Category: Colombia War

The Case of Manuel Rozental

He’s a friend and mentor of mine, so this is a matter of personal interest for me as well. Here is a communique from the indigenous movement in Northern Cauca about how Manuel was forced to flee. I did the translation.

The Price of Our Struggle: Individuals and Groups, using threats and dirty war, seek to silence us
Action Alert

Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (ACIN)

October 29, 2005

The Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (ACIN) –CXAB WALA KIWE, announces the following to national and international public opinion.

Continue reading “The Case of Manuel Rozental”

Open Letter from Colombia

The Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (ACIN) read this ‘open letter’ from various internationals who volunteered to help a negotiated solution between the combatants who are currently fighting in indigenous territory in Cauca, Colombia. ACIN read this letter at a press conference yesterday: it was written some time ago. The hope is that the government and/or FARC will respond with a demonstration of willingness to dialogue.

An Open Letter to the Combatants in the Colombian Conflict, FARC and the Government of Colombia.

Since April 14, 2005, the territories and communities of Northern Cauca have been transformed into battlefields. Only the representatives of armed factions have been heard. Civilians have been displaced, wounded, and killed; their houses, churches, schools, and hospitals have been destroyed. Their voice, the most important voice in the conflict, has been drowned out.

The indigenous of Northern Cauca have struggled and sacrificed much in order to attain and build autonomy. In the process they have become an example of sustainable development, according to the United Nations Development Program, which granted their ‘Proyecto Nasa’ the Equatorial Initiative Prize last year. They have become an example to the nation of Colombia and were recognized with the National Peace Prize. One of their leaders, Arquimedes Vitonas, is the mayor of Toribio. He was recognized as a UNESCO ‘Master of Wisdom’ and by Colombia’s daily newspaper, El Tiempo, as ‘Person of the Year’ in 2004. Their achievements in land reform, participatory democracy, and indigenous law and justice are no less impressive. In recent years, their ideas have become important throughout Colombia. Their leadership in a march against President Uribe’s ‘Democratic Security’ policy, against the various Constitutional Reforms proposed by the current administration, and the Free Trade Agreement in September of 2004 mobilized tens of thousands of people and opened an important debate on this crucial issue at the national level. Their Popular Consultation on the FTA in March 2005 was a model of transparency and democratic participation in which the FTA was rejected by nearly the whole population, in an election with record participation. This, too, raised crucial questions for debate at the national level, and a political initiative for such a consultation at the national level is growing. The consultation, like the earlier one in Brazil in 2002, set an important precedent for the continent, showing how people can convene transparent and valid electoral processes that have credibility and legitimacy that governmental electoral processes often lack.

Today these communities are again forced to raise their voices and make demands at the national level. In this case their demands have to do not with crucial questions of democracy and economic development, but war and peace. Their autonomous communal processes have been disrupted by war in their communities, a war in which their views and their rights are not respected.

An outgrowth of the ‘Minga’ of September 2004 was the ‘Indigenous and Popular Mandate’. This mandate included the following:

With regard to the armed conflict, the violation of human rights and the politics of “democratic security”

-To design and put in place popular mechanisms for a negotiated solution to the armed conflict.

-To demand truth, justice, and reparations for the victims of armed conflict.

-Promote popular and autonomous mechanisms of civil resistance, peace and security that include the recognition of the Guardia Indigena as a popular force for peace.

-Demand and design mechanisms of civil resistance with national and international pressure, support, and observation to win the exit of armed groups from our territories and respect for the civil population, respect for indigenous autonomy and indigenous organizations.

-Design mechanisms of resistance and civil disobedience against the politics of “democratic security” of the Colombian government.

In accordance with this Mandate, the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca has made three demands of the armed actors in their territories:

1) An immediate ceasefire
2) The complete demilitarization of their territories
3) The opening of dialogues between the armed actors toward a negotiated solution to Colombia’s armed conflict

Nobel Peace Prize winner and indigenous activist Rigoberta Menchu Tum has supported this call with a call of her own to “the armed groups in this conflict, the FARC and the government, to stop the war, silence the guns, and listen to the words and make redoubled efforts to continue dialogue and search for a negotiated solution to the conflict. Colombia must not have a future of eternal bloodshed imposed upon it.” Rigoberta Menchu also declared that she would “answer the call of the Regional Indigenous Councils of Cauca to form a diplomatic mission to aid in the facilitation of a dialogue towards a negotiated solution” and join an Indigenous Peace Initiative led by the Indigenous of Northern Cauca.

