More than a hundred indigenous people from Chocó invaded the Cerro Pan de Azúcar natural reserve, east of Medellín, arguing that this area is part of their ancestral territory.
“We are doing cambuches, we are concentrated because many more people are coming along the way. Here we are going to resist and fight because this is the ancestral territory of the indigenous people. The settlers took it from us the hard way, but we are working to recover our piece of land. Here we are 28 families. We are already located here while we wait for the institutions of the Medellín mayor’s office to support us with plastics and roofs,” we hear in a video.
In this special environmental protection area, a space not suitable for habitation, there previously existed the Pan de Azúcar CAI and a tourist corridor.
The representative of Medellín, with its Ethnic, Migrant and Refugee Affairs Group, has been present at the site with the aim of achieving a dialogue between the authorities and members of the indigenous community that is now called El Faro-Daidua.
According to the Personería, this community that has settled in Pan de Azúcar is different from the one that was installed in Niquitao and that returned to Chocó last year. In fact, they had been in Medellín for several years. “They decide to integrate as a new community and different from the other councils,” explained Sonia Peña, leader of the Ethnic, Migrant and Refugee Issue Group of the Medellín District Person’s Office.
The communities residing in a nearby place, called El Faro and Altos de La Mora, are worried and fear that acts of violence will be generated, since there are voices encouraging the forcible removal of the indigenous people, with whom there have apparently been problems of coexistence in other sectors where they were previously settled.
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