ABSTRACT
T Ypical of South American Countries which include an indigenous population within its boundaries (as all do except Uruguay), Colombia since the earliest Spanish colonies has represented an ethnocidal force for the sixty or so Indian groups who live there. The widespread massacres of the Spanish invasion are well known, the brutality of the ‘Casa Arana’ (the British Peruvian Rubber Co. Ltd.) less so. During the first quarter of our century this company ransacked the South Colombian rain-forest as far north as the banks of the Caquetá. About 50,000 Indians were controlled by the company, which forced them to work the ‘black gold’ as the rubber was called. They were maltreated, beaten, tortured and murdered. Many groups were completely annihilated, others merely decimated. In the eastern grass-lands of Colombia, Indians are still occasionally hunted today. In the Cauca and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Indian land is still being stolen. Virtually everywhere Indians are exploited economically. The Catholic Church still maintains large territories under its control. Although some missionaries are enlightened and are actually a positive force as far as the Indians are concerned, most are still perpetrating forms of education which degrade and eventually destroy the Indian culture and some are outright crooks. The U.S. Protestant and supposedly scientific missionary organisation, the Summer Institute of Linguistics, has little actual effect on most groups but it is at present keeping a watchful eye in the areas which are difficult of access. The written law cannot quite make up its mind if the Indian is to be ‘integrated’ or ‘protected’; but it makes little difference, as the individual's ability to bend or ignore the law depends directly on how much power or wealth he has and how far he is from the cities. The central government worries little about the Indians (it has many other concerns); through the Agrarian Reform Institute it has begun to create some reservations for some groups. In most cases these are of little effect as the land is already settled by ‘whites’.
