Matthew Yeomans

The fallout from the killings has been enormous. Both the U.S. State Department and the Colombian government have been quick to condemn FARC, calling on Colombia’s oldest rebel force to hand over the killers. FARC’s leadership, for its part, has blamed the murders on a low-ranking officer, Commander Gildardo of the 10th Front, who, it says, acted without the approval of his superiors. “We condemn the abominable assassination of the three Americans,” said one of FARC’s leaders, Raul Reyes, in a press conference last week. In a demonstration of damage control only befitting a guerrilla army, Reyes suggested that Gildardo might himself be executed for his crime. Not that this is likely to satisfy a Colombian military already critical of the government’s peace initiative and who, secretly, must be celebrating FARC’s blunder, or other skeptics who see the murders as evidence of growing divisions in the FARC ranks.

But in the scramble to score political points, the important story of why Freitas, Washinawatok and Gay were in Colombia has been lost. What were they fighting for? And what was so important to them that they would venture into one of the most dangerous regions of a very dangerous country?

The three had been visiting the U’wa Indians, a small nation of 5,000 who live in the northern tip of Colombia. They had come to help the U’wa establish a bilingual education project. This was Washinawatok’s and Gay’s first visit to U’wa territory. Ingrid Washinawatok, a Menominee Indian, was the co-chairwoman of the Indigenous Women’s Network and spent the last two decades campaigning for human rights. In 1977, she participated in the first indigenous meeting at the United Nations, and had taken her work to Africa and Asia as well as Latin America. Last week the Miami Herald reported that Washinawatok may have fallen ill (and perhaps even died) as result of a spider bite while being held by the rebels. According to Colombian military sources, the paper said, the rebels may have panicked because of their sick hostage. Lahe’ena’e Gay was founder and president of the Pacific Cultural Conservancy International (PCCI), the organization sponsoring the Colombia trip. An accomplished photographer and dancer as well as an ethnographer, Gay devoted herself and the work of the PCCI to preserving the cultural and biological diversity of the human family.

It was Terry Freitas, however, who was leading the trip. He had visited the U’wa five times since 1997. A conservation biologist, with a dual degree in biology and environmental studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz, Freitas had previously worked on American Indian law issues in the U.S. The bilingual project was just one part of a larger campaign, called the U’wa Defense Working Group, that Freitas, along with other international activists, had launched to help the U’wa in a bitter fight against the California oil multinational Occidental Petroleum.

In 1992, Occidental entered into a partnership with the Colombian national oil company and with the Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell to explore for oil in an area named the Samor4e block. Occidental believes the oil field holds about 1.5 billion barrels of oil – enough to satisfy U.S. domestic demands for about three months. The Samor4e block, however, carved a path right through the middle of what the U’wa claimed were their ancestral homelands.

“Terry was really drawn in by the vitality and the authenticity of the U’wa, and also by the issue” says Shannon Wright, director of the Beyond Oil campaign for the Rainforest Action Network, and a close friend and colleague of Freitas. “It’s such a black and white, right and wrong, David and Goliath situation where all this people is asking is to be left alone, to protect their land.”

Oil occupies a special place in the U’wa cosmology. They believe oil is the blood of mother earth and that their role is to keep the earth in balance. Occidental’s drilling plans would destroy the earth’s balance, affecting the entire planet and cosmos, not just their land.

An isolated and private nation, known as “the thinking people,” the U’wa have lived peacefully on their land in the Colombian cloud forest for thousands of years. This century, as with so many South American indigenous groups, the U’wa have seen their territory overrun by campesinos, in this case fleeing civil war, trying to make a living off the land. From 1940 to 1970, according to a 1998 report titled “Blood of Our Mother,” co-authored by Freitas and published by Project Underground, a California environmental outfit that specializes in oil and mining issues, the U’wa had 85 percent of their ancestral territory stripped from them by the Colombian government. In the eyes of the U’wa leadership, Occidental posed the greatest danger to their people since the Spanish conquistadors threatened to enslave them more than 500 years ago. Then, according to tribal oral history, thousands of U’wa jumped to their death from a 1,400-foot cliff in an act of defiance. In April 1995, the Colombian press reported that the U’wa nation would commit mass suicide by jumping off the same cliff if Occidental was allowed to start oil exploration.

