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From: Piercing Eyes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 11:12:34 EDT
Subject: Indians Caught in Colombian War
Indians Caught in Colombian War
.c The Associated Press
By JARED KOTLER
POPAYAN, Colombia (AP) -- Anger is brewing on the sprawling Indian reserves
that blanket misty Andean ridges rising above this whitewashed colonial
capital.
The somewhat surprising targets of the discontent are leftist rebels who
having been fighting for decades in the name of Colombia's poor and oppressed.
Once respected in this historically combative western region, where fierce
Paez Indian warriors fought a 100-year war against Spanish conquerors,
Colombia's guerrillas are now considered a danger.
Indian leaders say increasing rebel incursions on the reserves are sowing
violence, disrupting traditional life and drawing peace-seeking native groups
into a 34-year civil war they want nothing to do with.
``What indigenous people want is to have their territory, to live peacefully,
and not to be bothered,'' said a Paez activist, Jose Domingo Caldon. ``For
the guerillas -- and for the state security forces as well -- that concept is
a hindrance.''
At a statewide assembly of tribal authorities in late March, Indian leaders
agreed to present complaints to top rebel leaders, the military and
government peace negotiators.
``We can't sit passively before the actors of war and peace, because the
Indian territories are being converted into battlefields,'' said Caldon, who
is a member of the Regional Council of Indigenous People of Cauca, whose
capital is Popayan.
At a preparatory meeting held on a former rich man's estate north of Popayan,
now part of the 7,500-acre Ambalo reserve, Indian leaders ticked off
grievances against guerrillas active in the region.
Paez official Camilo Eider Fernandez said 300 heavily armed rebels from the
largest insurgent group -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
FARC -- have set up camp on his group's reserve and are ignoring elders'
pleas to leave.
``As long as the guerrillas are here, we all become military targets. We're
between a rock and a hard place,'' said Fernandez, who fears the army will
view his community as FARC collaborators and take reprisals.
Rebel recruitment also has Indians upset.
Alirio Morales, a Guambiano leader from the Quizgo reserve, said 10 Indian
teen-agers from the area were recruited by FARC rebels in February, only to
be slaughtered two weeks later in a firefight with soldiers.
The youths, ages 13 to 18, were sent out ``like cannon fodder,'' Morales
said. ``They hadn't even learned how to handle a rifle.''
Similar complaints are levied by embattled Indian groups in other regions of
Colombia. Only the culprits are often not the rebels, but rather army units
and rightist paramilitary groups who battle them for territory and popular
allegiances.
Blanca Lucia Echeverria, the top Indian affairs aide to the national human
rights ombudsman, said all sides are now using Indian reserves as
battlefields, threatening or killing leaders suspected of aiding the enemy,
and recruiting young Indians -- often by force -- as soldiers, messengers or
spies.
``As the conflict escalates indigenous people are getting dragged down with
it,'' said Echeverria, whose office reported that 63 Indian leaders were
assassinated in 1997 alone.
In one case, she said, FARC guerrillas killed 15 members of a tiny Indian
tribe in southern Caqueta state, the Koreguaje, after accusing them of aiding
rightist paramilitary groups.
Many Colombians were not surprised when an FARC rebel unit recently killed
three U.S. social activists working near the Venezuelan border with the U'wa,
a tribe fighting to keep oil companies off its lands.
``It was nothing new,'' said Sen. Jesus Pinacue, a Paez leader who is one of
Colombia's two Indian senators. ``What's new is that they attacked American
citizens.''
The Indians under heaviest attack at the moment are the Embera-Katio, a tribe
of about 500 families living along rivers in northern Cordoba and Antioquia
states. United Nations monitors in Colombia say that since July, rightist
militias and the FARC have killed and tortured Embera-Katio leaders, burned
homes and forced dozens of families to flee.
Underlying many of the conflicts are the armed groups' desire to control key
corridors and valuable resources located on or near Indian reserves.
``We are in strategic locations -- militarily, politically and
economically,'' said Rosalba Jimenez, a Sikuani Indian who heads the National
Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Colombia.
The growing harassment of Indians is a setback for a country regarded as a
leader in South America in protecting native minorities. It has about 80
tribal groups estimated to encompass more than 700,000 people out of a total
population of nearly 40 million.
Colombia's 1991 constitution made Indian languages official, set aside seats
in the legislature for indigenous people and ratified perpetual Indian
ownership and broad governing authority over reserves that cover nearly a
fourth of the country's land.
More than 80 percent of Colombia's Indians now live on 479 self-managed
reserves, which stretch across much of the Colombian Amazon and large pockets
of its Andean highlands and Caribbean coast.
After Colombia's government begrudgingly accepted centuries-old Indian
demands, indigenous groups and Marxist guerillas trying to take power
increasingly have gone their separate ways.
The trend is clear in Cauca, home to nearly a fourth of Colombia's Indians
and where in the 1970s indigenous groups and Marxist guerrillas were loosely
allied. At the time, police working with big landholders killed Indian
leaders by the dozens.
Indians in the region even had their own guerrilla movement -- Quintin Lame,
named after a revered Paez Indian who led rebellions early in the century.
The group laid down its arms in 1991 as the new constitution was being
approved.
Today, Indian leaders say the struggle for their people's rights and welfare
is long-term and nonviolent. Many look condescendingly at the rebel movements
that have been fighting since the 1960s.
``The guerrillas can talk about 40 years of struggle,'' said Alvaro Morales
Tombe, an elected mayor from the Guambiano tribe. ``We're talking about more
than 500 years.''
AP-NY-04-10-99 1111EDT
Copyright 1998 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP
news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise
distributed without prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
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