Yezid Arteta arrived in Barcelona, like many refugees, looking for a safe place to live. It wasn’t about seeking economic security, he says, but basically about saving his life. Having spent 10 years in prison for his participation in the Colombian armed struggle as commander of the guerrilla of the FARC, and having actively collaborated in the organization and dialogue with the political prisoners of Colombia, in 2006 Yezid decided to lay down arms definitively to take a new path in political struggle. We ask him what this process was like and how his process of exile in Barcelona has been, from where he has worked for the last 10 years for the peace of Colombia.
EP.- HOW WAS THE PROCESS OF LEAVING PRISON AND COMING TO BARCELONA?
YA.- I left in 2006 when the president of the government was Álvaro Uribe, when there was a major offensive against the FARC, where the groups Paramilitaries (who fought the guerrillas) have entered a phase of negotiation with the government, but they betray a hard and brutal prontuary of murders and massacres, and I found myself in a complicated land, because I was no longer going back to armed struggle, but the country did not offer me the security conditions to live a normal life. Then I began to think about the possibility of leaving Colombia and it was when I met Vincent Fisas, director of the UAB School for a Culture of Peace, he was very interested in having in his team of researchers who had been directly linked to a conflict, as leading protagonists. He was interested in my case, his management was very effective, all the procedure was carried out through the National Conciliation Commission, a meeting of various political, religious and non-governmental sectors, which were trying to find a rapprochement between the Colombian government and the guerrillas. Thanks to this, I could get permission from the Spanish government to come here, but it was not easy to leave Colombia because I was on parole and there were countries that did not believe in my intensity to leave the FARC, and the group was already on the list of terrorist organizations. I was a hot potato for any of these governments!
EP.- THEN, DON’T YOU ARRIVE AS A POLITICAL ASYLUM SEEKER?
YA.- No, I come with a scholarship that I was awarded to work at the School of Peace of the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the Colombian government gave me permission to leave. But, while here a new sentence emerged in Colombia, and you had to start processing your asylum. This was a very complicated situation, but fortunately everything was solved through diplomatic channels between the two governments, the government here did not understand that after spending several years working for peace, building bridges, I had to return to jail. The Colombian government suspended the condemnation of this new process and allowed me to continue my work here.
EP.- IS THE CONDITION IN WHICH REFUGEES FROM SYRIA LIVE, FOR EXAMPLE, DIFFERENT FROM WHAT A COLOMBIAN POLITICAL EXILE LIKE YOU GO THROUGH?
YA.- The case of Syria is a massive huída, and although something similar happened in Colombia, because the conflict displaced a large amount of population on the borders of Venezuela and Ecuador, coming here was different, the sea is in the middle and getting it is not easy. The war in Syria is a war that in a short time has had the impact and military capacity that cost Colombia years of conflict. It is true that there are some Colombian political asylums here, not many, because it is very difficult to achieve it, Spain has a very low average of refugees and political asylum seekers, especially compared to other countries such as Sweden and Switzerland, where there are many Colombians who already have the blue passport of UNHCR, supported by the United Nations system. My case is different from any Syrian or Libyan who has to leave because the war in their country is still active, they are people who have not loaded a gun and the war brought them to the city. In Colombia we live a peripheral war, of agrarian origin, which was not seen in the media, because the scenario was not the big cities. In the case of Syria, we are talking about armed groups that have great military capability and high-range weapons. In the end, granting asylum is a purely political decision, and the host country moves in accordance with interests with the countries of origin, today diplomacy comes behind business.
E.P.-HOW IS THE ISSUE OF RECEPTION OF REFUGEES IN SPAIN AND CATALONIA?
YA.- In cities where the left is governed, such as Madrid or Barcelona, there is a great sensitivity and openness to the issue of refugees, they are cities willing to receive them, but even when Spain works for autonomous communities, there are two issues that are the competence of the central government: Foreign Policy and Defence. This country has a normativity, and even when these cities have open hand policies with refugees, they cannot govern outside the normativity. Spain still has to comply with the number of refugees that it pledged to receive with the European Union, and I believe that the figure does not reach the thousand, I believe that in this sense the municipalities have their hands taken.
EP.- HOW DO YOU SEE THE SITUATION OF REFUGEES WHEN THEY ARRIVE HERE?
YA.- What I do not like to be considered is that people should integrate into the society they come to place, as if those who arrive have to accept everything here and assimilate customs without more. Everyone has the right to protect their customs and rituals, cultural and religious while complying with the law, when it is considered that a person has not integrated, it is not taken into account that that person is different, they come from a different world with a different scale of values. Integration involves legality, insertion within a legal framework that must be complied with, the schooling of your children, paying taxes, accepting the constitution and following the law. What happens with the second generations is different because it does not obey forced integration but to a cultural misture, they betray that of their country, but at the same time they mix and study with young people here, to a natural process that occurs over time.
EP.- FINALLY, WHAT HAS BEEN THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA IN COMMUNICATING NEWS ABOUT REFUGEES?
YA.- What the media have done is show the drama, show all those images of people lying down, children dead in the ears of the Mediterranean, people jumping the valley of Melilla, people sweeping through the wheat fields in Central Europel, persecuted by groups Paramilitaries nationalists in Czech Republic and Hungary. Some media outlets have also been critical of governments that have not been able to address the refugee situation, even means that can be described as conservative. But as for the analysis of the roots of this migration process, this mass mobilization of people from other peoples, there is hardly any information. It is clear that Libya’s destabilization was the first focus of this process. From war in Syria We know how it started, which countries are committed and which are the strategic interests, what is the political map that the West wants for these regions, but that part has not been touched, there has been no analysis of the media, nor a self-criticism of European governments. Boaventura de Sousa, The Portuguese researcher said that there used to be a sea of in-between, and that Third World It was on the other side, starting on the coast of Africa, then that third world was in the waters of the Mediterranean, represented in that great mass of boats and boats, but now that third world is here, it has been met in European territory and the response of governments has been disastrous.
Yezid Arteta @Yezid_Ar_D
Photo: Núria Simarro for the project Visible Tours
Interview: Ana Cecilia Cervantes