The current plight of the Embera community in Bogotá.

Members of the Embera community at their camps on the streets of Bogotá.

Article researched and written by Danna Arrieta, Melanie Boyano & Natalia Vargas

The Emberas are an indigenous group from Colombia that live in different parts of the country. They are divided into Embera Chamí, which means “the mountain people”, and who live in the Risaralda department; Embera Katío, which means “the river people” and who live in Antioquia; Embera Epera in the Nariño and Cauca departments; and Embera Cholo in the pacific coast. Because of the armed conflict that Colombia has gone through, the Embera Katío community has been displaced from their ancestral lands and forced to move. Since 2018, a large group of displaced Embera Katío has been present in the capital city, Bogotá. In Bogotá, their life has changed completely; they are now living in improvised shelters and changing their diet and way of living completely, waiting for the moment that the government will tell them that they can finally go back to their land.

Since their arrival in Bogotá, this indigenous group has suffered numerous misfortunes, the most recent being the death of an Embera woman and her child in January 2022, run over by a truck on the Bogotá-Funza highway. This also led to the unfortunate death of the truck driver who was attacked by an incensed crowd following the incident. In time, if nothing changes, the Embera risk losing their traditions and customs, which is especially dangerous for the new generations that are being born in the big city.

Members of the Embera indigenous communities were forced to flee their territories due to the risks posed by the ongoing conflict in Colombia. Despite the 2016 peace agreement which led to the demobilization of the FARC guerrillas, many regions continue to be war-torn due to the presence of other illegal armed actors. The forced recruitment by illegal groups has displaced Emberas from their homes in the mountainous regions of western Colombia. As displaced people, some 370 indigenous people from Embera communities arrived in Bogotá asking President Iván Duque for help. According to their leaders, the government promised to help them pay rent for houses for their families. But so far, the promise has not been kept. Consequently, they felt forced to occupy a park near the presidential palace, in precarious tents, and exposed to contracting Covid-19 throughout the initial wave of the pandemic (Jaramillo, 2020).

The Emberas have been living in tents exposed to the sun and the rain; their women cooking on makeshift fires and their children playing half-naked in the Tercer Milenio Park have become part of the Bogotá scenery. Their situation is dramatic, yet there is no solution in sight because the lack of government assistance only seems to worsen (Doria, 2020). Humberto Arce, the Embera Katio authority who traveled from Pueblo Rico to Bogotá to negotiate with the government, told La Silla Vacía that they asked that while the government designs a return plan to Risaralda (the department where there lands are located) with decent housing and productive projects for them, the government must guarantee them decent housing and food (Doria, 2020). However, given the grave situation in their territories, the possibilities for returning home seem remote for now.

The home of the Embera Katio en Risaralda has long been affected by the violence of the Colombian armed conflict. When the FARC handed over their weapons as part of the 2016 peace deal, there was cautious hope that the situation would change for the better. However, like other parts of the country, the FARC withdrawal left a power vacuum in a region with a poor record of effective state presence. Like other parts of the country, this power vacuum has seen rival illegal groups establish a presence with the objective of establishing control, in this case the ELN guerrillas and the Clan del Golfo, a neo-paramilitary organization which grew out of the demobilization of the AUC paramilitary group in 2006. In Alto Andágueda, Chocó, and Pueblo Rico, Risaralda the confrontation between the ELN and the Clan del Golfo has worsened in recent years. The latter are fighting over drug trafficking routes and territories for illegal mining. The Colombian army is also there to fight them both. Indigenous people—and indigenous land—remain at the center of this war (Doria, 2020). This means that they have been forcibly displaced from their territories to avoid the violence, as well as fleeing to avoid their children being forcibly recruited by the illegal armies. Until the situation regarding security in the region is improved, there seems little hope the Embera communities can return home, meaning the issue of how to best support them in Bogotá should be of the utmost importance.

It is important to note that resources have been made available to the community in Bogotá. The local government has allocated 770 million pesos for the 260 Embera families in the city since the pandemic began. With this money they have paid for shelters, rent subsidies, and food. The national government, for its part, has given them 200 subsidies, though not all members of the community are satisfied with the government hand-outs: "120 have accepted the aid from the district and, although it is not enough, they have been able to cope with the situation. These other 140 do not want to, even though they have all received aid from the government," Camilo Acero, undersecretary of government, told La Silla Vacia. What these indigenous communities want is a resolution which would allow them to return to their homes, and it is this issue which has motivated their protests within the city. Several indigenous people from the Tercer Milenio park told La Silla Vacia that they had already participated in other occupations in the same park in previous years. At that time, they managed to return to their territories, but they had returned to Bogotá because the confrontation in their territories has not ended and because the national governments of Santos and Duque did not comply with what they had promised. The district indicated that they would continue to work to comply with the legal ruling "with the leadership of the national institutions, and thus initiate the voluntary process (...) so that they can return to their territories with guarantees." Whoever wishes to stay in Bogotá, the Government Secretariat indicated that they would continue to insist on relocation (Qué viene para los emberá luego de la caracterización?, 2022). Leonival Campos, elder authority of the Emberá Katío, pointed out that the intention of the members of his community is to stay in the city rather than return to the existent danger of their territories: "We are waiting for a place with adequate conditions to move. (...) We do not want to go to a coliseum and even less to another place that does not have the necessary guarantees", he said (Qué viene para los emberá luego de la caracterización?, 2022).

To conclude, the current situation of Embera groups leaves them in an unprotected position, due to different factors such as the government's negligence in complying with the agreements, or the constant threats they experience from armed groups. These groups should be established in their ancestral lands and their rights (compiled in the Indigenous Rights Declaration) must be respected and protected by the government at all costs. The creation of more direct spaces for dialogue between the Embera communities and the government could be an effective measure to reduce the negative effects of the problem. In this way, it is also necessary that in addition to just being heard, the Embera indigenous people have available to them more mechanisms for direct participation in decision-making on issues that actively affect their communities. The Embera risk losing their traditions and customs given that new generations are being born and raised far from their territories.

References

Doria, P. (2020). LOS EMBERA EN EL TERCER MILENIO, UN DRAMA CIRCULAR Y SIN FIN. La Silla Vacía .

Jaramillo, A. S. (2020). Los indígenas embera desplazados por la violencia y a la deriva en Bogotá. FRANCE24.

¿Qué viene para los emberá luego de la caracterización? (2022). EL TIEMPO.

Bohórquez, Edwin (2021). ¿Qué ha sucedido con los indígenas de la comunidad embera en Bogotá?. EL ESPECTADOR.