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DECENTRALIZATION IN MULTICULTURAL AREAS: A COMPARISON OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

AND ETHNIC SELF-GOVERNANCE IN TWO COLOMBIAN COMMUNITIES

Marcela Velasco

Political Science

Colorado State University

7/19/2013

Abstract

The paper takes the case of Colombia to study the effect of local territorial politics on

ethnic self-rule by comparing an indigenous community in Karmata Rúa (Antioquia) and a

riverine Afro-Colombian community in the Anchicayá River (Valle del Cauca). After a

discussion on decentralization in the areas of local governance, multiculturalism, and natural

resource management the paper sets out to answer two questions: How are different authorities

and tiers of government working together in multiethnic regions? And how do local politics

affect self-governance in ethnic communities? Comparing territorial politics in the communities

examined supports the argument that local autonomy rights depend on social movement faculties

to capture or transform established institutions and embed rules on ethnic autonomy within

multiple layers of government. Their ability to work with such institutions is constrained by

territorially-based political dynamics affecting property rights and access to land and resources.

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Introduction

In June 2011 Afro-Colombian and indigenous leaders from nine Pacific coast

communities met for a week in Karmata Rúa (Antioquia), an Embera-Chamí indigenous village.

The group of forty leaders had met recurrently over a six-month period in venues that offered

experiences on local and national processes of importance for ethno-political autonomy. They

met to engage in general matters of decentralization involving ethnic rights, municipal

governance, and natural resource legislation. As a model of successful indigenous governance in

Colombia’s unfavorable conditions, Karmata Rúa presented a good backdrop to discuss inter-

ethnic territoriality which centers on matters of social movement agency, self-governance, inter-

institutional relations, and alternatives to development in shared spaces. Present at these

meetings were renowned social movement activists, including veteran elders of Cauca’s

Regional Indigenous Council (CRIC) and Karmata Rúa’s land struggles of the 1970s.

Spontaneous debates conveyed widespread concern about the future of increasingly

disenfranchised and economically deprived communities facing the worst effects of neoliberal

development and violence. Discussions on how to address such problems generally revolved

around buttressing social movements and prompting favorable inter-institutional relations

between adjacent territorial authorities, including ethnic and mestizo local governments.

A special delegation of activists from the Organization of Blacks United for the Interests

and Resistances of the Anchicayá River (ONUIRA) representing Anchicayá (Valle del Cauca),

came to explore Karmata Rúa’s institution-building. Karmata Rúa’s cabildo chose its own

delegate who later visited Anchicayá to learn about Afro-Colombian territoriality and share his

views as a leader and a healer on indigenous governance. Such sharing of local experiences has

been a mainstay of Colombia’s Indian social movement dating back to the 1980s when CRIC

activists visited and received delegations from other parts of the country to share knowledge,

resistance tactics and eventually, “best practices” on territorial governance (Jaramillo and Tobón

2005). The exchange between Karmata Rúa and Anchicayá, two communities with activists

working on resistance strategies and capacity building, presents an example of such an

experience.

I conducted research for this paper by participating in the exchange that occurred

between June and July of 2011. After the event in Karmata Rúa, I stayed on to interview

community leaders and local government officials, observe regular governance activities, and

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hold a meeting with about 30 residents. I then traveled to Anchicayá with Karmata Rúa’s

delegate and conducted two meetings with roughly 50 people, including leaders and activists

from Anchicayá’s different villages to discuss issues of territoriality. Karmata Rúa’s cabildo,

ONUIRA, and the Jenzerá Working Collective1 facilitated the exchange and my visit.

Jenzerá is a Bogotá-based non-governmental organization that supports black, indigenous

and peasant communities trying to find inter-ethnic solutions to local challenges. To do this, they

run an itinerant “Interethnic School for Conflict Resolution” that facilitates meetings such as the

one described in Karmata Rúa. Since 2003 I have either attended or kept informed with various

Jenzerá events in multi-ethnic territories in the departments of Antioquia, Córdoba, Cauca, Meta,

Nariño and Valle del Cauca and realized that hosting such meetings in places where indigenous,

peasant or Afro-Colombians had lessons to share is highly valued by both participants and hosts.

Inter-ethnic exchanges increase solidarity and collaboration among peers, offer political support,

and have the potential of producing innovative solutions to common problems.

In my research I am interested in assessing local governance in different regions of

Colombia after decentralization reforms redrew political, fiscal and administrative boundaries to

address different policy goals, including multiculturalism and natural resource management. So

when I came across funding to do research on collaborative natural resource conservation

(financed by a center at my university), I contacted Jenzerá to explore possibilities of linking my

research on territorial politics to a specific social movement activity. The exchange was

suggested, and after I talks with Aquileo Yagarí and Silvano Caicedo, key leaders in both

communities who accepted my participation, the small research grant was used to offer

additional resources to facilitate the exchange process.

The paper assesses how different authorities and tiers of government are working

together in multiethnic regions and how local politics affect ethno-territorial governance. Though

the two communities are not entirely representative of all cases in Colombia, their comparison

underscores ethno-territorial governance trends that have not been fully explored. The paper first

discusses decentralization and ethnic governance and then describes territorially-based political

dynamics in the two cases. It concludes with a comparison that suggests that ethnic self-rule

1 The Colectivo de Trabajo Jenzerá was created in 1995 by veteran Indian social movement activists, including

Kimy Pernía Domicó diasappeared and assassinated by paramilitaries in 2001 in response to his activism in defense

of the territorial rights of the Emberá Katío of Córdoba, whose ancestral lands were flooded by the URRA

hydroelectric project. Jenzerá is supported by leaders connected to long-standing Indian and black social movement

organizations.

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more likely develops in the presence of social movements that captured or transformed

established institutions. Social movement ability to work with such institutions is determined by

property regimes constraining rights to land and natural resources.

Decentralization and Ethnic Self-Governance: A Brief Review of the Literature

In general, decentralization reforms reorganized territorial relations to ostensibly address

a number of policy aims, most notably the devolution of political power to elected local

authorities, the accommodation of plural forms of governance at the subnational level in

response to multicultural realities, and better practices in natural resource management.

