500 Person Microcosm of Colombian past and present

More than 20 years ago the Nukak Maku were discovered to be one of the last nomadic tribes in the Americas, their numbers oscillated at around 1500, today less than 500 remain. Now this cultural treasure of humanity is facing an existential threat as the Colombian civil war has pushed them out of the jungle. Their way of life is simple: They live in one place for no more than 2 or 3 days, so as not to exhaust the resources. They eat the fruit nearby and leave the seeds on the ground so that new plants grow there in order to be able to eat them when they come back. The tribe has almost no social hierarchy, there are only some leaders in small groups who have little authority. The group as a whole has no representative and only a few of the members speak Spanish. Due to their nomadic lifestyle they also have no concept of wealth or private property.

Martin Luther King’s phrase „Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” manifests itself throughout the story of indigenous groups and Colombian society at large. Getting to know the plight of the Nukak Maku is like ingesting a pill with all of Colombia’s pain through its history to today: From the birth pangs of the country in the colonial settlement with its genocide of the various indigenous tribes to the abysmal inequalities in land and wealth distribution. These developments combined with more than 60 years of civil war have led to today’s appalling figure of 5.2 million displaced Colombians, making it the country with the most internally displaced people in the world, above Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan.

To be able to understand the intricacies of the Nukak’s dire position one must therefore be acquainted with the politics behind Colombia’s internal conflict. All of the armed actors, including the state, have created the current dilemma in a fusion of illegal and legal interests that operate through a complex web of struggles for power, land, wealth, and resources. When an armed group occupies their area, the Nukak are forced to cooperate with demands such as information, lodging, and food, at gunpoint. When the next armed group comes, they are accused of cooperating with the enemy and thereby killed or tortured. Women are subject to sexual violence and forced prostitution. In the case of non-state actors, boys and young men are forcefully recruited to fight the war. As far as the state, sometimes they have been killed in extrajudicial executions known as „falsos positivos” where they are added to the combat death toll as enemies in exchanges for benefits and promotions for the soldiers and commanders. The conflict disproportionately affects the indigenous peoples as they make up 15 percent of refugees despite being only 2 percent of the population. However, these processes are not an isolated force against the microcosm of the Nukak Maku and other indigenous tribes but are also affecting the Colombian population at large.

This pattern of transgressions against the Nukak Maku and other indigenous communities has been widely documented in reports by NGO’s such as Survival International. These reports, along with protests, led to an investigation of the Nukak’s dire status by the Colombian Constitutional Court. In its 2009 decision the court concluded that the primary factor for the decimation of indigenous communities has been the struggle for land and resources that has centered on the illegal planting of coca and the use of indigenous territories for drug trafficking activities. However, the court also pointed out that the „Development of legal activities of natural resources by actors of the private sector or the illegal armed groups such as indiscriminate wood exploitation, agroindustrial monoculture, mining and other similar activities” are also playing an active role devastating Indigenous groups. The court therefore denounced agricultural megaprojects in indigenous territories and criticized that legal and private sector interests have allied with illegal armed groups to profit from the removal of the indigenous communities from their protected areas known as „Resguardos”.

According to the court, the state has also played a role in this displacement and destruction as the spraying of coca fields with chemicals to eradicate them has been done without „the prior consulting ordered by the court”. This resulted in indiscriminate effects onto the legal crops, hunting, fishing and forests on which the indigenous populations rely for sustenance. In some cases these eradications have directly led to children deaths by malnutrition.

The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) fears that one of the aims of the war in Colombia is to remove the indigenous from their territories for the profit of settlers. Aditionally, for the benefit of iIllicit crops, mining, oil, banana plantations, and cattle ranchers as well as bio fuels plantations a corporate backed cleansing is executed.

In the case of the Nukak Maku, the Colombian government has established a ranch five minutes outside the city of San José del Guaviare for 170 of them to live in and distributed food. However, as this has not been enough they went to neighboring ranches, taking fruits and animals. In reality, the government has money allocated for these tribes, but a bureaucratic requirement needs to be fulfilled with one of their leaders, which they don’t have in their society. This red tape is now blocking help for the remaining Nukak Maku.

The Nukak Maku have been saved from the brink of extinction once already in the Guaviare state where the authorities implemented a health program for them and the peasant population. This plan was successful in buoying their numbers as well as improving their relations with the peasant population. However, placing the Nukak Maku in small confinements is noxious not only to their nomadic culture and way of life but also to the environment itself, as the natural resources are depleted.

Besides the Nukak Maku and the 33 other peoples that the Constitutional Court mentions in their order, there are 31 other peoples Colombia with less than 500 members like the Makaguaje and Wachina with 3 and 50 members respectevily. During the government of Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010), megaprojects such as the Dibulla Port, the Rancheria dam in La Guajira and the Besotes dam in the state of Cesar were approved to be erected by the state on sacred indigenous territories. On August 7th 2010, day of his inauguration as President, Juan Manuel Santos started his job in front of the indigenous authorities of the Sierra Nevada while committing himself to ensure their safety and territories. Immediate actions must include a cease to the government’s deed making for mining and other activities in indigenous areas and a guarantee of security throughout these lands, as well as secure access to the outside world for medicine and other necessities. Time and powerful interests are against the President’s promise to the Nukak Maku and the rest of Colombia’s indigenous people. Although as stated, the displacement and war affects indigenous groups at higher propertions, power and money interests know no ethnicity or race. Therefore, all of society must engage in support of this microcosm, because in reality, as Dr. King would say, everyone’s rights are at stake.