Amazonian Indigenous Peoples Decry War and Oil

Native peoples from nine countries of Latin America and the Caribbean drew up strategies and issued declarations against the anti-drug Plan Colombia, the Colombian civil war and against petroleum and mining activities on their lands, during a weekend meet in the Ecuadorian capital.

The indigenous delegates issued a declaration rejecting the implementation of Plan Colombia, the anti-narcotics fight launched by the Andres Pastrana government with international assistance, within their lands, "because of its environmental, social, cultural and economic effects, and particularly because it is a violation of human rights."

They also resolved to withhold political recognition of the peace talks currently under way in Colombia because native peoples "are not directly represented" at the negotiating table, despite the fact that they continually have been victims in the decades- long armed conflict.

Another resolution of the two-day conference was to demand compensation and reparations from the governments of the Amazon Basin countries and from oil and mining firms "for the environmental, social and cultural damages caused by petroleum exploitation and mining in indigenous territories."

They further demand that those countries standardize and reform their Constitutions to recognize the rights of indigenous peoples and that this process must include their participation.

The indigenous leaders from the region also called for the demarcation and legalization of their ancestral territories and the creation of a state agency to control the boundaries of these lands.

The participants in the meeting - from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela - are members of the Coordinating Body for the Indigenous Peoples' Organisations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), which held its annual conference here Saturday and Sunday.

The objective of the gathering was to draw up the Amazon Indigenous Agenda "so that all organizations in the Basin are working from the same perspective and in a coordinated way," said Sebastiao Haji Manchineri, a Yine native from Brazil and COICA general coordinator.

"We must have our own agenda, because until now we did not had a concrete mission as Amazon peoples," Manchineri told IPS.

Plan Colombia, oil exploitation and mining "are life-and- death issues for our peoples, issues that are threatening our reality. We must move forward with joint actions" that favor the sustainable development of the lands, said the COICA leader.

The coalition of native groups is working to prevent Plan Colombia from "increasing the militarization of the Amazon Basin," which would harm the local communities and turn the area into a "no-man's land".

Plan Colombia, the Pastrana government's anti-drug initiative that has over a billion dollars in mostly military support from the United States, is considered by many political analysts and civil society representatives as a plan to fight Colombia's guerilla organizations.

"With the Colombian war, our people do not have anyone to turn to for help in meeting their most urgent needs, and this lack of alternatives is pushing them into situations of extreme poverty," said Manchineri.

COICA was founded in 1985 to "defend territorial rights, the free determination of indigenous peoples and the continuity of their unique cultures". The organization represents 400 indigenous groups from the Amazon Basin, or approximately 1.5 million people.

The Association of Sarayaku Indigenous Centres, of the central- eastern Ecuadorian province of Pastaza, denounced that, since 1998, representatives from major oil companies have been making offers to indigenous leaders in efforts to divide them and convince them to back down from their refusal to allow oil exploration in their ancestral lands.

Franco Viteri, of the Tayjasaruta-Sarayaku Government Council, stated that these actions by the petroleum companies violate the collective rights recognized by the Constitution of Ecuador and by the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 169.

The ILO Convention stipulates that before natural resources may be exploited within indigenous territory, the native community that holds rights over the land must be consulted and grant its permission.

"We are a Kichwa community of 1,500 people living on an ancestral territory of 1,400 square km, practicing our culture and our economic, political, cultural and social systems. It is crucial to fight to maintain this, and we will do so," stated Viteri.

Holding on to territorial control is the only guarantee of survival for the Kichwa people of Sarayaku, said the indigenous leader.

"We have witnessed how in the last three decades the petroleum industry has upset the lives and environments of other native peoples, and how they did not receive any benefit at all," Viteri added.

Based on the recognition of collective rights established by Ecuador's Constitution and the ILO's Convention 169, Viteri's group is demanding the immediate withdrawal of the Argentina-based CGC (Compañia General de Combustibles) Oil Company that is carrying out exploration activities in the area.

"We demand recognition of the Kichwa people's autonomy and territorial jurisdiction," he said. "We were born free and we have lived happily. We will fight like tigers. We will not end up as slaves."

For their part, the delegates from the Cofán peoples, who live in the northeast Ecuadorian province of Sucumbíos, bordering Colombia, charged that the government has failed to provide them titles to the land that they have inhabited for centuries.

The authorities argue that the land is found within the boundaries of national parks.

Toribio Aguinda, president of the Federation of the Cofán Peoples, stated that the lack of documentation proving ownership has caused problems for them with Colombian and Ecuadorian tenant farmers who cut down trees in the area.

"This is our ancestral territory, and if they would leave us in peace we wouldn't care about the property titles, but the tenant farmers come and say that the land doesn't belong to us because we don't have any papers that prove we do," Aguinda said.

The titles would also provide the native community with a sense of assurance in case the Colombian civil war escalates and the displaced civilian population or right- wing paramilitaries begin to cross the border into Ecuador, he added.

This Ecuadorian area's Cofán communities, which total 600 people, live 23 km from Nueva Loja, capital of Sucumbíos province, on the banks of the Aguarico River.

In February 2001, some 500 indigenous peoples from nearby communities were threatened and forced to abandon their homes by a commando of right-wing Colombian paramilitaries operating inside Ecuador.

Aguinda pointed to other effects of the Colombian war, saying that a month after the incident with the paramilitaries, three Cofán women died from a strange intoxication, a poisoning the residents attribute to the contamination caused by the aerial fumigation of the illicit coca crops in the Colombian border area.

The pesticide used in the operations, glyphosate, "is a chemical so powerful that its effects are felt well inside the Ecuadorian side of the border," Aguinda said.

He and other leaders of the Cofán peoples believe that the deaths were a direct result of the rupture in the delicate balance between nature, humans and the spirits, a balance they say is necessary for their cultural survival.

The Cofán communities hardest hit by the Colombian conflict are the 428 families living in the Guamuéz river valley, in the Colombian department of Putumayo.

The widespread fumigation - part of Plan Colombia - and the clashes between the leftist insurgent Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the right-wing paramilitaries of the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) caused en exodus of the Cofán to Ecuador, where they were received by their fellow native communities in Sucumbíos.

Ten years ago, the Cofán numbered 10,000 between Ecuador and Colombia. Today, their population has dwindled to less than 3,000.

"Plan Colombia is one more reason why the indigenous peoples of the Amazon Basin face extinction. War and petroleum seem to be persecuting us," said COICA leader Manchineri.

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