Luca Ferrari - Like the mountains
2007 Luca Ferrari
The Nasa people are Colombia second-largest indigenous group, mostly concentrated in the departamento (province) of Cauca, Southwestern Colombia. Their social organization is similar to Gandhi’s: non-violent and based on collective property. Their traditional homeland in this part of the country has been wracked by some of the worst violence in the country’s 42-year civil war. Despite having long-declared their “active neutrality,” the Nasa are often caught in the crossfire of the fighting or targeted for supposedly sympathizing with one or another armed group. But since they are equally critical of all the conflict’s actors—including the military—the Nasa’s fiercely independent stance has often been reason enough to provoke harassment, kidnappings and assassinations or, worse, wholesale massacres of their peoples. Tired of suffering the brunt of the country’s bloody history, in 2001 the Nasa organized the “Indigenous Guard” as a permanent, non-violent, civil defense organization. Land is a big problem in Colombia: there are about 4 millions people despasados, farmers expelled from their grounds. The Nasa people, through non-violent actions are able to maintain the control on their land and crops. Coffee trade represents Nasa main activity, corn cultivation is for subsistence, coca cultivation, whose leafs Nasa people chew to defeat the fatigue during the work, is a fundamental part of their tradition. In fact, Coca represents the link between Man and Nature. But they have difficulties to sell coca products, like soda, creams, biscuits and tea. Coca Sek is emblematic: it is a drink similar to Coca Cola, but there is a law, dated 1961, that give to Coca Cola Company the exclusive permission to produce drinks derived from coca. The government allows the cultivation of only 100 coca’s plants for each farm. The Nasa people carry out a particular form of civil disobedience: they cultivate more than 100 plants and they buy coca from the irregular cultivations of narcotraffic. This is their way to underline narcotraffic issue and to declare the innocence of coca cultivation against coca drug.
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Luca Ferrari - Like the mountains
2007 Luca Ferrari
I Nasa sono il secondo gruppo indigeno della Colombia. Vivono nel Departamento di Cauca, a Sud Ovest del paese e sono una popolazione con un'organizzazione sociale basata sul modello gandhiano: non violenta e fondata sulla proprietà collettiva.
Tuttavia, la terra in cui vivono è stata teatro di alcuni dei peggiori episodi di violenza di in una guerra civile che dura da 42 anni. Assediati da guerriglieri, militari e paramilitari i Nasa, pur non-violenti, sono spesso colpiti dal fuoco incrociato dei combattenti che li vogliono simpatizzanti per l'uno o per l'altro gruppo armato e divengono vittime di attacchi, rapimenti e assassini. Nonostante tutto, i Nasa attraverso azioni non-violente sono stati capaci di mantenere il controllo della loro terra e delle loro coltivazioni, il caffè, che rappresenta la loro attivita' principale di sostentamento e le foglie di coca, elemento fondamentale della loro cultura e simbolo del legame tra l'Uomo e la Natura.
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