The threat grabbed headlines from Europe to the United States. But, says Wright, it’s the U’wa’s refusal to be influenced or bought off by outside parties, rather than this single statement of defiance, that has allowed them to block Occidental for so long. “When they explain their right to stop the project,” she says, “they say that they adhere to a law that is older than the sun and moon and this is the divine law. And it is their right as a community to continue to exist and to protect their area. It has completely disarmed the government, it has disarmed the company and it has disarmed the public.”

Rainforest Action Network and other environmental groups have long attacked Occidental for its environmental record in other parts of the Amazon Basin. Along the Rio Tigre in Peru, Quichua leaders have accused Occidental of polluting streams and rivers, while the Colombian Institute of Natural Resources, in a 1992 report, wrote that “Because of the polluting effluents from Caño Limon [Oxy's production facilities in Arauca] the receiving rivers and lakes are no longer fit for human consumption.” An Oxy spokesperson denied that company operations had caused pollution on either the Rio Tigre or in Caño Limon. “We have been in Colombia for over 30 years, and have built hospitals and clinics,” he said. “I think we’ve been a responsible corporate citizen.” He also pointed to Oxy’s “state-of-the-art” facilities in Limoncocha, Ecuador, as an example of the company’s commitment to responsible operations.

But the U’wa also had another, more immediate reason to fear Occidental’s operations. In Colombia’s ongoing civil struggle, oil has been a flashpoint for both sides. The government sees the oil reserves as the way to pay its crippling foreign debts, and has created a special army unit to protect oil installations. Meanwhile the two guerrilla armies, FARC and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) target the multinational oil companies that Colombia relies on for production because they resent foreign interference in the country and because their attacks embarrass and financially hurt the government. Oxy’s Caño Limon pipeline has been blown up more than 460 times since it opened in 1985, spilling 1.7 million barrels of crude oil. Meanwhile, it paid $20 million in 1997, according to Oil and Gas Journal, on security for its operations. $17 million of that went to a war tax levied by the Colombian government, $3 million was used to sustain two counter-guerrilla army units. According to David Rothschild of Amazon Coalition, another member of the U’wa Defense Project, “Occidental’s oil development on and near the U’wa traditional territory is inextricably linked to violence in the area. Or better said, if Oxy or any other oil company were not there, there would be less violence.”

In 1997, having first had lawsuits against Occidental upheld then overthrown in the Colombian courts, the U’wa launched an international appeal for help. In June, the Colombian government asked the Organization of American States to intervene and later that month, Freitas, having met U’wa leader Berito Kuwaru’wa at a meeting with Occidental in California, became active in the cause. The international campaign had an effect. In early 1998, Oxy’s partner, Shell, announced it was pulling out of the Samor´e project. Shell cited financial reasons, but according to minutes of Colombian government meetings with the company, obtained by Freitas and reprinted in “Blood of Our Mother,” it was also concerned about becoming embroiled in the same human rights problems that had tarnished its reputation in Nigeria.

Occidental also seemed to take a step back. On May 27, 1998, it announced that it was seeking to renegotiate its contract and that it was renouncing some 75 percent of the Samor´e block. At the same time, it agreed on an exploration site with the Colombian government that, Oxy insists, is not on U’wa land. But according to the U’wa and their international supporters, this is just a public relations scheme. They claim the new drill site, while not located on their government-sanctioned reservation, is still on their ancestral, and sacred, lands. Oxy denies this.

