Mon, Feb 04, 2008 page7

• FEATURE: Separatist crusade growing in San Andres

  LOYALTIES A haven for English slaveholders and pirates since the 17th century, the island came under Colombia's control after independence from Spain in the 1820s

  • SAN ANDRES
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  Down the road from a neighborhood here called The Hill, where reggae blares out of weathered houses and parishioners sing hymns in English at the First Baptist Church, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe recently inaugurated a hospital with a decidedly Colombian name: Amor de Patria.

  That translates as "Love of the Fatherland" for the English-speaking descendants of African slaves who inhabit this Caribbean archipelago, as if they needed a sharp reminder that they must be loyal to distant Bogota.

  But many Raizals, as the English speakers here are known, feel loyalty neither to Colombia, a US President George W. Bush administration ally, nor to Nicaragua, a supporter of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, which also claims San Andres in a bitter territorial dispute. While the two countries press their cases, a nonviolent separatist movement is growing increasingly vocal here.

  "This fight is taking place as if it were some abstract matter over unpopulated atolls," said Enrique Pusey Bent, a director of the Archipelago Movement for Ethnic Native Self-Determination, which symbolically declared independence last June by replacing Colombia's flags here.

  More than distance separates the 35,000 Raizals from the rest of Colombia. They speak an English-based Creole as well as English, listen to Jamaican reggae and Trinidadian calypso, worship largely in Protestant churches and consider as their brethren residents of nearby English-speaking enclaves like Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast and Panama's Bocas del Toro.

  A haven for English slaveholders and pirates since the 17th century, San Andres Province -- this island and others nearby with much smaller populations -- came under Colombia's control after independence from Spain in the 1820s. But the Raizals effectively managed their own affairs for decades until Colombia reasserted its presence here about a century ago.

  A policy of "Colombianization" ensued, supported by Franciscan monks sent here to convert the Raizals and enforce the use of Spanish. Migrants from the mainland were given free passage here. The islands became a duty-free port in the 1950s, spurring the formation of a merchant class, consisting largely of mainland Colombians.

  Today, Spanish is the dominant language here, and the Raizals account for just a third of the 100,000 residents.

  "Step into a shop or a court of law, and it's almost always the same: No Raizals work there," said Jairo Rodrmguez Davis, an independence advocate. "It's a subtle kind of apartheid, but more cruel than the colonialism Colombia threw off from Spain."

  The Raizals' concerns are rarely acknowledged, though, in the barbs exchanged by Nicaragua and Colombia. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega lashed out on Tuesday at naval patrols by Colombia around San Andres, saying he would complain to the UN that they harass Nicaraguan fishermen.

  Colombia won a round in the dispute in December when the International Court of Justice ruled that a 1928 treaty awarding it the archipelago was valid.

  But Nicaragua also celebrated the court's decision to allow its claim to the waters around San Andres, rich in fish and, potentially, petroleum, to move forward. Nicaragua contends that the US pressured it militarily to sign the 1928 treaty, making it void.

  Faced with Nicaragua's claim, Uribe sent more than 1,200 troops to march here in July in a Colombian independence celebration. But Raizal advocates say the military display was also meant to quell talk of rebellion.

  Colombian officials insist the separatist movement remains small, and that the Raizals have few reasons to seek independence.
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