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NY Times, March 9, 2020
Conflicts Over Indigenous Land Grow More Violent in Central America
By Alexander Villegas and Frances Robles
TÉRRABA, Costa Rica — For decades, members of the Brörán tribe in
southern Costa Rica longed to take back what they considered ancestral
land from the farmers who also claimed it. One weekend last month, they
acted, entering several farms, hanging up signs and vowing to stay put.
It was not long, they said, before group of agitated farmers came out on
horseback, motorbikes and in pickups. Armed with machetes, sticks and
firearms, the farmers huddled at the top of the mountain for hours,
hurling threats, as Indigenous leaders implored the police to come help.
Elides Rivera, a local Indigenous land rights leader, still has the
voice recording of the call for help she made to a local police
commander: “I beg you with all, all my heart.”
But soon after, a brawl broke out, and it ended in the death of her
nephew, Jerhy Rivera, 45, who was an Indigenous activist in the community.
Mr. Rivera’s death came just a few weeks after another Indigenous man in
a nearby town was shot in a dispute over land, and a year after a land
rights leader in that town was gunned down in his home.
Over the past five years, conflicts over land and natural resources in
the region have led to about 200 confrontations and the deaths of 60
Indigenous people, according to the Business & Human Rights Resource
Center, a London organization.
Four Indigenous people were killed in an attack in Nicaragua in January,
and at least a dozen more died in Colombia in just the first two weeks
of this year, according to the United Nations.
The deaths in Latin America are the result of increasingly violent
clashes between people who have lived on the land for thousands of years
and settlers who have arrived much more recently.
From Mexico to Brazil, Indigenous tribes moving against stop ranchers,
loggers, miners and other business interests — sometimes aggressively —
are hoping to reclaim their community land.
Sometimes, they are dying for it.
And when they do, the newcomers to Indigenous lands rarely seem to pay a
legal price.
“I told you these criminals would keep coming,” Ms. Rivera said in a
follow-up message to the police commander. “Thank you. Today, you let
them kill Jerhy.”
Mr. Rivera, a father of four, sold chickens and worked to promote
awareness about his tribe. In 2013, he was beaten in a dispute with loggers.
Mr. Rivera was a member of one of the nearly 800 Indigenous tribes in
Latin America. Many of them were never colonized after the arrival of
the Spanish and the Portuguese to the continent, and maintained their
languages and traditions.
Although some groups enjoy protections similar to that afforded Native
American reservations in the United States, enforcement can be lax.
That can be particularly true in areas that are remote, or are rich in
natural resources.
In Nicaragua, home of the Miskitu, the government has spoken against
illegal land grabs by settlers, but has done nothing to stop it, said
Laura Hobson Herlihy, a lecturer at the University of Kansas.
Four Indigenous people were killed in the country in January.
“This is a humanitarian crisis,” said Lottie Cunningham, a Miskitu human
rights lawyer on Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast.
With no legal avenue to turn to, Indigenous communities sometimes team
up to clear land of newcomers, a process they call “sanamiento.” In
Costa Rica, it’s called “recovery.”
“They had shirts that said, ‘sanamiento’ across the back,” Ms. Herlihy
said. “I used to tell them, ‘Dude, that’s a target on your back. That is
just so dangerous. It gets so many people killed.”
In many cases, settlers occupying Indigenous land did not know that
their land purchases were against the law. Many invested their life
savings into the land deals and are unwilling to go without a fight.
Víctor Hugo Zúñiga, a 38-year-old father of three, is one of the
thousands of non-Indigenous farmers living on disputed land in Costa
Rica. He says the government gave his father land in the town of Olán
back in 1972, five years before Indigenous reservations were established.
“We didn’t take it away from any Indigenous person,” he said. “Now after
45 years of living here, how are we usurpers?”
Costa Rica, like Nicaragua, began offering special protections to
Indigenous people and their lands in the 1970s.
Marcos Guevara, a professor of anthropology at the University of Costa
Rica who studied Indigenous issues for more than 30 years, says the
eruption of violence has been simmering for decades because of poorly
enforced government policy.
When the government gave Indigenous groups swaths of land in 1977,
farmers were supposed to be compensated, but few were.
“These are problems that the state itself created,” Mr. Guevara said.
Minor Mora, 61, a local farmer and member of the Buenos Aires Farmers
Commission, said there are around thousands of non-Indigenous people
living on Indigenous land in Costa Rica. The government, should help
compensate or relocate them, he said.
“They all just kick the ball forward,” Mr. Mora said.
The Brazilian government’s role in the disputes has been even more
contentious. Land invasions are on the rise across Brazil, where
President Jair Bolsonaro favors ending protections for Indigenous lands.
He says they impede economic growth.
In Mexico, the vast majority of the 14 environmental defenders killed in
2018 were members of Indigenous groups.
Worldwide, Central and South American Indigenous groups are the most
under attack, according to the Business & Human Rights Resource Center,
which maintains a database of attacks and killings of human rights
activists.
With 54 violent incidents against Indigenous groups fighting businesses
last year, Central America led the world last year in the number of such
confrontations, according to Adam Barnett, the group’s spokesman.
Honduras, he said, had the most.
The issue exploded internationally in 2016, when a Lenca woman fighting
a dam in Honduras, Berta Caceres, was murdered. Seven men were convicted
in that case.
The killings have been all the more alarming in Costa Rica, which has
escaped the rampant violence elsewhere in Central America.
Cindy Vargas, 35, a member of a group of Brörán women called Ruta de las
Aves, said that Costa Rica was sold as a multiethnic and multicultural
country, but that it did not extend much beyond folklore.
“They see Indigenous people as the ones who dress up, make traditional
food and dance,” Ms. Vargas said. “Costa Rica is a country with a double
standard. They only care about the folklore, but not about applying
rights in Indigenous territories.”
One of the plots of land seized by the Indigenous the weekend Mr. Rivera
died had belonged to her grandfather, she said.
After his death, one man turned himself in to the police and claimed he
had shot the Indigenous leader in self-defense. After a brief detention,
he was released.
In January, just after the New Year, Mark Rivas, a 33-year-old Miskitu
youth leader, was found dead in his home in Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua.
Even before the police investigated the case, the local
government-affiliated radio station had declared it a suicide, his
father, Carlos Hendy Thomas, said.
“We speak for the land, for the forests, and to silence us, they kill
us,” Mr. Hendy said. “That is the only way to shut us up.”
Paulina Villegas contributed reporting from Mexico City.
Frances Robles is a national and foreign correspondent based in Miami.
Before joining The Times in 2013, she worked at the Miami Herald, where
she covered Cuba and was based in both Nicaragua and Colombia.
@FrancesRobles
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