Thousands of indigenous Colombians have converged on Bogota to demand the liberation of indigenous leader Feliciano Valencia of the Nasa people, imprisoned for 16 years in a case that the UN denounced as “something out of Kafka”. The Nasa have declared themselves to be in a situation of “permanent assembly” in which direct actions are liable to break out at any moment.
Indigenous demonstrators are also angry that government ministers have refused to engage in dialogues with them to clarify and guarantee the indigenous rights outlined in the country’s Constitution. Many indigenous Colombians are concerned that the right to exercise indigenous jurisdiction has been overturned by the immprisonment of Valencia, and are also worried that indigenous rights will be watered down at the same time that the Constitution is redrafted in the wake of a likely peace deal with the FARC guerrillas.
The Nasa people have been at the forefront of the indigenous movement in Colombia. Robin Llewellyn takes his camera to see the life of Nasa communities behind the headlines.
The Nasa (also known as Paéz) people are one of Colombia’s largest indigenous peoples, who predominantly inhabit the western department of Cauca, a region central to the country’s civil war.
The region is characterised by plains dominated by sugar plantations, which are flanked on each side by the country’s two great cordilleras. The high mountains are largely controlled by the FARC guerrillas, and the narrowness of the plains in Cauca makes the region a strategic corridor for the trafficking of drugs between the two cordillera and onward to the Pacific coast, attracting the presence of both guerrillas and paramilitaries.
The Nasa claim that the plains were taken from them by force in 1915, and that many were then forced up into the poorer land of the mountains to make way for the sugar industry. Others remained but had to work individual lots and pay rent in the form of “terraje” — the provision of free labour on the large haciendas.
The last forty years have seen a transformation, as the Nasa organized themselves through the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC) which campaigned for the restitution of their ancestral lands. They occupied sugar-plantations and blocked the Pan-American Highway that passes through Cauca. Their opponents have responded with massacres and assassinations, many involving the security forces, forcing the government to promise to transfer land to the Nasa as recompense for past abuses.
The development of the indigenous movement also alienated the FARC and ELN guerrillas, who have assassinated many prominent Nasa activists, including Cristobal Secue in 2002 (FARC) and Mario Betancur in 1996 (ELN).
Today the killings persist, the most recent high profile killing was that of 70 year old former reservation governor Alfredo Bolaños on 19 October (2015), shot in the head by an army patrol next to his house, and whether at the hands of the armed forces, paramilitaries or guerrillas many argue that we are witnessing the “genocide” of the Nasa people.
The land conflict continues, with the indigenous people claiming the government has not transferred all the land that was promised, and with their opponents claiming that the Nasa are blocking the development of the region and the country. The state has defended the sugar plantations with the army and riot police, and the most visible Nasa leader, Feliciano Valencia, has been sentenced to 16 years imprisonment.
The Nasa communities are governed by community “cabildos” (councils) headed by an elected governor, and coordinate more broadly through the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (ACIN), and more widely again through the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC) which has been at the forefront of the indigenous movement in Colombia since its founding in the Nasa community of Toribio in February 1971. The Movement has struggled to recover land previously lost to indigenous reservations.
At its second congress in September 1971, the CRIC adopted a program of:
• Recovering and expanding the lands of the reservations
• Strengthening the cabildos/indigenous councils
• Refusing to pay the terraje
• Expanding awareness of the law as it applies to indigenous people and ensuring its just application
• Defending indigenous history, language, and customs
• Training indigenous teachers
The former ‘big house’ of a cattle ranch now serves as the medical centre and music school of the indigenous reservation of Huellas, that nestles between the foothills of the cordillera and the plains.
According to the reservation’s former governor: “It cost us many deaths to liberate this land, but now we nurture it, we replant the trees that had been cleared for pasture, and we grow crops and fruit as well as keep cattle and pigs: This is how the land was used before it was taken from us.”
