Civil Society, Headlines, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

COLOMBIA: ‘We Will Not Leave Our Land’ Say Pijao and Paez Indians

Helda Martínez

BOGOTA, Aug 2 2006 (IPS) - The Pijao and Paez indigenous communities in Colombia, who survived near extermination at the hands of the Spanish colonialists, continue to defend their land, lives and cultures against a new array of encroachers, as they face evictions, displacement, death threats and forced disappearance.

The Pijao Indians are known in Colombia for their resistance to Spanish domination, and their fierce struggles throughout Colombian history for their land and autonomy.

The two ethnic groups, which have a total combined population of around 70,000 according to the Regional Indigenous Corporation of Tolima (CRIT), remain on their ancestral land in the municipalities of Ortega, Coyaima, Natagaima, Chaparral and Saldaña, in the western department (province) of Tolima.

The latest incident involves a court order for the eviction of 90 families (around 600 people) from Chicuambe, in the municipality of Ortega.

A court ruled in favour of an absentee landowner who brought a lawsuit against the families, who must move out by Aug. 15, the governor of the indigenous community in Chicuambe, Deici Rodríguez, explained to IPS.

The Pijao and Paez communities have preserved their traditional form of political organisation, in which the governor – in this case, a woman – is the highest-ranking authority.

The Colombian constitution recognises the right to autonomy of the country’s 80 indigenous groups, who make up less than 0.5 percent of the total population of 46.5 million.

The José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective, a human rights group that has consultative status with the Interamerican Commission for Human Rights and is affiliated with the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), challenged the court order for eviction.

The Lawyers Collective maintains that the eviction warrant, which is based on the argument that the indigenous families illegally occupied the land in question, has no legal standing because the families have lived on the land for 10 years, and are merely reclaiming the area as part of the indigenous community’s ancestral land.

“In this case, the dispossessed are the people that the prosecutor’s office is treating as intruders,” said the Lawyers Collective.

The human rights group backed its legal challenge on a colonial era document that recognises the existence of the Great Ortega-Coyaima and Chaparral Reserve, which was registered before a notary public by legendary indigenous leader Manuel Quintín Lame, who died in 1967.

“The Pijao community of Chicuambe owns 200 hectares of land, which today the government and those who claim to be owners want to take from us,” said Rodríguez. “On that land we have 100 hectares of plantain, yucca, bean and corn crops, as well as land that is being reforested with timber and fruit trees. Another 100 hectares are dedicated to raising livestock.”

The plaintiff, Mario Vargas, an engineer who lives in Bogotá, claims he is the owner of the land. “I have been trying to recover the land for 10 years, because it is mine,” he told IPS. “But the justice system isn’t working. This has dragged on for a long time, and I have turned to all of the possible channels in my attempt to recuperate it.”

Vargas’ interest in the land is based on the existence there of a mineral, ferrite, which until the indigenous families moved in was extracted by a miner, José David de los Ríos.

“Before we came to the land in question we lived here and there and did temporary stints as contract workers,” said Rodríguez.

“To get the miner off the property, Vargas invited us to work the land,” the governor told IPS. “But a year later, he sued us for invading the land. Over the last few years, with support from CRIT, we have understood that this is part of our territory, and we are not going to leave.”

“We have already suffered enough, and this time we won’t stop to watch our own funeral go by. We will resist, and we will hold the national and provincial governments responsible for the consequences of the eviction, if it occurs,” she said.

The Lawyers Collective stated that “the prosecutor’s office has remained indifferent to the dispossession of the internally displaced, who have lost millions of hectares of land to the paramilitaries and multinational corporations, while taking an especially diligent stance in favouring private interests over collective, social interests, and being lax when it comes to ignoring the ancestral rights of indigenous peoples.”

The human rights lawyers were referring to the actions of right-wing paramilitary groups, which have forced large numbers of indigenous people off their land, as well as the presence of transnational corporations and investors keen on gaining control over resource-rich property in Colombia.

In an earlier case, there was an attempt to force some 200 Pijao Indians from Balsillas, in the municipality of Natagaima.

Indigenous governor Manuel Yossa Guzmán told IPS that on May 5, around 750 members of the army and police descended on the area, setting fire to housing and crops.

When the soldiers and police pulled out, the local residents began to rebuild. “We aren’t going to leave, because these lands have been ours since 1881,” said Yossa Guzmán. “So far we have recovered 350 hectares out of a total of 1,197 that were given to us by the Yossa Capea family in the 19th century. They are ours, even though they have had 30 or 40 different owners over all of these years.”

According to the Pijao governor, the different owners have paid for improvements on the land through sale-purchase agreements, which did not involve title deeds.

“We are not going to give up our land,” said Yossa Guzmán. “We are the legal owners, and have even paid our taxes, and have the documents to prove it.”

In another settlement, Rincón Belú, in the same municipality, local residents have received threats and others have fallen victim to forced disappearance. One member of the community, Luz Mari Romero, said several men were forced to flee for their safety.

“They went to Bogotá and stayed there a couple of months. But since all they know how to do is work the land, they came back. So far they haven’t had any new problems, but the anxiety never goes away,” Romero told IPS.

Elvira Oyola, who lives in the same community, said that in 2002 and 2003, members of the paramilitary umbrella group, the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), carried away several local residents, who were never heard from again.

“But we have stayed on our land. We work in peace, and have suffered difficult times, of hunger and illness,” she said.

“And if that is the case on our own land, you can imagine what things would be like somewhere else! That is why we are not leaving. Now we have to go to court because of a lawsuit filed against us by Señora Ana María Ospina, and we are going to testify. But even if we have to go to jail, we will continue defending our rights,” Oyola said in a soft but determined voice.