April 2nd, 2015

[NOTE: All faces have been blurred and all names have been with­held for secu­ri­ty rea­sons.]

Clash­es have erupt­ed in Colombia’s west­ern depart­ment of Cau­ca as the Nasa Indige­nous Peo­ples press the gov­ern­ment to ful­fill its promise to return 15,600 hectares to their con­trol. A suc­ces­sion of occu­pa­tions of sug­ar plan­ta­tions has seen the gov­ern­ment deploy the army and riot police against them prompt­ing fierce bat­tles across the north of the region.

This is the lat­est stage in a decades-long strug­gle for the return of indige­nous ter­ri­to­ry lost to inten­sive agri­cul­ture, a strug­gle that received inter­na­tion­al atten­tion in past decades fol­low­ing a wave of mas­sacres. Pro­tect­ed by the Indige­nous Guards, the fields remain large­ly under Nasa con­trol, but an abrupt rise in threats from the “Black Eagles” para­mil­i­tary group and the issuance of new evic­tion orders by the gov­ern­ment raise fears that dead­ly vio­lence may return to the region.

There was no shade to shel­ter the small par­ty as they crossed the expanse of earth last week, car­ry­ing a plan­tain sapling and a bag of maize. In the mid­dle of the field, its vast­ness already rip­pling in the morn­ing heat, they plant­ed the sapling and scat­tered the seeds of local indige­nous maize.

Keep­ing an eye on the ‘ESMAD’ riot police sta­tioned in the shade of the trees around the hacien­da was a local teacher.

“We are recu­per­at­ing the land” she told IC. “We are replac­ing the mono-cul­ti­va­tion of the multi­na­tion­als with the orig­i­nal veg­e­ta­tion. …One day trees will be grow­ing here again: what we are see­ing is the lib­er­a­tion of Moth­er Earth”.

The Indige­nous Nasa peo­ples have been seek­ing the ‘lib­er­a­tion’ of the ter­ri­to­ry of the hacien­da for years, reg­u­lar­ly occu­py­ing the fields and build­ings, and block­ing the road that runs between the prop­er­ty and the Nasa reser­va­tion of Huel­las.

Behind the line of riot police, sol­diers patrolled the build­ings of the ‘Hacien­da La Emper­a­triz’. Two weeks ago, on Mar. 17, they had opened fire on the Nasa, cit­ing a leaflet sup­pos­ed­ly deliv­ered by the FARC guer­ril­las claim­ing to have infil­trat­ed the indige­nous demon­stra­tors. Three Nasa were injured by gun­fire.

The planters con­tin­ued sow­ing the seeds in the grow­ing heat, small hand­fuls as a sym­bol­ic ges­ture amidst the stumps of sug­ar­cane and the cast tear gas grenades of ear­li­er con­fronta­tions. In the dis­tance oth­er groups worked with maize and plan­tains, often among patch­es of ground where the sweet fer­ment­ed smell of burned cane indi­cat­ed where the plan­ta­tions had burned dur­ing con­fronta­tions with the ESMAD.

Final­ly the calm was bro­ken as the riot police drove an armoured vehi­cle down the road par­al­lel with the fields, a line of police advanc­ing across the cleared plan­ta­tions to keep pace with it and fir­ing gas and stun grenades at the Nasa.

The indige­nous respond­ed with cat­a­pults and sling­shots, and the police line was halt­ed halfway across the sug­ar fields from where they fired stun grenades and gas grenades coat­ed with mar­bles. These were lobbed high in the air; their explo­sion shoot­ing the mar­bles out like bul­lets.

Oth­er gas and stun grenades were reg­u­lar­ly fired par­al­lel with the ground, direct­ly at the bod­ies of the Indige­nous, caus­ing a steady stream of injuries to be treat­ed by the community’s med­ical teams.

Fierce bat­tles reg­u­lar­ly erupt­ed where a stream sur­round­ed with bam­boo offered cov­er for each side to attempt to out­flank the oth­er. The Nasa used a three-man cat­a­pult against the ESMAD, often forc­ing them back, while the riot police hid­den on the oth­er side of the stream respond­ed with mis­siles fired blind­ly at the three. A hos­tile stale­mate over the plan­ta­tion last­ed for the rest of the day, the gas clouds blown some­times one way, some­times the other.The plains of Colombia’s west­ern Valle del Cau­ca depart­ment are now an expanse of sug­ar; road trains of cou­pled trucks haul the cane from the plan­ta­tions to be refined or used in the cre­ation of ethanol. Across the plan­ta­tion of La Emper­a­triz lie proofs of hours worked and records of fumi­ga­tion tossed onto the ground in past months by con­trac­tors of InCau­ca, the agro-indus­tri­al multi­na­tion­al that runs the largest sug­ar refin­ery in Colom­bia and which dom­i­nates the region.

