I'll start by giving Juan Forero his due -- in his article in today's Times, Forero does introduce readers to the incredibly brave and creative resistance against the violence of all the armed actors that the Nasa have engaged in through the creation of the Indigenous Guards -- disciplined nonviolent guards who have repeatedly stood up to soldiers, paramilitaries, and guerillas, and expelled them from Nasa territory.

In order to render the Nasa worthy of gringos' compassion, however, Forero depoliticizes their struggle for autonomy.  In prose that makes the tribe sound like a darker-skinned version of the Amish, Forero writes:

"The Nasa Indians appear to live well on their lush reservation here in southern Colombia, a swath of mountains and valleys where sweet fruit grows, trout teem in fast-flowing creeks and colorful birds dart about. [ . . . ]They live in tidy, well-kept homes, growing coffee, bananas and beans. Emphasizing economic independence, they run a successful fish farm and are trying to strike up a marble mine. [ . . . ]The one major threat to their existence is Colombia's unrelenting civil conflict, which has ground on for 41 years."

His idyllic picture of Nasa life does certainly elicit sympathy for the tribe -- but it masks the very real problems the Nasa face in terms of a model of "development" that leaves indigenous and campesino communities behind, and favors mining and logging and energy projects that drive them from their land.  And, of course he ignores the Nasa community's organized resistance against this "development" model.

Ignoring this context also allows Forero to portray the military as well intentioned defenders of the Nasa who regret their intrusion into the tribe's world -- a perspective belied by accounts from human rights groups that speak of a the military's bombardment of areas surrounding Nasa towns.  This particular difference of perspective is explained by Forero's admission in a multimedia piece on the Times' website in which he admits that "we entered the town with dozens of soldiers."

Forero does attempt to place the Nasa's struggles into the broader context of indigenous struggles in Colombia -- but once again he refuses to look at the relavant political and economic issues.  In a dreadful use of the passive voice, bound to make English teachers the world over cringe, Forero writes:

"Across Colombia, dozens of Indian tribes are being hammered by the war. Assassins single out leaders of the Wayuú in northeastern Colombia. In northwestern Choco State, Embera children, whipsawed by war and poverty, have committed suicide. Nationwide, tens of thousands of Indians have become refugees. Some of the smaller tribes, the United Nations recently warned, are on the verge of disappearing."

Thus he neglects the fact that the Embera children have been driven to despair mainly because of the violence visited on their communities by paramilitaries intent on driving them off their land to clear the way for hydro-electric dams and other mega-projects.   And everyone knows the "Indians" didn't just "become refugees" -- they were forced off their land primarily by paramilitary violence driven by the economic agendas of oil, mining, energy, and timber companies and big narco-traffickers.

Forero did better than most by at least covering the attacks against the Nasa -- but his article missed the key points that give the story its broader relavance.