Heart and soul: Colombian singer-superstar Juanes is raising awareness about the devastating effects of landmines in his country and throughout the world.

In the past decade, tens of thousands of Colombians have become personally involved in efforts co combat one of their strife-torn country's most daunting issues: landmines. An insidious byproduct of modern warfare, landmines contaminate virtually every corner of this South American nation of 45 million inhabitants. Despite a multitude of efforts to resolve the civil conflict, remove explosive devices, and deal with the physical and psychological toll of landmine incidents, not a day passes without new victims joining the ranks of the dead and maimed. It's a dilemma that won't soon be resolved.

One well known Colombian became an anti landmine activist in very particular circumstances, and his involvement quickly thrust him into a leadership role. In 1999 a largely unheralded rock singer named Juanes penned a tune called "Fijate bien." Its piercing lyrics probed the sad realities of landmines and their many victims.

   Te han quintado lo que tienes
   Te han robado el pan del dia
   Te han sacado de tus tierras
   Y no parece que termina aqui....

   Despojado de tu casa
   Vas sin rumbo en la ciudad
   Sos el hijo de la nada
   Sos la vida que se va.

   Son los ninos, san, los viejos
   Son las madres, somos todos
   caminando
   No te olvides de esto no, no, no ....

   Fijate bien donde pisas
   Fijate cuando caminas
   No vaya a ser que una mina
   Te desbarate los pies amor.

   They've taken what you have
   stolen your daily bread
   run you off of your lands
   and it looks like it doesn't
   end there....

   Homeless now
   you wander in the city
   you are the child of nothing
   of the life that goes by.

   They are the children
   the old people
   they are the mothers
   all of us walking
   Don't forget this no, no, no ....

   Look carefully where you're stepping
   watch where you walk
   don't let a mine
   destroy your feet, my love ....

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Like all good music, the song entertained its audience, but it also did much more; it started a social revolution. "Fijate bien was released in 2000, and immediately many victims of the landmines started to attend my concerts," the 36-year old superstar recalls of the reaction to his song. "I started to visit with them and listen to their stories, and I became really involved with the issue. When I learned more about the statistics, I said that as a citizen, as a colombiano, I needed to do something for my people. So, I started working with different organizations to see it we could do something to improve the situation."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Juanes was born Juan Esteban Aristizabal Vasquez in Medellin in 1972. His professional name, a contraction of his first two names, is a moniker given to him by his late father. The singer, composer, and guitarist began his career in music in the 1980s with a Colombian metal band, Ekymosis, before going it alone in the late 1990s. Fijate bien was his first album as a solo artist, and it drew immediate international acclaim. The New York Times, citing the composer's "soul-searching" themes that addressed the realities of Colombia's civil war, lauded Juanes for "facing down violence and mortality." The LA Times called the album "an uncompromising work of almost nihilistic disillusion and social outrage." With the seven Latin Grammy Awards the project received, the artist was quickly on his way to becoming the most honored and influential Latin American musician of his generation. The following three albums, Un dia normal (2002), Mi sangre (2004), and La vida es un ratico (2007), continued the flood of accolades and awards.

"It's always very hard, visiting with the victims," Juanes told Americas in an exclusive interview. "Every story you hear from these people is so sad. For example, you will hear of little children playing near a stream or in a meadow, the very picture of innocence. And then they step on a land mine and, in many cases, they die." Three years ago, he decided that his involvement in the landmine issue required more than just his songs. Taking the highly symbolic name of his third album, he started the Mi Sangre Foundation, a project focused on such simple but difficult to attain goals as rehabilitating victims of landmine incidents and contributing to peace in Colombia.

Bringing peace to Colombia has proved to be an elusive task. The half-century long period of civil turmoil can be traced to 1948 when the assassination of leftwing politician Jorge Eliecer Gaitan in Bogota sparked a decade of bloodletting that Colombians refer to as "La violencia."

