Colombia's Indigenous Communities Try to Survive
Leech, Garry M.
In the wake of the suspension of peace talks between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's civil conflict has dramatically escalated....
...According to Fabio Calambas, "We have problems with the armed groups who invade and conduct activities in our territories without authority...
...The CRIC's director, Anatolio Quird, criticized the media for aggravating the situation by publishing reports that indigenous communities armed with sticks have confronted the armed groups...
...It is a subsistence economy in which we produce the minimum quantity required for consumption...
...One alternative project in which the Guambianos manually eradicated some of their poppies and began breeding fish in large outdoor tanks was devastated by Plan Colombia's aerial fumigation of illicit crops...
...3. Onesimo Carpces, interview with author, Silvia, Cauca, March 6, 2002...
...The FARC retaliated by launching an extensive bombing campaign against urban targets and the country's infrastructure...
...7 Some of the 16,000 Guambianos living in the region cultivate the beautiful red, violet and white poppies on small plots of land behind their mud-brick houses...
...But both the paramilitary forces of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) and the FARC have refused to recognize these declarations of neutrality...
...They are not weapons...
...They also grow high-altitude food crops on fields spread across the steep mountainsides...
...The few that survived were never bought...
...Department of State, March 4, 2002, online...
...While poppies constitute only a small percentage of the land under cultivation, they provide a far more reliable income for poor indigenous families than traditional crops...
...8 In an attempt to deter individual Guambiano families from cultivating poppies and to encourage them to return to a more communal system of agriculture, the Guambiano cabildo has been developing crop substitution agreements with the government...
...8. Fabio Calambas, interview with author, Silvia, Cauca, March 6, 2002...
...Legal food crops are mostly used for subsistence because of their low market value and the difficulty of transporting them from remote mountain communities to towns and cities...
...We have suffered invasions by the armed groups throughout the peace process...
...The Colombian military initiated a massive bombing campaign against the FARC-governed zone (zona de despeje) before sending in thousands of ground troops to retake the zone's principal towns...
...We want to negotiate with the government to legally get more land for the community...
...9 In order to effectively eliminate poppy cultivation, the Guambianos need more arable land and a means of getting legal food crops to markets...
...5 The cultivation of illicit crops on indigenous lands has aggravated problems with the armed groups-paramilitaries in the lower elevations and the FARC in the Andean highlands-whose incursions onto indigenous lands have increased as they seek to expand their territorial control over the drug trade...
...It is not capitalism, it is communitarian...
...In the high zones they grow poppies and in the hot zones they cultivate coca...
...In recent years, both paramilitary and guerrilla forces have increasingly violated the neutrality of indigenous communities...
...2. A speech by Anatolio QuirA, Foro Nacional: Emergencia Social, Econ6mica y Cultural de los Pueblos Indigenas del Cauca y Mecanismos de Resistencia, PopayAn, Cauca, March 5, 2002...
...Because of the rugged terrain 9,000 feet up in the Andes, there is a limited amount of arable land and much of the farming is conducted on the sides of the steep mountains...
...6. William Armando Palechor, interview with author, Popaydn, Cauca, March 5, 2002...
...For indigenous groups in the southwestern department of Cauca, however, the violence began escalating long before the collapse of the peace process...
...Addressing the media's misrepresentations of the nonviolent tactics used by indigenous communities, Quird stated, "These sticks--bastones de mando-are always with us...
...This fact was clearly evidenced on March 4 when a paramilitary death squad in the small town of Santander de Quilichao killed Samuel Fernindez Dizu, the former governor of the Las Delicias indigenous communities...
...2 Reports of stick-wielding Indians confronting one of the armed groups could prove deadly for indigenous communities often accused of harboring sympathies for one side or another...
...nity leaders, the corruption of their culture and the recruitment of indigenous youths into the armed groups...
...At the forum, leaders vowed to continue their campaign of civil resistance against armed intruders by assembling entire communities to peacefully confront them...
...I The Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), which is comprised of leaders of many of Cauca's indigenous groups including the Guambianos, Paez and Yanacona, has responded to these invasions by repeatedly issuing statements declaring the neutrality of Cauca's indigenous communities with regards to the armed conflict...
