An Open Letter from the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca, ACIN, to U.S. President-Elect Barack Obama.

Santander de Quilichao, Cauca, Colombia

Dear Mr. President-Elect,First, please accept our sincerest congratulations. We congratulate you for having won because of the noblest aspirations of your people. We believe your election expresses the deep desire for change felt by the majority of the American people: change in the economy and society, change in international relations, and from there, we hope, a change in the relation between the United States of America and the indigenous peoples of the world.

During your historic campaign, you publicly noted some of what Colombians currently face: you acknowledged the murders of trade unionists by the regime and stated your reservations about a Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, which our people have decided against through a democratic referendum, about which we have written before. We thank you for this, and now want you to know about the specific situation facing Colombia's indigenous peoples.

In the past six years we have lost 1,200 people to assassinations by armed groups, both legal and illegal: right-wing paramilitaries, guerrillas, police, and members of the Armed Forces. These murders have created insecurity, and this insecurity has been used to strip us of our rights with what we call the 'Laws of Disposession', legislation and other institutional norms that legalize the loss of our lands, our fundamental freedoms, and our rights. These 'Laws of Disposession' dispose of Colombia's mines, hydrocarbons, water resources, intellectual property, and national parks – all of these are brought under the ultimate rule of the Free Trade Agreement with the US. The FTA will mean that if Colombia tries to change the laws to allow its people to share in its resources, or take any independent action, then we will be obliged to compensate investors. We will have to submit our laws to international arbitration outside our own legal jurisdiction.

But in our view, the ultimate law is respect for life. In our view, the FTA puts commercial logic above the respect for life itself, not to mention international humanitarian law, and agreements such as the ILO's Covenant 169, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Worldwide. These covenants, as well as the respect for life, have to date been ignored by the government of our country, as well as by your government.

Unfortunately both of our governments, yours with Plan Colombia, and ours with the so-called 'Democratic Security' policy, have done great harm to indigenous peoples and to Mother Earth, while multinational corporations have profited from the petroleum and gas contracts, mining concessions, privatizations, and low wages.

We hope that you will contribute to change all this. We hope that you will listen to our words. We have lost many lives defending these words. Words that we have walked and words we have backed up with our civil resistance. These are the words that we have shared throughout Colombia since October 10th, through the Minga of Resistance, a national mobilization we convened as indigenous peoples, in association with other peoples and processes.

We believe that the spirit of change in your people cannot be contained. We believe it is a powerful force and we hope it will join with the force of our words and with the need for change that has been crying out throughout Latin America. We invite you to come to listen to these words here in Colombia, and we are ready to articulate them there, if you invite us. Here or there, it is the same planet and our mission is the same: to protect it, to save us all.

Finally, we call on you to join with us in fulfilling our responsibilities to Mother Earth and to history. The first one, our collective Mother, has given all of us life. The second one, History, has reflected our growing pains and our errors. History has not matured into systems that reconcile it with the rhythms, pulses and mandates of Nature. We believe the very reason human beings and our societies exist is to create the harmony between History and Mother Earth.

As children of Mother Earth, we speak to you as to a brother or sister. As indigenous, we speak to you as peoples, obliged from creation to seek harmony between History and Mother Earth. To reconcile ourselves with nature is not an option, but an imperative. By transforming life into merchandise, by making sacred the accumulation of wealth, by enshrining greed, we believe our societies have entered a crisis, including the economic crisis currently faced by your country. The destruction of our peoples in Colombia is a consequence of that Historic error that has placed greed before life.

Brother President-elect Barack Obama, we do not write to ask or demand anything for ourselves, because we know that the death of our peoples and the destruction of our cultures for greed, signifies the beginning of the end for Mother Earth itself.

Before we disappear with our collective Mother, we have decided to speak and to walk our words. In the name of life, of change, let us listen to one another and make the effort to find a way to create harmony between our peoples and life. Let us create the conditions for new History. One where the sacred ends of promotion and protection of Life and Beauty can never again be transformed into means for private accumulation of power at the service of greed.

