Nancy, Cali.
Nancy is a defender of indigenous rights. During the armed conflicts in the Colombian countryside, they were the first to suffer of looting, assassinations and forced exoduses. Active member of MINGA, a group for the defense of indigenous rights. In Cali, MINGA denounced several attacks during peaceful demonstrations by armed civilian groups, aided in some cases by the Colombian police.
I am a woman from the páramo (field in the heights of the Andes mountain range between the forest and the eternal snows). I was born in the ancestral territory of Guambia, in the municipality of Silvia. I graduated in history from the University of Valle in Colombia and I obtained a master's degree in social sciences as well as a specialization in development and gender at FLACSO in Ecuador. I grew up in the south of the Valle del Cauca. Today, I follow the footsteps of my ancestors, I walk on their path. At the moment, I am busy revitalizing the educational system of the indigenous Nasa people of Colombia.
In the history of Colombia, indigenous people, peasants, Afro-Colombians and the popular classes have been the first victims of discrimination. Many policies have been created to physically and culturally eliminate indigenous peoples. A resistance that emerged in the 1960s was then organized. Its aim was to introduce an agrarian reform designed for the indigenous rural community, but also to review the payment of "terraje" (rent paid by a peasant on the land he owns, established since colonial times). Today most of the land is owned by agro-industrialists for the monoculture of sugar cane, palm or cocoa, damaging the ecosystem of hundreds of species.
A sense of identity was born, and with it, the desire to reclaim our land usurped since the 1500s. There is a motto from that time that is still relevant: "Reclaim the land to reclaim everything." "
Today, and after the obtention of certains rights, the struggle continues. The enemy is none other than the government itself. Since the 2018 and 2019 electoral campaign, he has refused to establish a peace process with any left-wing armed group, fueling the internal conflict experienced mainly in the Colombian countryside. The Democratic Center and its leader, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, stand firm, rejecting the establishment of a peace process. It is also important to note that several members of this party, including its main leader, are the subject of serious investigations in connection with paramilitarism and drug trafficking in Colombia.
On social media, Uribe and his supporters urge the protests to be silenced by moving the police and ESMAD.
Tired, the people rise up. He protests against increasingly numerous impoverishment policies seeking to weaken the people and deny their economic rights, such as the abolition of Colombian social security in the 1990s.
Photo: Esteban Vega /Semana - Colombia hoy. - Foto: archivo/Semana. Demonstrations of the MINGA in Cali.
I saw my student brothers die at the hands of ESMAD.
I am also worried about our youth. Statistics show that adolescents are the first affected during armed conflicts. It upsets me to see the faces of children and to know that the older generations did nothing to uphold the rights that I had. I worry about the peasants, the natives and the working class who have to work more than eight hours a day to bring some food to their homes.
I am also worried that we Women are subject to a permanent curfew because walking alone in the street is impossible for us or we will be raped.
I am concerned about the insensitivity and ignorance of most of the Colombian people who do not know how to act during these times of revolts. There is also, I think, a huge lack of education, Colombia is still a country with a high rate of illiteracy.
I am worried to see that certain communication and economic means are used to delegitimize the voice of rural, urban, indigenous and Afro-Colombian populations and that these peoples only have systematic violence as a response.
I am concerned that after many years of violence, today we have no guarantees to exercise our legitimate right to protest.
The demands are collective. As the Minga says: "count on us for peace, never for war". I want the voices of the victims to be listened to and I believe them when they complain about the disappearance of their loved ones in a war that is not theirs.
We need free and quality education for all, taking into account cultural, territorial and identity differences within the same community. Likewise, we urgently need a preventive health system that meets the needs of patients. Acetaminophen, a high-dose toxic drug, is the drug prescribed for all kinds of desease, from Covid 19 to classic migraine.
Institutional duty has also long lost its objective: that of being institutions for the defense and protection of civilians in the event of external war. Today they look like a refuge for mercenaries who act as the armed wing of a corrupt and oppressive state. Thousands of videos have been circulated around the world showing the cruelty of the police against the people. With the establishment of ESMAD in 1999, the policy in favor of the police force was reinforced, it seems that they were granted absolute power, since many of their actions were unpunished.
In the case of the military forces, according to the truth commission created to clarify the elements of the state's armed conflict with the FARC armed group, around six thousand people were extrajudicially murdered by this institution. These investigations reveal that civilians were disguised as guerillas in order to justify certain killings orchestrated by the state.
I saw my student brothers die at the hands of ESMAD: Jhony Silva, unpunished homicide in September 2005 and Julian Andres Hurtado killed in October 2006 while investigating the death of the former.
In the Minga group, I saw ESMAD damaging property, hitting the poor, mixing food with excrement, or firing tear gas from helicopters.
I have seen hundreds of people emigrate because the paramilitaries come to impose their order, take what does not belong to them, extort and ask for money in exchange for security. The guerrillas do not escape these practices either.
Photo: JOSE VARGAS ESGUERRA. "One million of thank you Cali, we are your fight".
The Minga wants to create a horizon of positive changes.
They are the heirs of exclusion, the heirs of lands usurped from indigenous communities. They are used to telling the Afro-descendant population that their music and dance is beautiful but that they have no right to protest for anything and that on the contrary they should be grateful for the small salary, the little food, from the little roof they are "allowed" to have.
These people do not know and do not want to know their history, because their privileges would end.
I admit that I am afraid not only of the police and the army but also of these men who make alliances for war, pettiness, hunger, the underworld, anxiety and where the pains of Colombian population.
For the future, I want a Colombia that leaves the peasant, indigenous and Afro-descendant sectors in peace, allowing them to cultivate and sell their products.
I want a country capable of understanding its rights and respecting the rights of others.
I want a dignified Colombia that is not afraid to emerge from the stigma of drug trafficking, prostitution and corruption
This is the message I want to get across: we must organize ourselves from below, in the neighborhoods, in the municipalities, from the workers, in order to know the common needs. It is Minga’s call to work together, to unite many voices. The Minga wants to create a horizon of positive change, to start living well, with dignity, with joy, with a smile, with respect for human life and nature. The Minga has been repeating this message for millennia: “think and act to live happily”.
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