The air is almost opaque from tear gas, lingering like heavy, burning perfume. Every few minutes, a warning shout echoes from up the highway—“Corre!” (“Run!”)—sending a cascade of people fleeing from the distant sound of explosions. “It’s the most beautiful thing, these protests,” a man comments from the protective shade of a tall grave. “You can see everyone fighting for their rights together.” He rearranges the T-shirt covering most of his face. “But it’s also sad. There will be bloodshed and deaths. It’s always a sacrifice.”

The man, who preferred to remain anonymous, belongs to a powerful indigenous movement in Southwestern Colombia that organizes through the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca, also known as the CRIC. They believe the Colombian government is ignoring systemic violence to indigenous communities—failing to enact peace programs that were designed to end five decades of armed conflict, and violating over a thousand legal agreements that protect minority groups’ land and sovereignty rights. In February, leaders from the Council demanded that President Iván Duque Márquez meet with them to discuss these concerns. But at the president’s refusal, they orchestrated a “minga”—which indigenous leaders consider a spiritual principle of resistance tracing back to colonization.

The “Action for the Defense of Life, Territory, Democracy, and Peace,” as they call the protest, has now lasted over three weeks, with 20,000 people blocking the Pan-American Highway, mostly in the state of Cauca, where the initiative began. Demonstrators are vowing to uphold the blockades until President Duque arrives in Cauca and engages in talks, prepared to sustain the minga for months. The longer he waits, the more people are joining in, closing down new highway passages in other parts of Colombia. The protest now blocks a third of interstate transportation, costing Colombia millions of dollars. State forces are increasingly using military tactics to disband the protest, but the violence is only encouraging more people to participate. Indigenous groups in 11 states are now involved, as are peasant farmers and Afro-descendants, who share bitterness about resurging violence and state neglect.

The National Organization of Colombia issued a call for action in late March that they say 326 popular organizations and 30 congressmen have endorsed. A week before, over 1,200 social coalitions, human rights representatives, and political delegates expressed their support for the protest in a letter to the president, and four state governors urged Duque to meet with the demonstrators. The government has sent several delegates, including the Ministry of the Interior and Peace Commissioner, to negotiate with leadership about terms to lift the blockade. But the organizers want the president, and want talks at the established assembly site in Cauca rather than a private meeting space so that the community can participate.

Locals unload the body of a victim a day after an explosion left eight people dead in an indigenous community in Cauca, Colombia on March 21, 2019. The Colombian government said that the explosion was caused by the “manipulation” of devices that were allegedly going to be used in an act of sabotage, while indigenous authorities stated that “a person allegedly threw an explosive device” during their preparation of a minga. AFP/Getty

Duque, meanwhile, has condemned the minga as a lawless action that harms the whole country. His decision to increase military pressure rather than give in to dialogue affirms what many in the minga already believe. As a leader from the guardia indígena, an unarmed civilian defense force, told me, “All of them—they love war. It’s easier than standing up to the pueblo, the people.”

