[Bloquez l'empire!] Violence Continues Against Afro-Colombian Communities

[David W.]

VIOLENCE CONTINUES AGAINST AFRO-COLOMBIAN COMMUNITIES

By David Parker

Bucaramanga, Colombia

August 21st, 2007

On June 21st, Luis Alberto, who I know better as ‘Janio’, was walking back
to his home in the Humanitarian Zone of El Tesoro when he was assaulted by
five illegally armed paramilitaries, who tied him up for half an hour,
kicking him and threatening to kill him, accusing him and other community
members of being guerrillas.  Now, two weeks later I wonder if Janio is,
like me, still recovering from the shock of the event.  I was not shocked
so much by the events of Janio’s story, as it is the same violent tactics
practiced against many other members of the communities who protect their
ancestral lands, traditional livelihoods and the unique tropical
rainforest they live in from agro-industrial development.  I was shocked
because this time I was living in the community with him and for the first
time, this was a victim I knew personally.  Janio, one of the best soccer
players in El Tesoro, who would make me sing Canadian songs; who steered
our boat down the winding river of Caño Claro, tributary of the Curvaradó
river; who held on to me as we were tossed around a top an intercity jeep
on pot-holed roads; who made me play soccer with the community and
wouldn’t take no for an answer.

The attack was preceded by a period of relative tranquility.  One month
earlier a group of 50 military passed by the barbed wire fence surrounding
the resistance community, asking to enter and claiming three of the
campesino men inside to be guerrillas – members of FARC.  But the assault
and threats to Janio’s life was nothing new for the communities of
Afro-descendants, indigenous and mestizos that continue to struggle
against State-backed violence and persecution; it was one more event in a
10 year history of bloody warfare, which has decided the fate of thousands
of campesinos, and the worlds richest zone of biodiversity, the jungle of
Bajo Atrato Chocoano.

FORCED DISPLACEMENT AND COMMUNITY RESISTANCE

In the recent history of this region of Colombia, the lower Atrato river
basin in Urabá, Chocó has seen massive State repression at the hands of
concerted military and paramilitary forces, as well as terror tactics from
the FARC, a guerrilla group operating in the region.  In October of 1996
and through 1997, a coordinated campaign of military and paramilitary
forces known as ‘Operation Genesis’ forcibly displaced around 4,000
Afro-descendants, indigenous and mestizo civilian populations from
territories collectively titled to Afro-Colombian communities.  By land,
sea and air, legal and illegal armed forces practiced torture, selective
and collective assassination, massacre, disappearances, threats, theft and
arson as a means to empty the dense and humid jungles inhabited by
peaceable communities under the pretext of guerrilla activity in the area.

In 2000 and 2001, many community members, after suffering from fear, the
loss of loved ones, hunger, and living in refugee camp conditions, decided
to return to their land and create Peace Communities, only to find the
development of agro-industrial mega-projects well underway.  Urapalma
S.A., the first of 12 private companies to operate in the region, with
funding coming internationally from USAID (under the pretext of replacing
illegal crops with sustainable agriculture and providing jobs for poor
peasants) and nationally from FINAGRO and Fedepalma subsidies, had already
sown 2000 hectares in the Curvaradó River basin with African Palm
monocultres, with another 6000 hectares being cleared for the same
purpose, all in the heart of the territories collectively owned by the
communities of Curvaradó.

By way of violence, armed forces had ‘emptied’ the land of its traditional
and ancestral inhabitants, although many fled the violence by retreating
into the dense jungle, living without a home and without lighting a fire,
for fear of both guerrilla forces in the region and the paramilitary and
military forces.  The violence had cleared the way for heavy machinery to
deforest the land, destroying the soil structure and poisoning waterways,
to plant greenhouse grown African Palm trees in symmetrical rows that
would later be harvested for mass production of palm oil for the world
market.

When new waves of incursions, assassinations, attacks and displacements
occurred in 2001, the Afro-Colombian community councils of Jiguamiandó and
Curvaradó, legally recognized governing bodies of the collective
territories, created physically enclosed communities labelled as
‘Humanitarian Zones’ protected at first by Cautionary Measures to preserve
the rights to life and physical integrity of community members, solicited
by the Interamerican Commission of Human Rights on Nov. 7th 2002, and
later by the Provisional Measures of protection of the communities decreed
by the Interamerican Court of Human Rights on March 6th, 2003.  According
to the community members, no armed actors were allowed into the zones,
since that would make them targets in the armed conflict.

