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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.

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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.

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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.

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