http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38290
By Zilia Castrillón
CHOCÓ, Colombia, Jun 23 (IPS/IFEJ) - Indigenous and black communities
of Colombia's north-western department of Chocó are trying to recover
their lands and food sources, lost to the decades-long civil war that
has taken its toll on this area of vast biological diversity.
Alirio Mosquera, legal representative of the community councils that
unite the 3,000 inhabitants of the Cacarica River basin on the Bajo
Atrato (lower Atrato River), is working to combine community
production projects with the peaceful resistance to the Colombian
internal conflict that has lasted a half-century.
"The people need their land returned in order to recover their
traditional practices," Mosquera said in an interview.
He was elected May 20 after a long struggle as logistical coordinator
for the return of more than 700 families displaced in 1997 by violence
by the army and right-wing paramilitary groups, which ended in land
being seized or illegally purchased by agribusiness and forestry
companies.
Known as "Operation Genesis", it left more than 4,000 people displaced
and at least 85 people dead or disappeared, according to the National
Movement of Victims of State Crimes.
"All the community councils are allies of the proposals of our
organisation CAVIDA (Communities of Self-Determination, Life and
Dignity of the Cacarica) because we have always defended the right to
land," says Mosquera.
"The land is the core of our life. When one loses it, gives it up, one
is left as a dayworker or as a slave," he adds.
In this humid, forested zone, surrounded by marshes and swamps, live
blacks and indigenous peoples, with constitutional rights to
collective lands and to overseeing their management.
Afro-Colombians constitute 85 percent of the Chocó population.
Cacarica is part of the Special Management Area of the Darién
Mountains, which separate Colombia from Panama. It is located in the
buffer zone of Los Katíos National Nature Park, home to numerous
endemic species and whose land is rich in minerals.
The violent displacement and illegal occupation of lands were
denounced in the biodiversity hearing held by the non-governmental
Permanent People's Tribunal, Colombia Chapter, on Feb. 26-27.
The tribunal held sessions in humanitarian zones established beginning
in 1999 -- when the displaced peoples decided to return to their
territory of 103,000 hectares -- where the families live and try to
protect themselves from armed attacks.
Among the conclusions of the hearings, the active participation of
paramilitaries in the negotiations and the concession of
non-collective lands to returnees were mentioned.
For the members of the community councils of the Cacarica, Jiguamiandó
and Curvaradó river basins, food self-sufficiency and land recovery
are a form of civil resistance.
"We won't allow people with weapons or multinational companies in our
territory. We aren't neutral because we are victims of the conflict,"
Bernardo Vivas, founding member of CAVIDA and of the humanitarian
zones, said in one of the meetings with international organisations
that took part in the Tribunal session.
In addition to the food shortage, the granting of land for large-scale
cultivation of monoculture crops like banana and African palm is
complicating CAVIDA's goals.
Agriculture Minister Andrés Felipe Arias recognised in an Executive
branch session on the Colombian Pacific, held in Cali on Jun. 3, that
there are 17,000 hectares with titles in the Urabá area of Chocó
department (of which Cacarica is a part) that pose problems, "given
that they are lands claimed by individuals as private."
Arias acknowledged that there was corruption in the purchase of those
lands, and that it was denounced at the time by the inhabitants.
According to the community members, the government has failed to take
action towards recuperating the seized lands, which they estimate to
be 22,000 hectares -- about 25 percent of the collective territory.
A report by the government's Institute of Rural Development from March
2005 said that "a group of investors associated with the companies
Urapalma, Palmas de Curvaradó, Pamadó, Palmas SA, Palmura, Asibicon,
La Tukeka, Selva Húmeda and Inversiones Fregni Ochoa carried out a
massive buying and selling of lands of different persons" and behind
the back of the community, "with the purpose of establishing
commercial fields of palm oil and extensive livestock projects."
The study also underscored that in the Curvaradó and Jiguamiandó river
basins there were 3,834 hectares planted with palm oil, destined for
production of biodiesel.
"The negotiations with the business executives did not occur with
equal rights. And they were illegal, because our territory is
inalienable and non-embargable,
" says Marcos Velásquez, of Nuevo
Espacio, one of the humanitarian zones.
The communities hope that, through the partial demobilisation of
paramilitaries promoted by the government, their lands will be
returned to them as part of the reparations as victims of the illegal
armed groups.
But it won't be that easy -- the commercially farmed lands are already
in progress.
In a statement issued Jun. 7, the Inter-Ecclesial Commission of
Justice and Peace denounced the CI Multifruit company for continuing
to expand banana cultivation for export, through the U.S. firm Del Monte.
The local population subsists on their own maize and rice, travelling
from the communal humanitarian zones to the plots that belonged to
them before they were displaced, and returning at the end of the day,
sometimes facing military harassment.
In the CAVIDA community zones they are trying out production of
medicinal plants and fruits, but they still lack the capacity to grow
crops that assure them a decent livelihood.
"They cut a lot of wood here, although it's small scale," says
Mosquera, worried about the forests, source of sustenance for the
local inhabitants.
As the legal representative and leader of the river basin's residents,
he hopes to develop crops of manioc and maize, among others, and to
set up a woodworking project that would use wood from the sustainable
management of local lumber.
(*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable
development by IPS - Inter Press Service, and IFEJ - the International
Federation of Environmental Journalists.)
(END/2007)
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