[R-G] Fwd: [encamino-info] Why they massacre indigenous peoples: profound analysis

[Anthony Fenton]

Last week, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, accepted  
responsibility for the brutal massacre of eight (8) indigenous Awa in  
the southwestern department of Nariño, justifying their barbarity by  
saying the victims were "informants" for the Armed Forces operating in  
the region. The leadership of the Awa, as well as the National  
Indigenous Organization of Colombia, ONIC, say that the number of  
people killed in early February was actually 27, and that FARC was  
responsible every one of these deaths.
The Awa, a people that has been targeted for years by all the armed  
actors in the region, say FARC entered two separate villages between  
February 4-6, and began to accuse them of collaborating with the  
Colombian army.
According to eyewitnesses from the community, the guerrillas then  
started to bring people into their homes and execute them ‘as a  
lesson’ to the rest of the village.
Among the victims were women, and children between the ages of 3 and 6.
Faced with this latest atrocity, and the ongoing displacement and  
murder of the Indigenous peoples of Colombia that, for generations,  
has been accompanied by the theft of land and constant accusations and  
charges from all sides in the decades-long conflict (that they are  
“collaborating with the enemy”), the National Indigenous Organization  
of Colombia (ONIC) “condemned the systematic genocide we have been  
experiencing, which after the National Minga of Indigenous Resistance  
(of October-November 2008), and so far in 2009, has taken more than 50  
Indians, wounded hundreds and displaced thousands.”
As part of their urgent call, ONIC is calling on the national and  
international communities, human rights defenders, and the UN to play  
an active part in curtailing this humanitarian crisis, sparked by  
aggressive attempts of controlling important strategic territory in  
southern Colombia. ONIC, the Awa, and other Indigenous Peoples of  
Colombia are in a state of high alert. On Friday, February 20th, Awa  
leaders and ONIC called on FARC to turn over the cadavers of the  
victims of this massacre.
This attack is part of a much broader pattern of aggression against  
the indigenous movement. While it is yet another indication of the  
depths that FARC has fallen in terms of any legitimate claim to  
struggling for the rights of the Colombian poor and for truly social  
transformation with justice, a false ideal that, unfortunately, too  
many of its apologists still continue to precariously hold onto, the  
government should be equally held accountable for the cycle of  
violence directed at the Awa. Indeed, the government of Alvaro Uribe  
is using this latest massacre as an excuse to further militarize a  
part of the country where the population rejects all armed actors as a  
direct threat to their life plans.Below I share a very important  
analysis of the situation facing the Awa people of Colombia, and why  
it should be seen as perhaps the most tragic example of the failure of  
Colombian society to accept the vision and the message of the  
country's original inhabitants. This piece was written by the members  
of the Communication Network of the Association of Indigenous Councils  
of Northern Cauca, ACIN, one of the most vocal sectors of the larger  
national movement of indigenous organizations in Colombia. This piece  
was originally published on ACIN's website in Spanish. Here I share  
with you the English translation put together by several of the  
movement's international allies.
MAMA

WHY THEY KILL THE AWÁ
Written by Network of Communication and External Relations for Truth  
and Life of the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca  
(ACIN)
Translated from the original Spanish available here: http://www.nasaacin.org/noticias.htm?x=9550
12 February 2009

We write these lines overcome by tremendous pain and sadness. We write  
from the shared rage we feel towards this criminal act, apparently  
committed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cauca, FARC, whom we  
condemn for these irreversible horrors and the shedding of innocent  
blood.

As we write, the Colombian Minister of Defense, Juan Manuel Santos, is  
arriving in the Department of Nariño to conduct the military  
operations that constitute the government’s response to the massacres  
and terror these indigenous communities are now facing. Referring to  
the difficulty the government authorities are having in obtaining the  
cooperation of the indigenous peoples, Minister Santos stated to the  
media: “We hope we can convince [the Awá] that the best position, the  
best attitude they can have is to collaborate with the authorities,  
with the Armed Forces.”