The Humanitarian Zones were more than Peace Communities because rather
than claiming to be neutral, the community councils resisted the presence
of all armed actors and demanded justice as victims of massive
displacement, continuing violent persecution and fear tactics.  They
demanded the right to govern the lands that had been stolen by State
forces and developed by private enterprises.  With accompaniment in the
communities by national and international participants, the resistance was
mounted on three fronts; to maintain a presence in the Humanitarian Zones
and uphold the observance of the Right to Life and Integrity; to denounce
the atrocities to the world community and generate pressure on Colombia’s
government to observe the Protective Measures declared by the
Interamerican Court; and to proceed judicially with cases of fraudulently
acquired land titles for palm plantations and investigation into
systematic violations of human rights.

Slowly, displaced community members have returned to their lands, and
solidarity overcame fear.  United by a common history, mestizo, indigenous
and Afro-Colombians organized their new Humanitarian Zones as a
non-violent resistance to State repression and capitalist development. 
The communities lived through years of threats, armed incursions into the
zones, and continued assassination and disappearances, while direct
solidarity and human rights organizations brought international attention
to the crisis in Curvaradó and Jiguamiandó.  The first Humanitarian Zones
in the region were located on the Jiguamiandó River, but provided homes
for community members of Curvaradó and Jiguamiandó, including the
community council of both territories.  Much of the Curvaradó river basin
was already sown with African Palm monocultures and swarming with
military, paramilitary, police and company employees.  In 2006, the first
Humanitarian Zone in Curvaradó was created in the midst of over 17,000
hectares (and growing) of palm plantations, by cutting down a a few
hectares of palm trees and building the Humanitarian Zone of Andalucia. 
Since then, new Humanitarian Zones and Biodiversity Zones continue to be
created in Curvaradó, including El Tesoro, created in October 2006.

ETHNIC AND CULTURAL MEMORY

Janio, his family and other familias living in El Tesoro and the other
resistance communities of Curvaradó and Jiguamiandó are preserving
vestiges of an ancient way of life in danger of extinction.  Despite waves
of colonization in Bajo Atrato, including attempts to develop a navegable
waterway between the two oceans, and mining of gold, silver and other
metals, The Atrato River and its tributaries have proved difficult for
conquistadors, slave-traders and pirate voyages to colonize due to its
difficult climate of dense jungle, torrential rains and labyrinthine
rivers.

The river names of Jiguamiandó and Curvaradó were known by the Embera,
Waunana and Awa peoples, whose ancient way of life, survival and
existence, meshed with African rituals and ancestrality when former
African slaves bought their freedom and moved to the jungles of Chocó and
Bajo Atrato, in search of land, simplicity, and their own methods of
development.  In the 1980’s, the cultural exchange developed with the
arrival of mestizos, fleeing the violence that had left them landless in
agrarian struggles from Cordoba to Sucre and Antioquia.  Politics, skin
colour and mentalities integrated and juxtaposed, but ultimately found
harmony in principles of life and territory.

In the 1990’s, the territories became the location and or route of passage
for guerrillas of the Popular Liberation Army, EPL; later for the National
Liberation Army, ELN, and finally for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, FARC EP, who still exist there today.  But the cruel military
and covert paramilitary strategies of Brigade XVII of the National Army
known as Operation Genesis, was directed not at the guerrillas but at the
Afro-descendant, indigenous and mestizo civilian populations.

STOLEN LAND FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Jiguamiandó and Curvaradó remained, into the 1990’s, one of the last of
the unplucked gems of the Americas, having successfully resisted repeated
attempts of colonization.  The capitalist economic model was eventually
imposed on the land and people beginning with Operation Genesis in
1996-97.  The war against the civilian communities of Curvaradó and
Jiguamiandó, begun in ’96, has continued on many fronts; military,
judicial, political, psychological and technological.  The objective, not
only to appropriate the land from the communities, has also been to
destroy cultural constructions and ancestral collective mentalities.

The massive displacements, preceded by chains of threats, assassinations,
tortures, pillages and hostage-taking, reveal a comprehensive plan of
expropriation of territory, under the pretext of controlling insurgent
groups, but they cannot hide the aggression against native communities and
simultaneous protection of corporations who have taken these territories. 
The clear motive of the State-led violence, rather than quelling armed
resistance, was targeting peasant communities in order to use lands for
agro-industrial projects as part of an imposed economic development model.

