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Refugees Magazine Issue 132: (Protection) – Indigenous Colombians: "We are here today and tomorrow we disappear"
Colombia's indigenous and poor people bear the brunt of conflict
By William Spindler
Deep in the Amazon rain forests, clandestine laboratories refine local coca leaves into cocaine. Powerful crime syndicates, opposing guerrilla and paramilitary groups duel for control of the lucrative trade with destructive scorched earth military and assassination campaigns.
The regular army, supported by the United States, recently stepped up its campaign to eliminate both the trade and its sponsors. Heavily fortified airstrips, military compounds, checkpoints and lumbering patrols stud the landscape. Overhead, crop-spraying aircraft unleash deadly clouds of chemicals to destroy the coca fields.
The epicentre of all this activity, Colombia's southern province of Putumayo, became one of the most dangerous places in the turbulent South American country.
Some peasant farmers abandoned their hamlets and villages and fled in increasing numbers to somewhat safer larger towns.
Since 1985, non-governmental organizations estimate as many as three million people were uprooted from their homes (the government said this figure is too high) to become internally displaced within Colombia or refugees in neighbouring states. More than 200,000 persons were killed in the unending cycle of violence involving the army, entrenched landowning elites, and irregular armed groups fighting for territory, power and wealth not only in Putumayo, but also in many other parts of the country.
HIT HARD
Amid this ongoing carnage, Colombia's indigenous populations and its poorest regions have paid a particularly high price. The small ethnic groups face not only death and displacement, but also the permanent loss of their way of life and centuries-old cultures.
In the semi-abandoned villages of Putumayo in the south, one indigenous leader worried: "Unfortunately for us, our lands are of great strategic importance to the armed groups. They have killed many members of our communities. They try to recruit our youth by persuasion or force. Many families have become displaced."
The territory of the Cofan ethnic group in the border area with neighbouring Ecuador is also under threat. But "the land is the most important thing of all," according to one Cofan official. "If we lose our territory, we disappear as a culture, as a community. We lose our children, we lose everything. We become poor. We become sad. We remain only as drifters. We are here today and tomorrow we disappear."
In the north, many of the 20,000 Sikwanis (Guahibo) ethnic group living in border areas with Venezuela fled springtime fighting between paramilitaries and guerrillas from FARC, the largest of Colombia's leftwing groups.
Last year, one-third of the 4,500 strong Kankuamos people were displaced from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region. There, the origins of the universe rest on four pillars, one belonging to each of the main ethnic groups in the region, and the rude eviction of the Kankuamos upset that delicate cultural balance according to the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC).
Tule (Kuna), Bari, Embera and other groups from the Sierra Nevada, Naya and Chocó regions also found themselves under pressure.
RESPONDING
Local groups, aided by UNHCR, have begun to respond.
The refugee agency helps the Indigenous Zonal Organization of Putumayo (OZIP) which in turn provides practical help, legal advice and training to individuals and local authorities (cabildos) and it researches indigenous cultures themselves.
This assistance paid off for everyone when OZIP was able to negotiate an agreement with the government to compensate local communities for voluntarily abandoning the cultivation of 6,000 hectares of coca.
Indigenous doctors known as mambeadores de coca, use this same leaf in a more beneficial manner, treating trauma victims of the conflict in time-honored traditional ways. Spiritual guides or taitas also employ a vine called yagé which for the Cofan people is "a spiritual element in our life and in ceremonial use allows us to propose a model for life for our future generations."
Identification papers are as important as medicine or food in a country where the lack of proper documentation can prove deadly at the hands of gunmen or prevent people from receiving needed assistance.
In a more innocent era, "long time ago, the only cédula (ID) we had was this," a Cofan traditional leader told one visitor recently. "This was all we needed to be identified by others," he said, pointing at his many brightly colored necklaces.
But times have changed. Today "without a cédula you simply don't exist," another indigenous chief said. "We need documents for our security, to adapt to the needs of society, to receive basic health and education from the government. Without documents we can't even register our dead."
To improve that situation, indigenous populations were among the recipients of some of the 140,000 ID cards distributed thus far to IDPs and other groups of civilians considered to be particularly at risk in an ongoing project by the National Registry Office and UNHCR.
MASSACRE
Along with the indigenous groups, less developed parts of the country have been particularly savaged.
Chocó, a sliver of tropical jungle wedged between the Andes mountains and the Pacific Ocean in the northwest of the country is the poorest of all.
The regional capital, Quibdó, shelters more displaced persons per capita – tens of thousands of them – than any other population centre in Colombia.
Along the banks of the nearby Atrato, San Juan and Baudó rivers, hundreds of thousands of mainly Afro- Colombians and indigenous civilians are trapped in the web of war. The armed gangs who control the waterways do not allow them to fish, hunt or gather wood.
Food, medicines, fuel and other essential supplies are intercepted and hijacked by the gunmen.
Travel itself is dangerous. At least 600 people have been killed in the last few years according to the main Afro-Colombian Association, ACIA.
The inhabitants of San Martín fled fighting four times, but when a navy unit clashed with guerrillas in April, they dispersed for the last time. They say they will never again return to San Martín.
The town of Bojayá is only now recovering from the worst single tragedy in the country's blood soaked war. In an incident a year ago, 119 people, many of them children, were killed and scores were wounded when a missile hit the church in which they were sheltering during another round of interminable fighting between FARC guerrillas and the paramilitaries.
A week after the massacre, a UNHCR team arrived in Bojayá and then established a permanent presence in Quibdó. Chocó was selected as one of the first areas in the country to benefit from the Humanitarian Action Plan, a joint initiative by U.N. agencies to target particular areas with a coordinated series of projects.
Teachers at the La Gloria urban school in a working class district of Quibdó have been trained to respond to the specific needs of displaced children among the 1,200 students. School and parent associations are being strengthened and new schoolrooms built.
A cultural centre for displaced youth in another part of the town financed by the refugee agency promotes dance, music, theatre and literature and is being built by the youngsters themselves. "We are not investing on infrastructure but on communities themselves," says UNHCR field officer Jovanny Salazar. "We want young people to build their own centre themselves, learning practical and organizational skills and offering them alternatives."
A fishing project near Bojayá will help 850 families. Some of the destroyed homes in the town of Napipí are being rebuilt. As with the country's indigenous groups, other IDPs in the Chocó region are being supplied with identity documents.
A U.N. motor launch plies the Atrato river regularly, offering the isolated communities both reassurance and a link with the outside world.
But despite the help, while the conflict continues, Colombia's embattled indigenous peoples mourn the destruction of the entire country. One Naya regional leader lamented: "Colombia is the most bio-diverse country in the world and 75 percent of it is found in the territories of the indigenous peoples. When they attack us, they are attacking the whole of humanity."
Source: Refugees Magazine Issue 132: "The Changing Face of Protection" (September 2003). Download the complete issue in pdf format: low-resolution (620Kb) here or high-resolution (1.8Mb) here
