by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Dec 26, 2017 | Colonialism & Conquest
Featured image: The Guarani continue fighting for their land rights despite continuous attacks. © Fiona Watson/Survival International
by Survival International
Ten years ago the Brazilian government signed a landmark agreement with the Guarani tribe, which obliged it to identify all their ancestral lands.
The core objective of the agreement, which was drawn up by the public prosecutors office, was to speed up the recognition of the Guarani’s land rights in the southern state of Mato Grosso do Sul.
However, one decade on, most surveys have not even been carried out and the authorities’ failure to recognize the Guarani’s land rights continues to have a terrible impact on the tribe’s health and well-being.
With no immediate hope of recovering their land and rebuilding their livelihoods, thousands of Guarani are trapped in overcrowded reservations where the prosecutors say there is so little land that “social economic and cultural life is impossible.”
Other Guarani communities live along busy highways or on fragments of their ancestral land, hemmed in by vast sugar cane and soya plantations. They cannot plant, fish or hunt and have no access to clean water.
A Guarani-Kaiowa couple sit outside their makeshift roadside settlement of the Apy Ka’y community, near Dourados, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. © Paul Patrick Borhaug/Survival
Health workers report that these communities are suffering from severe side effects of pesticides used by agribusiness. Some communities say their water resources and houses are deliberately sprayed by the ranchers.
A recent study estimated that 3% of the indigenous population in the state could be poisoned by pesticides, some of which are banned in the EU.
Malnutrition especially among babies and young children is common. According to Gilmar Guarani: “Children cry and cannot put up with this situation any more. They are really suffering and are very weak. They are practically eating earth. It’s desperate.”
Mato Grosso do Sul is home to the second largest indigenous population in Brazil, with 70,000 Indians belonging to seven tribes.
Much of their ancestral land has been stolen from them by cattle ranchers and agribusiness, and now they occupy a mere 0.2 % of the state.
John Nara Gomes says: “Today the life of a cow is worth more than that of an indigenous child… The cows are well fed and the children are starving. Before we were free to hunt, fish and gather fruits. Today we are shot by gunmen.”
The despair among the Guarani at the loss of their lands and self sufficient life is reflected in extremely high rates of suicide . In the period 2000-2015 there were 752 suicides. Statistics collected since 1996 reveal a rate that is 21 times greater than the national one. This is probably under-estimated as many suicides are not reported.
Damiana Cavanha, leader of the Apy Ka’y community, has seen the deaths of three of her children and her husband. She is determinedly planning a reoccupation of their ancestral land where they are buried. © Paul Patrick Borhaug/Survival
The Guarani also face high levels of violence and are constantly targeted by ranchers’ gunmen whenever they attempt to take back parts of their ancestral land. Recent data shows that 60% of all the assassinations of indigenous people in Brazil occurred in Mato Grosso do Sul state.
With a government and congress dominated by the powerful agribusiness sector, the landowners in Mato Grosso do Sul will not cede an inch. Many have resorted to the courts as a delaying tactic, to challenge the identification of Guarani territories. One core Guarani territory has had 57 legal challenges.
Despite this bleak scenario many Guarani vow to fight on: “Brazil was always our land. The hope that feeds me is that our land will be recognized, for without it we cannot care for nature and feed ourselves. We shall fight and die for it” says Geniana Barbosa, a young Guarani woman.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Dec 7, 2017 | Colonialism & Conquest
Featured image: Cejudhcan Derechos Humanos
by Courtney Parker / Intercontinental Cry
¡Ya Basta! A phrase known for its political and revolutionary connotations throughout much of the Spanish-speaking world, translates roughly into English as, ‘Enough is Enough!’
It is a statement of finality; a concrete call to action; a heightened call for awareness; and an official call of duty to end cultures of violence and impunity against Indigenous Peoples.
His name was Felipe Perez Gamboa. He was 24 years old.
According to Mark Rivas, who has aided in representing the Moskito Council of Elders at the United Nations, Gamboa was a leader of much distinction among the young people of the community of La Esperanza on the traditional Indigenous frontier region of Moskitia – located on the northern Caribbean coast of colonial Nicaragua and home to the largest tropical rainforest, second only to the Amazon, in the western world.