“Kick them while they’re down” is the phrase that best describes the  
government’s reaction to these terrible circumstances, basing its  
response on the supposition that, according to the information  
available, the FARC committed the massacre. The result is that the  
atrocity—this massacre, the ongoing massive displacement, and  
disappearances, all faced by the indigenous communities caught in the  
middle of this terror—is blamed on the victims. It is their fault,  
implies the Minister, because they refused to collaborate with the  
Armed Forces. He tries to convince us that, if the Armed Forces had  
been in the territory, the violence would not have happened. As a  
consequence, the complete militarization of the territory is underway  
with the pretext of protecting the Awá, who in turn run to the forests  
while some of their leaders, seeing no other option, call for the help  
of the Armed Forces. The Colombian corporate media, the government  
coalition and their spokespeople all echo these calls, and Colombians - 
terrified by the horror of this ongoing genocide, in turn call for the  
same.

United in calling for the protection of these people and for justice  
to be served, we denounce the assassins, whoever they may be; in this  
case, we denounce the FARC, who in carrying out these actions have  
confirmed a terrible truth: they have evolved into one more agent of  
terror against the people. These perverse acts are the same as those  
carried out by the paramilitaries, the Armed Forces, and all others  
who use violent force to subjugate Colombia’s peoples and communities.  
We have denounced them before, and we denounce them now: at its core,  
terror is used as a means for achieving certain ends that ought to be  
acknowledged. If these ends are ignored, the only expected result is  
atrocity; without objectives, massacre and terror have no motive. They  
would be ends in themselves – terror for terror’s sake. But terrorism,  
from wherever it comes, is a mechanism to achieve objectives other  
than those stated; that is why the truth demands a different reaction,  
one that comes from the entire Colombian population, from indigenous  
peoples and organizations, and one that is backed by governments and  
peoples of the world.

The truth can be found in the answer to a necessary question: Why do  
they massacre the Awá? It is absolutely critical to ask this and to  
react coherently and firmly in consequence. To do otherwise is to  
allow the terror of this massacre to serve as an excuse to commit  
further massacres, as a mechanism to displace the people from their  
territory, culture, and way of life, and to make them disappear in a  
premeditated genocide. If this happens, those who have sacrificed to  
defend their lives, cultures and territories will have fought for  
nothing. Once again, we will have allowed ourselves to be convinced  
that these massacres against the Awá in Nariño have nothing to do with  
the massacres in San José de Apartadó, Urabá, Catatumbo, Amazonía,  
Cauca and across the country. That these massacres have nothing to do  
with the murders of women, trade unionists, peasants, human rights  
activists, and the entire package that accompanies acts of terror, no  
matter who the perpetrators are [1].
Because we understand terrorism to be a perverse means to achieve  
perverse ends, we refuse to forget, we point out the crimes, and we  
denounce and condemn the FARC with pain and rage, not only for this  
latest crime in which they have sown pain, death and misery, but also  
for contributing to the pillage that forces indigenous peoples from  
their communities and lands.

The Facts: 1. Terror as a Tool

“We are People of the Mountain, children of the wild forest, and for  
these reasons they are going to have to take our lives” was the  
premonitory statement of Eder Burgos, coordinator of Camawari, of  
August 10, 2008. It was made during the hearing to review the critical  
situation of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Rights Law  
(IHL) faced by the Awá people. The hearing took place in the presence  
of officials from various levels of the Colombian government, watchdog  
officers, UN representatives, and NGOs from the Human Rights sector,  
under the watchful eye of over seventy people from indigenous groups,  
most of them members of this people who had mobilized in southern  
Colombia. According to the communiqué from the National Organization  
of Indigenous People of Colombia (ONIC, by its Spanish acronym),  
“during the hearing, authorities and representatives of the Awa people  
submitted a report obtained through grassroots consultation, the  
Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the Ombudsman’s  
Office and SAT”. Both the hearing [2] and the report evidence the  
dramatic developments of the pillage for land by all the armed  
participants against the indigenous population. The communiqué points  
out that communities in the townships of Tumaco, Barbacoas, Roberto  
Payan, Samaniego and Ricaurte have brought forward specific abuses,  
such as “‘three days of bombardments, including places where the  
displaced population [was] coming together in the town of Ricaurte,  
specifically in the indigenous reserves of Magui and Imbima,’ as had  
already been made clear by the regional Ombudsman for the Department  
of Nariño to his superior in a letter dated today”. These are the  
territories where the community is currently being massacred.

Both the Resolution and the Report denounce and give clear evidence of  
the presence of terror in that territory, the dirty war against the  
civilian population that implicates the Armed Forces as well as  
illegal armed actors, supporting the claims that terror is being used  
against the indigenous communities as a strategy for submission and to  
deprive them of their land [3].

