“If it is a question of demonstrating that the current social system generates inequalities among the most abandoned, then the marginalized themselves will say “ya basta” and today this “ya basta” that the indigenous people are launching is not only for them but for all the marginalized”.
In the year 1500 the population of the globe numbered approximately 400 million inhabitants, 80 of whom lived in America.
Towards the middle of the sixteenth century, of these 80 million, 10 remained.
It has been estimated that, after one hundred and fifty years from the arrival of Colombo, the number of indigenous people dropped between 80 and 95% of the total.
While Western culture sees man’s struggle to control and bend nature as the engine of progress, indigenous people establish a relationship of true fusion and protection with the environment.
“Indigenous peoples have been fighting for centuries against those who try to impose their way of life, but the populations considered more advanced now look at what have brought us: a global pandemic, the climate crisis, mass extinctions and, at the beginning of all this, widespread spiritual poverty”.
The indigenous people in Latin America had disappeared like ghosts; it was a question of escaping the swords of Cortes and the cross of the evangelists, hunting for gold and their minds.
It is clear that today’s indigenous have changed compared to the past, while remaining the same.
They fight to maintain their identity and to prevent their traditions from disappearing, trying to take back into their hands the destinies that were lost.
Those who try to take over the territories of the native populations are now mainly criminal groups, military apparatuses or companies and multinationals that try to take over the territories for personal interests.
As often happens, those who pay the highest price are the children.
In Colombia, for example, in the Cauca area, cradle of the indigenous Nasa population, many children are recruited by some criminal and paramilitary groups and then forced to be part of the armed conflict, both against the government and for the expansion of the cultivation of cocaine and marijuana that criminal groups try to expand in this area where the Nasa population lives.
Cauca is a very poor region, in fact more than half of the residents live in poverty, while more than 20% live in extreme poverty and it is one of the most violent regions in Colombia also because it is a very important corridor for the trafficking routes established on the northwest coast of the Pacific for the transportation of marijuana and cocaine.
In the rural area of Toribío, on the slopes of the Central Cordillera of the Colombian Andes, every day, at dusk, hundreds of hectares of fields light up at the same time and when it gets dark these lights seem to become constellations.
These “constellations” are actually marijuana and cocaine plantations, supported by an electrical system that is activated every night to accelerate the growth process of the plants.
The hours of artificial lighting provided every night allow for very abundant harvests, so much so that Toribío is the largest marijuana production hub in Colombia.
The Creepy quality of Toribío has very affordable prices (from 5 to 70 dollars per pound), which attract the intermediaries of the major Latin American cartels.
When the recruitment of minors occurs, a rupture occurs, it is a violent separation of a member of the community from their territory, their roots and their traditions.
“Our stick is the symbol of the relationship with the territory and the fight for its defense, we must defend our culture, which must live through our children because they are our future.
The spirit of the indigenous struggle and the love for the territory must not disappear because without them the indigenous people lose their soul”.
