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The mayor of Popayán, Juan Carlos López Castrillón, spoke out rejecting the act, in which a group dand indigenous Misak demolished the statue of Sebastián de Belalcázar in Popayán.
The president indicated that these types of acts have no justification since his administration has provided all the guarantees to exercise the right to protest. “We defend social protest and it is legitimate, we all have the right to protest, what we reject is violence,” said the mayor.
(In context: Indigenous people knocked down the statue of the conqueror Sebastián de Belalcázar)
López Castrillón expressed that it is a regrettable act against a historical monument and therefore the statue will be restored. He also called on the public not to generate divisions.
“Discussions about our cultural differences can occur and we have always been willing to generate this type of space, we cannot justify that violence becomes an instrument to express our disagreements,” said the Mayor.
(Also: Prosecutor asks to close investigation against the mayor of Popayán)
The natives affirm that a Misak pyramid from before the conquest is built on the hill of Tulcán, which is also an indigenous cemetery and a temple of the sun for their ancestors. It is a sacred territory and they will not allow the statue of the person who caused the highest demographic reduction of indigenous people, to remain present in that place.
“It is declared that the today called Morro de Tulcán must be honored as the Sacred Territory of the Misak People, as direct heirs of the Great Pubenence Confederation, and therefore must be removed and destroyed, locating Mama Machangara, Taitas: Payán, Yazguen, Calambas and Petecuy ”, they point out.
According to historians, the Valley of Pubén or Valley of Pubenza, named in homage to the chief Pubén, was inhabited by the locals and they would have been in charge of building the Morro de Tulcán. Historians consider that the image of Cacique Pubén should be in that place, since he fought for these lands.
The statue has been on Cerro del Morro since the 1930s.
The natives accuse the colonizer of genocide and dispossession of lands, “of the physical and cultural disappearance of the peoples that were part of the Pubenence Confederation, torture by means of impalement techniques and attack with murderous dogs on the strong warriors Misak Pubenences and murders by Taita Payán, Taita Calambas and Taita Yasguern. Theft of the cultural and economic heritage of the Pubenence inheritance, arbitrary distribution of land, slavery through the institution of encomiendas, forced dispossession del NUPIRO – great Pubenence territory, rape of women, enslavement of indigenous labor for illicit enrichment, imposition of customs and beliefs such as Christianity, desecration of sacred sites and spiritual disharmonization. All of the above with the following aggravating circumstances: the previously described conducts were carried out with cruelty and fraud, under the deliberate will to commit a crime knowing its arbitrariness ”.
In the text, the Guambianos assure that such acts are proven in different historical texts of both the department and the Nation and that although 485 years have passed, they continue to demand justice for the thousands of natives who died in those wars.
(Can read: Video: municipal representative attacked an elderly adult for a pet)
This judgment is framed within a commitment that we have in front of the collective memory of our blood
“This trial is framed within a commitment that we have against the collective memory of our blood, which is why we are called to rewrite history freeing ourselves of all traces, a product of the coloniality of knowledge. We declare that the statue erected since the 30’s (at the initiative of the one who has disguised itself as a poet and statesman, being only a racist and aristocrat – Guillermo Valencia), when Popayán commemorated 400 years of the defeat of our peoples by the genocidal Spanish boot , it is part of the symbolic violence that has oppressed us and has put us in a place of oblivion. The ancestral peoples, we are not part of the colonial history, we are in force from our DUTY AND RIGHT Greater and primitive on these territories, even more in this territory today called Popayán, by us called YAUTU, political center of the Pubenza Valley Confederation. Some Payanese celebrate the day of the supposed Popayán Foundation well, without knowing the history that preceded this event. The day of the founding of Popayán, is a day of mourning, invasion and territorial looting, because the greatness of what our peoples were once before the arrival of the conqueror, was blurred by the brutality of the troops commanded by Juan Ampudia and Pedro de Añasco, military officers in charge of the court today ”.
CALI