The evidence contained in the Report, the Hearing and the Resolution,  
put together, demonstrate the groundlessness of the allegations made  
by the Minister of Defense. The Armed Forces have been and currently  
are spreading terror against the Awá; therefore, far from being a  
warrantor against abuse and the violation of Human Rights, they are a  
direct threat against its application. All the armed actors are  
exercising violence against the Awá.
2. Greed and Megaprojects

a. Agribusiness and plantations: The Colombian Pacific Coast and the  
lowlands, all of which include the ancestral territories of the Awá  
now suffering massacres and forced displacement, are zones of  
strategic interest for projects of capital accumulation, both legal  
and illegal, including monocrop operations of rubber, and palm oil, as  
well as the cultivation of coca and laboratories for the processing of  
coca leaves. As is the case for the rest of the country, these  
agribusiness projects demand the use of, and rely upon terror  
inflicted against the ancestral inhabitants of these lands [4]. Their  
displacement coincides with the theft of their land [5] [6].

b. Mining and Vital Resources:
As the Situation Bulletin on Human Rights and IHL in Nariño concludes,  
“The geographical resources in Nariño have brought about investment  
analyses by multinational corporations to explore the viability of  
projects for strategic resources such as uranium and gold” [7]. As  
reported by the national agency for the mining industry, INGEOMINAS,  
Sociedad Kedahda S.A., a division of Anglo Gold Ashanti, submitted 110  
applications for mining contracts in Nariño in July of 2007.

These applications are disturbing based on this corporation’s history  
of intervention: there is a strong correlation between the activity of  
this corporation and the violation of Human Rights. Resources among  
the 37 municipalities in Nariño for which Kedahda S.A. has submitted  
applications are as follows: for the municipalities of Taminango,  
Leiva, Rosario, Policarpa, Cumbitara, Samaniego, and Barbacoas there  
is a wealth of gold, zinc, copper, silver, platinum, molibdenum and  
other minerals, and it is in these townships that there has been a  
notorious presence of Armed Forces and illegal armed groups that has  
produced grave Human Rights situations and violations of IHL against  
the civilian population, which has been subjected to cruelty,  
degradation and inhumane treatment. The abundance of water and wood  
resources, biodiversity, biotechnology, hydrocarbons and oxygen in  
this region is outstanding. The ancestral lands of the Awá are under  
threat from the interest expressed by the great transnational  
extractive industry.

c. Infrastructure:
The Multimodal Axis of the Amazon [8] of the Project for Integration  
of Regional South American Infrastructure (IIRSA by its Spanish  
acronym) runs across the lands of the Awá, starting from the Colombian  
Pacific Coast. The 284 kilometers of highway running between the  
Colombian cities of Pasto and Tumaco cut through targeted Awá lands  
and are a part of the multimodal corridor stretching along Tumaco –  
Puerto Asis – Belem do Para (the latter in Brazil) that will  
communicate the Pacific and Atlantic coasts across South America and  
through the Amazon region. Beyond the benefits that these modern and  
expensive highways may generate, not to mention the enormously  
destructive environmental impact they will bring, these roads are  
being laid with the clear intention of opening new territories for the  
extraction of vast resources to be privately exploited by  
transnational corporations. The roads are to be managed under a  
private operator scheme. Their existence, construction and use impose  
the submission, forced displacement and destruction of the peoples who  
live in its path and the areas it will affect. The Awá live in the  
midst of this planned infrastructural mega-project and have thus  
become dispensable. The disappearance or subjugation of the Awá serves  
the interests of those who seek to obtain benefits from this mega- 
project, one that threatens and diminishes all peoples who claim  
rights over the territories that stand in its way [9].

d. Tourism and other interests:
The natural beauty and wealth of resources in the lands of the Awá,  
both in the Colombian Pacific coast and lowlands of Nariño, are ideal  
places for the tourism industry, which is frequently used to  
articulate projects for the exploration, exploitation and private  
patenting of the life and knowledge of the territory and its peoples.  
The tourism industry expels or exploits the dispossessed indigenous  
peoples, raking in enormous profits and seizing autonomous territories  
and peoples as though they were commodities existing for the sole  
purpose of accumulation.
Carrot and Stick: Law and Terror

Those who promote and ultimately benefit from death and pillage  
combine “all forms of struggle” to access the riches and resources  
they seek. Meanwhile, diverse armed actors, both legal and illegal,  
carry out the dirty work of terror through criminal war tactics  
directed against these communities. The strategic, awaited and  
inevitable result is the privatization and plunder of their territory,  
a process through which the Colombian government implements policies  
that provide the legal and institutional framework needed for the  
exploitation of the land.

