G21 NEWS
Blood, Drugs and Oil
by Rod Amis
G21 Special Report
Part 2 of 3
Re-action & Action
Dear Rod,
Thank you so much for putting together a very comprehensive summary of recent events in Colombia. People that I know are either absolutely outraged, or, haven't heard a thing. Did something happen last week? I must have missed it. Your account brings the hundreds of isolated news releases together, to create a context, and to send a profound message to most of the people who do not realize what is now set in motion.
The deaths of Ingrid Washinawatok, Terence Freitas and Lahe'ena'e Gay are a watershed mark in the field of philanthropy, one which will have profound implications for the next millienium.
How, you ask?
All of these people played major roles in decisions about the redistribution of corporate and family wealth to people who are in need.
Wait and see, their deaths will challenge the existing paradigm of charity and largess; especially when the people are in need as the result of corporate land swaps made continents away. Or when new deserts are made in fertile areas as the result of genetically altered seeds that will not reproduce. Or when the DNA from thousands of tribes is nicely tucked away in vaults in Geneva so that scientists can clone and experiment with beings that the courts determine are not really persons. And rows of these "not persons" become farmed, in barrels, for useable parts. (A little enhanced this, a little enhanced that, beverages from immune systems, pills with ancient hormones).
Is it then "philanthropy" to exterminate a people and then use "missionary charity" to "reconstruct the same people, in the image we want; just barely, just enough to be controlled, with less than appropriate resources?
But why would that change, why now, that's been --- has been happening --- for thousands of years, obviously.
Or wait, not obviously, certainly not right in our own living room, on our own T.V.'s, on our own Internet, and in our own Board Room. The nicieties of socially responsive investing, empowering people (with not nearly as much as is needed) and providing economic development while desecrating spiritual systems, cultural history and language, is coming home.
Indigenous people, in Ingrid's death, have found the opportunity to unite in a global bond, stronger than she ever could have imagined. People on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin are suddenly united with the U'Wa in Colombia. We will find as these people gather together that they will not settle for a bit of feel good charity in exchange for rape.
What then will we use for glossy Annual Report photo's?
"These people" are already us and we are changing.
Ingrid's death reminds people here in Minnesota of Anna Mae Asquash's brutal murder by the FBI at Wounded Knee. Hearing that Ingrid had to be shipped home in a body bag because her coffin couldn't fit in the plane is like finding Anna Mae's decapitated hands in a box in Washington D.C. at FBI headquarters. Anna Mae helped birth the American Indian Movement; Ingrid will launch the Global Indigenous Movement in a way that we wait to behold.
Things are changing, and it will happen even this month. There will no longer be business as usual at the boardroom table, either in corporations or in foundations. We will now be held accountable, for acts of charity and acts of mercy.
Peg Thomas
Executive Director
Grotto Foundation
St Paul, MN
PART 2 OF 3
This is the SECOND of a three-part series in which G21 will report on the murders of Indigenous Rights activists Ingrid Washinawatok and Lahe'ena'e Gay, and environmentalist Terry Freitas in Colombia earlier this month.
IN PART ONE of this series we looked at the chronology of events which led to the deaths of these three human rights activists, catalogued the intersection between drugs, oil and violence in Colombia today, and raised questions about the involvement of
- The United States State & Justice Departments
- Occidental Petroleum
- The Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - (FARC).
We noted that Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu, a Mayan Indian activist from Guatemala, is among concerned activists forming a Truth Commission to go Colombia in order to investigate the complex circumstances which lead to Ingrid's death and those of her companions.
We included a transcript of our Open Letter to FARC, no response to which we have received thus far. We also noted that we had contacted Occidental Petroleum. That company has not seen fit to get back with G21, either.
In this second part of the series, G21 will look at the outrage expressed in the indigenous peoples' and Native American communities, and provide a means for you to take action.
What you will find below is unusual for a news magazine, let alone a Web magazine, to do. We shall be sharing the heartfelt Calls to Action of various indigenous peoples' and Native American groups as reaction to the deaths of these three human rights activists. We shall also provide links to various governmental officials here and abroad so that can you to do your part in this effort for justice. The lists provided are extensive and, we trust, comprehensive.
The facts presented thus far are that Ingrid, Lahe'ena'e, and Terence were found bound on the border of Colombia and Venezuela. The women were shot four times, in the face and the chest. Terence Freitas was shot in the back, the face and chest. They were left near the river with their faces covered. FARC has admitted that one of its functionaries committed the crime because the activists failed to get FARC's "authorization" to be in the area.
