Northern
Caucan Communities:
Their Fate Lies in Our Hands
Justin Podur interviews
Noam Chomsky on Colombia
by Noam Chomsky and Justin Podur
ZNet, July 12, 2002
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=9&ItemID=2104
At
the time of this writing, the municipalities of Toribio and Jambalo in
Northern Cauca are being bombarded by both FARC and the Colombian
government. Northern Cauca is home to one of the most remarkable
experiments in resistance to neoliberalism and in the actual
construction of alternatives in the hemisphere, not to mention a
courageous and unarmed struggle for peace.
The
current battle began when the FARC entered the area with the intention
of executing the indigenous mayors of these municipalities for
'corruption'. The mayors were elected in a direct-democratic,
consultative process developed by the people of Cauca (see "Snapshot of
Colombia" for more detail on this process) and the accusation of
corruption leveled at them is not warranted. The indigenous
organizations of Cauca have asked for international action to protect
them from this threat and for all armed actors to leave their territory
so they can continue their construction of autonomy.
Noam Chomsky visited Cauca several months ago. He gave his assessment
of the situation there in an email interview today.
1) You
visited the indigenous of Cauca recently, and now they are being hit
quite hard from all quarters-- the FARC, the paramilitaries, and aerial
fumigation from the US. Why is that? Do their achievements qualify as
the kind of 'threat of a good example' that has to be destroyed?
That's a fair conclusion, I think.
I spent a few days in Cauca, but met mostly people from the southern
part, campesinos and indigenous mostly, with personal testimonies that
are really painful to listen to. Also met activists from many different
groups, very impressive people, and was able to spend a few hours
talking to the governor, Floro Tunubala, a thoughtful, articulate,
proud indigenous man, maybe the first indigenous elected official at
that rank in the hemisphere. His election was a shock to the elites
that have run the place forever. It's reminiscent of Haiti 10 years
ago. His election was a reflection of the success of local organizing
among the popular sectors, the "Bloque Social" -- the Social Bloc. In
answer to your question, I'll just quote what he said in a published
interview. He warned a year ago of the growing presence of
paramilitaries in the north, another step in extending their control
over large parts of Colombia. He attributed their invasion of northern
Cauca to the successes of the Social Bloc, which has "won economic and
territorial rights, and social rights in the areas of education and
health." That "attracted the attention of the paramilitaries," who do
not tolerate such deviation from the traditional structures of power
they protect. I think that's the basic answer to the question you raise.
But it's more complex. In recent years, he said, the guerrillas have
"sought to manipulate the social movements," and it is clear from
personal testimonies that they -- particularly FARC -- are feared by
campesinos, Afro-Colombians, and indigenous people, and that FARC has
lost its former social program as the conflict has become increasingly
militarized. The Social Bloc is seeking to separate the region from the
conflict, to free themselves from the military-paramilitary and from
the guerrillas, and to pursue a path towards independent social and
economic development under their own control. None of the militarized
forces accept that. There are similar efforts in many parts of
Colombia, including quite sizeable networks of communities, in one case
an area about the size of El Salvador. Perhaps the oldest is San Jose
de Apartado, which declared itself a zone of peace over 30 years ago,
and has suffered bitterly from the refusal of the armed groups to
accept that. They had been under siege by paramilitaries for weeks when
I was there, food and other supplies were running short, and the
situation may be desperate unless they receive some outside support
beyond the human rights and solidarity groups that are attempting to do
something and arouse international attention.
