Tired of waiting for lands promised by the Colombian government, in 2015, the Indigenous Nasa Peoples from southern Colombia decide to take direct action to reclaim lands that have been industrialized by one of the richest people in the country.
TIERRAS TOMADAS (Reclaiming Stolen Lands) documents the Nasa’s struggle to regain what was wrongfully taken, despite paramilitary threats, riot police and mercenaries.
Featured image: The Wixárika community of San Sebastian Teponahuaxtlán or Wuaut+a is preparing to send 1,000 members to the remote Nayarit community of Huajimic to take back from the ranchers lands that the courts have ruled belong to the Wixárika. Photo from Facebook/San Sebastian Teponahuaxtlán.
A contingent of at least 1,000 indigenous Wixárika (Huichol) people in the Western Sierra Madre are gearing up to take back their lands after a legal decision in a decade-long land dispute with neighboring ranchers who have held the land for more than a century.
Ranchers who have been in possession of the 10,000 hectares in question for generations say the seizure is unlawful and that they will not hand over the land — setting the scene for a showdown that observers fear may end in violence.
Leaders of the Wixárika community of San Sebastian Teponahuaxtlán have announced their plans to accompany the authorities of the federal agricultural tribunal to carry out an enforcement action on the first parcel, a 184-hectare ranch in the state of Nayarit, on Sept. 22, and called on state and federal law enforcement officials to send police forces to prevent a conflict. Until the time of publication, neither the Nayarit nor the federal authorities had agreed to send police to maintain order, so both parties are hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.
The Nayarit community of Huajimic in the municipality of La Yesca has a long tradition of ranching. Ranchers of Huajimic have titles to their land that date to 1906, but the courts have ruled that the Wixarika land claims go back to the Spanish land grant of 1717. Photo from Facebook/Huajmic, Nayarit.
“We’re hoping they’ll accept the decision which is now law: that they lost the trial. They had the opportunity to legally prove that they really had the documentation and they didn’t have it,” said Miguel Vázquez Torres, president of the communal lands commission of San Sebastian. He is aware of the potential for violence, he said, “but the community is not going to sit with its hands crossed. We are prepared.”
Ranchers have titles to the land that go back to the early 1900s — but San Sebastian has the original grant from the Spanish crown that dates to 1717, and is backed by a 1953 presidential resolution. In all, 10,000 hectares is at stake, for a total of 47 different claims. The agrarian court has ruled in favor of San Sebastian in 13 of those cases; the remainder are still in process.
Rosa Carmen Dominguez Macarty, an attorney representing some of the ranchers of Huajimic, disputes the version presented by Wixarika attorneys, saying that only two of the sentences are definitive, and that all the rest are still under appeal. The ranchers are appealing the 1953 presidential resolution, saying it is based on a document that is invalid.
“It’s a social injustice,” she said. “These are very simple people; they are fathers, they are mothers who work the land themselves, and that’s how they support their families. It would be really sad if through the government’s disregard, something unpleasant were to happen.”
Vázquez said that two families who have no land have already been granted permission by the community assembly to establish homesteads on the parcel and that the assembly plans to send a rotating contingent of community residents to stand guard for several months — “as long as it’s necessary so that the families can feel safe and comfortable.” The long-term plan, he said, is to establish another settlement in the area, as San Sebastian’s existing towns are becoming overcrowded.
Dominguez argued that the local inhabitants have worked the land for generations and turned it into a highly productive area. Local residents suspect the Huicholes have another ulterior motive for taking back the land, which they have never worked: to exploit the mineral deposits that supposedly lie beneath.
Members of the Wixarika community of San Sebastian Teponahuaxtlán protesting for land reform in Guadalajara in 2014. Photo from the Facebook/San Sebastian(Wuaut+a).
Complicating matters is that San Sebastian lies in the state of Jalisco, while the contested land lies in Nayarit, where the ranchers have been outspoken in their opposition to the court decision and have been organizing in resistance to the return of the land to the Wixárika.