During the last two years, tensions in the Arauca region had increased. In June 1997, Berito Kuwaru’wa was kidnapped from his home by masked, armed gunmen who beat him and tried to make him sign an “authorization agreement.” The U’wa believed right-wing paramilitaries, allied with the army, were behind the attack. Freitas also was nervous. He told friends that he believed he had been followed while on a previous trip to the region, and that the military had made him sign a waiver releasing it from all responsibility for his well-being — a deliberate act of intimidation as he saw it. Still he returned again to the people he ultimately gave his life for.

A day after the death of Freitas, Washinawatok and Gay, Evaristo Tegria, a U’wa representative in Cubarà, a town near the Venezuelan border, went to tell the U’wa elders the news. When he arrived, they already knew. Terry, they explained, had visited them the night before in a dream. He had brought them a snail shell — a symbol of the gods and of problem solving — and told them he was passing on, that he could no longer be with them, but that his work would continue.

According to Wright, the other members of the U’wa Defense Project will make sure the fight goes on. “There is a stronger resolve than ever to make sure the U’wa’s land is protected from oil,” she says. “It was never a job for Terry, it was his life, his commitment.”

One look at a map of current Pentagon troop deployment demonstrates how the Pentagon sees its 21st century dual mission. Since 2001, new military bases have been established in Eastern Europe and Central Asia — including Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, Romania, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan — allowing the U.S. to keep watch over the Islamic tinderbox of Central Asia and the strategically crucial Caspian Sea oil region which will soon supply millions of barrels of oil to the U.S. and Western Europe markets. Other bases in Afghanistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti and Oman (not to mention the huge military garrison in Iraq), guarantee a strong and long-term presence in the Persian Gulf, while new pacts with Nigeria and other West African nations will ensure the U.S. military keeps a watchful eye on another important oil region, the Gulf of Guinea.

Energy security has been a mainstay of U.S. foreign policy ever since Franklin Roosevelt pledged to provide military protection to Saudi Arabia in return for unfettered access to the Kingdom’s oil. In 1980, the so-called Carter Doctrine declared the U.S.’s intention to intervene militarily to counter any threat to Middle East security. And in May 2001, Dick Cheney’s National Energy Policy announced that the Bush administration would make “energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy.” The most recent redeployment of military forces is just one more reaffirmation that in the post-Cold War global order, preserving access to energy resources is the prime strategic imperative.

The seeds of the latest twist in new energy protection policy were sown in 2002 when Congress authorized $98 million for U.S. troops and equipment to help the Colombian army protect oil pipelines owned by California company Occidental. The pipelines were regular targets of the FARC and ELN, the two main leftist rebel groups in Colombia’s 40-year civil war. In the spring of 2003, just as U.S. forces were invading Iraq, a far smaller group of 70 Green Berets flew into Colombia to secure Oxy’s pipeline.

The funds were authorized under the proviso of the administration’s war on terrorism, but the military training had more to do with the National Energy Policy. The Andean nations of Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia contribute 20 percent of the U.S.’s imported oil. Colombia is the 10th largest oil supplier for the U.S. and the Bush administration has made increased imports from Andean nations an important part of its goal of lessening its dependence on Middle East oil. Colombia’s oil is easy to produce and output could be significantly increased were the oil companies not targeted so often. The national government also uses a good deal of its oil profits — 25 percent of the country’s annual revenues — to fight the rebels.

The Pentagon is also concerned with other areas of the world that have been indentified by the US government as crucial to its energy future.

The Caspian Sea, especially the waters of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, could prove to be one of the largest oil finds in the world after the Middle East. In 2000, oil companies discovered the Kashagan field off the coast of Kazakhstan — the single largest oil find in over 40 years. By the end of the decade, Kazakhstan is destined to be the world’s fifth largest oil producer.

The U.S. has invested heavily in the Caspian region. U.S. companies have put many billions of dollars into oil and gas projects and both the Clinton and Bush administrations have worked hard to curry favor with the former Soviet republics and limit the influence of Russia, Iran and China in the process. As Anna Borg, a deputy assistant secretary for energy issues at the State Department told Congress in 2003, “The U.S. government and State Department are focusing on [the Caspian] extensively.”