Those I met described the US chemical warfare campaign ("fumigation")
as a particularly vicious atrocity. Peasant testimonies were graphic
and heart-rending, and even a casual visit suffices to see some of the
effects directly. Most of the those met were coffee farmers. They had
managed to overcome the sharp decline in coffee prices (which
devastates the farmers; the multinational distributors are doing fine)
by developing a niche market for export, mostly to Europe: very high
quality organically-grown coffee. That's destroyed by the fumigation,
forever. Not only are all the coffee bushes killed, but the land is
poisoned, and will not be certified again, even if they can somehow
survive the years it takes to re-establish what has been destroyed,
along with all other crops: yucca, asparagus, much else. Their farms
and lives are ruined, their animals killed, their children often sick
and dying. They are left destitute, with little hope. At least in the
areas from which I heard personal testimonies, the crop destruction had
little if anything to do with guerrilla presence or drug production --
grotesque as even those projects are. There hadn't even been an attempt
to investigate on the ground the areas subjected to ruinous crop
destruction. These programs appear to be another stage in the
historical process of driving poor peasants from the land, opening up
rich resources to exploitation by foreign capital, and probably laying
the basis for agroexport controlled by multinationals using
laboratory-produced seed, once the biodiversity is destroyed, along
with the rich but fragile tradition of peasant agriculture. Along with
the governors of the neighboring provinces, Tunubala has called for an
end to fumigation, with manual eradication along with programs of
social and economic development. But that doesn't fit the aims of the
Colombian elite and Washington's "Plan Colombia," so it receives
virtually no support.
There's background that should be kept in mind. In 2001, Cauca had the
worst record for human rights violations in Colombia, which is quite an
achievement. Next was Choco, mostly Afro-Colombian, the scene of a
terrible massacre when a FARC bomb hit a church where people were
taking refuge from fighting that broke out after paramilitaries invaded
the area. These are the latest stages in an ugly history. From far
back, the violence in Cauca, as elsewhere, is part of the expulsion of
peasants from the best lands, escalating under the neoliberal programs
but with deep historical roots, leading to a social order with extreme
concentration of wealth, linked to foreign capital, and awful misery in
a country with rich and varied resources. That's been true of Cauca for
a long time. The Social Bloc has been reversing the process, and that
is not welcome to concentrated power, domestic or international.
2) How
credible is the Colombian government's claim that they are trapped
between a guerrilla insurgency and a paramilitary army, neither of
which they can control, both of which they need military help from the
US to bring to heel?
Both international and
Colombian human rights organizations now attribute the large majority
of atrocities to paramilitaries, who are so closely, and so visibly,
allied to the military that Human Rights Watch calls them the "Sixth
Division," alongside the five official divisions. There's overwhelming
evidence of intimate connections and cooperation, both from ample
personal testimony and published reports of the major human rights
organizations, which are detailed and informative. The proportion of
atrocities attributed to the military/paras has been steady over the
years: about 75%-80%, with the military component declining as
atrocities are "farmed out" to the paras in ways that are familiar
elsewhere. That's useful for "plausible deniability" -- plausible
enough for State Department pretenses when they go through the annual
charade of certifying "improvements" in the military's human rights
record, most recently a disgraceful performance by Colin Powell a few
months ago after he had been presented with extensive documentation
from the main human rights organizations showing in careful detail that
accreditation would be a farce. The transfer of atrocities to
paramilitaries is a form of privatization that fits well into the
"neoliberal model," of which Colombia is a stellar example generally.
US participation in state terror is proceeding along a similar track.
Increasingly, it is privatized. The tasks are handed over to companies
like MPRI and Dyncorps that hire US military personnel and operate on
government contracts, but aren't subject to the congressional
surveillance that somewhat constrains direct participation in state
terror.
3) Can concerned North Americans actually help protect the work of people in
Cauca? How?
It's no exaggeration to say that their fate lies in our hands. The
Social Bloc in Cauca is one of quite a few popular formations
throughout the country. They cannot alone withstand the overwhelming
resources of violence in the hands of the Colombian elite linked to US
power. As for the guerrillas, power centers may not defeat them in
conventional military terms, but have already succeeded to a large
extent in one primary goal: driving the guerrillas to become a military
force without meaningful social programs, hence just another source of
terror for the population that seeks to find a way to escape the
criminal socioeconomic system and pervasive violence that is closely
connected to it. That's again a classic device of state-directed
international terrorism.
The courage and dedication of the Social Bloc, and the activists who
work with them, are extraordinary and inspiring. But the heavy hand of
oppression has to be removed right here. It is also right here that
they should be receiving direct support for the very impressive and
promising work that they are doing. To some extent that is happening,
with sister city projects and other forms of solidarity. How these
processes develop will determine the fate of millions of Colombians.
We're not observing from Mars, and even a tiny fraction of what they do
every day, under incomparably harsher conditions, can make an enormous
difference.