Chief Ompore smiles at the animals projected on a PowerPoint presentation (click to enlarge)
Chief Ompore couldn’t stop smiling as he watched photos of Amazonian animals get projected across the Town Hall wall of Yarentaro – a remote village in Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park inside what oil companies call “Block 16.”
It was the 14th of December 2012 and the Spanish oil giant RepSol that administers the petroleum block had funded a project as part of its Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Development Strategy “designed to alleviate pressure on the forest and to restore the ecosystem to its original state.”
RepSol’s project to offset the hundreds of millions of dollars of crude oil being pumped out of Block 16 was to build a “zoo-creidero” or animal hatchery. Since big oil moved in bushmeant had become increasingly scarce in the Waorani tribe’s formerly bountiful hunting grounds but once the zoo-creidero was completed those same wild animals getting projected against the wall could be bred for food in captivity.
On the 5th of March 2013, less than three months after these photos were taken, Ompore Omeway was murdered. His body and that of his wife Buganey were found impaled with spears inside RepSol’s Block 16 and the prime suspects were an uncontacted Amazonian tribe inside the Yasuní National Park called the Taromenane.
“We were surprised to see Ompore at the door,” says a RepSol contractor, “he was timid at first but once he saw the animal photos he couldn’t stop smiling.”
Before the month of March ended an estimated 30 men, women and children of the Taromenane tribe were massacred in a battle that pitched wooden spears against modern weaponry.
Two Taromenane girls, aged 3 and 6, were kidnapped by those that killed their tribe while members of the Ecuadorian government spent seven months downplaying the massacre. Some even casted doubt on whether the Taromenane still exist.
RepSol is without a doubt the most responsible oil company in the history of Ecuador’s dirty oil industry.
The Spanish company has invested in education and schools in Yarentaro unlike their predecessors (Dallas based oil company Maxus) who were responsible for 29,355 hectares deforestation of primary rainforest and forbid Waorani from forming coalitions with indigenous groups outside of Block 16.
Yarentaro is half an hour by boat or one and a half by car from Pompeya on the via Maxus – a formerly unpoliced “oil highway” built by Maxus – which gave commercial loggers and hunters access to the impenetrable depths of the Yasuni National Park where they stripped it like a plague of locusts.
Today getting to Yarentaro in Block 16 is illegal without a laminated photo ID issued by RepSol. The 40km speed limit to prevent noise pollution is strictly enforced with controls where guards pen down the time it took your vehicle to reach: the first speeding fine is $800, the second time its $3,000, the third you are banned from Block 16.
Chief Ompore looks at the whiteboard and (overexposed) projection
Younger generations of Waorani can enter and exit Block 16 freely without RepSol ID cards but carry Ecuadorian cedular’s just in case.
For Waorani like Ompore, who were born “Before Contact” and have never worn western clothes with their accompanying deep pockets, carrying identification is a little trickier.
But the guards, engineers, scientists, and contract workers in RepSol’s Block 16 all knew of Chief Ompore.
Ompore wasn’t just the Cacique of Yarentaro, he was the only person alive to have made peaceful contact with the mythical Taromenane and lived to tell the tale, as documented in this remarkable video: //www.youtube.com/embed/9a7mE2TgPbQ
A Hidden Tragedy: Ompore’s Last Moments Alive
As the Ecuadorian police seemingly stonewalled the investigation into the Taromenane massacre an unlikely team comprising of a Spanish anthropologist monk Miguel Ángel Cabodevilla and the veteran Ecuadorian journalist Milagros Aguirre began asking questions.
Footprint of the Taromenane. Investigators say they walk only on the tip of their feet.”(source: El Universo)
Why did the Taromenane attack almost a year to the day after the Chief claimed in the video above he had made peaceful contact with this uncontacted tribe?
They documented their findings in a book called A Hidden Tragedy which was prohibited from circulation in Ecuador “over any medium” at 5:43pm on September 24th, a full seventeen minutes before its presentation to the public.
In the book Cabodevilla and Aguirre piece together Ompore’s last day alive for clues: On the 5th of March he left his jungle hut with his wife Buganey before dawn wearing nothing but gumboots and a machete, carrying gifts of bushmeat for his family in Yarentaro.
Today the way younger generations of Waorani blasted their radios in Yarentaro annoyed the late Chief enough to build his home with Buganey away from the high-tech comforts of Contact three hours walk into the jungle. As he arrived on the village outskirts before 8am it was those same radios booming over the top of the drills, saws and hammers constructing the zoo-creidero that prevented the master hunter from hearing the ambush.
[quote]The aftermath was documented with the very technology that generations of Waorani born After Contact have embraced: cellphones.[/quote]
Buganey is in agony while being carried in a hammock to a doctor (source: Polificcion)
“We have verified various videos and many photos of those first moments” writes Cabodevilla who transcribes the screams of Buganey:“Cut the spear! Cut the spear with a knife so I can live! Grab the spear, Hold it! I’m still alive but if you pull out the spear I will die…Give me water, put water on my head…hold the spear…”
She died an hour later.
The voice of one of her children screams: “I am going to kill them all! I am going to kill all of the Taromenani!”
A woman replies: “don’t talk like that!”
The body of Ompore was found near the river where he ran to escape the ambush. He’d been fatally wounded and fell into the leaflitter before propping himself up in a half-sitting position and died, impaled with nine spears more than three meters long and covered with colorful feathers.
There was no speed limit on the via Maxus the afternoon of Ompore’s murder as RepSol began withdrawing its personel from Block 16 in seeming anticipation of the tribal war to follow.The next day the Bishop of Coca, Jesús Sábado, arrived in Yarentaro with two members of the FAL Foundation. One of the members filmed the Waorani community using a computer connected to the projector to show the Bishop and everyone else gathered a grainy cellphone video of Buganey, the Waorani elder born Before Contact, her dying breaths cast across the Town Hall wall for all to see.
[quote]In the video a woman’s voice shouts:“Ompure had already warned them, he already knew but you all did nothing. Two days ago the Taromenane left a sign; they bent a banana plant and put there a spear.”[/quote]
The question is: Why did the Taromenane attack Ompore Omewey? Read excerpts from A Hidden Tragedy translated into English to find out yourself. [mc4wp_form]
“At the end of march this year, 2013, in the jungles of Ecuador’s northern orient, a great massacre of uncontacted indigenous was committed.” opens the book A Hidden Tragedy. “Accomplished in a way that was abusive and cruel. Those eliminated, above all, where women and children.”
Seventeen minutes before the book was due to be presented to the Ecuadorian public it was censored from circulation “over any medium” by none other than Judge Hilda Garces of the Judicial Unit of Violence Against Women and Family.
The reason: the book contained uncensored photos of two Taromenane girls aged 3 and 6 who had been kidnapped during the massacre of their uncontacted tribe.
Seemingly unbeknownst to the Judge or anyone else who had not yet read the book is that the authors took great care to protect the identities of “C-” and “D-“, as we follow their terrifying journey from the moment their mother is speared to their arrival in the remote Yarentaro outpost inside the oil giant RepSol’s Petroleum Block 16.
The book contained something much worse: a catalog of government incompetence and carelessness in the Ecuadorian Amazon at a time when it was facing a massive public backlash on its decision to drill for billions of dollars of oil in the Yasuní National Park – home of the uncontacted Taromeane tribe now facing the existential threat of genocide.
One thing above all becomes clear: the massacre was preventable.
Knowing this fact makes the reader feel the tragedy all the more deeply as the authors, a Spanish anthropologist missionary and veteran Ecuadorian journalist, scramble to alert the authorities to stop sitting on their hands and do something to prevent a repeat of the 2003 massacre in which between 13 – 26 innocent men, women, and children of the Taromenane were killed.
The book also opens up as many questions as it answers: why did the Governor of Orellana Province celebrate the massacre? Who is airdropping poisoned food onto an uncontacted tribe that happen to live above one of the largest untapped oil reserves on the South American continent?
In Part I of this story we walked through events leading up to the assassination of Ompore Omewey, the flashpoint that triggered the massacre, using photos and information passed to me by a contact inside Block 16 while referencing the first 60 pages of A Hidden Tragedy.
