Colombians in L.A. Gather to Pray for Peace at Home

More than 300 Colombians gathered at St. Basil’s Roman Catholic Church in Los Angeles on Thursday to pray for peace in their violence-torn homeland and, as one worshiper said, “to tell the public that we are not as we appear in the news.”

“Peace is not something that just arrives from heaven,” said Father Luis Tomich, a Colombian priest who celebrated the Mass. “We have to work for it.”

The Mass in Spanish was celebrated in the wake of reports of yet another bombing carried out by powerful drug lords in Medellin.

Tomich said Colombia “is a victim of circumstances that originated outside the country,” indicating that the international demand for cocaine is as much to blame for his country’s nightmare as the actual fighting between drug dealers and government forces.

Before the Mass, Maria Helena de Cruz, Colombia’s vice consul in Los Angeles, told the congregation that it is time “to tell the news media, in the name of our hard-working, honest farmers, our students, our good citizens and our children--true representatives of our country--enough of this bad press.”

She added that generalizations in news reports “without careful analysis” have caused a great deal of damage to the image of Colombians. She asked the media to show the same dedication to covering Colombia’s “values and advances toward development” as to covering drug trafficking.

News accounts of drug traffic among Colombians are true, said Nestor Gonzalez, a Burbank graphic designer and magazine publisher. He added, however, that “only 3,000 or 4,000 Colombians of the more than 70,000 in the Los Angeles area are in that dirty business.”

Teofilo Arboleda, a Pasadena restaurateur and publisher, pointed out that crime in Colombia is a complex problem that won’t yield to easy solutions. He noted that Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates had called for invading the country to wipe out the drug trade, adding: “We ask why he can’t invade high-crime areas in Los Angeles and wipe it out?”

Constanza Cardoso, who is visiting Los Angeles from Bogota, the Colombian capital, said, “We are a people who have lived with violence for a long time. All of the violence has not come from the drug traffic.”

She and several others at the Mass said they were deeply saddened when drug traffickers murdered presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan, a man seen as the embodiment of Colombia’s hopes for the future.

“It is very sad now that traffickers are killing political candidates,” Cardoso said. “I hope the government gets the help it needs from other countries in fighting the drug traffic.

Times community correspondent Rafael Prieto contributed to this story.