For his part, Rivas credited Cejudhcan Derechos Humanos – a local NGO whose founder, lawyer Lottie Cunningham, and staff, have been on the receiving end of death threats for their ongoing human rights work in the region – with originally disseminating and confirming the tragedy to the larger community.
The traditional Indigenous frontier regions of Moskitia have been terrorized by mounting acts of deadly colonial violence, stemming from the expanding agricultural frontier and the rigidly nationalist agenda, since 2015.
IC first began reporting on the escalating tragedies in the traditional Indigenous regions in June of 2016.
Readers may refer to previous analyses here and in other outlets concerning the role of the Ortega government, neoliberalism, and the fraudulent banner of ‘Christian Socialism’ the fallen Sandinista leader still attempts to hang over his tenuous authoritarian rule.
As of right now, we can do no more than reach out to the Indigenous rights community in the rest of Latin America, and across the world, with the simple message, made famous by the Zapatsista, that ‘Enough IS Enough’.
It’s time to end this culture of impunity surrounding deadly violence against Indigenous Peoples – in this instance, those who are protecting the last bastions of a biodiverse, climate mitigating rainforest.
¡Ya basta!
¡YA BASTA!
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 15, 2017 | Colonialism & Conquest
by Brett Spencer / Intercontinental Cry
On Saturday, Nov. 11, members and supporters of the Miskitu indigenous party, Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Aslatakanka (YATAMA) crowded into their burnt down compound to celebrate their thirtieth anniversary. Over one thousand people were present, including many from surrounding villages that came to listen to the party’s political leader and congressman, Brooklyn Rivera.
The celebration came just days after riot police and military were flown in from Managua to control dissent following Nicaragua’s municipal elections. YATAMA and its supporters roundly denounced the election results on Nov. 5 that deposed them of control of the municipalities of Bilwi, Waspam, Prinzapolka and Awaltara.
YATAMA’s supporters, who took to the streets in protest of the results—which YATAMA deemed fraudulent—were met with violence by military and paramilitary forces carrying automatic weapons.
“We were protesting electoral fraud,” said the party’s leader, Brooklyn Rivera. “We were protecting our people. We were not expecting the military or the police to attack. Our youth tried to resist the attack, but you cannot fight back with rocks when they have machine guns.”
The violence in Bilwi reached a new low when YATAMA’s headquarters was set on fire Monday night. At least part of the event was caught on film, but no one has taken responsibility for setting fire to the compound.
YATAMA and many residents of Puerto Cabezas-Bilwi say that local residents are not responsible.
Brooklyn Rivera, who was in his office when the building was set ablaze, insists that it was the police and army. “I was inside there when they attacked. It was not the Sandinista youth or local Sandinista members. It was the army and the police who did this, not our local people. This violence was organized from Managua,” he said.
IC confirms that party leadership has been harassed, attacked and threatened by military and paramilitary personal as government forces laid siege to the city. “The burning of the YATAMA house, the radio station and the destruction of the Indian statue came directly from the special forces of the police, not from some local Sandinista group,” said Mr. Rivera. “The leadership of YATAMA is not fighting, we are here accompanying our people.”
These allegations suggest that the post-election unrest in Bilwi is not a local conflict of “Miskitu versus Miskitu,” but rather a government crackdown on indigenous resistance. There are currently one hundred and three political prisoners in Bilwi following the municipal elections, and the arrests of protesters throughout the country show that distrust of the democratic process in Nicaragua is not isolated to the Atlantic Coast.
Mr. Rivera was pleased to have peace during the party’s celebration, and he is already planning a path forward to remain a pillar of support for the indigenous population. “We must rebuild, it is important that our people have staples of communication and resistance like our radio station to keep unity in our communities.”
It has been a difficult week for the party, as it comes to terms with the iron grip of militarization. The aftermath of the election has left many questioning if YATAMA should direct itself away from a political agenda, when each election is met with allegations of fraud and violence.