We echo Rigoberta Menchu’s support for the indigenous communities of Northern Cauca in their call for a ceasefire, the demilitarization of their territories, and the opening of dialogues. We will accompany the process of the Indigenous Peace Initiative created for these ends.

Sincerely,

Manfred Max Neef (Chile), economist, spokesperson for the Indigenous and Popular Congress
Noam Chomsky (United States), linguist and author
Adolfo Perez Esquivel (Argentina), Nobel laureate
Baltazar Garzon (Spain), jurist
Arturo Escobar (Colombia), researcher
Naomi Klein (Canada), author

Colombian Government’s Counteroffensive

Vicente Otero was once the elected mayor of the small Colombian town of Caldono in the department of Cauca. He was instrumental in the Nasa indigenous movement’s recent referendum against the Free Trade Agreement, in which record numbers participated and in which the FTA was unanimously rejected. He has long been an important leader in the indigenous movement for autonomy and peace. On the morning of May 19 at 6am, Colombian police and secret agents raided his house. He was not home. The only people home during the read were Otero’s 11-year old son and his mentally ill younger brother. They entered, took his literature on the FTA and his computer and planted a radio, a rocket, and a grenade. They are now claiming that he had an ‘arsenal’ in his home. The idea that Otero had an arsenal in his house is preposterous on every level. A lifelong pacifist, well-known political organizer and leader in the indigenous movement, Otero is well-versed in indigenous methods of solving problems and works intimately with the ‘guardia indigena’, the unarmed ‘indigenous guards’ who ensure security throughout the region with only the prestige symbolized in the batons they carry. Today Otero is in hiding, awaiting guarantees of his security, an apology, and the clearing of his name by those agencies who have planted false evidence in order to implicate him.

Otero would not be the first person from the indigenous communities of Northern Cauca to be framed in this way. Twenty-one others have been detained and taken off to Cali (Colombia’s second largest city), all community members from the town of Jambalo, over the past several days (12 on May 9 and 9 more on May 10). Four days later the Army’s Third Brigade announced that they had already ‘judged’ the community members for their ‘links’ to FARC.

This is an established pattern of government repression in indigenous territory. In January 2004, 8 people from Toribio – mine workers, farmers, craftspeople – were pointed out by someone wearing a ski mask and taken to Popayan (the site of Cauca’s biggest prison) by a group of heavily armed police and military personnel. They were later shown on television with weapons none of them had ever seen before. They army claimed they had captured high-level guerrilla commanders. The community knew better, but the prisoners rotted in jail with no rights to face their accusers, no rights to see the evidence against them, and no rights to a jury trial.

The pattern is escalating. DAS (Colombia’s secret police) officers announced to the press on May 19 that 200 other indigenous people from northern Cauca will be arrested this weekend (May 21-22) for ‘supposed links to FARC’. The idea that the secret police could announce an exact number – one could call it a quota – of Indians it is planning on arresting in advance of the arrest, and have the figure published in the papers, makes an utter mockery of any notion of a justice system in which evidence, charges, or law matters. The language of the article describing the announcement, published in ‘El Tiempo’ on May 19, betrays the racism: ‘Agents from DAS, the Army, and the Attorney-General’s office raided various houses in Caldono looking for Indians and war materials,’ the leading paragraph proclaimed, placing the region’s people and various inanimate objects in the same category.

Added to frame-ups by the government are death threats from paramilitaries. On May 16, Hollman Morris, a television journalist who is well-known in Colombia for his documentaries, received a bouquet of funeral flowers at his office, accompanied by a note announcing his death. Another journalist, Carlos Lozano, received the same death threat that day. Hollman Morris’s most recent work has been on – the indigenous movement in Northern Cauca, the march against the FTA, and the recent military attacks and campaigns taking place there. Prior to his stories on Cauca, Hollman did a special on the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado.