For Part II I have devoted my limited time and resources to translate excerpts from the moment the authors of A Hidden Tragedy uncover why the Waorani elders were assassinated, to give an incomplete, yet very relevant and revealing view, into the massive human and environmental costs associated with the crude profit of petroleum exploitation in Ecuador’s Amazon.
English excerpts from A Hidden Tragedy
NOW AVAILABLE: Censored Book by Miguel Cabodevilla
NOTE:The headings, highlights and [comments] are mine to help give context and make the excerpts easier to scan.
The first half of the book is written by Cabodevilla from an anthropological perspective and the second half by Aguirre examines what seems like a government coverup of the massacre. The excerpts are ordered primarily by page number but I have placed parts of Aguierre’s investigation towards the beginning chronologically. All the photos below are in the book.
The version used to translate was una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida.pdf (a hidden tragedy corrected) which you can download here on Chekhov’s Kalashnikov as well as from the blogs, torrents, twitter, dropbox and facebook pages Ecuadorians used to subvert the censorship.
“I’m not meeting their demands they are going to kill me”
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 59 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
Two Taromenani veterans had approached [Ompore] various times, with some confidence, asking for axes, machetes, and pots.
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 59 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
In fact in a Waorani reunion in March 2012, when they filmed this video [of Ompure recounting First Contact with the Taromenane] Ompure told the Waorani assembly about these encounters at his house. He had obtained a few tools from a Waorani employee of Repsol; also Cawetipe, President of NAWE [Waorani Nationality of Ecuador] but it seems this meagre distribution reached only a few [Taromenane] and provoked animosity in others; some of them came to Ompore in a threatening way, demanding tools for everyone.
Ompore, in turn requested, somewhat distressed (i’m not meeting their demands they are going to kill me) the tools from the assembly and the petrol company RepSol. [they denied the request]
He was terrified. On several occasions [the Taromenane] had robbed his house in the jungle. Following various claims these complaints and intimidations became more often. Not only for tools, but they also complained (as we have seen) about everything that disrespected their territory, for the loud noise of the petrol rigs of the north, for the highways that cut their ancient paths and impeded their passing.
The Waorani elder Ompure Omewey impaled with Taromenane spears
Airdrops of food cause suspected “massive poisoning” of uncontacted Taromenane
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 62 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
On the 12th of April, the Agency of Official News, ANDES, published a surprising declaration from the Attorney General of the nation. Given the hermetic way in which it had managed itself until then (also before and after this declaration) in light of the subject, emphasizing the complexity of the investigation and therefore the steps which were to occur, their words came as a surprise. “The Attorney General is verifying a testimony given by the [kidnapped Taromenane girls] that an aircraft flew over dropping poisoned food that was eaten by various indigenous Taromenane, producing death in some of them. The Attorney General Chiriboga has left open the possibility that, if the murder is proven and those responsible identified, they will be tried in civil courts.”
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 63 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
The planes doing flights over the zone, normally leave the airports of Shell and Coca, shouldn’t be that numerous in recent months (or years) to not be able to check them. That which is obvious is to say that the Attorney General signaled, first and foremost, that the Ministry of Justice, charged with ensuring strict compliance with the PMC [Plan of Precautionary Measures] are therefore responsible for all actions that pose a threat to the safety of uncontacted tribes.
However, from the policy portfolio until today there has been no clarification issued on this grave suspicion that came all the way from the Attorney General. The Ministry of Justice is well aware that controls on flights in that area is just as important as on terrestrial entrances. [to the Intangible Zone – territory of the uncontacted Taromenane]
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 64 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
In our recent interviews with multiple Waorani witnesses of the area that complain and remember helicopter flights, also light planes, over the area. Several of them are members of the expedition organized by Waorani to revenge the death of the elders [Ompure and Buganey]. Their words, and even some of the photographs taken, testify to a large number of canned tuna found in the Taromenane homes. Other strange products found there could perhaps be explained by theft: clothes, liniment, cables for petroleum explosions…
Waorani from revenge expedition holds up a t-shirt found in the Taromenane house
¿Could the Taromenane have accidentally opened some out of date tuna can, eaten it, and become victims of food poisoning for example? Are there other ways or risks for this alleged poisoning that has been denounced by the Attorney General? We are waiting for an explanation of the flights, also the possibility of homicide perpetrated from the air. This is something extremely serious.
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 65 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
Certainly that first interview with the kidnapped girl, made at the beginning of her confinement, surely could not accurately determine the circumstances of these events: date, circumstances of death … In any case it reminds us of another narration we collected from the mouth of Ompure referring to the annihilation of an uncontacted group perhaps prompted by an illness or massive poisoning.
Government compensation for murder: food rations
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 68 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
What had happened in Yarentaro in legal and political terms was this: people protected by the [Ecuadorian] Constitution (with the government in charge of enforcing it), such as the Taromenani, assassinated two Waorani citizens who must also be protected by the State.
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 69 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
Meanwhile an endless treadmill of consultations and meetings began from many different government sectors. An unfortunate feature of this way of doing politics. They argued, as is customary, to whomever was playing the lead in resolving the problem. There were meetings with at least two dozen different secretaries and managers. They collided with each other, got into endless speeches or opinions, and whoevers opinion eventually prevailed was less than what was needed, while the police made the case a secret and controlled every aspect of it.
They consulted each other and who knows how many supposed experts in the following days, because after so many years with the problem [10 years since the massacre of 2003] the government team had no one to guide these matters wisely. They lost precious time to react and when they did they incorrectly calculated the internal social composition of the Waorani.
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 70 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
During those days we cautioned them with incessant communications to different [government] officials: You have to try and talk with those that are preparing the revenge attack! The only way, probably, is that the Government, above all, recognises its error: we have failed in our protection.
Then accept a duty incumbent upon [the government] to recognize its responsibility to help (compensation is a word that officials run away from like cats to water) the family. We encourage them to enter the affected communities with a generous and fair offer, not some insufficient food rations. [“the compensation of beans did not calm the tensions” – page 152 Milagros Aguirre]
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 71 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
Officials or advisers during the situation accepted as routine the expenses of incessant helicopter or plane travel, diets and hotels, etc., but were utterly incapable, and scandalized the Waorani whose family had been speared (we insisted: these people were expressly protected by the government) They can claim compensation. They had every right to it!
Waorani warriors acquire modern weaponry
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 72 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
Waorani of the effected clans left for Coca and other points and made contacts for the adquisition of arms and ammunition. Repeated requests to the authorities to effectively control arms and munitions did not work. Several of the attackers had obtained sophisticated weaponry, 12 shot rifles among others. The final expedition that left the population was organized on the 24th of March. [Since the assassination] 19 days had passed! The luck of the Taromenane had been cast. The Government, with all of its means, had not been capable of resolving, in such a long time, a complex case, but one which involved less than a dozen well known Waorani.
Waorani enter the jungle to track the attackers after Ompure and Buganeys burrialWaorani Warriors pose for photo on the 30th of March, 8:30am, inside a Taromanene hut
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 79 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
To live on such a violent border [the Taromenane “Intangible Zone”] (like some groups situated on the Vía Auca), where there are arbitrary land grabs, forest exploitation, etc., as well as the unlawful acts of many of their neighbours (colonizers and inidgenous) that do not respect this border (above all in hunting and fishing) is not the best school for the Taromenane to appreciate the laws of the Cowori [Taromenane word for outsider]. It is a place with very little law, with very bad laws, we can say.
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 150 – Milagros Aguirre
On that same day we sent 9 emails to the Viceminister of the Interior and an advisory lawyer of the Ministry, insisting on compensating the victims [Ompures family], as the only possibility to calm the tension, to uphold justice and start the rule of law in this no mans land. Including to make work a proposal to regulate compensation claims in cases like this: “if uncontacted groups are protected by the State and cause damage to their neighbours, the State has to take responsibility for this damage”. A regulation should have already been the first step to set a precedent. [and prevent the massacre of 2003 from happening again]
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida-2-1 – Highlight on Page 152 – Milagros Aguirre
Why didn’t they act? Why didn’t they prohibit weapons, create a strong control, an agreement that could prevent those affected from seeking justice with their own hands? The argument, according to an official from this very government, is that some expert voices on the Waorani blindly told them that the Waorani were incapable of going to seek their Tagaeri/Taromenani brothers, that it was crazy to think that. They were mistaken. Its easy to make such a mistake on this topic, above all, if prejudice and anthropological assumptions are handled unrealistically and entirely wrong. Moreover, not far from all human feelings, common to all cultures and all people: anger, fear, the need for revenge, the thirst for justice.