However, these policies produced mixed outcomes as a result of asymmetrical top-down

relationships that reverberate in local political dynamics. This requires more careful scrutiny of

territorial politics, or spatially organized practices of governability (Walter and Kahler, 2006)

containing culturally informed rules and regulations, political strategies, and forms of natural

resource appropriation (Kolers 2009).

Decentralization did not necessarily increase the power of local authorities (Faletti,

2010), nor did it generally empower citizens or improve governance (Grindle 2007). Celebrated

achievements in participatory budgeting, citizen oversight, and accountability were

overshadowed by instances of increased corruption and clientelism (Fox 1994), incumbent use of

local budgets as rents to strengthen their hold on power (Gervasoni 2010) or fragmented political

party systems that stalemated decision-making (Grindle 2007; Ryan 2004). Making sense of such

diverse outcomes requires a more nuanced understanding of local territorialities (Faletti, 2010).

Multicultural reforms in Latin America also expected to deepen democracy by enhancing

inter-ethnic cooperation (Sieder 2002) and devolving power to ethnic groups as a way to reverse

internal colonialism and appease social movement demands. The reforms sought to regulate

cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems within delimited ancestral territories (Cal y

Mayor 2013; Martínez 2013), and required legal pluralism at the constitutional level (Van Cott,

2000). However, multicultural reforms failed to produce the expected beneficial outcomes for a

number of reasons. First, they overlapped with neoliberal structural adjustment policies that

rolled back social services, enhanced the property rights of private business interests, and

secured the government’s ultimate control over strategic natural resources. Second, though

central government transfers yielded critical resources to many communities, they also came

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with set conditions and, in the worst cases, financed clientelism and corruption (Martínez 2013).

Both dynamics contributed to increase inequality and marginalization of ordinary people in these

communities. Following Lucero (2013) multicultural scholars have argued that the reforms were

not implemented properly, and in some areas maximized the power of certain groups or

individuals or made women or Afro-Latinos vulnerable, doing very little to bring-on progressive

change. Again, such diverse effects are to be explained by local interactions between state elites,

emerging political forces, and social movement strategies (Van Cott 2000).

Multicultural reforms overlapped with legislation on environmental governance. Based

on the assumption that indigenous communities share sustainable environmental governance

practices (Dove, 2006), indigenous self-determination and the demarcation of collective lands

was encouraged as an appropriate way to address sustainable development and social justice

(Uquillas and Rivera, 1993). Natural resource scholars concur that decentralization may lead to

effective environmental governance, and are most concerned with problems of collective action

and rule development to manage dynamic natural systems embedded in complicated and

overlapping political environments (Ostrom 1990). Their studies emphasize that natural

resources are managed sustainably in conditions where homogeneous local groups benefit from

clearly defined property rights, high social capital, legitimate leadership, redundant rules

embedded in different levels of government, and central government support (Agrawal 2002;

2003). However, communities are overburdened by large-scale, nonlocal processes (Dietz,

Ostrom, & Stern, 2003) that de-territorialize decision-making. Cultural minorities are especially

vulnerable to this since their cultural survival largely depends on governing their own resources.

In sum, decentralization and multicultural studies highlight the centrality of territorial

politics, social movement strength and elite alliances to understand the difference between the

intent and the actual outcome of reforms. Natural resource studies are more concerned with norm

development, property rights, and the complex embeddedness of natural and political

environments. These different literatures therefore offer diverse viewpoints to grasp the

challenges facing local, multiethnic communities in spaces overlapping different cultures,

institutions and natural environments.

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Decentralization in Colombia

Decentralization policy responded to difficulties stemming from a fractured geography,

partisan strife, and regional economies controlled by vested interests (Bushnell 1993; Safford

and Palacios 2002). These predicaments were compounded by the state’s lack of legitimacy and

uneven territorial presence. Territorial reordering laws modified spatial relationship between

different tiers of government, adding new boundaries to the old municipal and departmental

administrative divisions, sanctioning new actors and changing local power dynamics. This

prompted new forms of inter-institutional coordination and required people with the knowledge,

resources, and technology to navigate the new system, though not all administrations were

equally prepared to exercise new obligations (c.f. Sarmiento 1998).

As expected, decentralization had different outcomes. In many municipalities it led to

innovative governance and increased citizen satisfaction with the administration of local affairs.

In the example of some violent regions, reforms served to facilitate groundbreaking strategies to

resist or mitigate the effects of armed conflict (Mitchell and Ramírez 2009). But the reforms also

opened opportunities for armed clientelism and violent rent-seeking in weak institutional settings

(Eaton 2006), and violent democratization in areas where leftist social movements won local

elections gaining control of local administrations, but then faced right-wing paramilitary violence

informally sanctioned by state elites (Carroll 2011).

The 1991 Constitution also reconfigured the country as a multicultural nation. As in other

parts of Latin America, multicultural reforms applied to separate spaces containing indigenous

peoples, and disregarded the fact that save for a few territories in the Amazon where

homogeneous ethnic groups live in contiguous territories, Indian lands are shared spaces with

other ethnic groups, mestizos, or settlers (Plant 2002). The reforms established collective

property rights of Indians to about 30% of the country’s territory, and of traditional Afro-

Colombian communities to 4% of the national territory (DANE 2005). Collective rights

however, are curtailed by article 332 of the constitution that establishes state ownership of

subsoil and nonrenewable resources.

Ethnic group autonomy rights were recognized under different legislation for blacks and

Indians. Indigenous territories were recognized as public entities and economic development

projects in their land subjected to processes of free, prior and informed consent. Indian cabildos

became recipients of fiscal transfers and were covered by laws compelling decentralized

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governments to invest and devise development plans (see Law 60/1993 on decentralization and

Organic Law 152/1994 on development). They also have to plan fiscal transfers with local

municipal authorities (Congreso de la República, 2001). Fiscal transfers amount to about $242

dollars per person per year according to the government (Presidencia de la República 2006),

though cabildo governors in meetings I have attended widely agree that the figure is inflated and

that they receive about $83 per person. At any rate, fiscal transfers created incentives to increase

cabildo capacities in benefit of the communities, but on the downside also to procure resources

illegally in collusion with local municipal authorities (Flórez, 2007).

