HEADS WE WIN, TAILS
YOU LOSE
Embera People Betrayed in Urra Dam
Construction
“The [dam] development has meant the
ignorance of our rights, the death of the
fish, the division of the communities, the
death of Lucindo Domico and others …”
Kimi Pernia Domico, leader of the
indigenous Embera Katio people.
Kimi's words reflect the tragedy of the
Embera people, whose territory has been
threatened over the past four years by the
construction of the Urra hydroelectric dam
under the guise of development for the
people. The Embera's drama is similar to
that of people all over the world who have
been faced with hydroelectric dams, which
have proven completely incompatible with
sustainable development.
There are various interests seeking to
profit from Colombia's Urra Dam:
transnational corporations reaping natural
resources; engineers anxious to retain
their jobs; politicians pushing for more
votes; and technicians resolving their
complexes with the natural world. The dam
consortium includes Swedish, Russian and
Colombian transnationals, the Canadian
Export Development Corporation and Dutch
and Canadian banks. All of these interests
are facilitated by the corruption that
parades boldly through Colombian
society.
The case of the Urra Dam has a specific
ingredient that makes it more tragic than
other mega-dam projects: violence.
Indigenous people, priests and
environmentalist opponents to the project
have disappeared and been killed in recent
years. Yet despite these blatant violations
of human rights, the involved TNCs still
claim to promote sustainable development
and defend human rights.
The Story Begins …
Although studies for the Urra Dam began as
far back as 1951 and the environmental
license to begin construction was granted
in 1993, the first time that the plight of
the Embera Katio people was publicized was
in 1994. “The engineers have come to our
huts, but … just to take tourist
photographs," testified Kimi Pernia. "We,
the Embera, don't appear in the studies of
1951 or in the following studies. In 1977,
the zone, including our territory, was
declared a public utility without asking
us. … The country first knew about our
problems through our declaration against
the Urra Dam in 1994.”
Furthermore, although the Colombian
government has ratified a law stating:
“Interested people must have the right to
decide their own priorities in the
development process while this affects
their lives, creeds and institutions, and
the lands that they use or occupy,” none of
this has been recognized for the
Embera.
In 1994, representatives of the Embera
Katio people rafted down the Sinu River to
publicly denounce the violations of their
environmental and cultural rights, and to
plead for their right to survive. One month
later they were granted an audience at the
environmental ministry, only to be told by
the then minister that "the construction of
Urra will continue, because it offers more
development opportunities than ecological
ones. We publicly assume the
responsibility. This is a ministry for
sustainable development, not for the
conservation of resources.”
Since that time, bitter confrontation has
raged: the Colombian government and the
Urra construction company versus the
indigenous and fisher people who make use
of the river. The Colombian government and
the Urra consortium have employed various
strategies, including intentional delay,
corruption and the provocation of internal
problems in an attempt to divide the Embera
Katio.
Kimi Pernia sums up the government's
dishonest actions towards his people: “The
environmental minister has acted against
us, as he did with our U'wa brothers. … He
signed a document accepting the designation
of a special territory for the Embera as if
it were a farm, dividing us. He ignored the
proposals of the Embera in the license. He
does not respect nor understand our
proposals ... His heart is with the banks
and the transnationals."
Continued Resistance and Struggle
The price of resistance to the Urra
Dam has been very high over the past years.
Eighteen Embera people have been killed,
along with a Cordoba University professor
and two environmentalists. Some ten
indigenous people have also disappeared. In
1998, Alonso Domico Cabrera, the Embera's
spiritual leader, was killed in his home by
paramilitaries employed by the dam
consortium. Another leader and spokesman,
Lucindo Domico Cabrera, was killed soon
afterwards. On another occasion,
paramilitaries detained a dozen Embera,
threatened them and burned their canoes
before killing Alejandro Domico. And the
list goes on…
The fisher and indigenous peoples have
organized various long distance marches,
including one to the Urra consortium
headquarters to protest the disappearance
of the bocachico (a fish from the river)
and another to the Ministry of Environment
to demand a halt to the project. They also
occupied the Embassy of Sweden, a country
where some of the consortium companies are
based.
In 1996, the Embera Katio occupied the
Spanish Embassy to ask for political asylum
due to the extermination of their community
and displacement from their lands.
According to Kimi Pernia, a letter from the
paramilitaries to the dam proponents called
the Embera “guerilla fighters" due to their
opposal to the dam. The dam consortium
asked for permission to fill the reservoir
immediately, and five days later the
necessary license was granted.
At the end of 1998, the Colombian Court
finally ruled in favour of the Embera
Katio, requiring the Urra consortium to
honour consultation promises before
granting the license to fill the reservoir
and begin dam operation. Not surprisingly
however, the consultations have been
meaningless, and none of the indigenous
proposals have been taken into
consideration. In late 1999, the filling of
the Urra Dam reservoir began.
On December 12th 1999, 160 Embera
indigenous people arrived in Bogota after
having walked 700 kilometers. They
installed themselves in the garden of the
environmental ministry and demanded further
dialogue before the flooding proceeded.
Four months later, and still in the garden,
an agreement was reached between the dam
consortium, the environmental, mining and
internal affairs ministries and Embera
leaders.
The Embera returned to their ancestral
territories on April 26th 2000, hoping to
see the results of the agreement within a
few weeks. However, one year later, the
agreements have not been fulfilled, the
murder of Embera leaders continues, and
more than 250 Embera families have been
displaced from their lands to the closest
town.
Low Wattage
All of this ethnocide and environmental
massacre has taken place to obtain just two
percent (340 MW) of the total electricity
produced in Colombia. Other futile damming
exercises come to mind, for example the
Balbina Dam in Brazil which for the price
of one billion dollars converted some
250,000 hectares of tropical jungle into a
lifeless lake filled with putrid
vegetation, killed millions of wild
animals, displaced various tribes and
brought disease into the area. All of this
to generate some 80 MW of energy!
Human Rights Inventory
The Urra Dam process has been a
shameful desecration of human rights. This
is despite the fact that the Colombian
government boasts about its advanced
national human and environmental rights
legislation, and has ratified various
international human rights conventions.
Despite these professions, the Embera have
not been granted any rights by the
Colombian Courts, and laws have been
created to guarantee the smooth continuance
of the dam project. European governments
are also to blame for financing mega
projects like the Urra Dam, projects that
violent all of the fundamental rights to
life, culture, environment and self
determination.
Javier Marin,
FoE Colombia
