Knowledge and People's Power - Multiworld India

hardly read or write. During the "inspection" visits he helped broaden thecommunity's information on the housing situation and knowledge of thevillage history so that finally it was able, both ethically and legally, toundertake collective action against the sugar plantations. "Strength andreason are already on our side. All we need now is to act," was Ro Didacio'sconclusion. Everybody present (especially the women, though they hadremained quiet during the meeting) agreed with him that the right momenthad come for the invasion to take place because now enough information,facts, laws, figures and recordings had been gathered to carry it outefficiently. They had obtained a power which 'no one would be able to takeaway from them although its defence would cost some lives: the power ofvalid knowledge supported by reason, justice and moral principles. Thispower gradually developed into a regional civic and political movementaimed against the large sugar plantations which had appropriated the land andwhich were exploiting its people. Everybody in the town had arrived at thisconclusion in his own way and with his individual human resources, withoutthe help of sophisticated research techniques."Hey, No Didacio," replied Don Silvestre in his house at El Cerrito(Cordoba, Colombia), "What we need here in El Cerrito is not so muchhouses as land to grow food, because we have many mouths to feed. Take thecase of the Munoz woman, who has 30 children. We grow yucca, yams,water melons and other crops in the dry lands left around the lagoon when theseasonal water level falls. The law confirms our communal rights over thoselands, but the rich owners of the neighbouring estates, supported as they areby the corrupt authorities, have been putting up more and more barbed wirefences to take them away from us.""Have you not been able to make them respect those ancient rights?""I suppose we have not been consistent in our action although this yearwe have organised ourselves better. We compiled a history of the villagewhich gave us plenty of reasons to defend ourselves and to act. I myself toldabout the origin of E I Cerrito and how we used to use the lagoon, how wefounded a prosperous and happy hamlet with healthy and co-operativepeople. That is until the greedy capitalists arrived. Others explained what24