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Promoting group

CABILDO WAYUU NOUNA DE CAMPAMENTO
The organization of the Wayùu has been working for 4 years to strengthen it organizational system. In 2005 it was legally recognized. Its aims at creating spaces for meditation, training and coordination between indigenous Wayùu women, to allow them create strategies for the defence of the rights of all the Wayùu people and to give visibility to the conflicts caused by the implementation of big projects for the extraction of natural resources in the indigenous territories.

A SUD ECOLOGY AND ONLUS COOPERATION
A Sud has been working for years in Latin America in collaboration with local and environmental social organizations through projects for the defence of human rights and local populations. In the past years it has carried out projects in Colombia that aim at the protection of the indigenous populations through the strengthening of the legal system and by supporting the self-determination of the indigenous people.

Together with the NGO Bogotá Fundacion Hemera and with the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), A Sud established legal assistance centre for the Colombian indigenous people, thanks to which the communities have had the possibility to press charges for the numerous violations of human rights they have suffered. A Sud creates a bridge between the indigenous Columbian communities and the international civil society, which has strengthened the visibility process that the communities need in order to create a network of international solidarity that would allow the circulation of information and of accusations.

Place of intervention

Period

Description

The project responds to the needs of Wayùu women, who need appropriate meeting spaces for the Wayùu victims of the conflict.
The house for women is a strategic space where the testimonies and the accusations of the women who cannot count on the judicial system can be heard.

Having an autonomous meeting space will help to strengthen the organizational system and the power of political representation. It will also give the women the opportunity to organize courses and training seminars that can give them cognitive skills for improving the socio-political conditions of the community.

The project finds it crucial for the organization of the Wayùu women to build and strengthen a communication network with other national indigenous organizations for the defence of human rights. This so as to bind the local action to the political trials of the indigenous people on a national and international level, in order to spread information regarding the violations of human rights suffered. The women will also be offered legal advice on how to press charges for crimes committed by paramilitaries.

Contest and motivation

COLOMBIA
Colombia is in the North Eastern corner of South America, between the Cordillera of the Andes, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean coasts, the Amazon forests and the Orinoco plains. It has 43 million inhabitants, 16 million of whom are under 18. The country has been devastated by a disastrous civil war that began in the 60’s with dramatic effects: 300 thousand deaths, more than 3 million evacuees 60% of whom are under 18 (44% are children between 5 and14 years of age), in the past 15 years more than 70.000 land mines have been placed in the territory and approximately 3000 people are kidnapped per year.

According to the estimates published in the annual report of the Thematic Group on Displacement of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, 38% of the displaced people belong to ethnic groups that are only 1.7% of the entire Colombian population.

Another problem is the atmosphere of terror imposed by the Colombian drug rings: hundreds of courts have been hit by methodical attacks; more than 100 mayors have resigned because they have been kidnapped or threatened.

Despite its richness in resources and its development potential, the whole country is trapped in an atmosphere of violence and insecurity that influences the political and socio-economic stability.

The countries economy is strongly affected by the political instability: a fifth of the population is unemployed, 20% lives on less than a dollar a day, the average income pro capita is just above 1,900 dollars a day, the inflation rate (which is the highest in Latin America) reaches about 20%.

On the other hand the profit connected to the sale of cocaine and drug trafficking is very high.

The fall of the prices of traditional agricultural products, such as coffee, due to the competition with the foreign multinationals has left the farming population in poverty. They are now vulnerable to the threats of the cocaine traffickers because cocaine farming is now the only means of livelihood for the poorest farmers.

Despite its great natural resources, Columbia is 68th out of the 173 “medium development” countries in the UNDP human development index list. (UN report on human development, 2002). The Human development index is an associated index that doesn’t consider only the macro economical figures such as the GNP, but it also takes into consideration income distribution, the educational level (7.5% of the population according to the 2001 UNDP statistics is illiterate) and the life expectancy level.

THE INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS

At the moment Columbia is the country with the highest concentration of different cultures and languages on the territory: out of the existent 92 indigenous populations, 64 speak a language of their own. The National Planning Department and Territorial development Unit (PNUD), calculated the indigenous Colombian population in 1997 to be made up of only 701,860 people, which corresponds to 1.7% of the countries population.

The indigenous population is spread throughout the country, i.e. in 27 of the thirty-three 33 departments that make up the national territory.

In 1991,due to the pressure applied by the indigenous representatives elected to the Constituent Assembly, the Columbian Constitution recognized different ethnicities and cultures in the country for the first time by introducing new indigenous juridical concepts: for example, the indigenous person’s right of ownership passes from being an individual right to being a collective right to land.
In the new constitution the fundamental right of the indigenous people is the right to exist, ratified by the law number 70, that states that the State must protect and acknowledge the different ethnicities and cultures of the Country.

Despite this institutional victory, the Columbian native’s right to “exist” continues to be violated. The usurpation and the continuous colonization of their land and of their territories, the pollution and the contamination of the ancestral territories and the destruction of their ecosystems represent a threat to the survival of the native Colombian people and the people of the world.

The Report on Human Development for Colombia elaborated by the PNUD in 1999 states that 80% of the native and Afro Colombian population lives in extreme poverty and that 74% receive salaries that are lower than the legal minimum. It also states that its municipalities have a higher poverty rate and the people cannot fulfil their basic needs. In the regions with a strong presence of native communities, the quality of living and the human development are below the national standards and the life expectancy level is lower than that of the national average by 20%.