While exact figures are hard to document, there is a consensus that since 1990, over 7,000 Colombians have been killed of injured in landmine incidents. Some observers contend that, because of the remoteness of the areas where many incidents occur, the number is likely much higher. A recent report by Bogota's El Tiempo newspaper states that 1,692 victims have lost their lives and 5,759 have been injured.

Within those grim statistics lie troubling details, including the escalating rate of landmine incidents in recent years. The Colombian Red Cross estimates that fully 80 percent of all incidents have occurred in just the past five years. Between 1990 and 2000, the best estimates put the number of annual incidents at less than 150 per year. In recent years, however, the rate has jumped to a point where there can be two or three incidents a day. The annual tally of death and physical injury doubled between 2002 and 2005. The Coffeelands Landmine Victims' Trust, an international organization that sees the issue from the perspective of the world's coffee producers, claims that the problem disproportionately affects coffee-growing regions and it cites the high landmine incident rate in the department of Antioquia.

In fact, the presence of landmines has been documented in virtually all of Colombia's 33 departments. Colombia ranks third in the world behind Cambodia and Afghanistan in terms of total landmine incidents, accounting for more than thirteen percent of the world total. While Colombia is not the only Latin American nation with landmines in its soil--a variety of unexploded ordinance continue to pose threats to public safety in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, and in Chile along the borders with Argentina and Bolivia--it is the only country in the region in which combatants continue to routinely deploy such devices. There is one particularly unique aspect of Colombia's crisis: While the vast majority of victims in other countries are civilians, over 50 percent of Colombia's casualties are military.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Colombian society has responded to the landmine issue in a variety of ways, publicizing the crisis beyond its borders and dealing with the ever increasing number of victims at borne. The Colombian Campaign Against Mines is a non-government organization founded to carry out the objectives of the Mine Bah Treaty (also called the Ottawa Convention), an agreement signed by 122 governments in 1997. According to the International Campaign to Bah Landmines, the Mine Ban Treaty is "the most comprehensive international instrument for ridding the world of the scourge of antipersonnel mines; it deals with everything from mine use, production and trade, to victim assistance, mine clearance, and stockpile destruction." Another Colombian initiative, the Presidential Program for Integrated Action Against Antipersonnel Mines, addresses a broad range of humanitarian issues with support from the OAS, Canada, and the United States.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

With the efforts of the Mi Sangre Foundation added to the mix of private sector and governmental initiatives, it is evident that Colombia is taking bold steps to responsibly address the issue. What haunts everyone involved is the sad truth that despite their best efforts, the casualty list grows by the hour.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In a spotless rehabilitation ward on the grounds of Medellin's century-old Hospital Universitario San Vicente de Paul, Cipriano Padilla Medina radiates a shy, boyish kind of charm that belies his 23 years of hardscrabble life in rural Antioquia and a recent personal tragedy. Three months ago, while on patrol with an army unit, the young soldier stepped on a landmine. The explosion tore into his legs; he lost one below the knee and the other above the knee. Today, he spends hours undergoing rigorous, daily physical therapy with other victims. Dr. Diana Maria Molina Montoya, the head of the hospital's department of physical medicine and rehabilitation, listens intently as Padilla Medina explains an ironic consequence of the mine laying activities. Some of the victims come from the ranks of the rebel groups who laid the devices in the first place. Because of the absence of maps detailing exactly where this potentially fatal danger lies, the mines can claim virtually anyone at any time.

While not in therapy, the soldier listens to Mexican banda music and passes time thinking about his three year old son and what the future might hold. He is inspired by the example of a small contingent of Colombian soldiers, all landmine victims, who recently became the first limbless mountain climbers to ascend to the summit of Argentina's Aconcagua, the tallest mountain peak in the Americas at 22,831 feet above sea level. Their physical and mental resolve, their successful rehabilitation, and their proficient use of the state-of-the-art prosthetic devices all prove to Padilla Medina that, despite his misfortune, the future may hold promise.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"As long as there is this internal conflict in Colombia, there is no way to remove all of the landmines," Juanes concedes, reconciling himself to a lifelong effort to resolve the problem. "A couple of groups are still planting land mines, so at the same time that several mines are removed, 100 more are planted. When a new mine is planted, it can be active for 50 years. It's a kind of terrorism being imposed on the people who live in those rural areas. We believe that there ate approximately 125,000 landmines currently in the country. So, even if the conflict were to end, it's impossible to think of Colombia without landmines."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

