Colombia, Repression and Criminalisation in Tolima: The social cost of mega-projects
Colombia, Repression and Criminalisation in Tolima: The social cost of mega-projects
Wednesday, July 03 2013 @ 10:27 PM CDT
Contributed by: Admin
Views: 95
South America
In Colombia, when investment arrives, repression arrives also. Tolima, in the centre of the country, with innumerable mineral and hydro resources, is becoming an important attraction for both national and transnational capital. The problem is that in the same region there are also peasants who, generation after generation have put down their roots, and who do not want to be forced from their land to facilitate a quarry on the mountains.
These days we have seen this clearly in the region of Catatumbo in Colombia, where thousands of peasants have been mobilising against the destruction of their livelihoods by the army and the militarisation of the region with the excuse of “counter-insurgency” operations. The region has, incidentally, been declared a strategic region for the mining-extractive industry.
The same is happening elsewhere. Tolima, in the centre of the country, with innumerable mineral and hydro resources, is becoming an important attraction for both national and transnational capital. The problem is that in the same region there are also peasants who, generation after generation have put down their roots, and who do not want to be forced from their land to facilitate a quarry on the mountains. Not only will they have nowhere to go, because all they have ever known is working the land and they do not have the resources to go elsewhere, even if they wanted, but the problem is that they do not want to. And since these people are not giving in, then this is certainly an inconvenience. An inconvenience which the state is “solving” the same way that it has done during two centuries of republican life: with brutality.
~snip~
Those most affected have been from the trade union ASTRACATOL, which is affiliated with Fensuagro. On the 30 March 2011, the rural leaders Gildardo García and Héctor Orozco were killed between two military control points on the road from Chaparral to La Marina (near a place called Albania). They had been harassed for some time by the army leading up to this murder. Then came the mass arrests: during that same year Edwin Lugo Caballero and José Norbey Lugo Caballero, along with Arcesio Díaz, Aycardo Morales Guzmán, Saan Maceto Marín and Fredynel Chávez Marín, all from ASTRACATOL, were arrested. Also arrested were Alexander Guerrero Castañeda and Armando Montilla Rey, of the Community Action Committees of La Marina and La Esperanza (Río Blanco) respectively. Later the nephew of Arcesio Díaz, Enzo Fabián Díaz, would be arrested. In this state of paranoia, four local soldiers who were serving in Piedras were also arrested: Vilman Useche Pava, Wilmer Javier Pérez Parra, Isidro Alape Reyes and Jason Orlando Castañeda. Apparently the orders to kill all the guerrillas were not followed with enough zeal, and so they ended up being considered suspicious to their officers.
This farce against the agrarian union ASTRACATOL has been orchestrated with a cartel of witnesses on the payroll put forward by the prosecution and the Caicedo Batallion, who have paid, in the opinion of the peasants, the laziest of the village to denounce their peers. The set-up is so clumsy that at least five of the paid informers, who pose as demobilised guerrillas, were not even registered as such in the Colombian Agency for Reintegration of Armed People and Groups. As such, it is demonstrated that in the south of Tolima the only law which is followed is that of the Army, which acts as judge, jury and executioner. And alas for those poor souls who oppose the supreme designs of big capital.
More:
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20130703232744470
