As the Rio Olympics kick off, Brazil has blocked the construction of a controversial dam in the heart of the Amazon rainforest.
The São Luiz dam, planned for the Tapajós river, threatened to flood the Munduruku Indians’ forest and force many off their land.
The Munduruku, like all indigenous peoples, depend on their land for their survival, but industrialized society is trying to steal it and plunder its resources in the name of “progress” and “civilization.” The Munduruku have been firmly opposing the São Luiz dam, and dozens of others planned for the region.
The dam’s environmental licence was shelved this week following the Munduruku’s resistance, pressure from public prosecutors and experts on the ground, and reports by Brazil’s Indigenous Affairs Department and Environment Ministry.
Alongside their struggle to stop the dams, the Munduruku have embarked on a landmark mission to map out their ancestral territory and protect it from illegal miners and loggers. The Brazilian government has failed to uphold its constitutional duty to do this, leaving the land open to destruction.
Munduruku leader Suberanino Saw said, “Our struggle is dangerous, but we know we will win.”
Together with tribes across Brazil, the Munduruku are also protesting plans to change the law and drastically weaken indigenous peoples’ land rights. One of these plans, known as “PEC 215,” would give anti-Indian landowners and others the chance to block the recognition of new indigenous territories – and it might even enable them to break up existing ones.
Survival’s “Stop Brazil’s Genocide” campaign, launched in April 2016 for the run-up to the Olympics, is galvanizing global support for the Indians’ resistance against PEC 215, and calling for the protection of the land of uncontacted tribes, the most vulnerable peoples on the planet.
On the eve of the Olympics, a tribe in Brazil has made a powerful statement to the ranchers who are destroying their land and subjecting them to genocidal violence and racism.
This follows a recent wave of violence and evictions, and the death of a seven-month-old baby in Apy Ka’y community in July.
Aty Guasu, the organization of Brazil’s Guarani tribe, said: “You are killers and you continue to attack our tekohá [ancestral lands]. But we won’t retreat from the fight for our lands which were stolen from us. Every time you kill one of us, we will be stronger in our struggle. Every time you shoot at us, we will take a step forward. And for every grave, we will reoccupy more land. We guarantee this.”
Aty Guasu has also produced a video compiling footage of recent instances of brutality against the Guarani and featuring graphic footage.
Many Guarani Indians have been forced to live on roadsides and are attacked by gunmen or forcibly evicted if they try to reoccupy their ancestral land. In July, Guarani families were evicted from their ancestral land by almost 100 heavily-armed police officers. A baby subsequently died of malnutrition and exposure, as Guarani houses were bulldozed and the community was forced back into makeshift encampments on the roadside.
Earlier in 2016, several other Guarani communities were attacked by ranchers’ gunmen. One attack in Tey’i Jusu community led to one Guarani man being killed and several others – including a twelve year old boy – being hospitalized.
Over the past few decades, most of the Guarani’s land has been stolen by destructive agribusiness, and they live by the side of the road and in overcrowded reservations. Guarani children starve and many of their leaders have been assassinated. Hundreds of Guarani men, women and children have killed themselves, and the Guarani Kaiowá suffer the highest suicide rate in the world.
In a video made with equipment provided through Survival’s Tribal Voice project, Eliseu Guarani, a Guarani leader, said: “Brazil will host the Olympic games this year, the government will be on the world stage and is trying to hide the situation we indigenous people face…We Guarani are being attacked, our leaders are being killed… and our land is not being returned to us, but these Olympic Games won’t show any of that. People around the world will watch these games and cheer and they’ll also be cheering our suffering.”
In April Survival International launched its “Stop Brazil’s Genocide” campaign for the run-up to the Rio 2016 Olympics, to draw attention to the situation facing tribes like the Guarani. Their lands, resources and labor are being stolen in the name of “progress” and “civilization.”
On July 31st Survival supporters demonstrated outside the Brazilian embassy in London.
The campaign is calling for the Brazilian government to uphold the law by protecting the Guarani, demarcating their land, prosecuting murderers and providing food for starving communities until they get back their ancestral land. It is also concerned with uncontacted tribes – the most vulnerable peoples on the planet – and PEC 215, a proposed change to Brazilian law which would undermine tribal land rights and lead to the break up and exploitation of existing indigenous territories.
