ENVIRONMENTALISTS SUPPORT THE “MASSIVE GATHERING OF SOCIAL AND COMMUNITY RESISTANCE OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN COLOMBIA”

If you have ideas on how to make this visible and get the Colombian government to stop the violence and abuses and start listening and taking positive action to support and protect our IPs !

Gert Stenssess - Juana Camacho

Tel +(57)311 3090862 mobile

comunicaciones@censat.org

Today America is called Abya Yala again, as our ancestors formerly called it. On October 12th here we stand the indigenous people and social movements, demanding our collective rights and pointing out we are building Good Living. We show as well that we are fighting against those that deceive us with a promise of development trying to trick us as the European invaders did with little mirrors, the sword and the cross. Back then, they said they had come to save our souls, today they say they come to free us from poverty. But the spirit of our ancestors did not need their deceitful prayers as we do not need their promises for development nor their so called “investments” because they only deepen our economic dependency, their ecological debt, the plunder and the unfair economic and ecological exchange.

The Colombian indigenous people’s movement has stand up as well. It is not new. In their long historical journey of organization, mobilization, struggle and resistance, in their integral defense of our territory and of its environmental heritage, they have preserved with their own vision and millenary culture, a sense of Good Living and have confronted violence all these centuries. Today the new offensive colonialism of international capital and their mafia partners at the national level –there is no way to call them business men- is hanging over their territories and cultures.

In Colombia, particularly in the ancestral territories of ethnic peoples, the government and its institutions allow, favor and support incursions of large Transnational that control in minerals, water, infrastructure and agriculture land around the world. These institutions are controlled in a big portion by the front men of these corporations or their national partners. For these greedy capitalist, for the oligarchy and the mafia men the wisdom of indigenous peoples and their own spaces that are inhabited by afro descendent communities and campesino communities are a tempting bite. Therefore, in order to seize up it they won’t stop their legal tricks (i.e. the Rural Development Statue, the Mining Code, the Reforestation Law and the Water Departmental Plan), their economic and commercial measures (Free Trade Agreements, Partnership Agreements, fito-sanitary measures imposed by the World Trade Organization), their cheating and the use of official or paramilitary violence.

This plundge and pillage model is supported by the selective assassination and massacres of indigenous peoples, afro descendents and campesino people as well as the massive displacement of 4 million people that results from these practices. This is a model that transforms our country in the second one that has most internal displaced people, after Sudan (Human Rights Watch, 2007). Murdering, displacing and derooting are constants in the territories that are of interest to transnational corporation, that articulate commercial operations with armed legal and illegal structures.

Confronting this permanent and undeniable aggression, the indigenous peoples, campesino communities and afro descendent communities of the south west area of Colombia, organized the BIG GATHERING OF SOCIAL AND COMMUNITY RESISTANCE demanding respect, protection and defense of their right to land and culture, and sustained by the unity of the peoples.

Colombian Environmentalism is not far from this situation. The struggles for territories, for culture, environmental and social justice are struggles of the indigenous peoples but our own too. We will standing with our brothers and sisters from Cauca.

To the solidarity with the Gathering, we need to sum up financial support to attend the dozens of wounded people and of the families of murdered indigenous peoples during the mobilization. Please make your support to the checking account 496-05979-1 from the Banco de Bogotá, office in Popayán, to the CRIC (Consejo Regional Indigena del Cauca). The SWIFT code is SWIFT BBOGCOBB.

It has been 516 years of resistance to the civilization and predator model.

Enough is enough! Another World is Possible and we ar working for it!


For further information please surf

www.onic.org.co

www.censat.org


Or contact if you have ideas on how to make this visible and get the Colombian government to stop the violence and abuses and start listening and taking positive action to support and protect our IPs !


Gert Stenssess - Juana Camacho

Tel +(57)311 3090862 mobile

comunicaciones@censat.org



Supported by

Friends of the Earth – Colombia

Iniciativa Ambiental

RED JUAN Red Amabiental Juvenil

Teatro Esquina Latina

Hernán Dario Correa

Surviviendo

Juan José Castillo

Germán Ochoa

Fundación Mata de Monte. Enrique Galán.

Escuela Agroecológica de Santander.

FIDHAP. Alfredo Ordoñez

ECOFONDO. Rafael Colmenares

Siguen firmas


Bogotá, 16 de octubre de 2008