Since 2001, the U.S. has not only established military bases in the region but it has also conducted joint Navy exercises with Azerbaijan in the Caspian and has supported Kazakhstan’s push to establish its own Navy. The U.S. Coast Guard even patrols the Caspian Sea and the combined U.S. military presence makes Russia — whose Caspian fleet has long exercised de-facto control over the sea — very edgy.

As General Charles Wald, deputy commander of the U.S. European Command, explained to the Wall Street Journal in June 2003, “In the Caspian you have large mineral reserves … We want to be able to assure the long-term viability of those resources.”

Of central concern to the U.S. is the Baku to Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, a million-barrel-a-day project headed by BP, running from Baku, Azerbaijan, through Nagorno Karabak, a region claimed by both Azerbaijan and Armenia, into the turbulent republic of Georgia and on to the Black Sea port of Ceyhan. From there, oil would be shipped via tanker through the Bosphorus and into the Mediterranean on its way to Europe and the U.S.

The BTC pipeline will start carrying oil in 2005 but it runs through a smorgasbord of ethnic unrest. With new military bases in Romania and Bulgaria, a U.S. rapid response force is in easy reach of the Caucasus region to counter any threat to the smooth supply of Caspian Oil. And in Georgia, U.S. forces have been training the local military to counter armed Islamic groups operating out of the lawless Pankisi gorge. The stated purpose of this training is to fight the War on Terror, but insurgent activity now also threatens world oil security.

So far, West Africa poses less of a threat to energy security than either the Persian Gulf or the Caspian. But as this region promises to supply more and more oil to American consumers in the future, the U.S. is planning ahead.

In June 2003, on the eve of President Bush’s first visit to Africa — only the second time a sitting U.S. president had visited the continent — General James Jones, commander of the U.S. European command, gave an interview to the New York Times in which he outlined another layer of the U.S. military’s shift in global priorities.

The U.S. was negotiating with a number of African nations for the long-term use of military bases to help combat the terrorist groups that may be operating in the region. The areas of interest included Algeria, Morocco, and also sub-Saharan venues like Mali. Augmenting these bases would be a strong U.S. Navy and Marine force operating in the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of West Africa. “The carrier battle groups of the future may not spend six months in the Mediterranean sea,” Jones said, “but I’ll bet they spend half the time going down the west coast of Africa.”

There are very few known terrorist outfits in the waters off West Africa but there is an enormous amount of oil. Africa possesses an estimated 80 billion barrels of oil, 8 percent of total world crude reserves. The U.S. imports some 16 percent of its foreign oil from this part of the world and by 2015 it is expected to rise to 25 percent. And that makes African oil, in the words of U.S. undersecretary of state for African affairs, Walter Kansteiner, “a national strategic interest.”

As the African Oil Policy Group, a Washington lobbying group, reported to the House of Representatives African Subcommittee in 2002, “the Gulf of Guinea oil basin in West Africa, with greater western and southern Africa and its attendant market of 250 million people located astride key sea lanes of communication, [is] a vital interest in U.S. national security calculations.”

Nigeria, Angola and Equatorial Guinea, all of them already serious oil powers in their own rights, have territorial claims to the Gulf of Guinea and U.S. oil companies including ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhilips and Marathon, along with many other foreign companies, all have invested heavily in the region.

No nation has whetted the appetite of the oil majors more than Sao Tome e Principe, a tiny island some 500 miles west of Equatorial Guinea. Over 20 oil companies have bid for the right to drill in the waters off Sao Tome in a concession that is jointly run by the island’s government and neighboring Nigeria. Sao Tome has also been wooed by the U.S. military which would like to build a naval base on the island. Indeed, for a leader of just 150,000 people, president Fradique de Menezes could be said to be hitting above his weight. In September 2002, de Menezes was one of nine African leaders that Bush hosted at the White House. All nine preside over sizeable deposits of African oil.

