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Trabajadores Cañeros de Colombia

Barack Obama: We live in the same planet. Hear what we have to say

Open Letter from the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (ACIN)

 

We want the new president-elect of the United States to see for himself how in a country where so many have been and are still murdered, disappeared, kidnapped, tortured and exiled, we oppose guns with words, we respond to violence with our voices, we rise against conformism with civic resistance, and we want him to know that in spite of the bullets, the repression and the lies, there are thousands and thousands of us mobilizing.

 

 


 

Mr. Barack Obama

President-Elect of the United States of America

 

Dear Sir:

 

We address you today with the conviction that your triumph expresses the deep desire for change felt by the majority of the people of the United States: a change in the economy and in society, a change in international relations, and a change, of course, in the relationship between the United States of America and all indigenous peoples. We congratulate you on your victory and on such noble aspirations on the part of your people.

 

We want you, the new president-elect of the United States, to be aware of the situation of the indigenous peoples of Colombia, how we have suffered more than 1,200 murders in the last six years at the hands of paramilitaries, guerrillas, and police and military forces, that is, at the hands of illegal armed groups and public security forces; how the government has taken advantage of this situation to institutionally strip us of our rights, implementing a legislation of dispossession that includes a rural code and laws that divest Colombia of its resources –land, minerals, hydrocarbons, water resources, intellectual property, and national parks– and which will reach its ultimate expression and consolidation if the so-called Free Trade Agreement with the United States succeeds, as the country will then have the obligation of compensating investors if it changes its laws, and we will have to submit our conflicts to international arbitrators that are under the rule of foreign trade practices and not under our jurisdiction.

 

The imposition of this market logic, to the detriment of the respect owed to life, ignores, breaches and violates every international agreement and convention established by humanity to place the collective good that is life above individual interests. Because of that logic, agreements such as ILO Convention No. 169 and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples are ignored by our governments, both our country’s and yours.

 

Unfortunately, the governments of the United States have contributed greatly to our situation through the Plan Colombia and its support to what Colombia’s current administration calls the policy of “democratic security.” Large transnational corporations have profited with oil and gas contracts, mining concessions, privatizations, and low wages, and are now after the biodiversity of our territories.

 

To contribute to change all this, we want you, the new president-elect of the United States, to personally hear our words, words that have cost us many lives and that we defend every day with our voices, marches and civil resistance. They are the words that we have been spreading since October 10 throughout Colombia in the Resistance Minga, a great nationwide mobilization convened by us, as indigenous peoples, in association with other peoples and movements.

 

We want you, the new president-elect of the United States, to see for yourself how in a country where so many have been and are still murdered, disappeared, kidnapped, tortured and exiled, we oppose guns with words, we respond to violence with our voices, we rise against conformism with civic resistance, and we want you to know that in spite of the bullets, the repression and the lies, there are thousands and thousands of us mobilizing.

 

We believe that the spirit of change in your people cannot be contained. We believe that it is a powerful force which we hope will join with the force of our age-old words and with the need for change that is clamored by all of Latin America. We invite you to come to listen to these words here in Colombia, and we are also willing to articulate them there if you invite us so that we can bring our voices to Washington. Here or there, we live in the same planet, and our mission is one and the same: to protect the earth and save it from the state it is in.

 

We must once and for all respectfully assume our true place before Mother Earth and History. The first has given us life. The second, an offspring of Mother Earth, reflects the actions of human beings in societies and systems that have not yet matured enough to achieve the harmony and balance that is needed. It is as human beings, as sons and daughters of the same Mother Earth, that we address you now. We speak to you as indigenous peoples, fruit of the Law of Creation that compels us to seek harmony and strike a balance between History and Mother Earth.

 

Reconciling the history of humanity with the rhythms and processes of nature is not an option, but rather an imperative that we cannot put off. Greed, the transformation of wealth into something sacred and the commoditization of life are behind your country’s crisis, behind the economic disaster and the inevitable end of life that results from an economy that destroys everything so that a handful of people can satisfy their avarice. The destruction of our peoples in Colombia is the consequence of this error that today we call crisis.

 

Brother president-elect Obama, we are not writing to ask you for anything for ourselves, because we know that the death of our peoples, the end of our cultures at the hands of a mistaken greed, symbolizes the end of all life. Before we all disappear, we have decided to voice our words and march forward. In the name of Life, in the name of the change that History demands, we ask you to listen to Life, to listen to us, so that together we may work to find a way to harmonize History and Life. We hope you will join us.

 

So we propose a meeting of our peoples with you, the new president-elect of the United States, to discuss what we set out above.

 

Respectfully yours,

 

 

 

Asociación de Cabildos Indígenas del Norte del Cuaca (ACIN)

 

 

Rel-UITA

              November 10, 2008

 

 

 

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