[IPSM] Colombia War Spills Into Indians' Peaceful World

[Macdonald Stainsby]

Colombia War Spills Into Indians' Peaceful World
By JUAN FORERO

Published: May 2, 2005
New York Times

TACUEYÓ, Colombia, April 28 - The Nasa Indians appear to live well on their 
lush reservation here in southern Colombia, a swath of mountains and valleys 
where sweet fruit grows, trout teem in fast-flowing creeks and colorful 
birds dart about.

They live in tidy, well-kept homes, growing coffee, bananas and beans. 
Emphasizing economic independence, they run a successful fish farm and are 
trying to strike up a marble mine.
	
The one major threat to their existence is Colombia's unrelenting civil 
conflict, which has ground on for 41 years. But the Nasa, an Indian nation 
that numbers about 100,000 in this region, has used a pacific civil 
resistance campaign to stay out of the drug-fueled war, which pits the army 
and right-wing paramilitaries against Marxist rebels intent on toppling the 
state.

For four years, the Nasa's stern-faced but unarmed Indigenous Guards - now a 
force of 7,000 men and women - have simply driven away the fighters who 
venture into these fog-shrouded mountains in Cauca Province. They confront 
rebel and soldier alike with ceremonial three-foot batons decorated with 
tassels in the colors of the Nasa flag, green and red, and persuade the 
outsiders to leave.

Their success has earned the acclaim of the United Nations and the foreign 
governments that pay for Nasa development programs.

The Indians have forced traffickers to close down cocaine-producing labs. 
They have faced down paramilitary death squads. When the mayor of the Nasa 
town of Toribio was kidnapped by guerrillas last year, 400 guards marched 
two weeks over the Andes to the rebel camp where he was being held. They won 
his release.

"We do not want armed groups on our land," said Julio Mesa, 57, the leader 
of the Indigenous Guards in Tacueyó. "So what we do is we get people 
together and get them out."

But in the last two weeks, brutal fighting has swept into three of the 
Nasa's eight towns, testing the Indians' pacifism and autonomy.

Starting on April 14, the rebels began rocket attacks on Toribio. In nine 
days of fighting, a 9-year-old boy and several policemen and soldiers were 
killed. The government took back the town, but rebels pounded another 
community, Jambaló, with their notoriously inaccurate mortars, propane tanks 
armed with explosives.

Tacueyó was next.

On Wednesday, with a Colombian military plane raining down bullets on rebel 
positions, dozens of young soldiers supported by light tanks and armored 
vehicles stormed Tacueyó. The rebels responded by firing nearly a dozen of 
the makeshift mortars. Soldiers answered back with their mounted machine 
guns from the central square.

"What worries me are the sharpshooters," said one baby-faced soldier, Andrés 
Nova, 24, as he squeezed up against a wall for protection. "They are not 
that good, but anyone with a rifle is a danger."

Shortly after, snipers killed a soldier and wounded two others.

Tacueyó's Indians were caught in the middle. When a rebel rocket landed on a 
house, severely injuring two children, Mr. Mesa and others ran to help. They 
looked stunned and helpless.

Mr. Mesa, 57, and his wife, María, 54, also a member of the guard, had 
spoken to the rebels early on. "They said, 'We're at war,' " Mr. Mesa 
recounted. "There was nothing more to say, so I left. But first I told them, 
'What you're doing is very bad.' "

Across Colombia, dozens of Indian tribes are being hammered by the war. 
Assassins single out leaders of the Wayuú in northeastern Colombia. In 
northwestern Choco State, Embera children, whipsawed by war and poverty, 
have committed suicide. Nationwide, tens of thousands of Indians have become 
refugees. Some of the smaller tribes, the United Nations recently warned, 
are on the verge of disappearing.

Mr. Mesa and other Nasa leaders are determined to see their nation avoid 
that fate.

The Nasa, also known here as the Páez, were not always peaceful. In the 
1980's, they formed a fighting group, Quintin Lame, but the violence only 
escalated. The Indians changed tactics, and vowed to stay out of the 
fighting. They focused on building a self-sustaining community held together 
by an overarching philosophy of self-determination and the right to be left 
alone.

"The government wants to involve us, in their army, in the police, in their 
informants network," explained Nelson Lemus, an Indian leader. "The 
guerrillas, they want us to get involved in the revolutionary story, the 
fight for power."

But "getting involved in war," he said, "hurts our culture, our language, 
our ways."

As Mr. Mesa spoke about the Nasa's efforts to keep the peace, a sniper's 
bullet came close and the Indian leader and other guards hit the ground.

"We want to talk, to see if they will listen," Mr. Mesa said, lifting his 
short, bulky frame off the ground and dusting himself off after the shooting 
ended. "Sometimes they do listen to us, but lots of time, they do not."

For the army, whose commanders met with the Indians throughout the ordeal, 
there could be no withdrawal, though Col. Juan Trujillo said he understood 
the Nasa's position. But he said it was the army's job to fight off the 
rebels. "We are the state here," he said.

Still, Mr. Mesa was not about to give up. Last Thursday, he calmly trudged 
across Tacueyó, wearing a farmer's hat and carrying his trusty baton, and 
generally oblivious to the shooting around him. What he faced, though, was 
at times heartbreaking. A 2-week-old girl had died; villagers debated 
whether the missiles and bullets that had raked the fields near her home 
were to blame.

But not all the news was bad. When townspeople became concerned that light 
tanks were being positioned too close to where most villagers had escaped, 
Mr. Mesa was able to get a tank commander to hold off.

And when a young man was detained by soldiers, suspected of helping the 
rebels, Mr. Mesa was able to get the army to turn him over.

"You see," Mr. Mesa said, leading him away. "Talking is the best way to 
resolve things."
-- 

Macdonald Stainsby
http://independentmedia.ca/survivingcanada
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
In the contradiction lies the hope
	--Bertholt Brecht.