Photos: Polinizaciones, Carolina Caycedo, ASOQUIMBO & Descolonizando La Jagua.
The threat of the Quimbo Hydroelectric Project at its final hour,
the Huilense people stand once again in defense of the Yuma River and their
territory
In what has been close to eight years of struggle for a territory,
a free and dignified river, the communities affected by the
Quimbo Hydroelectric Project in the center of the
department of Huila, Colombia has reached its most critical point. The
multinational company responsible for the hydroelectric project, Emgesa
(Endesa-Enel), has only completed a portion of the environmental, social and infrastructure
requirements that they are required to have completed prior to the filling of
the dam’s reservoir which started at 5am on June 30th.
Emgesa's director Lucio Rubio told press the dam would be operational by
September of this year and will be completely filled in its 8.500 Ha reservoir
by early next year.
The communities that have organized and struggled for these years
have done so as the Association of Affected Peoples of Quimbo Hydroelectric
Project (ASOQUIMBO) and the Movement Ríos Vivos Colombia. Since the beginning
when Uribe handing over nearly 10,000 Ha of land to a foreign company as
“public utility” in 2008, every single aspect of the environmental license for
the Quimbo Hydroelectric project has either been systematically ignored by the
ANLA (National Authority of Environmental Licenses), or changed to favor the
company´s needs disregarding the people, communities and the ecosystems. One of
these cases is of the Ávila
Family, the owners and caretakers of the property
known as “Las Juntas” in La Jagua, who had their 16 Ha of land used for mixed
crops and small scale dairy cattle that has supported the family for over eight
decades. “We lost everything, this land is what has supported my family for
generations and all we demanded was to relocated or compensated fairly as
stated in the environmental license ¨ the same or better condition¨ and now the
State expropriates us a forces us to accept less than half of the land´s worth”
lamented Jose Ávila one of the brothers who herds cattle on the land.
Mobilization ¡The River of Life!
In March of this year ASOQUIMBO and Ríos Vivos in accompaniment of
writer William Ospina organized and traveled the National
Mobilization of the Defense of the Magdalena (Yuma) River, the territories, (The River of Life), a territorial journey following the
Yuma River through its first bioregions, the Colombian Massif and the Upper
Magdalena in the departments of Huila and Tolima, visiting the territories
affected by the 17 dams that are intended to be built as part of the Master
Advantage Plan of the Magdalena River. The beginning initiated in San Agustin
passing through all the places where dams exist or are planned, Pitalito,
Timana, La Jagua, Hobo, Neiva, Aipe, going throughout Tolima to Honda and
finishing in Dorada (Caldas) with a ceremony in the river.
In the first part of journey following the river there were
marches, forums, press conferences where all the aspects and threats related to
the Master
Advantage Plan of the Magdalena River, which the
national government is putting into effect through the entity CORMAGDALENA in
conjunction with the Chinese government´s state-owned company Hydrochina. The
Master Advantage Plan seeks to turn the upper part of the river into a system
of hydroelectric dams (the electricity is for industrial and not social needs)
and from the middle to the lower region of the river it will be dredged to
allow large container ships to be able to go up from the Caribbean Sea to Honda
and connect with railways and highways to the pacific coast port of
Buenaventura.
Master Advantage Plan of the Magdalena River
Just as the Quimbo H.P. has been built by consortiums and sub
contracts, the group
Navelena made up of the Brazilian company Odebrecht and the Colombian Valores
and Contratos (Valorcon) will be in charge of the
dredging and nagavenatility of the river. According to the magazine Portafolio,
the dredging while have to allow for a width, depth, and curvature of a canal
that allows container ships with up to 7,200 tons go up from Barranquilla to
Barracabermeja; ships with 6,000 tons from Barracabermeja to Puerto Berrio, and
ships with 800 tons from Puerto Berrio to Puerto Salgar. With those statistics
that responsible entities aim to reach a fluid transport along the 652
kilometers from Barranquilla to Barrancabermeja. The goal is to surpass 1.2
million annual tons in 2014 to 6 million annual tons of our goods for
exportation. The terms of the contract with Navelena are for 13.5 years at over
2 billion pesos. According to the National University of Colombia the aims of
nagavibility for the river
are unattainable do to the natural amount of
sediments that the river has as well as the social and environmental impacts
since the river.
The Plan also contemplates a cascade of hydroelectric dams
starting in the Colombian Massif going all the way down to Honda: Guarapas, 140
MW & Chillurco 180 MW (both in Pitalito), Oporapa 220MW (in Oporapa),
Pericongo 80 MW (in Timana), The Quimbo 400 MW (Central Huila), Betania 520 MW
(built and functioning in Yaguara), The Manso 140 MW (in Neiva), Veraguas 130
MW (in Aipe), Bateas 140 MW (in Villavieja) and continuing into Tolima with the
Basilias 140MW (in Natagaima), Carrasposo 170 MW & Nariño 200MW (in Girardot),
Lame 560 MW (in Purificacion), Ambalema 160 MW (in Ambalema), Cambao 100
MW (in Cambao), Piedras Negras 100 MW and 3 more dams in Honda.