The same plains once sup­port­ed a land­scape of leafy savan­nah where com­mu­ni­ties pro­duced numer­ous crops. One can read of this world as recent­ly as the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry in the work of local jour­nal­ist and chron­i­cler Luciano Rivera y Gar­ri­do, who described,

“Ripar­i­an forests, thick car­pets of dark green… vast plains cov­ered with forests, over there pas­tures, yon­der ham­lets… small val­leys sowed with seeds, clogged wood­lands… quaint huts of peas­ants… gold­en light… sap­phire sky.”

A mixed land­scape has been reborn in the land on the oth­er side of the road. A hacien­da sim­i­lar to La Emper­a­triz has been metic­u­lous­ly maintained–and now, paint­ed with Nasa sym­bols and iconog­ra­phy, serves as the com­mu­ni­ty health cen­tre and music schoo..

The sur­round­ing land is held in com­mon though dot­ted with parcels of land where indi­vid­ual fam­i­lies farm their own mixed crops, inter­spersed with for­est and pas­ture. The ter­ri­to­ry of the Huel­las reser­va­tion was a cat­tle ranch until the Nasa retook it; the road that forms the bound­ary between the reser­va­tion and La Emper­a­triz run­ning along the edge of the plain and below the gen­tle foothills of the Sier­ra Occi­den­tal.

“Before this we had no land”, said a for­mer gov­er­nor of Huel­las. He con­tin­ued,

“We came from high up and had to work for two days a week for noth­ing oth­er than the per­mis­sion to be here through the sys­tem of the ‘ter­a­je’. Then around 1971 we estab­lished the Asso­ci­a­tion of Indige­nous Coun­cils of North­ern Cau­ca (ACIN), and we refused to pay the ter­a­je. The local pow­ers respond­ed with threats and assas­si­na­tions, but we had found our voice. The elders teach us that we lived in the plains until 1915, when the police came from Cali trip to evict every­one who refused to leave for the moun­tains.”

ACIN became a dri­ving force in the indige­nous move­ment of Colom­bia, and as part of the Region­al Indige­nous Coun­cil of Cau­ca (CRIC) its suc­cess­es in over­com­ing state and para­mil­i­tary vio­lence to reclaim ances­tral land and oppose the export econ­o­my of inten­sive agri­cul­ture have gained it sup­port beyond indige­nous Colom­bia.

In 1985, the nation­al gov­ern­ment was pres­sured into pass­ing Decree 865, which led to the estab­lish­ment of the Com­mis­sion of Land for the Peo­ple of Cau­ca, but the gov­ern­ment machin­ery pro­ceed­ed at a snail’s pace in real­is­ing promis­es of land reform. In Octo­ber 1991, with threats and attacks ris­ing against Nasa occu­py­ing hacien­das, the CRIC and indige­nous coun­cils of north­ern Cau­ca asked that the Gov­ern­ment inter­vene to pre­vent a mas­sacre and pass 15,663 hectares to the indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty to set­tle claims. The gov­ern­ment did not respond.

On 16 Decem­ber 1991, 50 armed men in mil­i­tary style uni­forms shot 21 Nasa to death in the El Nilo hacien­da. An inves­ti­ga­tion point­ed to the involve­ment of Major Jorge Enrique Durán Argüelles, police com­man­der of the Sec­ond Dis­trict of San­tander de Quilichao, and Cap­tain Fabio Ale­jan­dro Cas­tañe­da Mateus, com­man­der of the anti-nar­cotics com­pa­ny of that unit, along with numer­ous police per­son­nel, but the charges were dropped.

The Inter-Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion on Human Rights inves­ti­gat­ed the El Nilo mas­sacre from 1993 to 1997, pub­lish­ing its rec­om­men­da­tions in 2001 urg­ing Colom­bia to inves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute those respon­si­ble for the mas­sacre, includ­ing police offi­cers; to make social and inte­gral repa­ra­tion to the Nasa peo­ple; and to guar­an­tee the non-repeti­ti­ton of sim­i­lar acts.

The gov­ern­ment had belat­ed­ly signed an accord in Bogotá on 23 Decem­ber 1991 that promised to return the request­ed land to the Nasa, but only a por­tion of this has been legal­ly trans­ferred. In 2001 fur­ther mas­sacres occurred at Gua­lan­day, San Pedro, and Maya. The gov­ern­ment has nev­er accept­ed respon­si­bil­i­ty for the mas­sacres, and the return of prop­er­ties has con­sis­tent­ly relied on pres­sure from the Nasa.

“We lost many peo­ple killed in order to reclaim this fin­ca” said the ex-gov­er­nor of Nasa.

