Republic of Colombia
Department of La Guajira
Municipio of Barrancas
Indigenous Community of Tamaquito II
August, 2006
International Group Witness for Peace
Warm greetings,
Knowing your great spirit of cooperation with the communities, we hope
to present
you information about our needs and the damages caused by the Cerrejon
Mine and
its administration.
The Tamaquito II community is suffering greatly from the contamination,
and our
people are becoming sick from the coal dust from Cerrejon's
excavations.
They say that we are not within the mine's area of exploitation, but
according
to the law no community should have to be located less than 10 km from
a mining
operation. The other thing is that they do not take our community
into
account in any way. We hope that you can help us so that the
mining
company will relocate us from here so that we can live comfortably.
We have pursued some projects for relocation with the Municipal
Government, but
they are just playing around with us [making us "nurse from roosters"]
and they have taken away our medical services and medicines, which we
have not
received now for five (5) months.
We thank you for your attention to our petition and we are sure that
you will
help us.
Sincerely,
Jairo Dionicio Fuentes E.
CCN 84.008.882/Barrancas
Governor of the Cabildo [indigenous community government]
Nilson Antonion Ramirez
CCN 84.006.015/Barrancas
Secretary of the Cabildo Committee
Short Term Needs
Transportation
Issues: Sometimes a person from the community becomes ill, and we
have to
carry them out in a hammock because we have no vehicle with which to
take them
to the town. We hope that you can help us with our transportation
problem
to be able to have a vehicle of our own, because we are incomunicado
because we
don't have one.
Medical supplies
Issues: If we had access to medical supplies we would be able to
attend
to people who became sick while we were waiting to be able to take them
to the
town.
Food coupons
Issues: The community, as you saw, has no source of work to be
able to
support our families. We ask for your help in enabling us to keep
our
families happy and healthy, and we have no place to cultivate our food.
Artisanry
Issues: We have no source of work to enable us to buy materials
for our
women to carry out their weaving.
Note: Any financial help that you can provide us with, we would
like to
be sent directly to the community through the Committee of the Cabildo.
Telephone numbers for the Cabildo: 315.672-7675; 315-663-9252;
315-655-9412. [Note: these are cell phone numbers so they
do not
require the provincial prefix if you are dialing from abroad.
From the
U.S., you would dial 011 for international access, then 57 for
Colombia, then
the number as written above.]
Health
We are getting sick because we no longer receive doctor's visits in our
community, and we have no medicine. We need these because they
took them
away. We have no health program and the community has to
sacrifice to be
able to go to the doctor. We are the only community that does not
receive
visits from the medical brigade.
Education
The problem comes from the fact that when it rains the community loses
its
access to the town because the road is impassable. We need our
own
teacher in the community so that our children will not miss their
classes. We hope that with your help we can get the provincial
government
of La Guajira to name a teacher for our community.
THE INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY OF TAMAQUITO WILL BE VERY GRATEFUL FOR YOUR
GESTURES
OF GOOD FAITH AND IT WILL BE A SMALL STEP TOWARDS PEACE.
Long term needs
Indemnization and Relocation of the Community of Tamaquito II
Issues: The community is becoming sick because of the
contamination from
the mine and they do not let us cultivate in their lands. We
cannot raise
animals because they also die. We cannot harvest our crops
because of the
burning of the coal.
Very sincerely,
Indigenous community of Tamaquito II
A page with 21 signatures follows
|