The Nasa Movement
Justin Podur interviews Manuel Santos
Conducted February 20, 2004 in Cauca, Colombia
Manuel Santos is a part of the indigenous movement of Northern Cauca. As the movement began taking over the local machinery of government, he became a councillor, first in the municipality Toribio, and then a member of the departmental government of Cauca under its first indigenous governor, Floro Tunubala. He was interviewed on his personal history in the movement, and the history of the movement itself.
Manuel Santos
JP: Talk about your personal history.
MS: I was born in Caloto, in the plain of Northern Cauca. There were missions, established there, in order to prevent children like us from growing up as Nasa-speaking 'brutes'. They took us away from our mountain, and raised us in the houses. My father was actually involved in organizing the communities. But at the same time he didn't want us to speak Nasa. He was confused. He was a communist: he took us out of the mountain, he organized in the councils, the secret meetings at night that led to the founding of CRIC. But to him, to speak Nasa was bad.
JP: Was that rare at the time?
MS: My mother spoke Nasa and so we learned some. We studied in Caloto but we eventually went back to our mountains. My father needed our help to work the land. But all indigenous had these problems. At the time there was a rule from the government, that children wouldn't be allowed to speak indigenous languages. And in fact the first real recognition of the indigenous was with the Constitution of 1991.
JP: What about your history in the process.
MS: I have been involved in this process for 23 years. I was very young when The Regional Council of the Indigenous of Cauca , CRIC was formed. I was born in 1964. CRIC was founded on February 24, 1971. As a child, in the late 1970s, I was involved in the struggle for the recovery of land. When I was 12 years old, my father, Filomino Poto, educated me and my brothers and sisters by sending us to work with those recovering the land. We were kids, but we had our own work. When we were recovering El Berlin, a ranch owned by a major landowner, the job of the children was to watch the roads for police and army. The older children worked - cleaning the land, and so on. Our job was to watch the roads. There were 20-30 of us. We would yell our warnings, but we would make it seem like we were playing. And we would run away. The army would see us, and do nothing: we were just kids. I remember those days, one of the leaders, an adult, Miguel Huejia, he was one of the first indigenous leaders killed in Cauca in this process. He was actually shot by the landowner at a meeting.
The first major indigenous congress after the founding of the CRIC, was in 1980 in Toribio. I went to those meetings. That was where a lot of the infrastructure you see here was laid. We had 'indigenous guards' at the meeting. We had commissions organizing food, transport, music, for 5000 people. It was tense: the landowners in Toribio were very close, their police were very close, armed; they would come on horses, we had only sticks. I remember it vividly because it was the first time I saw other kinds of indigenous people: people from Putumayo, the Guambiano from southern Cauca, people from Pasto and Peru.
JP: What continuities and what changes have you seen, since those days?
MS: There are many changes. When I studied, the children had no shoes. Back then, only a few leaders would speak at meetings. Today, the community has grown and many people speak. Today the women and the youth have a voice in meetings. When I was a child, the women were the bedrock of the movement. All the men were taken off to jail, but the women kept recovering land. When the men were imprisoned in Toribio, one time, the women opened the gates of the prison. And in spite of that strength, they didn't have the chance to speak in meetings. Today they do. Back then there was no cooperation with the Afro-Colombians. Today there is.
JP: What about changes in terms of the actors? Today the whole area is occupied by the military and police. The guerrillas are here in force, and no one respects the autonomy of the Nasa. What was it like back then?
MS: The guerrillas were in the cordillera in the 1980s: in Toribio, in Jambalo. They worked together, very closely, with the Communist Party. There was a break between the two when the Communists took the electoral route, forming the Union Patriotica and contesting elections.
In Toribio, the FARC guerrillas and communists tried to oblige us to join the party. That is when the violence against us began. In the San Francisco reserve, they obliged us to vote. Every family had to pay 10 pesos a month in membership fees. When people resisted, there was violence. The worst was in San Francisco, between 1980-81, there were 80 people killed.
The communists were our own indigenous people. Some of them were very important to the movement. Abelino Ul, he was an important figure in the 1980s, teaching and guiding people, a really exemplary person. He was a communist. But he was killed by the landowners. There were others who just used force, and it got so bad that there were 3-4 killings a day.