On the 15th of March we wrote back to the Viceminister in private. We sent him a document titled “Some reflections”. One more time, we insisted that if he is not in the community, if he does not compensate the victims, if he does not go to Dicaro-Yarentaro to calm the animosity of the people, something is going to happen. A new disgrace in the jungle was imminent. And we would see it happen, before our eyes, the dead, once again.
To inform the public we wrote an article in Vanguardia which was published Monday 18th of March. Since then we have expressed to some organizations –the ONWO [Organization of the Waorani Nationality of Orellana province], the Confeniae [Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities in the Ecuadorian Amazon], the Conaie [the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador], the CDES [Observatory of Collective Rights], the Network of Anthropologists, the applicants of precautionary measures [Plan de Medidas Cautelares] letters in Avaaz.org and Change.org – everybody – worried about what happened and what could happen, even though we explained the unique conflict exclusively from the easiest side: Ompure and Buganey were murdered because of the loud noises from an energy generator, and that Buganey, in the final moments on her deathbed, gave an Anti-Oil Company speech, which suited a series of rumours, depending on the organization speaking or the expert on shift.
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 154 – Milagros Aguirre
On the 23rd of March we got the first news that an armed expedition had left to look for those who had killed Ompure and Buganey. Nothing to do. Utter helplessness. Despair. Distrust in the promises of the authorities. Overall, it had been almost 20 days since the assassination of the elders and the authorities still didn’t know what to do, they didn’t speak, and if they did, they said it was a structural problem and should be fixed structurally.
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 156 – Milagros Aguirre
On the 28th we sent the Viceminister another text, “the new jungle of uncontacted peoples”, aiming to contribute knowledge to the circumstances he found himself living. The weekend continued with uncertainty: the expedition had not returned, they were still deep in the jungle. We found out about them on Monday the first of April. The revenge had been consummated. Justice, made there way. Death had arrived.
Paradoxically on that same day, the 1st of April, our response from Brigadier General Edison Narváez, Commander of the IV Division of the Amazon, also arrived: there has been no discovery of people dedicated to the sale of arms and munitions in the zone, was his reply.
A few hours before the news, we were again contacted by officials of the Interior Ministry. They called to invite us to participate in a workshop prepared on the issue by a different office, one with understanding of the topic and consultants, another with local authorities (again its always the same and ends the same). Hours later we returned their call, but not to confirm our presence on this so called workshop, but to tell the Viceminister that it was all too late, that there was no point in yet another workshop, whether or not the State could manage a structural response: the revenge had been consummated. The Waorani returned with two girls, C- and D-, that they had captured on their expedition.
“What! Are we talking about a scenario like 2003?” said the surprised Viceminister.
“March for Peace and Justice” on April 11th in Coca. Banners include: “we are all brothers”, “yes to peace” and “barrels of oil do not justify the death of anybody”Waorani community leaders Penti and Tepa in the March for Peace in front of the Police station of Coca. In the video of Ompure “The Taromenane told me…” Penti says that one day the Waorani and Taromenane “Will have peaceful contact and we can be as one,” and together the two tribes “will defend the territory” from petrol companies.
Snapshots from a deadly revenge expedition
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 85 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
A photographic report was made during the expedition [to avenge Ompure]. It is a series of 74 photos taken between the 24th of March and the 2nd of April by one of the explorers. 18 photographs are missing from the series.
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 86 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
The snapshots, taken on a digital camera, determine the day, hour and minute of when they were taken. They are, therefore, a primary document to the hour of the confrontation when compared with the following testimonies. If we don’t publish them here intact its obviously to conceal the identities of the protagonists. Revealing them is not our intention. We know at the time of obtaining them that these documents were in the hands of the Ministry of Justice, and therefore the use of them was transferred to the police as well as all legal and political responsibility.
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 89 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
The photographic guide resumed on the 30th, at 8:30 in the morning. The expedition had discovered an old Taromenane house that was empty. The expedition believes the attackers [of Ompure and Buganey] stayed here on their return. There are monkey skulls with termites, evidently consumed raw. The importance of the discovery for those is shown in the immediate activity of the reporter: 12 photographs in the following 7 minutes. Its the first Taromenane refuge they find.
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 90 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
The expedition finds a winding path, with lots of ups and downs, which they anxiously walk. The group knows they are at a key point. On 15´21 they encounter a bridge again, this time with much more Huangana skulls [wild Amazonian pigs] hanging from the walkway, which opens up into a space around a big house that’s also abandoned. They see bones impaled on a stick lying on the ground at the extreme end of the patio: a large series of skulls bleaching in the sun. The expedition talks of finding bones inside the house as well. A sign to warn off uninvited visitors, or trophies in a house of great hunters?
A Waorani warriors testimony of the massacre
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 93 – Unidentified Wao who participated in the massacre
“The Taromenane were singing, a song different to what we sing. It was a strong song, strong. They sung like the monkeys sing. That’s how they sang (he sings trying to imitate them but the lyrics aren’t easy to understand) The song seems like its calling the jungle. Ayyyyy, hear the jungle. Like the call of the animals. They sung strong, strong.
When we arrived at the house we heard a man who was strong. He sung that if he was a jaguar he would become strong: “I don’t respect nobody, I turn into a jaguar.” That’s how they attacked Ompure and Buganey. I killed them. Then the sound of lightning and thunder. The Taromenani said: “when I went armed with my spear everyone ran scared! That’s why I’m here armed. If a jaguar was tied up, when its set free, no one stays around!”
This man sung when we were still far. When I went with Manuel (in the entrance narrated by M. Cawiya) the Taromenani sung there as well. On another occasion, one brother of mine got scared and fainted to hear the song of the Taromenani. They sang like that now. Also my grandmother N. knows a story about an elder Taromenani who sung very strong. At the end of the song they screamed: “Tucuuuu…We come to kill, we are going to eat like the tiger.”
We quickly went on the path. Others sung, watching the path. They were inside the house, spying the path. Inside they were singing but they had two guards. They were looking above, but they did not see us. Someone will come out, we thought, and that’s how we will shoot them. Some said: “I am going to kill them first.” I thought to go on the left hand side. They sung like Bai de Bataburo, that’s what their voice was like. He he he! They were laughing. All of these people singing, all of them destined to die. That’s why I believe they were dedicated to singing, it was their last song.
When it rains hard, they will say do not kill, they will talk strong, the Taromenani, so that we don’t come and kill. Their elder said: “we are keeping watch because enemies are coming.” But the young ones laugh. The elder was warning them, but the young ones didn’t realise. “You are going to die,” repeated the elder, “in the claws of a tiger.”
I. said: “I believe the women are making chica of chonta, that’s why they are singing” We listened in ambush around the house; we kept surrounding it. So that we can kill them as they leave the house! we thought. First you kill, one said, and later we enter. We waited for whoever wanted to initiate. Their young ones were laughing. Two of them came out with spears. When they came out of the door E. was already getting close to the same door of the house to kill them. I believe they came out because the boy wanted to make a relation with the girl.
The girl was right there and realised that we were also coming close. One of them entered the house, the girl stayed outside of the house. A. said “they are all about to come out!” E. went first and afterwards I followed. Around the house it was clean. When we entered on another path, you could hear the spears of the Taromenane inside the house. When they came out we killed them all, we killed them as they came out. We shot the rifles, but it didn’t sound loud. At first they didn’t hear. Two times we shot and they didn’t hear.
Afterwards, with the sound of another bullet, an elder said, “the Cowori have come! run, run, run! Guri, guri, guri.” There was a shootout, the bullets flew and they fell. Blood came out, lots of blood, blood dripping like water. Many people running. A big man managed to run away and hide. “Guri Guri, Guri, run, run, run!” the big man was saying. Run from those that are killing you, run or they will kill you. There were lots of them. One of them we shot in the eye. We killed them like fat Huanganas, fat, that’s how we killed them, equal to the Huanganas. Those that were skinny we left. Blood flowed like a stream of water. We killed each one with a gunshot, we shot them without stopping.