Ecocide in La Jagua and affected animals 
In the community of La Jagua, the chainsaws in the hands of the workers
of the subcontracted company Refocosta, has progressively deforested nearly all
of the area that is projected to be inundated with the Quimbo Hydroelectric
Project´s reservoir. Indiscriminately any plant with a trunk over 10 cm is
taken down; the screams of the chainsaws have not stopped leaving a devastating
landscape everywhere.
The massive deforestation which began in March of this year
currently has finished in La Jagua. The first days there was resistance, but
soon enough there were hundreds of loggers all over the thousands of hectares
of land. What poorly organized forest defense was attempted was overwhelmed.
What are left are people taking what wood has not been already taken, but
everything is downed, and environmental authorities are harsh applying full
force of the law on any one trying to salvage the wood that is rotting in the
sun and rain. In La Jagua everything along the Magdalena River from the Juntas
of the mouth of the Suaza River into the Magdalena River all the way up to the
Peñalta farm. Refocosta has taken down all types of trees, destroying all sorts
of dry tropical forest ecosystem from the Paso del Colegio in Gigante to La
Virginia in Altamira, epic beings like the ceiba, iguá, cachimbo, raspa yuco,
caracoli, dinde, bili bil and cedar lay strewn about on the ground, piled on
top of each other flooding the landscape. 
The largest concentration is in the
outskirts of Gigante as the machinery scramble to get as much wood out as they
can now that the water is filling. None the less the Autonomous Environmental
Corporation of the Upper Magdalena- CAM
ordered the dam´s filling to be suspended due to
the fact still over 20% of the biomass has not been logged from the reservoir
area and what has been chopped down is piled up in the area, the ANLA ignored
the CAM´s orders. Once filled, according to the Investigation Group of
Limnology of the National University of Colombia has warned about the possible
explosion of cyanobacteria
in the reservoir of the Quimbo H.P.
With the exception of the first couple of days in La Jagua, the
logging has not had any setbacks. According to the loggers who work for
Refocosta the company sells the wood to the multinational company Cartones de
Colombia and the big box store chain Home Center. Those who end up buying this
wood are buying the massacred and stolen forests of Huila.
Since the logging took place in the areas of La Jagua known as San
José, Las Peñas, el Alemán, Las Cuchas and Peñalta the grape growers and
vineyards in llano de virgin have complained about the fruit bats that have
migrated and are finishing off their crops. Most growers to deal with the
increase in of bats have resulted in applying more pesticides or shooting the
bats. 
The fruit eating and pollinating flying mammals lose their homes and food
but also the parrots in the caves of las Peñas have nothing left to eat, the
snakes are seen killed and smashed along the high way as the escape the chain
saws and the wrath of the falling trees. There are stories of near the wall
where the water has already flooded the iguanas, rabbit and quail are perched
in the tree tops waiting to be rescued by Emgesa´s boatmen or drown in the
rising waters. Emgesa does not recognize the animals as affected; perhaps
it is because the animals do not know how to stand in line outside the office
that they have been included on the census of the affected. Emgesa hires
veterinarians to relocate animals that they find like snakes, turtles, baby
birds, and abandoned pets, though not all have had the best luck, the displaced
animals that have had to endure this destruction also included otters, fox,
ocelot, armadillo and deer.
A
supposed progress
The roads uphill between Garzón and Gigante are already in use, as
is the new longest bridge in Colombia, measuring at 1.8 km is has no lighting
at all, railing and a side walk on only one side, and the pavement cracked in
less than a week after its opening. The Viaduct that connects Garzón with El
Agrado floods with tourists on the weekends taking selfies.
On July 6th the last person was displaced from the reservoir’s
basin area. In the year 2013 Constitutional Court ordered sentence T-135
obligating Emgesa to realize another census of the affected population in less
the 6 months, the company failed to do so. Just one more example of how Emgesa
has washed its hand of so many obligations stipulated in the environmental
license and the ANLA has facilitated and been complicit in the destruction and
ecocide of the territory. 
Francisco
Cabrera along with wife Angela Trujillo, their
children, grandchildren, pets and farm animals are true symbols of resistance,
for a long time they were the last family left in Veracruz. What was once a
community rich in crops, tree, water, animals, people and life now lays
desolate amongst dead and scattered trees, the rubble of demolished homes, and
taken over by private, armed security guards and dogs. Until few days ago the Cabrera
Trujillo family, along with the church of Vercruz
and some 20 trees were the last outcrop of resistance. In the finals days
massive amounts of birds of all varieties took refuge in and around his house
now that this was all that was left of their habitat. “Don Francisco put a
banana on a branch for the birds to eat, “they have always come here and I have
always fed them, forever, where will they go now?”. 
