|
A L S O+T O D A Y
When white means "weak"
T A B L E+T A L K Is NATO intervention the only option left for bringing peace to Kosovo? Weigh in on the Balkan crisis in the Headlines area of Table Talk
R E C E N T L Y Star Wars lite? A death foretold "You start to think that he's dead" The question that won't go away The China syndrome - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Browse the - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
|
![[ Books: Tackling America's tax system ]](/news/1999/03/src/19newslinks.gif) |
||
|
Chaos in Colombia
BY MATTHEW YEOMANS | The murder of three U.S. environmental activists in Colombia -- discovered two weeks ago in a field on the Venezuelan border, their hands bound, eyes blindfolded and bodies filled with bullets -- stunned a Colombian people supposedly immune to horror stories of violence and atrocities. When, four days later, the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC), Colombia's largest rebel force, admitted it was responsible for the deaths of Terence Freitas, 24, Ingrid Washinawatok, 41, and Lahe'ena'e Gay, 39, the executions took on a new meaning. This single act of murder now became the catalyst to destroy the fragile peace negotiations with FARC begun in January by Colombia's new president, Andres Pastrana, and possibly ruin his presidency in the process. 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 Samor´e 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 Samor´e 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.
N E X T+P A G E+| The threat of tribal suicide |
||