“Jalisco vs. Nayarit: Blood will run,” screamed one headline in a Nayarit newspaper. Meanwhile, Nayarit Gov. Roberto Sandoval reportedly has sent messages of support to ranchers.
“The governor promised us that while he is in office, we would not have to turn over a single meter of land to the Huichols,” one of the landowners told local reporter Agustín Del Castillo of Milenio newspaper.
Indeed, it’s no accident that the conflict crosses state lines, according to anthropologist Paul Liffman, author of the book Huichol Territory and the Mexican Nation.
“In fact that’s the deep history of Jalisco and Nayarit,” Liffman said in a recent interview. “Nayarit was part of Jalisco, and it separated in 1917, in part for the ranchers who wanted more political autonomy and also wanted to kick out the Indians.”
During the early years of the 20th century, the government encouraged settlers to make land claims on apparently abandoned land. It was during that period that major encroachment began to occur on Wixárika land, and the courts granted titles based on the erroneous assumption (or pretext, as Liffman says) that the land was unoccupied.
Tensions have flared periodically since the land was taken but the Wixárika had no legal recourse until the government created an agrarian court system in the 1990s, said Ruben Avila Tena, the attorney representing the community of San Sebastian. Soon afterwards that community began a legal process of reclaiming its land.
Jalisco law enforcement has agreed to be present, but only up to the state line; thus far the Wixárika leadership has received no such assurances from the Nayarit authorities, nor from the federal government.
“I’m not sure what the Jalisco police can do, besides cheering them on from the other side of the border,” commented Avila Tena. “It’s actually a very worrisome situation.”
Avila said sources in the Agrarian Tribunal have told them that the Nayarit police have no intention of supporting the Wixárika on Sept. 22. Agrarian Magistrate Aldo Saul Muñoz López spoke to this reporter by telephone but said he could not grant an interview by telephone, only in person in the Tribunal regional offices in Tepic, Nayarit.
“We did what corresponds to us as a federal tribunal, we notified all of the relevant authorities of Nayarit. If they don’t respond, it’s something that escapes my authority,” said Muñoz López, but would not give further information by phone.
Liffman likened the current conflict in San Sebastian with one that arose in the 1950s under the Huichol leader Pedro de Haro. Haro built a movement that ultimately procured the 1953 presidential resolution confirming that San Sebastian was the legal owner of the land. But as in the present case, the government didn’t provide any enforcement mechanism, and the local residents refused to give up the land. A band of armed Huichols took the matter into their own hands and marched to the Canyon of Camotlán, where they reportedly burned down a farm, drove out local residents and reclaimed the land.
Photo from the Facebook pages of the community of San Sebastian (Wuaut+a).
Santos de la Cruz Carrillo, a Wixárika leader and also an attorney on San Sebastian’s legal team, said the community has been urging the federal authorities to attend to this case for five years under a program that would offer financial compensation to the current landholders.
“It’s been five years since the community of San Sebastian asked the federal government to attend to this situation, to support the landholders with compensation”, said de la Cruz. “But the ranchers showed no interest in the compensation; they always said they want the land, so the community chose to take possession.”
Finally, in a meeting in March of this year, an official with that program told San Sebastian authorities that there was no money to pay restitution to the ranchers. That’s when they made the decision to move ahead with the process of retaking the lands, said Avila.
The Wixárika authorities have done everything in their power to seek compensation for the ranchers in the hope that a conflict could be avoided, said Avila. “This case was decided in their favor more than two years ago,” he stressed. “The community didn’t want it to be enforced like this, they were trying to get the federal government to indemnify the landholders. When they couldn’t do that anymore, they said, it can’t be helped, we will have to ask the tribunal to enforce the law.”
Liffman warned that the situation was not to be taken lightly; the area has changed radically since the times of Pedro de Haro, he said, with a significant amount of drug production now occurring throughout the territory.
