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Educate to Liberate!
Peter S. Lopez aka: Peta
Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com
Sacramento, California, U.S.A.
From: Tupac Enrique <chantlaca@tonatierra.org>
To: NetworkAztlan_Action@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, November 9, 2008 11:41:35 PM
Subject: [NetworkAztlan_Action] Colombia: Letter from Indigenous Councils Northern Cauca to President Elect Obama
As children of Mother Earth, we speak to you as to a brother or sister. As indigenous, we speak to you as peoples, obliged from creation to seek harmony between History and Mother Earth. To reconcile ourselves with nature is not an option, but an imperative. By transforming life into merchandise, by making sacred the accumulation of wealth, by enshrining greed, we believe our societies have entered a crisis, including the economic crisis currently faced by your country. The destruction of our peoples in Colombia is a consequence of that Historic error that has placed greed before life. Brother President-elect Barack Obama, we do not write to ask or demand anything for ourselves, because we know that the death of our peoples and the destruction of our cultures for greed, signifies the beginning of the end for Mother Earth itself. Before we disappear with our collective Mother, we have decided to speak and to walk our words. In the name of life, of change, let us listen to one another and make the effort to find a way to create harmony between our peoples and life. Let us create the conditions for new History. One where the sacred ends of promotion and protection of Life and Beauty can never again be transformed into means for private accumulation of power at the service of greed. We await you. With great respect, ### 10,000 indigenous Colombians are marching against President Alvaro Uribe's policies. The protest comes one week after violence erupted during demonstrations to press for land reform and dialogue with the government. Colombia's indigenous protest against Uribe ************ * From Democracy NOW Interview above: JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Mario, obviously, the protests, you said, started on October 12th, which is the anniversary of el Dia de la Raza, or of Columbus Day, as it's called here in the United States. What is the—in terms of the condition of the indigenous under the Uribe government, what is it like right now? MARIO MURILLO: That's a great point, and this is interesting that finally, after over almost two weeks of mobilizing and weeks before the mobilization began, the indigenous communities were putting out communiqués consistently on their websites and holding press conferences to draw attention to five key points that the communities are trying to address and to get the government to address, but it hasn't gotten any coverage whatsoever. Only the last couple of days, because the government has been forced to respond to the specific points, are the media now here in Colombia actually addressing them. One of them, you pointed out in the introduction. They're really concerned about the free trade agreement that was signed by the Colombian government, and they're waiting for approval in the US Congress. It hasn't been approved by the Congress. And so, the Colombian indigenous movement and the popular movement in general are saying that this free trade agreement has to be reconsidered, because the communities were not consulted. ### The Threat of REDD UN Admits Its Climate Change Program Could Threaten Indigenous Peoples Sept. 27, 2008 - On the third day of the General Assembly's 63rd Session, the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Prime Minister of Norway launched the United Nations REDD program, a collaboration of FAO, UNDP, UNEP and the World Bank. The inclusion of forests in the carbon market, or REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) has caused anxiety, protest and outrage throughout the world since it was created at the failed climate change negotiations in Bali and funded by the World Bank. An estimated 60 million indigenous peoples are completely dependent on forests and are considered the most threatened by REDD. Therefore, indigenous leaders are among its most prominent critics. The International Indigenous Peoples' Forum on Climate Change declared that: '...REDD will steal our land... States and carbontraders will take control over our forests.' It is alarming that indigenous peoples' fears and objectionshave now been confirmed by the UN-REDD Framework Document itself. On page 4 and 5 it blatantly states that the program could "deprive communities of their legitimate land-development aspirations, that hard-fought gains in forest management practices might be wasted, that it could cause the lock-up of forests by decoupling conservation from development, or erode culturally rooted not-for-profit conservation values." It is further highlighted that "REDD benefits in some circumstances may have to be traded off against other social, economic orenvironmental benefits." In carefully phrased UN language, the document further acknowledges that REDD could cause severe human rights violations and be disastrous for the poor because it could "marginalize the landless.and those with. communal use-rights". This is tantamount to the UN recognizing that REDD could undermine indigenous peoples and local communities rights to the usage andownership of their lands. Could it be that the UN is paving the way for a massive land grab? To read UN-REDD Framework Document: http://www.undp. org/mdtf/ UN-REDD/docs/Annex- A-Framework-Document.pdf To see photos from the protest against REDD and the World Bank in Bali: http://www.globaljusticeecolog y.org/gallery.php To watch the video from the protest against REDD at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= UtORVi7GybY ++++++++++++ +++++++++ ++ NAHUACALLI Initial Fact Finding Report regarding the World Bank Funded Development Projects in Colombia October 20, 2008 NAHUACALLI Embassy of the Indigenous Peoples Izkalotlan, Aztlan October 16, 2008 Association of de Indigenous Cabildos of the Northern Cauca - Colombia ACIN Relatives: By means of this message we submit our inquiry to the Association of de Indigenous Cabildos of the Northern Cauca ACINin Colombia regarding the situation in your indigenous territories, that the conscience of Humanity in its entirety become aware in particular of the violation of the Human Rights of the Indigenous Peoples. To this purpose, the Nahuacalli - Embassy of the Indigenous Peoples now proposes to organize an International Indigenous Peace Legation of the Commission of Indigenous Nations and Organizations of the Continent (CONIC) to travel to the Northern Cauca to verify and strengthen the processes of Peace and