Survival’s Stephen Corry said: “An urgent and horrific humanitarian crisis is unfolding across Brazil while the media’s eyes are diverted by the Olympic Games. The Guarani’s situation is not an anomaly, it’s the continuation of a centuries-old process of land theft, genocidal violence, slavery and racism. Scores of indigenous people are dying and being killed, tribes across the country are being annihilated. It’s difficult to exaggerate the severity of this crisis which will only end when tribal peoples are respected as contemporary societies and their human rights protected. Brazil needs to act now, before more tribes are destroyed.”
The Southern Autonomous Region of Nicaragua is home to nine indigenous and afro-descendant communities represented by the Rama-Kriol Territorial Government.
On May 3, 2016 Rama-Kriol Territorial President Hector Thomas signed an agreement with the Nicaraguan Canal Development Commission giving consent for the indefinite lease of 173km of communal land to develop the canal.
Communal representatives have denounced this action, claiming they have not been consulted and have not seen the terms of the agreement, which would remove several communities from their ancestral land.
According to international law (ILO Convenant 169 & The UN Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) the government must obtain the free, prior and informed consent of the communities to use their land.
Over the past month, community members have given documented testimony and are organizing a formal legal appeal against this illegal land concession.
This short film documents this series of events and the response of the communities.
Of the several different sub-groups of Ayoreo, the most isolated are the Totobiegosode (‘people from the place of the wild pigs’). Since 1969 many have been forced out of the forest, but some still avoid all contact with outsiders. Their first sustained contact with white people came in the 1940s and 1950s, when Mennonite farmers established colonies on their land. The Ayoreo resisted this invasion, and there were killings on both sides.
In 1979 and 1986 the American fundamentalist New Tribes Mission helped organise ‘manhunts’ in which large groups of Totobiegosode were forcibly brought out of the forest. Several Ayoreo died in these encounters, and others later succumbed to disease.
Recently contacted Ayoreo Indians are worried for the future of their uncontacted relatives. Other Totobiegosode groups came out of the forest in 1998 and 2004 as continual invasions of their land meant they constantly had to abandon their homes, making life very hard. An unknown number still live a nomadic life in the forest.
The greatest current threat to the Totobiegosode is a Brazilian firm, Yaguarete Porá. It owns a 78,000 hectare plot in the heart of their territory, very near where uncontacted Ayoreo were recently sighted. Yaguarete plans to bulldoze most of it to create a cattle ranch – this will have a devastating effect on the Indians’ ability to continue living there.
Land inhabited by the Ayoreo is some of the last standing forest in the Chaco region, a great testament to the tribe’s conservation abilities. However, pressure on the forest is immense. Almost all the Ayoreo’s ancestral land is now owned by private landowners, who hire work-teams to clear the forest of valuable timber and then introduce cattle. Many of these new landowners are Mennonites, but much of the Ayoreo land has now been bought up by wealthy Paraguayan and, especially, Brazilian cattle-ranching businesses.
The Indians are claiming title to just a fraction of their territory. Without their forest they cannot feed or support themselves, and they are also greatly concerned about their uncontacted relatives still living there. Under Paraguayan law, this claim area should have been titled to the Indians years ago, as both Paraguayan law, and the country’s Constitution, recognize the Indians’ right to the ownership of their traditional lands.
But the powerful landowners have blocked the law at every turn, and have illegally bulldozed some of the forest already.
Crisis Point: As bulldozers and cattle ranchers encroach further into their territory the Ayoreo of Paraguay are worried for the safety of their uncontacted relatives. In the heart of the Indians’ territory ranching firm Yaguarete Porá has already cleared a large area of forest that is home to uncontacted Ayoreo.
In response to public anger it has announced plans to create a “nature reserve” on its land, but actually intends to destroy around two thirds of the forest. In 2010, Survival awarded the company with its Greenwashing Award.
With the bulldozing of this vast area of forest, the isolated Totobiegosode will have nowhere left to hide. The settled Totobiegosode are desperate to protect it.
Beast with Metal Skin: In 1994 a bulldozer driver clearing the forest at night was attacked out of the darkness. Although he didn’t know it, he was destroying the gardens and hunting grounds of a group of Ayoreo-Totobiegosode families. One of the Indians, Esoi, was finally forced out of the forest in 2004. Here, he recounts his attack on the bulldozer.
How do they live?
