On 16 December 2014, the Nasa indigenous nation began the appropiation and direct liberaton of 2000 hectares of land in the municipality of Corinto, located in the northern department of Cauca, Colombia. These lands were monopolized by the sugar company INCAUCA S.A., owned by Ardila Lule who, besides controlling the cane production for biofuels in two departments of the Colombia’s south-western, has a strong monopoly on the fabrication of soda, sugar, the bench and have an enormous influence in the national channel RCN, media that is recognized by a constant defense of the violent action of paramilitary groups in the country.

The aim of this process of land liberation is to overcome the food crisis of indigenous communities, refolded in high and infertile lands, replacing cane production for biofuels from beans, corn, banana and pumpkin crops; expand and strengthen their safeguards, exercising their ancestral land rights, practices that has been taken away in more than 500 years of despoiling. For Nasa indigenous communities, land is the material sustenance of an independent and dignified life, in which harmonious relations between people and nature are practiced under their own forms of autonomic government.

Direct struggle for land that is being done in five indigenous safeguards of Northern Cauca has not been without repression: paramilitary groups paid by the landowner Alvaro Za, known in the region as “the monkey” in complicity with the institutional armed forces, receive the “mingas” (traditional name for community harvest work) with bullet gusts against men, women and children, who have no other weapon than rocks and hoes, as was presented in the last liberation minga release on August 8, 2016. According to reports from the community, since last two months these armed groups have begun patrolling the area at late hours of night, sowing terror and capsize in the community, announcing the possibility of future violent actions against the commoners.

Death threats against the liberators of land are now a daily occurrence, without permanent presence of human rights organizations in the municipalities. Furthermore, in the hard days to liberation the anti-riot police (Escuadrón Móvil Antidisturbios or “ESMAD”) attacked homes and sacred community centers, setting fire to structures built in bamboo and straw, firing gases against children, using unconventional weapons like slingshots, inforced with explosive material segmentation and excrement, stun bombs and conventional firearms.

Atmosphere of terror and intimidation is permanent, according to information provided by the Comunication Tissue of Nasa People (Tejido de Comunicaciones del Pueblo Nasa), only in 14 to July 18of this year, were savagely killed four commoners in the municipality of Caloto, while the Coordinator of the Indigenous Guard in the resguard “Las Delicias” was shot in his home. Despite these facts, the indigenous community does not back down in its fight. Is urgent that communities are not left isolated, generate and strengthen networks of solidarity between the indigenous community and the indidividuals and organizations in cities of the world that support direct struggle for land is a new challenge. Must be broken the siege of terror that has wanted to isolate those who struggle, because only why the international solidarity it’s possible to stop the repression against the originary communities in the northern Cauca.

The colombian State has ignored the just demands of indigenous sectors of Cauca, constantly discriminated and forced to live in the steep mountains away from arable land. Previous estates (haciendas) that served as administrative centers, warehouses gathering and housing for laborers, are now the headquarters of the police, army and paramilitary groups, from which coordinates with the large landowners and under the approval of the local political class, the most strongest repression to the Nasa people, their crops and their culture.

Indeed, the strategy of psychological warfare of the Colombian State (which curiously has increased amid of the “Peace Talks” celebrated in La Habana, Cuba) causes to weaken solidarity and Nasa rear. Corn crops are destroyed by machinery of the sugar monopolies and the tanks of police (ESMAD) missing a few weeks for harvest, sacred places are burned and targeted assassinations are becoming more numerous, since pistols with silencers until sharp weapons.

Regardless the dead people, repression and constant black propaganda of the mass-media, the resistance continues and more and more strongly, as registered in the previous “Agrarian National Minga” that paralyzed part of the country. However, we must “walk the word” (caminar la palabra) further away, converting the ‘Minga’ liberation in a anti-systemic process to reach a worldwide resistance, for who refuses to live under a system of death because accumulation for the nature destruction.

Rebeldía Contrainformativa (Colombia)

Revolución Internacional / World Revolution (Latinoamérica)

Ruptura Colectiva (RC) (México)

Radio Zapatista Sudcaliforniana (México)

Centro Cultural “Ricardo Flores Magón” (México)

And those who want to join…

* The photographs correspond to mingas of December 24, 2015 and August 8, 2016 in Corinto, northern Cauca.

Traduction: Revolución Internacional

Photography: La Rochela

Edition: Ruptura Colectiva (RC)

 

 

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