tranquility that should be realized in terms of social justice in every part of our continent of Abya Yala. We have received your letter to the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights of the Organization of American Statesrequesting the intervention of that body in protection of the Human Rights and Indigenous Rights of the Indigenous Peoples of the Northern Cauca in Colombia, rights which are inscribed in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted by the UN General Assembly on September 13th, 2007. The mission of the International Indigenous Peace Legation of the Commission of Indigenous Nations and Organizations of the Continent (CONIC) shall be to verify and report to the international community regarding the processes and conditions under which the Indigenous Peoples of Colombia live, and further in pursuit of a relationship of Peace and Harmony among our societies and within the natural world. Please communicate as soon as possible with our office regarding this request, in order to facilitate the arrival in your territories of the International Indigenous Peace Legation. Tlazocamati. Tupac Enrique Acosta, Yaotachcauh Tlahtokan Nahuacalli NAHUACALLI Embajada de los Pueblos Indígenas Izkalotlan, Aztlan Tel: (602) 254-5230 TONATIERRA
Dear Mr. President-Elect,
First, please accept our sincerest congratulations. We congratulate you for having won because of the noblest aspirations of your people. We believe your election expresses the deep desire for change felt by the majority of the American people: change in the economy and society, change in international relations, and from there, we hope, a change in the relation between the United States of America and the indigenous peoples of the world. During your historic campaign, you publicly noted some of what Colombians currently face: you acknowledged the murders of trade unionists by the regime and stated your reservations about a Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, which our people have decided against through a democratic referendum, about which we have written before. We thank you for this, and now want you to know about the specific situation facing Colombia's indigenous peoples. In the past six years we have lost 1,200 people to assassinations by armed groups, both legal and illegal: right-wing paramilitaries, guerrillas, police, and members of the Armed Forces. These murders have created insecurity, and this insecurity has been used to strip us of our rights with what we call the 'Laws of Disposession', legislation and other institutional norms that legalize the loss of our lands, our fundamental freedoms, and our rights. These 'Laws of Disposession' dispose of Colombia's mines, hydrocarbons, water resources, intellectual property, and national parks â€" all of these are brought under the ultimate rule of the Free Trade Agreement with the US. The FTA will mean that if Colombia tries to change the laws to allow its people to share in its resources, or take any independent action, then we will be obliged to compensate investors. We will have to submit our laws to international arbitration outside our own legal jurisdiction. But in our view, the ultimate law is respect for life. In our view, the FTA puts commercial logic above the respect for life itself, not to mention international humanitarian law, and agreements such as the ILO's Covenant 169, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Worldwide. These covenants, as well as the respect for life, have to date been ignored by the government of our country, as well as by your government. Unfortunately both of our governments, yours with Plan Colombia, and ours with the so-called 'Democratic Security' policy, have done great harm to indigenous peoples and to Mother Earth, while multinational corporations have profited from the petroleum and gas contracts, mining concessions, privatizations, and low wages. We hope that you will contribute to change all this. We hope that you will listen to our words. We have lost many lives defending these words. Words that we have walked and words we have backed up with our civil resistance. These are the words that we have shared throughout Colombia since October 10th, through the Minga of Resistance, a national mobilization we convened as indigenous peoples, in association with other peoples and processes. We believe that the spirit of change in your people cannot be contained. We believe it is a powerful force and we hope it will join with the force of our words and with the need for change that has been crying out throughout Latin America. We invite you to come to listen to these words here in Colombia, and we are ready to articulate them there, if you invite us. Here or there, it is the same planet and our mission is the same: to protect it, to save us all. Finally, we call on you to join with us in fulfilling our responsibilities to Mother Earth and to history. The first one, our collective Mother, has given all of us life. The second one, History, has reflected our growing pains and our errors. History has not matured into systems that reconcile it with the rhythms, pulses and mandates of Nature. We believe the very reason human beings and our societies exist is to create the harmony between History and Mother Earth.
Association of Indigenous Couincils of Northern Cauca ACIN -Cxab Wala Kiwe-Territory of the Great People- Cauca, Mother Earth, November 10th, 2008 Santander de Quilichao
ZAA NKWETA, TRNN: Ten thousand of Colombia's indigenous peoples are taking part in a massive demonstration, which comes after days of violent clashes between indigenous groups and Colombian police. The 62-mile march began Tuesday in Piendamó, in the Cauca province, and will end Friday in the city of Cali. The aim is to pressure the government into returning land to indigenous farmers and to protest against the alleged genocide of indigenous peoples. Recent clashes stem from the killing of indigenous leaders. Indigenous groups claim 1,200 people have been killed by different armed groups since 2002. Colombia President Álvaro Uribe has denied that police and army forces have been using lethal force against demonstrators, but medics said they have treated scores of Indians injured by bullets and shrapnel. Uribe says out of Colombia's 150 million hectares of land, 30 million already belong to indigenous communities. According to Colombia's national indigenous organization, 27 percent of Colombia's indigenous population have no land. Demonstrators want the government to set aside more land for Colombia's 1.3 million Indians and to provide money for better education and health care. They also want the government to prevent corporations and multinational companies from encroaching on their land.
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