Diego Yatacue is one of the members of the NASA people in Turkey. He currently resides in the department of Cauca, in the village of Toribio, France. For twelve years, CECIDIC has been the director of the country's most important educational center and has promoted the process of recovering the language and culture nasa yuwe in collaboration with Garabide, the Basque institution. Leave the teaching and represent the indigenous movement in the last Yatacue elections. In the region, the climate of violence is rampant; 68 human rights defenders, the majority indigenous, have been killed in 2019.

Hand sheets signed by the Sinaloa Cartel have appeared in the village. Yatacue is threatened by her first name and last name: "... that they are not weird to see him or a family member careless of ay [sic]" (do not be surprised if he or any of his family members appear stumbled). The document has appeared in the last days of the municipal and foreign elections in May. The signatories welcome the new mayor and promise him that if he does not come with them they will leave his absence at peace. Yatacue has been proclaimed as a military objective, but the zemai is also the opposite of anyone who can hinder his activity: "We take it 2 meters underground" (we will sink it two meters).

The municipal elections have just passed and the atmosphere of Colombia is getting worse every time the elections are approaching…

In Cauca, 68 people have already been killed so far this year, more than twenty of them in Toribio. It is a revenge for the effort we are making to control our territory. We are leaders in the spotlight, since the beginning of the campaign they have made direct threats to us.

How do they make the threats?

They are distributed in whatsapp. And throwing leaflets down the street. But without them they also have the anguish imposed on the ground. The person who lives here knows the groups, perceives them, and this presence is suffocating.

How did you receive the threats?

Both my opponents… but they have also threatened my children, and that is much tougher.

What protection measures do you have?

It protects me from the community. I have denounced my situation in the Public Prosecutor’s Office, but I have been told that the threats are not “sufficiently strong”.

Why have you taken the step of being a candidate?

It's the community that decides. Everyone does not present themselves as a candidate, the citizens choose their representative.

You lost the mayor by just over a hundred votes…

For twenty years we have had the mayor's office and during that time it has been the strengthening of the indigenous conscience. But we've been affected by a new cycle of violence. They have bought a lot of votes for the funds that the drug traffickers have put in. The people have been divided… The campaign has not found groups of ideas and proposals, but has differentiated between those who advocate the planting of coca and marijuana and those who do not support it. I believe that the fields of marijuana and coca are the cancer of indigenous society. Drug trafficking has mobilized a fictional economy and spread the mafia culture through a profound change of thinking. Many of us and we defend this model because there is nothing else. In addition, the armed groups have been panicked by the arrests. We've been killed by many of our colleagues. The last at the beginning of the month: Four members of Kiwe thegna (indigenous guard) and Cristina Bautista neehwesx (governor). Another half a dozen people were injured. It was a massacre.

Who are the murderers?

In our territory were the members of the FARC who did not want to reach a peace agreement. They were not many, but they had weapons and great military experience... Look, in our country the economy of coca and marijuana is driven, and that is controlled by dark hidden forces. The only objective is money, and the whole territory is in a compromised situation. Many of them, unfortunately, are members of our communities, who have grown up and educated in war. It's war that you know how to do. That is why they were unable to approve a peace agreement. Drug trafficking has now strengthened them because they have been rearmed with money.

They are not only former members of the FARC…

They want us to call them FARC, or ELN (National Liberation Army) or EPL (People's Liberation Army) -- they want to give ideological shape, but for me they're just groups of criminals.

The Sinaloa poster also works, right?

The cartel appears to have a monopoly on marijuana production. They themselves finance planting, pushing the peasants to seed it. And that divides the community and impoverishes social conflict. It should be taken into account that in the department of Cauca inequality is enormous, the state does not guarantee minimum living conditions. Ours is a war lab. Drug trafficking is always there and is cyclically strengthened, because many people see nothing but to improve their lives a little.

For years you have suffered the most crude of the war. He then calmed down when he felt close to the peace agreement. A kind of impasse started to lose after the signing of the agreement. How is your region today?

Thanks to the peace agreement, we no longer have large armed groups of the FARC, let alone. There was also not much conflict between guerrillas and armies. It is true that negotiation and signature have brought peace, but that has gone. It's been a year since uribism took power. In the campaign it was said that the peace agreement with the FARC was to be destroyed and work is being done on it. In the areas where the FARC had strength, criminal groups have been created, paramilitary groups have been created… and in short, drug trafficking has grown. It determines the economy of our territories and the lives of those of us who live in them. In the Havana agreement a point was agreed for the replacement of illegal crops, but no agreement was reached and that has damaged everything. We do not have the old FARC, but the situation is more critical than before. More dangerous. Before we knew who our enemy was, we knew who to turn to if we needed an interview. Today’s enemies have no political and ideological structure or basis and dialogue is impossible. What we have now is a war to control drug trafficking.

The process of recovering the language has begun and has materialized in the peace negotiations…

We're very complicated in resistance. It has been for many years to face the violence, fear and death caused by the conflict. And yet, the Nasa people have been able to start working towards autonomy from culture. What is at the base is our being, the struggle to remain indigenous. That's why the strategy of drug trafficking in Toribio is to destroy that social fabric that we feed, that political and cultural thought.

How do you get into the future?

We have two tasks: We have to keep working consciousness in our community. On the other hand, we have to keep fighting on the streets against the government. It was in their hands to push the peace process forward and they have done nothing… We are not going to resign, we still have an opportunity. Cristina Bautista, who has just been murdered, said: -They kill us if we shut up. And if we speak, they kill us. So let us talk! ".

*Interview by journalist Jon Artano on the initiative of Garabide. This Saturday at 11:00 hours a solidarity action has been organized in the Egiar orchard of Oiartzun to denounce the situation in the Colombian Cauca.