Traditional Afro Colombian authorities were not recognized as public entities in the same

manner. Like Indians, Black peasants in the Pacific coast and parts of the Andes, organized

around the collective use of land. However, no legal precedent allowed them to claim collective

titles over these lands (Valencia, 2002). This changed after Law 70 of 1993 created Black

community councils to oversee collective property and natural resources and choose legal

representatives to stand for the communities in relation to adjacent governments. Law 70 allows

Community Councils some degree of autonomy but does not allocate fiscal transfers for them.

Councils must therefore negotiate with municipal governments or seek outside financial support

from national and international NGOs to do their work. After the reforms granted constitutional

protections of ethno-political autonomy, most communities failed to benefit. This occurred

because few regions could endure neoliberal economic reforms that de-localized decision

making to favor large capitalist companies, nor could they fend off an increasingly regionalized

political economy of war based on violent land occupations to control people and natural

resources (Houghton 2008; Oslender 2007; García and Jaramillo 2008; Asher 2009).

Colombia’s environmental governance institutions constitute another jurisdictional layer

overlapping indigenous and black ethno-territorial rights. Environmental policy is ostensibly

designed to alleviate poverty and conserve natural resources (Sánchez-Triana et. al. 2007) and is

framed by a National Environmental System (SINA) organized around centralized2 and

decentralized3 institutions. The SINA functions under principles of inter-institutional

coordination and expects civil society participation in democratic decision-making processes

2 Ministry of the Environment, National Parks System, and Forest Reserves 3 Regional Autonomous Corporations, departments and municipalities, indigenous authorities, and research

institutes

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(Sánchez-Triana et. al. 2007).4 The regional environmental management institutions such as the

Autonomous Corporation of the Cauca Valley (CVC) and the Autonomous Regional Corporation

of Antioquia (Corantioquia) mentioned later in the paper, structure environmental governance at

the departmental level in sub-regions, municipalities or ethnic territories. The first Autonomous

Corporations were conceived as decentralized units invested in local economic development,

most importantly, agriculture and hydroelectricity production. The first corporations were

created in the Cauca and Magdalena river valleys in 1954 and 1960, and then in other regions.

They were modeled after the Tennessee Valley Authority, but also integrated principles of

regional planning following the Economic Commission for Latin America (Blackman,

Morgenstern and Topping 2006). The 1990s decentralization reforms produced more

corporations, but restructured them to position them as environmental governance bodies.

Previous responsibilities in areas of agriculture, infrastructure development, or communications

were passed on to other specialized public and private entities (Sánchez-Triana et. al. 2007).

Environmental governance decentralization has produced disappointing results in

sustainable development and eventually collided with national economic growth priorities that

hinge on competitive, market-based plans in resource- and land-intensive economic activities.

This contradiction became evident in legislative initiatives designed to open markets for

environmental services and extraction, which contemplated privatization in collective lands and

contained loopholes for investors to circumvent provisions on the rights of ethno-territorial

groups (Jaramillo and Velasco 2007). In sum, the reforms produced different outcomes, or failed

to materialize, because of lack of implementation, violence, or opportunistic use.

The next sections describe territorial politics and governance dynamics in the

communities examined. I highlight the way governance institutions overlap requiring

communities to work with or around different tiers of governments.

Ethno-Territoriality in Karmata Rúa: An Example of Indigenous Self-Government

The Embera-Chamí indigenous reserve of Karmata Rúa (also known as Cristianía) is

located in the Andean municipality of Jardín in southwestern Antioquia, one of Colombia’s most

economically developed departments. Antioquia’s southwest is a post-conflict region, where land

4 Other institutions with environmental responsibilities include the National Planning Department, Ministry of

Mining and Energy, among others.

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conflict in the 1960s galvanized left and right wing factions, eventually leading to violent

confrontation. The Peasant and Civic Movement of the Southwest formed in the 1960s in

response to national policies of agrarian reform that also inspired Indian land claims. The

policies sought to modernize labor and property relations in the region, undermining traditional

clientelistic relations and the political control exercised by influential family patriarchs

connected to the coffee economy and the Liberal party (Aguirre 2010). Local political chiefs

generally opposed reform, eventually hardening their position, persecuting peasants and

sponsoring selective assassinations. In response, some in the peasant civic movement formed

self-defense organizations against landowner attacks (Aguirre 2010). When the National

Agrarian Reform Institute was slow to adjudicate land under the prevailing domain expropriation

laws, the peasant movement bifurcated into contentious and legalistic factions.

This fight over the democratization of property rights set the stage for the arming of right

and left wing groups. Thought the ELN existed in Antioquia since the 1960s, in the early 1980s

it increased the use of violence and extortion of wealthy landowners, and turned the southwest

into an ELN bastion. To improve security, local politicians, landowners and business

entrepreneurs organized their own self-defense groups, and the government militarized the

region. After Decree 356 of 1994 on private security enabled networks of civilian informants

known as CONVIVIR, most municipalities in the Southwest, including Jardín and Andes,

formed such organizations, which often colluded with paramilitaries or rogue military

commanders. At this point, indigenous governors across Antioquia blamed Colombia’s army,

guerrilla and paramilitary groups for violating their human rights, calling on them to respect

International Humanitarian Law on civilian rights in times of conflict, and declared themselves

“neutral in armed conflict” by which they swore to deny political, economic or social support to

all armed groups.5

Eventually the southwest became a strategic center of operations for the paramilitary

United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). The Southwestern Antioqueño Block was last

to demobilize in 2005 when the AUC went into peace talks with the government. In the early

2000s homicide rates across the region dropped and security improved. The current peaceful

socio-political relations therefore rest on violent pacification by paramilitary groups who

5 Declaración de los cabildos indígenas de la Organización Indígena de Antioquia. “Los indígenas de

Antioquia somos neutrales frente al conflicto armado, pero no indiferentes ante la muerte.” Unpublished

Manuscript. Medellín, Colombia: Organización Indígena de Antioquia, 2002.

