Movement to Reclaim Lost Land Refuses to Die : South America: The assassination of three Indian leaders in Colombia fails to deter indigenous people from trying to retake reservations from settlers.

The three Indians--friends who grew up on the same reservation and ascended to top national posts--were barreling down a gravel road when they drove straight into an ambush.

A fusillade of bullets erupted out of the night on March 26, riddling the Indians’ red pickup with some 60 holes.

The three men--leaders of the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia and a tribal chief who also served as alternate senator--didn’t have a chance. Their driver died alongside them.

Settlers are suspected in the bloodiest attack on Indian leaders in modern Colombian history. It came as militants of the Zenu tribe are retaking their reservation from settlers and are feuding with the mayor over hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The fight of the Zenu is the struggle of tribes across the continent to regain lost land.

In Venezuela, the Yucpa tribe went on an arson spree and blocked highways this year to press for the return of land in the foothills of the Sierra de Perija Mountains.

In Brazil, the Macuxi tribe has been clashing with encroaching non-Indians in the Amazon rain forest--a Wild West atmosphere of raids on Indian villages by rifle-toting ranchers and counterattacks by Indians on horseback.

The Zenu’s fight goes back to Spanish colonial times when the tribe was granted a 205,000-acre reservation called San Andres de Sotavento, also the name of the area’s main town.

The Indians lost their rolling hills and plains over the centuries to whites who simply ignored reservation boundaries and settled there, and to businessmen who loaned the Indians money for seeds and tools and then took the land when crops failed and the Indians couldn’t repay the loans.

Among the newer non-Indian settlers are drug traffickers who have invested their earnings in cattle ranches.

As a ceiling fan stirs the air in his sweltering, cramped office in San Andres de Sotavento’s “Indigenous House,” acting Zenu Chief Jose Carmona--replacing Chief Hector Malo who died in the ambush--and fellow tribal leaders declare they won’t be cowed.

Their decision to continue retaking reservation land and confronting the mayor puts them on a collision course with the settlers, including the traffickers who have no compunction about gunning down anyone who stands in their way.

“We are not afraid,” said Jose Lucas, whose brother Luis was one of the slain leaders. “As warriors, we must keep going forward.”

Parked in the courtyard below Carmona’s second-floor office is graphic evidence of the ambush: the charred, bullet-riddled pickup in which the four Indians died.

The killers burned the pickup, the only vehicle the government had given the reservation. With no money to carry out their programs, the Indian leadership can’t even afford to fix the Indigenous House’s backed-up, reeking toilets.

A few blocks away is the settlers’ center of power: the office of Mayor Juan Bautista.

Indian leaders say they suspect Bautista was behind the ambush because he has refused to release $700,000 the government allocated for the reservation, and because Chief Malo received a death threat two days before the ambush as he met with his subchiefs to plan how to get the money.

Bautista, sitting behind a desk in his air-conditioned office and with gold chains adorning his neck and wrist, denied responsibility.

“I had nothing to do with it,” he said. “My conscience is clear.”

Outside, young toughs with pistols in their waistbands stood guard. Colombian mayors, often targeted by anti-government rebels, commonly use bodyguards.

Until this year, Bautista decided how federal funds earmarked for the reservation should be spent. Now, reservations are in charge of such funds, though they still must be channeled through local mayors’ offices.

Bautista said he has not handed over the money because the Indians haven’t submitted the proper paperwork.

A senior government official in Bogota said it was unlikely Bautista was behind the ambush because “he’s not stupid; it would have been much too obvious.”

Settlers who elected Bautista and who created paramilitary groups--initially to fight leftist guerrillas but which are now being used against Indians--probably ordered the massacre, the official said.

“They thought they could kill the Indian movement by assassinating the leaders,” said the official, interviewed on condition of anonymity. “On the contrary, the Indians are becoming even more determined.”

In the 1970s, the Zenu began recovering reservation land lost over the centuries by simply moving in.

They build huts on the land, forcing a confrontation with settlers and triggering the intervention of the Agrarian Reform Institute, which buys the land and gives it to the Indians for communal use as recovered reservation.

Zenu leaders complain they must create a climate of crisis before the institute steps in.

Although Indians have a constitutional right to their reservations, government officials say the state can’t simply expel ranchers whose families have worked the property for generations and--considering the many claims by tribes across the country--can’t afford to buy all the land.

“There’s just not enough money in the budget,” said Jorge Lopez, the vice minister of government.

About 39,000 acres--one-fifth of the reservation--has been recovered with the strategy, in which the Indians risk being shot, beaten or jailed.

Alberto Santos, wearing only sandals and ragged pants secured by string, is the Zenus’ symbolic presence on a disputed ranch called San Francisco.

Living with his wife and eight children in a shelter of thatched palm fronds supported by wood beams, Santos grows crops on San Francisco with other Indian families.

Two years ago, security forces burned the Indians’ huts on San Francisco, destroyed their crops and threw nine Indian men, including Santos, into jail.

The Indians say they have no choice but to persist.

“Hunger makes us brave,” said Rafael Noriega, a Zenu subchief. “Landowners pay us 1,500 pesos (about $2) per day to work their fields. If a man has children, how can he feed them?

“We must have our own land.”