The Rural Statute [10] (or Law 1152 of 2007) provides a direct  
example. The sole paragraph of the law’s Article 123 reads:  
“procedures involving the establishment, expansion, or reorganization  
of indigenous reserves shall not be allowed to take effect within the  
geographical limits determined in Article 2 of Law 70 of 1993, nor in  
areas of the country that present similar conditions.” Article 2 of  
Law 70 (1993) delimits the Pacific Basin as a territory located  
between the Chiles volcano, on the Ecuadorian border, and the Gulf of  
Urabá, on the Atlantic Coast, to the Pacific Coast. This immense  
territory spanning mountains, foothills and coasts, includes the  
Colombian territory of the Awá people of Nariño.

According to the article cited in the Rural Statute, indigenous  
reserves cannot be established, expanded or reorganized in the Pacific  
Basin. Thus the Awá people lose, through law, the right to a large  
part of their current and ancestral territory. As a result, their  
territory is ‘liberated’ for economic interests that ultimately  
benefit – whether directly or indirectly – the actors of terror. A  
total of 27 legal petitions by the Awá community have been suppressed:  
4 for the establishment of reserves, 8 for their expansion, and 15 for  
their reorganization.

Currently, the Constitutional Court is set to issue a ruling regarding  
the Rural Statute. If this law is declared unconstitutional, as was  
the Forest Law (Ley Forestal) in April 2008 (for violating the  
obligation of prior consultation with affected communities) [11], the  
Awá and the other indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples of the  
Pacific region might be able to bring forth legal actions to resolve  
their claims to territorial rights. These necessary legal permits have  
been impossible to obtain thanks to the actions of those who massacre,  
displace, confine, and threaten. Meanwhile, new owners of the  
territories appear with false titles that are legalized all too easily.

Eventually, the inefficiency of the state, laws and terror will have  
combined to consolidate the pillage and expropriation as an  
accomplished historical fact. By then, the mega-projects and usurpers  
of riches will have been established, the territory will have been  
exploited, and the struggle, sacrifice and suffering of the victims  
will be buried by the infamy of a history written by thoughtlessness  
and greed.

The Awá people struggle for their dignity, lives and the life of their  
territory. They are exterminated for the sake of insatiable greed.  
Although it is important and urgent to know who committed this  
terrible and unpardonable massacre, so that justice may be served, to  
make known the truth and respect those affected and their families,  
even more important is to understand that they were massacred to strip  
them from their territories. That is why we must denounce and mobilize  
to resist the project served by terror against our sisters and  
brothers. Today, the project kills in order to steal.
An Appeal

First, we join with the ONIC, all indigenous peoples, and all those  
who feel the commitment and necessity to accompany the victims in  
solidarity. We call on the Humanitarian Minga to affirm its presence  
and convert pain into companionship and concrete action.

Secondly, we call together those who have been demanding the  
mobilization of the Social and Community Minga of Resistance. The  
message is clear: the attempted assassination of Aida Quilcué that  
left Edwin Legarda, her companion, dead – yet another ‘false positive’  
carried out against popular resistance by the National Army under  
orders from the designers and promoters of the policy of ‘Democratic  
Security’ – is currently followed by further massacres, this time  
committed by the FARC, which serve as a means for escalating the  
pillage before the insensitivity of the society and the world.

This issue is not exclusive to the Awá, nor is it a problem faced only  
by indigenous peoples or by just one community in Nariño. This act of  
terror is part of the acceleration of policies of pillage implemented  
through death. This is Plan Colombia in action, an economic mega- 
project that hands over our territories and our lives to the greed of  
global capital.

Facing so much horror, we can no longer watch from afar, waiting for  
our turn to come. We have to understand why they killed us then, why  
they kill us now, and why we must rise to stop them, to resist. Now is  
the time to reject, for once and for all, the horrors committed by the  
FARC in the name of the people, just as we reject the horrors of the  
regime.