Mr. Rivera understands this sentiment and frustration, citing a recent resolution by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, he commented, “We are violating our own rights by participating in this election.”
When asked why the national government has exhausted so much power to prevent YATAMA from succeeding, Mr. Rivera did not hesitate. “They are trying to colonize our people and our land to control our natural resources. We resisted, and now they are trying to totally destroy indigenous organization.”
As relations between YATAMA and the Ortega administration continue to deteriorate, residents are beginning to accuse the government of resorting to the same kind of reactionary violence seen in the 1980s. For now, the city remains peopled with military personnel, as YATAMA plans to reopen its radio station and reconstruct its pillars of resistance.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 11, 2017 | Colonialism & Conquest
Featured image: Amid reports the Sandinista army has ordered his capture or execution; historic political and spiritual leader of the Indigenous political party of Yatama, Brooklyn Rivera, prepares to brave a public appearance. Photo: Lloyd Lopez
by Laura Hobson Herlihy / Intercontinental Cry
Since the elections on Sunday Nov. 5, Yatama has lost far more than the municipalities of Waspam, Bilwi, Prinzapolka, and Awaltara. At least four people have been killed, dozens have been injured, and 50 have been taken as political prisoners; Yatama’s Miskitu-language radio station and sacred headquarters was burned down; the “indio guerillero” (warrior Indian) statue was destroyed; and Yatama’s own flag was replaced by the flag of the Sandinista nation-state. Their backs are to the wall.
Yatama leaders’ feelings of helplessness does not fit within the Miskitu world-view, however. The Miskitu Peoples still see themselves as successful warriors. They fought alongside the British during the colonial era and were not conquered by the Spanish until 1894, when their Muskitia homeland was incorporated into the Nicaraguan state. As fighters in the US-backed Contra War within the Nicaraguan revolution (1979-1990), the Miskitu were awarded a pluri-ethnic homeland, almost half of the country, with two politically autonomous regions.
So why now in 2017 do the Miskitu feel helpless? In the past, the Miskitu aligned with the British and US governments. Today, they have no international alliances. Only Russia and China are current players in Nicaragua. Chinese mega-projects and Russian military bases and armory, including a recent purchase of 50 tanks, fortify the Ortega government.
On Tuesday, Nov. 7, the Miskitu Yatama sympathizers placed a road block in Sisin, blocking passage of vehicles and haulting commerce between Waspam and Bilwi. Rumors began that Yatama men were arming themselves in rural communities and planned to fight in Bilwi and burn down the entire town of Bilwi (pop. 50,000), the capital of the North Caribbean Autonomous Region. The US Embassy evacuated its Fulbright scholar in Tuapi. Bilwi residents experience anxiety and PTSD.
Speaking with Brooklyn Rivera by phone on the evening of Friday, Nov. 10, IC asked him directly if Yatama is planning to cause violence. He told us, “No, we are the victims of violence. The state is committing violence against us. We are poor indigenous people. We don’t have guns, we have rocks and they have automatic weapons. We can’t fight that.”
When asked if his troops are arming in communities, he responded, “That is just gossip.”
We also asked if Yatama plans to burn down Bilwi. He told us, “No, how can we burn down our home?”
Rivera continued, “Thousands of Miskitu people were not allowed to vote in the municipal elections. Then, the Riot Police from Managua backed by the local Bilwi Police burned down the Yatama radio station and headquarters.”
Rivera, now 65 years old, has served as the highest leader of the Miskitu people since the early 1980s. On the Monday following the 2017 municipal elections, Rivera had a busy day—he escaped from Riot Police and later, the devastating fire at the Yatama house.
Rivera interjected, “Tomorrow at 1:00 in the baseball stadium, we will celebrate Yatama’s 30-year anniversary.” He is the founder and long-term Yatama director. We asked if he plans to attend the celebration. Rivera replied quickly, “Sure, I have to celebrate along with my people.” We pointed out that he may be arrested. He demured, “I am ready for anything that comes. I am the leader of my people, I have done nothing wrong. I haven’t killed anyone.”