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persecuted an increasingly assertive guerrilla movement, including their alleged sympathizers,

and carried out “social cleansing” activities to rid the region of petty criminals (Aguirre 2010).

The paramilitary capture of key state institutions and their threat of violence to force

sociopolitical discipline, was somewhat restrained by the survival of plural forms of organization

that allowed ordinary citizens to resist and defend democratic institutions. Partly as a result, the

region currently enjoys a more active civilian state presence in the form of social investment,

economic development programs and technical assistance in natural resource management and

production.

Karmata Rúa’s population currently stands at 1,736 and lives in 391 hectares of land, 201

hectares of which are not productive. Family farmers have small plots where they grow organic-

certified coffee commercialized by Karmata Rúa’s Association of Indigenous Coffee Producers

(ASOPICK) through Colombia’s Federation of Coffee Growers; they also sell arts and crafts,

raise cattle and grow crops for domestic consumption (López 2011). The 416 families of

subsistence farmers are consolidating socio-economic, justice and environmental governance

institutions resulting in innovative leadership, territorial expansion, insertion into local markets

and strategic alliances with municipal and departmental governments. This is the product of a 40

year process that began in 1967 when Cristianía first organized to recover reserve lands. In 1980

they led peaceful land takeovers which the departmental government met with violence, but later

addressed by buying 200 hectares of adjacent hacienda land (Salazar 2000). They were the first

community in Antioquia to adapt the cabildo as a social movement strategy and later as an

instrument to plan development and forge relations with adjacent governments.

According to Aquileo Yagarí, Karmata Rúa’s cabildo governor in 2011, the new rights

obtained in the 1990s “increased our responsibilities and exposed our weaknesses in the areas or

administration, budgeting and planning […] so we built a school of government to train our own

leaders” (Interview, July 2009). The cabildo is elected every three years through consensus by an

assembly of adult men and women. Recently, cabildo authorities began to report on their

activities to the assembly every six months or whenever required. Between 1996 and 1997 they

produced the first development plans—which would later be called “life plans” to reflect holistic

conceptions of socioeconomic, cultural or ecological welfare.

In 1998 Karmata Rúa approved by general assembly a constitution known as “Dachi

Código Embera.” The constitution is based on interpretations of Embera Original Law (Karabí’s

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or Karakabarí’s Mandates) and integrates principles from Colombia’s constitution. It helped

classify conflicts affecting family life, land and natural resources, governance and

administration, and social peace. A salient feature of this constitution is the Justice and

Conciliation Council (JCC) which took over justice administration. In an official ceremony,

justices from the municipalities of Jardín and Andes handed over to the JCC, legal records over

which Karmata Rúa had jurisdiction. However, serious felonies are handled in collaboration with

the municipal justice system where the convicted serve jail time. Finally, comuneros enjoy the

right of defense and can resort to the tutela mechanism—a writ for the protection of the

constitutional rights of all Colombians—through regular court systems if they disagree with JCC

rulings or find fault with the legal process leading to sanctions. The mechanism has been used in

several occasions by disgruntled comuneros, but the regular courts have generally supported

cabildo decisions.

The guardia indígena is another important self-governance institutions whose legitimacy

is conferred by the community and their authority represented by a command baton. They

mediate social and environmental conflicts and offer protection to cabildo officials or other well-

known community leaders who, given Colombia’s violence against Indians, are at a higher risk

of attack. They also coordinate with Jardín’s Municipal Unit for Agricultural Technical

Assistance (UMATA) and Colombia’s Federation of Coffee Producers, both institutions that

share production technologies and conservation strategies. The Indigenous Guard has established

some degree of authority in relation to adjacent law enforcement institutions in Jardín and Andes

and in interviews and informal conversations, many inside and outside Karmata Rúa felt safer as

a result of their presence.

In 2011, Karmata Rúa passed an environmental mandate consisting of Diez

Mandamientos (Ten Commandments) addressing matters of environmental governance and

resource conservation as well as respect for jaibanás, or traditional doctors who play a central

role in conflict resolution, health and biodiversity conservation. The Mandate conceives the

environment as a triangle that includes human beings, territory and the indigenous worldview. In

one a meetings, an elder explained that Emberá ancestors never talked about the environment,

and argued that the environmental mandate is a new type of law in tune with current times.

Indeed, the mandate mixes Christian principles (it has 10 basic commandments), social

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movement principles (it refers to territorial and human rights), and traditional principles (it

defends the institution of the jaibaná).

Relations with Adjacent Governments

In the 1980s, Antioquia’s government began to respond to Indian demands by creating

what would eventually become the Indigenous Board (Gerencia Indígena). Antioquia’s assembly

Ordinance No. 32 of 2004 buttressed Indian autonomy and capacity to interact with adjacent

municipal governments by supporting local planning mechanisms. With this legislation,

Antioquia consolidated an ethnic affairs policy (Gerencia Indígena, 2004). Increasing self-

governance in Karmata Rúa has recently compelled adjacent governments to coordinate with the

cabildo and pass their own legislation. Jardín’s municipal council passed Accord 12 of 2010, an

extensive piece of legislation by which it sanctioned “a public policy to recognize and guarantee

the rights of the Embera Chami indigenous community in Karmata Rúa.” The accord

acknowledges indigenous territorial boundaries, agrees to indigenous juridical, administrative,

and political autonomy, and calls for coordinating mechanisms where jurisdiction overlaps with

the cabildo. The municipality recently equipped the cabildo with a city hall office and created a

“veeduría indígena” or indigenous citizen committee to oversee municipal proceedings and the

implementation of the new public policy.

Despite these advances, tensions do exist. In interviews I came across some evidence of

bigoted attitudes, misrepresentation of Indian interests, disregard of their history, and disrespect

or ignorance of the community’s rights and achievements. Some functionaries were critical of

the sinecures granted by the regional and national governments, manifesting that Indian

governments were misusing resources and wasting their electoral potential. Some held the wrong

impression that Karmata Rúa’s infrastructure projects had been transacted and financed by

Jardín’s municipal government, when in reality they were financed by a combination of fiscal

transfers, Antioquia’s government, and Corantioquia. The cabildo has procured international

cooperation and saved its own funds to buy more land, modernize health facilities, and remodel

the school.