We await you.With great respect,

Association of Indigenous Couincils of Northern Cauca ACIN (Cxab Wala Kiwe-Territory of the Great People) Cauca, Mother Earth, November 10th, 2008 Santander de Quilichao

The Voices of Indigenous People Felt Throughout the Americas

By Natalia Cardona

This past week was a big week for Indigenous peoples in the Americas as a whole. They along with thousands of social activists mobilized during the III Social Forum of the Americas which took place in Iximulew (known in the mainstream as Guatemala) to share their experiences of resistance and struggle, their demands and proposals, to meet and get to know one another and to advance collectively in the building of Another American Continent which is possible and necessary. Meanwhile, in Colombia thousands of Indigenous people also took to the streets to bring attention to their plight and the humanitarian crisis they face. On October 12, the 516th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the Americas, Indigenous people in Colombia gathered to mourn all those who have been lost in the struggle to better their situation and to call attention to their proposals for change.

Protesting U.S. Policies
Colombian Indigenous Peoples are protesting the pursuit of militaristic and economic policies that have placed 18 of 84 indigenous groups at the brink of physical and cultural extinction and created a humanitarian crisis for the entire population. Among these policies are Plan Colombia and the U.S. Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA). These policies were promoted by the U.S. in tandem with the current Colombian administration. Their effects are systematic and harsh for the indigenous movement and indigenous peoples as a whole.

The Effects of U.S. Policy on the Humanitarian Crisis
Plan Colombia has led to the militarization of the rural areas and displacement of thousands of indigenous people. The fumigation that accompanies this militarization caused hunger in many communities as planes do not distinguish between food crops and coca crops. Also, many innocent civilians were killed over the past years and passed off by the Colombian military as guerrillas in an effort to show success in battles against guerrillas. The U.S.-Colombia FTA, which has not been passed in the U.S., already had negative effects for the Indigenous of Colombia. Laws which govern their rights and protect their culture and ties to the land are being dismantled in preparation for the implementation of the FTA.

They Will Not Be Silenced
The marches occurred despite violence perpetrated by the “demobilized” paramilitary groups. In South Western Colombia an indigenous man was killed by paramilitary groups known as the Black Eagles in an attempt widely seen by the communities as a way to discourage their march from happening. The man was killed in front of his family as he travelled between communities. The Black Eagles were unsuccessful 7,000 indigenous peoples remain in the march today. Additionally, 800 people from the Bari Indigenous group arrived recently in Cucuta to protest the effects of multinational corporations on their land and the ecosystem. In the Colombian-Venezuelan border the U’Wa peoples, who are also trying to prevent the exploitation of oil in their territory, were told the march was cancelled by members of the U.S. funded Colombian military. The U’Wa travelled through inner river channels to reach a local oil field 1,111 of them arrived there to cleanse the area and ask for forgiveness from mother earth. The U’Wa believe oil is the blood of mother earth and have threaten collective suicide should the process continue.

Proposals
Indigenous peoples in Colombia this week released a set of demands and proposals. They are asking the Colombian government to:
· Create and implement a set of measures to deal with the humanitarian crisis facing the Indigenous groups and their leaders,
· Reestablish and come into compliance with agreements the government made with Indigenous peoples,
· To ratify the UN Declaration on Indigenous Peoples,
· To repeal laws that erode the rights of Indigenous peoples, and
· For truth, justice and reparations for the victims of paramilitary crimes.

For more about the marches you can visit: http://www.onic.org.co/

Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi From Colombian Indigenous Organization

Cauca, Colombia
April 11, 2008

"Three years later, like us, you said no to the Colombia-US FTA"

Dear Representative Pelosi and Congress of the United States of America:

First, we would like to express our joy and gratitude for the decision made yesterday, April 10, 2008, in the United States Congress. With 294 votes in favor and 195 against, the House of Representatives, over which you preside, decided to indefinitely freeze the FTA between Colombia and the US. We know that this is but one step on a long path, but the result is profoundly meaningful for our peoples, and it opens a window through which we can breathe with strength and rejuvenated spirits. With this letter, beyond expressing our recognition and appreciation as peoples, we seek to open a space for communication between us, because we feel that we deserve the right to be heard and respected. It is long overdue that Democratic Party members of Congress under your leadership should become aware of our democratic decision and analyses, all of which are rooted in dignity and respect for life.