The Totobiegosode live in small communities. They grow squashes, beans and melons in the sandy soil, and hunt in the forest. Large tortoises and wild pig are particularly prized, as is the abundant wild honey.
In the forest four or five families will live together in a communal house. A central wooden pillar supports a dome-shaped structure of smaller branches, topped with dried mud.
Each family will have its own hearth around the outside; people will only sleep inside if it rains. The most important Ayoreo ritual was named after asojna, the nightjar: when the bird’s call was first heard it heralded the arrival of the rainy season, and a month of celebrations and festivities.
The Ayoreo who now live in settled communities live in individual family huts. Those who have lost their land now have little choice but to work as exploited labourers on the cattle ranches that have taken over much of their territory. The evangelical New Tribes Mission has a base near their communities, and exerts a powerful influence on their daily lives. Under the missionaries, the asojna ritual—and many others—have been suppressed.
Act now to help the Ayoreo
Write a letter or email to Grupo San Jose asking it to hand back the Ayoreo’s land to its rightful owners.
Write a letter or email to the government of Paraguay asking it to demarcate the Ayoreo’s land in line with the country’s laws and treaties.
Donate to the Ayoreo campaign (and other Survival campaigns).
Today, Haitian garment workers are going on strike to demand 500 gourdes ($7.94 for 8 hour work day)!
This follows last Thursday’s (5/11) work stoppage and shut down of the SONAPI Industrial Park in Port Au Prince.
From that action, union organizer, Telemarque Pierre, was fired without reason from his position at Premium Apparel factory, which produces for Gildan, and owned by Clifford Apaid.
In a statement shared with the RRN, organized workers said:
“The Fight for social justice will continue!… The firing of our comrade is an act of repression, intimidation and interference in the fundamental rights of workers to organize concerted activities to defend their economic and social interests.”
So now workers are striking for a decent wage, and also for the re-hiring of Telemarque Pierre!
Reports from Haiti say that police presence is high, and workers will brave strong repression for the strike.
1) Use the following contacts to Voice Workers’ Demands (Talking Pts Below)
a. Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor (MAST), Haiti: maffairesocial@yahoo.fr
b. AGA Corporation (Parent corp of Premium Apparel factory): 305-592-1860
c. Gildan (international clothing brand that contracts with Premium Apparel factory):
Jason M. Greene, Director of Supply Chain: 843-606-3750
Corporate office (Montreal): 866-755-2023
Customer Service (Charleston, SC): 843-606-3600
Email: info@gildan.com
Twitter: @GildanOnline; facebook.com/GildanOnline/
Talking Points:
– I’m calling/emailing in support of Haitian garment workers’ demands for a minimum wage of 500 gourdes ($7.94).
– I also support union organizer, Telemarque Pierre, who was unjustly fired from Premium Apparel for exercising his right to union organizing. Rehire Telemarque Pierre!
– I disagree with the minimum wage of 265 gourdes ($4.21) that the Association of Haitian Industrialists is pushing for.
– Pay workers 500 gourdes ($7.94)!
2) Send solidarity statements directly to the garment workers. Let them know you took action: batay@batayouvriye.org
3) Share, Post, Tweet. Tag RRN
#RehirePierre #SolidarityForever #500Gourdes
Twitter – @RRNsolidarity
Facebook – @Rapid Response Networ Background Info:
On Thursday, May 11, garment workers shut down the SONAPI Industrial Park in Port au Prince to demand increased wages. These efforts were organized by the Port Au Prince trade union, SOTA-BO (Union of Textile & Apparel Workers), along with PLASIT-BO, an association of autonomous textile trade unions in Haiti, affiliated with Batay Ouvriye (Workers Fight).
The mobilization started in the morning with a work stoppage, followed by a sit in. The national police were called as more workers joined the mobilization, demanding 500 gourd ($7.94 for an eight-hour workday).
In response to this action, on Saturday, May 14th, Premium Apparel factory owner, Clifford Apaid, fired Telemarque Pierre, the General Coordinator of SOTA-BO and spokesperson for PLASIT. Further, ADIH (Haitian Industrialists Association), Better Work Haiti (a labor practices monitoring agency), and the USDOL (U.S. Department of Labor) have denounced “acts of violence” they claim were committed against property and people during the day of the mobilization.
What about the daily violence of wage theft, harassment, and threats for organizing for your rights? What about the violence of not being paid enough to eat? This is repression in the interest of profit.
