COLOMBIAN INDIANS RESIST AN ENCROACHING WAR

Indigenous People Join To Search For Leader

TIERRALTA, Colombia -- For the past several days, they have been arriving
on airplanes and in caravans of cramped buses and wooden rafts, filling the
central square of this frontier town with garish hammocks, tarps and the
acrid smell of campfire smoke.

More than 1,000 of Colombia's indigenous people have traveled to Tierralta,
where the country's northern plains give way to lush mountains, to protest
a war that is consuming their land, language and people.

Their stand has taken the form of a largely symbolic search for Kimy Pernia
Domico, a leader of the Embera Katio tribe that controls strategic
stretches of northwestern Colombia. Domico was seized here June 2 by three
gunmen presumed to be members of the right-wing paramilitary United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). He has not been seen since.

The Indians gathered in the cluttered square -- their faces and legs marked
with ritual tattoos, walking on bare, broad feet, speaking in languages
that predate the Spanish colonization -- hold out little hope that Domico
will be found alive. But in the coming days, without government sanction
and with little security, they will venture onto the cattle ranches of
Cordoba province, whose owners help fund the AUC, and seek the return of a
man who tried to keep war and economic interests from overwhelming tribal land.

"We want him given back to us -- dead or alive," said Luis Ondino Duave,
23, a student and Embera Katio member who traveled three days by bus from
Choco province along the Pacific Coast. "We may be here for weeks, it all
depends. If God permits, we will find him."

As Colombia's decades-old civil war has expanded in recent years, so has
the threat to the country's 700,000 Indians, who belong to 84 tribes and
speak 64 languages. They live on more than 50 million acres of land granted
to them by the government, much of it located in strategic, resource-rich
regions coveted by the armed groups.

In recent years, the government has signed accords with the Indians
ensuring their autonomy and human rights, but tribal members say those
agreements have been largely ignored as the war has sprawled into virtually
every corner of the country.

"The objective of this search is a call to the state to respect our
autonomy and territory," said an Embera Katio leader who said he feared
being identified by name. "The government must comply with these accords."

The Latin American Association for Human Rights says that half of
Colombia's indigenous tribes face extinction because of the encroaching
violence. Displacement is fracturing families and diluting tribal
languages, and forced recruitment into guerrilla ranks and selective
assassinations by paramilitary forces are scattering tribes like the Embera
Katio that have lived along Colombia's swift rivers and thick jungles for
centuries.

In southern Amazonas province, the leftist guerrilla army, the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) requires each indigenous
family to provide two people to its ranks, according to the human rights
group. FARC seeks recruits as young as 14 who are prized for their
knowledge of jungle terrain. In past three years, more than 1,500 Indians
have been forced into guerrilla ranks, the human rights group said.

Domico's disappearance followed a rash of violence against indigenous
leaders by paramilitary forces and the FARC. The AUC, especially here in
northern Colombia, has chosen to eliminate powerful tribal leaders who
resist the right-wing group's territorial ambitions. At least 10 leaders of
the Embera Katio and Zenu tribes in Cordoba, and neighboring Antioquia and
Choco provinces, have been killed by the AUC in the past three years,
according to the human rights association. Embera Katio leaders say 16
tribal members have been killed over that period, half by the paramilitary
forces and half by the FARC.

"For these groups, it is dangerous to have a leader who is much listened to
by his people, someone who says, 'This is our territory, not yours,' " said
an adviser to the two Embera Katio leaders who oversee tribal land between
the Sinu and Verde rivers southwest of here. "We have come here to look for
[Domico] in [the paramilitary forces'] house."

Domico's plight is in some ways similar to that of the thousands of
Colombians trying to remain neutral during the intensifying civil conflict,
which is fueled by the vast profits the armed groups receive from the drug
trade. Tribal members say that in recent months, Domico was resisting
pressure from the AUC to begin growing coca -- the raw material used to
make cocaine -- on tribal land.

Tierralta sits on a volatile border between the two military forces, and in
the past 18 months drug crops have sprung up on land once used to grow
bananas, rice and timber. Last month, FARC forces operating along the Sinu
River slaughtered more than two dozen farmers, sometimes using machetes,
who were allegedly working AUC-controlled coca fields.

At the same time, Domico was continuing a long battle against the
government and international corporations over a dam erected against the
tribe's will in Embera territory. After decades of study, a corporation
comprising Canadian and Swedish interests began building the Urra Dam on
the Sinu River six years ago. The tribe won a brief injunction suspending
construction, but subsequent legal rulings resulted in the 1998 flooding of
a fertile valley filled with the tribe's banana plantations.

For the first time in their history, many of the 142 Embera Katio families
living between the Sinu and Verde rivers were going hungry after the
flooding devastated the fishing stock. Domico had been leading the crusade
for government compensation, angering many powerful business interests.

Colombian officials have shown little interest in the Domico case. Col.
Henry Caicedo, Cordoba's police chief, said without offering any evidence
that Domico's disappearance was related to involvement in the drug trade.
He retracted his comments, but only after Abadio Green of the Indigenous
Organization of Antioquia said: "If they kill Kimy [or] any other of our
colleagues, the colonel will be responsible."

Then, Cordoba Gov. Jesus Maria Lopez prohibited the indigenous caravan from
entering his state on the grounds that it could interfere with a national
ranching festival. He said he would do nothing to stop the procession, but
offered no security.

So those who arrived here did so under less than safe circumstances, and
remain vulnerable during what could be a weeks-long demonstration. The main
square, strung with hammocks and draped with scraps of plastic that serve
as tents, offers the Indians little protection from paramilitary or
guerrilla forces.

A few army patrols stand guard as dozens of children, barefoot and dirty,
play ball and tag in the streets. Around each person's neck hangs a
laminated picture of Domico on a string, a crude credential meant to
identify participants.

Three hundred people arrived by raft from Alto Sinu, the Embera Katio
region that is Domico's home, including Rigoberto Domico, a member of the
tribe, his wife and 6-month-old son. "He was our leader, and we will stay
until we find him," he said. "How long it takes is not important."

Hundreds more arrived in a caravan of buses from Medellin to the south,
braving perhaps the most contested stretch of highway in Colombia with
little protection.

"The government should be looking for Kimy's killers and arresting these
paramilitaries," said Jennifer Harbury, an American lawyer who has accused
the CIA of complicity in the 1992 death of her husband, a Guatemalan
guerrilla. She made the trip from her home in Texas to search for Kimy,
whom she showed around Washington two years ago. "These people should not
have to risk their lives for this."