Bogota. Indigenous organizations in Colombia have reacted with sharp criticism and protests to a decision by Congress that revoked agreements previously reached with President Gustavo Petro’s government. The various indigenous movements are marching to the capital, Bogotá, to assert their demands.
The National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia,Onic) had demonstrations and other protest actions announced, including a star march from different parts of the country to the capital. A communiqué announced that they “will peacefully mobilize to the city of Bogotá on behalf of our indigenous peoples.”
These protests are taking place due to the “systematic and general non-compliance by the current national government with the agreements signed so far”, according to Onic. Above all, President Petro’s new progressive government has been criticized for not complying with the agreements agreed in the National Commission for Indigenous Lands. For the National Development Plan 2022-2026, consultations were carried out throughout the country, in which the indigenous people were also consulted and included.
The three main points of criticism are the withdrawal of Articles 31, 160 and 290 of the development plan. These refer to the special rules of land ownership on indigenous territories, according to which community land cannot be sold and resource extraction may not be carried out without the prior consent of the community. It also deals with the regulation of special prison conditions for members of indigenous communities who have committed criminal offenses and who do not have to answer to the state judiciary, but are convicted by indigenous courts. Finally, it is about promoting the participation of Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities in public tenders in order to compensate for the severe disadvantage that continues to exist.
In a opinion Onic said that “as a national organization bringing together the country’s indigenous peoples from the Guajira Peninsula to the most remote areas of the Colombian Amazon, its primary mission is to demand and defend the rights of indigenous peoples.” Their highest delegates are in an ongoing advisory process on the 2022-2026 development plan to assess it from the perspective of their communities and to track the state of progress in relation to the agreements reached with the government.
These were the result of a process lasting more than six months and were canceled again in Congress.
Paulo Añokazi, spokesman for the movement, explained in an interview with the Colombian daily El Espectador: “We had reached 231 agreements between the national government of Gustavo Petro and the government of the indigenous peoples. These agreements relate to issues of regional convergence, the human right to food, internationalization and the productive economy , women, family and generations, spatial planning, human security and social justice.”
In discussions with Petro, Onic expressed its interest in “building a new society together with him in order to realize what is enshrined in the 1991 constitution and that the 115 indigenous peoples should not be seen as beneficiaries, but as designers of a more democratic, more open and diverse society should be included,” he said.
The movement regards the deletion of the three articles as “historical and systematic structural racism,” stressed Añokazi.