The ‘Jose Alvear Restrepo Lawyer’s Collective’ is based in the department of Antioquia, the same department as the community of San Jose de Apartado. Its lawyers document and organize around human rights abuses. About a week ago the president of the collective, Soraya Gutierrez, received a dismembered doll in the mail with a death threat against her family. The lawyer’s collective has been one of the loudest voices bringing to light information about the most recent army/paramilitary massacre against San Jose de Apartado, in which 8 people were brutally murdered on February 21, bringing the total of murders against the people of Apartado to 150 over the past 8 years. Apartado’s members have decided that they want no part of the armed conflict and have a declared stance of ‘active neutrality’ in it. For that, they have been savagely attacked over years. As in Northern Cauca, the military attacks against civilians were accompanied by vicious and slanderous accusations against the very community that had suffered the massacres: President Uribe himself accused the Peace Community of collaborating with guerrillas. As in Northern Cauca, the slanders were followed up with paramilitary action against outside supporters of the community (Hollman Morris in Cauca, and Soraya Gutierrez in Antioquia).

Hollman Morris was threatened for his coverage of the quickly evolving military and political situation in Apartado and also in Northern Cauca. On April 14, 2005, Colombia’s main guerrilla group, the FARC, attacked various towns in Northern Cauca, a department in the South west of the country. The government counterattacked immediately, but the FARC were not dislodged. Militarily, the attack was a demonstration of power. The Colombian President, Alvaro Uribe Velez, had assumed power in 2002 on a platform of eradicating the guerrillas and abandoning peace dialogues or agreements. His principal military policy was called ‘Plan Patriota’, and consisted of a major military offensive in the south of the country. The offensive was barely contested by FARC, and both Uribe and the Colombian military became smug. Then FARC launched a number of spectacular attacks last month, announcing that they had not, in fact, been eliminated, and they could take, and even hold, parts of the national territory, against the Colombian army.

But parallel to the military campaigns and deeper than them is the real Colombian war: the war against the civilian population of the country, its organizations and its leaders. FARC’s offensive in Northern Cauca attacked the very heart of Colombia’s indigenous movement, where indigenous leaders have patiently and courageously built autonomous institutions for their own development and governance over decades, as well as their own mechanisms for peace, conflict resolution, and demilitarization of the zone. One of the leaders of this indigenous project is Vicente Otero. One of the principal effects of the combats in Northern Cauca has been to militarize the region and undermine the indigenous political project. Colombian analysts like Daniel Garcia-Pena, who was active in the peace process in the 1990s, argued that the FARC’s offensive was a military success but, since it showed disregard for the indigenous movement and for the civilian population, it was a political failure. Now the government, having failed in its military counterattack against FARC, is engaging in dirty political war against the country’s social movements.

As his secret police were raiding the houses of political activists and announcing plans to arrest hundreds more, as his army was bundling innocent civilians off to jail without charges, as journalists who covered these abuses were receiving death threats in the mail from paramilitaries, Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe Velez was angrily making a public statement denying that he has any paramilitary links. He was responding to accusations by other politicians (Horacio Serpa and Enrique Penalosa) that he is close to the paramilitaries. He told them they should produce proof if they want to make such accusations. In fact, producing such proof is no real challenge (see, for example, this interview with human rights activist Javier Giraldo from 2004: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=5156). But if Uribe is arguing that public accusations ought not to be made without proof, lest they cause harm and damage to individuals and communities, he should put this principle into practice. Northern Cauca and San Jose de Apartado would be a good place to start.

Some of the leaders of Northern Cauca’s indigenous movement were on the Pacifica Radio Program Democracy Now! On May 20: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/20/1425246

Colombian government acts quickly to stop a crime spree!

A crime epidemic has affected Colombia! But not to worry. Despite accusations that it is selective in its application of justice, Uribe’s administration and its military and paramilitary apparatus have come to the rescue.

Continue reading “Colombian government acts quickly to stop a crime spree!”

Cauca Update

There is a great deal going on in Colombia even beyond Cauca. I am a bit backlogged in terms of article writing, but an article updating and explaining the situation throughout Colombia is definitely on the agenda. Meanwhile, some more information on the military and political situation in Northern Cauca.

I forgot to link here to the article I did a few days ago. on the topic. There is also an op-ed by Daniel Garcia-Pena Jaramillo, a very good analyst with long experience with the FARC and the government from when he was peace commissioner during the negotiations in the 1990s. His piece is on the political failure of the FARC. His last line expresses a disbelief that is widely felt.

Even worse than not speaking though, is not listening. I don’t understand a guerrilla organization that is indifferent to what the people say can aspire to be the army of the people.

