POPAYAN, Colombia (AP) -- Anger is brewing on the sprawling Indian
reserves that blanket misty Andean ridges rising above this whitewashed
colonial capital. The somewhat surprising targets of the discontent are
leftist
rebels who having been fighting for decades in the name of Colombia's poor
and oppressed.
Once respected in this historically combative western region, where fierce
Paez Indian warriors fought a 100-year war against Spanish conquerors,
Colombia's guerrillas are now considered a danger.
Indian leaders say increasing rebel incursions on the reserves are sowing
violence, disrupting traditional life and drawing peace-seeking native
groups
into a 34-year civil war they want nothing to do with.
"What indigenous people want is to have their territory, to live peacefully,
and not to be bothered," said a Paez activist, Jose Domingo Caldon. "For
the guerillas -- and for the state security forces as well -- that concept
is a
hindrance."
At a statewide assembly of tribal authorities in late March, Indian leaders
agreed to present complaints to top rebel leaders, the military and
government peace negotiators.
"We can't sit passively before the actors of war and peace, because the
Indian territories are being converted into battlefields," said Caldon,
who is a
member of the Regional Council of Indigenous People of Cauca, whose
capital is Popayan.
At a preparatory meeting held on a former rich man's estate north of
Popayan, now part of the 7,500-acre Ambalo reserve, Indian leaders ticked
off grievances against guerrillas active in the region.
Paez official Camilo Eider Fernandez said 300 heavily armed rebels from
the
largest insurgent group -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
or
FARC -- have set up camp on his group's reserve and are ignoring elders'
pleas to leave.
"As long as the guerrillas are here, we all become military targets. We're
between a rock and a hard place," said Fernandez, who fears the army will
view his community as FARC collaborators and take reprisals.
Rebel recruitment also has Indians upset.
Alirio Morales, a Guambiano leader from the Quizgo reserve, said 10 Indian
teen-agers from the area were recruited by FARC rebels in February, only
to be slaughtered two weeks later in a firefight with soldiers.
The youths, ages 13 to 18, were sent out "like cannon fodder," Morales
said. "They hadn't even learned how to handle a rifle."
Similar complaints are levied by embattled Indian groups in other regions
of
Colombia. Only the culprits are often not the rebels, but rather army units
and rightist paramilitary groups who battle them for territory and popular
allegiances.
Blanca Lucia Echeverria, the top Indian affairs aide to the national human
rights ombudsman, said all sides are now using Indian reserves as
battlefields, threatening or killing leaders suspected of aiding the enemy,
and
recruiting young Indians -- often by force -- as soldiers, messengers or
spies.
"As the conflict escalates indigenous people are getting dragged down with
it," said Echeverria, whose office reported that 63 Indian leaders were
assassinated in 1997 alone.
In one case, she said, FARC guerrillas killed 15 members of a tiny Indian
tribe in southern Caqueta state, the Koreguaje, after accusing them of
aiding
rightist paramilitary groups.
Many Colombians were not surprised when an FARC rebel unit recently
killed three U.S. social activists working near the Venezuelan border with
the U'wa, a tribe fighting to keep oil companies off its lands.
"It was nothing new," said Sen. Jesus Pinacue, a Paez leader who is one
of
Colombia's two Indian senators. "What's new is that they attacked American
citizens."
The Indians under heaviest attack at the moment are the Embera-Katio, a
tribe of about 500 families living along rivers in northern Cordoba and
Antioquia states. United Nations monitors in Colombia say that since July,
rightist militias and the FARC have killed and tortured Embera-Katio
leaders, burned homes and forced dozens of families to flee.
Underlying many of the conflicts are the armed groups' desire to control
key
corridors and valuable resources located on or near Indian reserves.
"We are in strategic locations -- militarily, politically and economically,"
said
Rosalba Jimenez, a Sikuani Indian who heads the National Organization of
Indigenous Peoples of Colombia.
The growing harassment of Indians is a setback for a country regarded as
a
leader in South America in protecting native minorities. It has about 80
tribal
groups estimated to encompass more than 700,000 people out of a total
population of nearly 40 million.
Colombia's 1991 constitution made Indian languages official, set aside
seats
in the legislature for indigenous people and ratified perpetual Indian
ownership and broad governing authority over reserves that cover nearly
a
fourth of the country's land.
More than 80 percent of Colombia's Indians now live on 479 self-managed
reserves, which stretch across much of the Colombian Amazon and large
pockets of its Andean highlands and Caribbean coast.
After Colombia's government begrudgingly accepted centuries-old Indian
demands, indigenous groups and Marxist guerillas trying to take power
increasingly have gone their separate ways.
The trend is clear in Cauca, home to nearly a fourth of Colombia's Indians
and where in the 1970s indigenous groups and Marxist guerrillas were
loosely allied. At the time, police working with big landholders killed
Indian
leaders by the dozens.
Indians in the region even had their own guerrilla movement _ Quintin Lame,
named after a revered Paez Indian who led rebellions early in the century.
The group laid down its arms in 1991 as the new constitution was being
approved.
Today, Indian leaders say the struggle for their people's rights and welfare
is
long-term and nonviolent. Many look condescendingly at the rebel
movements that have been fighting since the 1960s.
"The guerrillas can talk about 40 years of struggle," said Alvaro Morales
Tombe, an elected mayor from the Guambiano tribe. "We're talking about
more than 500 years."
Copyright 1999 The Associated Press.