Additional tensions revolved around matters of representation. The cabildo is limiting

unauthorized proselytizing and is trying to compel the community to vote united for candidates

who are responsive to ethnic interests. Local politicians who believe they have affinities with

Indian voters or who need this minority vote to win elections took issue with this ban on open

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campaigning. A young politician for example, questioned the degree to which Indian authorities

were really representative of their constituencies, claiming that Indian/mestizo divisions were a

thing of the past; while another candidate running for mayor on an environmental campaign was

rather lobbying cabildo authorities to win their trust.

Some concerns about Indian government affairs are warranted. Jardín is a small, well-

planned town, with an attractive central plaza, so officials in both planning and sanitation

departments worry about Karmata Rúa’s disorganized urbanization and lack of recycling,

garbage collection and waste water treatment. Even though Corantioquia built infrastructure for

waste water and the cabildo manages a local aqueduct, the system has major deficiencies in

quality and service. Another problem is garbage collection. Karmata Rúa authorities argue that

waste management is a municipal matter and the responsibility of Jardín. At the time of my visit,

Jardín’s sanitation department was running programs to teach people how to compost and sort

trash and recyclables. But when nothing got collected, people had to go back to burn or scatter

trash. The landfill is located four hours away and municipal officials argued that the cabildo

needs to contract the private service to deliver to the site.

Most people interviewed however, saw indigenous governance as a positive development

allowing municipal authorities to get more work done by coordinating with established

authorities. Others viewed gains for security and public order since potential lawbreakers would

no longer take advantage of the community’s land. The current cabildo governor for example,

cracked down on Indian and non-Indian individuals using an abandoned peasant community

meeting house in the limits of reserve land to sell drugs.

The Land Problem

Landlessness continues to be a problem for 120 families for whom expanding the reserve

to its original size is politically untenable. Cabildo authorities explained that adjacent lands are

too expensive and property owners “are committed to not selling us land.” They described

current power dynamics as dominated by well-established property owners with significant

political and economic clout, who did not welcome Indian territorial expansion. They also

consider that given politics on the ground, by which they mean the threat of violence, land

takeovers are out of the question.

To address land shortages the cabildo has resorted to formal mechanisms including the

use of fiscal transfers, as well as funds provided by Antioquia’s Indigenous Board and

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Corantioquia, who is interested in the conservation role that the community could play in this

water-rich, forested area. With Corantioquia’s help, they bought about 1,000 hectares of land in a

remote area called Dojuro in the municipality of Andes, situated at an altitude of 1,800 to 2,000

meters near the limit of Chocó and Risaralda. A 25 km rugged road and a 5 km steep foot trail

separate Karmata Rúa from Dojuro. Campesinos in the area want to move to larger urban centers

and are willing to sell. Some of them have vague property rights or no titles at all, and know that

the process to clear these could cost as much as the land itself. They have accepted the

indigenous guards who are making rounds in the area and have seized shotguns, prevented illegal

logging, and expelled informal miners. However, according to cabildo authorities, the

government has announced plans to dam the Santa Barbara River that passes through Dojuro and

there is increasing mineral prospecting in the region.

The cabildo is destining 90% of this land for the conservation of high altitude natural

forests, where they are guarding patches of second-growth forests and reintroducing wood

species common to the area. Some areas will be left alone because they contain undetonated

bombs left by the military after combats against ELN guerrillas in the 1990s. Another 200

hectares of degraded soil are being recovered for agriculture. Infrastructure projects to attract at

least 35 families to Dojuro began in 2006, but people used to Karmata Rúa’s proximity to regular

government and market services, including jobs and transportation, reject Dojuro as a living

alternative. Though traditional families, or those who believe in Dojuro as a political project

seem more motivated to settle there.

Anchicayá: Limits to Autonomy in Black Territories

Anchicayá in the municipality of Buenaventura, Colombia’s Pacific littoral, a land

frontier that until recently was a poor and isolated, but relatively peaceful region. Until the 1950s

the littoral’s growing population still depended on subsistence economies. After that, territorial

pressures increased as integrating peripheral areas to benefit modernization became a

government imperative (Asher, 2009). By the 1980s violent entrepreneurs, some of them

interested in investing drug trafficking profits, easily targeted local institutions (García and

Jaramillo, 2008). Meanwhile, the national government aims to improve infrastructure in the

region in order to attract larger capital investments. Included is the modernization of the port of

Buenaventura, a necessary condition for increased free trade, as well as large mining, logging

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and palm oil projects. Counter-insurgency and containment of illegal drug trafficking are also top

government priorities in the region. Violence in the municipality of Buenaventura, as in other

parts of the Pacific, has been explained in its connection to such modernization projects and

territorial struggles between different armed actors for control of strategic legal and illegal

resources (Molano 2007). In the backdrop is the forced displacement of entire communities from

both rural and urban areas.

Anchicayá’s population of approximately 6,000 descends from African slaves and has a

rich cultural tradition and a common past and identity setting it apart from other socio-cultural

groups (Escobar 2008; Asher 2009). They live in collective lands covering tropical rainforests

and mangroves. Their territory is organized in nine Community Councils—including the Greater

Council of the Anchicayá River which unites fourteen smaller villages. In 1993 they obtained

collective titles to 59,024 hectares of what had been government-defined baldíos or vacant lands.

These were once remote lands that occasionally allowed isolated and precarious free

slave and Indian communities to resist oppressive slave and hacienda systems (Thompson 2006).

Economic activities revolve around fishing, shellfish collection, agriculture, logging, artisanal

gold mining, and transportation, education or health services. Sea fishing operations are typically

performed by groups of partners, agriculture is done through communal work teams, and

families maintain a labor sharing institution known as “changed hands” (mano cambiada). These

practices helped preserve resources, ensure enough food and keep social networks. Livelihoods

are now threatened by natural resource degradation and water contamination coming from

unregulated gold mining in the river, and deforestation of mangrove and inland forests. Finally,

coca was introduced to parts of this territory but the community organization forced cocaleros

out, an act of self-governance that has made Anchicayá notorious across the region.6

Grassroots organizing began around 1984 when the Committee to Defend the Anchicayá

River [later renamed ONUIRA)] was formed first as a peasant association and later as an

organization reflecting black ethnic identity. ONUIRA is politically aligned with the Black

Community Process (PCN), one of Colombia’s main black organization and its Palenque el

Congal in Buenaventura. ONUIRA and PCN are working together to empower the relatively new

community councils.

