The “liberation of Mother Earth”,

In Colombia, a movement of indigenous activists are calling the “liberation of Mother Earth”, a movement to reclaim ancestral land from sugar plantations, farms and tourist resorts has gained momentum.

Despite two deaths in the past year, the Nasa Indians – the biggest, most organised and most militant of the 20 indigenous groups in the valley – have staged waves of monoculture clearance and occupation operations. Almost every other week hundreds, sometimes thousands, of machete-bearing activists join these communal actions, known as minga, which involve burning and hacking down swaths of sugar cane, then erecting camps and planting traditional crops including maize and cassava. The Nasa see this in historical, spiritual terms. For them, it is the latest phase in a centuries-old struggle for land and a clash between two contrasting world views: one that seeks harmony with nature, and one interested only in extracting as much profit as possible, regardless of the impact on the people and the environment.  Deforestation in Colombia rose 44% last year. Coca production has also risen rapidly.

“Liberating the earth means defending the land,” says José Rene Guetio, a Nasa elder. “You can see the blood that has been spilled in the cause for better land and a better future for our children.” The worst clashes have occurred at Corinto, an hour’s drive from Cali airport. This is where activists from the Nasa have stepped up their efforts to occupy land within a vast plantation owned by Carlos Ardila Lülle, a billionaire sugar, bottling and media tycoon.

Environmental concerns are also among the motivations. The Nasa say they should not be living in such large numbers near sacred sites in the hills, particularly lakes, wetlands and waterfalls. “There are too many of us in the mountains. That’s not good because we are destroying our water source,” said Eduin Mauricio Capaz, human rights coordinator for the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (Acin). But this position has pitted them against the law, state security and some of Colombia’s biggest property owners and global sugar suppliers.

A 2,000-strong guarda indígena formed from the 20 native communities has already closed down several mines despite threats from militias who are alleged to be in the employ of the owners. The volunteer force, dressed in green-and-red uniforms, is armed only with wooden staffs decorated with coloured tassels. 

Drug gangs, militias and private security firms – which often overlap – have made this one of the most dangerous places in the world for indigenous rights campaigners, environmental defenders and journalists. Last year a record 37 activists were murdered in Colombia, which is second only to Brazil in a world ranking of such killings, according to the NGO Global Witness. This year looks set to be a similar story, with 28 fatalities so far.

Hermes Pilicue, a Nasa elder, blamed the violence on the rising pressure for land now that the peace deal has opened up the region. “Colombia is supposed to be in the midst of peace, but in our territories the conflict continues,” he said at Acin’s head office in Santander de Quilichao. “The peace agreement has made our lives more difficult. More people are entering our territory to claim land, partly because the government is granting more concessions for mining and water use.”

Article one of the peace accord guarantees agrarian reform and states that land taken during the conflict will be given back to its rightful owners. The authorities do not specify what this means, but indigenous groups have interpreted this as a prompt to reclaim ancestral territory. “Until recently, the Cxhab Wala Kiwe (Nasa people) were absorbed in simply saving our community from war and preventing paramilitary groups from recruiting our children,” said Capaz, who is also a senior member of the indigenous guard. “Now there is no war, we can focus more on the liberation of Mother Earth. Extractive industries and monocultures are contrary to our belief system. People here are aware of what is going on elsewhere in the world. We know how the climate is changing. We know about contamination of the land. We don’t want that.”

Their campaign to carve out territory between the coca and the sugar cane challenges the colonial hierarchies in the valley. After the white Europeans pushed the indigenous people into the mountains, they built homes in the foothills and brought in African slaves to work on sugar plantations on the plains.