“The region has become much more heavily armed,” he said. “San Sebastian has been the most violently disputed area in the sierra over the past several years…. it’s big-scale transnational narcos now, it’s not just some ranchers with pistols on their belts. So if it does come to that, it could be a bloodbath.”
Featured image: Leaders from Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw First Nation recently boarded a BC fish farm to serve an eviction notice. Photo by Alexandra Morton.
The Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw, whose traditional lands includes much of the Broughton Archipelago, have boarded two Japanese-owned fish farms and delivered eviction orders to remove their operations from unceded territories over the last six days.
On Aug. 15, three Dzawada’enuxw traditional leaders served an eviction notice to a Cermaq/Mitsubishi salmon farm on the Burdwood Islands, and on Aug. 18 boats from the communities of Gwayasdums (Gilford Island), U’kwa’nalis (Kingcome Inlet) and Alert Bay arrived at the Sir Edmund Bay fish farms run by Cermaq/Mitsubishi to conduct a cleansing ceremony.
Melissa Willie, an elected councillor for the nation, said about 40 people participated in the cleansing ceremony and that more demonstrations are planned later this week.
Willie said a cleansing ceremony was necessary because fish farms have been clouded by a lot of “negativity” and environmental impacts, and her people wanted to do something positive.
“We will do a cleansing of our waters once we get these fish farms out,” Willie told The Tyee.
The Martin Sheen, a research vessel loaned by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to biologist and anti-fish farm activist Alexandra Morton, witnessed and filmed the delivery of the eviction notice as well as the cleansing ceremony.
Morton, a long-term foe of the controversial industry, is on a two-month mission to investigate the state of corporate fish farms, do research on virus prevalence, and provide a platform for First Nations.
Some nations support fish farms on their territory, while others such as Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw have been fighting them and their impacts on wild fish for 30 years.
The eviction notice follows a number of developments, including the federal government’s decision to extend fish farm licences from one to six years despite recent evidence found by federal scientists of a “potential” heart disease in farmed Atlantic salmon samples collected from one B.C. fish farm.
Members of the Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw were also shocked earlier this month when Melissa Willie visited a Cermaq farm and opened the lid of a blue-coloured tote containing dead fish netted from the facility.
Both Willie and Morton identified what they said looked like several wild salmon and other native fish (possibly herring and eulachon) in the pile. Fish farms do not have a licence to feed or harvest wild fish.
But in an Aug. 18 press release, Cermaq denied the dead fish were wild and said they were young farmed salmon.
“The small salmon carcasses found in the mort totes are Atlantic salmon grown from our own broodstock, not Pacific wild salmon as alleged. In fact, the tote in question was at our broodstock site, where we grow salmon that are several years apart in age. The age difference results in both small and large fish that, if they die, go into the same tote,” explained their press release.
Willie disagreed with Cermaq’s view of things.
“Wherever you have fish farms, there will be wild fish entering those pens. It is common sense. We all know that the herring stay by some of the farms and feed there.”
In the same press release, Cermaq accused the Sea Shepherd Society of trespassing on private property, making unsubstantiated claims, and having “taken samples of dead fish without permission and without following any proper scientific procedures.”
In contrast, Willie said her people would like to thank Sea Shepherd for joining them in their fight.
Notice gives three months to pack up
The eviction notice gives the corporate farms three months to pack up their operations.
It also demands that no more farmed fish be transferred into the First Nation’s traditional territory and that the nation be allowed to take fish samples from the farms anytime it wants to determine what types of disease or parasites might be present.
“The people who are benefiting from these farms are benefiting over the suffering of our people,” said Dzawada’enuxw hereditary leader Farron Soukochoff in a press release.
The Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw First Nations have opposed corporate salmon farming on the grounds that open-net feedlots invite diseases and waste that have had a deleterious impact on wild fish, including herring and five varieties of Pacific salmon.
