(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #252 (n° spécial) -
Colombia: Release of Mother Earth (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
For over forty years, the indigenous peoples of Cauca (Colombia) are raised to recover the
land that was stolen from them since colonization. In recent months, they have them again
occupied and cultivated while undergoing frontal state repression, which does not hesitate
to kill to protect capitalist interests. ---- Long relegated to the mountains by settlers,
the indigenous peoples of Cauca, organized within the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca
(Cric) conducted many lands recovery measures since 1971. However, the fertile plains of
the region to remain largely hands of landowners and multinationals: Cali to Popayan, the
sugarcane monoculture expanses alternate. ---- Land grabbing is such that, in Cauca, only
eight sugar production firms and biofuel share 330,000 hectares of land, while 172,000 are
relegated indigenous families on 165,000 hectares of arable land, more or less [1 ]. What
then of the amount of water [2]and pesticides absorbed by the crops with raw materials
extracted are exported worldwide ... To end this organized theft of collective property,
the Nasa people (northern Cauca ) performs actions Liberation of Mother Earth - Uma Kiwe
in nasayuwe. If these actions can take many forms (recovery, confrontation with armed
actors, neutralization of mines ...), an emblematic example is that of the liberation of
the hacienda La Emperatriz.
Sowing life and resistance
This land ownership had already been the subject of occupation by communities in 1991. But
police and paramilitary forces had landed in the night to kill twenty people, in order to
neutralize the resistance. However, forced to acknowledge his crime by the IACHR [3]- the
massacre of Nilo - The State undertakes to return the land.
In 2005, indigenous, noting that the agreement had "strangely" not been completed, decided
to reoccupy La Emperatriz, which was notably played in March. For NASA, retrieve Uma Kiwe
also means taking care of the one who gives life, cultivating the ancestral seed corn and
red beans to sow life and resistance that germinates in it.
Redo born a Foodland in favor of the autonomy of communities however, is not easy in a
context where state repression, selective assassinations and threats are common to the
peoples in struggle. The Colombian State and its army bent on defending the multinational
[4 ]: witness the violent incursions of tanks ESMAD who killed the young Nasa Guillermo
Pavi in April and resulted to May 28 by destruction of crops, many injured and many-es and
the forced expulsion of more than three hundred people who had invested La Emperatriz.
There will be no peace in Colombia as all land will not be recovered, as multinationals
impose their mines and their monocultures, as powerful trade at Havana on (non-) sharing
of wealth. There has never been a cease-fire in Colombia. The war filled all the days of
those who struggle in the wake of Guillermo, who gave his life for Uma Kiwe, for whom the
people nasa invites us all to join their struggle.
Camille (AL Paris-Northeast)
[1]Source: www.nasaacin.org
[2]These crops monopolize water over thirty rivers and 1800 wells. Sources: ibid
[3]Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
[4]The Emperatriz now belongs to the sugar company Incauca, owned by billionaire Ardila Lule
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Colombie-Liberer-la-Terre-Mere