Just in case Sao Tome doesn’t pan out, the U.S. military recently agreed to conduct joint oil protection operations with Nigerian forces in the Niger Delta region of the country, where insurgents from local ethnic communities have targeted international oil workers in a campaign to force out the major oil companies.

As the U.S. searches for new ways to reduce its reliance on Middle East oil, protecting energy supplies from Latin America, Central Asia and West Africa will take on greater importance. The new realignment of its global military might will likely see the U.S. risk placing its armed forces in danger throughout the most treacherous and politically unstable areas of the world for decades to come. It is a scenario likely to be replayed not just in the Persian Gulf but also across the Central Asian republics, West Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America and anywhere else in the developing world where new oil is found. The net result may ensure America gets the oil it needs, but it is a policy that makes the United States secure, not safer. More U.S. troops will perish protecting oil and hatred of America will expand far beyond the ravings of Islamic extremists. Ultimately, it is an unsustainable policy.

Ecuadoreans, Argentines, Bolivians and, most recently, Mexicans have made Jackson Heights their home. But today, only one country matters.

“Co-lom-bi-a, Co-lom-bi-a,” is the cry from the cars as they crawl down Roosevelt Avenue; cumbia is the music that pounds from their car stereos, cranked to fever pitch to drown out the rumble of the elevated No. 7 subway train overhead. This afternoon only one country matters, because Colombia is about to play England in its final first-round game of the World Cup. If Colombia wins, it will advance. Anything less and it’s going home.

The police are taking no chances. Barricades have been erected for blocks along Roosevelt Avenue to hem in supporters and prevent a repeat of four years ago, when jubilant Colombian supporters, celebrating their team’s victory over Argentina in a warm-up game on the eve of the 1994 World Cup, swelled into the streets and brought Jackson Heights to a standstill. Today, a phalanx of cops — taking time out from implementing Mayor Giuliani’s latest master plan — patrols the streets.

The 1994 World Cup was supposed to have been Colombia’s year. Four years before, it had qualified for the Cup for only the second time in its history with a team of young stars, including clown-wigged midfield guru Carlos Valderrama, powerhouse striker Freddy Rincon and goalkeeper Rene “El Loco” Higuita. That year, Colombia made it to the second round. Three years later it trounced Argentina once more, this time 5-0, and arrived at USA ’94 as the critic’s favorites. Then it all went wrong. Rumors flew that key members of the team had been told not to play well by Colombian drug barons betting against the team; then Colombia lost 2-0 to the United States in that fateful game at the Rose Bowl in which defender Andreas Escobar scored a goal for the wrong side. Colombia was eliminated in the first round, and days after the team returned home, Escobar was gunned down outside a bar. Now, in 1998, after losing 1-0 to Romania and beating Tunisia by the same score, Colombia is under pressure once again.

No more keenly is the pressure felt than in La Chibcha, a cavernous Colombian coastal restaurant on Roosevelt Avenue at 80th Street, complete with booths fitted into a multicolored Cheever “Ranchero” truck that is parked at the side of the bar. The crowd of some 300 is buzzing as the clock ticks down to kickoff. Stocky, fresh-faced young men talk feverishly about the drama about to unfold. Fathers and mothers bounce excited young children on their knees — the kids’ faces brightly painted in the yellow, blue and red of Colombia. Extra rows of seating line what would normally be the dance floor. All through La Chibcha, Colombian flags are raised and cheers go up as the local Univision television crew feeds live shots from the restaurant to the pregame show coming from Miami. As the DJ pumps out the intoxicating Vallenato beat of Colombian folk hero Carlos Vives, the crowd sings along and one man, his hair tied back in a brilliant yellow bandanna, gets up and exhorts his fellow fans to dance.

On three giant screens, the fans watch their longtime heroes
Valderrama and Rincon — both playing in their third and final World Cup –
warming up. The cameras pan to the stands where a mass of all-male
English fans cheer, their white and red painted faces complementing their mostly
sunburned pink torsos. The comparison with the fans in La Chibcha couldn’t be more striking. Both are celebrating game and country. But while
the English contingent are “on tour,” promoting their sometimes misguided
national pride as if it were an export business, New York’s expatriate
Colombian community is looking home, not abroad, and finding, in its World
Cup team, a sense of identity and cohesion with a land left behind.