When the idea of starting his own foundation came to mind, the singer quickly thought of a longtime friend as the perfect person to head the effort on a day-to-day basis. "Tatiana Sanchez and I are good friends," he says of the Medellin native he's known since they were classmates in high school. "When I thought about starting the foundation, the first person I called was Tatiana, because I knew of her commitment to Colombia."

As the executive director of the foundation, Sanchez says that the organization gives her the means to turn a dream into reality. "We had been good friends during our adolescence," she recalls, "and we had never lost touch. For me, it was marvelous when I heard his proposal because I wanted to work more intensively for a social cause." Sanchez oversees a staff of nine and works dally on a broad range of landmine-related issues. Her closest allies are governments and foundations in Europe and Colombia. The biggest sources of funding are from Juanes himself as well as contributors in Spain and Germany and from Exxon Mobil in Colombia. "The support from Juanes is fundamental," the director says. "I speak with him on a weekly basis. He is very attentive to the foundation's needs and he generates a lot of new ideas. Most importantly, he is our grand ambassador and contributes enormously to the acquisition of additional resources."

The work of Juanes and his foundation was recently recognized by the Organization of American States and the Trust for the Americas, a nonprofit affiliate of the OAS. In a November 20, 2008 ceremony in Washington, DC, OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza conferred the organization's first-ever Humanitarian Award to the singer. In addition to recognizing Juanes' dedication to helping mine victims, the award also seeks to draw attention to the problems caused by this type of weapon and to publicize OAS work in the area of destroying landmines and helping the victims of this scourge.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The OAS has been promoting its Mine Action Program since 1991 and financial and technical assistance from this program have allowed Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and Suriname to be declared free of landmines.

"But there is still a great deal of work to be done: the OAS continues to assist In the destruction of landmines in Nicaragua, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, and it is absolutely imperative that we redouble our efforts to sustain this work," said OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza in a recent meeting held to seek and coordinate contributions from donor countries for the mine elimination programs. He also warned that "thousands of anti-personnel landmine survivors still need our support to recover from their injuries and support their families."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Among the concrete results obtained by the OAS Mine Action Program are: the destruction of more than 200,000 mines; the destruction of more than one million reserve mines; assistance to 1,250 landmine victims including help with total rehabilitation and with social and economic reintegration into society; and informing approximately one million people in over 2,500 at-risk communities about the dangers of nearby landmines.

Already at work on his next album, Juanes says that he tries to avoid thinking about what kind of message people will draw from his lyrics. Although such songs as "Fijate bien" and "Mala gente" are rife with symbolism, sometimes his message is misinterpreted. The tune "La camisa negra," for instance, was adopted by Italian neo-Nazis as a kind of anthem. At the same time, the Dominican Republic banned it because censors there saw it as too sexually suggestive. "You'll go crazy if you do that, if you try to guess what people will see in your work," Juanes adds. "I just write about things that I'm feeling at that moment. On the new album, we'll have a little bit of everything, because I'm still worried about the reality of the world. What are we here for? But I'm also interested in Colombian themes."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Some of those Colombian themes will undoubtedly reflect his finely honed ability to express through his poetic lyrics the fears and aspirations his countrymen's everyday experiences. "When I go to visit them," Juanes says of the landmine victims, "I always see examples of heroes, because they are strong people. They have strong souls. Even if they experience something like this, they want to overcome it, to because something. They want to keep fighting for their families and their country."

Mark Holston is a regular contributor to Americas. The author wishes to acknowledge the InterContinental Hotel in Medellin and the Crowne Plaza Tequendama Hotel in Bogota for their collaboration with this article.