During his years as a community leader in Saiza, Tierralta district, he was displaced several times by the guerrillas, by the paramilitary groups and by the army, who accused him of being an alleged informant for the enemy faction. From his region, which registers 4077 people killed and 1739 disappeared by the armed conflict, today he considers that what he experienced has been a great spiritual teaching.

By Erick Gonzalez G.

"Tell the teacher not to appear, that they are looking for him, that he is on the list to kill him", was the phrase that, like the slogan of a five-part horror saga, Omar de Jesús Pino Torres heard for more than 20 years, in Saiza, Tierralta district, embedded in Paramillo National Park, where history dictates that the paramilitary groups arose, a presence that, together with that of the guerrillas, caused 120.238 people from Tierralta to be included in the Single Registry of Victims (RUV).

Omar tells his biography as if it were the presentation of a film script. 61 years old, from Dadeiba (Antioquia), from a Catholic and peasant home, a day laborer father and a housewife mother, the oldest of seven brothers, with enough comforts to graduate from high school, but without land of their own are the characteristics of his character in this horror story.

Once upon a time

Their synopsis begins in 1980, when Omar's family decided to emigrate to Saiza (Córdoba) because of the almost biblical promise of finding land that they could convert into their own estate. His father went in advance to corroborate the reality of that commitment, and within months, with that trust in the people and in the land that the peasant's DNA so much demands before betting his hope, his family followed.

When they arrived, his father was already the president of the communal action board of the township. Omar, as a good peasant who knows that faith, beyond or more than a prayer, must be worked, he decided to follow the social and community path of his father and joined the board.

He also got a job as a teacher at El Carmen school in Saiza. “At that time, they got the job with the high school diploma. I had to teach all grades, from first to fifth, of course we had training". His statement reminds us the beautiful film The King of Children (Chen Kaige, 1988), the name by which school teachers were called since ancient times in China, which narrates the work of young teacher Lao Gan destined to teach classes in a remote village during the cultural revolution, who despite not feeling sure of his abilities, managed to avoid the lack of books and official programs and taught based on freedom, imagination and good treatment.

Soon, Omar became “core director”, and he was in charge of 37 teachers or schools, which was the same, since one teacher was all the courses, all the subjects, it was the school. He made a pilgrimage from hamlet to hamlet as if he were one of the protagonists of the Iranian film La Pizarra, by the director - 23 years old at the time - Samira Makhmalbaf, winner of the Grand Prize of the Jury at Cannes Festival, in 2000, who with a Neorealist style told the odyssey of teachers who traveled the hills of Iranian Kurdistan looking for children - who smuggled for a living on the border and at the same time fled the bombings during the war against Iraq - to teach them in exchange for food, and that they had the board hanging on their backs.

On Saiza hamlets the room could be made of palm, with five benches, or it could be the orchard, the river, the field, or a paddock. "The board had to be done, brush some boards, glue it with a lace and paint it green or black, the chalks were bought in Urabá or Tierralta and from one's pocket".

He began earning 5.600 COP a month, but the parents helped him, as he says, with food, the inn, the beast to walk and, sometimes, they gave him pig and chickens. “The teacher was a bullfighter: he was a psychologist, a priest, a veterinarian, a counselor, there was a lot of research, I learned more by teaching than in eleven years of school. I not only taught, I also learned”.

Being a teacher marked it positively: "Of the students I had, two or three professionals, and the rest stayed working in the territories, there is no one stranded there".

Parallel to his work as a teacher and director, he worked on his family's farm, served on the community action board, even replaced his father in the presidency and managed to create boards in the 37 neighborhoods to work for the social development of the region.

The origin

In the mid-80s, the region began to live years of nightmares due to the presence of the Farc and Epl, for which according to the book Toma y guerrilla attacks (1965 - 2013) - the result of research between Centro de Memoria Histórica and Universidad Nacional - Tierralta is one of the ten municipalities most seized and attacked by the guerrillas in the country. At the end of the decade, fears of paramilitary action would add up.

Omar lasted as nucleus director for only two years, since, for the first time, in 1984, a phrase reached his ears: "Tell the teacher not to appear, that they are looking for him, that he is on the list to kill him". The wanted was from Epl; the warning, from a former student who had joined to those groups.

Moved to Medellín, where he spent a year living on the charity of his relatives. His wife was able to remain on the farm and continue her work as a teacher. "Because of my work, I used to leave the region a lot to go to the government, so the guerrillas accused me of being an Army informant".

