Freitas
See also Slugs in Action and Eco-heroes
Note: The Environmental Studies Department has created a scholarship. a cafe has been named for him.
Colombian Tragedy Must Not Martyr Peace
March 10, 1999 By The Stanford Daily Staff
Jocelyn Wiener
Since 1996, Terence Freitas had been working in the Colombian Andes to stop Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum from drilling on the lands of the U'wa people. The U'wa, a traditional community of 5,000 indigenous people, have vowed to walk off a 1,400 foot cliff in mass suicide if Occidental is permitted to drill. Terence Freitas was a friend to the U'wa people. He was a threat to Occidental.
"Terry [Freitas] was finding direct evidence that linked the oil companies to the paramilitaries, and that was very dangerous," said Melinda Selverston, director of the Washington-based Coalition for Amazonian People and the Environment.
Freitas, a 24-year-old recent graduate from UC-Santa Cruz, had been followed by people he believed to be right-wing paramilitaries allied with oil companies in the area. He had also received anonymous death threats at his Oakland home by people who told him "to back off or die."
He was disliked by the Colombian army, and the right-wing paramilitary groups as well as the country's largest leftist guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
"He had problems with every violent actor in the region," according to Coletta Youngers, a Colombia specialist at the Washington Office on Latin America. But his passion for indigenous rights took him back to the area time and again. Last month Freitas returned to Colombia with 41-year-old Ingrid Washinawatok and 39-year-old Lahe'ena'e Gay. The three were members of an indigenous rights group that had filed suit to block oil drilling in the region. They were working with the U'wa to develop an educational and cultural program for their children. Freitas had also been investigating disappearances of members of the community.
On Feb. 25 Freitas, Washinawatok and Gay were kidnapped on their way to the local airport. Last Thursday their bodies were found in a cow pasture just across the Colombia / Venuezuela border. They had been blindfolded and bore marks of torture. Each had been shot at least four times at point blank range.
The U.S. government has placed blame for the murders on the FARC guerrillas. Demanding that the FARC hand over the murderers, the U.S. government halted the incipient peace negotiations between the guerrillas and the Colombian government. The U.S. allegations are based on claims by the Colombian military that they have intercepted a radio conversation between a FARC leader and another rebel. Members of the U'wa who witnessed the kidnapping also accuse the FARC.
The FARC has denied responsibility for the murders, accusing right-wing paramilitaries of attempting to sabotage the peace negotiations. Colleagues of the victims support these claims. It was paramilitaries, not the FARC, who issued death threats to Freitas. The kidnappers wore masks and civilian clothes, outfits more typical of paramilitary groups than of guerrillas, who usually wear uniforms and bandannas. Having just entered into peace negotiations, the FARC would have much to lose by murdering U.S. citizens.
The tragedy of Freitas, Washinatowak and Gay is not an isolated event. It is an embodiment of decades of senseless death and gross impunity. While one group may eventually be implicated in this case, the paramilitaries, the military and the FARC are all guilty of violence. The murder rate in Colombia is 85 per 100,000 people, approximately 10 times that of the United States. Much of the violence is based in Colombia's 80 percent share of the world's cocaine trade.
With so much fear of retribution and distrust of the state, only one in 10 crimes goes to trial. Of these, 99 percent are acquitted. Those who take a stand for human rights are often shot, so most judges are either afraid or cynical. Sicarios, the adolescent hit-men paid as little as $10 per murder, are the more depended-upon form of "justice."
Occidental Petroleum has operated with impunity in such a context, using threats and bribery to secure its hold on the U'wa land. Should Occidental be allowed to drill on their traditional lands, it will destroy the lives of the U'wa people. No group threatens mass suicide lightly. Terence Freitas did not know he would die in his fight against Occidental, but he knew why he was risking his life. Either directly or indirectly, Occidental must be held accountable for his death.
The U.S. government is also guilty. U.S. tax dollars fund the Colombian military, even though the military is indisputably connected to the paramilitary death squads responsible for the great majority of murders in Colombia. And now, in suspending the peace negotiations, the U.S. government will be complicit in converting three tragic murders into thousands more.
In a speech in 1992, Ingrid Washinawatok said, "the human family needs all its peoples to come together if it is to survive." In the last three decades, Colombia has had more than 30,000 martyrs. The exploitation, the violence and the impunity must stop, both within Colombia and internationally.
Accountability must supercede U.S. power plays, multinational sovereignty and a desire for politically expedient punishment. Terence Freitas, Ingrid Washinawatok and Lahe'ena'e Gay were members of that small sector of humankind who acts on its principles in a world where silence and complicity seem the only ticket to survival.
Let us not misconstrue their deaths. Let us not dishonor their lives.
Jocelyn Wiener is a senior majoring in history and Latin American studies.
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