According to intelligence reports, the brother of the second ranking officer in FARC is reported to have said, upon hearing that a woman was ill --- whether Ingrid or Lahe'ena'e we may never know --- words to the effect of "We don't need that bitch! Take them across the river and burn them."
This type of arrogance from an organization which claims to have common cause with indigenous people, and especially the U'Wa, is unconscienable and unacceptable to any one concerned with human rights. G21 is not surprised that FARC has not gotten back to us.
Meanwhile, with the blessing of the Clinton Administration, the government of Colombia has announced that it will proceed with peace negotiations with FARC. More on the motivations behind this decision in the third segment of this series.
This week our focus is on the voices of the distraught, mournful and aggrieved.
Madison, WI,
March 5,1999
The Colombia Support Network deplores and condemns in the strongest terms the murder of three United States citizens who were kidnapped near the U'Wa lands in Arauca in Eastern Colombia. These three persons were on a mission to promote peace and wellbeing for the people of Colombia, particularly
for the U'Wa indigenous peoples whom they had just visited. Their killing is
an outrage. The perpetrators of this infamous crime must be located and brought to justice.
....We call upon the Colombian authorities to act professionally and promptly to investigate to determine who kidnapped and killed Ingrid, Terry and Gay and to arrest and try all those responsible for this crime. CSN, with headquarters in Ingrid's home state of Wisconsin, offers its
assistance and good offices to help.
JOHN I.LAUN
President CSN
***************************************************
Please send faxes and letter to the addresses below DEMANDING aprompt and
full investigation to determine the true authors of these crimes and see that they are brought to justice. Please write to your Senators and Representatives
- President William J.Clinton (202)456 2461
- Ms. Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State (202)647 0221
- U.S. State Department Office of Andean Affairs (202)647 2628
- Ambassador Curtis Kammam 011 57 1 315 2197
- Ambassador Luis Alberto Moreno 1 (202)232 8643
- Inter-American Comission of Human Rights (202) 4583992
- Doctor Andres Pastrana Arango,
Presidente de la Republica de Colombia,
Palacio de Nari_o
Presidencia de la Republica
fax: 2837324 2867434 2877937 2818262
Cra. 8 No. 7-26
Santafe de Bogot_ D.C.
pastrana@presidencia.gov.co
- Doctor Gustavo Bell Lemus
Vicepresidente de la Republica de Colombia.
Carrera 8 Ne 7-26
Palacio de Narino
Presidencia de la Republica
fax: 2837324 2867434 2877937 2818262
Cra. 8 No. 7-26
Santafe de Bogot_ D.C.
- Doctor Humberto Martinez Neira
Ministro del Interior
Carrera 8 Ne 8-09,
Santafe de Bogot_, Colombia.
Fax: (571) 3368377
- Doctor Rodrigo Lloreda
Ministro de Defensa,
Avenida El Dorado con
Carrera 52
Santafe de Bogota, Colombia
Fax: (571)2215363
E mail : infprotocol@mindefensa.gov.co
- Doctor Jaime Bernal Cuellar
Procurador General de la Nacion
Carrera 5 No.15-80,
Santafe de Bogot_. Colombia.
Telefono: (571) 2838609
Fax: (571) 3429723
___________________________
Initially distributed by:
Colombia Support Network
P.O. Box 1505
Madison, WI 53701
(608) 257-8753 fax
(608) 255-6621
csn@igc.apc.org
http://www.igc.apc.org/csn/
Date: Sat, 06 Mar 1999 11:47:24 -0800
From: ncdm
Subj: This Indian Way
There is a cassette of music I just bought and on it, it says "All over this world, this Indian way is hard." Those words have become engraved in my consciousness. Today they mark my heart with great pain.
I just received word that Ingrid Washinawatok, a North American Menominee Indian who served on the board of the Indigenous Woman's Network, who had a big bright smile and was always laughing, who also cried easily at the many tragedies suffered by Indian people was found dead today somewhere in Colombia. She had been kidnapped. Ingrid did a great deal to help the Zapatistas while she was alive. Many things which most people never knew about, because that is how it is among Indians, you extend your hand without expecting adulation or recognition.
I have no word yet about how or where or when she died. Only the word of her death, and the silent shaking I feel inside. Profuse, hot, quick tears and sobs, because crying is beyond you, when death is so much your friend. You turn suddenly and death is there looking at you, reminding you that she is always with you, always with your people, a shadow, a breeze, a gift sometimes from the constant doubt that causes you to hesitate.
