1.  Latest U'Wa Communiques 5/25 and 5/22
2.  10 Things you can do for the U'Wa
3.  Newsweek article

website for further information:  U'Wa
 

COMMUNIQUE TO THE PUBLIC OPINION

May 24 2000

The U'Wa Traditional Indigenous Authorities, Cabildos and other members of this sovereign community wish to make known to the public that our peaceful community will continue on with this struggle for the respect and recognition of our ancestral territory and cultural principles.

Our one purpose is to go on defending our culture and territory.  In response to the ruling handed down by the Superior  Tribunal on May 15, which rules against our peaceful community, we will continue with the second stage of mobilizations.  Because of this ruling we have decided to blockade the road to our territory as a sign that we will continue demanding that the Government and Occidental not initiate their project in our ancestral territory.

We ask that the national and international community support our struggle and be ready to continue fighting for the good of all that lives on this planet earth.  The government has not handed over one piece of the enlarged territory committed to us in Resolution 056 of August 6, 1999, and to the contrary has violently removed us from the Santa rita and Bellavista farms which are property of the U'Wa community.  Lastly the U'Wa community asks for respect on the part of the armed forces, because we do not want these groups to intervene when the U'Wa are peacefully mobilizing.

It is a persons' right to publically demonstrate and mobilize to ask for the observance of our rights.

Roberto Afanador Cobaria
International Coordinator,
U'Wa Ancestral Territory Defense Project.

COMMUNIQUE TO THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC

Cubara, May 22 2000

From the Indigenous U'Wa Community

As the president of the Cabildo Mayor of the ASSOCIATION OF TRADITIONAL U'WA AUTHORITIES and in the name of this sovereign community, I officially present to the national and international communities the rejection of the second ruling made by the Superior Tribunal of the Judicial District of Santafe de Bogota.

This decision is a clear demonstration of the violation of fundamental constitutional rights as well as the individual and collective rights of the U'Wa; the same rights that are in the hands of the national courts created to administer justice in the name of the Republic of Colombia.

Because it is our mission to defend life, the U'wa the will continue on with the struggle.  we also demand respect for a healthy environment, for human rights and for national sovereignty as a principle of historic dignity.  I also ask that the social sectors of the departments of Casanare, Arauca, Boyaca, Santander and North Santander continue with the public uprisings and other popular avenues of pressure which demand that the Colombian government and Occidental Petroleum respect the constitutional, legal and historic millenial rights of the U'Wa as natives of this region and of all colombians.  Additionally, I request that the Constituional Court immediately review the injunction.  This is the only mechanism that will demonstrate, with transparency, the violation of our fundamental rights which occured in the Superior Tribunal of Bogota.

Roberto Perez Gutierrez
President of the Cabildo Mayo
U'Wa Association.

10 THINGS YOU CAN DO FOR THE U'WA

Occidental Petroleum's drilling project on U'Wa ancestral lands.  The injunction from March 30th, which had helped de-escalate violence in the U'Wa region over the past 6 weeks was issued because Oxy's project would potentially violate the U'Wa's 'fundamental rights'.  We now must take action as Oxy and the Colombian government move forward again with their genocidal project.  The U'wa and their supporters in colombia are immediately mobilizing to send the strongest message possible that this project will not go forward.

THERE NEVER HAS BEEN A MORE CRUCIAL MOMENT!

1.  TELL AL GORE TO STOP THE DRILLING - The gore family controls up to $1m in Occidental stock, and al Gore has long-standing ties to the company.  Tell Gore that as a Presidential candidate who claims to stand for human rights and the envoronment, he must use his personal, political and financial influence to end Occidental's proposed drilling on U'Wa land.  Visit your local Gore 2000 or Democratic National Committee office and let Gore know we won't stand for Petroleum Politicians.

Find your nearest Gore 2000 office at:   http://www.algore2000.com/states/index.html 
Or you nearest DNC office at http://www.democrats.org/action/

Come to Los angeles on august 14th - 19th to protest outside the Democratic National Convention

2.  EDUCATE YOUR COMMUNITY - Organize a teach in, demonstration, or direct action in your community in support of the U'Wa and make sure to invite the press!  For ideas and support, contact Patrick reinsborough, Grassroots Coordinator, Rainforest Action Network: organise@ran.org

3.  SPREAD THE NEWS - Write a letter to the Editor or Opinion piece for your local newspaper regarding the U'Wa struggle against big oil and big politicians.  Link your letter to campaign coverage or other current news stories to make sure it's published.  this is an effective way to reach a large number of readers in your area.

