Part 4: Northern Cauca, Liberated Territory (2)
The movements have used the spaces won in the municipalities and their constitutional rights to the reserves to develop the region using a decentralized planning methodology. An outgrowth of Paulo Freire's methods of adult education, the methods involve the training of facilitators and the use of assemblies to create development plans, establishing priorities and setting projects for the community to allocate the municipal budgets and the transfer payments to the indigenous reserves. This type of planning is done at the reserve and municipal level. In February, the municipalities held their annual assemblies where the priorities were set.
For the municipality of Toribio, the assembly took place at the indigenous university of CECIDIC, a diverse university with programs in agriculture, economics, trades, and law. Toribio, with its 30,000 inhabitants, had 3,000 at the meeting. The meeting opened with the staff of the municipality placing posters with indicators collected in village-level meetings two months before. There were dozens of indicators, ranging from production, to educational outcomes, to reports of human rights abuses within the community. In the first step, the members of the community had to revise the indicators and, if necessary, correct any errors. Then the 3,000 broke up into smaller groups to work by theme (the 7 themes included education, institutional development, health, culture, human rights, family, and ecology and economy, treated together) and by reserve (the municipality consists of four reserves, Toribio, Tacueyo, San Francisco, and the urban centers). The 28 working groups set the budget priorities, decided on projects, and submitted their decisions to the assembly.
This decentralized planning has proved to be a highly effective method for management. Toribio's 'Proyecto Nasa', the overall plan, of which the development plan is a part, was one of the winners of The UNDP's Equatorial Initiative for Sustainable Development prize on February 19, 2004 in Malaysia for the best development project. The prize, given to 6 projects out of 600 entrants, was given for development plans that reduce poverty by conserving and restoring ecology. The ecological successes of the process can be seen by anyone traveling in the region: the land, after decades of abuse by sugar barons, ranchers, and absentee landlords, is being reforested, restored to productive use, and brought back to life.