He must have used acquaintances who helped him clarify things with the people who had him blacklisted to be able to return, but when he returned he had lost the job as core director, although he was linked again as a teacher.

The return

In April 1988, disputes in the region between paramilitary groups and the guerrillas encouraged Los Magníficos paramilitary group, led by Fidel Castaño, to commit La Mejor Esquina massacre, south of Córdoba, where they murdered 27 peasants. Then, on August 23, the Guerrilla Coordinator Simón Bolívar attacked a police station in Saiza, which caused the death of 14 soldiers, 12 civilians and the disappearance of 26 soldiers.

“In Saiza there was a military base, a police post and a civil defense group, which was a group of peasants who, with shotguns and rifles, as if it were some kind of paramilitary group, worked hand in hand with the Police and the Army. The Guerrilla Coordinator devastated these groups”, says Omar.

Although the capture of Saiza did not happen to him to live it personally, the slander would persecute him. “I was in Bogotá with three other people from the community, doing development management in the ministries. We realized what had gone through the news. We quickly flew back to Chigorodó and from there to Saiza, but that was when the army, the police and the civil defense mounted it. They accused us that we knew about the massacre, that we worked hand in hand with the guerrillas, that we were the informants”.

Due to the takeover, Omar says, the government quickly responded to requests for population development that had brought them to the capital. However, days before the authorities' visit, the threats would return. “One night I was knocked on the back door of my house, but I did not open, I did not move, and within minutes I heard the shots fired at the prosecutor of the community action board that ended his life. A member of the civil defense, who was known, said to me: P Batteries! that you were saved by not opening the door, if it had not been both of you, teacher piles who are looking for you to kill you too! fly away at night, because you are targeting! 'So, I flew and I went to Peque, to a farmhouse where relatives of my lady lived; I lasted three or four months there”.

Although the version of the informant changed, the film was the same. Wanted was from the army, the warning, from another former student. Omar must have used the esteem of the people to clarify the accusations. “The mayor of Carepa of that time helped me, who made contact with the brigade, and helped me clarify the situation. ‘How so before the guerrillas take him out and now the army’, he told them”.

He was not very calm with the pardon. He preferred to stay still for a while, with the profile at ground level so as not to attract attention and to be able to restart work with the communities as soon as possible.

The return 2

On civil defense, the book Toma y guerrilla attacks (1965 - 2013) affirms that they were civilian resistance groups trained by the police, which they supported to repel the guerrilla attacks against Saiza in May 1984 and August 1986.

Regarding what happened in 88, Omar affirms that “the members of the civil defense left for Magdalena Medio, where they were trained as paramilitaries and returned to Urabá and Saiza. In addition, due to the demobilization of the Epl, in 1991, some of its commanders switched to the paramilitary groups, such as ‘Negro Ricardo’”.

By 1994, now because of the Farc, his biography became a series of displacements made up of three different threats and a single true danger. They wanted the leaders of the community action boards to become militias, but because they refused they turned them into military targets. “I had to leave the region again. Those who always informed me of the decisions made by the guerrillas, the self-defense groups or the army were my students. When they found out, they ran and warned me, so I could fly away. There were meetings in the sidewalks where they said: so-and-so collaborates with the cause, but Omar Pinto is as iffy, and that departure from him from the region is suspicious, it is necessary to proceed, so the boys I taught and who they had joined those groups, they warned me”.

Again he went to Medellín. And again, he had to resort to the same strategy: that the appreciation of the people and their transparency in their community work interceded for him. “As the processes for the development of the region in which he was working were delayed, they made the decision to speak with the coprincipal, and so I was able to return”.

On his return he must have sacrificed a passion. “I left teaching because of the anxiety it caused, since being from hamlet to hamlet and leaving one place and entering another, without anyone doing anything to me, any group could again misinterpret it and put me in danger. It's just that while I was working they killed people and kidnapped”.

So he entrusted to his miscellaneous Variedades Myriam, named after his wife, where he sold construction materials, hardware, animal medicine, shoes and clothing, among other products.

The Nightmare 2.0

The rush of a threat dispersed in the region much faster than good gossip, but there were factors that kept him from shielding himself from that omen.

“The paramilitary groups said to leave the territory. The army told us not to enter food because it was for the guerrillas, but how can we not resist! How to leave the territory and what has been built for 20 years! The process of finding land in that natural park, turning it into a town, working for schools, having a health center better endowed than those of other more developed municipalities, how can we abandon that!”