Meanwhile, Bilwi sleeps lightly tonight, with the Yatama celebration planned for mid-day. Bilwi is highly militarized, with over 100 riot police roaming the streets along with rogue neighborhood gangs. Any gathering could easily turn into a violent confrontation. The stage is set for a showdown.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 10, 2017 | Colonialism & Conquest
by Laura Herlihy / Intercontinental Cry
The Nicaraguan Sandinista (FSLN) government of Daniel Ortega and the indigenous Miskitu people are repeating their own history. Resembling the Cold War era of the 1980s, violence is playing out again along the Caribbean Coast. At least four indigenous Miskitu men are dead, several are missing, and many more have been taken as political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in the violent anti-indigenous riots that followed the municipal election in Bilwi-Puerto Cabezas on Sunday, Nov. 5.
A few hours after polls closed, officials from the indigenous political party Yatama (Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Aslatakanka/Children of the Mother Earth), calculated having nearly 3,000 more votes than the opposition FSLN party. While Yatama officials awaited the arrival of ballot boxes from their loyal communities, the FSLN claimed victory and celebrated shortly after 10:00 PM. The following day, Yatama officials denounced the FSLN for lack of transparency in the election; they also claimed to have documented electoral fraud and voter suppression, through the manipulation of voter data, multiple voting by FSLN sympathizers (by using removable ink on their thumbs); and the purchasing of votes.
Yatama held a protest march on Monday afternoon but were confronted by Riot Police brought in from Managua, backed by Sandinista youth gangs. The Riot Police reportedly turned a blind eye to the gang’s destruction of property belonging to Yatama sympathizers, including costly vehicles.
A car set on fire during the massive riot lights up the night
Later, both the Yatama headquarters (a sacred temple of indigenous identity) and Radio Yapti Tasba (Yatama’s indigenous language-based, community radio station) were destroyed by fire.
Rampant destruction across Biliw (also known as Puerto Cabezas) included the YATAMA Indigenous party headquarters and both of their radio stations, leaving the Sandinista radio station as the only operating, on-air station in a region which relies on community radio as a prime source of information
The FSLN flag was then mounted high upon the surviving radio tower, replacing Yatama’s flag.
Raising of the FSLN flag
Perhaps most symbolically, the iconic statue of the Indian (“El Indio”) was demolished in Bilwi’s town center. The statue, erected decades ago, represented the indigenous struggle. Caribbean coastal residents lost a significant amount of their cultural patrimony in one volatile day.
The iconic statue before it was destroyed
Local intellectuals claim this election and its aftermath symbolize the final conquest and domination of the Muskitia region, finishing off what Rigoberto Cabezas initiated in 1894, when he incorporated the Muskitia territory into Nicaragua and ousted the last Miskitu King, Robert Henry Clarence. Today, in a similar way, the Sandinista state attempts to eliminate the long-term spiritual and political leader of the Miskitu people, Brooklyn Rivera, and the Yatama organization he founded almost 30 years ago to the day, on Nov. 11, 1987.
Para-military forces apprehended Rivera the afternoon of Monday, Nov. 6, but he escaped when Yatama youth fought his captors. Rivera and other top Yatama leaders (Reynaldo Francis, Bilwi’s 2017 Yatama mayoral candidate, and Elizabeth Henriquez) are now in hiding, threatened by arrest warrants and the burning of their houses by FSLN sympathizers. Their children also remain in hiding, along with many Yatama officials and their family members.
Since 2008, a new wave of colonization has occurred in the Nicaraguan Muskitia by mestizo agricultural and cattle-ranching colonists from the Pacific. Colonists cut down trees in ancestral, indigenous rainforest lands, illegally settle in the region, and vote Sandinista.
To date, in their fight with the colonists, 44 Miskitu men have been killed, 22 have been kidnapped, and dozens have been injured. These indigenous environmental activists are protecting their rainforest lands for the global good. The IACHR (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) passed two resolutions in 2015 and 2016, urging the state to protect the Miskitu people, but the Nicaragua state has not complied.
Accused Sandinista aggressions since the Municipal Elections include:
- Arbitrary repression and imprisonment of indigenous people.