"Don't hesitate, do it right" she says "because your life is not forever." And so death is a teacher about what life should be.
The sobs come from imagining her pain at the time of her death--the memories..the barrel of a gun at your temple, the barrel of a gun in your mouth, the barrel of a gun on your forehead, and you looking at the sky above you, praying that it will be over soon, burning with rage at the armed one above you and his contemptful domination, longing to find a way to turn the gun on him. The sobs come from the rage and the impotence that is also a familiar companion in this "Indian" way, the sobs come from missing her smile, her laughter which burst like pearls from her mouth.
Missing that already and her bright, rich voice on the telephone as she chattered about this and that solution to the thousand and one impossible situations faced by Indians in different parts of the world. She was a woman so hungry for life and for dignity and that is how we found one another and that is how we were friends, and that is how I lost her.
Ingrid was in Colombia visiting a group of Indians, who of course are threatened by genocide, and on the way back she was kidnapped and later killed.
And so in this numbness all I can do is write. I can write and ask the same question I asked after I was raped. I can write and ask the same question I did after Aguas Blancas, Acteal, the same question which rings in my head today. Why? When will it end? How many more must die?
In these days when my body is wracked with exhaustion in the struggle to explain to people why they must act, the question is one which each day demands an answer. An answer buried under the tons of paper of the insane foreign policy of this country which sanctions plunder, and displacement, and impoverishment and yes "genocide."
And I remember on one of the first trips I made to Washington D.C., describing the situation of the Zapatistas an American Indian woman brought up the word "genocide" in front of a roomful of bureaucrats, and Indian representatives, and press people. And a severe criticism was embedded in the hushed room during the long meeting.
"Don't you think you're exaggerating using that word genocide...it is such a dramatic word.." What is wrong with a society that cannot acknowledge brutality which is supposed to be ignored, because the victims of it, Indians, are invisible?
And I remember Ingrid's bright round eyes and the way they would fill with tears when she would hear the stories over and over again, when she would tap that well of sorrow which she knew so well as an American Indian whose people had faced the same genocide 150 years before. And I know somehow that at the moment of her death, she had no regrets about the way she had lived her life. The things that she had believed, the things that she had fought for, the hundreds of meetings and conferences and consultations and tours and articles that she had worked together with other Indian women in the hope of giving voice to the reality of Indians all over the world. In the hope that if this voice screamed loud enough, somehow this would make it stop.
And now I also imagine the pundits at the State Department are running through the official halls trying to figure out what "spin" they will put on Ingrid's death. "How will we explain the death of three Americans? A tragic accident, a travesty, a dramatic exposure of the need to continue to fund the Drug War " -- because of course, all the violence in Latin America is laid at the feet of the Drug War. "There are so many factions," the pundits will say, "....terrible, terrible confusing situation, warn Americans to stay away," they will postulate.
- Ignore the oil companies and their plunder.
- Ignore the exploitive trade agreements which deny farmers their livelihood.
- Ignore the crumbling national governments which melt under the weight of the International Monetary Fund.
- Ignore the corrupt police and Army forces.
- Ignore the burgeoning social movements which erupt everywhere in search of hope, in search of something better than this devastation.
"This is the third world," the neoliberal pundits say, "and the Third World will be saved soon--maybe twenty five more years of blood and suffering but eventually all of Latin America will join the first world and everyone will have a VCR and a Chevy in their garage. Indians will become integrated and happy."
And Ingrid's death joins the list of the thousands who have died giving witness to something that is terribly wrong with humanity today -- this obscene imbalance that imbues a few with more wealth than they can ever use in their entire lives, and condemns the large majority to nothing but a march, a protest, a hunger strike, a land occupation, a gun, a hardened, wrinkled hand bunched together in a fist.
Forgive me if in my sorrow I am rhetorical and all over the place. This was my way of giving voice to the pain of her loss. Of honoring her life.
Of marking her death.
I send to Ingrid's family and her loved ones all our consuelo, our hugs, our handshakes. We say to you that we honor Ingrid's life and mourn her death. From the Zapatistas who knew Ingrid, even though they never met her, who dreamed her dreams, who touched her heart, who know that in her death she will live forever, we salute Ingrid.
Her hope remains untarnished.
Her death now becomes another of the callouses which cushion our feet as we continue this long walk to freedom.
We will endure, Ingrid.
We will win.
Cecilia Rodriguez
EZLN representative in the United States
--
" Otra vez siento bajo mis talones el costillar de Rocinante; vuelvo al camino con mi adarga al brazos"
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