Dear friends, we would like to invite you to participate in an open meeting with two companher@s from the Black Communities Network (PCN) of Colombia. This will take place on friday 2nd of March, 8pm, at Atherden Community Centre E5, off Lower Clapton Rd. There will be food and music afterwards. The following text explains the spirit of their visit and gives some info on the situation in Colombia and the organisation they represent. In Vienna there is an open meeting with two people from PCN at friday, 2 march 2001, starting 7 pm at ekh-atigf-beisl, wielandgasse 2-4, 1100 vienna (u1 keplerplatz) A group of 6 representatives from Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN) are coming from Colombia to Europe to begin a tour starting in January and ending in April. They are coming to speak to people who are interested in continuing a process of greater communication and cooperation at a global level between those who are building, or would like to build, autonomous collective alternatives in response to the political, economic and cultural dominance of global capitalism. These are alternatives which will be rticulated through horizontal and participatory processes which revindicate and put into practice the right to difference and to an identity of choice, which recuperate and strengthen the collective capacity of self organisation and self management, and generate a space of empowering freedom, free of state structures. The PCN invites us to foster this process of convergence through concrete work which allows us to get to know each other personally and politically through direct human relations. For this reason, they are proposing a series of initiatives against Plan Colombia and in favour of self government by black, indigenous and peasant communities. The situation in Colombia, already terrifying in itself, is becoming increasingly more horrific due to the preparation for massive miltary intervention directed and financed by the US in the name of Plan Colombia. It is in this context that the active involvement of groups and movements from other countries becomes one of the key factors in preventing the erradication of the centuries-old struggles of black, indigenous and peasant communties. Since last summer, killings by the paramilitaries have intensified, following a strategy designed by the CIA and supported by the Colombian government. At the beginning of December paramilitaries committed the worst massacre to date, assassinating an indeterminate number of people (which could be as many as 87, perhaps more as the corpses were cut up and thrown in a swamp). The intensification of the conflict is taking place with the aim of exterminating all manifestations of resistance and self affirmation of the rural population, percieved by global capital as a "population surplus" with no place in the economic system, in order to "clear the land" for the investors and give them free access to the natural resources- which is the underlying raison d' etre of Plan Colombia. The war in Colombia is bound to spread into other countries of the region and has already propulsed the spread of the military operations of paramilitary and other armed actors further afield than Colombian frontiers into Panamá, Venezuela, Brazil, Perú and Ecuador. The United States' army has built new military bases throughout the region, specifically for Plan Colombia. This includes the biggest military installation in Latin America in Manta, Ecuador and many other bases in countries as far away as El Salvador. They have also received permission from the Dutch government to use their military bases in the ex-colonies of Curaçao and Aruba (off the Venezuelan coastland). This Plan is the cruelest expression of globalised capitalism, which will manifest itself with increasing frequency unless the response from those societies of the countries set to benefit most from these interventions (ie. United States and Western Europe) is strong enough to challenge their legitimacy both there and in the countries where they will be implemented (in this case, Colombia). It is a war against social movements which incorporates a massive use of genetically modified (GM) biological arms, under the guise of an anti-narcotics strategy (specifically the use of a GM fungal herbicide in coca-erradication : fusarium oxysporum or "Agent Green"-Ed.) But as the Colombian analyst Héctor Modragón states, "The explicit objective of Plan Colombia is the strengthening of free trade through the "OMC" (¿)that at the same time is the best way of ensuring the continued esistence of illicit crops." Our companions at PCN are coming on the European tour with various objectives and expectations. They would like to inform the European networks of their organisational processes, the history of their resistance, the alternatives they have come up with and their perspective on the terrible situation currently facing Colombia. On the other hand, they want to get to know the struggles and organisational practices of Europe, to discuss possible joint interventions in the situation created by Plan Colombia and explore ways of continuing, connecting and strengthening processes of global convergence on a long term scale, with those who struggle against power with a clear and critical viewpoint. An important component of the tour therefore will be the initiation of a process of discussion with people from all over Europe, around the basis of two combined proposals. together. One of these proposals refers to a strategy for collective intervention in Colombia and will include elements such as: the generation of technological capacity in the Colombian communities to enable them to communicate better with each other and the rest of the world, and a proposal of an international presence in the regions where black, indigenous and peasant communities are building processes of self government. The second proposal, hand in hand with the first, is about the convergence of non-hierarchical organisations in order to achieve autonomy from capitalism on the state margins. The ancestors of black communities taught them the saying "I am because we are", which expresses the idea that a person can only be free if the people around them are also free. This was one of the fundamental motivating principles in the struggle against slavery and the building of the movement. Now, in the era of global capitalism, they say that their struggle for freedom can only advance on the foundations of the collective advance of struggles for freedom, autonomy and the right to difference throughout the world. They want to develop new forms of solidarity grounded in this principle. for more information go to: www.no-racism.net/global/colombia
PCN Tour | Noticias sobre Colombia | Plan Colombia (ca) | Plan Colombia (en) | AGP