If the paramilitary groups at that time were the sword, the Farc were the wall. "The guerrillas treated us as institutionalists because they called for a strike, and we did not participate in that. We were interested in making projects for the development of the region and presenting them to the entities”.

On Wednesday July 14, 1999, at 2:00 p.m., the massacre materialized. The AUC Banana Bloc was presented with a list in hand and the first funerals were reserved for merchants who were branded as guerrilla suppliers. The balance: 11 people killed.

“That day I was not in town, I was at my farm Los Cedros, working, because days ago the army had given us what was a sign of what was going to happen; So on Monday I went to the farm. They stole, burned businesses. My youngest son saw how they burned the miscellany that was also my home.

A former student who was with the paramilitary groups met his wife and asked her, “Where was I, I wish I hadn't come down from the farm, tell the teacher not to show up, that they are looking for him, that he is on the list to kill him. "

As if the damage had not been enough, the paramilitary groups ordered the inhabitants three days to say goodbye to their customs and their region. Not even the ghosts stayed.

The end

Omar went with his family to Urabá, but that past continued to beat, so in 2001 he relocated to a farm in Batata township, Tierralta municipality, now without his parents who decided to stay in the municipality of Carepa. There with other 40 families they began to plant seven hectares of corn, but three months later the nightmare was repeated: "The Farc came and took us out of there, took away what we had, saying that we were collaborators of the paramilitary groups".

An event began to change the region's destiny: on July 15, 2003, on a farm in Santafé de Ralito, Tierralta district, the government and the AUC signed an agreement to demobilize their ranks.

“In 2004 we made the largest return ever made in Colombia. Saiceños never wanted to be alms, we did not stop working with our heads held high, we were trained, raised to never be humiliated and not depend on anyone. But I did not continue with the business, I dedicated myself to the farm, to social work and I returned to be a teacher for a year”.

Despite the fact that the Farc had once again threatened him for not lowering his head to the order to plant coca, in 2011 he experienced his last and decisive displacement; A fact was the trigger to definitively abandon his Los Cedros farm, in Saiza, the murder of a leader highly appreciated by the population: Jairo Varela. "His death was selective murder, so four leaders left".

Despite this farewell, in his soul hang the diplomas of the prizes obtained for his social work with the Community Association of Displaced Persons of Saiza (Ascodesa), especially for the development of productive projects and for, as the diplomas say, "child nutrition during the period of displacement and its sustainability after the return of the community of the township of Saiza”.

He sowed his life in La Sierpe hamlet, in Batata rural district, on Nueva Esperanza farm, where he is the president of the community action board. His wife continues as a teacher, her eldest son is a police officer and the youngest studies Civil Engineering. Omar has received workshops on project formulation and on the psychosocial issue, by the Victims Unit. He has also participated in forums recounting his experience and traveled to Brussels with other survivors of conflict to tell his story before the European Parliament.

"We, from the region, had our own process of forgiveness and resilence”. He was able to speak in a tone of reconciliation with the former paramilitary Don Berna, who asked the Saiceños for forgiveness; He shook hands with former Farc-Ep Rubén Cano, alias “Manteco”, who told him: “I did not plan to kill him, he knows who wanted to kill him, members of his own community who envied and resented him”.

“That process of violence, of victimization, of survival, of rising from the ashes has been a university for us, it has been a spiritual teaching. I said he was rich because he handled a lot of money; Today I do not have the money from those times in 1999, but I can say that I am richer than before due to the accumulated experience and the new way of seeing the world, it is something similar to what the pandemic is teaching us now, to live on another way".

He says that he has attended town meetings, amid beers and rums, where former members of the Farc, the paramilitary groups and soldiers who come to visit their families have been drinking beer at the same table, collecting and telling stories as if they were films.

You can imagine what it will be like when they narrate theirs: once upon a time there was a man named Omar Pino, a community leader, whose mission, if he wanted to accept it, was to flee five times from the blacklist that announced his death. He was saved from being one of the 4077 people killed or the 1739 forcibly disappeared in Tierralta according to the RUV. Neither the Epl nor the Farc nor the paramilitary groups nor the army, despite their networks of informants, never counted on their 'cunning', which consisted in the fact that he had, inadvertently and without any intelligence work, his own network of informants in each one of their groups, simply because Omar de Jesús Pino Torres for these young people was, is and will be, thanks to his work on the board, 'the king of children'.

(End/EGG)