6 See for example ONUIRA’s 2009 press release against coca fumigations in nearby Naya River

http://afgj.org/colombian-community-gardens-fumigated accessed May 24, 2012.

15

The old peasant organizations or village committees (comités veredales) are still active,

and so are customary institutions such as justices of the peace who settle problems between

families, and the Council of Elders that includes two representatives from each village. Village

committees take care of most problems and only resort to other instances “when things get out of

hand.” Extended families constitute influential institutions for interest intermediation, property

allocation and natural resource management, and powerful families may pick and choose what

rules to follow. For this reason, ONUIRA and other leaders in the area understand that to be

effective, Community Councils must harmonize old and new laws and institutions, and develop

governance plans and internal rules in local assemblies that include key representatives from all

relevant institutions.

One key division in the river exists between community councils in the middle and lower

parts of the river and those located in Buenaventura’s Eighth District. The latter are more clearly

connected to traditional clientelistic networks operating from the city of Buenaventura, and are

politically aligned with the Federation of Community Councils of the Cauca Valley (FECOVA).

FECOVA formed as a pro-government organization representing black communities in order to

contest the political influence of the PCN’s Palenque el Congal which is more independent from

traditional clientelistic circles and defends ethno-territorial governance.7 According to ONUIRA

representatives, this division is a problem at the time of addressing land and natural resource

management. ONUIRA claims for example that people in the Eighth District are introducing

backhoes for mining without following any type of environmental practice, generating problems

for everyone else.

Relations with Adjacent Institutions

In group discussions people maintained that they only experience the repressive face of

Colombia’s state authorities, citing as evidence the ill state of health, education and security.

Both guerrillas and government armed forces take shelter in churches and schools, and do not

respect communal rules, generally violating the rights of civilians. Military authorities reprimand

people when passing through security controls, and if carrying gasoline or food they may be

accused of supplying guerrillas. In 2011 the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)

7 Personal communication Efraín Jaramillo, Director Colectivo de Trabajo Jenzerá and José Santos, Activist and

Sociologist, Proceso de Comunidades Negras, May 2012.

16

caused three mass displacements in the river. According to a 2011 press release signed by leaders

of rivers nearby Buenaventura on the “Current Situation in Rural Buenaventura,” in their bid for

territorial control, armed groups behind illegal mining are also forcing displacements in

Anchicayá. On occasions however, Anchicayá residents have resorted to self-rule institutions to

set limits on illegally armed groups (e.g. guerrillas and cocaleros).

The Energy Company of the Pacific (EPSA), has the greatest economic and health

impacts on the river communities. The company once was the state-owned CHIDRAL

(privatized in the 1990s) dating back to the 1950s when hydroelectricity plants were built in the

river with World Bank loans. The project changed the river’s natural course and life cycles and

intensified floods. In 2001, EPSA opened floodgates to evacuate 2.8 million cubic meters of

sediment that were reducing reservoir capacity by 40 percent (López 2012). In a matter of days

500,000 m3 were released, causing water pollution, degradation of plant and wildlife, and

economic devastation to about 3,000 people (Defensoría del Pueblo 2005). Since then,

Anchicayá has been trying to consolidate a legal strategy to seek compensation for the

environmental damages suffered.

Government officials in Buenaventura gave the impression that they visit the

communities very occasionally—citing security reasons as an impediment to travel. However,

they support basic health, sanitation and education projects. The government body most

frequently mentioned by anchicagueños was the CVC—the regional environmental management

Corporation. On occasions the CVC has offered valuable support such as the services of a

biologist who collected evidence for the legal process against EPSA, and offers technical support

in agroforestry, natural resource management, environmental education and improvement of

environmental services. Yet in the river, people criticized it for failing to sanction pollution.

The CVC’s performance however is questioned by allegations of incompetence and

corruption, corroborated by government institutions of internal control. The CVC went from

being “a top example of public administration” to being dominated by regional politiquería –or

the politics of abuse of power and corruption (Semana, 2011). This organization of 600

employees and a budget of about 145 million US$ became political spoils managed by a board of

directors who supposedly represent business organizations and community interests, including

ethnic groups, but that is controlled by the network of former Valle del Cauca senator, Juan

17

Carlos Martínez Sinisterra. Martínez was arrested on charges of supporting paramilitary groups

and is widely believed that he still controls regional politics from prison (Semana, 2011).

In 2005 and 2006 alone, the municipalities of Buenaventura and Dagua and the CVC

collected about 5.6 million dollars of electricity transfers to invest in the Anchicayá basin

(Defensoría del Pueblo 2007). By law, hydroelectricity companies with a generation potential

above 10,000 Kw must transfer 3% of their gross sales to autonomous regional corporations (i.e.

CVC) and 3% to the municipalities where hydroelectric watersheds and dams are located. These

funds must be used for basic sanitation and environmental protection of the watershed.

According to the Comptroller General, in 2006 both the CVC and Buenaventura had destined no

more than 10% of these transfers to social investment in the area, and in 2007 the CVC had

accumulated and failed to execute about 6.75 million dollars (Defensoría del Pueblo 2007).

Anchicayá’s communities know about this malfeasance, but the citizen oversight committees that

were supposed to give them a say in these affairs have to date been inoperative.

The protracted legal case to seek compensation for the environmental damages suffered

in 2001 offers additional insight into the inoperability of inter-institutional relations. To begin,

Anchicayá’s communities were divided in their legal action against the company. The villages in

the middle and lower course of the river brought a class action suit against EPSA, the Ministry of

Environment and the CVC. Meanwhile, the communities in Buenaventura’s Eighth District filed

a criminal prosecution against EPSA. The State Council decided in 2008 that the communities in

the Eighth District should be covered by the class action suit.

