“Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others ” Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America. Latin Latin Americ America a has always always been been the target target of all great powers powers due to its fruitf fruitful ul soils, its rich richne ness ss in prec precio ious us ston stones es,, mine minera rals ls,, spic spices es and and boun bounte teou ous s natu natura rall and and huma human n resources. These ones have attracted curious, powerful and covetous people around the world who have come even before Christopher Columbus’ arrival. These men from the old world thrilled by the wonders of such unexplored land started to trade with the natives (an innocent exchange of things that were not common for both parties).Unfortunately, human beings after having something and seeing someone else´s possessions, we immediately show our non-conformist spirit which leads us to covet what it doesn’t belong to us and thus thus make make us comm commit it crime crimes s of all all kind kind like like robb robber ery, y, but especi especial ally ly crime crimes s again against st humanity (which are human rights violations) such as: forced migration, genocide, slavery, forced prostitution, human trafficking, among others. On the other other hand, hand, it’s universa universally lly acknowled acknowledged ged that many many people people throug throughou houtt the last centur centuries ies has recogn recognize ized d Christ Christophe opherr Columbu Columbus s as “the “the brave brave man who discov discovere ered d America” (or the so-called New world) and who’s been honored by having his own day “Columbus day” celebrated in the USA on October 12 th which has been widely criticized because because it’s related related with the atrocities made by Columbus to indigenous peoples during during the European colonization time ( part of the history that has never been mentioned by our history teachers from school). In most of Latin American countries they named this holiday “the “the day day of race race”” or in its Spani Spanish sh vers versio ion n “Día “Día de la raza raza”” comm commem emor orat ating ing the first first encounters of Europeans and Native Americans. Sadly, even though we nowadays live in a techno technologi logical cal society society where where it’s easy easy to get informa informatio tion, n, some some people people still believe believe that Christopher C. was a hero ignoring that he was the forerunner of today’s Latin America’s poverty and enslavement. In the first place, in order to know how Latin America’s misfortune started, it’s important to clarify the process of America’s discovery: First of all, Columbus was not the first person who discovered America; In fact, Leif Erikson was the first European to set foot in the New World (in 1001 AD), then, Vikings started to explore the land but they just made a few voyages. 500 Years later, Christopher Columbus had the first contact with the beaches of the Bahamas in which he and his crew found the natives of these lands (lucayans). They were were as curiou curious s as Christ Christophe opherr and they naively naively gather gathered ed around them looking looking at each other for the first time and exchanging their possessions. Columbus was amazed by the Gold and the precious pearls of different colors and sizes that the indigenous people were wearing wearing as jewelry. jewelry. At that moment, he realized realized he was in a “goldmine”. “goldmine”. After going back back to his land and sharing his adventure, the Spain Catholic rulers decided to finance a new trip to the new world in order to take the resources found over there so that, they could stock up on what they need by themselves and be the monopolist of the trade in spices and tropical plants, plants, etc. etc. In 1493 Columbus Columbus returne returned d to the indigen indigenous ous territo territorie ries s but this time with sevent seventeen een ships ships under the author authority ity of the Spanish Spanish crown crown which has given given to him the permis permissio sion n to invade invade forcib forcibly ly the new world world as “vicer “viceroy oy and govern governor or of the Caribbean Caribbean islands and the mainland of America” dictatorship held until 1500.
