And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: March 7, 1999 Executions of 3 Americans in Colombia May Prolong Civil War By LARRY ROHTER RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Whether or not Colombia's main guerrilla group proves to have been responsible for the kidnapping and execution of three Americans this past week, the deaths have ignited a political controversy in Colombia that is likely to inflict a major setback on efforts to negotiate an end to the country's long civil conflict. Since taking office last summer, Andres Pastrana, the president of Colombia, has sought to bring a peaceful conclusion to that war, responsible for the deaths of more than 30,000 people in the past three decades. Informal talks started in January, but immediately bogged down, and analysts said that right-wing opposition to Pastrana's conciliatory approach, already strong, is certain to grow as a result of the killings of the three Americans. "This is a serious blow to the peace process, if it is proved that the killers of these three Americans were the guerrillas," Augusto Ramirez Ocampo, a former foreign minister, told the Bogota newspaper El Espectador. Daniel Garcia Pena, the government's former chief peace negotiator, added that "this type of attack strongly affects the support of the United States" for the incipient negotiations. The bodies of Ingrid Washinawatok, Lahe'ena Gay and Terence Freitas were found Thursday, bound, blindfolded and riddled with bullets, in a field on the Venezuelan side of the Arauca River, which forms part of the boundary between Colombia and Venezuela. The three had gone to Colombia last month as part of an international campaign by environmental groups to prevent an oil company from drilling on an Indian tribe's ancestral lands. Both Colombian police and leaders of the U'wa tribe the three Americans were visiting have blamed the country's principal left-wing guerrilla group for the kidnapping. As of Saturday, however, the organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, had not acknowledged either abducting or executing the Americans, and news reports in Colombia have raised questions that cloud the issues of who could have committed the crime and why. The rebel group is a classic Latin American insurgency, Marxist-Leninist in political orientation and therefore deeply suspicious of "American imperialism." For that reason, ordinary Americans, whether missionaries, scientists, reporters, tourists or engineers, are often regarded as envoys of the Central Intelligence Agency. But the region where the Americans were kidnapped is one where right-wing paramilitary groups also have been extremely active in recent years. Those heavily armed groups, which also have a history of abducting and executing people they regard as enemies, oppose the government's efforts to negotiate an accord with the rebel group and have recently stepped up their actions. As Colombian news organizations have been quick to point out, the gunmen who seized the Americans on their way to a provincial airport on Feb. 25 wore masks and civilian clothes. That form of dress is more typical of paramilitary groups than of the guerrillas, who usually wear uniforms and use bandanas when they wish to cover their faces. In addition, Venezuela's new president, Hugo Chavez, who took office last month, has shown clear signs of sympathy for the rebels, elements of whose left-wing ideology he shares. Colombian news reports Friday and Saturday noted that dumping the bodies of the Americans in Venezuelan territory is an act that unnecessarily alienates the Venezuelan government, as well as solidarity groups abroad, and is not in the rebels' long-term interests. "This turn of events is totally inexplicable," Garcia Pena said in remarks to El Espectador. He noted that the killings came at a time when both the guerrillas and the United States were engaged in "the delicate process of unfreezing relations." It has never been clear how much control the central command of the guerrilla group maintains over its regional fronts. But the rebel units in the Arauca region, where the Americans were kidnapped are led by the brother of the group's second in command, lessening the likelihood that the kidnappings and executions, if carried out by the rebels, were a renegade action. At the request of the Colombian government, State Department officials late last year met in Costa Rica with rebels. State Department officials have defended the decision, describing it as an effort to obtain information about the fate of three American missionaries kidnapped in 1994 and the group's involvement in drug trafficking. "Talking to them is the right thing to do," a State Department official said recently. "They are very intelligent and shrewd, but incredibly naive, and we got a glimpse of how unsophisticated their world view is on some issues." ================= March 7, 1999 3 Victims in Colombia Defended Indigenous People By SUSAN SACHS The three Americans who were killed while on a mission to help the Uwa people of Colombia had distinguished themselves in the United States and in international organizations as passionate defenders of the environment and of the rights of indigenous people, associates said Saturday. Ingrid Washinawatok, 41, of Brooklyn, began fighting for the rights of American Indians as a teen-ager in her own backyard, on the Menominee Reservation in Keshena, Wis., where her