Talking About Colombia

There has been never-heard-of-before warm weather in the northeast U.S. for this time of the year. Global warming. We are showing we don’t care about the environment.

We don’t care about the lush jungles. We don’t care about the people who make the jungles their home and who’ve protected it for generations.

Is there, at all, a will, at a local, provincial, national or international level to protect the Indigenous communities of Colombia?

Nineteen indigenous people from the Embera and Zenu communities have been killed this year in Colombia. The latest victims are John Jairo Dobiama Mecheche and Fabio Domicó, both gunned down by the FARC’s 34th Front in the war for territory to control drug trafficking corridors.

Domicó was the vice governor of the Dabeiba’s Indian authority. Domicó was in charge of executing the safeguard plan of his community to avoid the physical and cultural extermination of his culture. There are nearly one million indigenous people divided into 102 different ethnicities in Colombia. The Constitutional Court has warned that 34 of those groups, including Domicó’s, are in danger of dying out.

Related:

More culture lost: Jiw Indigenous displaced from their land

Violence against women in Colombia’s conflict

Colombia’s indigenous languages disappearing

Amazon’s remaining Ticuna Indians ban tourists

The survival of the Nukak indigenous

Colombia’s indigenous: a culture in extinction