Where they have been able, Cauca’s indigenous Nasa people have stood firm, campaigning to have all armed actors removed from their lands. The Indigenous Guard’s July 2012 dragging of six troops from a hill in Toribío, Cauca saw images of bawling army sergeant Rodrigo Garcia beamed around the globe, however the Nasa’s arrests of suspected guerrillas in the same period gained less exposure.
Throughout Huila, the resistance has not only manifested from the communities affected by the Quimbo Hydroelectric Dam, but also from the communities in Gigante and Garzón affected by petroleum company Emerald Energy, as well as communities in southern and central Huila resisting the Master Advantage Plan of the Magdalena River which would hand over the country’s largest and most important river in concession to the state-owned company HydroChina.
United Fruit’s heir has again been linked to paramilitary abuses in Colombia. […]
The negotiations between the government and the guerrilla forces are seen by a large part of the Colombian public as a good opportunity to seal a peace deal. Many believe that the hour has come and that the main actors in the conflict will not let this opportunity escape. The reality, however, is much more complicated.
In the weeks following the Festival of the Sun that culminated June 26th in the park of the town of Gigante, the Movement for the Defense and the Liberation of Mother Earth has been preparing for the next Minga. A traditional Andean practice of collective and communal work, in recent years the Minga has gathered strength in indigenous communities as a collective and communal mobilization in defense of territories that have been assaulted by state policies of militarization and resource extraction.
On July 11, the indigenous Nasa of Cauca, Colombia began confronting armed groups face to face while peacefully asking them to leave Nasa territories. They removed police trenches from the urban center and disassembled homemade FARC missiles found on their lands. On July 16, when the military had yet to retreat from indigenous lands by the proposed deadline of the previous day, the Nasa forcibly removed troops from El Berlin’s mountaintop base.
Throughout June 2012, dozens of indigenous and AfroColombian civilians, human rights defenders, community leaders, and politicians in the department of Cauca were arrested under suspicion of guerrilla collaboration. These arrests are part of the new counterinsurgency strategy of the Colombian government – Operation Sword of Honor.
“It is vital that we rescue our indigenous identity”, expressed Harold Segura a member of the Association of Affected by the Quimbo Hydroelectric Project-Asoquimbo. “We were originally an indigenous reserve. We still have such a rich culture and territory, but with the Quimbo Hydroelectric Project on the river, petroleum company Emerald Energy in the Eastern Mountains and the Special Energy and Transportation Batallion ‘José María Tello’ next to us we are about to lose it all forever.”
Eight years after negotiations began in May 2004, the U.S.Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) came into force on May 15. […]
There have been “few tangible improvements” in human rights in Colombia, says Amnesty International’s new report, which also points to legal loopholes that ensure impunity, as well as government attacks on court rulings.
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