It is also painfully evident what little use it is to have land,  
denounce human rights violations and negotiate agreements with an  
illegitimate government when its development model – which includes  
agreements and laws that are served by terror, from wherever it comes  
– means only massacres, displacement and pillage. The obligation to  
resist the model in its entirety, and as a priority, is paramount. In  
these conditions, faced with all the terrible facts, what must be  
recognized above all other concerns (even the political-electoral) is  
the urgency of an agenda of mobilization and action in a Minga that  
resists and stops the accelerated course of the pillage, of which this  
most recent massacre is a part.

We call upon the Social and Community Minga. We are putting forward  
the agenda to resist the death model that is on the way through the  
FTA, laws of pillage, broken agreements, terror and in the absence of  
a people weaving together common struggles for freedom. Let us decide  
together, in Minga, how to stop the horror of the FARC, the government  
and the rest of the armed groups in Nariño and Colombia. Let us figure  
out how we can support the Awá people and, with them, defend their  
territory. Let us determine how to defend life and our own territories  
from this assured and approaching death, one that exists so that a few  
may continue to accumulate.

So that the dead may rest and their families rebuild their lives, so  
that the dignity of the Awá is restored, so that no one may steal from  
them their territories, so that those with guns and hate leave us in  
peace, so that the murderers no longer declare that they fight for the  
people or that they have come to protect us, so that we have a country  
of peoples without owners, so that they haven’t been massacred for  
nothing: the Social and Community Minga. Let us meet in a collective  
territory and build the Minga from our pain, consciousness and path.  
The Awá are not alone [12].
Notes
[1] These victims include civilians massacred by the Armed Forces,  
then dressed up as guerrillas and shown as proof of the progress in  
the War on Terror, a tactic known in Colombia as creating ‘false  
positives’.
[2]Awá deciden y se arriesgan a contar sus amenazas http://www.onic.org.co/a_derechos_not.shtml?AA_SL_Session=1f88a61fdde2a7c96da6110ca4de211a&nocache=invalidate&sh_itm=048f034ba5335c382645b6e281c02f94&add_disc=1
[3] Declaración Final Preaudencia Nariño y Putumayo http://www.redcolombia.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=186
[4] Resolución Defensorial No. 53. Pueblo Awá http://www.nasaacin.org/uploads/646f63756d656e746f732e2e2e2e2e2e/Resoluci_n_Defensorial_53__Pueblo_Aw__2007.pdf
[5] Boletín Situacional sobre los Derechos Humanos y el DIH en Nariño http://ordh.org/Boletines/Boletin_3.pdf
[6] See Eje Multimodal Amazonas de la IIRSA, página 36 http://www.semillas.org.co/descargas/cartilla-IIRSA-2.pdf
[7] Boletín Situacional sobre los Derechos Humanos y el DIH en Nariño http://ordh.org/Boletines/Boletin_3.pdf
[8] Eje Vial Multimodal Amazonas ¿oportunidad o amenaza para la  
región? http://www.etniasdecolombia.org/actualidadetnica/detalle.asp?cid=5691
[9] See Eje Multimodal Amazonas de la IIRSA, página 36 http://www.semillas.org.co/descargas/cartilla-IIRSA-2.pdf
[10] Estatuto Rural, Ley 1152 de 2007. http://www.elabedul.net/Documentos/Leyes/2007/Ley_1152.pdf
[11] Sentencia C-030 de Abril de 2008 http://www.agronet.gov.co/www/docs_agronet/20089311148_SENTENCIA_C_030_DE_2008_Ley_Forestal_2.pdf 
.
En esa medida, de acuerdo con el ordenamiento constitucional y en  
particular con el Convenio 169 de la OIT, que en esta materia hace  
parte del bloque de constitucionalidad, la adopción de la ley debió  
haberse consultado con esas comunidades, para buscar aproximaciones  
sobre la manera de evitar que la misma las afectara negativamente, así  
como sobre el contenido mismo de las pautas y criterios que, aún  
cuando de aplicación general, pudiesen tener una repercusión directa  
sobre los territorios indígenas y tribales, o sobre sus formas de vida.
[12] HOUGHTON, JC, Editor. La Tierra contra la Muerte http://www.prensarural.org/spip/IMG/pdf/10383_1_La_Tierra_contra_la_muerte.pdf





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Posted By Mario Alfonso Murillo Ayala (MAMA) to MAMA Radio at  
2/21/2009 03:23:00 PM