Colombian Poor Occupy Lands Slated for Military Base

12th May 2014 FORTUL, COLOMBIA–Holding down an occu­pa­tion for five months isn’t easy. Doing so in Colom­bia, even less so. But mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty of Héc­tor Alirio Martínez in the munic­i­pal­i­ty of For­tul, near the bor­der with Venezuela, have raised the stakes even high­er: they’re occu­py­ing land owned by the Min­istry of Defense. The 100 hectare ter­rain now spot­ted with wood and plas­tic homes was slat­ed to become a large mil­i­tary base.

Locals say the land orig­i­nal­ly was pur­chased by Occi­den­tal Petro­le­um in order to build a large new base to coor­di­nate pro­tec­tion of a new oil pipeline which pass­es less than a few hun­dred meters from the lot.

“This land belongs to the Min­istry of Defense, it was pur­chased and spon­sored by Oxy, so we as good peo­ple from Arau­ca said that the most viable thing is to take over this plan, and see if the Min­is­ter of Defense will give it to us over time, many peo­ple need­ed this land,” said Jhon Car­los Ariza Aguilar, the Vice-Pres­i­dent of the com­mu­ni­ty of over 2,000 fam­i­lies. They began the occu­pa­tion on Novem­ber 26, 2013.

I met with Jhon and oth­er mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty on a hot Feb­ru­ary after­noon, weeks after the com­mu­ni­ty was sup­posed to have been removed by force. On Jan­u­ary 20, the army entered the shack set­tle­ment with a tank, and an evic­tion was sched­uled for Feb­ru­ary 4, but that date came and went with com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers in an uneasy calm about what would take place next.

For­tul is a munic­i­pal­i­ty in the Colom­bian foothills, between the moun­tains and the wide open plains, and not far from the Arau­ca Riv­er, which marks the bor­der with Venezuela. This oil rich region is also deeply con­flict­ual, on the road over, sol­diers hung around a hand­ful of tanks, and army pres­ence is ubiq­ui­tous. ELN and FARC guer­ril­las also patrol the area and have car­ried out attacks on Caño Limon-Covenas pipeline which serves Occidental’s near­by Caño Limon field. Under the heavy after­noon sun, a group of men lounged under a hand­ful of trees, and women relaxed under a shel­ter beside them. Iden­ti­cal palm shacks pro­tect­ed by green cloth roofs dot­ted the area.

As we spoke, a taxi cab arrived, with a mat­tress strapped to the top and fur­ni­ture in the trunk, indi­cat­ing anoth­er fam­i­ly per­ma­nent­ly mov­ing into the area. Ariza Aguilar indi­cat­ed that about one in four mem­bers of the occu­pa­tion was an inter­nal­ly dis­placed per­son, forced out of their homes because of the ongo­ing con­flict.

“Oxy bought this land and they gave it to the Min­istry of Defense” in 2010, said Jhon­ny Alex­is Cas­tro, the For­tul rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Joel Sier­ra Human Rights Foun­da­tion. Oxy did not respond to a request for com­ment.

The Oleo­duc­to Bicen­te­nario, a meter wide oil pipeline that will even­tu­al­ly trav­el 960km from Casanare depart­ment to the port of Cov­eñas, is three min­utes from the occu­pa­tion by road, on the back end of the com­mu­ni­ty the under­ground pipeline is but a few hun­dred meters away. “That’s why they want­ed a bat­tal­ion here, but there is a school very close, hav­ing a bat­tal­ion here would mean hav­ing a check­point right in front of the school,” said Cas­tro.

Today, chil­dren from the set­tle­ment are already attend­ing the school. “What mat­ters is that the chil­dren go and study, it doesn’t mat­ter if we have elec­tric­i­ty or not, that [they study] is the impor­tant thing,” said Ariza Aguilar. He invit­ed me to swim in a riv­er near­by, which pro­vides those liv­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty with a place to gath­er water, wash cloth­ing, and bathe.

The com­mu­ni­ty of Héc­tor Alirio Martínez is the first per­ma­nent occu­pa­tion of land owned by the Min­istry of Defense in Colom­bia. The com­mu­ni­ty takes its name from a local peas­ant activist who was pulled from a house at dawn and shot to death by sol­diers along with two oth­ers on August 4, 2004. “The prob­lem is that Arau­ca is con­sid­ered a red zone in Colom­bia, and any leader who ori­ents peo­ple, who even just teach­es them how to go to city hall (to man­age their paper­work), that’s enough to say they’re a guer­ril­la and hunt them until they kill them,” said Ariza Aguilar.

Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers know that tak­ing part in the occu­pa­tion is an extreme­ly risky activ­i­ty, but for many the need for hous­ing and the abil­i­ty to send their chil­dren to school out­weighs the risk.