Imprensa: A rich heritage is good as gold for Colombia's tribes

Tue Sep 13 14:43:16 UTC 2005

Matéria da Associated Press, publicada pela Salt Lake Tribune 
http://www.sltrib.com/nationworld/ci_3019239

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(Article Last Updated: 9/11/2005 12:38 AM)

A rich heritage is good as gold for Colombia's tribes

By Margarita Martinez 
The Associated Press 

Colombia's indigenous population 

   l Background: Colombia has 94 recognized Indian tribes, comprising about 2 percent of the population, and the constitution approved in 1991 grants them a degree of autonomy, their own judicial and administrative systems and generous cash aid to preserve their traditions and way of life. 

   l Result: Some groups that had all but abandoned their Indian heritage are making efforts to return to their roots. The leader of the Kankuamo tribe acknowledges that the government aid is a major incentive, and a Kankuamo elder complains that some of the tribe's traditions are recent inventions. 

    ATANQUEZ, Colombia - Saul Martinez is on his cell phone to a friend, doing his best to speak a dying language. But after a few halting phrases, he has to give up and switch to Spanish. 
   Martinez is trying to speak Kankuamo, the ancient language of his Indian tribe, and do his bit for a broader Kankuamo revival that has as much to do with nostalgia as with taxpayers' pesos. 
   By returning to their roots, Colombian tribes are cashing in on hefty government aid to preserve indigenous culture. And for this impoverished farming town in the Kankuamo reservation 420 miles north of the capital, Bogota, every little bit helps. 
   ''The reason for this process is the most pragmatic of all: survival,'' says Jaime Arias, chief of the 12,000-strong Kankuamo tribe. 
   The Kankuamos, Koguis, Arhuacos and Uiwas all live by the world's tallest coastal mountain range, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. 
   But while three of the tribes dwell high in these remote snow-peaked mountains, the Kankuamos have always lived lower down and were so exposed to outside influences - Spanish colonials and former slaves from Africa - that by 1900 anthropologists began referring to them as a mixed-race tribe. 
   Their Corpus Christi festival in late May reflects this fusion - Indian grass skirts and chicken feathers, African drums, and dancers being led through the streets by the town's Catholic priest. 
   In 1991, a new constitution granted land rights and aid packages to indigenous peoples, and the Kankuamos set about qualifying for the aid by dressing in tribal garb, reviving their language and taking up the chewing of coca leaves, said to be a tribal custom dating back 5,000 years. 
   Six years later their efforts were rewarded when they officially became one of the 94 ethnic tribes totaling up to 800,000 people, or 2 percent of Colombia's population. 
   In 2003 they got their own reservation in Atanquez, and they receive 600 million pesos ($255,000) a year from Bogota. 
   The Kankuamos sometimes are caught up in Colombia's four-decade civil war and after more than 100 were killed by suspected right-wing paramilitary groups in 2003-2004, a permanent police force was deployed in Atanquez to protect them. In July, 15 police in Atanquez were killed in a bombing by left-wing rebels. 
   Nobody speaks the language fluently, but Martinez, the aspiring Kankuamo-speaker, is compiling a dictionary based on conversations with tribal elders and books from the days of Spanish rule. He says townspeople have ''a desire to return to their roots,'' but acknowledges the main incentive is those government handouts. 
   Tribal leader Arias does his part by chewing the coca leaves used to make cocaine. 
   ''I never used to chew this stuff, but now I do all the time,'' Arias said as he walked down the cobbled streets of Atanquez, stuffing the leaves into his mouth. 
   Some think it has all gone too far. 
   ''I'm not an enemy of the movement but I am against misguided actions and there are many things being made up and not being checked out with tradition,'' said Rafael Andres Carrillo, a town elder in his 70s. Officially a Kankuamo Indian, his curly hair reveals his mixed race. 
   ''The [Kankuamo] leaders who do not even live on the reservation are inventing things. That's wrong,'' he said. ''We have some Indian roots but they have long been forgotten and we can only revive them through research, but not by make things up to win benefits.'' 
   Arias, who still wears blue jeans and a golf shirt, counsels patience. 
   ''You'll see,'' the tribal leader promises. ''In about 10 years, we'll all be dressed in white tunics, chewing on coca leaves and feeling as Indian as our ancestors.''  

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