Since he wrote his piece and I wrote mine the military confrontation continues. On April 28 the Colombian daily El Tiempo reported new combats in the towns of Jambalo and Tacueyo, which neighbours Toribio (I visited Jambalo briefly last year during my trip to Cauca and have several photos of Tacueyo in the photo essay on the movement). In Tacueyo three minors were injured by a pipe bomb.

These attacks have taken place since members of the community have begun to return. On April 25 El Tiempo reported that 5000 people who had left Toribio were returning. Mayor Arquimedes Vitonas expressed worries that “now will come the selective assassinations.” On April 26, the indigenous council of Jambalo reported that ‘in a gesture of nonviolent resistance the community of Jambalo has decided to remain in Permanent Assembly so long as the conditions under which they can return to their homes are absent.” (They assembled in the centre of town and camped there overnight – defying the armed actors who told them to leave.)

I believe the most important single piece of news in the area is the statement made by the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (ACIN), whose communique of two days ago demanded that the military organizations ‘silence the guns so words can be heard’. They call for 1) a ceasefire, 2) demilitarization of the region, and 3) commencement of negotiations toward a political solution to the conflict. A translation (I can’t take credit for it) of this communique is below.

URGENT COMMUNIQUÉ: “SILENCE THE GUNS SO WORDS CAN BE HEARD”

In face of the escalation of the war in our territory, and taking into account the difficult situation in which we are living, we the Nasa Paez communities reiterate before national an international opinion – as has already been expressed in the official communiqués of the ACIN beginning on April 15, 2005 (see www.nasaacin.net) – our call to a:

CEASE FIRE, COMPLETE DEMILITARIZATION OF THE AREA, AND THE BEGINNING OF CONVERSATIONS TO SEARCH FOR A NEGOTIATED SOLUTION TO THE ARMED CONFLICT IN COLOMBIA.

We say this taking into account our deep rejection of:

The declarations of Mr. President of the Republic Álvaro Uribe Vélez concerning his firm decision to “eradicate the guerrillas from Cauca” and no dialogue with terrorist groups until they put an end to their military actions (in the same way that has been done with the self-defense groups).

The continued presence and political pressure from the members of the FARC on the dwellers of a wide area of Northern Cauca and their expressed position of strengthening their military control in that territory.

Faced with these radical positions of the actors at war, we the indigenous peoples of the Northern zone of the department reiterate OUR DECLARATION OF A STATE OF HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCY until there exist true guarantees for human rights, international humanitarian law and, above all, for the community process of the indigenous communities.

We openly manifest that we the indigenous population, as a whole and as each individual person, are in imminent danger of being subjected to processes of legal prosecution or execution, currently or afterwards, by any one of the actors involved in the conflict.

“TO CONTINUE WITH ROOTS IN THE LAND”

ASSOCIATION OF INDIGENOUS TOWNSHIPS OF NORTHERN CAUCA (ACIN)
CAHB WALA KIWE

Will people power have a chance in Colombia?

Yesterday (April 22), as the attacks on their communities continue to intensify, the indigenous communities of Northern Cauca, specifically Toribio and now Jambalo, convoked an assembly in the main city of the region, Santander de Quilichao. Supporters of the movement came, on very short notice, from different parts of the country, to affirm the indigenous position of autonomy. The Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca, in their own communique, summarized the military situation: the FARC have exerted a major effort since April 14, taking over the municipality of Toribio. They took over other nearby towns as well, including Tacueyo (April 19), and Jambalo (April 22). Over the past week, FARC and the Colombian military/police battled in Toribio and elsewhere. The FARC are in the mountains; the Colombian army controls various roads leading up to the communities. The FARC has set blockades of their own. The civilian population, having suffered various deaths (including children) has largely been displaced to centers around Toribio and elsewhere in the region where they have families. Dozens of homes have been destroyed in the fighting. The FARC use their gas pipe bombs, the Colombian military uses aerial bombardment. The hospital was damaged, disrupting health services, and the health organization is overstretched. All agricultural activity has been interrupted.

Colombia’s indigenous peoples have long been invisible in the mainstream media, but these combats have seen reports on Toribio appear all over AP wires and on BBC world. Even the best reports, however, present the story as a battle between the FARC and the government, with the indigenous communities being either the background or the battlefield itself. And while many of the messages of solidarity and support that have come from organizations and individuals of conscience in Colombia and throughout the world describe the urgent humanitarian situation, with over 1800 people displaced, dozens of houses destroyed, dozens injured and several killed, it is very important that the words and message of the communities themselves not be lost.