Like all indigenous territory, the Huellas reservation is collectively owned and its land cannot be sold. But each family works plots designated to them as well as donating time to community work, known as “minga”, which might be harvesting, litter-picking, or collecting fruit.
Huellas borders the sugar plantations of the plains, and neighbours the sugar hacienda named “La Emperatriz” that the Nasa claim is ancestral land owed to them as part of the historic settlement between them and the government. The indigenous regularly occupy the property and cut down the sugar cane that they say is a “monoculture”, and they symbolically replant the land with tree saplings and indigenous maize seeds.
Clashes frequently erupt between the Nasa and the police and army; both sides use catapults to attack the other, and the police and army use tear-gas and have also fired live rounds at those occupying the fields of La Emperatriz, killing 19 year-old Siberston Guillermo Pavi.
[Pavi was a known youth activist and the son of an indigenous leader killed by the FARC. The same week musician Carlos Garcia was put in a coma in the same field after being hit in the head by one of the marbles that the police glue to the tear-gas grenades, but he’s recovering. The broader deaths that many link to tensions arising from the land conflict are mentioned here, including the kidnap, rape and murder of Feliciano Valencia’s cousin].
The owners of the sugar plantations claim their property is being invaded illegally, and conservative Cauca Congresswoman Paloma Valencia has responded to the land conflict by advocating the division of Cauca into two: “One for the indigenous for them to do their strikes, their demonstrations, and their invasions. And one directed towards development where we can have roads, promote investment and where there are dignified jobs for the Caucanos.”
An indigenous meeting house under construction on a sugar plantation close to the town of Corinto, Cauca, with the foothills belonging to the indigenous reservations in the distance. The Nasa claim their forefathers were violently driven from the plains in 1915.
A Nasa activist based in Corinto said: “Try to find the papers that prove the original purchase of these sugar plantations. I have and I can tell you it’s impossible because they don’t exist; they were taken by force at the start of the twentieth century.”
Many Nasa were born in Cali, Colombia’s third largest city, where urban life and poverty presents its challenges to Nasa identity. Juan Carlos Chindicue is governor of the cabildo (indigenous council) of Alto Buenavista in Cali, which enables the Nasa community of the city to participate in traditional community self-government.
“I was born in Cali, and I never spoke the Nasa language.” He says, “But here we participate in the life of the Nasa people. We have our programs of self-government, we participate in Nasa education, Nasa politics, and locally here we achieve things collectively — we’re currently extending our meeting house and we have worked collectively to achieve things. Up here on the edge of Cali the state does nothing for anybody.”
The community also has its own Indigenous Guard, the members of the community elected to non-violently protect the lives and territory of the Nasa. With their batons symbolizing their authority they have become emblematic of the Nasa as news reports have reported indigenous guards detaining FARC guerrillas and army patrols who have attacked indigenous people.
Indigenous Guards are unarmed community members who seek to protect Nasa lives and territories; here they create an arc with their batons of office while a traditional Nasa ’spiritual guide’ pours a herbal mixture on the heads of participants at a CRIC meeting to promote harmony.
Spiritual guides have an important role as both health practitioners and counsellors in Nasa society, where the concept of Mother Earth and a veneration of ancestors are highly important. They have frequently been targeted for assassination by the FARC.
A political and cultural meeting in the mountainous reservation of Toribio. Land on indigenous territories is collectively owned and cannot be sold, and a some work is carried out communally in a process known as “minga”.
Teacher Jamir Inseca, Toribio:
“We are making our body sick, all these sicknesses that we have today, they come from the living conditions that we have established... We need to talk to our elders and spiritual guides, to hear their advice and to think again about how we want to live.”
An indigenous meeting in Cauca attracts Nasa, Wayuu and Embera delegates. Here Embera delegates from the department of Choco paint their traditional tattoos onto the skin of Nasa delegates.
While the languages are distinct, communal land ownership and shared communal work (“minga”) are shared characteristics of Colombian indigenous life.