By 2004 the process included class action suits, criminal investigations, tutela rulings,

and multiple resolutions either overturning specific rulings or mandating compliance. In its

assessment of the legal case, the Office of the Ombudsman accused the entities involved of not

conforming to the principles governing administrative functions, in particular those relating to

speed and efficiency (Defensoría del Pueblo 2007). Finally, a 2009 court ruling in

Buenaventura’s First Administrative Court found EPSA and the CVC culpable for environmental

damages and the sentence was confirmed by the Administrative Tribunal of the Valle del Cauca

department. CVC and EPSA were ordered to pay 150 billion pesos (roughly US$83 million) to

the communities. EPSA must cover 80% and has yet not paid its share.

EPSA is represented by one of Colombia’s largest law firms presumably benefiting from

extensive lobbying. EPSA has denied wrongdoing, and alleges that they carried out a lawful

18

action to maintain the dam following management plans developed by the CVC, and most

importantly, that the river’s main function is to generate energy (Marín 2011). They have tried to

overthrow the whole process by filing a tutela in the Council of State arguing evidentiary errors,

but the council denied the suit. At this point the Council of State is reviewing the whole process

to unify jurisprudence. And the case will eventually end in the hands of the Constitutional Court

and because it affects an ethnic minority at risk, the Inter-American Commission on Human

Rights began to look into the process in 2011 (Marín 2011).

The legal case against EPSA is motivating the unification of most of Anchicayá’s

communities around their local institutions. In an informal conversation with a community

council leader whose organization had recently joined ONUIRA’s unity process, he criticized the

bad advice and political orientation provided to his community by FECOVA (the regional

organization connected to Buenaventura’s clientelistic networks) and was hoping to see better

results under ONUIRA and the PCN. Silvano Caicedo, ONUIRA leader, has faith in “black

people’s history of active community participation and resistance” which will let them prevail

even as “we face abuse from the state and now from multinationals.”

Building on this history, ONUIRA, the PCN, and five Community Councils are leading a

socio-environmental campaign of “Rebirth from the entrails of the River to protect our territory.”

The campaign insists on a “civic and peaceful vision to build democratic solutions worthy of the

country that we want and deserve” and calls for an environmental identity and Afro-Colombian

pride. The campaign endorses education programs, and symbolic actions such as yearly

“balsadas” or boat tours along the Anchicayá River to observe EPSA’s “environmental crime”

and denounce the institutional negligence sentencing them to poverty. Anchicayá is demanding

their right to free, prior and informed consultation following ILO convention 169 ratified by

Colombia and turned into Law 21 of 1991. They argue that EPSA must obtain proper

environmental licenses and consider the rights of people living below the dam. This position has

been supported by the Office of Ethnic Affairs at the Ministry of the Interior and Justice.

Comparison: Social Movement Dynamics and Property Regimes

This section compares territorial politics in the two communities to discuss the role of

social movements and property regimes affecting rights to land and natural resources. The

comparison underscores the relative success of social movements that gain access to or overhaul

19

already existing local governance institutions. The Indian movement targeted cabildos and

resguardos as instruments to reconstruct Indian communities and defend land. These were

contained in Law 89 of 1890, a positivist law that provided indigenous people land stewardship

to mitigate the effects of their transition to a more “civilized” stage. The law however, delimited

Indian lands, recognized the authority of the cabildos, and established that reserves could not be

divided, embargoed or extinguished without court approval.

Law 89 enabled the Indian movement’s autonomy claims thanks to the activist legacy of

Manuel Quintín Lame Chantre a Nasa terrajero, or Indian bound to land under semi-servile

conditions. When the Cauca Regional Indigenous Council formed in 1971, land conflict and

exploitation of Indians were at a tipping point. Rallying the terrajero struggles, CRIC defined an

agenda to recover Indian lands, strengthen cabildos, free terrajeros, disseminate and demand the

enforcement of indigenous laws, and defend indigenous culture. Since cabildos were controlled

by church and local politicians, CRIC placed its sympathizers in cabildos to put a stop to their

use as land distribution instruments in favor of non-Indians (Jaramillo and Tobón 2005).

CRIC activism spilled over into other regions, such as Karmata Rúa where regional and

national authorities first contained their demands with violence, but later accommodated with

decentralized policy instruments. When the constitutional reforms came into effect, Indian

communities that targeted cabildos had already developed governance capacities. The reforms

also granted them more rights as ethnic authorities, especially in the case of fiscal transfers that

created incentives to improve cabildo capacities to access much needed resources. Engagement

with different authorities and tiers of government is on the surface far more collaborative in

Karmata Rúa than in Anchicayá, where indigenous, municipal, departmental and national

legislations are embedded and redundant. In other words, different tiers of government passed

policies recognizing ethnic autonomy and are building up experience working with each other in

specific programs of land restitution, infrastructure development and administration of justice.

Afro-Colombian claims for collective land rights date back to the 1980s when Chocó’s

majority Black peasant population living in public lands organized to reclaim their territories

after land concessions to timber companies threatened their traditional ways of life. Since no

legal precedent allowed them to claim collective titles to ancestral lands, black territorial

cohesion was seriously threatened. The Integrated Peasant Association of the Atrato River

(ACIA) pressed for Black collective land rights with the support of indigenous organizations and

20

Claretian Missionaries in Chocó. Between 1983 and 1987 they secured 800,000 hectares in

Chocó’s Atrato River and the community’s right to manage their forests, thus promoting a local

process of institutional innovation. They also advanced an “ethnicization process” to identify

riverine black communities as a special category of people with rights to collective land. At

around this time, black peasant organizations in other parts of the Pacific, such as the case of

ONUIRA, were also beginning to make their own claims on collective land and a distinct

cultural identity. However, it was only until 1993 that black ancestral claims to land found legal

recourse in the new constitution. But once they obtained these rights, increasing violence in the

Pacific coast curtailed black self-rule, giving these communities few opportunities to take over,

transform or implement the legislation available for their ethnic rights.