- Burning of indigenous community radio station Yapta Tasba of the Yatama organization.
- Burning of the Yatama headquarters that served as a scared temple for its indigenous supporters.
- Criminalization of Yatama leaders, including the detainment of long-term leader and national congressman Brooklyn Rivera, who escaped from para-military police.
- Destruction of monuments: the Indian statue in the town’s center that stood as a symbol of indigenous resistance for 30 years.
- Suppression of the Yatama flag by the FSLN flag.
- Militarization of communities with Riot Police, who voted in local elections although not residents.
- At present, the Riot Police from Managua are fighting with automatic weapons against indigenous Yatama youth armed with mainly mortar, rocks, handguns, and knives.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Oct 18, 2017 | Colonialism & Conquest
Featured image: Three young brothers and their mother, from a family with 6 children overall – Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who fled to Bilwi, Nicaragua in August of 2015 from the frontier community of Santa Clara. Their family is struggling to get by in Bilwi; they are not used to needing money to survive. They don’t consider Bilwi their home and only wish for peace to be restored in the frontier community of Santa Clara so they may return to live in their traditional ways on their legal, traditional land. Photo by Courtney Parker. 2016
by Courtney Parker / Intercontinental Cry
One day after she received an ominous warning, Indigenous Community Judge Celedonia Zalazar Point and her husband, Tito José González Bendles, were shot to death by Colonos in the northern Caribbean region of Nicaragua, a region that has been plagued by an escalating land conflict with illegal settlers since at least 2015. The unthinkable double homicide took place in the Tungla, Prinzu Awala Indigenous territory—Judge Celedonia Zalazar Point’s jurisdiction in the municipality of Prinzapolka.
La Prensa journalist, José Garth Medina, reported a statement from The Center for Justice and Human Rights of the Atlantic Coast (Cejudhcan) on Sept. 8, the date of the killings, concluding that the settlers entered the family home and killed both husband and wife with firearms.
Despite claims issued by local authorities regarding pending investigations into this most recent incident, Medina reminded readers that the November 2016 massacre (which IC also reported on) of a Mayanga family by Colono invaders, has yet to generate any arrests.
Colonos are armed, Mestizo imperialist settlers who are terrorizing Nicaragua’s Indigenous communities. Their endgame varies from one faction to the next; however most of them are interested in expanding the agricultural frontier with cattle farms or illegal mining interests—an effort that runs parallel to what has been happening across the Amazon for decades.
Many Colonos are also in possession of illegal land permits that grant them ownership to traditional Miskito lands.
In fact, the Indigenous territories of the northern Caribbean coast, where this recent double homicide took place, is also home to the largest tropical rainforest second only to the Amazon rainforest in the Western Hemisphere. The Bosawás Biosphere Reserve received official UNESCO designation as a biosphere reserve in 1997.
La Inicativa Mesoamericana de Mujeres Defensoras de Derechos Humanos (IM-Defensoras) has issued a call on the international human rights community “to remain vigilant about the grave situation facing the indigenous communities of the Caribbean Coast.” They called on Nicaraguan authorities to investigate the double homicide of the community judicial leader and her spouse; and in the process, end the culture of impunity that surrounds the ongoing murders of Indigenous Peoples in Nicaragua.
Even amidst the Guardian’s largely publicized partnership with Global Witness—a human rights watchdog group that has defended their methods, model, and investigation into the killings in Nicaragua after receiving waves of criticism from leftist groups operating ‘in solidarity’ with the Sandinista/Ortega government—the Guardian now appears unwilling to directly address the wave of deadly violence in Nicaragua, or even utter the country’s name in articles stemming from the partnership.
While the individual names of the judge and her spouse are listed at the top of their ‘recent killings list’, the Guardian‘s most recent published article, dated Oct. 11, makes no mention of the couple, let alone the cold-blooded colonialism that drove their murders.
To be sure, Community Judge Celedonia Zalazar Point and her husband, Tito José González Bendle, were killed by senseless colonial, greed-fueled violence in a country that has ironically managed to brand itself in many circles of international human rights discourse as a global leader of Indigenous rights recognition. Behind the scenes, the Indigenous Peoples of the northern Caribbean coast have been begging for years to FSLN/Sandinista authorities to end the culture of impunity that surrounds—and establishes a complicity in—this slow burning genocide.