These are no passive victims. The people of Northern Cauca have a long memory of resistance going back to the warrior La Gaitana who led her people against the Spanish colonizers, to Manuel Quintin Lame who helped them win back their land in the 19th century, to ‘La Violencia’ in which their gains were reversed after 1948, to the land struggles of the 1970s in which they won their land back. There are many who carried arms to fight for autonomy in the 1970s and 1980s, fighting all those who would deny it to them. But in recent years they have become the moral and political guide of the movements in Colombia. In February 2004, they enacted a political judgement against the military for murdering one of their youths. In September of that year they organized a massive march against Uribe’s ‘Democratic Security’ counterinsurgency policy and against the Free Trade Agreement with the US. In March 2005 they organized a popular consultation against the FTA in which participation was unprecedentedly massive at 70% and rejection of FTA was virtually unanimous. Beyond all these actions, and most important, they are administering their own affairs, from the economy to justice, according to their laws and their practices, and using participatory democracy and assemblies to do so. Their ‘guardia indigena’ walk unarmed, with their moral authority symbolized in batons they carry, and resolve conflicts, protect people, and in August 2004, rescued the mayor of Toribio, who had been kidnapped by FARC.

Returning to last week’s attacks, the Colombian President, Alvaro Uribe Velez, arrived the day after the first FARC offensive for just long enough to pour some fuel on the fire. Along with his supporter, the governor of Cauca, Juan Jose Chaux Mosquera, Uribe walked the streets of Toribio under heavy guard. Uribe taunted the guerrillas and accused them of cowardice and terrorism. He promised humanitarian aid. He said ‘the population of Toribio has to decide which side they are on’. Then he took his heavy guard and left. Raul Reyes, the FARC’s spokesperson, replied in an interview to ANNCOL that ‘the government is in a very weak position to give assurances that it has the capacity to force the FARC into retreat.’

The FARC counterattack followed a day after Uribe’s provocation. Uribe was long gone. The humanitarian aid never arrived. But the Defense Minister (also named Uribe) announced the government’s determination: “Government forces will not withdraw from this zone,” he told the AP.

FARC has obviously decided these towns are of great symbolic importance. An AP story quoted a FARC platoon leader saying “We have no plans to leave here,” and that 500 FARC members were involved in the siege. But it is hard to imagine how they could hold the region if the government throws all its weight against it. Ultimately, they will withdraw, after more lives are lost, and the corrosive military presence in this stronghold of indigenous autonomy will be all the greater.

Meanwhile, the population have activated their contingency plans: permanent assembly, to keep the communities together and protected as much as possible, while political pressure is built to get the armed actors out of the region. They will have to contend, in their plans, not only with the utter lack of respect for them on the part of the FARC and the Colombian army’s brutality, but also for all the legal repression by the government, based on phony pretexts. Last year, before the September 2004 march, the government arrested indigenous leader Alcibiades Escue. Like Toribio’s mayor Arquimedes Vitonas, Alcibiades Escue was essentially kidnapped, though several phony legal pretexts were provided by his kidnappers (the Colombian government in this case). Also like Arquimedes Vitonas, Alcibiades was freed by popular mobilization. Today the movement is warning that the National government has already threatened legal actions and prosecutions against the very people who are being attacked and displaced.

Their project is not neutrality or passivity, but autonomy. The military actions and military bluster over their territories drowns out the fact that they have their own ideas and plans for how to live – including how to resolve Colombia’s armed conflict. It starts with respect for civilian populations, with respect, in the words they would use, for life. That means, as a starting point, demilitarization of their region.

Days ago, indigenous movements led the way in Colombia’s neighbour, Ecuador, not very far from Cauca at all, to overthrow a President who was abusive and corrupt. Their struggle is far from over, and they have hard days ahead. But they showed, as Bolivians showed just over a year ago, that popular power is real. The indigenous of Cauca are Colombia’s seeds of that kind of power. Their process is too important to be allowed to be destroyed by those who fear it or hold it in contempt because they can’t understand it.

Justin Podur visited Northern Cauca in February 2004. His photo essay, with much background and interviews on the indigenous movement there, can be found at: http://www.en-camino.org/caucaphotoessay/caucaphotoindex.htm