Development & Aid, Environment, Tierramerica

Why Colombia's Indigenous Peoples Are Protesting

BOGOTA, Oct 27 2008 (IPS) - For the Colombian government, caught up in polls that put it at the peak of popularity, indigenous protests could not be anything but the work of conspirators, writes indigenous expert Héctor Mondragón in this column for Tierramérica.

The National “Minga” (Gathering) of Indigenous and Popular Resistance has mobilized the native peoples in 17 departments of Colombia over the last two weeks. There have also been work stoppages in the sugar industry, by judges and other public employees.

For a government engrossed in the data from the pollsters, which put it at the peak of popularity, the protests are nothing but the work of political conspiracies, infiltrations of the guerrilla groups or efforts to destabilize the country.

However, the increasing discontent displayed by the Minga (which means “collective work for the common good”) and the strikes that continue to multiply and form a more continuous movement, are above all the result of economic events, the laws that have been passed and the policies of the government — which is now trying to close its eyes to the matter.

The struggle of the indigenous peoples has grown since 2004.

The Indigenous Minga of the city of Cali, in September 2004, the referendum in six municipalities of the southwestern department of Cauca in 2005 that rejected the free trade agreement with the United States, and the liberation of Mother Earth in 20 Caucan haciendas between September and November of that year against the noncompliance in reparations for the massacre of 20 Indians in El Nilo — committed Dec. 16, 1991 — were massive mobilizations that were a psychological shake-up.

As was the summit against the FTA in May 2006, which paralyzed Cauca and neighboring Nariño for five days, accompanied by marches in the departments of Huila, Valle del Cauca, Tolima, Caldas and other places. On Aug. 19 of that year in Popayán, capital of Cauca, the march in solidarity with the dairy farmers affected by official measures turned into a grassroots celebration.

Although their fundamental rights are recognized in the Constitution and international treaties, the Indians here engage in struggle because in practice the government fails to comply with its obligation to consult them about the adoption of any measure — legislative or administrative — that affects them.

This was the case with the forestry law, declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court several months after having taken effect because of the lack of consultation with the indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities.

The trade agreements with the United States and Canada are seen by the indigenous peoples as harmful to their rights because they allow international arbiters to rule on their conflicts with transnational corporations, establish intellectual property rules that threaten the collective ownership of knowledge and of cultural heritage, and allow the patenting of living organisms.

Furthermore, the trade agreements stimulate privatizations and freeze laws that have been approved against the Indians, under the form of “juridical stability” that ensures compensation for investors if those rules are changed.

Imports of food, boosted by the treaties, affect Indians alongside the rest of farmers.

The government has presented legislative bills and constitutional reforms that would limit or eliminate rights of indigenous peoples.

The 2007 Rural Statute is one example: in its articles it contradicts the rights established by Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), prohibits that in the Pacific region and in the Atrato River basin (in northwestern Colombia) they constitute or expand indigenous reserves and that the existing be returned.

The Statute allows municipalities and departments to ignore the status of indigenous lands through land-use standards, and requires nomadic peoples and itinerant farmers to have “regular and permanent” occupations.

Other laws on mining or fossil fuel exploitation and various projects on waters and wetlands are also harmful. The government went so far as to propose constitutional reforms to eliminate the judicial action of guardianship that allows protection of collectively-held rights, and to suppress the status of autonomous territorial entity that all indigenous lands have.

The Colombian government was the only one in Latin America that did not vote in favor of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted Sep. 13, 2007. The United States and Canada voted against it.

The Indians are protesting because the free trade agreements with those two countries and the unfavorable rules have been imposed amidst an escalation of violence, assassinations and multiple violations of their human rights.

The greatest number of indigenous murders, since data has been tracked, occurred during the first term of the Alvaro Uribe government (2002-2006). Fifteen Indians were assassinated in Colombia from Sep. 17 to Oct. 12. Since 2005, mobilizations have been quashed at rifle-point, with deaths and gunshot wounds. That has been repeated this month of October.

The assassinations that for years were committed by paramilitaries, guerrilla groups and the armed forces, as well as the armed repression of mobilizations, are contributing to stripping indigenous peoples of their rights.

Five hundred years of resistance allowed Indians to preserve 20 percent of their land. They have staked their bets on civil resistance because they understand that the current internal conflict in Colombia is massively displacing the population and is the engine of dispossession not only of lands but of rights.

The “Minga de Resistencia” this October, which has included the great march of Cali led by the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), was prepared with public involvement, in hundreds of assemblies, hearings and community meetings. That is where its success comes from.