“We, the Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw view the destruction of wild fish by the fish farming industry as part of the long history of genocide forced on our people by the governments of Canada,” reads an Aug. 18 press release. “Salmon are essential to our well-being and the well-being of our world.”
According to a recent report, the number of young wild salmon leaving Dzawada’enuxw territory in the spring of 2015 could have been reduced by nine to 39 per cent due to sea lice from salmon farms.
Along with the eviction notice, the Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw have set up a website called “cleansing our waters.”
Approximately one-third of the corporate feedlots growing Atlantic salmon along B.C.’s coast are located on Dzawada’enuxw territory.
A 2008 scientific study found that wild salmon populations declined wherever corporations have set up industrial fish farms in the ocean including Norway, Scotland, Ireland and Canada.
“We have heard the words of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, that honouring the rights of First Nations are a ‘sacred obligation’ to the Liberal Government of Canada,” said Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw hereditary leader and chief councillor Willie Moon at a cleansing ceremony at the Sir Edmund salmon farm at the entrance to Kingcome Inlet.
“Our people have spoken: we want salmon farms out of our territory.”
In a prepared statement, Jeremy Dunn, executive director of the BC Salmon Farmers Association, said that the industry has 20 agreements with First Nations that cover “78 per cent of the annual harvest of farmed salmon.”
“Our members are always open to meeting and discussing issues with First Nations and would like to develop agreements in areas where they do not exist today,” added the statement.
Dunn told The Tyee that many First Nations have tried to evict corporate farms in the past but later signed financial agreements with the industry.
Indigenous Ngäbe communities living on the banks of the Tabasará River in western Panama are scrambling for their lives as flood water from the Barro Blanco hydroelectric reservoir inundates their houses, schools, farms and cultural centers.
“We are without homes and without anywhere to take shelter,” said Weni Bagama in a video statement recorded on Wednesday, Aug 24, 2016.
Bagama—a lifelong resident of the community of Kiad—explained that local road connections have been washed away by the flood waters leaving her family and neighbors geographically isolated. A group of springs that the community relied upon for safe drinking water have also been lost along with archaeological sites of local and national significance.
Roads into Kiad are now under water and the community is inaccessible. Photo: Ricardo Miranda
Two days before Bagama’s statement, Panama President Juan Carlos Varela was busy celebrating the signing of a formal “peace agreement” between his government and Silvia Carrera, the elected chief of the semi-autonomous Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé.
“After 19 months of dialogue we seal the deal that ends the conflict over the Barro Blanco Hydroelectric project,” wrote President Varela on his Facebook page without the slightest hint of irony.
“With the signing of this agreement we have achieved clear objectives for the benefit of the Ngäbe people.”
His Facebook post includes a self-congratulatory public relations video and a link to a full press statement asserting that “the success was achieved on the basis of respect, tolerance and a thorough examination of the key aspects of the project.”
Despite President Verala’s claims, however, none of the Tabasará communities directly affected by the flood waters were involved in the talks. Nor did they endorse the new agreement.
Since the project’s inception in 2011, the affected communities have maintained vigorous opposition to the Barro Blanco dam.
Submerged houses. Photo: Ricardo Miranda
What’s more, according to Bagama, the flooding of their communities commenced on Friday, Aug. 19, 2016 – a full three days before the signing in Llano Tugri. Furthermore, by Saturday—some 48 hours before the ill-fated PR fiasco—the inundation had already completely destroyed the community of Quebrada Caña.
“The population who lived there had to collect their things and see what they could salvage,” she said.
President Varela’s pronouncement seems to be the latest move in what human rights lawyer Osvaldo Jordan calls “a game of words”—that is, a cynical and carefully planned PR campaign designed to obfuscate gross human rights violations.
“The agreement does not seem to have any legal basis,” he told IC. “However, many people seem to believe in it and have forgotten the most important story: the communities being flooded illegally before the agreement was signed.”
