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Columbus Day Provokes Indigenous, Environmental Actions WASHINGTON, DC, October 11, 2002 (ENS) - Demonstrations will be held across the United States on Saturday in solidarity with actions in Mexico and Central America to protest the 510th anniversary of Columbus Day. A national holiday marking this day honors the explorer Christopher Columbus, who made his first landfall on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean on October 12, 1492 somewhere in the Bahamas. American Indian Movement leader Vernon Bellecourt said, “October 12th marks the 510th anniversary of the coming of the colonial pirate Christopher Columbus and the beginning of the American holocaust that has claimed 16 million Indian lives in what is now called United States.”
Vernon Bellecourt is a member of the Chippewa tribe of the Lakota nation. He is a founding leader of the American Indian Movement, Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Nathan Robinson courtesy Ohio State University)"We demand respect for indigenous treaty, cultural and environmental rights by way of restitution and reparations that will begin the reconstruction of an indigenous future in America,” Bellecourt said.Thousands of indigenous activists and supporters from Canada to Panama plan to block roads and borders, and hold marches, cultural celebrations, and rallies to demand basic human rights for all native peoples and environmental justice. They are seeking an end to "the militarization that accompanies corporate globalization," and "an end to free trade agreements that exploit native communities and their lands," organizers said in a statement today. The Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice will mobilize activists from the U.S.-Mexico border communities of El Paso, Ciudad Juarez and Nogales to rally at the border. They intend to show their rejection of the "corporate colonialism" embodied in the North American Free Trade Agreement linking Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, and also the Free Trade Area of the Americas by which American nations from Chile to Canada may be linked in the near future. In Washington, DC, demonstrations led by representatives of the American Indian Movement (AIM) will take place at a Christopher Columbus statue to demand, among other things, the immediate release of AIM’s Leonard Peltier, who AIM says is wrongfully imprisoned for the deaths of two FBI agents.
Statue of Italian mariner Christopher Columbus at Union Station, Washington, DC (Photo credit unknown)In New York City, Minneapolis, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Columbus, Ohio, actions are planned at federal buildings, borders, military installations, trade offices, and multinational companies such as Coca-Cola, Nike, Monsanto, and Citibank.Demands of the U.S. based Latin American Solidarity Coalition (LASC), an organizing group for the demonstrations, include halting environmentally destructive bombing by the U.S. Navy on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. The LASC actions will occur in solidarity with Central America and Mexico wide actions against the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP). According to the Inter-American Development Bank, the objective of the Plan Puebla-Panama is to "take advantage of the human and ecological riches of the Mesoamerican region within a framework of sustainable development and respect for its ethnic and cultural diversity." Teodosio Angel of the Union of Indigenous Communities in the Northern Zone of the Isthmus in Oaxaca, Mexico says, “We will block roads, ports and borders and protest multinationals like Coca-Cola to demand that corporations and governments stop robbing our natural resources and basic rights. For 510 years, governments and corporations have ignored us and it continues today with the PPP.” The Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Central American Economic Integration Bank compose the Plan Puebla-Panama's advisory group. The project is composed of eight regional initiatives, which seek to "promote integration and foment dialogue between authorities and civil society," the IADB says. In Managua, Nicaragua, actions against the Inter-American Development Bank on Saturday "will expose their role as a corporate welfare institution," organizers say. Indigenous activists are marching from Costa Rica to Panama City, a distance of over 200 miles, to protest the ecological destruction caused by mining on their lands. In Panama, mining is resulting in disastrous environmental effects in several areas of the country, generating at the same time conflicts with the indigenous communities that live there, according to the World Rainforest Movement (WRM), a Uruguayan nongovernmental organization based in Montevideo. In 1994, one quarter of Panama's land area was covered by mining concessions or applications, and currently over half of the national territory is open to mining concession applications. WRM says, "Many mining sites are located in forests, and 70 percent of concessions have been granted in indigenous lands at San Blás, Boca del Toro, Veraguas and Chiriquí." “October 12, so called Columbus Day, is the day when terrorism began on our lands.” says Andrea Carmen of the Yaqui Nation and executive director of the International Indigenous Treaty Council. "We've seen our lands taken, cultures and sacred sites destroyed, treaties violated, families killed and imprisoned, and so-called development imposed on us with no regards for our peoples’ ways of life," Carmen said. "We are coming together today," she said, "to rededicate ourselves to the struggle for safeguarding our Mother Earth, the continued survival of our traditional cultures, and renewing bonds of solidarity with all peoples of this world who share our aspirations for a better life." Plan Puebla Panama is online at: http://www.iadb.org/ppp/index.asp |