“The nar­co-traf­fick­ers, the land-own­ers, and the police were all involved. Now they call them­selves the Black Eagles or the Ras­tro­jos, but they’re just the same peo­ple. When we pres­sure the gov­ern­ment to ful­fil its promis­es to return our land the intim­i­da­tion increas­es. Three months ago we had para­mil­i­taries pass­ing along the road in front of the reser­va­tion shout­ing threats against the cur­rent gov­er­nor. They said they were from the Ras­tro­jos but the name is not impor­tant.”

We had walked into the foothills to see the trans­for­ma­tion of Huel­las in the years since it had been passed to indige­nous con­trol. Between the land returned to wood­land, fields of mixed crops of beans, yuca, plan­tain, cof­fee and maize were inter­spersed with cit­rus groves and pas­ture.

The plain spread out beneath us, the end­less sug­ar sug­ar plan­ta­tions extend­ing to Cali and beyond; the explo­sions of gas grenades and white smoke ris­ing beyond the fur­thest trees of Huel­las showed where the dai­ly strug­gle to reclaim the plains con­tin­ued.

The cur­rent gov­er­nor empha­sized in assem­blies each morn­ing that the focus of the strug­gle was to recu­per­ate the land and to lib­er­ate Moth­er Earth. “We are Indige­nous, we know how to care for the land,” she told the com­mu­ni­ty, before its mem­bers pre­pared to return to the strug­gle at La Emper­a­triz. “Focus on your replant­i­ng of the land, don’t pro­voke the fight­ing.” The Nasa would then line up to have their heads bathed in a herbal mix­ture pre­pared by the spir­i­tu­al guide. Then, they would cross from Huel­las into La Emper­a­triz.

The strug­gle for con­trol of the fields is cur­rent­ly swing­ing in favour of the Nasa; the increased repres­sion serv­ing only to boost the num­bers of those com­ing to the prop­er­ty. The riot police are grow­ing reluc­tant to spend each day before the slings and cat­a­pults in the fields; but at the same time, as they begin to remain clos­er to the con­fines of the build­ings of the hacien­da the num­ber of threats has mul­ti­plied. By night the fields are desert­ed by the Nasa; “In the dark the police would shoot us dead” they say, “The ‘Black Eagles’ is just the name they use at night”.

A sim­i­lar pat­tern of dis­en­gage­ment fol­lowed by threats has occurred in the prop­er­ties between the sug­ar-pro­duc­ing town of Cor­in­to and neigh­bour­ing Nasa com­mu­ni­ties, where ESMAD police wield­ed machetes and fired live bul­lets injur­ing four Nasa who were con­test­ing the own­er­ship of the sug­ar plan­ta­tions of Que­bra­da Seca and Gar­cia. The esca­la­tion of vio­lence prompt­ed the UN to nego­ti­ate an agree­ment in which the police and army occu­pied the hacien­da build­ings of the con­test­ed hacien­das of Miraflo­res, Que­bra­da Seca, Granadil­lo, and Gar­cia, while the Nasa are left in pos­ses­sion of the fields. The first two prop­er­ties are owned out­right by InCau­ca, the sug­ar com­pa­ny that rents the oth­er two prop­er­ties as well as La Emper­a­triz. Nasa have also received firearms injuries from the pri­vate secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny of InCau­ca.

A leaflet from the Black Eagles cir­cu­lat­ed in Cor­in­to last week, promis­ing the “social cleans­ing” of the area and the erad­i­ca­tion of the “ban­dits” in the sug­ar­cane plan­ta­tions. The para­mil­i­taries ordered a region­al cur­few of 10pm. Threat­en­ing promi­nent Nasa, they signed off with: “Unit­ed for a north­ern Cau­ca with­out Indi­ans”.

This week, the Gov­ern­ment issued evic­tion orders for some of the set­tle­ments the Nasa have been estab­lish­ing in the con­test­ed fields around Cor­in­to. From the Mon­day until Wednes­day the same prop­er­ty also seen a Nasa Assem­bly devel­op a “plan of life” for the com­mu­nal ‘recu­per­a­tion’ of the land. Around the assem­bly the for­mer sug­ar-plan­ta­tion was already grow­ing with indige­nous maize, such as the planters had been sow­ing at La Emper­a­triz.

Dur­ing the strug­gle at La Emper­a­triz the plan­tain sapling they had plant­ed was lat­er uproot­ed when the ESMAD gained con­trol of that part of the field, but in the days that fol­lowed it was replant­ed and like­ly grows still. The teacher who had spo­ken of the lib­er­a­tion of Moth­er Earth as the planters walked through the heat had claimed that the envi­ron­men­tal and spir­i­tu­al dimen­sion of the strug­gle gave the com­mu­ni­ty a strength that vio­lence couldn’t break. “We will always be here, and we will always demand this land back, not just for our­selves to live as before but also for Moth­er Earth. We are not like the Gov­ern­ment which only knows how to sell things. That is why we will win, that is why we have the patience which will win here.”