This sense of identity is a subplot to the World Cup being played out all
over New York this summer. From Colombians in Jackson Heights to Mexicans
in Sunset Park, to the disparate English community that takes over
Manhattan’s sports bars every time England plays, New York’s immigrant
cultures take time out from being New Yorkers and reaffirm their original
identities. The city is abuzz with talk of the Coupe du Monde. So far
this summer, I’ve had tactical chats with my Yugoslavian super, endured the
tunnel-vision logic of the Argentine short-order chef at the local
diner and been abused daily by the Aussies in my corner deli, jealous that
their team didn’t qualify. The U.S. may be out of the World Cup, but New
York is still mad for it.

Back in La Chibcha, the crowd is scooping up prematch Budweiser and
Heineken promotional freebies from two companies that appreciate a strong
market when they see one. As the match kicks off, only one question
remains. Will Colombia win? Rafael Duque, a native of Cali who came to
New York just last year, is sure. “Colombia have the motivation to go and
win,” he says with quiet confidence. All week, the talk has been of the
team’s errant genius, Faustino Asprilla, who has been kicked off the squad
by coach Hernan Dario Gomez, for criticizing tactics (though he quickly
apologized and begged to be brought back). Tino, as he is known, is the one
player who can set Colombia alight; plus he knows today’s opposition
because he played last season for Newcastle United in the English Premier
League. Rafael is unfazed by the dilemma. “It doesn’t matter about Tino,”
he says with a smile. “We still have good players.”

In front of me, a woman turns around and starts chatting. “Are you from
Colombia?” she asks. No, I reply, I’m from Wales. “Why are you here
then?” It’s a good question. Before the game, I was convinced that,
watching the game in a Colombian bar, I wouldn’t really care if England won
or not. Now, with the match under way and the tension mounting, it’s
obviously going to be more difficult than I first thought. Actually, it’s
tough being Welsh. If you’re a Scot, it’s simple. Basically, you hate
England — whatever the situation, whatever the sport. But I’ve always been a
little schizophrenic when it comes to England. Growing up, my Welsh
nationalism was only as strong as the strength of the Welsh team. Rugby was
easy: For nearly a decade in the 1970s Wales was untouchable and England
the laughingstock of the world. Even now that the situation has pretty
much been reversed, I still could never bring myself to support England. But
football was always different. For whatever reason, when England plays
football, I put on hold my distaste for that snooty, misplaced sense of
superiority that so many English adopt in addressing their Celtic
neighbors. Hence I’ve cheered on England in World Cups since 1982 without
ever feeling I’ve sold out my homeland.

Though I can’t subdue my guilty loyalty, it seems tactful not to scream
too loudly in La Chibcha. Then England scores, a searing close-quarter shot
from winger Darren Anderton that rockets into the top of the net. Inside,
I jump for joy; outside, I give a half smile. This is going to be hard.

Then, just before the end of the first half, David Beckham, poster pin-up
of the English team and fiancé of Posh Spice no less, sends a free kick
curling into the right corner of Colombian goalie Mondragon’s net. “Yes!” I
cry out among the collective groan of the crowd — causing a few
puzzled Colombian supporters to stare at the traitor in their midst.

My moment of jubilation marks the beginning of the end for Colombia. From
that point on the team fades away and the crowd gradually loses interest in
the game. “Disappointed, very disappointed,” is all one fan will say
afterward. Outside La Chibcha, a few dozen supporters crowd around a
television camera broadcasting postgame reactions, but Colombia’s bubble
has been burst. In Jackson Heights, New York, life returns, at least until
Colombia’s independence celebrations at the end of July. And World Cup
fever moves south to the streets of Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, where Mexican
fans are preparing for their country’s biggest game in a decade — a second-round encounter with Germany.