4.  SUPPORT ORGANIZING IN COLOMBIA -  The U'Wa and their supporters are gathering again to peacefully occupy the Gibralter 1 proposed drilling site.  They could use any financial support possible to help them continue their work, to feed and accomodate thousands of supporters and to pursue other legal avenues to stop Oxy once and for all.  Please send any donations to:  Amazon Watch, 20110 Rockport Way, Malibu, CA 90265, earmarked 'U'Wa Defense'

5.  TARGET FIDELITY INVESTMENTS - Fidelity Investments, the world's largest mutual funds company is a major shareholder in Occidental Petroleum.  While operating under the corporate slogan, "We Help You iIvest Responsibly", Fidelity is endangering the existence of an entire indigenous culture.  Call, visit, leaflet or organize a direct action at your nearest Fidelity Investor Centre and tell Fidelity to divest frm Occidental!! 

In the US find your nearest Fidelity Investor Centre at: http://personal400.fidelity.com/gen/centers/invstctr.html.tvsr
Internationally, get free phone numbers to call Fidelity from around the world at:
http://www.100.fidelity.com/about/contact/inter.html
Send letters of protest to Fidelity's CEO,  Mr. Edward Johnson 111, Chairman Fidelity Investments, 82 Devonshire St., Boston MA 02109  fax: 617 476 4164

6.  CALL YOUR SENATORS -  On May 9, the Senate appropriations committee approved a major US aid package to Colombia - the bulk of which consists of military aid to an abusive army to support ineffective and environmentally damaging anti-drugs policies.  The aid package will now be considered in the full Senate as early as Tuesday May 16.  Senator Wellstone will offer an amendment to shift funds from Colombian military aid to drug treatment at home.  Call your senators and urge them to oppose all military aid to Colombia, support Wellstone or any other amendement to shift aid from military assistance, increase funds for the internally displaced and retain human rights conditions. 

You can contact your senators by calling the Capitol switchboard:  202-224-3121. 
Or look up your Senator on the internet at:  http://www.senate.gov  
For more information contact: 
Latin america Working Group, 202- 546-7010
US Colombia/Coordinating Office: 202 232-8090

7.  REDUCE DEPENDENCE ON FOSSIL FUELS - The world cannot afford to burn the reserves of fossil fuels that have already been discovered without risking unpredictable and potentially devastating global climate change.  However, the oil industry continues to search for new oil reserves in the earth's most fragile ecosystems, endangering the U'Wa and indigenous cultures around the world.  Work in your community to promote alternatives to dependency on fossil fuels.  To learn more about the connection between the oil industry and global climate change, download "Drilling to the Ends of the Earth" at :  Rainforest Action.  Hard copies available from, Project Underground, 1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94703.

8.  GO TO CALGARY - Join activists on the streets of Calgary to resist dirty oil politics!  The world Petroleum Congress is meeting on June 11th to 15th in Calgary, where it will be greeted by massive public demonstrations against the petroleum industry.  Join the momentum! 
For more information log onto:  http://www.nisto.com/activism/project/petrol

9.  JOIN THE U'WA IN THEIR PRAYERS - U'Wa spiritual leaders invite all concerned activists to join them in prayer and spiritual renewal to continue our struggle for Mother Earth.

10  STAY INFORMED - Subscribe to the U'Wa alert listserve and distribute alerts widely to your networks!  Simply send a blank email from your account to:  uwa_updates-subscribe@icg.topica.com  and we;ll keep you up to date on the most crucial developments.

On most subjects, Ebaristo Tegria can be calm, articulate, as buttoned-down as the shirts he wears and as rational as the computer on his desk.  But words just about fail the 30 year old Colombian lawyer when he speaks of the people who run Occidental Petroleum.  "They want to take the blood from the heart of the world!" he tells anyone willing to listen (a category that has included princes, foreign ministers and members of the European Parliament).  "They want to sterilize the earth, extinguish the Indian community and destroy the universe!".

Tegria says he's part of a divinely inspired mission to save it.  He and other leaders of northeastern Colombia's 7000 member U'Wa tribe have vowed to stop Occidental from drilling anywhere near their territory.  According to the company's geologists, seismic tests suggest that an untapped pool of up to 1.3 billion barrels - a godsend to Colombia's battered economy - may be buried right beside the U'wa's lands.  And thats where the tribe's nature- worshiping priests say it should stay.  Oil is the earth's blood, they insist; pumping it out of the ground would upset the cosmic balance and send the world spinning towards destruction.  U'Wa leaders have warned that the tribe would be ready to commi8t mass suicide rather than let that happen.  Colombia's 35 million people can only pray things never reach such a pass.  Still, many of them welcomed an appellate court ruling last week that will let Occidental proceed with exploratory drilling just outside U'Wa territory.

