Dear Friends, here is your monthly FOR update on Latin America.
 Colombia’s faith communities stand firmly for peace amidst grueling violence. Now they ask faith communities across the United States to join them in this year’s Days of Prayer and Action for Colombia from April 12 to 17. Hundreds of faith communities will dedicate part of their worship service to praying and working for peace in Colombia. Many will help us create 5,200 homes to represent Colombia’s 5.2 million internally displaced people’s desire to return home. Will you join us? Read more.
 By Susana Pimiento
The list is growing of sitting heads of state in Latin America who question the failed war on drugs and seek a debate on their legalization. Besides the voices of presidents Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia and Felipe Calderón of Mexico, several Central American countries are joining the chorus, led by Guatemala under the recently inaugurated government of Otto Pérez Molina. Read more.
 By Gina Spigarelli
Padre Javier Giraldo summed up fifteen years of the community’s history. He spoke of the massacres and displacements and deaths, and he also spoke about the process of resistance and how certain beautiful things came out of the dark history. He talked, for example, about how the idea of self-sustenance came out of the food blockade. He talked about how women’s work groups formed in response to men being killed and displaced. He talked about how alternative education came to be because traditional teachings about the state and the war didn’t ring true in the community’s experience. Read more.
 The Youth Network in Medellin, Colombia uses several programs to guide Medellin youth away from the armed conflict, before they fall into the hands of the armed forces, guerrillas, and paramilitaries. This happens to children as young as 12. Questioning gender roles with children via a computer "dress-up" program is one of many ways they are trying to break the chain of command, in which boys become soldiers and girls become dolls. Watch the video.
 It is obvious that both the guerrillas and the Colombian government insist on involving indigenous peoples in the war. Some community members decide to join the guerrillas and others the Army, whether due to political convictions, disobedience, because they are seduced by uniforms and guns, or because there is a genuine lack of alternatives due to the constant state of war in their territories. Nevertheless, the Cauca organizations’ policy is to not perform military service and to reject forced recruitment. At the same time, we are working on an initiative to seek dialogue and political solutions to the Colombian armed conflict. Read more.
 By John Lindsay-Poland
Militarization takes different forms, not just aid or bases. Although both military aid and arms sales to Latin America have declined somewhat since 2009, when the Obama administration began constructing budgets, Pentagon contracts have increased substantially. U.S. arms sales to Mexico in 2008-2010 were extraordinary, representing about 40% of sales to the region in those years. In the Caribbean, U.S. military aid and contracts have steadily and somewhat dramatically increased through 2011. As U.S. military aid in Colombia has declined, arms sales have tended to increase. Meanwhile, an increasing amount of military aid does not specify the country of its destination - over $300 million a year in the last two years. Read more.
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