Haitian garment workers live in crushing poverty and are paid the lowest wages in the Western Hemisphere. These wages are mostly absorbed by workers’ transportation costs, to and from work, pushing them into debt to afford the basics – food, water, rent.
Wage theft, harassment, and unwarranted firings for organizing are the norm in factories.
In 2013, Workers Rights Consortium found that the majority of workers in Haiti’s garment industry are being denied nearly a third of the wages they are legally owed due to widespread wage theft. A previous report found that every single one of Haiti’s export garment factories was illegally shortchanging workers.
The demand for 500 gourdes is absolutely necessary for Haitian garment workers to exist. Please support their fight.
In solidarity and struggle,
Featured image: Inside the United U’wa Resguardo on the cloud forests along the Colombia-Venezuela border. Photo: Jake Ling
This is the final installment of “The Guardians of Mother Earth,” Intercontinental Cry’s four-part series examining the Indigenous U’wa struggle for peace in Colombia.
The vast wetland savanna called Los Llanos stretches thousands of miles into Venezuela but it begins on the U’wa’s traditional territory at the base of the foothills below the cloud forests and paramos surrounding the sacred mountain Zizuma. For the last few years the worst fears of local environmentalists fighting on this forgotten frontline of climate change have come true: excessive exploitation of (though maybe that’s redundant since the categories already give a way to find stories about indigenous issuespetroleum in the Casanare region on the eastern border of the U’wa resguardo helped cause the desertification of large tracts of land in the swamps and grasslands across the province. An estimated 20,000 animals have died of thirst as traditional water holes evaporated and cracked under the strain of complete ecosystem collapse. Now, the only sign of life in places that once teemed with native species such as capybaras, deer, foxes, fish, turtles and reptiles, is the occasional vulture.
As Highway 66 snakes around the base of the mountain range, it passes several fortified military outposts guarding bridges and monitoring the flow of traffic towards Cubará in the Boyacá Frontier District. These bridges that once conquered the massive flows streaming down from the paramos above the clouds in the west now overlook small streams of water between riverbed boulders as Colombia plunges into a severe drought.
One of the many rivers that flow from the mountains in U’wa territory that are now almost dry as Colombia plunges into a severe drought. Photo: Jake Ling
Seventeen years ago, in the final week of April, 1999, an international event was organized known as U’wa Solidarity Week. It was the early days of climate change awareness when the world was just beginning to understand Global Warming and its potentially devastating effects on the planet. The international campaign against the oil multinational Occidental Petroleum had hit critical-mass after the kidnapping and assassination of Terry Freitas, the 24 year old co-founder of the U’wa Defense Working Group, and the two renowned native american activists Lahe’enda’e Gay and Ingrid Washinawatok, by FARC guerillas in eastern Colombia. Protests against Occidental Petroleum in support of the U’wa were being held in eight cities across the United States as well as in London, Hamburg, Lima and Nairobi. Meanwhile, in the background, the burgeoning power of a very young cyber-network called the Internet had created a space for the remote U’wa nation, heralding a new age of activism that facilitated vital connections between grassroots indigenous movements and environmental activists abroad.
Berito traveled to Los Angeles with another U’wa leader, Mr. Nuniwa, where the two men were received by organizations such as Rainforest Action Network, Project Underground, Amazon Watch and half a dozen other groups that planned to converge on Occidental Petroleum’s Annual Shareholder Meeting on friday, April 30th, 17 years ago.
At a dinner before the shareholder meeting the two U’wa leaders held hands to say grace with the two-dozen American activists around a feast of primarily vegan salads and vegetarian stews for the activists and dishes of meat for the chiefs. With the assassination of the American activists still painfully fresh in the minds of the the protest movement, the U’wa leaders proclaimed that after his death Terry Freitas had visited the dreams of the Werjayá, the shamanic healers of the U’wa in charge of communicating with the superior powers that flow through nature. In the dream Freitas was clutching a white snail shell, a symbol of spiritual purity and peacemaking, and the Werjayá declared the apparition of a god. The two U’wa leaders Berito and Nuniwa invoked their ancestors at the dinner table and summoned the spirit of Terence Freitas.
The following Wednesday, halfway through U’wa Solidarity Week, about 200 or so people marched from the University of California, where Freitas had studied, to Occidental’s headquarters a mile away. Many of the protestors were led away by the police.
