In early August 2006, while driving on the highway that links the northern Colombian cities of Bucaramanga and Santa Marta, a uniformed officer with a sidearm signaled for us to pull over to the side of the road. The officer was speaking into a walkie-talkie as he approached our vehicle and I noticed the words “private security” emblazoned on his uniform and a name badge hanging from his breast pocket identifying him as an employee of the Drummond Company. My Colombian driver and I had just passed the entrance to Alabama-based Drummond’s open-pit coalmine near the town of La Loma in the department of César. The guard said he had orders to detain us until the mine’s chief of security arrived on the scene. Ten minutes later, Drummond’s security chief pulled up with a truckload of Colombian soldiers to question us about our activities in the region. It was then that it hit me; we had just been detained and interrogated on a public Colombian highway by the private armed security force of a U.S. mining company.
Tag Archives: colombia
The Massacre in Altaquer
In early July, 64-year-old Segundo Ortiz was displaced from his land along with 1,700 other indigenous Awá in a remote jungle region in southwestern Colombia. He and many others had to walk for as long as two days to escape Colombian army operations in the region, finally seeking refuge in the small towns of Altaquer and Ricaurte. But one month later, tragedy struck the displaced Awá again when five of their leaders were dragged from their beds and shot to death on World Indigenous Day. It appears to many observers that the very forces that were charged with protecting the displaced Awá were the likely perpetrators of the massacre.
Waging War in Colombia’s National Parks
Cecilia walked around her small wooden house pointing to the banana trees and yucca plants that were killed by the aerial fumigation that had occurred eight days earlier. She described how the chemicals blanketed not only the coca crops she and her husband cultivate in order to survive, but also their food crops and two young children. As a result, the family is now struggling to survive in a part of Colombia that has been Cecilia’s home for her entire life: the Macarena National Park. Based on the results of the initial fumigations, it appears that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s decision to begin spraying coca crops in the country’s national parks will only intensify the conflict, escalate the humanitarian crisis and increase ecological damage in some of Colombia’s most pristine environments.
The World’s Warmonger
According to the Bush administration, it is Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s desire to purchase weapons from Russia that threatens to destabilize the Andean region, not the $3 billion in military aid that Washington has provided to Colombia over the past five years. Likewise, in the Middle East, it is Syria’s efforts to obtain purely defensive anti-aircraft missiles that pose a threat to that region, not the $1 billion a year in U.S. military aid to Israel. And on the nuclear front, while there is no evidence that Iran is intending to build nuclear weapons, it is the regime in Tehran that is threatening to further destabilize the region, not President Bush’s apparent pledge to support any future Israeli attack against Iran. Meanwhile, North Korea’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in order to develop nuclear weapons makes the Asian nation a “rogue state,” but Washington’s abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) to build its missile defense system, which could lead to the weaponization of space, apparently does not justify the same anti-multilateralist label being applied to the United States.
The Indigenous Struggle in the Chocó
and Terry Gibbs
Our indigenous guide maneuvered the dugout canoe cautiously through the shallow waters of the Río Opogodó deep in the rainforest of Colombia’s Chocó region. We had traveled almost 12 hours from the departmental capital Quibdó down the Río Atrato and up the Opogodó when we approached a collection of canoes moored on a pebbled embankment. After seeing few signs of human existence during the previous three hours, the sight of a small Embera indigenous village consisting of some 20 open thatched huts on wooden stilts was a magical vision. Walking up a green and muddy hill into the mist-enshrouded village was like traveling back a thousand years in time. But the sense of peacefulness that greeted us as we entered Egorokera proved to be mostly an illusion. The modern day reality for the Embera is far from peaceful as communities from this indigenous tribe struggle to cope with malnutrition, disease, governmental neglect, and constant confrontations with Colombia’s armed groups.
Garry Leech 