Latin America
Related: About this forumViolence as Colombia's indigenous Nasa oppose police and paramilitary in struggle for “Mother Earth”
By Robin Llewellyn
Intercontinental Cry
April 1, 2015
Clashes have erupted in Colombias western department of Cauca as the Nasa Indigenous Peoples press the government to fulfill its promise to return 15,600 hectares (60 mi²) to their control. A succession of occupations of sugar plantations has seen the government deploy the army and riot police against them prompting fierce battles across the north of the region.
This is the latest stage in a decades-long struggle for the return of indigenous territory lost to intensive agriculture, a struggle that received international attention in past decades following a wave of massacres. Protected by the Indigenous Guards, the fields remain largely under Nasa control; but an abrupt rise in threats from the Black Eagles paramilitary group and the issuance of new eviction orders by the government raise fears that deadly violence may return to the region.By Robin Llewellyn.
At:https://intercontinentalcry.org/violence-as-colombias-indigenous-nasa-oppose-police-and-paramilitaries-in-struggle-for-liberation-of-mother-earth/
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The Black Eagles (Águilas Negras) referenced in the article is one of the principal right-wing death squads operating in Colombia currently. Formed in 2006, their activities have been financed by drug trafficking, the Colombian government itself, and, through Plan Colombia, the U.S. taxpayer. Colombia's Dirty War remains one of the world's most under-reported conflicts - and most victims in recent years haven't been guerillas at all; but labor organizers, teachers, and the country's very marginalized indigenous peoples.
Judi Lynn
(160,617 posts)They are fighting against well-recognized evil, with every possibility they will lose their lives any day, but they do it because if they don't, evil will win. It's a bitter, sad struggle which should never had been necessary. And to think those who have put the poor people in this position actually imagine themselves their "superiors".
The criminals who have done this should realize everyone knows what they have done, and how they have created their wealth, through stealing from the poor. I don't think they can ever stay drunk enough to not be aware of the fact people do see them as monsters.
"The meek shall inherit the earth."
Aguilas Negras are nothing but former AUC, publicly known to have been associated with the Colombian military, doing its worst dirty work for them, the stuff for which there is no legal justification.
forest444
(5,902 posts)Indigenous Latin Americans are the most likely to be run roughshod over by foreign investors, and of course to be marginalized by their own countrymen.
Shame.
Judi Lynn
(160,617 posts)the theft of their homes, their lives, their loved ones, their world.
Then they pleasure themselves by looking at the original inhabitants as "sub-human." Doesn't seem possible.