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

[phil cash cash]

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

By Margarita Martinez
The Associated Press

Salt Lake Tribune
Colombia's indigenous population
http://www.sltrib.com/nationworld/ci_3019239

   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.''