“Why don’t they just finish us off for good, so we don’t have to struggle?” Berito told the Wall Street Journal, while his colleague Mr. Nuniwa expressed surprise that their march lasted as long as it did, considering the extremely aggressive tendencies of Colombia’s riot police.
The movement placed an advertisement in the New York Times — endorsed by Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, Friends of the Earth, Oilwatch, Oxfam-America, Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, the Center for International Environmental Law and others — warning Occidental shareholders of the political and environmental risks of the mining project: “U’wa territory will not be spared the oil wars raging in the nearby Arauca area, where a violent attack on Oxy’s pipeline occurs every eight days. Meanwhile, those familiar with U’wa culture warn that their suicide pact must be taken seriously. U’wa oral histories recount an event four hundred years ago, when an U’wa band leaped from a cliff rather than submit to the Conquistadors.”
As protestors picketed the building hosting the shareholder meeting, inside Occidental’s chairman and CEO Ray Irani, seethed as the U’wa leader Berito lectured him for 45 minutes. Berito sang a sacred song in the U’wa tongue which he told protestors the previous night at dinner would be about “Mother Ocean and her breath, the wind, which sweeps up our words to the gods.” The 1,000 or so shareholders in attendance applauded the U’wa leader. Chairman Irani’s response was to declare: “The fact of the matter is your problems should be discussed with the Colombian government, not here… It doesn’t matter what Occidental does or doesn’t do.”
U’wa leader Berito Cobaria battles Oxy CEO Ray Irani at the oil multinationals Annual Shareholder Meeting 17 years ago. Drawing by Bolivian artist Pablo Ruiz
The Sinsinawa Dominican nuns, who held 100 Oxy shares, proposed that the oil multinational hire an independent firm to analyze the potential impact on the company’s stock if the U’wa people’s pledge to commit mass-suicide was fullfilled. The proposal, which Terry Freitas had helped draft, went on to win approval from 13 percent of Oxy shareholders, totaling over 40,000,000 shares, exceeding the expectations of the activists and forcing those opposed to consider the consequences.
After the meeting, Chairman Irani and the other directors made a stealthy exit out a side door where their limousines waited on the opposite side of the building to the protestors. Irani told the Wall Street Journal, “The U’wa use these activists very effectively.” Meanwhile Oxy Vice President Lawrence Meriage complained that the campaign was a concoction of certain activists up in the Bay Area and suggested the U’wa were being manipulated by U.S. environmentalists dead set against oil exploration, as well as the Colombian guerrillas that his company helped finance since the 1980’s. “We feel as a company that we’re caught in the middle,” said Mr. Meriage.
“We demand an announcement by Occidental that it is canceling its project on our ancestral land,” said Berito, “There is nothing else left for the company to do.”
As outrage over Occidental Petroleum’s behaviour in Colombia continued to grow, the oil multinational pushed ahead with their plans to exploit the petroleum block on U’wa territory. The next year, in February 2000, several hundred indigenous people and thousands of Colombians mobilized to block roads and prevent heavy machinery from arriving at the drilling site. The demonstration ended in tragedy as Colombian security forces violently dispersed the protestors with beatings and tear-gas leading to the tragic death of three U’wa children who drowned in the river while trying to flee government troops.
Occidental Petroleum pulled out of petroleum block on U’wa territory in May 2002, 10 years after the U’wa first threatened to commit mass suicide in protest. That same month, as senior members of the U.S. government publicly rallied against the FARC for the “terrorist murder” of Freitas, Gay and Washinawatok, President George H.W. Bush proposed $98 million in military aid to the Colombian government to protect Occidental Petroleum’s Caño-Limon-Covenas oil pipeline.
“We are dismayed to see the Administration’s cynical and exploitative use of Terence’s murder to justify further U.S. military aid to the Colombian armed forces,” friends and family of Freitas stated in response to the President’s proposal. “Employing Terence’s death as a means to continue perpetuating violence in Colombia grossly contradicts everything Terence believed in.”
“This isn’t about corporate welfare, it’s not about protecting Oxy,” a State Department official said. “It’s a security argument, not a U.S. economic interests argument.” The $4 million dollars that Occidental spent lobbying the U.S. government, however, certainly paid off for the company.