Little more than three years ago, on Sunday March 6, 2005, the first Popular Consultation on the US-Colombia FTA was carried out through a referendum held in six municipalities in the Department of Cauca, Colombia. In that free, open and transparent referendum, monitored by national and international observers and bound by strict electoral regulations, there was a level of participation that had been unprecedented in the history of our municipalities. Ninety-eight percent of the people responded NO to the following question: "Are you in favor of the FTA between Colombia and the United States?" The people expressed their sovereign and conscious decision. Since that first consultation, others have been carried out throughout Colombia, all with the same result.

On February 1, 2005, we had made public a proclamation in which we called for a national popular referendum on the FTA. We invite you to examine this document, which we reaffirm, and whose clarity and eloquence remain relevant today, even more so given the most recent decision of the US Congress. In order that you may understand our motives and perspectives, we believe it is our right to respectfully express this to you, as peoples reacting to a trade agreement that would deeply affect our lives. Through you, Rep. Pelosi, we invite the Congress and the people of the United States to read this proclamation and to treat its content with the respect and consideration that it deserves, recognizing the sovereign and democratic decision of our peoples.

It is important for you to know that from the moment of our carrying out the consultation to today, information on the FTA and its consequences made available to the people of Colombia through the government and the mass media has been absurdly distorted and entirely in favor of those interested in winning approval of the agreement. This has effectively closed any spaces for debate and discussion among diverse perspectives, which would be necessary for Colombian citizens to understand the issue and to take a substantive position on it. In the proclamation of our consultation, we asked: "If the FTA is so good, why is the population being misinformed, and why is the government so afraid of a popular consultation and a conscious and democratic decision?"

Today, in light of the decision you have made, we reiterate the relevance of that question. In spite of the barrage of propaganda in favor of the FTA and the manner in which fear was used to assure people that rejecting the FTA would be equivalent to the United States' abandoning Colombia in backwardness, those who participated in the referendum understood that quite to the contrary, approval of the FTA on these terms and under these conditions would be equivalent to pushing Colombia toward an abyss of backwardness, impoverishment, inequality, and war. We understand that the people of the United States also suffer negative consequences from these kinds of trade agreements, but it is ultimately up to you and the people of the United States to analyze and make decisions on these agreements and their consequences. Rep. Pelosi, the Colombian government was opposed and remains opposed to allowing the Colombian people to understand the real impacts of the FTA that has been presented to Congress; it has closed the spaces of democratic debate and ignored the results of the Popular Consultation. We therefore urge you to examine the Consultation of March 2005, our motives and arguments, the democratic decision of the peoples, and the consequences and implications of this decision. We also invite you to support the right of peoples to understand and decide. With respect to the FTA, this is a right that the Colombian government has not respected.

The Colombian government attempted to discredit the decision of the consultation, alleging that we do not understand the benefits of the FTA and that terrorists and other nefarious forces had manipulated the population. Our response to this disturbing and unfounded accusation is found in the text of the proclamation and in the reality of facts that speak for themselves. The position of the government is racist insofar as it still considers us primitive beings incapable of understanding and consciously deciding for ourselves. Moreover, it seriously threatens our lives and integrity by falsely claiming links with terrorists, claims that easily become death sentences in this country.

Read our arguments and see for yourselves if we can be accused of not understanding. In contrast with the Colombian government's reaction, read and respond with ideas, arguments, and substance. As we said in the proclamation calling for the consultation, we are opposed to neither free trade nor an agreement with the United States. We are opposed to this particular agreement, and we have reasons based fundamentally on substance.