Columbus’ regime was the start of a gory period for the native inhabitants of America. After setting up shop on the large island called Española (named by Columbus) which is what we know today as the Dominican Republic and Haiti, he enacted slavery policies commonly known as Encomienda which is “a legal system used by the Spanish crown during the Spanish colonization of the Americas in which a person takes responsibility of a specific number of natives and teaches them the Spanish language and the Catholic faith, getting tribute from the natives in the form of labor, gold, or other products. Many natives were forced to do hard labor and subjected to extreme punishment and death if they resisted” (retrieved from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encomienda). This led him to the exploitation of natural resources, forced labor under brutal conditions and finally to the onset of extermination campaign against the indigenous people all over America. Bartolomé de las Casas recounts better than anybody else what people went through at that time: “the greatest outrages and slaughterings of people were perpetrated, whole villages being depopulated...The Indians saw that without any offense on their part they were despoiled of their kingdoms, their lands and liberties and of their lives, their wives, and homes. As they saw themselves each day perishing by the cruel and inhuman treatment of the Spaniards, crushed to earth by the horses, cut in pieces by swords, eaten and torn by dogs, many buried alive and suffering all kinds of exquisite tortures... many surrendered to their fate, while the survivors fled to the mountains to starve” ( Neitschmann, Bernard, "The Third World War," Cultural Survival I,.Luarterly, Vol 11, No. 3 (1987). Furthermore, the so-called tribute system “Encomienda” instituted in 1495 was a cruel way of fulfilling the Spanish lust for Gold. Every three months indigenous people over the age of fourteen had to give to their commanders a hawk’s bill of gold (if there was a shortage of it, they had to give twenty-five pounds of spun cotton) those who didn’t do their jobs were punished by having their hands cut off until to bleed to death and those who did were given a token to wear around their necks so they can be identified as the ones who carry out their wishes. Natives were not only killed by the murders committed by the people who belong to the old continent (if we can call them “people”). In fact, there was a more effective and lethal way of getting rid of these “subhumans” ( also called "lower animals," with lack of souls as the Spaniards used to call them): the outbreak of epidemics, sexually transmitted diseases and pandemics such as: smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, bubonic plague, cholera, diphtheria, scarlet fever, venereal disease and the common cold brought and transmitted by Europeans and unluckily spread into the non-inmune natives, killing a huge part of the indigenous population between 1520 and 1890 without any mercy and almost instantly. The exact death toll is unknown; however, it’s said that according to the estimate of the initial population, it was wiped out more than 80% of the indigenous tribes during the colonization time. Nevertheless, we believe that this recapitulation of America’s historical events is now just part of our past and that no longer exists in our societies. We innocently think that the ethnic minority annihilation doesn’t occur in such civilized world. The human murder by poverty in Latin America is secret; every year, without making a sound, three Hiroshima bombs explode over communities that have become accustomed to suffering with clenched teeth (Introduction: 120 Million Children in the Eye of the Hurricane Open Veins of Latin America Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent By Eduardo Galeano). Nonetheless, there’s still a never-ending and silent war closer than we ever thought. The
most powerful countries are doing everything they need (even if it’s against the law) in order to take advantage of our inexhaustible natural resources until their greedy hands are completely overflow making themselves more powerful and richer but at the same time making us poorer and more miserable. According to the United Nations there are 60 million campesinos whose fortune amounts to $.25 a day. At the other extreme, the pimps of misery accumulate $5 billion in their private Swiss or U.S. bank accounts. This is just one of the thousand facts that show us the inequality, selfishness and lack of humanity that exists in the current world. In addition to the Spanish colonization, the World War I and II, there’s another war that is unknown for many people here in Latin America: The exploitation and expropriation of the indigenous' territory in the Guajira Peninsula located in Colombia due to the intensification and expansion of the world's largest open-pit coal mine at the Cerrejón Mine. Contrary to the Cerrejon's vision and its "commitment" with the development of the communities that surround the areas where they are operating, Aviva Chomsky, Steve Striffler and Garry Leech have assembled a comprehensive collection of reports in their book : The people behind the colombian coal, describing the horrors, the impact of the Cerrejón mine (in a very detailed way) and the crimes committed against the human rights of these defenceless communities like the Wayuu who have inhabited the region before Europeans arrived in 1499. (University of Arkansas, Fayetteville (2007, October 14). Human Cost Of Colombian Coal Revealed. ScienceDaily . Retrieved November 18, 2013, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071012100630.htm). Before giving details about the cruel but real facts reported on this book, it’s important to know about how this evil and mercenary project started and of course about the companies involved in it. In 1975, The Colombian government invited 17 firms to participate in the bid for mining the 32,000 hectares that form what we know today as the Cerrejón North Zone. Only five of these companies engaged in it and just three of them met the requirements: Intercor, an Exxon subsidiary, was chosen. One year later, Carbones de Colombia S.A. (Carbocol) and Intercor, after an international competitive bid, signed a 33-year partnership contract in the month of December for the development of the coal reserves of the Cerrejón North Zone. This contract