As the U’wa struggle slowly faded from the consciousness of the international community, the oil wars in eastern Colombia continued to escalate with the $98 million injection of U.S. military aid. Despite the U.S. State Department designating the AUC – the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia – as a terrorist group in 2001, these paramilitary death squads formed the vanguard of the Colombian Army’s surge into the ELN stronghold of Arauca province, along the Caño-Limon-Covenas pipeline.
The Colombian army, meanwhile, received additional funds totaling billions of dollars coinciding with the kidnapping and execution of thousands of Colombian civilians, whose bodies were then dressed up in guerrilla uniforms to artificially inflate body counts, a crime known as the “scandal of false positive.” Between 2000 and 2010 the Colombian military kidnapped and executed 164 civilians in Arauca, 122 in Boyaca, 301 in Norte de Santander, 209 in Casanare, the four provinces bordering the U’wa Nation’s territory.
Occidental Petroleum’s direct financial and logistical support to the Colombian military included a specialized meeting room inside the Oxy-fortified compound for the 18th Brigade that operates in Arauca and the Boyacá Fronteir District of Cubara with the mandate of protecting the Cano-Limon-Covenas. Commander César Oswaldo Morales of the military’s 18th Brigade was imprisoned in 2012 for kidnapping and executing civilians years earlier in northern Colombia.
In an effort to deescalate the war, an agreement between the government and right-wing paramilitaries saw the AUC begin to lay down arms in 2003. The demobilization, which is widely viewed as a failure, led to the rise of neo-paramilitary groups called BACRIM that continue to threaten and target the civilian population and indigenous people who protest the contamination of their lands and waters by oil operations in the region.
In 2006, the BACRIM inflicted a reign of terror in the Catacumbo region of Norte de Santander, displacing 8,000 civilians over a few months to the north of the U’wa resguardo’s border. It was the same year that Colombia’s Interior Ministry cleared the way for state-run Ecopetrol to begin new explorations in the U’wa territory on behalf of the Spanish oil giant RepSol, as well as on another site inside U’wa territory to the west of the Gibraltar drilling site.
There is not a pipeline on the planet that has been bombed as many times as the Caño-Limo-Covenas. It is an engineering marvel that reaches deep beneath the war-torn province of Arauca and stretches 780 kms (480 miles) across the country to the Caribbean and the effluent discharged into the rivers and lakes that surround the oil well make them no longer fit for human consumption. The several hundred bombings that have ruptured the length and breadth of the pipeline have also polluted 1,625 miles of rivers with thick cancerous crude, leaving a devastating legacy for the local indigenous and rural populations.
The major river in the region, the Arauca that separates Colombia and Venezuela, is experiencing reduced flows due to the drought and many of its tributaries drying up. It has also been affected by oil spills after bombings of the Caño-limon-covenas. Photo: Jake Ling
This particular environmental disaster is a symptom of a larger problem in Colombia with roots that reach deeper into a much darker cause. Across the country indigenous men, women and children from tribal nations both large and small are being murdered and displaced to make way for mega-mining projects. In the Sierra Nevada mountains, the Kankuamo Indigenous Peoples were the victim of twin arson attacks on separate religious temples two days after they canceled consultations with the government to oppose 400 mining projects in the region that will affect 100,000 indigenous people. In the northern state of La Guajira, the multinational el Cerrajon mine is diverting 17 million liters of river water daily during a severe drought that has decimated rural people’s livestock and responsible for indigenous Wayuu children dying of thirst.
For the Wounaan Peoples on the pacific coast, 63 families have been displaced in the past year as petroleum exploration takes place on their ancestral lands. “We know that the peace process will open the way for megaprojects that bring international investments into our territory,” said one member of the Wounaan, “therefore we know that true peace will not come. For Indigenous Peoples the violence will not end with the peace process.”
The ability of the Colombian government to hold multinationals to account for crimes against the civilian population, Indigenous Peoples and the environment is limited while the country attempts to rebuild its crippled economy and frail state institutions after half a century of war. Despite this, predatory multinationals are currently suing the Colombian government for billions of dollars whenever it attempts to protect the environment: such as the $16.5 billion lawsuit that U.S. Tobie Mining and Energy launched against the government when it declared an area in the Amazon rainforest a National Park, where the U.S. company owns a mining concession; or the lawsuits launched by multinationals protesting the new law banning mining in the country’s paramos.
Seventeen years after her murder, Washinawatok’s words in her essay “On Working Towards Peace” now seem increasingly prophetic: “The roots of war and violence go deep, into the Earth herself. As an indigenous woman, I wish to simply state that until we make peace with Earth, there will be no peace in the human community.”