The project has been on hold since March, when the tribe won a temporary restraining order against Occidental.  Meanwhile the country is enduring its worst recession in half a century, with unemployment at 20% and a sharply devalued peso.  Economists and industry analysts say a major oil strike could create 5000 jobs and add as much as $14billion to the national treasury in the next 25 years.  Otherwise the country's fields are expected to run dry by 2005, leaving the drug lords, the Marxist rebels and the right-wing death squads brawling in an economy breft of its No.1 export.

Even so, the tribe has rallied major US support against the drilling.  Most U'Was live in a world of jungle spirits, not newspaper editorials.  They subsist on beans and berries and speak the language of their ancestors.  In recent years though, they have sent a few dozen young people off to learn Spanish and attend high school or college.  Tegria, the only lawyer among them, began school at 7.  He says his parents sensed that someday the tribe would need his skills.  Five years ago he and other young U'Was grabbed international headlines by vowing their people would leap off a 1,400ft "cliff of death" if drillers violated tribal lands.

The apocalytic threat led to the creation of the U'Wa Defense Working Group, a bloc of nine US based human rights and environmental organisations.  "They talked to us about their deep spiritual beliefs and their role as protectors of the earth," says Atossa Soltani, executive director of Amazon Watch.  "They told us they were willing to die.  It got us incredibly fired up."

The tribe and it's US friends have fought Occidental relentlessly ever since.  U'Wa supporters in more than a dozen US cities have picketed the Offices of Fidelity Investments, the world's largest mutual fund company, urging it to divest an estimated $500 million in Occidental shares.  Protesters have dogged Al Gore's presidential campaign, tirelessly heckling the candidate about his father's close business and personal ties to Occidental's founder, the late Armand Hammer.  The tribe's allies gathered daily in Bel Air, California, chanting and drumming at dawn outside the home of Ray  Irani, Occidental's chairman and chief executive, until he sued to stop the noise.

Company vice-president, Larry Meriage argues that some US groups are using the tribe to push their own agenda.  "The U'Wa issue for them is part of a broader, anti-development strategy to shut down oil exploration around the world," he says.  Such aims are certainly in line with the tribe's religious objections to "taking the blood from the earth."  Meriage says Occidental has been talking with the U'Was since the mid 1980s, and no one mentioned a taboo against prospecting for oil until the late 1990s.  Thats when the tribe began making contact with US environmentalists.

The company claims to be doing all it can to treat the U'Was and the land with respect.  Occidental's engineers insist they know how to tap an oilfield with minimal environmental harm.  And company executives say they used U'Wa maps and voluntarily reduced their area of exploration by 75% to keep from encroaching on ancestral lands.  What's left is no unspoiled wilderness.  The ground was cleared years ago for farming and cattle ranching.

"The [activists] and the U'Was keep repeating that we are going to drill in this pristine wilderness, because it creates an emotional response in the public."  complains Meriage.  "They're tugging on people's emotions, rather than dealing with facts."  But it is a sad fact that oilfields in Colombia have their own kind of life cycle.  The new gusher sets off a stampede of eager job seekers and their families.  Prices, prostitution and crime soar.  There is never enough work for everyone.  The newcomers quickly overwhelm the rural infrastructure of schools, police and health care.  Tribal customs and other local traditions are abandoned.  Eventually the field runs dry.  "Occidental may be able to avoid the direct environmental effects of oil drilling in the immediate well area," says Ernesto Guhl, a former Environment deputy minister.  "But it will be absolutely impossible for the company or anyone else to prevent a mass migration of job seekers to the region, and all the related problems of deforestation, social dislocation, prostitution and damage to the traditional U'Wa way of life."

With or without oil, the tribal life may be doomed.  About 100 miles east of the U'Was territory, a pipeline runs from another Occidental oilfield to the Atlantic Ocean.  Leftist guerillas have attacked the pipeline more than 700 times since 1986, befouling the countryside with eight times the crude that was spilled in the Exon Valdez disaster.  The rebels seem to be staking a claim on the U'Wa land as well.  Last year they kidnapped three US activists from the edge of the tribe's territory and a week later executed them with for bullets each to the face.  Sooner or later the drug lords will discover U'Wa country.  Environmentalists say the tribe's spectactacularly diverse lands offer perfect niches for growing all three of Colombia's chief outlaw crops: cocaine, opium and marijuana.

Yet the U'Was seem ready to confront any threat to their way of life.  The tribe is taking its case to the Constitutional Court, Colombia's highest court.  A final ruling could take as long as nine months.  Meanwhile the company has a legal right to begin drilling.  Occidental has laready spent $15m researching and exploiting the region.  Geologists figure the chance of a significant oil strike here at roughly 20%.  Thast means the U'Was have an 80% chance of being left alone - for now.