Traveling by horseback through the Bajo Atrato, between the departments of Antioquia and Chocó, is the “Careperro” or Jaika tuma mountain, revered a sacred site for the Embera Eyabida Indigenous peoles. Eyadia is translated as “mountain inhabitants.”[1] The Atrato River, which flows through both departments and into the Caribbean Sea, is inhabited by a multitude of Afro-Colombian, mixed-race, and Indigenous communities. Many of these communities are accompanied by the Justice and Peace Commission (JyP), an organization accompanied by PBI since 1994. Among these, along the banks of the Jiguamiandó River—a tributary of the Atrato—and close to the Jaika Tuma mountain, are eight communities[2] of Embera people who are organized in the Uradá-Jiguamiandó Indigenous Reservation. For them, the mountain is a sacred site and source of life, as it provides water and is where the jaibaná—traditional doctors—collect their medicinal plants.

Historically, the ethnic communities of the Bajo Atrato region have resisted the interests of diverse megaprojects promoted in their ancestral territories. The actions of the banana, palm, and mining industries, which contributed to the dispossession of the communities’ territories, has had a common denominator—stomping on ancestral rights, committing grave human rights violations, and generating environmental impacts in their territories.[3] In fact, some of these companies—which are an additional element in the armed conflict’s already complex web—have been investigated and, occasionally even convicted, for collaborating with paramilitary groups in the region.[4]

Continue reading The Embera Defending Their Sacred Territory →