...For this reason we are not really free...
...They occupy our territories with violence and then when the public forces arrive we are caught in the middle of the fighting...
...3 Carpces, mayor of the 6,500 Paez who live in Pitayo, says that the problem of unemployment in the indigenous communities has resulted in some of their youths joining the armed groups or enlisting in the military...
...He claims the armed groups actively recruit indigenous youths disenchanted with a traditional way of life that has left them impoverished and with little hope for economic improvement...
...9. Fabio Calambas, interview with author, Silvia, Cauca, March 6, 2002...
...They are a part of the relationship between us and nature...
...4 Because of the difficulty of marketing their traditional food crops, which are difficult to transport to distant markets, many indigenous communities supplement the meager subsistence provided by their traditional crops of maize, plantains, yucca, coffee, beans, potatoes, wheat and onions with coca or poppy cultivation...
...This balancing act of maintaining their traditional culture while at the same time interacting with Colombia's economy-at-large is made all the more difficult by a civil conflict that is being fueled by the profitability of illicit drug crops...
...But the individualistic nature of the drug trade has corrupted the economic culture of Guambiano communities...
...Paez leader Onesimo Carpces says the indigenous communities "have problems with all Vol XXXV, No 6 MAY/JuNNE 2002 53UPDATE/COLOMBIA the armed groups because when the guerrillas come they say we are army collaborators and when the army comes they say we are guerrilla collaborators...
...These violent incursions into indigenous territories have resulted in the deaths of commuGarry M. Leech is author of the book, Killing Peace: Colombia's Conflict and the Failure of U.S...
...54 NAC(A REPORT ON THE AMERICAS No Sympathy for Either Side 1. Fabio Calambas, interview with author, Silvia, Cauca, March 6, 2002...
...Fabio Calambas, interview with author, Silvia, Cauca, March 6, 2002...
...The murder of Fernindez Dizu occurred one day before a national forum organized by the CRIC was to be held in the city of Popaydn to address the social, economic and cultural emergency faced by the indigenous communities of Cauca...
...But when the land is in our hands, there must be another project to finance the traditional crops...
...Traffickers from Cali, on the other hand, willingly travel to the indigenous communities to purchase the valuable opium latex from Guambiano poppy growers...
...The CRIC is attempting to combat this problem by encouraging indigenous youths to participate in regional conferences in order to develop a closer identification with their elders and traditional culture...
...Calambas says "the survival of Guambianos depends on land...
...7. Fabio Calambas, interview with author, Silvia, Cauca, March 6, 2002...
...1 0 As a result of the escalating violence, Cauca's indigenous communities are now organizing in order to defend their traditional culture and the neutrality of their lands, while at the same time looking to the government to help them improve the economic condition of their communities...
...5. William Armando Palechor, interview with author, Popayin, Cauca, March 5, 2002...
...Also, the problem is worse now because the AUC is present and there have been deaths...
...Intervention (INOTA, 2002) and editor of Colombia Report <<http://www colombiareport.org>> This article was funded in part by the Dick Goldensohn Fund...
...Calambas claims the guambianos "have suffered fumigations that contaminated the water and destroyed the trout crop...
...These fumigations have affected our crops and our lifestyle...
...According to Palechor, the FARC doesn't insist that the Yanaconas grow coca or poppies, "but they force communities to pay a tax for cultivating and commercializing illicit crops...
...4. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2001: Colombia," U.S...
...6 The Guambiano Indians have also experienced increasing incursions onto their territory by the armed groups-particularly the FARC's 8 Front-because of poppy cultivation...
...As a result, says a young Yanacona leader, William Armando Palechor, "indigenous communities have adopted illicit crops as traditional crops...
...They say they have come to socially cleanse...
...According to Calambas, "Our economy is not an exploitation economy, or an economy of profit...
...It is our tradition...
...According to Fabio Calambas, the vice-governor of the Guambiano indigenous communities located near the Andean highland town of Silvia: "The end of negotiations has made no difference to us...
...But it is proving to be an uphill battle in a country in which 80% of the indigenous population lives in conditions of extreme poverty...
Vol. 35 • May 2002 • No. 6