Rep. Pelosi, Members of Congress, and people of the United States, three years after our proclamation and call to carry out a public referendum on the FTA, three years after our people said NO, in spite of the closing of spaces for debate and democratic decision-making, more than 60% of arable lands in Colombia remain in the hands of 15,000 families, less than 0.4% of the population of the country. This immense concentration of land is nonproductive in that the food that we consume comes from the poor, small producers; the large property owners do not produce food. Furthermore, the influx of subsidized agricultural products condemns peasants, indigenous peoples, and rural producers to ruin and hunger, as they face the impossibility of competing with less expensive products and artificially reduced prices. Free trade is making the production of crops for illicit use necessary for survival and for the attainment of basic economic resources. You are well aware that we are being displaced and forced off our lands through violence and war, which serves to open the countryside to the megaprojects of transnational corporations. This eviction has displaced 4 million of our compatriots to the cities, where they live in miserable conditions. This promotes only social and political violence and hatred, thereby perpetuating war and misery.

The agreement would place the price of life-saving medications beyond reach for the majority of Colombia's people and would permit the patenting of life-forms and our ancestral knowledge. The FTA, which you have decided to not consider for now, would back a government whose president, during a "community council" held on March 15, 2008, offered bounties on the lives of indigenous peoples who are struggling to recover the lands from which we have been displaced, lands to which we have a right in accordance with agreements with the very state that now criminalizes our struggles to access its own commitments. Agrarian reform has been transformed into a crime in order to protect particular interests that would benefit from the FTA. In the midst of war, misery, displacement, terror, and deception, there can be prosperity for no one. That is why we have rejected this FTA.

Rep. Pelosi and Members of Congress, we want a trade agreement that is actually an agreement, one that is negotiated among sectors that really represent the interests of peoples-not only among a few who act exclusively in the interests of big capital. We want an agreement that is free and not imposed unilaterally through propaganda, without debate or open and democratic consultation.

We want an agreement that has real trade as its content, trade that guarantees reciprocal opportunity, so that the well-being of peoples is realized in a manner that is autonomous and sovereign and protects nature and life. The FTA that you have decided not to debate for the moment promotes displacement, legalizes injustice, condemns us to permanent war, and leaves us behind.We celebrate the decision that you have taken, and we thank you. This means nothing more or less than respecting our lives. Receive our expression of immense gratitude to your people, and accept our invitation to understand the motives of the decision we made democratically three years ago.

Sincerely,

Association of Indigenous Authorities of Northern Cauca Council

New Aid Package Imperfect but Offers Significant Changes

The new aid package is far from perfect. But there are some positive and significant changes thanks to your hard work.

The military aid was cut by $141.5 million (31%), and funding for inhumane and environmentally harmful aerial spraying program has also been cut. Meanwhile there is an increase in economic and sustainable development aid of $97.4 million (71%) with $15 million of the development aid slated for Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities which make up some of the most impoverished and negatively affected by the ongoing conflict.

The new legislation ties 30% of the aid (versus 25% in previous years) to human rights conditions which include: that Colombian army officials be investigated and prosecuted for violating human rights, and that the Colombian government guarantee that the army is respecting the private property of Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities. In the past two years $110 million dollars have been held by the State Department due to Colombian government and army’s inability to meet these conditions. A new conditions places restrictions on the use of US aid for investment in oil palm—used in the making of lotions, cookies and ethanol. Oil palm is and export crop that has led to the displacement of thousands of Afro-Colombians and Indigenous peoples as corporations in tandem with right wing paramilitary groups usurp the land belonging to these communities for this environmentally unfriendly crop.

These are results that should be celebrated. There is much more to be done this year given that the Department of Defense bill, which authorizes more military aid to Colombia, is highly nontransparent and difficult to monitor. Congratulations on all of your hard work and let’s work to make the rest of the military aid in the Department of Defense bill more transparent and accountable.