Colombia

VIOLENCE

Here's a translation from the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado:

The Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado asks urgently for national and international solidarity. The Army has today indiscriminately bombed in Arenas Altas and Bajas. Ground troops have thrown grenades against the civilian population in this humanitarian zone. One of the grenades was thrown and hit Arlen Salas David, the coordinator of the humanitarian zone of Arenas Altas, who was working in the field. He is badly injured. A commission from the community left at 2pm to retrieve him. We are unsure if we will be able to save his life as he is very badly wounded. The indiscriminate bombings continue. We ask for urgent actions to guarantee the lives of the commission, 42 families of the humanitarian zone and the other families of Arenas, to avert a massacre.

Alfredo Molano
El Espectador

Señor Álvaro Uribe Vélez
Presidencia de la República
Cra. 8 No..7-26, Palacio de Nariño, Santa fe de Bogotá.
Fax: (571) 566-2071
secretaria.privada@presidencia.gov.co

Re: liberar la madre tierra !

Strategic Planning

The kids at National Planning have a view of the country that looks down from the commanding heights of the towers of 26th Street. Their view of the country used to be from the beltway that ringed Bogota. Later, when they opened their business consulting office, they discovered how the country looked from their private helicopters. There are some exceptions: a few come down to Sasaima on Sundays to play golf – of course, they only do so after they’ve called the local Battalion to ensure their security – and the vast majority have laundered their engineering degrees from Colombian universities with PhDs in economics from provincial gringo universities. They don’t understand anything other than figures. Figures, after all, are the only way to measure the value of everything in terms of money, which is in the end what is of interest to them. It is their specialty. They assume the world began on the day they put on their tie and, with their father’s (or their uncle’s) connections, signed their first contract. I say these boys have come to tell us that the land (and the concentration of land ownership) has ceased to make any economic sense.

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.

1. In the past several days, a wave of threats has fallen over various of our community members, leaders, and authorities. To us this translates to a clear message that there are those who seek to destabilize the process of the indigenous communities in the northern zone of the department of Cauca.

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.

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.

WE MUST MAKE OUR WORDS MOVE FORWARD

February 18, 2005

Public declaration of the indigenous and popular congress
Call for a citizen's popular consultation

"The State that should protect us, is pursuing us, attempting to dismantle the rights won throughout the centuries of resistance, denying us our fundamental rights, acting against the soveriegnty of the country and the well-bing of its citizens. It does so in favour of private and external interests, as it represses, criminalizes, defames and persecutes our organizations, leaders, and people." (From the Political and Action Proposal of the Indigenous peoples, September 2004.)

The First Popular Indigenous Congress

The Indigenous and Popular Mandate of the Minga for Life, Justice, Joy, Freedom, and Autonomy

Cali, September 18, 2004

The Challenge Before Us

We bring with us the memories and experiences of a long history of struggle and resistance. We rely on our identities and cultures to confront the many threats that face us time and time again. This path has not been easy. Since the Conquest and without cease, arrogance, egoism, ignorance and disrespect have fallen on us with lies, false promises, the power of ever more lethal weapons, and with institutions, laws, and norms that bring us misery, exploitation, pain, and dependence. Each time they attack us, they assure us it is for our own good. Each time we have had to learn the deception, unite and organize to defend ourselves. It has always served us to return to our roots, take advantage of the wisdom of our own collective memory, listen to our elders and pay attention to nature to make ourselves a part of life and defend ourselves by defending it. Time and again we have had to learn to resist and do so differently in accordance with the challenge before us. We have come from far, over a long period. The latest steps have brought us to this Congress of Peoples, the latest stage in this long history. More than the latest stage, it is the beginning of a new path we have decided to take. With the 60,000 that marched to Cali and in other parts of the country, our memories have marched; our elders have marched; those who opened the way by struggling before us, many men and women in many places within and outside of Colombia who have recognized the danger, suffered the pain and got up to march for the other world we know is possible and necessary.

[Note: This letter was published in December of 2003 and received some publicity in the Colombian media. Several of the indigenous communities that signed this letter were then besieged by the military and paramilitaries in what can only be interpreted as collective punishment for their insistence on autonomy.]

Popayán, December 15, 2003

Mr. Alvaro Uribe Vélez

President of Colombia

Mr. President

In 1985 our traditional authorities in Tierradentro issued the Resolution of Vitoncó, a document which showed the public, for the first time in Colombia, a social position demanding from the armed actors respect for our legitimate ancestral authorities and our territorial autonomy. Equally important has been our organization's contribution through peace initiatives in the 1980s that led to the Constitution of 1991, the first national accord which recognized the ethnic diversity of the Colombian nation, setting up clear guidelines for the conduct of the state with respect to our communities.

A Letter from Joe Emersberger to the Star

Your coverage of Colombia's civil war has been extremely one sided and inaccurate in recent months. Anyone who relied mainly on your coverage of this conflict could be forgiven for having quite a distorted view of it. The impunity with which the Colombian government, often through its paramilitary allies, has killed and tortured its people is greatly assisted by media coverage that distorts reality. I implore you to consider what I say below and to do your part to deprive the Colombian government of this impunity.

Since April 4 you have published 14 articles that referred to the conflict. Five of them dealt directly with murders committed by the leftist rebels (FARC, ELN). None mentioned murders carried out by the Colombian government. Three made brief reference to murders committed by right wing paramilitaries, but their connection to the government was left unexplored.

May 20, 2003

Iraq isn't the only place where bombing is a means to the end of privatization. While the Bush regime was killing Iraqi protesters in Fallujah and handing Iraq's wealth out to its friends in Bechtel and Halliburton, the Colombian establishment was testing out the privatization-by-bombing strategy in Cali.

The municipal worker's union in Cali, SINTRAEMCALI, has long been a combative, militant, and popular union. From the early 1990s, SINTRAEMCALI has taken a stand for accessible public services and against privatization and corruption. It has struggled, unafraid and undeterred by threats and murders against its members, using direct action tactics like occupying the municipal offices in downtown Cali.