I believe the hand flew with the bullet. I shot a bullet in the stomach of one, but i’m not sure if he lived or died. I’ve only got 4 bullets and I’m out of bullets! We shot them all. There were ten bullets left! You could see well below the trees and shoot. “Look below!” said one. Two Taromenani couples ran. One man came with spears and wanted to kill K., but he couldn’t spear him. You already know how the bullet is: faster. We shot them with bullets and the man who had the spear fell. Another Taromenani was crying, saying we should not have killed them. “We were living well!” complained this man. He was crying when they killed him. “We shouldn’t have killed the family of Ompure because now many have come to kill us,” is how the Taromenani cried.
K. was saying: “Why did you come and kill my father?” Just like what they did to Ompure, we speared them. We nailed them with spears. The same. Now some of us laughed as we killed; several of us laughing as we killed them. V. kept stepping this Taromenani against the ground, then speared him from below so the point came out through the mouth, like they did to Ompure. We felt dizzy. After all the people we killed, we felt dizzy. I believe one of them we cut off the head, we stuck a few heads to a stick is how we got rid of two men.
Afterwards we collected the fallen bullets and hid in the jungle. When we were finished killing, everyone entered the house and we found that they had cooked monkey, paujil, and we ate that food. They didn’t eat tuna. But they had it saved, they had lots. They had Axes, all of them given to them from Ompure. I tipped out the moretal, so that those who lived could not take it. I stopped hurling axes. The chica smelt like the smell of a chiefs nest, thats how Taromenani chica smells. That chica of the Taromenani we came back drinking. We also collected the spears and dart pipes to bring them home. When we were carrying them a Taromenani got up, as if it was alive. It scared us, we left it there and ran away,
When we stopped running, we slept. Afterwards we got up at dawn. The girl who came was soaked wet, she was cold. She cried a lot when she arrived the first time. She cried a lot that girl. She was swollen with crying. We climbed the mountain, the hills, the plains, we climbed up and down, walked and came out on the River Tivacuno. I didn’t think of bringing things. Another time I thought of going back and collecting them. B. wanted to leave them on the hills. Of the monkeys, two monkeys, we came walking. K. stayed asleep. All of us stayed asleep.
The law of the jungle
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on age 97 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
Life, tradition, mark this. To die or to live, which is another way to say: you have to kill to live. Its the law of the jungle. Two faces on the same coin that fall towards one side or the other, its a question of change, strength, courage, cunning, and determination.
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 98 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
The two following images, at 16´06, show a similar scene on the same minute: a young Taromenane, face down in the jungle, shot in the back and pierced by a spear. Together with her, thrown onto his back on the ground, is a child of 2 or 3 years, seemingly impaled by a spear.
War trophies: two taromenani girls are kidnapped
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 106 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
According to an eyewitness, when they had finished off the wounded and various Waorani dedicated themselves to looking through the property inside the Taromenane house to obtain their booty, a young woman suddenly appeared close who carried with her two girls: C-, already presented here, and D-, her little sister of three years. The three had been outside the house before the assault, maybe in the creek closeby or in some other occupation.
Upset by the shootout, surely seeing the massacre of her family, the woman came to offer herself, or she was discovered, when the climax of the furor had already passed exhausting all the bullets. The narrator insists that, from the beginning she appeared absolutely submissive and pleaded with them to respect the life of the three, offering herself to be the woman of whoever would take them.
In one testimony, the three were surrounded by some of them, while the rest continued their search [for loot and survivors] As she understood them quite well, she was interrogated about the closeness of her other family. She told them that the other [Taromenane] group had been split off and estranged after their assault on the elders [Ompure and Buganey] (who we are certain were identified as Cowori). The other house was a good days walk away. According to her those members were the most aggressive and violent [of the Taromenani]. She listed the names of the fallen members of her family and her neighbours.
Those that listened were in a rush, there was only two hours of sunlight left; less in the jungle. They had to put land in between them in case of a Taromenani counterattack by survivors. Some said to end with the three of them and start the escape. One Waorani laid claim to the two girls, the abduction of girls, both with other groups of Waorani attackers as well as Cowori, is quite a common tradition. Some of them did not accept it, and insisted all of them must die, and it produced a moment of great tension.
The testimony insinuates that there could have been shots fired between Waorani had their weapons not been discharged. Seeing this, the woman offered herself to the veteran, and he was tempted to take her with him. The rest did not permit it and said they should not be in charge of her, she was too old to hold while fleeing. So one of them killed her right there, in front of the eyes of her daughters.
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 112 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
Then for almost 20 minutes, perhaps in a high moment on the trip, the improvising reporter, offers us the three last snapshots of the expedition; three beautiful portraits of the two captive girls. They have an impressive paleness, surely the cause of being soaked wet, hungry and cold in the canoe voyage, and for certain the terror and newness of everything they were seeing.
Police avoid photographic evidence of “unconfirmed” massacre
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 104 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
This man was on the streets of Coca with his camera and photos, leisurely giving declarations to the press, offering this barbaric merchandise to the highest bidder. What did the Prosecutors Office do? They didn’t seize or examine the camera (that showed so many things) or the photos. They also decided not to enter [the site of the massacre] and also prohibited the entrance to that theater of events. They did a lot of aerial flights, that yes, something which is harmful for the survivors, we want them to explain to us one day why.
One of the many overflights of the authorities during the first days of April. Uncontacted tribes are terrified by low-flying planes and helicopters
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 116 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
We can say that, a few days after [the massacre] the photographs of the terrestrial expedition were being sold in Coca to the highest bidder. It seems like the Attorney General and the Judicial Police, with all of their abundant contacts, did not arrive there. Comparing the photos from the ground with those from the air would have left no doubt about the massacre. The police argued that the unknown dangers were too great to go there [into the Intangible Zone to examine the scene of the crime]
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 118 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
Outside of sporadic visits of scarce bureaucrats from the Attorney and Justice offices, the presence of the State has shone brighter than ever by its absence. We have seen distinct [government] officials hesitant in their behavior, contradicting each other, making unjustifiable promises. Despite what was often expressed by the Attorney General, the fact is that a climate of impunity has been established in the communities as if they had gained definitive ground from the State.
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 123 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
This is a very sad story. Not only because of the amount of innocent victims, more than that because it reflects beyond the errors of government injustice, an incomprehensible and generalized human and cultural insensitivity inside Ecuador. Also in international news networks which barely reported on this. As we said, it is more terrible when you consider that killing was not an exception. It was not a surprise, it was preventable.
“The terrible scourge of genocide”
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 124 – Miguel Angel Cabodevilla
In this, as in the terrible scourge of genocide of the people in that uninhabited jungle, the Government should have the responsibility it wants given. But, of course, it is not their exclusive fault. Neither of these misguided officials invented the disaster that has come to mean the annihilation of uncontacted groups. To say this is to deceive, to not see the obvious.
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 158 – Milagros Aguirre
First of April: two girls captured. Taken by force from the heart of the jungle after a horrific massacre of their family members. Two girls who can die from the common cold. Two innocent girls, terrified. One with the son of Ompure, the other with another. Girls who are the legacy of vengeance. Girls who are witnesses. Girls who are trophies of war, of a war without sense, of deaths that could have been prevented, or at least attempted. If the deaths of Los Reyes could not have been prevented, or the Ompure’s death either, for being truly unpredictable, this attack seemed predictable and obvious because of the 20 days that elapsed.
President Correa’s first public statement
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 159 – Milagros Aguirre
On April 6th President Correa made his first statement about the topic on his Saturday TV appearance. “They talk of 18 dead, but until now they haven’t found a single cadaver.” He continued: “unfortunately there have been grave problems between the Contacted and Uncontacted tribes. Various aerial expeditions have been sent, terrestrial, but we don’t know. This is an extremely difficult and complex case because of its nature.” Correa denied the conflict was related to the activity of petrol companies in the zone. “Nothing to do with the petrol companies, its a problem between clans.”
Municipal governor celebrates the massacre?
