Thousands of indigenous people on Monday demonstrated in southwestern Colombia demanding an end to violence, on the day commemorating Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the Americas.
Clashes also broke out between police and protesters in Chile as hundreds demonstrated in favor of the Mapuche indigenous people on the day known in many countries in the region as the “Day of the Race.”
Dressed in green and red and carrying traditional sticks, the demonstrators converged on the city of Cali where they hope to meet Colombian President Ivan Duque.
Photo: AFP
“The main reason we’re marching is the systematic massacres happening in our territories without the government taking any interest,” said Franky Reinosa of the Regional Indigenous Council in the western state of Caldas.
The demonstrators are demanding they be consulted on major development projects and for the full implementation of the historic 2016 peace plan that ended a half century of armed resistance by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels.
Colombian Minister of the Interior Alicia Arango said on Twitter that a government delegation was traveling to Cali to meet the protesters.
The demonstration coincides with the commemoration of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas in 1492.
While the occasion was originally intended to mark the beginning of Hispanic influence in the Americas, for many people in Latin America it is seen as an opportunity to celebrate native cultures and their resistance to European colonialism.
“For us [that] was the greatest ethnocide in the history of our territories,” Reinosa said.
The southwest of Colombia that borders Ecuador and the Pacific has a large indigenous population and is one of the worst affected areas by a wave of violence that has resulted in at least 42 massacres this year, according to the UN.
Despite the 2016 peace accord, dozens of armed groups remain active in Colombia fighting over the lucrative drug-trafficking trade.
Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine.
Representing 4.4 percent of Colombia’s 50 million population, indigenous people have been fighting for territorial rights for decades, using methods such as road blocks to gain attention.
In Chile’s capital, Santiago, hundreds of people, including other indigenous tribes, converged on a central square for a demonstration dubbed “Mapuche Resistence.”
Clashes broke out with police as some people wearing hoods smashed bus stops and road signs, and threw stones at security forces, who responded with tear gas and water cannon.
The Mapuche are the largest indigenous group in Chile and have a long-running dispute with the state.
They are demanding the return of ancestral lands in the nation’s south, much of which has been allocated to private logging companies.
The disturbances came less than two weeks before a landmark referendum on changing Chile’s dictatorship era constitution.
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