father was a prominent tribal judge. From that springboard, she travelled to dozens of countries as an advocate for women's and Indian causes. Terence Freitas, 24, a California native who had recently moved to Brooklyn, had spent much of the last three years trying to focus attention on the Uwa tribe's battle to preserve its land from oil exploration. The Uwa "considered him one of theirs," a friend said. Lahe'ena'e Gay, 39, of Hawaii, chairwoman of the Pacific Cultural Conservancy International, worked to bring educational opportunities to indigenous people and recognition for her own Polynesian culture. To shed light on that culture, she was writing a book about her own roots in Hawaiian royalty. "These people are so committed and courageous," said Laurie Parise, executive director of the Rainforest Foundation U.S., a 10-year-old organization in New York City, who knew two of the slain Americans. "They knew the danger, but they still went down there." Washinawatok grew up on the Menominee Reservation, where a tribal spiritual leader gave her the name Peqtaw Metamoh when she was a child. It means Thunderbird Woman. "Her whole life was about humanity, about respecting people's ability to be who they are," said Apesanahkwat, the chairman of the Menominee Nation. "She was just a wonderful person, a mom and a sister and a daughter, an Indian woman who epitomizes all those values that not many people possess," he added. Washinawatok was a co-chairwoman of the Indigenous Women's Network and was active in forums sponsored by the United Nations and other international groups on Indian and women's rights issues. Since 1992, she was also a member of the board of directors of the American Indian Community House in Manhattan. She worked for the Fund of the Four Directions in Manhattan, a foundation that supports Native American culture. Washinawatok's advocacy work began early. At age 14, she helped her father, James, organize on the reservation, and three years later came to New York City as an intern with the International Treaty Council, which monitored Indian rights in the hemisphere. Ali el Issa, her husband of 16 years and a former Rite Aid drug store manager, said he last spoke with his wife a week before she was kidnapped. "I told her, if it's not safe, come back. Don't use your sympathy, use your brain." El Issa said she responded, "I feel I am with my people, like I'm back on the reservation." The couple has a son, Maehki, who is 14. Freitas, a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz, was trained as an environmental biologist and worked in various environmental law projects after college. His passion was not for books and formulas, though. It was for the wild, said Leslie Wirpsa, a close friend. "It was his natural habitat to be out in the woods," she said, adding, "His spirit is inextricably linked to the land." Freitas had been involved with the Uwa fight to keep oil companies from drilling on their land for nearly three years and founded a group called the Uwa Defense Working Group, which he said was dedicated to the principle of non-violent social change. He helped bring an Uwa tribal leader to California last year for public debates with spokesmen for the Occidental Oil and Gas Corporation, the Bakersfield, Calif., company whose affiliate, Occidental de Colombia, has been trying to explore for oil on and near the Uwa lands. "The Uwa considered him one of theirs," Wirpsa said. The feeling was mutual. "He was awestruck when he was in the Uwa territory," she added. "I remember when he showed us a slide -- red birds against a rich verdant green backdrop -- and you could feel his heart jump when he showed that slide." Melina Selverston, director of the Coalition for Amazonian Peoples and their Environment, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group, said Freitas had received death threats on his telephone answering machine. She said they came from the right-wing paramilitary groups that operate in the Arauca area of Colombia where the Americans were abducted. "Terence was a deeply, deeply committed young man," Ms. Selverston added. "He was the one person the Uwa trusted as a connection to the outside world." Gay, 39, was a native Hawaiian of Scottish, Mohawk and French descent, with varied interests and talents. A photojournalist and writer, she led delegations of indigenous Polynesians to various international forums and was active in Hawaii in fighting for their official recognition. "Her work was her passion," John Livingstone, who described himself as Gay's common-law husband, said in a telephone interview from his parents' home in Connecticut. "She dedicated her life to indigenous causes and saving traditional cultures." Hawaiian elders had trained her in what Livingstone called traditional anthropology, and she was using those skills to trace the history of the royal family from which she was descended. She was writing a book about her roots called The Ancestral Voices. Livingston said that Ms. Gay understood the dangers of a trip to the Uwa in Colombia, where she was exploring the possibility of setting up an education program modeled on one she had established in Panama. "They took my heart," Livingstone said, sobbing. "She was the love of my life. She was just a phenomenal, beautiful person, and it was a senseless brutal act." Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html) &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