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 160 – Milagros Aguirre
The vigilantes were happy and proud of their achievement. They show the huge thick spears stolen from one of the Tagaeri / Taromenani houses after the assault. Each one of them has one. They surround the Governor and have their photos taken with her. The photo appears on the Facebook of the Governors Office of Orellana Province, (all officials enjoy the way that social networks, Facebook and Twitter, let them communicate with their constituents) with an alusive text about the visit which says that the Waorani of Yarentaro sent, like a souvenir, a Taromenani spear to the President of the Republic… And that they are now in peace. That calm has returned to the Waorani communities. That Yarentaro and the Government have reached an agreement.
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 160 – Milagros Aguirre
Does this perhaps show a hidden agenda? A machevelian plan of premeditated extermination? Or was it simply the slip of a government official who had no idea what to do in such a complicated situation?
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 161 – Milagros Aguirre
The Government, through its representatives, celebrating a victory? And recieving a war spear like a trophy as if it was part of national folklore? Ecuador loves life, as the government slogan says? This photo – and the narrative – were deleted immediately off the Internet to avoid misinterpretations.
“Convicting Ecuador of genocide by inaction or malpractice”
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 161 – Milagros Aguirre
The same day 9 [of April] both the Governor and the police in Coca gave a public statement to the media: “You cannot confirm the massacre, the massacre is just a rumour” Meanwhile, Cawetipe Yeti, president Nawe, armed the newspaper El Comercio – and also the television – that this was not a rumour, that this was true, and gave concrete statements.
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 168 – Milagros Aguirre
On the 23 of April, David Romero appeared on telelvision in an exclusive interview, on the program Day to Day on TeleAmazonas. He confessed to having killed 5 people and doing it with spears. “I killed!” he said, “because i’m a warrior”. There also appeared on television a young man, son of one of the vigilantes. “My father killed, killed a lot of people” On the 30th, the Attorney General Chiriboga said on the television channels “There is no proof of this alleged massacre” and that “the investigation has not yet been able to establish the veracity of the information in the number of deaths” At the end of his declaration he assured “yes there was an attack” but did not say if there was or not any deaths.
For those of us in Coca, and in the countryside, informed of what had happened, all this was absurd. One day a boy confesses to the crime and another day, the authorities come out to conceal the facts. One day the leader of Nawe, Cawetipe Yeti, asserts that there had been many dead. The other day, the Attorney General of the nation comes out saying there is no proof. And days later, indicates that there were poisonings from food thrown out of the sky from who knows who and with what interests.
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 170 – Milagros Aguirre
The result of this confrontation between officials and managers of two branches of government and lack of coordination between different institutions, the powers attributed to one or the other, were effective at only one thing: silence. The silence to shield the country against any international criticism referring to a possible sanction, a call to attention or convicting Ecuador of genocide by inaction or malpractice. Silence is better. The party of silence.
The fate of the two kidnapped girls
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 180 – Milagros Aguirre
For some reason that escapes our understanding, the silence became a slogan and, in some cases, was accompanied by fear, in these almost six months from the 5th of March. Workers on the zoo-creidero project, located 200 metres from where Ompure and Buganey died, were witnesses to this fact. They did not or could not talk about the theme. An anthropologist gave an interview to the newspaper El Telégrafo and was summoned by the police because of his opinion (or because of the use of an official communication medium to give his statement). They told him to rectify his public statement that he made in the newspaper in question. He received threatening calls from people who had worked on some projects. And the panic spread.
A group of women tried to talk about the problem of the kidnapped girls, giving their point of view and putting on the table their legitimate worries that the elder girl pointed and confronted one of the men, accusing him of killing her mother. They knew that, for at least those first days, she cried saying her grandmother and uncle were coming to find her. They said that when she heard the rain coming, when the jungle announced oncoming thunder and lightning, “she hid like a rat”, still hostage of her fear.
Months had already passed and nobody had an idea what was going to happen to the two children that had been forced to live with their kidnappers, that now wore clothes, who refused to eat anything, who were being photographed, who were now living in houses of cement like the ones in the communities of Dikaro and Yarentaro, to learn about things like cars, televisions, cameras, and tablets.
We knew that the younger girl was living in Awemuro, near Kawimeno, with one of the sons of Ompure those first months. Later she was changed to a house in Dikaro of one of the other expeditionaries. For her, for D-, the younger one, it will surely be easier to forget and adapt to this new reality of her new parents. For the other it will cost her more….she will suffer with moderate rage, but will learn to get used to it…
The women signed a petition on Avaaz.org (that didn’t pass 100 signatures) so that the State takes responsibility for the girls, using the pseudonym to avoid retaliations. They presented several scenarios to the authorities, from the possibility of returning the girls to their clan, to the temporary custody of other Waorani families [who were not involved in the massacre]. They neither obtained a response to their request or opened a debate on the topic: its better not to speak, of certain things, to paraphrase the title of a recent Ecuadorian film.
una-tragedia-ocultada-corregida – Highlight on Page 181 – Milagros Aguirre
The girls had the status of protected witnesses of the Attorney General, but were made to live with their kidnappers. Didn’t the rapporteur for the United Nations, Mr. Anaya, say that the state must guarantee the physical and psychological safety of the girls? Who is the authority, entity, or instituion that has this competence? We asked the group of women in private because, in public, its better not to speak of certain things. Inside the politically correct, the result is it becomes best not to intervene or comment. Even though this accommodates unspeakable suffering, to live with those who ended your family, you can say it with a sort of irony that in the case of the Uncontacted Girls the only way to contact them is through the people that killed their parents.
The Welfare of Conta and her sister Daboka
I hope after reading these excerpts you have concluded, as I did after reading the book, that a full English translation is needed to warn the international community about what is happening in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The censorship of A Hidden Tragedy was shortlived but fortunately the hamfisted attempt at prohibition accomplished one thing: the blogosphere, social media, and every newspaper in Ecuador were discussing the fate of the two kidnapped Taromenane girls the government had abandoned in the hands of those that butchered their family.
It also stoked the Ecuadorian government to partake in a stupidly disproportional publicity stunt to rescue the girls depicted in the Newsweek article After all the people we killed we felt dizzy. Today we know the elder Taromenane girl, Conta, is under the care of Penti, the highly respected Waorani community leader. The whereabouts of her younger sister Daboka are believed to be with those who were responsible for the death of her family.
A Hidden Tragedy is not the only book to come out of this troubled region that has captured the worlds imagination and provided a window into the Amazon’s heart of darkness. While the theme and setting may remind some of the highly acclaimed 1989 novella The Old Man Who Read Love Stories about the increasing stupidity of modern man in the Ecuadorian Amazon, there will no doubt be comparisons by rosy-eyed missionaries to the 1961 cult-classic The Savage, My Kinsmen
There are however two other books that I believe A Hidden Tragedy resembles more deeply: the first is Eduardo Galeano’s 1971 international bestseller Open Veins of Latin America (which was also censored) in the way it furthers our understanding on how the western world’s thirst for resources is plundering the Amazon.
Then there is the renowned 1924 masterpiece of Latin American literature known as The Vortex – translated into English, French, Russian, Portuguese, Italian, Polish and Japanese – which warned the world about the extermination of indigenous tribes enslaved on the Amazonian rubber plantations of Putumayo, less than a century before and little more than a hundred kilometers north, from where the extermination of the Taromenane tribe is currently taking place. [mc4wp_form]
Citizen Journalist Aida Castro in front of the hashtag she coined “Thankyou for believing in the #RevolutionOfTheRuanas”
Its not every Sunday that the priest of a rural Colombian city called Tunja begins his sermon with a story of an illiterate Indian girl who grew up in the shadow of the British Empire.
The 8th of September was not a normal Sunday.
For the three weeks previous farmers from the province of Boyaca and its capital Tunja had blocked the roads to strangle the food supply en route to Colombia’s biggest city Bogotá.
Boyaca is not only Bogotá’s backyard, its also the breadbasket for this city of 7 million mouths and has fed it since the time of the Spanish.
After decades of having their human rights ignored the National Agrarian Strike with its epicenter in Boyaca was a last resort to get urbanite Colombians to pay attention: the countryside is in crisis so consumers can save a few pesos at the supermarket.
