Forced Displacement, Land Reclamation, and Corporate Power in Colombia

[Judi Lynn]

Forced Displacement, Land Reclamation, and Corporate Power in Colombia
April 26, 2008 By Eustaquio Polo

Eustaquio Polo Rivera is Vice President of the Major Leadership Council of the Curvaradó River Basin, Chocó, Colombia. He is an active leader in his community's struggle for justice and food security, as they fight to reclaim collectively-titled lands stolen and occupied by oil palm plantations since the 1997 displacement of the region's inhabitants at the hands of the US-funded Colombian military and affiliated paramilitary death squads. Colombia has the second-largest internally displaced population in the world; sixty percent of the roughly four million dispossessed Colombians have been driven from areas of "of mineral, agricultural or other economic importance," according to Amnesty International. For his advocacy and efforts to help his community reclaim what is rightfully theirs, Mr. Polo has received threats of assassination from paramilitaries reformed after the purported "demobilization" process.
(snip)

Thank you for letting me address you tonight. Please receive a warm welcome from the Chocó county of Colombia and from myself, Eustaquio Polo Rivera. I am Vice President of the Major Council of the basin of the Curvaradó River, and legal representative of a smaller council.

I come here with the grace of God and the support of the church of Justicia y Paz and also with help from Molly and Jake. I have been asked to tell you a little bit about the human rights abuses that the people of the Chocó territories are suffering.

These lands are the lands where most of the Africans brought to Colombia as slaves have lived for a long time. Three groups of people share culture here—people of African descent, people of mixed descent, and people of indigenous descent. There has been a shared culture there for many years now.

This is land that is recognized by Law 70 as collectively owned by the three groups of Afro-Colombians, mixed race people, and indigenous people. We used to have farms in this territory. The land supported our families, and we also sold bananas to the United States.

Then, in October of 1996, an operation called Operation Genesis came in, led by the General Commander Rito Alejo Del Rio.

This military operation was in conjunction with a paramilitary group called AUC.

This military group came in and asked the peasants to move out. They said, "Move out, or people will come after us to kill people, to take your heads."

In the same year, 1996, in a place called Brisas, they killed 6 people. They killed them and threw them into the river. That year half of the people who lived in the area left. The other half stayed, and we stayed resisting the displacement. But the incursions from the military and paramilitaries continued. They tied the peasants down. When the paramilitaries or military would get people, they would cut off their fingers, their ears, and their private parts. And they killed them with chainsaws. They would cut right through their chest cavity and take out their internal organs. In our river basin they killed 113 people just that way.

Then in 1997, the incursions from the military and paramilitaries increased. The military and paramilitary alliance came and said to us that we needed to leave, all of us. They threatened saying that if we didn't leave, they could not respond for their actions. They said that the reason we needed to leave is that they would be bombing that territory to take the guerrillas out. A lot of people left then. One part of the peasants left toward the hills, and other people fled to other places in Colombia.

In the year 2000, a group from the police collected signatures from members of paramilitaries and some peasants left in the area. They said they were collecting the signatures to get three military bases in the area, and they claimed that this was so peasants could return to their land. This was not the case. These signatures were used by businesses to take over the land and implement the planting of African palm plantations in the collectively-titled territory. They used them to prove that peasants were in agreement with the planting of the palm, but the peasants were actually outside the territory, fled to the hills.

More:
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/17339



A.U.C. leader "Macaco's" ( Carlos Mario Jiménez, recently sent to the U.S. on drug charges, while citizens protested that his stay in the U.S. will allow him to avoid charges for the massacres he committed in Colombia against villagers.) right-wing paramilitary death squad as it enters yet another village.



Carlos Mario Jiménez "Macaco"

[magbana]

1. Excellent article, Judi!

What a godawful situation for Afro-Colombians. And many comparisons with Haiti! Thanks for posting this.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Workers' Rights: a Good Reason to Oppose Colombia Trade Deal

Workers' Rights: a Good Reason to Oppose Colombia Trade Deal

By Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, The Hill. Posted April 26, 2008.

Congress can show that it's serious about workers' rights by pressing Colombia to change the pattern of violence and paramilitary influence.

Congress is right to delay consideration of the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA). What's at stake here is a fundamental principle: that free trade should be premised on respect for human rights, especially the rights of the workers producing the goods to be traded.

Colombian workers cannot exercise their rights without fear of being killed. Just in the first three months of this year, 17 Colombian trade unionists have been assassinated--a substantial increase over the 10 killed in the same period last year.

Many of the killings are committed by paramilitary death squads, which openly admit to deliberately targeting unionists, whom they stigmatize as collaborators of left-wing guerrillas. The New York Times this week described how a unionist was forcibly "disappeared," burned with acid, and killed after he participated in protests against paramilitary violence last month.

Despite thousands of reported unionist killings in the last two decades, in only 68 cases has anyone ever been convicted in connection with the killings. Nearly half of those convicted have served no prison time. Others are serving dramatically reduced sentences: for example, paramilitary commander Salvatore Mancuso, who was recently convicted of ordering the killing of the two-year old granddaughter of a trade unionist, could be free by 2010 under Colombia's "Justice and Peace Law."

More:
http://www.alternet.org/audits/83595/