Colombia's Indigenous Raise Their Voices

Ten thousand representatives of Colombia's indigenous peoples marched into Bogota last Thursday and are camping on the grounds of the national university. Friday morning we marched from the university to Bogota's central square, the location of Colombia's national government offices.

Marchers have named the mobilization "La Minga" which, loosely translated, means a gathering of the peoples. As I understand it, indigenous leadership call for La Minga only very rarely. The reason for calling La Minga this time is to be "caminando la palabra" which means "walking the word."

I have been listening to people talk about what the "Word" is, and here is what i have learned: It is the Word of dignity, meaning it is an expression of the dignity of all the native peoples. The Word is a recounting of the history of the peoples, especially their subjugation and oppression, and an analysis of what it means for today, and then acting on the results of the analysis. Walking the Word means living out what the Word calls one to do. The Word has called the indigenous of Colombia to raise up their voices together to appeal to all of Colombia.

I wonder if all of you see what i see: Christians were not the first, or the only, to show reverence for the Word. Scripture is also the story of the oppression and subjugation of a certain people in a certain time and place, and what they then did with their oppression that brought new life. Christians see our this story something universal, because it tells the story of all oppressed and subjugated peoples in all times and places, and helps us to know how to act. We are also supposed to analyse that story based on our own time and place and act out of that analysis. But Christians are not the only ones with a story to tell.

There are two main messages that the marchers brought to the people of the Colombia: First, that all the victims of the war in Colombia, the indigenous, the afro-Colombians, the campesinos, and the laborers, must raise their voices together to end this war and build a new Colombia that serves everyone. Second, the government must stop giving their lands away to multinational corporations that exploit the nation's natural resources for profit to investors outside of Colombia. The latter will lead to the former.

There are a number of specific actions that the march has called for in order to fulfill both of those demands. They include: not signing a free trade agreement with the US, forming a joint commission to investigate and proscecute human rights abuses against the victims of the war, honoring all past agreements with native peoples, rejection of "Plan Colombia" which is US military assistance to Colombia, and a number of legislative and constitutional reforms. This march is really, really organized and clear about their goals. For all you theologians out there: it seems to me they had a very good process of practical theology.

As I reflect on my own participation in this march, I feel that it was a significantact of solidarity, but that there was no real danger of violence, and that violence was not why we were present. There was violence when the march began, because it took place in the more remote lands of the indigenous peoples, far from the public eye. It never seemed likely to me that anything like that would happen closer to the big population areas. But as an act of solidarity it seems pretty important, because of the ugly history that Christianity has as having taken part in and enabled the subjugation, enslavement, and genocide of native peoples in the Americas.

I don't know if any of you have an interest in solidarity with these marchers. Most of their proposals are specific to Colombia, but there are two that US citizens have enormous influence over, which are the free trade agreement and military assistance. If you are interested, Latin American Working Group is working on a petiTion to hand over to Obama on his inauguration. You can find it at http://www.lawg.org/. You can also learn a lot more about these issues. LAWG is a pretty good organization, located on Capital Hill, made up of a coalition of mostly faith-based groups.

FYI, there was a prominent banner that read: Obama: We Don't Want the Free TradeAgreement. The silent majority, who are the poor people around the world, have placed a lot of hope in Obama.