The strike had abated the day before and Tunjas Cathedral was packed with people who came to see three of the movements leaders who fought against forces far greater than themselves: the Colombian government castrated by consecutive Free Trade Agreements with foreign powers, the United States that provides the country with billions of dollars in military aid (and expects its back scratched in return) as well as omnipotent multinationals like Monsanto.
Their names were Florentino Borda, Walter Benavides, and César Pachón and they spoke to the gathered mass in front of a banner stating, “Thankyou for believing in the #RevolutionOfTheRuanas”
The name of the Indian woman was Kasturba Mohandas Gandhi and the priest recounted a question once asked to her about the man she married who brought the British Empire to its knees.
Her reply: “I did not marry a man, I married a cause.”
This is the story of Boyaca’s cause.
The Seeds of Discontent
Before dawn 12 hours earlier a man they call Pacho from the nearby town of Paipa rigs his car with a speaker and microphone transforming it into a mobile soapbox.
Mist hangs heavily over the back roads that bend up the mountainside and visibility is limited but Pacho dodges the severed trees that had, up until a few days before, blocked all entries and exits to the town.
With steering wheel in one hand and a microphone in the other Pacho shouts out the first names of those who cut the trees and blocked the roads with aggressive threats of force – they are potato farmers and they are invited to a Town Hall Meeting that morning where farmers get to discuss the strikes resolution with Florentino Borda, Walter Benavides, and César Pachón.
Flour & Barley: Because Cocaine is not an Option
Pacho has gained a measure of success in his life and now runs a warehouse full of farming goods from fertilizer to cattle feed and tools both big and small to work the land. But sales have bottomlined, purchases are being made on credit, and customers he counts as friends are struggling to survive.
In the 1970’s the crop of choice for the province was barley until big beer breweries with factories in the province began using imports from the US. The farmers switched to wheat which was used in bakeries across Boyaca but subsidized wheat and flour from the US undercut competition in the 80’s.
Over the following decades everything from contraband Ecuadorian potatoes to European imports of powdered milk made it harder for Boyacenses to do business.
In other parts of the country these Fair Trade Agreements that flooded the market with cheap foreign imports forced farmers into growing the one Colombian crop with insatiable international demand: the Coca leaf. Boyaca’s too cold for Coca.
“We don’t have politicians that protect the community, they are selling the country and the farmers are fed up.” Pacho says as the car climbs up above the mist for a view of Boyaca’s spectular valleys.
“The same state that forgot about the potato farmers is facilitating the multinationals so that they can sell more at subsidized prices.”
Potato Farmers Do Not Want Monsanto Seeds
Three paperos or potato farmers come to greet us, “this land makes good potatoes but what kills us are the importations, they don’t let us compete and now we are broke” says community leader Alexander Camargo.
“You dont sell potatoes,” he says, “you give them away.”
Its not a lack of creativity or initiative that bankrupted the potato farmers of Paipa.
For years they have gone to the mayor with plans to help return their industry to profit but the municipal government ignored them. One such plan was a seed bank that Alexander Camargo and Luis Cipaguata dreamt of creating called Crops from a Cold Land.
After Colombia signed the TLC with the United States storing seeds became a criminal offence. Farmers that followed the tradition of their great grandfathers became criminals under new laws enforced with fines or imprisonment. Saving seeds threatened the bottomline of Monsanto.
[quote]”We need to buy foreign seeds but they are too expensive, we want to certify our own seeds” says Camargo, “if we cannot save our own seeds then they have us screwed.”[/quote]
Catastrophic Acts of God vs Government Pacts: MercoSur, TLC
The nearby town of Santa Teresa has felt the destructive nature of these Free Trade Agreements with the US and South American countries under the MercoSur umbrella as hard as 3 floods that devastated the area in 2.5 years.
“When the government took the barley off us we had to look for a different crop, some went for potatos, others for milk or onions,” says Wilson Pulido a representative for the region.
“After the floods destroyed everything everyone’s in debt and then the government floods us with Peruvian onions, MercoSur, the TLC.” he says.
“Now it costs 55,000 pesos to get a load of onions but we have to sell that load at 20,000 pesos, we are losing 70 percent on every load”
Back in Paipa Pacho drives down the valley to ready himself for the Town Hall Meeting and tells me, “What other choice do the people here have? They are honest, they don’t know how to steal, they aren’t guerrillas, they only want to work with dignity to get a better quality of life for their families”
You can only step over peoples human rights for so long until they have nothing left to lose and the stoic Boyacenses had nothing left to lose. They took the roads.
How The Movement Spread
1. The Watercooler of Dissent: Fruit & Vegetable Markets
Colombia’s National Agrarian Strike started as grassroots as it gets: in fruit and veg markets across Boyaca where farmers and sellers had been swapping stories of dwindling profits and soaring losses for years.
It was here Pacho says: “farmers communicated and organized every single wednesday”
2. Protest Leaders Organize While President Santos Laughs
“Wearing the Ruana gives me pride but it also makes me easily identifiable and I have made many enemies” says César Pachon
On May 7th 2013 representatives for farmers convened in Bogotá to alert the the government about the crisis in its agricultural sector. Speeches on Youtube by César Pachon and Florentino Borda show how their microphones are cut which was considered incredibly condescending by farmers.
The government gave them empty promises but the congregation served an important purpose to Pachón and Borda because they were able to network with other sidelined farmers from provinces across the country to coordinate the next strike.
In August 2013 when the National Agrarian Strike began comments by President Santos deliberately belittling the size of the protests infuriated Boyacenses long fed up with their rights being ignored.
“There were only 20 or 30 people blocking the roads” says Pacho, “but when Santos said ‘this so called national strike doesn’t exist‘ overnight we trippled in size.”
The Boyacenses wanted to send a message: YES WE EXIST.
3. Citizen Journalists Shoot Police Human Rights Abuses
“Read and Study or Look at the Consequences –>”
To beat Boyaca’s farmers into submission the Colombian government sent a largely undisciplined, downright violent, and universally feared force of ESMAD Riot Police to stop the protests.
What happened next would shock the western world but comes as no surprise to your average Colombian: these trigger-happy storm troopers dressed like Darth Vader vigilantes began looting and pillaging the countryside.
In the village of Barranco 10 minutes outside of Tunja a potato farmer named Ernesto Torres was selling black coffee to protestors blocking the via Bogotá a mere 100 meters from his home. When the ESMAD arrived protestors panicked and ran up past Torres’ house and into the hills but the police gave up chase and looted the potato farmers’ home instead.
That night the ESMAD broke Torres’ two motorbikes, tipped over a gallon bucket of honey, stole 3,000,000 pesos he had set aside to buy pesticide, smashed the windows and left spent teargass grenades on his childrens bunkbeds.
[quote]”We left the door unlocked because its safe in the countryside, we never thought something like this could happen in Boyaca,” says Ernesto Torres, “Thank god the children were with my father.”[/quote]
“I believe the ESMAD made us stronger” César Pachón told me explaining how the deluge of videos by Citizen Journalists documenting human rights abuses by the ESMAD caused public outrage and garnered the sympathy of Colombian’s from the city.
4. The Town Hall of the Future: Red Boyaca
Citizen Journalist Aida Castro filming César Pachon in Paipas Town Hall
In Paipa’s Town Hall the mood is a mix of elation and tense relief amongst the farmers gathered. Here Florentino Borda, Walter Benavides, and César Pachón give speeches about what Boyaca gained now the strike against the government had been resolved while citizen journalist Aida Castro films and tweets their points.
The sleepy town of Paipa, like many others in the province, have risen up in protest only once before in history: during the Battle of Boyacá in August 1819 that gained Colombia its independence from the Spanish.
This August 193 years later the Colombian elite are again facilitating foreign states as well as multinationals to plunder the countryside at the expense of the human rights of farmers and their families.
What has changed however is a phenomena mushrooming across South American cyberspace called the Town Hall of the Future – online meeting places like this brick and mortar Town Hall in Paipa were concerned citizens come to discuss important topics online.
Online Town Halls like Red Boyaca are the future in bringing people together to fight for their communities by holding human rights abuses accountable thanks to the courageous grassroots reporting by citizen journalists.