For eight years Mr. Francisco a fisherman has demanded the company
comply with the environmental license to be relocated to a property in the
“same or better condition” then where he was on, something the company has not
been able to do and is offering money to wash so they do not have to meet this
obligation. As the Cabrera Trujillo family loaded their possessions onto the
moving trucked Doña Ángela “We use to live so good, there was good work and a
lot of fish. It is just to say the fishing here used to be so good, we could
live from this… And now there is nothing left, everyone is gone, everyone has
been displaced. It really is awful what has happened to us all. ” 
Currently Emgesa has relocated people to illegal resettlements
that have no permits or environmental licenses. People were relocated into
areas that according to the CAM are of unsuitable ground and some are even to
close to the oil pipeline of the Emerald Energy petroleum company. Most
settlements do not have clinics or schools and some even lack potable water and
in the case of the community resettled
in La Galda in the Municipality of el Agrado, at
one point they were left for two weeks where the water truck did not bring them
the most needed and vital liquid.
Since the beginning the affected communities and academic allies
knew and were saying that this huge disaster of an ecocide called the Quimbo
would happen, from its inception of its irregular approval, it was already know
it would turn out bad. 
In May of this year ASOQUIMBO held a Public
Audience in the main campus of the South
Colombian University (USCO) in Neiva. At the Audience representatives from the
governor’s office, the CAM and the professor, investigator and spokesperson of
ASOQUIBMO Miller Dussán along with Cecilia Quimbayo, from the Comptroller´s
Office of the Republic criticized harshly backed up with studies and proof of
Emgesa´s but also ANLA´s irregularities and unfufilments of the QUIMBO H.P.
According to Dussan, “the tectonic faults near the Quimbo´s wall that if
something were to move the disaster
would be worse than 54 Armeros” (referring to the
volcanic eruption and resulting avalanche in 1985 that destroyed the town of
Armero, killing more than 20,000 people). 
In terms of arguments presented to the audience there is the lack
of restitution of 5,300 Ha of agriculturally productive lands that the company
and INCODER (Colombian Government Land Entity) has to distribute to the affected
population, the individual and collective resettlements without the adjusting
the Basic Plan of Territorial Order -POT-, the destruction of 842
Ha of dry tropical forest, the ignoring and refusal to acknowledge the relocating
and restoration of the San
José de Belen Chapel of el Agrado, on June 10th
president of the community Junta Luz Neldy Bravo with other community
members effectively stopped two men working for the subcontractor
“Bautista & Bautista” in an attempt to “move”
items in the church including the statues, the bell, pictures and tiles that
was not authorized by the Dioceses or the governor. 
Land isn't to be sold, it is to be defended!
The filling of the Quimbo Hydroelectric Project has already
commenced and you can see the flooding in of reservoir from the highway. Even
though the Administrative Tribunal of Huila ratified a suit filed by the fish
farmers of Betania, the filling goes on. The governor like so many others
in the Colombian media who were quiet these eight years that Emgesa trampled
the communities and ecosystems of central Huila and did nothing but ignore and
speak ill of the communities of that mobilized in defense of the territory, now
all of the political class is in an uproar about the illegal filling of the
Quimbo. None the less the Ministry of Environment ignored the regional denouncements and has upheld the illegal filling of the Quimbo that is already accumulating large amounts of biomass that was supposed to be removed before the filling. 
On July 6th, after nearly two years being violently evicted,
ASOQUIMBO once again liberated lands in the struggle to establish a
Peasant Farmer Reserve with the 5,300 Ha that have not been given to the
affected communities. Over 50 peasant families recuperated some 200 Ha in
the area called Llano de la Virgen. That same day ASOQUIMBO reached an
agreement with the police and Emgesa to organize
a meeting with INCODER to settle the land and
census issue in a week or more land liberations will occur. 
On Friday, July 10th, mobilizations occurred in Neiva
in the Santander Park in front of the governor´s office and in Garzon in front of City Hall. In Neiva different theatrical actions took over the city´s
central park and in Garzon a chalk-in was had on the street in front of city
hall. In Los Angeles, California a group of Colombian women took over the
Colombian Consulate with signs forcing the Colombian diaspora to what is going
on in areas like Huila. On Saturday, July 11th occurred the last
mass at the Chapel in San Jose de Belen bringing together over a thousand
people from the region, the Dioceses of Garzon and the different regional
Parishes. 
The
fisher folk and farmers affected by the Quimbo H.P. are on the move and using a
variety of tactics to do what they can to protect their territory from the
announced disaster. The Colombian government, the multinational and national
corporations the plan to continue to impose dams and other projects of
displacement and destruction can only expect a growing tide of resistance from
the communities that each value and cherish more the true wealth and strength
they their territories have given them for so many generations; the rivers, the
air, the land, are not to be sold, they are to be defended.