In fact, the flooding of the Tabasará River basin began last May with what the government cunningly described as a “test filling”. The reservoir was allowed to rise to a height of 87.5 meters and remained stable until last Friday when the green light was given to let it rise higher and flood the communities.
Disturbingly, according to evidence presented in an independent report by the Human Rights Network of Panama (HRNP), the so-called “test-filling” was achieved not through “respectful dialogue” but through violence and thuggery.
According to eye-witness testimonies, on May 23 2016, police invaded a long-standing indigenous Ngäbe protest camp on the banks of the river, assaulted and humiliated the assembled families, confiscated their possessions, demolished their church, and killed and mutilated their animals.
Said one anonymous witness:
“While we [were] praying in the church, and in the presence of various pastors visiting from other regions, a heap of people arrived from the company, the police, SINAPROC, and they told us that we would have to leave there because it was the property of the company and it was to be flooded.”
“They told us that there was an eviction order–that we would have to die if we would not move. We continued praying and then they pulled us away and started to break up and tear down the houses. They killed the dogs, chickens, pigs, and even the parrots that we had. They grabbed the children and women and carried them to the bus. There were many against us and some ran away. One companion was stripped naked in front of her children and husband…”
Some 30 Ngäbe protesters were rounded up that day and transported to the nearby town of Tolé where they were detained for approximately 36 hours without due process.
Police confined the protesters to Tolé’s Catholic Mission Center and reportedly failed to explain to the priests exactly what had occurred. In fact, none of the detainees were formally charged or permitted to seek legal support. Some of them alleged injuries to their legs and arms, but no medical care was dispatched.
While the protesters spent a gloomy night incarcerated in the Mission, Panama’s civil protection services distributed sacks of rice and other sundry ‘gifts’ to nearby communities not directly impacted by the dam in an apparent effort to create further division between the communities.
The next day, at around 11:00am, without any regard for domestic protocols or international human rights law, Generadora del Istmo (GENISA) closed the gates on their 29 MW hydroelectric dam and commenced flooding the Tabasará River basin. As the water levels rose, farm plots were washed away and witnesses reported a massive fish die-off.
The formation of the reservoir saw endemic fish die. Photo: Chiriquí Natural
Any hopes that GENISA would soon conclude their “tests” and reopen the gates were definitively crushed when the company met with their financial backers and the Government of Panama on July 8 2016.
Owned and built by the Kafie family (who are currently embroiled in a massive fraud scandal in their home country of Honduras), Barro Blanco is being financed primarily by European taxpayers via the Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank (FMO) and the German Development Bank (DEG), along with the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI).
“It was important to have for the first time a tripartite meeting [in Panama City], which allowed the Government and Genisa to exchange feasible options for the continuation of the project… FMO and the other lenders will continue to support this process.”
The statement went on to applaud the project for its “benefits to the local communities”.
Indeed, the political pressure to maintain a “positive” environment for foreign investors—that is, one presumably devoid of human rights or environmental obligations – may have been the force driving Varela’s latest PR stunt.
“He did it to stay on good terms with the corporate lawyers in his entourage and foreign embassies, including the US one”, said Eric Jackson, editor of the Panama News. “Think about the dam business as a whole. Varela is threatening more of these projects, with offsetting promises that are empty.”
For what it’s worth, the agreement between the government and Carrera does include promises of significant investment in Ngabe communities, particularly those living in Muna District near the project.
That’s not saying much, however, as the document has been roundly rejected by GENISA, the Tasabará communities, and even Panama’s own National Assembly. In any case, promises of long overdue regional investment will be cold comfort to those communities experiencing the flagrant violation of their human rights, not to mention the destruction of their homes.