The inception of the Indigenous Guard has also spread across indigenous Colombia, and many elements of the politicised indigenous movement: a rejection of free trade agreements that impact agriculture, the replacement of the growth model with one directed towards sustainability and “buen vivir” (good life — quality of life not measured in economic terms), and the right of communities to determine whether their land can be used for mining or dams, have become popular in some non-indigenous areas of rural Colombia.
Nasa activists carry the banner of the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia, the umbrella group for all the indigenous peoples of the country.
No Nasa leader has gained national attention in recent years as much as Feliciano Valencia, who has been vocal in the campaigns to recover ancestral land from the sugar industry. Valencia was the presidential candidate of the Pais Comun alliance that was formed to contest the 2014 elections, but he was detained on 15 September [2015] and sentenced to 16 years imprisonment for “co-authoring the kidnap of a soldier” during demonstrations in 2008.
The Nasa were angered by what they saw as political charges that violated the country’s 1991 Constitution, which established that indigenous law applies on indigenous lands when those who carry out a crime and those victimised by it are indigenous.
The soldier, Chaparal Santiago, was in civilian clothes when he was detained by the Indigenous Guard on an indigenous reservation during demonstrations. He was accused of infiltrating the protests for the army and having allegedly identified himself as coming from the indigenous reservation of Quintana, was tried by the assembled community and sentenced to lashes on his legs.
The Tribunal of Cauca’s capital Popayan found Felicano Valencia guilty of being the “co-author” of the detention of the soldier, and he was sent to the maximum security prison of San Isidro.
To the Nasa indigenous law and the constitution were being marginalized by powerful interests that the indigenous movement is challenging. They also argued that the political and judicial decisions of the Nasa are made collectively, so the individualization of the against Valencia are both artificial and political.
Demonstrators sing the Nasa anthem outside to Feliciano Valencia in the maximum security prison of San Isidro.
Tay (fourth from the right, wearing a white shirt) is a member of the Alvaro Ulcue Chocue Youth Movement that provides psychosocial support in northern Cauca:
“We demand the state comply with our constitutionally recognised rights. For many years our ancestors took it on themselves to fight great struggles for the freedom of our territories, this struggle will continue until the sun ceases to rise. Our way of thinking is collective: no to this individualization.”
“Our jurisdiction is an ancestral right and won’t be supplanted by any tribunal”. Popayan, Cauca.
Feliciano Valencia has now been transferred to indigenous territory to serve the remainder of his sentence. He is housed in the “Centre for Harmonisation” of the Gualanday, open to visits and where he can live with his family.
On the nights of 13 and 16 November the Indigenous Guard of Gualanday surprised and deterred a group of armed and hooded men approaching the Centre for Harmonisation, the first time in the centre’s four years of operation that they had encountered such a threat.
He says the new environment is “an absolute and total change to the place I was in before. For 54 days I was in the prison of San Isidro with all the high-risk criminals. But here I come to this world where I encounter nature, where I meet my people, and where I can resuscitate after those 54 days of permanent torture.”
The judiciary of Cauca “is impregnated with politics”: “We were beginning to question many things that impacted on the Cauca oligarchy. The sugar cane industry, illegal mining, and indigenous councils like Tacueyo, Toribio, and like Jambalo, had initiated a manual eradication of coca program.”
In respect of the sentence “We have requested assessmnets from many lawyers at the national level, including ex-judges, and all have said: “Hombre, here they are commiting an outrage... It is absurd! How can they condemn someone for kidnap when there wasn’t a kidnap? Never was there configured a crime of kidnap. All of them arrived at the conclusion that this is a judgement of a political nature: Why? Why, because before condemning me we were in the process of the liberation of Mother Earth in Corinto, in La Emperatriz. We had blocked the Panamerican Highway in La Agustina, and there was a strong debate in respect of the use of violence to empower private property, in this case the private property of the land of the sugarcane industry in northern Cauca.”
