CPTnet
28 July 2006

COLOMBIA REFLECTION: The miners' wisdom and the technocrats' knowledge.

by Julián Gutiérrez Castaño

Translated by Julián Gutiérrez Castaño and Carol Tyx

[Note: The following release has been edited for length and clarity. The
original version may be found at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cptcolombia/message/120.]

On 29-30 June, Stewart Vriesinga and I accompanied mining communities of
South Bolivar to a meeting with the government.

The community sat in the auditorium, while on a platform above them sat the
government officials: the Ingeominas Director, who was serving as the
representative of the Energy and Mines Ministry, a representative of the
Bolivar Mines and Energy Secretary, three government advisers, and the
mayors of Santa Rosa and Simiti.

The government officials, armed with confusing numbers and maps, were
emphasizing what the state is doing to help the miners. The miners
confronted the economic science and technology by saying, "The community
gets drunk with numbers and phrases as 'we are doing as much as we can to
help you.' Security is what we need, not in military terms, but in the
right to live." The Government refused to talk about human rights, using
the words "alleged" and "presumed" when they later summarized the miners'
complaints of human rights abuses committed by the Colombian military and
judicial system. They only wanted to address technical issues.

FEDEAGROMISBOL, the South Bolivar Agrominers Federation, left the table
Thursday afternoon because government officials were not giving them real
solutions to their problems, but were instead exacerbating problems by
allowing the multinational corporation Kedahda to appropriate many hectares
of mining territory. The Government also rejected without reflection the
community initiative to create a 'Special Reserve Zone for the Small Mining
in South Bolivar' that would protect a larger percentage of the mines from
multinational takeovers. Ingeominas' Director justified the presence of the
multinational, saying "The Constitution says that the subsoil belongs to the
State; we cannot be creative; we must follow the norms--but we are here to
help you."

The community responded, "You say you do not have resources to create a
Mining Reserve Zone, but you have a lot of resources to keep a war--. you
say you do not have resources for peace, but in reality you do not have the
will for peace--"

For the miners, the need for such a zone is not just about making a living.
For them, the Mining Reserve Zone is a fight for the future, a fight for
their ancestors and their descendants, for the right to live in a territory
that they have built for the last forty years, and for the right to die in
the land where they were born. It is a fight against modernity and a
conception of development that destroys the earth.

In contrast to multinational corporations, the miners do not think in
dollars; they think in families, children, future, rivers, trees, mountains,
animals, earth, mining and crops. Just as Indigenous Colombians do, they
fight for the right to develop their own way of life.