Why do they persecute us?
Written by Waira Nina for El Tiempo (May, 2019)
Read the original article in Spanish
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In this path of leadership, and for as long as I can remember, I have lived through the war.
I was born in Yurayaco, municipality of San José del Fragua, department of Caquetá, land of my grandfather, the Indian Apolinar; daughter of Roberto Ignacio Jacanamijoy and Natividad Mutumbajoy. Since my childhood, they transmitted to me the service and love to lead community processes with the guidance of traditional medicine. In this path of leadership, and for as long as I can remember, I have had to live through war and persecution, in silence, despair, fear, indignation, cowardice, rage and hatred.
However, when I heard that peace was signed in Havana I felt the return of singing in my spirit and I saw the children of Yachaikury running to the river, to the chagra, and the families with a smile of happiness. Grandma used to say: “Now we can light the Tulpa at night, we can go to catch fish and bring some animals from the mountain for our food”. But today, again, she asks me: “Why do they persecute us, the indigenous people? Waira, we have to ask President Duque not to send them to persecute us and take away our wealth.”
Our wealth is our territories; we have everything there, but by force they want to build roads, explore for oil, introduce cattle ranching, take our wood, when we do no harm to anyone; we only take care of, conserve and love what we have inherited as a gift from the Earth. In return, we receive threats, suicides, persecution and dispossession, when what we have done is to care for, love, respect the three worlds as a people culturally attached to the ALPA AWAMA.
Of course, grandmother, those of us who live here in the territory think the opposite of those who govern our country. And to think backwards for me is to do what we have always done, what all the grandfathers and grandmothers have taught us, that is, to protect life and the existence of the three worlds: the world of the invisible, where our spirits from above live, the water, the air, the stars, the Sun, the Moon. The ALPA CHAUPIPI, the world of the visible-invisible where we all live, women and men, water, spirits, mountains, animals, birds, plants, spiritual force; and the ALPA UKUMA-UKUTA, the place where we find, under the earth, minerals, water, the roots of the womb of the ALPA CHAUPIPI.
We are concerned about our future and our existence, both for our social leaders, teachers and future generations.
Now, we have been developing this mandate and commitment to our ancestors and walking with the knowledge, focused on our strategic plan of life, with education, learning every day in Yachaikury health and traditional medicine, applying our codes of ethics as doctors and apprentices on the roads of the jungle; socializing our cultural values and articulating processes of love. Also from the ancestral agriculture, germinating seeds that ensure the survival of our ancestors.
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(translated from Spanish by ONISHKA)
