Increase in coca planting and business aggression agresiones empresariales
Business aggression against Afro-Colombians and Indigenous: New destruction of subsistence crops of the inhabitants of the community council of Caracolí in Curvaradó, who live in the Humanitarian Zone, was carried out by bad-faith occupiers from the cattle ranching company La Tuteka.
José Buitrago, administrator of this company, along with other workers, cut the fence surrounding the subsistence crops to allow the cattle to enter and destroy these families’ food.
Several days prior to this event, in the property occupied in bad-faith by that company, armed groups have been observed. The same armed groups have intimidated the residents of the Caracolí community council, among them the disappeared Eberto José Gonzalez Hoyos. Among the armed men who protect the illegal property of the Argote family, witnesses state that they observed the presence of Norberto Narváez, a former member of the security detail of the former paramilitary commander, Raúl Hasbún.
Today the inhabitants of Jiguamiandó observed the entry of heavy machinery for mineral extraction in the territories that border the reserve of the Embera Katios communities. Indigenous and Afro-Colombian families that live along the banks of the Jiguamiandó River both denounced that these business operations took place without their consent.
They maintained that the mining company businessmen are bribing some community leaders and, at the same time, aerial military operations and paramilitaries river operations on the Jiguamiandó River have increased.
The abusive business operations, without consultation, ignore the Constitutional Court Orders and rulings that have demanded authentic consultation and consent of the population that lives in the territories. Meanwhile, in Curvaradó, in the Tuberquia Biodiversity Zone, the bad-faith occupiers received assistance from Ana María Zapata who claimed to be authorized to do so by the Urabá Police.
Today, functionaries of the national government and of the National Prosecutor General have referred to the situation in Curvaradó and Jiguamiandó without alluding to these situations that have been happening in this sub-region of Bajo Atrato, Department of Chocó.
More information in the Constancia
Comisión Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz
Interchurch Justice and Peace Commission
August 26, 2011