Part 5: Moves and Countermoves
Underscoring the paradoxical situation lived by the Nasa, the annual development planning assembly was an occasion to speak for the families of 8 people from Toribio who were summarily arrested and jailed with a complete lack of due process. A woman from the Tacueyo reserve explained how on January 29, 2004, her husband was pointed out by someone wearing a ski mask and taken to Popayan by a group of heavily armed police and military personnel. Hugo Prado Orozco, a marble mine worker, well known to the entire community as someone with no links to the guerrillas, was then put on national television along with 7 others from the community and weapons none of them had ever seen before, while the Army claimed to have won a major victory against the guerrillas, capturing high-level commanders. According to Colombia's anti-terrorist laws, these people, now in jail in Popayan, the capital of Cauca, have no rights to face their accuser; no rights to see the evidence against them; no rights to a jury trial. Instead, their fate will be decided by the state prosecutor's office, in private.
The families collected 3,000 signatures in the community of people who swore that these eight individuals had nothing to do with the insurgency. Against this, the prosecutor general has the testimony of someone in a ski mask - and the eight continue to sit in jail, in dreadful conditions, in Popayan.
The
'guardia indigena' stands watch in Tacueyo
Another paradox: the very day that 'Proyecto Nasa' was winning the UNDP's sustainable development award, February 19, the Nasa held a massive assembly of 6,000 people in Caloto. This time, the assembly was a kind of 'trial': according to the 1991 Constitution, the indigenous have the right to exercise justice according to their traditions for crimes committed within indigenous lands. The Nasa used this to raise the issue of the conduct of the Colombian Army itself. On December 31, a member of the community, Olmedo Ul, was shot dead while riding past a military post on a motorcycle. No one has been punished for the crime. To the community, the issue is clear: that murder, along with many other abuses by the Colombian military, could not have occurred if the Army was not in their lands in the first place. Indeed, this random killing of a young man in Nasa territory is understood by the political organization to be a kind of punishment for the Nasa's refusal to allow their project of autonomy - from the government and the insurgency - to be used as part of Uribe's counterinsurgency strategy. The killing took place two weeks after the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca published a communique differentiating indigenous autonomy from the government's position.
The 'trial', like the UNDP prize, became national news in Colombia, with the commander of the Army going on television to state that the indigenous had no jurisdiction to try the Colombian military. Publicity more generally helps provide protection for the Nasa, as it does for movements everywhere.
At the February 19, 2004, 'trial' of the Army commander at Caloto
It is for this reason that communication with other movements in Colombia and throughout the world has become so important for the Nasa, as it has for all Colombian social organizations. The strategy for destroying them has been to divide and isolate, something the establishment learned to do ruthlessly well in this country of regions, of diverse indigenous, afro-colombian, and mestizo ethnicities, and of urban/rural and class divisions. Being just 110,000 of Colombia's 44 million, the Nasa cannot defeat Uribe's agenda alone, as much as they might have to teach other movements about how to build and organize a remarkable project in terribly adverse conditions. They are not alone, however -- and by weaving their autonomy and resistance with others, they are opening up possibilities in Colombia and, perhaps, elsewhere as well.