‘Violence is coming to our land’: Colombia’s Indigenous Peoples face threat of extinction
Around a fire in a ceremonial hut in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the Arhuaco people make a pledge. Tying traditional cotton threads around their wrists, they promise to guard the land beneath them – and then they ask for protection.
“Our culture has been preserved for thousands of years,” says Ati Quigua, an Indigenous leader. “We are a peaceful community, but now violence is coming to our land.”
The Arhuaco are profoundly spiritual, with a belief system centred on worshipping and defending the Earth. They descend from the Tayrona, an ancient civilisation brutally subjugated by Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century. The survivors retreated to the upper valleys of Colombia’s Sierra Nevada, the world’s highest coastal mountain range, but in the centuries since they have endured waves of intrusion – from settlers carving up their lands to Catholic missionaries who tried to quash their traditions.
Now another force has reached their mountain, and the Arhuaco fear it could lead to their final erasure.
