"Alert: Multinational company Carbones del Cerrejón threatens to evict peasant farmer families from the banks of the Ranchería River", 10 November 2021

...1. We are a group of peasant families who for several generations have lived peacefully and publicly on the banks of the Ranchería River in the village of Papayal, adjacent to the Wayúu indigenous reservation of Provincial in the municipality of Barrancas, Guajira. This territory has been inhabited by our ancestors who, as a result of their work, have made this territory their home, where we have had our homes made of bareque and wood, forming a small community...2. Today, November 9, 2021, lawyers and employees of the company Carbones del Cerrejón owned by the Swiss multinational Glencore arrived in our territory accompanied by the police inspection of the Mayor's Office of Barrancas threatening us that they will begin a process of eviction from our territory and that on November 10, 2021 an ocular inspection is scheduled for 8:30 am. This means that an irregular and abusive process is being carried out in which we are being presented as if we were disturbing our own territory, a territory that we have inhabited and worked for more than 80 years...3. The background to these abuses is an irregular adjudication of land by Mrs. María Rosa Hernández Argüelles, who drew up deeds that we consider to be fraudulent on our lands, which did not belong to her. Since then we have been subjected to serious attacks, threats, outrages and human rights violations in which our houses have been destroyed and burnt with all our belongings in order to remove and evict us by force...4. Behind these abuses and illegitimate actions has been the company Carbones del Cerrejón, who through its employee Salvador Raad, brother-in-law of Mrs. María Rosa Hernández negotiated an illegitimate sale of the land of our ancestors to the mine, which now using its immense corporate power in the region is threatening to evict us from our territory...

(Translated by the BHRRC)