One elder from Kiad told HRNP:
“Those people do not understand that I cannot sell this sacred land. I need my land, I will not sell my land, the land is not like money. Money gets wet, it rots, melts and ends; the land, no, it is permanent, not for sale. Money is deception… What price do the ants have? The stones? The crickets? The trees? The water? I cannot put a price on it, it is the heritage of my children. Without this land we die.”
There is some hope that the national ombudsman may be able to interrupt the violations currently taking place on the Tabasará River. However, with national and international media turning a blind eye to these events, that hope appears tenuous at best.
Ft. Yates, North Dakota, United States: On Thursday, August 18, 2016 the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) jointly submitted an urgent action communication to four United Nations (UN) human rights Special Rapporteurs. It cited grave human rights and Treaty violations resulting from the construction of the Dakota Access crude oil pipeline in close proximity to the Standing Rock Reservation by the United States Army Corps of Engineers and Dakota Access LLC, a subsidiary of Texas-based Energy Transfer.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (SRST) stands in firm opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline. The pipeline would carry nearly half a billion barrels of crude oil a day, and would cross the Missouri River threatening the Tribe’s main water source and sacred places along its path including burials sites. The urgent communication was submitted to UN Special Rapporteurs on the situation of human rights defenders; the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation; and Environment and Human Rights, as well as the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. It requests that they urge the United States to halt the human rights violations and uphold its human rights and Treaty obligations to the Standing Rock Tribe. It was also forwarded to key officials in the U.S. State Department, Department of Interior and the White House.
The urgent communication focuses on violations of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty and other International human rights standards to which the United States is obligated. It also cites actions against human rights defenders, including arrests and other forms of intimidation, violations of the human right to water, and lack of redress and response using domestic remedies. The submission noted that this action violates Article 32 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which affirms the obligation of States to obtain Indigenous Peoples’ free prior and informed consent before development projects affecting their lands, territories or other resources are carried out. The Lakota and Dakota, which includes the SRST, were part of the Sovereign Sioux Nation, which concluded the 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty with the United States. The United States has legally-binding obligations based on this Treaty to obtain the Lakota and Dakota’s consent before activities are carried out on their Treaty lands.
The urgent communication also highlights environmental racism in violation of the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination Convention (ICERD) to which the US is legally obligated. It notes that the United States has permitted Energy Transfer to divert the pipeline’s route from near the mainly non-Indigenous population of Bismarck, ND to disproportionately impact the SRST.
A primary concern expressed by the Tribe is potential devastating effects on its primary water source. SRST Chairman Dave Archambault II, who was among those arrested and is also being sued by the company for obstructing the pipeline’s construction, stated on August 15th “I am here to advise anyone that will listen, that the Dakota Access Pipeline is harmful. It will not be just harmful to my people but its intent and construction will harm the water in the Missouri River, which is the only clean and safe river tributary left in the United States.”
In response to the Tribe’s opposition, Dakota Access LLC, the developers of the $3.8 billion, four-state oil pipeline, has waged a concerted campaign to criminalize and intimidate Tribal leaders, Tribal members and their supporters who have consistently been peaceful and non-violent. The IITC and SRST are calling upon the UN Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders to call upon the United States to immediately cease all arrests and other forms of intimidation, drop any pending lawsuits, and ensure that all legal charges against these human and Treaty Rights defenders be lifted. The urgent action communication cited this case as an example of the criminalization of Indigenous human rights defenders around the world, as noted by various UN bodies.
Despite 28 arrests reported to date, the peaceful protesters have succeeded in temporarily halting the pipeline’s construction. A hearing is currently scheduled for next week in federal court to consider the Tribe’s request for an injunction. Construction has reportedly been halted until the hearing, providing an important initial victory for the Tribe and their supporters.
The joint urgent UN communication requests the intervention of these UN human rights mandate holders to call upon the United States to uphold its statutory, legal, Treaty and human rights obligations and impose an immediate and ongoing moratorium on all pipeline construction until the Treaty and human rights of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, including their right to free prior and informed consent, can be ensured.
