• 23 July, 1998 - Los Angeles, CA - In a joint statement Occidental Petroleum (Bakerfield, CA) and Royal Dutch/Shell Group announced signing of an agreement for cross-border oil and gas exploration and production portfolios. Occidental will exchange holdings in the Phillipines and Malaysia for Shell's holdings in Yemen and Colombia.
• December, 1998 - Mexico City, Mexico - Despite having designated the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - (FARC) as a terrorist organization, Clinton Administration enters into peace negotiations between FARC and the government of newly-elected Colombian President Andres Pastranas.
• January, 1999 - Bogota, Colombia - Peace talks breakdown. A tentative date of 20 April is set for resumption.
• 19 February, 1999 - Northeast Colombia, the Arauca District - Colombian military forces mount a massive attack against FARC rebel strongholds, killing 70 guerillas. For the first time, army warplanes, helicopter gunships, and heavy artillery are utilized in an attack.
• Week of 22 February, 1999 - Washington, DC - The Clinton Administration re-certifies the government of Colombia as a full ally in the War on Drugs.
• 25 February, 1999 - Northeast Colombia, the Arauca District - U'wa Indian leader Roberto Cobario and three American guests --- Indigenous Rights activists Ingrid Washinawatok, of Brooklyn, New York, Lahe'ena'e Gay, of Hawaii, and ecological biologist and activist Terence Freitas, of Oakland, CA. --- are stopped by armed guerillas of Colombia's largest anti-government force, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC.) The three Americans are taken prisoner by FARC.
• 3 March, 1999 - Bogota, Colombia - U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno visits Colombia, tours scene of recent earthquake, and delivers assurance to new Colombian President Andres Pastrana that $240 Million in counterdrug and military assistance to the troubled nation will be delivered.
• 4 March, 1999 - Kenesha, Wisconsin - Apesanahkwat, chairman of the Menominee nation, of which Ingrid Washinawatok was a member, and Ingrid's family receive greetings from FARC as "a relative indigenous group" expressing optimism for the release of the three Americans.
• 4 - 5 March, 1999 - Northeast Colombia, the Arauca District - The bodies of Washinawatok, Gay and Freitas are found by a farmer on the Venezuelan side of the Arauca River.
• 11 March, 1999 - FARC rebels stage two-day bombing of the Transandino pipeline, Colombia's third largest, the eleventh such attack this year, according to state oil company Ecopetrol.
• 14 March, 1999 - Despite admission by FARC insurgents that members of their organization did kill the three Americans, Colombian government announces that peace negotiations with FARC will proceed.

This is the first of a three-part series in which G21 will report on the murders of Indigenous Rights activists Ingrid Washinawatok and Lahe'ena'e Gay, and environmentalist Terry Freitas in Colombia earlier this month.

The three activists were in Colombia to help organize members of the U'wa nation, an indigenous group in northeastern Colombia's Arauca region.

Mr. Freitas was a founding member the U'wa Defense Working Group, which was dedicated to help the U'was block oil drilling on their sacred lands. The U'wa won a legal battle against Occidental Petroleum in 1997 that prevented the California-based company from exploratory drilling on traditional U'wa territory.The U'wa have sworn to commit mass suicide should the Colombia government grant drilling rights on their lands to oil companies. Occidental Petroleum has been seeking such rights.

Mr. Freitas invited prominent indigenous rights activists Washinawatok and Gay to Colombia to help him organize U'wa education and resistance. The U'was are slated to present their case before Occidental Petroleum's board of directors at its meeting in April of this year.

Lahe'ena'e Gay, of Hawaii, chairwoman of the Pacific Cultural Conservancy International, worked to bring educational opportunities to indigenous people and recognition for her own culture. She led delegations of indigenous Polynesians to various international forums.

Ingrid Washinawatok was director of the New York-based Fund for the Four Directions, which focuses on American Indian issues. The Fund awards agrants for projects to revitalize indigenous languages. Ingrid was recognized in New York as 1998 Indian Woman of the Year. She was selected by the Rockefeller Foundation as an outstanding leader in the National Generation Leadership Program. She was co-chair of the Indigenous Womens Network, a group that educates young native women on the historic struggles of their female ancestors. She was on the Board of Directors of the Sister Fund, Native Americans in Philanthropy, National Network of Grantmakers, participated in the Joint Affinity Groups Retreat. She was also a member of the board of directors of the American Indian Community House in Manhattan. She was a member of the Menominee Nation and mother of a fourteen year old son.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu, a Mayan Indian activist from Guatemala, is among concerned activists forming a Truth Commission to go Colombia in order to investigate the complex circumstances which lead to Ingrid's death and those of her companions.

Drugs, oil and violence have been as much a part of the Colombian landscape as coffee for as long as anyone living in that beleaguered country can remember.

From the outrageous wars of the Medellin cartel, to the raging civil war which now includes FARC and two lesser rebel groups against the Colombian government, to the right-wing paramilitary death squads employed by the multinational oil companies who operate in Colombia, blood flows everywhere.

If there is a real Juan Valdez, he's most likely packing an Uzi or a Glock.

Occidental's Petroleum's Cana Limon pipeline is reported by the U'wa Defense Working Group to have been attacked at least 500 times in the last twelve years by rebel forces. The response of the government and the oil companies, observers say, is to hire more paramilitary thugs who have no compunction about killing or "disappearing" unarmed civilians.

Human Rights Watch reported in 1998 that both British Petroleum and Occidental Petroleum did not take "... adequate measures to address serious human rights violations allegedly committed by forces protecting their facilities.''

And then there is Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - (FARC). FARC is Colombian's oldest revolutionary army and said to be 30,000 strong. FARC is believed to control as much as forty percent of the Colombian countryside. It has financed it's "revolution" for years by "taxing" cocaine production and kidnapping foreign nationals for hefty ransoms.

FARC first came to the attention of G21 in August, 1996, when we ran a series of articles about the kidnapping and ransom "industry" which this narco-terrorist organization conducts. That series was on the abduction of Thomas Hargrove, who provided a follow-up series for This Magazine in March, 1998, before testifying to the United States Congress.

The picture painted of the organization by Mr. Hargrove's articles for G21 and his Congressional testimony belie much of the information which FARC presents of itself on its own Web site, produced from Mexico City. Indeed, many of the details of this investigative series will also belie that image. In the interests of fairness, G21 contacted FARC regarding this series this week. Our communication reads:

To: elbarcino@laneta.apc.org
From: rod@g21.net (Rod Amis)
Subject: Regarding Ingrid Washinawatok

Our Web magazine is doing a series on the assassinations of Indigenous Rights activists Ingrid Washinawatok and Lahe'ena'e Gay, and environmentalist Terry Freitas by your organization. This runs counter to everything you say on your Web site and certainly belies your avowed solidarity with the U'Wa. Meanwhile, prominent U'Was are denouncing you in the international press.

We welcome any response you may have on how you can justify this atrocity.

Rod Amis
g21.net