CULTURES OF ILLICIT USE COMMIT AN OUTRAGE AGAINST THE HHRR OF THE BLACK AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES FROM CHOCÓ

 

Sent by: Maura Nasly Mosquera
Date: Sunday, January 16th, 2005 7:46 AM

The appearance of illicit use crops and his eradication by fumigation with Glifosato defoliant in the department of Chocó are part of a state political decision that joins the long chain of facts that in the last eleven years conjuncture, since 1996, they are leading the black and indigenous peoples from Chocó towards an entire genocide.

Almost at the end of the fulfillment of the tasks of the armed groups that in the Urabá Chocóano provoked one of the biggest exoduses of entire communities, in addition to the hundreds of missing persons or simply executed in the particular "war" in which they faced for the forced occupation of the territories that only correspond to the natives or the Afro-descendant peoples, the "new land-owners" propose that it should be the coca one of the cultures that there must work the communities that could not go out in displacement.

The enlargement of the border of the coca is coming to almost all the municipalities of the Pacific Ocean and in the Chocó like particular case the cultures have the best receipt between the rural communities that in them find a better alternative of income to guarantee food safety as natural response to the ignorance of the state on the vital needs of thousands of families that without any state attention on the subject of accompaniment and opportunity of access to credits to produce better and of legal form they survive dispersed in the forests and rivers loading on their selves the biggest indicators of poverty and misery that are known in the nation.

Instead of the order that law 70 imposes on the state and his leaders the opportune and urgent attention so that the development of this order turns out to be reflected in state actions that it allows the peoples of black communities to carry out the best use of the territory and his natural resources, neither vocation nor political sufficient will has existed that elementary matters make possible as coherent joint of codes that allow the rational use of the natural resources leaving gaps of law that facilitate the dispossession on part of external companies that increase extraodinarily his capitals in exchange for the pauperizacion of the life in the black and indigenous peoples.

According to the reports that the project SIMCI gives the cultures of illicit use in the Chocó are 2.500 You have in 18 municipalities and for it it appears and the fumigation develops as effective alternative for air spraying not knowing elementary matters as they are:

It is fumigated in one of the most fragile ecosystems of the world and with the biggest index of biodiversity for square meter.

The water network of the Chocó is a complex system where the waters of the basins of the rivers Atrato, Saint John and Baudo in reality are an alone system for his relative and easy intercommunication.

The cultures of illicit use generally establish in the plots where the peasants sow products of pancoger for car familiar supplying and with surpluses directed to the commercialization.

From the law 70 and his rules express itself, as order to expiring, that in the territories of black communities any action or decision that he compromises to the territory and his natural resources must be consulted and agreed with his maximum authorities.

The fumigation unfailingly will transport costs in lives, unpredictable illnesses will prove between the affected communities, losses of material goods will supervene in licit cultures, baby of minor and major species and the damages that are caused to the environmental collective patrimony of the communities are the foreseeable results of this action erradicadora.

 

POSITION

The illicit cultures go in contradiction with wanting on the chore of the communities of the black people of the Pacific Ocean and It collided with the development of the territory as soon as that this model disintegrates the territorial unit, he proposes the violence as everyday occurrence it destroys the social textile and praise undermines structural basements of the culture of the peoples and in the last intention they do not correspond to the postulates of the etnodesarrollo that visiona from the thought of the African and indigenous peoples.

Not sharing with the presence of the cultures of illicit use in any case makes us admit that the politics and the method that there implements the state (PLAN COLOMBIA) to eliminate the problem should be the most suitable because simply this is a plan that is assumed to treat as therapeutic measurement the implementacion of the war instead of giving him a response eminenmente social to a problem that has his origin in the same disorder and the social inequity prevalente.

 

RECOVERABLENESS

Admitting that the incidence of the air fumigation is going to affect directly the balance of the ecosystems, the quality of the waters, it will affect the food safety for the destruction of illicit cultures, we endorse that the eradication is of manual order to preserve all the elements that mean the safe-conduct of the patrimonies and tangible and intangible of the communities.

Admitting that if the peasants, for the inattention of the state, today take part in the sowing of cultures of illicit use to produce the sufficient thing and to obtain the necessary thing to survive, the eradication of the cultures must be for them an opportunity of employment and therefore it is required that this one should do in a manual way on part of the same ones and with the accompaniment and observation of the organisms that the government determines for the cross-check of the process of eradication.

To generate real opportunities of development between the communities him leading to credits and the development of productive projects as alternative to the cultures of illicit use.

That the organizations of black communities develop programs and campaigns that promote between the communities activities that drive to create conscience not to allow to take part in the activities of cultures of illicit use.

Finally, if the state, across the government, persists in the eradication of the mentioned cultures by means of the use of the air spraying with Glifosato, the affected communities stay in the obligation to formulate the respective demands against the state in actions of repair for the damages of the any nature that are caused to effects of the fumigation.

FOUNDATION THE MOJARRAS AND THE BIGGEST COMMUNITY COUNCIL OF CONDOTO.

Condoto, January 12 of 2005.