ARENAS ALTAS, Colombia — Ana Hilda Vargas was living in a place called Hope when the gunmen came to her farm and gave her an ultimatum: Leave your house in 48 hours or be killed.
"Everything I built in my youth and all that I had -- pigs, hens, mango and avocado trees, yucca, corn and bean fields -- I lost that day," Vargas said, recalling the terrible morning in 1997 when she was thrown off her land in the village of Esperanza by paramilitary members.
It wouldn't be the last time she would hear that chilling warning.
Over the next six years, the widow, now 50, was forced from one village to another by army, right-wing paramilitary and left-wing guerrilla groups vying for control of this strategic, mineral-rich region of northwest Colombia. One of 3 million displaced Colombians, she became a statistic in one of the hemisphere's longest-running humanitarian crises.
Finally, Vargas decided she'd rather die than be rootless again. Three years ago, she joined the "peace community" of San Jose de Apartado, where a group of 1,200 peasant pacifists is taking a brave stand against the country's civil conflict.
The community of three villages, which includes Arenas Altas, where Vargas lives, was formed in 1997 after a Catholic archbishop named Isaias Duarte -- who would be assassinated five years later -- encouraged the farmers to say no to war. It is one of 10 such peace communities, or "humanitarian zones," in Colombia, according to Justice and Peace, a human rights advocacy organization in Bogota, the capital.
"They are making a strong moral point at great risk to themselves," said Lisa Haugaard of the Latin America Working Group, a human rights advocacy office in Washington. "It's a very hard and daring venture which seems to almost invite attacks from the various armed actors."
Vargas lives off the land in this Xanadu-like corner of Colombia, creased by river chasms and carpeted with cedar, cacao and banana trees, accessible only by mule. Her village of 200 people, hemmed in by the jungle, is a neatly laid-out collection of wood-paneled shacks bordered by the community soccer field. Pigs and mules roam freely.
She and other members disavow any contact or collaboration with armed groups, and agree to work as a collective on crops, livestock and community projects and to share what they produce. The group is self-sufficient except for small grants from outsiders to build community projects.