Although the 1991 Constitution had provided for new provisions for the acknowledgment the native people’s rights to independence and to the protection of their cultural identity, the implementation of economic policies that aim at opening the country’s borders to foreign investments and worsening of the conflicts are creating a situation in which the rights and the independence guaranteed by the constitution are being ignored.

THE WAYÚU PEOPLE
The Wayùu natives live in the Guajira territory, in the north west of Colombia, which occupies an area of 15,300 km2 and stretches to the Venezuelan region of Zulia for 12.000km2. This ethnicity therefore has two nationalities, Columbian and Venezuelan.
In Colombia, the Wayùu make up less than 25% of the total population of Guajira, with more than 200.000 natives in Colombian territory (20% of the total native Colombian population, making it therefore the biggest native group of the country).

The social organization is matriarchal and it is divided in clans. 97% of the population speaks the traditional language of Wayùunaiki, while 32% of also speaks Spanish.66% of the Wayùu have no formal education.

To this day, this people maintain their own cultural identity and traditional social organizational system. As far as the judicial system is concerned, the Wayùu use an ancestral method for solving internal conflicts.

Due to the climatic conditions of the regions, the Wayùu land is not productive and it does not guarantee enough agricultural means for subsistence. Apart from the seasonal agriculture that is practiced during the wet season, the Wayùu also breed cattle and practice fishing. In the past few years many members of the clan have also began working in informal commerce.

In the social organization of the Wayùu people, the women have a very important role and unlike in most Latin American indigenous ethnicities they have many privileges that the men do not have.

The Wayùu culture is the only matriarchal indigenous Colombian culture, this means that the children inherit the name of the maternal clan and they are brought up and educated in it. The Wayùu woman therefore transmits and protects her indigenous culture and she handles the social and political activities. The traditional work of the Wayùu women is to create textile handicrafts and ceramics decorated with the traditional designs of the region.

The distinctive cultural features allow the Wayùu women to participate largely in the social and political life of the clan, and to participate first-hand in the decision-making process. An example of this is the Cabildo Wayùu Nóüna de Campamento that for years has been fighting against the presence of armed conflict in its territory.

THE CONFLICT AND THE WAYUU WOMEN
It is common knowledge that the dramatic conflict that has been ravaging the Columbia for years is putting at risk the survival of the native cultures and it is causing continuous violations of human rights.

In the native Wayùu territory, which is rich in mineral resources, a series of military actions began in the ‘90’s to gain control over the land. These actions have resulted in the almost total control of the territory by the paramilitary groups. The consequences have been devastating: forced evacuations, the disappearance of some natives, murders, rapes, acts of intimidation and the continuous violation of human rights. Unfortunately, those who are really responsible for these actions are unknown due to the fear of many natives to denounce the violations.

In the past years, the Wayùu women have been the main victims of the various episodes of abuse by the armed groups and nevertheless they are the first to organize themselves, to maintain unity in the community and strengthen the Wayùu identity. Due to the role that the Wayùu women have in their society -which is connected to the indigenous cosmogony of the earth, considered “flesh and blood” and thought to be sacred for its ability to procreate- the abuse of the women has caused a tragic imbalance in the Wayùu culture.

Like other regions, the Wayùu Cabildo Wayúu Nóüna de Campamento, in the suburban area of the municipality of Maicao in Madia Guajira, has been fighting the territorial control on the part of paramilitary groups in the southern regions of Colombia. These groups almost entirely control the economic activities, both legal and illegal, forcing the Wayùu population to less productive and less profitable jobs.

The presence of the paramilitaries in the region has caused mass displacement in the Wayùu communities in the strategic areas of the actions of the paramilitaries. The freedom of the members of the Wayùu clan has been seriously limited by the armed groups, so the indigenous communities live under a sort of forced confinement. There is no guarantee of the principle of legality. Various factors contribute to the atmosphere of social insecurity and of total lack of judicial guarantees:

- The presence of big projects that threaten the territory (gas, hydrocarbons, energy etc);

- Localization of paramilitary bases and contingents along the Venezuelan borders;

- Total lack of respect on the part of the paramilitaries of the political group and of the traditional authorities of the Wayùu people;

- Continuous threats against the Wayùù leaders made by the armed groups;

- The displacement of numerous Wayùu families beyond the Venezuelan border;

- The weakening of the traditional judicial system due to the interference of the paramilitaries;

- The killing of numerous representatives of the community and the consequent weakening of the representational system;

In general the Wayùu community complains about the accelerated deterioration of the living conditions and an increasing and progressive socio-economic impoverishment, which results in the impossibility to fulfil the community’s basic needs.

There is a migratory tendency in the young generations of the Wayùu community to Colombian or Venezuelan urban centres , and it is causing a progressing ageing of the community. Although the traditional culture remains very strong there have been cases of families that have had problems connected to the cultural uprooting, loss of identity and cultural dispersal.

Between 1998 and 2007 hundreds of cases of violence and threats against the Wayùu people were reported and the murders of Wayùu natives reached 78 solely in the city of Maicao and 56 in Guajira. Most of the victims were community leaders and unfortunately many of the murders were kept quiet.

This situation can easily become a threat for the survival of the Wayùu community. For this reason it is important to implement cautionary measures and provide effective instruments to give new drive to the community and give it new instruments for the defence of its cultural identity in the climate social instability and violence that they have been living in for years.

Millennium Objectives related to the project