There is an old saying in this cold Colombian province: “Boyacenses don’t pray to God for good crops, they pray the neighbors crops will fail.” Now however for the second time in history the stoic Boyacenses are united but this time they are hyper-connected to each other and the rest of Colombia thanks to Citizen Journalism and the Town Halls of the Future. [mc4wp_form]
What happens to a democracy when its journalists and artists are too afraid to criticise those in power and express themselves freely?
This is one of the questions we ask Vilma Vargas – a rising talent in the Ecuadorian art scene who was twice selected for the “World Press Cartoon” in Portugal and awarded first prize at RESET 11.11.11 in Mexico for best caricaturist.
This however hasn´t intimidated Vargas into censoring her outspoken style and while other Ecuadorian journalists have become fearful of rocking the boat her caricatures stand out like a Cotopaxi-sized-pimple on President Correa´s chin.
A Woman in a Profession Dominated by Men
Jake: When the newspaper El Comercio asked six artists to draw a comic with the theme “If Superheroes lived in Ecuador” you where the only woman selected. Does that mean there are 5 male artists for every female or do you think artists of your gender are often overlooked?
Vilma Vargas: Ecuador is characterized as having several renowned artists, as well as many caricaturists. Unfortunately in the realm of graphic humour there are some women who remain in the shadows and very few who have won a place in the press. But in graphic humour like it is in other areas: women are still relegated to second place.
Also history has always been written by men. In the history of art, there exists several women artists, sculptors, philosophers, between other important women that have also been looked over.
Jake: What advice can you give to younge female artists searching for their artistic voice and fighting to be noticed in the world?
Vilma Vargas: I believe that in my country, women and people in general are more worried about how to solve their basic needs than perform some type of art. However people who do choose to have an artistic vocation should know that art is a way of life where you need to embrace risk and to express yourself is the best form of freedom.
Jake: Then for art to become a lifestyle you need to focus on it 100% which is one of the reasons you left your career in architecture?
Vilma Vargas: I believe it was more of a necessity. Passions sometimes impose and its necessary to renounce certain areas of your life to focus on creative work. But I haven’t abandoned architecture completely, its just that “art” wont let me abandon it at all.
On Government Attacks Against Freedom of Expression
Jake: Do you receive enough from your caricatures published in the newspaper Hoy to support this lifestyle or do you need to find other sources of income?
Vilma Vargas: Like you know, the press is passing through one of its gravest ever moments because of government harassment regarding freedom of expression and that has affected various media outlets, including the newspaper where I work. I live off my drawings, illustrations, and ceramic murals.
“Press Freedom”
Jake: One of the major themes to your work is Freedom of Expression, can you tell us the meaning behind drawings of yours like the one of Press Freedom being attacked by bats?
Vilma Vargas: That drawing is based on an engraving by Goya called: “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters”. – What I wanted it to represent is the press being attacked by various shadows.
The worst part is reality is not like the caricature, if you have a different opinion you will not be disturbed by innocent bats but with the entire weight of the law which almost always responds with the interests of the Government.
Jake: What happens to a democracy when journalists fear investigating and criticizing those who are in power?
Vilma Vargas: First there wouldn’t be a democracy, because if not, you wouldn’t be afraid to have an opinion, to criticize others or yourself. The latent risk with these measures and pressures and media laws that infringe on our freedoms is that journalists and news media will start self-censoring, which impairs peoples ability to get information or adequate research on various topics.
The “Legalization” of Attacks Against Journalism
Ecuador´s new “Law of Communication”
Chekhov: What is the new Law of Communication in Ecuador like and in your caricature who are the people in suits and ties coming out of the Trojan horse?
Vilma Vargas: Even before the implementation of the “Law of Communications” there was some pressure and harassment through various means. Now the only thing its done is “legalize” these practices. In the drawing I represent a law disguised as a gift which is lawful but inside swarm several beings that already have incorporated prohibitions in mind.
Jake: Can you tell us about the correlation between what is happening on the national level with respect to the journalists who fear criticizing president Correa and how that has empowered politicians on the municipal level to threaten, harass, and force out of work journalists who are investing municipal corruption like Ignacio Ramos Mancheno?
Vilma Vargas: The problem is that the government only believes in what they say and they put together an entire strategy on the Saturday TV Broadcast Chains to convince us of “their truth”. Thus, it is normal that there are lots of clashes with voices outside of the ruling party.
The former mayor of Riobamba, Juan Salazar, in jail under investigation for corruption.
I don’t know very well the story behind Ignacio’s case, but its clear that like many other people working in the press they have closed the doors on him for not agreeing with the powers that be. Graphic humour is monitored as well, we can already see cases where caricaturists have been mentioned in the Saturday TV Broadcast Chains.
Jake: Can you tell us about my favourite caricature, The Zebra Cow, and how social networks helped spread messages like this caricatures and other images from citizen journalists in their fight to unseat and imprison the former mayor Juan Salazar on corruption?
Vilma Vargas: Its been a long time since I touched the themes of my city owing to bad experiences I had with the directors of a certain newspaper that censured my drawings, however given the importance of the issue, I was again expressing my opinion about the city and from that came the drawing of the mayor from which I understand did not offer any grace to his followers.
Drilling for oil in the most biodiverse place on the planet
Jake: Recently a lot of your caricatures are focused on President Correas decision to drill inside the Yasuni National Park for oil. Can you tell us your feelings about the Yasuni and if you had the opportunity to visit it when you were painting the mural for the bus terminal at Coca?
Vilma Vargas: In effect, I had the opportunity to paint the Mural of el Coca and see the breathtaking nature we have. The city of Coca is a population that has been generated because of the extraction of petroleum.
Concerning the refusal to conserve the Yasuni is not up to the government to decide, its a decision of the country, its something that concerns us all. With this news the world will realise that we have a government that doesn’t give priority to conserving the natural wonders of Ecuador.
“Executive – Legislative – Judicial”
Jake: After the journalist Emilio Palacio wrote that President Correa was a dictator he fled to the United States where he received political asylum to escape three years in jail and 4 million dollars in damages. If you continue to draw caricatures of President Correa like the one with three heads that represent the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of government have you thought of the possibility that one day you to might have to leave the country if you wish to continue expressing yourself freely?
Vilma Vargas: To report and make art or say what one thinks always brings risks. To be free and feel differently too.
While my lucidity has permitted me to continue drawing it may sound counter-intuitive, but the worse the country gets, the more work there is for us caricaturists.
Today on Chekhov’s Kalashnikov we are going to talk with Luis Xavier Solis Tenesaca who works for the Comittee of Human Rights of Orellana in the Ecuadorian Amazon. This organization which works closely with UNHCR is in charge of protecting and defending some of the worlds most vulnerable and forgotten people – refugees that have fled Colombians civil war in search for asylum and a better life in Ecuador.
Jake: Can you explain your work, the organization where you work, and what you specialize in?
Luis Xavier Solis Tenesaca: I work in two areas through a project with UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) 1.- Consulting and advocacy for people in need of international protection, in this case especially for Colombian refugees who are the majority of people who need international protection by the Colombian internal conflict. 2. – Counselling and Advocacy in cases where human rights have been violated, in recent cases we have have had were against human rights violations by the police.
[pullquote align=”right”]FOR REFUGEES:
if you come to Ecuador the first think you must do approach a human rights organizationor ACNUR in Ecuador, inform yourself about the request for asylum before you reach 15 days in the country otherwise the Ecuadorian government will not consider your request.
Jake: What are the statistics, that is the number of Colombian refugees who are living in Ecuador and especially in the provinces of Sucumbios and Orellana?
Jake: What are the statistics, that is the number of Colombian refugees that are living in Ecuador especially in the provinces of Sucumbíos and Orellana?
Luis Xavier Solis Tenesaca: well in Ecuador there are around 56,000 refugees of which 90% are of Colombian nationality! The other nationalities are Palestinians, Haitians, Spanish, Cubans, etc.
Jake: and how does the Ecuadorian government treat the Colombian refugees in comparison with that of other nations?