Community leader, Brooklyn Rivera, has had his name smeared through the mud from every side but he’s still treated like a modern day mythic hero when he travels the frontier, which unlike the loud-mouthed Gringo ‘Sandal-istas’ who got caught up in the romance of a campesino revolution in the 1980’s—and have been unwilling to update their internal programming to recognize the economic and political ideological shifts that have taken place in the Sandinista model under Ortega—he travels to these violence-torn communities regularly. He is recognized everywhere he goes, every much the leader he was when Russell Means of the American Indian Movement (AIM) fought by his side during the last Indian wars.
The Moskito Council of Elders, led by Chief of the Elders, Ottis Lam Hoppington, are an entirely separate faction of tribal political influence in Moskitia and have no direct connections to Brooklyn Rivera or the various factions of the Indigenous political party of YATAMA that have emerged over the years. And yet, the message they send to the world is the same.
The colonial violence and invasion, which has greatly escalated since June of 2015 according to Hoppington, has disrupted their ancient way of life and connection to the land—and even disrupted the natural cycles of the region to the point of drying up rivers, causing animals to migrate, and causing the climate patterns to shift. The residents of Moskitia have been vigilant stewards of one of the most biodiverse areas in the world since ancient times; and, this is all being threatened – the Indigenous Peoples’ lives, and the climate mitigating biodiverse forest—by armed factions who, according to Hoppington, are directly supported by the Ortega government.
Chief of the Moskito Council of Elders, Otis Lam Hoppington, on the far left. Photo taken by Courtney Parker in February of 2016 in Bilwi, Nicaragua as the Elders met to discuss their list of demands from the YATAMA political party in a private meeting preceding the YATAMA conference in February of 2016.
In a statement collected from Brooklyn Rivera last year, he explains in great detail, the de-evolution of relations between the residents of Moskitia and the Sandinista government. This history ranges from a time of civil war when Indigenous villages were burned to the ground by the Marxist revolutionaries and tens of thousands of Indigenous individuals were internally displaced. Later, the Indigenous leaders of the region still gave Ortega and the FSLN another chance to make things right – for two election cycles – until it became apparent that the FSLN’s hollow apologies for their human rights violations on the Indigenous Peoples of Moskitia committed in the past were just empty rhetoric, hiding their real intentions to expand and nationalize the autonomous ancient Indigenous territory once and for all.
Accordingly, in the past few years, the region has been exercising more and more political autonomy which has resulted in a long line of violent attacks on Indigenous leadership in the quasi-urban Indigenous city of Bilwi – called Puerto Cabezas by colonists. This has occurred in tandem with the escalated violence and terrorism by Colonos inflicted on the frontier where Indigenous Peoples of Moskitia attempt to maintain their ancient lifestyles.
Many of the refugees fleeing to Bilwi from the frontier have never had to use money to acquire housing or food. A large percentage don’t even speak Spanish – only Miskito, the language which defines their lived experience on the frontier – and are marginalized further by this micro-cultural barrier when fleeing to Bilwi or other relatively urban regions.
Of course, the modern border to Honduras does not mean much to Indigenous Peoples of the region, as there have been Miskitos living, since ancient times, on either side of the dotted line. Yet, for whatever reason, masses have somehow been able to escape the encroaching settler violence on the Nicaragaua side, by crossing into modern-day Honduras, a part of the ancient ‘binational’ Indigenous territory of Moskitia.
This geopolitical anomaly (which has proven inconvenient for some ideologically entrenched ‘human rights groups’) seems to further disrupt the prevailing narrative that U.S. funded factions in Honduras have produced the deadliest violence towards all land defenders in Latin America. They certainly have produced an inexcusable amount of violence by any measure, but as the October 11tharticle in The Guardian noted on Honduras, their official body count of murdered land rights’ defenders for 2017 is ‘one’; and, is once again trailing behind Nicaragua’s death toll for the current year.