considers three stages: exploration (1977-1980), construction (1981-1986), and production (1986-2009). An agreement was signed with the Colombian government in January of 1999 to extend the last stage for another 25 years, until 2034 ( retrieved from http://www.cerrejon.com/site/english/our-company/history.aspx). These events mentioned before, they meant for the indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities the beginning of an unstoppable calvary. The company Intercor took control of every single detail, so they could have everything in favor of them: the spent money on publicity, they approach hypocritically to the residents in order to offer them jobs, carrying out vaccination campaign and among other “favors”; they lure the communities and their leaders to their side in order to neutralize any opposition, they even manipulated the local, municipal and provincial media, so they could hide all the biased information, the truth itself and avoid public opinion; and the worst thing, they convinced and bought the authorities, the police and even the government so that nobody could use the elements mentioned before against Intercor. Unfortunately, the company took advantage of their innocence and needs and lack of information, giving them a promise of
development that was never fulfilled. Instead of helping them, they brought destruction, pollution, famine, fear, disease, and above the extinction of their culture. During the construction phase (building of the mine’s railroad and port) and the expansion of the Cerrejón mine ( 1,482 acres per year), there were thousands of people from different communities (Tobaco, Tamaquito, Caracolí, Espinal, among others.) forcibly displaced, and taken with all their belongings in a merciless and inhuman way to two plots of land (that nowadays have been named as Resguardos) given by Intercor. However, these places are uninhabitable due to the lack of resources and subhuman conditions in which they are. Despite all the warnings that the Intercor company make to the families who dwell close to the construction zone, some of them decide not to abandon their lands because, these ones are sacred for them. The book tells us how they were punished: the mining company opted to enclose the area where the families were living, placing a chain-link fence around it, with locks on an entry door and armed guards to report each move the inhabitants made. Residents were often denied access to water and the company made a policy of refusing to employ any of them. The community has continued to resist for the last 14 years, locked inside a chain-link fence, as if they were in a Nazi concentration camp. ( the people behind Colombian Coal by Aviva Chomsky, Garry Leech, and Steve Striffler, p. 20). As we can observe, almost all the human rights of these people were deeply violated; they didn’t have any mercy either respect for their lives or their relative’s graves; no matter what they had to do, they had to take over every single piece of land they saw as Christopher Columbus did in the past. Some of the consequences that the Cerrejón’s open-pit Coal mine project brought to the dwellers of the northern section of Guajira were: Environmental degradation (the loss of coastal land which led to the loss of offshore marine resources such as: turtles, fish, shellfish, etc. that are part of the Wayuu diet and their income); Health problems: Eye and lung problems in humans and in livestock due to the dust from the road, dietary alterations caused by the introduction of processed food, Mental disorders, social problems like prostitution, alcoholism and increased of violence due to the stress produced by the forced changes brought by the company in their lives; Social change: degradation of Wayuu self-esteem and the devaluation of their social identity, etc. Sadly, the communities and their leaders are still struggling with the Colombian government in order to negotiate the relocation and reparation of their communities. Even though, one of the Colombian laws says that it’s responsibility of the government of this country to protect its citizens no matter their sex, religion, language, political opinion, raze; it seems like this law is not applicable for these vulnerable populations and what is worse, after all the complains that these indigenous people have made to the Colombian court, there is no punishment for those who have made such atrocities already explained in previous paragraphs. Powerful countries have always been “the puppeteers” of the show ( in this case, the wars that Colombia has been going through during the last decades as in example “the drug war”) and our government is the puppet of this performance. Besides that, It’s extremely disappointing to know that there are many people who are not even aware of our enslavement; and much worse, they believe that they will never be kidnapped or they will never experience a dangerous situation like the ones that villagers who live close to the
areas where people from guerilla pass by have gone through. I think that we must be conscious that Colombia’s economic, political, educational and social situation is getting worse day by day because we’re submitted to the government’s will and we have always been afraid of swimming against the tide due to the threat that we know we could possibly have if we do something for the benefit of the whole nation. as in conclusion, i invite you to share this information with your friends, family member, etc and think about of today's Colombia situation, and answer the following questions: after reading this, what are you going to do? What could be the possible actions that together (i mean the whole nation) we can do in order to finish off the corruption of this country? Do you think it's important to change first ourselves and then everybody else? What do we need to change?
http://zinelibrary.info/files/Churchill%20-%20From%20a%20Native%20Son%20-%20Selected% 20Essays%20on%20Indigenism%201985-1995.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples#Spanish_colonization_of_the_
Americas http://www.mnc.net/norway/LeifErikson.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Day http://www.unc.edu/world/2011Seminars/LANC_Study_Guide_Readings.pdf http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day http://www.cerrejon.com/site/english/our-company/who-we-are.aspx http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071012100630.htm