Written on the side of an U’wa school are the words: “nature is wise and as much as man tries he cannot overcome her.” Photo: Jake Ling
“In the late 90’s the U’wa struggle against Occidental Petroleum resonated with progressive social movements that were fighting corporate domination, the multilateral financial institutions like the World Bank and free trade agreements like NAFTA,” said Andrew Miller, Director of Advocacy at Amazon Watch. “The core U’wa messages have not changed, and once again we see synergies within the global conversations about climate change and the growing movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground.”
It was the multiple bomb attacks on the Caño-Limon-Covenas inside U’wa territory in March and April 2014, which not only showcased the indigenous nation’s vulnerability but also its strength. The subsequent 40-day protest in which petroleum engineers were prevented from accessing the bomb-site to fix the ruptured pipe cost the Colombian government $130 million dollars. The concessions that the state proceeded to make to the U’wa in exchange for stopping the protest included the dismantling of the gas exploration project in Magallanes; other points in the agreement have since been ignored.
A year later, the pipeline was bombed again on U’wa territory, contaminating the Cubogón and Arauca rivers and creating an environmental emergency that left the entire state of Arauca downstream without water. The Colombian government had still not fulfilled its side of the deal leading 40 organizations to sign an open letter to President Santos reminding him of the agreement.
At the end of March, 2016, two weeks after another twin-bomb attack on the Caño-Limon-Covenas, and only days after the U’wa mobilization surrounding the Cocuy National Park received the threatening photograph of the armed-sheep, Amazon Watch issued its highest red-alert to warn its network of concerned global citizens of the dangers facing the protestors. The International Urgent Action has so far received 5,000 signatures from people around the world supporting the U’wa’s demand of a direct dialogue with Colombia’s former Minister of Environment.
The requests were ignored; however, just two weeks ago, on April 25th, President Santos replaced the minister with Luis Gilberto Murillo, the former Governor of Choco province, who is himself a victim of the war after being kidnapped by paramilitaries. The new Minister for Environment is now presented with the opportunity to mend relations with the U’wa Peoples by handing over the administration of the Cocuy National Park, an act that would protect its precious ecosystems while providing a source of income to the communities via sustainable and responsible tourism. The government’s obligations under Colombian law, however, do not end there. The U’wa still urgently need access to better health-care facilities and clean drinking water to prevent the spread of tuberculosis and dysentery — two basic human rights that the international community can pressure President Santos to fulfill.
As the U’wa leader Berito recovers from tuberculosis in his wooden shack in the cloud forests on the eastern border of the United U’wa Resguardo, he is content at having officially changed his name late last year. The indigenous leader passed IC an original copy of his signed and stamped identification papers, issued to him a year earlier when he traveled to Bogotá to change his name from Roberto Cobaria, the name arbitrarily placed on him by Catholic missionaries. Now, the Colombian government must recognize him by the same name his people call him – Berito KuwarU’wa KuwarU’wa – the wise and powerful Werjayá whose life work has been to guide the people who know how to think and speak through the most violent and longest running armed conflict on the South American continent.
In the coming weeks or months when the FARC and Colombian government are expected to finalize a historic peace agreement, the war will not be over for the U’wa people. The Paramilitaries eventually dispersed, more BACRIM may be imprisoned, most of the FARC will probably demobilize, the ELN may lay down arms, the state military might be disciplined with court-martials, but the Colombian government will never give up its relentless thirst for the sacred blood of Mother Earth underneath the ancestral lands of the U’wa. Once again the U’wa are cornered on all sides with their backs against a cliff, but the question remains if the indigenous group will jump or if they will be pushed.
Berito discussing the threat of oil drilling at Amazon Watch’s 2010 Annual Luncheon. Photo: Amazon Watch
“The U’wa people are reaching out at a national and international level to ask for the unconditional assistance to our struggle that dates back many years,” Berito announced in 2014, before he became sick. “We refuse to be silent and we are going to mobilize ourselves and once again engage in protest actions against the extraction of oil which will damage our Mother Earth.”
Jake Ling is the founder of www.ecuadorecovolunteer.org and has worked with indigenous communities for several years on conservation projects in the Andes and Amazon. He writes for Colombia Reports and IC and he tweets at @chekhovdispatch
