Mesa, 57, and his wife, Marma, 54, also a member of the guard, had spoken to the rebels early on.
"They said, `We're at war,'" Mesa recounted. "There was nothing more to say, so I left. But first I told them, `What you're doing is very bad.'"
Across Colombia, dozens of Indian tribes are being hammered by the war. Assassins single out leaders of the Wayuu in northeastern Colombia. In northwestern Choco state, Embera children, whipsawed by war and poverty, have committed suicide. Nationwide, tens of thousands of Indians have become refugees. Some of the smaller tribes, the UN recently warned, are on the verge of disappearing.
Mesa and other Nasa leaders are determined to see their nation avoid that fate.
The Nasa, also known here as the Paez, were not always peaceful. In the 1980s, they formed a fighting group, Quintin Lame, but the violence only escalated. The Indians changed tactics, and vowed to stay out of the fighting. They focused on building a self-sustaining community held together by an overarching philosophy of self-determination and the right to be left alone.
"The government wants to involve us, in their army, in the police, in their informants network," explained Nelson Lemus, an Indian leader. "The guerrillas, they want us to get involved in the revolutionary story, the fight for power."
But "getting involved in war," he said, "hurts our culture, our language, our ways."
As Mesa spoke about the Nasa's efforts to keep the peace, a sniper's bullet came close and the Indian leader and other guards hit the ground.
"We want to talk, to see if they will listen," Mesa said, dusting himself off after the shooting ended. "Sometimes they do listen to us, but lots of time, they do not."
For the army, whose commanders met with the Indians throughout the ordeal, there could be no withdrawal, though Colonel Juan Trujillo said he understood the Nasa's position. But he said it was the army's job to fight off the rebels.
"We are the state here," he said.
Still, Mesa was not about to give up. One recent day, he calmly trudged across Tacueyo, generally oblivious to the shooting around him. What he faced, though, was at times heartbreaking. A 2-week-old girl had died; villagers debated whether the missiles and bullets that had raked the fields near her home were to blame.
But not all the news was bad. When townspeople became concerned that light tanks were being positioned too close to where most villagers had escaped, Mesa was able to get a tank commander to hold off.
And when a young man was detained by soldiers, suspected of helping the rebels, Mesa was able to get the army to turn over the young man.
"You see," Mesa said, leading him away. "Talking is the best way to resolve things."
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