Days of judgment in Colombia's slums

Phil Davison in Bogota finds that a country notorious for not bringing people to justice is trying to bring justice to the people

In the heart of Bogota's Ciudad Bolivar slums, billed as the most violent barrio in South America for its nightly killings, the white ranch- house with red-tiled roof stands out like a castle among the red-brick box dwellings. Once used by Simon Bolivar, Latin America's great "Liberator" against the Spanish kings, it has always been known as La Casona (The Big House).

This month, it was rechristened the "House of Justice" by Colombian President Ernesto Samper, part of a programme to decentralise an overwhelmed judicial system. The idea: a country notorious for not bringing people to justice, is to bring justice to the people.

The early-19th century colonial-style ranch-house is the first of 10 "Houses of Justice" to be opened in Bogota neighbourhoods to tackle violence, corruption and internationally-denounced human rights violations.

The House includes a "Rapid Reaction Force" of heavily-armed police, a Conciliation Office to solve family or inter-neighbour problems, and a state-run Human Rights Office. "This will give people access to justice with no costs involved, no lawyers," said Annette Gonzalez, who will run the Houses of Justice programme nationwide.

"It is neighbourhood justice. The idea is to bring justice closer to the community and deal with problems while they're small, before people start to take justice into their own hands.''

The government says it opened the House of Justice at residents' request after killings in this slum district of 1.5 million people peaked at 10 a night. Some residents, however, are suspicious.

Asking foreign reporters not to use their names, they expressed fears that the move was a "Big Brother" operation to infiltrate the slums in an effort to deal with Marxist guerrillas for whom poverty-stricken Ciudad Bolivar is an ideal breeding ground.

Annette Gonzalez admitted that the reason only a handful of people seemed to be using the House during our visit was that locals were "scared off by the uniforms" - 50 or so armed police commandos who said they were there for journalists' security. "You get them all here - guerrillas, narcos, paramilitaries, basuco dealers," said police Major Alfonso Cepeda. "There used to be up to 10 dead a night but since we moved in, the figure has dropped. Much of the violence is caused by basuco [a cocaine by-product smoked like a joint and nicknamed Susto - Fright - because of its dramatic high-to-low after-effects]."

The guerrillas and narcos "have got real guns but most of the killings here are carried out with hechizas [home-made guns that fire a single bullet]," one resident said. "There were 89 killings registered in Ciudad Bolivar in the last three weeks but only nine of them have been resolved."

Ciudad Bolivar Mayor Humberto Lizarazo said the figure was unfair, since people were coming to his barrio from elsewhere to report murders because of the new House of Justice. With an average of 30,000 killings a year in recent years, Colombia has the highest per capita homicide rate in the world.

"Here, people don't die from heart attacks. They die from lead," the Minister of Government, Horacio Serpa, told me.

While most deaths are put down to common crime, around 10 people are killed daily for political reasons, according to the Bogota-based Andean Commission of Jurists.

Of the latter, 35 per cent are carried out by leftist guerrillas and 65 per cent by state-security forces or paramilitary groups which often include serving or retired security forces, the Commission says.

"You can't solve the problem of human rights by decree. You have to educate people to respect them," Pilar Gaitian, special delegate for human rights in the Colombian Defence Ministry," told foreign journalists. "The situation is still critical, still worrying."

But she noted that, under a new human-rights thrust announced last year, human-rights offices had been opened in military barracks and police precincts.

"The collapse of the judicial system is crucial for understanding Colombia," said Hernando Valencia Villa, a university professor on loan to the state as Prosecutor for Human Rights. "Of 28,000 homicides last year, only 10 per cent were even investigated.

"We're still very far from a system of sanctions for violations of human rights. The present President has much more political will to solve the human rights problem but there's still a lot to do. I'd say 10 to 15 years more, working at the same intensity.''

Not far from the House of Justice, we witnessed other government attempts to win the hearts and minds of the locals from the guerrillas.

In "Welfare Homes," simple private houses one step up from slums, "community mothers," or housewives trained and paid by the state, look after up to 30 local pre-school children to allow mothers to work without worry.

"I used to lock my three children up when I went to work as a maid," said Luz Marina Vargas, 35, who runs one such home.

The programme is financed by a 3-per-cent contribution from government employees' salaries.

Elsewhere in the slums, housewives learn bakery, sewing, ceramics or beauty treatment in a programme under which they can receive easy-term loans without credit to allow them to set up small businesses at home.