As the case of Anchicayá suggests, local norms have not been embedded because black

consuetudinary laws have generally received less attention from adjacent authorities. Though the

Cauca Valley Department passed policy instruments in support of Afro-Colombian rights, they

are not operating effectively. Finally, the environmental legal case against the hydroelectric

EPSA is offering Anchicayá community governance institutions support from middle and upper-

tier judicial institutions and state control organisms that have censured lower tier authorities in

the municipality of Buenaventura and the CVC for mismanaging resources. This may strengthen

Anchicayá’s community councils and ONUIRA, though the extent to which they will succeed

with their local governance project is contingent on the end of armed conflict and massive

government corruption in their region.

Land, Natural Resources and Property Regimes

The comparison reveals mixed results on the effects of property regimes on self-

governance. Anchicayá’s communities have legal titles over large tracts of land. But this land

contains strategic resources including mining and hydroelectricity claimed by the national

government as state property and managed by political and economic agents beyond the bounds

of ethnic authorities. Though the Minister of Mines and Energy granted collective concessions in

San Marcos and Guaimia through resolutions delimiting special Mining Zones for traditional

black communities,8 the National Hydrocarbons Agency has parts of Anchicayá covered by

8 Resolutions 18-1527 of 2008 and 18-1193 of 2010

21

blocks of land available for prospecting.9 Further, the river has been set apart for hydroelectricity

generation since the 1950s. To address governance issues related to such economic activities that

affect the community’s livelihoods, Anchicayá will depend on accessing ILO 169 mechanisms of

free, prior and informed consultation, which are not working properly.

Karmata Rúa is located in a relatively wealthier region with a diverse economy and is

better connected to market and government services that have been harnessed by the cabildo and

community members. Contrary to Anchicayá, property rights are not currently challenged by

national government claims to subsoil. Karmata Rua’s economy in fact, revolves around coffee,

a commodity historically produced by small landowners organized in the National Federation of

Colombian Coffee Growers, founded in 1927. FEDECAFE claims that 96% of the 563,000

coffee growers it represents have less than 5 hectares of land.10 As the country’s leading

parastatal, FEDECAFE historically supported regional economic and institutional development,

and gave its rank and file some opportunities to participate in decision making (c.f. Bergquist

1988). Currently, FEDECAFE and Karmata Rúa’s are working together through ASOPICK on

socioeconomic, environmental, and technical projects.

However, Karmata Rua faces other types of challenges. For one, the population is

growing and the cabildo has little maneuver room to guide sustainable economic activities that

improve standards of living. This may lead to natural resource depletion and will require further

urbanization of their main land base. Crucially, adjacent lands are too expensive and neighboring

landowners are committed to not selling. In response, they are expanding the reserve by buying

land destined by regional authorities for conservation, forcing them to develop a stronger

environmentalist agenda and exploring economic opportunities based on conservation or

environmental services.

Conclusion

In recent years, multicultural areas have been experimenting with a diverse set of policy

reforms pivoting on decentralization. The paper set out to explore how, under these reforms,

different tiers of government work in multiethnic regions and how local politics affect self-

governance. Though in Colombia few territories have benefited from the legal framework that

9 Agencia Nacional de Hidrocarburos. Mapa de Tierras. August 2012

http://www.anh.gov.co/media/asignacionAreas/2m_tierras_220812_2.pdf (accessed 10 September 2012). 10 www.federaciondecafeteros.org (accessed 8 September 2012)

22

enabled them as local authorities, many communities are making efforts to implement the

reforms in combination with social movement resistance strategies, to endure conditions in

territorial contexts marked by armed conflict and socioeconomic inequality. Local faculties to

uphold ethnic rights and manage their own natural resources largely respond to territorial

variations with respect to economic conditions affecting property regimes and social movement

strength.

The paper argues that ethnic self-rule is a function of social movement faculties to nest

rules in different tiers of government by capturing already existing institution or creating new

ones. This is clearer in Karmata Rúa where social movement activists qualified leaders who

either forced the creation of new institutions or redirect already existing ones to enable

community governance. The cabildo was transformed by a contentious process and is supported

by fairly active social movement organizations. Local authorities accommodated ethno-political

autonomy as an agenda to address their own policy aims of security, conservation and more

peaceful inter-ethnic relations. This has achieved some advances in infrastructure and improved

quality of life. However, the community needs more land and has to manage their common

property in a way that sustains a healthy economy, urban development, and natural resources.

In contrast, Anchicayá has a larger territory containing strategic natural resources for

hydroelectricity, forestry and mineral prospecting. Grassroots organization is fractured, even if a

unity process promises to advance local self-rule. However, the region is embedded in a context

of corruption, relative absence of beneficial civilian state institutions, and armed conflict. This is

not unusual in domestic economic enclaves like Colombia’s Pacific littoral. Considering that

black autonomy rights do not enjoy the same institutional history of Indigenous self-rule, it has

been more difficult for black social movements on the ground to effectively work with local

governance institutions to promote self-governance.

This paper highlights the central importance of territorial politics in matters of ethno-

political autonomy. Different social forces map themselves out to hoard wealth and political

resources by capturing institutions, containing populations and changing property regimes. In

Antioquia’s southwest, paramilitaries forced a peaceful social order that subdued progressive

projects and stemmed further expansion of indigenous territoriality. However, social movements

and some elites sustained the conditions that developed decentralized governance institutions by

resisting armed group pressures. Ethnic self-rule has then been contained within formal

23

institutional bounds, such as the regional government’s environmental authorities who have

supported indigenous governance as a prescription for social peace and natural conservation. It

has also been extended by developing alliances with economic organizations like the coffee

producers traditionally sustained by small land-holders.

In contrast, territorial politics in Anchicayá are subjugated by the property rights of the

energy company as protected by the national government. The rent-seeking behavior of the

armed groups and corrupt officials maintains the region in the position of being an extractive

economic frontier, while weaker social movements have seen fewer opportunities to establish the

type of meaningful locally-grounded inter-institutional dynamics that buttress self-governance.

As the natural resource literature highlights, rule embeddedness in different tiers of government,

as seen in Karmata Rúa is a key factor for the success of local natural resource management. If

achieved, such embeddedness also promises to force elite and institutional alignments in favor of

indigenous and Afro-Colombian self-rule.

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