children and
that helps me forge ahead because they need me; they love me so
much," concludes Antonio José with satisfaction.
In July 2009, the Colombian Government held three ceremonies,
with technical support from IOM and financial support from the
United States Agency for International Development (USAID), to hand
over compensation money to the first 2,000 victims from all over
the country.
The compensation fund is allowing Antonio José and many
other victims to rebuild their lives.
Violence generated by armed groups in Colombia can be traced
back to the 1950s. According to information published by the
Presidential Agency for Social Action and Cooperation (ACCION
SOCIAL) there are 3.1 million Colombians internally displaced
because of violence. The agency has received 255,000 applications
for financial compensation from victims of illegal armed groups in
the past year alone.
Although there are no figures on the number of persons actively
engaged in illegal armed groups, in the past six years some 51,000
men, women and minors have demobilized from these groups as a
result of peace accords brokered by the Colombian government or as
individuals wishing to put down their weapons and return to
civilian life. An estimated 35,000 of them were former
paramilitaries.
Since 2006, IOM's Community Oriented Reintegration Programme
supports the Government of Colombia in the development of its
Justice and Peace Law aimed at promoting national reconciliation
and symbolic and collective reparations for victims of the
violence. Working with the National Commission for Reparation and
Reconciliation (NCRR), IOM implements information campaigns to
inform victims of their rights; supports the formulation of the
National Plan for Collective Reparations, which includes collective
reparations and the restitution of goods and land; supports the
institutional strengthening of NCRR; and provides assistance for
victims; amongst other activities.