PLAN COLOMBIA AND IMPUNITY

The palm oil industry currently developing in Bajo Atrato Chocano now with
27,000 hectares of palm plantation in the Cuenca of Curvaradó operated and
owned by 12 corporations, figures prominently in government and State
policy of economic development under the administration of President
Álvaro Uribe Vélez.  Palm oil has traditionally been a highly profitable
export used in foods and hygiene products, but the use of palm oil to make
biodiesel and the expanding demand for biodiesel in the North as a ‘green’
energy has led Uribe to guarantee an export market of palm oil for
biodiesel.  He has pledged to increase palm plantation hectares from
175,000 in 2005 to 6 million, as part of State policy recognized in the
U.S.-Colombian Free Trade Agreement and the U.S. backed Plan Colombia.

The financial profiteers of palm oil production are the same for palm
plantations in Colombia, Indonesia and Malaysia, three of the worlds
biggest exporters;  a handful of elite locals from each respective region
and transnational corporations such as Unilever, Procter and Gamble,
Henkel, Cognis and Cargill.  In Colombia, Law 138 of 1994 sanctions palm
oil production, by creating the “Cuota de Fomento Palmero” to financially
subsidize palm oil cultivators and encourage development, administered by
Fedepalma.  Meanwhile, Plan Colombia and the State strategy of Democratic
Security has oriented the process of “paramilitary remobilization”, a way
of legalizing the history of paramilitary violence and bringing them
impunity.  Institutional impunity was officially created through Law 975
of 2005: “Law of Justice and Peace”, which demobilizes paramilitaries,
leaving criminals unpunished, instead linking them as ‘employees’ to the
newly created agro-industrial projects being developed on land stolen
through forced displacement.  One example is the model of associative
enterprises currently employed in agro-industrial projects such as cocoa,
lumber, rubber and palm oil.  Demobilized paramilitaries, displaced
peasants and peasants work with a corporate investor interested in
starting a business who “acts as a tutor”.  In Urabá, for the
paramilitaries who do not demobilize, there continues to exist work
opportunities, uniting forces with the military to control local
populations in the municipalities of Riosucio, Barranquillita, Belén de
Bajirá, Pavarandó and Mutatá.

There are no guarantees of protection of the rights of victims, nor
guarantees of returning properties and lands to their rightful owners. 
Furthermore, the palm plantations themselves are ‘legalized’ through
fraudulent mechanisms, including purchasing land titles from landowners
who could not have sold the land because they are deceased; drastically
augmenting the size of land purchases on paper form 30 to 6000 hectares;
inventing fake landowners, or buying land from people who don’t own any
land.  To secure international funding from USAID, the palm companies
claim they are providing work opportunities for Afro-Colombians by
substitution illicit crops (coca and marijuana) with a profitable legal
alternative, a fraudulent lie puppeted even by President Uribe Vélez.

The Colombian State judicial apparatus only aggravates and confuses the
problem, by ignoring the many pending investigations and not recognizing
the systematic nature of the human rights violations, instead treating
each case individually and unconnected.  In effect, different levels of
State and government provide guarantees for private enterprise, while
persecuting civilians and violating human rights; all of which is
legislated by transnational capital.

RESISTANCE FOR LIFE, LAND AND DIGNITY

The communities of Curvaradó and Jiguamiandó have faced remarkable
adversity, from massacres and forced displacement to the appropriation of
their land and impunity for the criminals, yet have shown incredible
resilience.  The crimes perpetrated are of such a systematic nature that
they can only be understood as crimes against humanity.  It has led to a
profound deterioration of ethnic and cultural identity.  Furthermore, the
crimes, committed in a very fragile ecosystem with the world’s highest
levels of biodiversity and rainfall, have created irreversible
deterioration of the environment.  These atrocities have been done in
order to install an exclusionary development model, a capitalist model
fundamentally opposed to the ethnic communities’ values of life, natural
rhythms and sacred relationships to the environment, human life and the
eternal.

A testament to the resilience of their traditional way of life has been
their ability to create an authentic democracy in the midst of armed
conflict.  Resistance has been their only option for the reconstruction of
truly democratic self-determination.  Peace Communities turned into
Humanitarian Zones: communities chose, rather than to be neutral, to
demand justice.  Their method of organizing is to construct concrete
guarantees for their life, liberty of thought and land.  Internal and
international mechanisms of protection and justice are in place to
preserve a community, a way of life, an ecosystem and a principle of basic
human value and dignity.

www.pasc.ca

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