Luis Xavier Solis Tenesaca: well you´ve got to remember the major part of Colombian refugees were recognised and registered in Ecuador in 2009-2010 after the Bombing of Angostura. Before 2012 Ecuadorian legislation was less rigorous until the issuance of Decree 1182 of May 30, 2012 which restricted access to asylum.
We´ve heard from different areas in the government its position that refugees are an expense to the country principally Colombians which are the majority however this does not take into account the contribution they have made to the Ecuadorian economy with their labour and microenterprises. The government with the issuance of this decree severely restricted access to the right to shelter, so much that of the 100% of requests for shelter only 4% are accepted when before the decree it was about 60%.
Jake: and they are rejected legitimate refugees now?
Luis Xavier Solis Tenesaca: the majority yes, people who have elements of refugees, as well with such small percentages almost all are left out.
Jake: and what happens when they reject one´s asylum, they have to return to Colombia or do they stay in Ecuador?
Luis Xavier Solis Tenesaca: that´s the problem, in lots of cases when there are refugee elements, the need for international protection, they cannot return.
[quote style=”1″]Suppose you are a refugee and your country does not protect you or does not want to protect you, therefore if he comes to seek refuge in another country there is a need for protection, either a regular or irregular armed group, that pursues them, threatens them, makes them fear for their lives or for their political expressions, social, racial, etc.
In lots of cases we have seen that the refugees stay in Ecuador without official documents which puts them in a vulnerable situation, they can be exploited laborally or sexually.[/quote]
This is because the current government decree (1182) left off numbers to the right to be able to recognise victims of violence that the law had previously incorporated under the declaration of Cartegena, but it is no longer beholden in Ecuadorian law. That was part of the law and therefore should be applied.
Life For refugees in Ecuador less famous than Julian Assange
Julian Assange in Ecuador´s London Embassy
Jake: everybody has heard of the Ecuador´s most famous refugee, the Australian Julian Assange, can you tell us about some of the refugees that have fled violence in Colombia but have been forgotten by the Ecuadorian state and the rest of the world?
Luis Xavier Solis Tenesaca: …what you say is precisely the contradiction that has befallen the Ecuadorian state, already on a global level and in a principled way it gave asylum to Assange and a pass to Edward Snowden, however the life of Colombian refugees is not that easy.
The fact of fleeing from a conflict of over 50 years is very complicated, to get to a different albeit close country, finding a place to live, where to work, where to raise children… These issues are really sobering to think about.
[pullquote align=”right”]
“Up to June 2013 the Ecuadorian government has recognized 55,141 refugees in the country. Since 2000, when there were 390 refugees, 168 525 people have applied for refugee status in Ecuador. About 23% of them are children and adolescents.” ACNUR in Ecuador
A lot of the refugees in Ecuador that have fled the Colombian conflict were only able to bring identification documents so there access to rights is very precarious. Generally the same authorities that are making systems where [refugees] are unable to register because of the number of refugee visas, is the one for social security and education.
Afterwards they also become vulnerable because when they start to perform jobs they are poorly paid, being characterized by cheap hard labour, in other cases they are not even paid for their labour…
This is the case for those who do find work, for the rest they have to look at finding more informal ways to earn a living, ways where they are exploited for their situation of always being on the move, which is to say the solutions aren’t comprehensive. There is still much to do in terms of providing refuge, while we agree that it is not just an Ecuadorian problem but an international one, but I think the government should deal with more attention to this sector.
Ejercito Ecuatoriano
[quote style=”1″]The problems are greatest in the zones by the border where the both the Ecuadorian and Colombian civilian populations live in a situation of uncertainty.
They are already violations of rights by the Ecuadorian military, the Colombian military, and armed groups, this is to say they are a population living in the line of fire.[/quote]
Women and Children Refugees from Colombia
The Federation of Women in Sucumbíos is a program that gives comprehensive care to women refugees from Colombia, where programa de atención integral a mujeres refugiadas de Colombia, which “promotes the end of impunity for cases of domestic violence against women.”
Luis Xavier Solis Tenesaca: Also you have to remember that 70% of Colombian refugees are women and children.
Jake: and what happened to the fathers and husbands?
Luis Xavier Solis Tenesaca: there are lots of motives, they were assasinated, they have been disappeared, or the women are on there own, or the husbands come afterwards…
For the part of ACNUR and other social organizations like us at the Committee of Human Rights of Orellana, we have tried to help, provide counselling so there rights are not violated, however the number that we meet is still small compared to the refugee population in total.
Jake: can you tell us about some of these recent cases where the human rights of refugees have been violated by police?
Luis Xavier Solis Tenesaca: There exists many occassions where because of the movement of people that need asylum do not have the correct documentation to travel throughout the country, whether thats because they havent sought asylum with the Ecuadorian state or because the authorities do not know how to identify a refugee and the rights they have.
There exists and continues to exist various detentions by police of people who need asylum, however this is to ignore the constitutional rights of refugees who are in parts 9, 40, 41 and others of the Constitution guaranteeing freedom of movement, the right to asylum and refuge, universal citizenship.
The police have no power in their grading of if a person is a refugee or not so all you can do is apply the documentation and if the person does not have it says they are a refugee or is in need of international protection what needs to happen is to refer the case to the Department of Redwhat to do is to refer the case to the Directorate of Refugees with their facility to analyse and consider the case.
What we know is that there are still abuses principally when they detain refugees working in prostitution, starting first with that yes they are recognised as refugees and can work in whatever lawful activity such as prostitution, secondly you cannot be detained and have their documents withdrawn because the police do not have the power to do that.
The best way to end these abuses is to denounce them so that they do not repeat and to sanction those responsible for denying these human rights.
There also exists illegal detentions of refugees without respect due process, only because they are presumed to have commited a crime because of the stigma that much of the Ecuadorian authorities have of refugees from Colombia.
The World Refugee Crisis
Luis Xavier Solis Tenesaca: The topic of the global refugee crisis as you know is a phenomenon that isn´t going to finish any time soon, rather the situation has worsened, principally in the Middle East with Syria, North Africa, and how things are going there will be added to by more climate refugees and by the adverse conditions in which the world is developing….
For this I believe the solution legal, social, but in the background is POLICY.
Jake: Right now in Australia there is an electoral campaign where the two main political parties are trying to demonstrate to a xenophobic and sometimes racist electorate who can create the toughest policies against refugees to send a message and stop them entering the country, what do you say to them?
Luis Xavier Solis Tenesaca: …what is happening on a global level is to believe that economic crises and lack of employment is due to refugees, that economic migrants are those who take away jobs, however this is only an appearance to hide the truth, which is that the crises, lack of employment is due to the accumulation of capital in a few hands, in the minority, less than 1% of the population.. these political speeches stick in times of global economic crises and sometimes ordinary people usually believe them.
It is therefore important to be more critical about where these speeches are coming from, speeches that are supported by the mainstream media that are repeated until they permeate in the minds of the population.
[quote style=”1″]You have to put yourself in teh shoes of the migrants and refugees and understand there reality, you cannot restrict the right for refuge, its a human right, and governments around the world need to respect that right[/quote]
Refugees under Juan Manuel Santos and Alvaro Uribe
Jake: I want to ask you of the armed groups: paramilitary, military, FARC Guerillas, who are causing the most violations against human rights?
Luis Xavier Solis Tenesaca: generally I believe the Colombian military and the paramilitary. But it seems like the guerrilla in Colombia have forgotten there founding principles and there exists many rural people that are persecuted and killed.
What happens is that it is a field of war, a civilian has to pay the armed groups without reason in many cases, if the armed groups see a frightened farmer, one that was forced to give water to the paramilitaries or the military, they are branded as an informant o vice versa.
Jake: what is the level of refugees under the former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe in comparison with the current President Juan Manuel Santos?
Luis Xavier Solis Tenesaca: Ive already mentioned that the majority of Colombian refugees were granted asylum between 2009-2010, during the government of Uribe after the bombing of Angostura, where the Colombian military bombed Ecuador.
But in reality there is not a big difference in the amount of people that are request asylum in Ecuador between the government of Uribe or Santos. The violence still continues to be common, armed groups of the state or non-state continue to displace people in Colombia, the number of displaced Colombians is the biggest in the world with almost 2.4 million people and the numbers have not fallen. [mc4wp_form]
