Notes from Bogotá: The U'wa Solidarity Campaign | Amazon Watch
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Notes from Bogotá: The U’wa Solidarity Campaign

February 24, 2012 | Andrew E. Miller | Eye on the Amazon

“It’s like Bagdad,” the taxi driver comments as we bump past concrete rubble, protruding rebar, and unruly pedestrians darting in and out of snarled traffic. Bogotá’s roads have been under seemingly interminable construction in recent years, in part due to a huge corruption scandal. “They took the billions on up-front payments. Some are in jail now, but where’s the money?”

The taxista, in true Colombian form, launches into a colorful and detailed analysis of the political situation. He tells me his country is an “Empire of Corruption,” a product of a small number of elite families that have monopolized political power through the centuries. Their attitude? “You rob, I rob. Let’s rob together!”

He chalks the situation up to criminal ingenuity on one hand, and a generalized cowardice on the other: people see things they know are wrong but are unwilling to speak up. A dozen exceptions to that uncharitable characterization of his countrymen flash through my mind. Exiting the taxi in the city’s colonial Candelaría district, I’m about to meet with some of them.

Up 11 flights of stairs, a panoramic view greets me out the conference room windows, Bogotá’s mountains rising to the East and downtown to the North. The rubble is nowhere to be seen, though regular horns and revving engines permeate the windows, a reminder that the chaos below is never far.

A small group is gathering in the sparse offices of Colombian human rights lawyer Pedro Mahecha. We are joined by a duo of investigators with the Friends of the Earth affiliate in Colombia and two U’wa leaders, Gilberto and Claudia. Our goal – exchange the results of field investigations carried out in late 2011 and discuss campaign strategies moving forward.

This is my first time meeting Claudia Cobaría, who was recently elected to the U’wa Council. A young mother, she brings defiant energy to the gathering. It’s refreshing to see an increasing role for women leaders within the U’wa, given our close collaboration with pioneering indigenous women like Peru’s Daysi Zapata and Brazil’s Sheyla Juruna.

Claudia outlines a number of issues the U’wa are confronting related to oil and gas extraction. She raises specific concerns about gas flaring, which is damaging to both the environment and the health of people in the vicinity. Related are the gas pipeline being built from the Gibraltar wells and a large oil pipeline, called “Bicentenario” (reflecting Colombia’s 200th anniversary), planned for construction immediately north of the U’wa reserve though well within their ancestral territory.

Pipelines and oil blocks in Colombia

She relates the threat these represent to a landmark that is sacred to the U’wa – the peaks of Mount Cocuy, in the southern part of the U’wa reserve. Much as they view oil as “the blood of Mother Earth,” the U’wa talk about the peaks as “the lungs of water.” Claudia explains, “The snowcapped mountain is a source of life, the connection we U’wa have with the ocean and the rest of the planet.”

Claudia’s message is mirrored by Danilo, an environmental campaigner with FOE Colombia. He looks more the part of an indie rocker – thin black dreadlocks tied back, earring, leather jacket covering a Strokes t-shirt that seems to be the only one he owns. He offers a withering political analysis that puts the taxi driver to shame.

“The defense of U’wa territory is playing itself out in a pretty complicated national context,” Danilo explains. “The new Santos government has achieved a complete change in how it exercises authority through processes of militarization, new laws, and guarantees to foreign investment. This investment and other mega-projects that are being facilitated by the government are being placed in the strategic U’wa territory.”

Danilo provides a broader vision of “ancestral territory,” beyond the limits of the government-recognized U’wa reserve: “Thinking about territorial defense, we found that it’s not just about the territory defined by the U’wa reserve as an administrative unit. Using the definition of ancestral territory, both from the U’wa cosmovision and within some geographic limits we could establish, allows us to see that the megaprojects are impacting a culture and the U’wa people.”

The investigation focused on five principle threats to the U’wa: Oil, gas, mining, road construction, and tourism.

Working into the evening, we are abandoned by an exhausted sun. Our U’wa colleagues have to catch an overnight bus back toward their corner of the country, for a meeting the following morning with the new governor of Santander department. The effort they made to be with us puts any rush-hour taxi ride I might have to take through Bogotá’s construction zone in perspective.

A packed day of intense information and discussions leave me intellectually spent. We have a powerful weapon in hand, however, to help defend the U’wa territory: current information about the breadth of threats against them. We say our goodbyes, with a plan to officially re-launch the international campaign for U’wa life, culture, and territory in 2012.

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