Embera Indigenas
--
...as Colombia’s war for control of the drug trade intensifies in frontiers like this one, with new combatants vying for smuggling routes and coca-growing areas where Indians eke out a meager existence, it is adding to the already grave toll on the nation’s indigenous groups. At least 27 of the groups are at risk of being eliminated because of the country’s four-decade conflict, according to the United Nations , and human rights organizations worry that the new violence is pushing even deeper into the Indians’ ancient lands.
...
But the seeming stability in some places belies the conflict in remote areas, where Indians like the Embera find themselves at the mercy of armed groups. Colombia has about three million internal refugees — second in number only to Sudan, the United Nations says — and its Indians bear a disproportionate share of the suffering.
“Our rulers in Bogotá prefer to ignore that an entire section of the country is surviving, just barely, as if we are in the 16th century, when plunder and killing were the norm,” said Víctor Copete, who runs Chocó Pacífico, a foundation addressing the violence here in Chocó, one of the nation’s poorest departments, or provinces.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/world/americas/22colombia.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
Comments