The indigenous guerrilla movement, Quintin Lame, began this way. The indigenous were trying to defend themselves. The landowners were killing us, and so were the FARC and the communists! Quintin Lame was really an organization of armed self-defense. And other guerrilla organizations actually came to the territory to help Quintin. Quintin needed the help. M-19 was one of the groups that helped train and arm Quintin. The FARC front in this territory was "Ricardo Franco".
There was a lot of confusion. In 1983, the indigenous voted the communists out, and the liberals came to power. The indigenous who joined the liberals took their money and demobilized. It was a very difficult time. In 1984, Alvaro Ulcue, the Nasa priest who had been instrumental in the movement here, was assassinated. There was violence in 1984-5 in Toribio. We were involved in meetings with liberals, M-19, Ricardo Franco, the communists, Quintin.
JP: What were the landowners and paramilitaries doing?
MS: They were always there. They were the ones who killed Alvaro Ulcue. The army accused us of subversion. Quintin became involved in theft, armed robbery. I fled the region in 1985 for six months. My post in the local government was filled by another member of the community, and rumors flew that I was informing the army. After I came back, the army took two members of the community to the mountains - one from M-19, one from Ricardo Franco, tortured them, and killed them. They left a note saying "by order of the indigenous council." This was a tactic of the army, but I was blamed. I fled the country for three years. I went to Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala. But I wanted to return, and in 1990, I was able to return and participate in the process leading to the 1991 Constitution.
JP: What is your assessment of that Constitution?
MS: It really changed the whole landscape. Before 1991, the indigenous were in a state of rebellion against the government. It wasn't a state of perpetual shooting war, but it was a state of rebellion. When we became a part of the system in 1991, we accepted the system, in exchange for its recognition of us, and we weren't in rebellion any more.
One of the effects of this was that we stopped building for ourselves. Look at our documents today. We make our arguments in terms of the constitution, not in terms of our intrinsic rights as indigenous people.
But it gets worse. There have been 'reforms' of the constitution and they are planning more 'reforms'. Essentially the spirit of 1991, in which our rights were recognized, is already dead. People speak of the "ex-constitution of 1991". The mining rights and mineral rights are already gone, for example. Only the concessions made to the multinationals remain. It is a major retrogression, and I believe that we have to recognize that we have won far more through struggle, through facts, than through laws. Rebellion was better. How did we win agrarian reform? Not by law. The government shows a nice constitution to the world, but the facts no longer match it.
JP: What of the electoral landscape today? The regional elections brought left governments to power all over the country - except Cauca, which was ahead of the country when it elected Floro Tunubala, the first indigenous governor, but now has elected Juan Jose Chaus, a major friend of Uribe's. What can be learned from the Cauca experience with Floro for the local governments in the country now?
MS: Floro was part of a different movement. The visions of the Nasa of Northern Cauca and the Guambiano, the nation Floro is from, are different. The Guambiano demand social justice from the government. The Nasa see themselves as a nation, we have our own project. So we are in rebellion in a different way. That is one difference.
Floro didn't have the power to make fundamental changes. He didn't mobilize and work with the social sectors. He tried, instead, to manage conflicts between the elite and the social sectors. During various campaigns of the social movements, he didn't take a position. He didn't attack the traditional sectors or elites. He tried to make small changes.
JP: Do you fear the same will happen in Bogota, and elsewhere, where the left has come to power since October 2003?
MS: It is not only the fault of the political class. The social sectors have not articulated an alternative project. And you have to recognize that Floro prevented a major militarization of Cauca. He prevented fumigation. The paramilitaries were much weaker under Floro than they will be under Chaus. Floro was opposed to Uribe's 'Democratic Security'.
All over Latin America, these things are happening. What can these governments do? In Colombia, they are trying a hard-line approach with Uribe. If it fails, they will go with a liberal type. But there is this division in the elite. The problem is that there is no one with the strength to stop them. Their actions during the Pastrana era and since have discredited the FARC nationally and internationally, and they haven't been willing to do what they need to do to clean up. No political group or project like ours is big enough or strong enough alone to change the national situation. We wouldn't want to impose our will or our values on the rest of the country in any case. Others have rights too! But we have to fight nationally and internationally for the space to build our project here.