Death in the Indian reservation

José is an Awa Indian, in love with the earth, who has lived to plant, hunt and survive amidst of the jungle and its dangers. His farm is located deep in the rural area of Barbacoas in the province of Nariño, in a place that is so remote and isolated that to get there could take two days. The routine of his country life was broken last February 4 when he had to leave his wife and his children and run through the jungle to avoid being assassinated. On that day, at 2 p.m., as they were working on their plots of land in the Tortugaña Telembí reservation, a jungle paradise of 250,000 hectares (about 618 acres) which is home to at least 25,000 Awa Indians, a group from the FARC arrived. “They first arrived one by one and then there was a steady stream of guerillas,” the timid man said, noting that he knew that they were the FARC because of the insignia that they wore.

The guerrillas grouped them together and asked them if they had seen the Army in the area. Almost all of them remained silent, some out of fear, but the majority because they do not speak nor understand Spanish. A few answered denying the presence of the military. Later, a well-built guerrilla separated several of the men from the group where there were women and children and took them to a small hill that bordered the country house. There, the guerrilla raised his hand and pointed far in the distance at what looked like a squad of soldiers. “So, those men over there, who are they?” he asked. None of the men answered. They knew deep down at that point that their fate had been sealed. Then minutes later, the group of at least 17 men were forced to walk to the banks of the Hojal River, where they were stabbed in the abdomen one by one and thrown into the turbulent waters. “I managed to step aside and escape,” explained José, to date the only known witness of the massacre. José believes that they killed them by stabbing in order to avoid noise and not alert the Army.

Until Friday the contingent of soldiers that arrived to the area where the massacre occurred still had not found any bodies. They complain about the lack of collaboration from the Awa community, who are terrified by the cruel attack by the guerrillas, and don’t want to get involved with any side in the Colombian armed conflict.

They still hadn’t shed light on the events of Barbacoas when a humanitarian commission had to travel to Ricaurte, another municipality in Nariño, in order to verify the claim of a new massacre against Awa Indians that had occurred the previous week leaving 10 dead.
If both massacres are confirmed, that would make 27 Indians who were assassinated by the FARC in less than one week. What is the FARC trying to achieve with such barbarism?

The Awa reservation is located in the area where today drug trafficking is taking place with more intensity. There are illegal crops (at least 20,000 hectares or 50 acres in all of Nariño), cocaine laboratories and drug transportation routes that are being disputed between guerrillas and armies involved in working for drug traffickers. That’s why criminality in municipalities such as Barbacoas, Ricaurte and Samaniego are reaching unheard of levels. Crime rates there averaged around 100 cases per each 100,000 residents, something that is absurd if it is taken into consideration that they are towns that have only around 15,000 residents. Because of all that, and because the Indians had already suffered selective deaths, the Public Defender’s office has warned since 2007 that the communities that live in this territory were at risk, confined by armed groups that don’t allow them to move freely, surrounded by mined fields and threatened by the guns of all the groups.

Because of the very presence of illegal groups, the government decided to send in Mobile Brigade 19 to the area. This also generated mistrust among the Indians, as they believe that, with soldiers in their territory, they suffer even more pressure from illegal groups.

There, in Nariño, some say that the massacre was FARC retaliation for recent military operations, in particular because of a cocaine laboratory that the military destroyed which belonged to the Daniel Aldana column of the FARC.

Nevertheless, until humanitarian organizations like UNHCR and the Red reach the area, it will be difficult to know if these deaths are yet another chapter in the fratricidal struggle for territorial control or if the FARC want to break a community that is trying to remain neutral in the conflict. Meanwhile, José, the only witness, went into the jungle to try and rescue his family. Nothing more has been heard from him since.