4 Days & 4 Places

Cali, Colombia
[photos to come... patience]

4 days, 4 very different places. From observing a human rights community meeting with the UN, to going back to La Toma for their community assembly to discuss their mass eviction on the 6th August, to the other side of the valley where last week death threats were last week painted onto the walls of the village, to a rural project linked to New Generation in London where last night army troops had decided to occupy a farmhouse. Just another week in the Cauca.

After a heavy night, it was with relief that we weren't the centre of attention at this meeting, with the UN, in La Maria. We watched as local groups submitted reports about local situations to the delegation present on their high table, and spoke about their local issues.

On Monday we headed back to La Toma, the place with the forthcoming mass eviction, for a community meeting to which we were invited when we were there before. We arrived to find a packed covered area, with around 300 people. However our inviter was nowhere to be seen, making it slightly awkward to make our presence. The meeting itself was heavily front-centric, with very little opportunity for community input. There was a call-out for a march to Bogota, which was met with rapturous applause. An interesting idea, but takes the mobilization out of the local area. There was little room for suggestion of anything resembling local action in the community. And nothing suggesting mobilization on the eviction date of the 6th August. Nonetheless, the importance of unity of this black afro-colombian community with indigenous and campesino communties was noted in the struggle against mining multinationals.

Later in the afternoon we walked 45 minutes down a steep narrow mountain path to the community of Gelim, site of proposed evictions. Here there were workshops going on, when we arrived the local residents had split into groups to work on building a picture of local work and resources, and histories thereof. We caught up with them later after a delicious dinner, meeting in the school yard in a large circle. Here we heard how the community are ready to defend their territory by force if needed, if the eviction happens.

Since 2004, mining has been a main form of earning a living in the area. In 2005, Kedadha began their interests in the area, coming to a local meeting painting the wonders of the company. Since then, they have had a strategy to penetrate the community, including the mining rights through intermediaries Jesus Ario and Fernando Ruis. Law 70 of 1993, article 44, grants the legal right to public consultation before mining takes place... of which none has taken place. The community feel backed into a corner - both metaphorically and literally, into harder to reach pockets of territory that has been theirs for 409 years.

On Tuesday morning we received warnings from 2 sources not to visit Cerro Tijeras, our next stop on the other side of the river. In the end we decided it safe to visit the lower part of the village. The area is the site of recent fighting between the FARC and the military. We wanted to see the graffiti that had recently been painted in the town, signed by the Black Eagles paramilitary group. It read "We are coming for you sons-of-bitches leaders. Thieves 8 days to give yourselves up sons-of-bitches thieves. Black Eagles. Death Melba, Enrique, Leandro, Leonardo, Meraldino". Another read "Manipulative snitch leaders. Dead. Black Eagles". It is highly unusual that the Black Eagles do this without also leaving written threats, usually a letter posted under a door. This, additional to the fact that the army are right here in the village leads to the suspicion that it was the army that painted the threats rather than the Black Eagles. We then visited the village of Olivares, where the ex-governor Enrique has now received so many threats (including being mentioned in the above threat) he has left the village for fear of his life.

Wednesday we headed to Dagua, an hour from Cali, back in Valle del Cauca, to visit Cais Maloka, a project up in the hills towards the coast. They are linked to Nueva Generacion in London, a Latin American collective working cross-culturally to raise awareness of local issues, stimulate change and promote their culture. In Colombia, they are working on building a collective farm, working with children and young people to become change-makers, and through principles of Participatory Action Research. We paid this beautiful finca a visit, and having heard that the army had stationed themselves illegally in the upper farmhouse, to see what was going on, with a local human rights defender. We found that they'd left, but left behind a "Colombian Army" towel as evidence, along with various bits of litter.

Sitting around an open fire, I watched the cloud-line sink below us. It's so hard to marry the totally tranquil serenity up here with the knowledge of what's going on in this an countless other areas in Colombia. People are afraid to talk to each other about politics, to come to meetings. Meanwhile, the water supply has been privatised and bills push higher and higher. You might understand that when you live in a city of a million, having to pay for water, but when you live surrounded by natural sources of water it really boggles belief. Not only that, but the natural water that there is, is being drained to feed the pine mono-cultures that belong to the shareholders of Smurfitt-Kappa Carton, that Irish company I mentioned. It's here that I see the real effects of capital, punishing a population for daring to try and continue existing.