Part 2: Northern Cauca, Occupied Territory (2)
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Higher up in the mountains, in the indigenous reserve of Tacueyo, there is
fighting, as the Colombian Army tries to dislodge the FARC from territory
the guerrillas have held for decades. To get from Toribio to Tacueyo, one
has to pass one, sometimes two, military roadblocks. At the roadblock, the
military officer acts respectfully to our group, chatting with the driver
and expressing his concern for the civilian population: "The important thing,"
the officer says, "is that the people are calm."
In Tacueyo, the people are under siege. The thousand people who belong to this reserve have gathered in a 'Permanent Assembly' at El Crucero. Above El Crucero are the FARC's positions. From below, the army continues to push. The Army's behavior on the ground, meanwhile, makes a mockery of the checkpoint officer's show of concern.
Here at the assembly, the people have organized sleeping quarters, sanitation, food, and the indigenous guards. The latter are a Nasa innovation: unarmed guards, who communicate with handheld radios and carry sticks as symbols of their authority, they keep watch at night and sound the alarm if there is an encroachment into their territory. They are gathered together here because when they are dispersed in their fields and homes all over the countryside they can be caught in the crossfire, or targeted themselves.
The Army constantly attempts to elicit the cooperation of the Nasa, in Tacueyo and elsewhere. Soldiers go to the supply stores and rooms, they offer children money to inform on the guerrillas, and try to visit and make themselves visible with the indigenous, so the guerrillas will see this and commit reprisals against the civilian population. In Toribio and Jambalo, it is not a stretch to say the police are using the population as human shields against the guerrillas. They are building a permanent, fortified station in Toribio against the will of the community who will have no such fortification against the fighting the police are trying to provoke. When combats occur, armed forces casualties are evacuated by helicopter. Civilian casualties have nothing.
This, the community reports, is a strategy to try to drive the Nasa politically towards the Army. The Nasa remain aloof: the Army then resorts to repression. They plant coca, poppy, or marijuana in the houses of indigenous peasants and claim the Nasa are narcotraffickers. Members of the community are falsely accused of being guerrillas and carted off to jail without any due process. The roadblocks themselves are a threat: if the peasants are unable to get to their fields for long enough, they will become dependent on food from outside - food which can be blocked off at the Army's will by the roadblocks, a strategy the Army and especially the paramilitaries use all over Colombia to break the resistance of communities.