Several indigenous leaders from Bajo Atrato traveled to Bogotá in order to find a solution to the serious problem of sedimentation of the Salaquí River, in the municipality of Riosucio, the lack of basic services such as water supply, health and education, and threats from illegal armed groups.
More than 6,000 people are incommunicado and confined, they do not have freedom of mobility to work in agriculture due to the climate of terror in the area.
“The only support we have received is from the Social Pastoral, but we need comprehensive support from the Government. Due to the dryness of the river, we have no way to get the products, our women and children have developed diseases. Already in 2022, two adults and a child died, and in January of this year another child died,” says the leader Diocelina Bugama, secretary of the Association of Indigenous Mayor Councils of the Bajo Atrato Area (Camizba), which brings together 12 communities of five indigenous reservations of the Embera Chamí, Katío, Dobida and Zenú peoples.
Camizba denounces that since 2022 the Chocó Governorate has promised to move yellow machinery to dredge the river, but so far this has not happened.
Chocoano indigenous leaders have not been able to hold all the meetings they had planned in Bogotá. At the Ministry of the Interior they were only received by a low-level official, “We have seen a great paralysis, a debt of more than 10 years in the lack of updating the censuses of this population, which affects their rights as indigenous peoples. It remains to be found out which route the Ministry is going to implement to serve these communities,” said Mariana Castellanos, who is part of the Colombian Commission of Jurists (CCJ), an organization that accompanies the advocacy tour of the Bajo Atrato communities. in Bogota.
The indigenous leader Maximiliano Baniama recounted that several months ago, in a congress in the municipality of Carmen del Darién, the communities made 51 urgent requests to the Petro Government, which had to be executed within a period of 100 days: “Until now they have not been they have attended We are still waiting for them to fulfill us”
The Chocoano indigenous leaders met with officials from the Dane, the National Land Agency, the Ombudsman’s Office, the Land Restitution Unit, the National Protection Unit, the Victims Unit, the National Commission for Indigenous Territories, and the Attorney General’s Office. of the Nation
But they have not received a response from the ministries of Housing and Health, nor from the Constitutional Court.
“The Court did not respond, despite the fact that these indigenous peoples are part of those prioritized by order 004 (in relation to judgment T025, on displacement), which orders that State follow-up measures be implemented around indigenous peoples who They are at risk of physical and cultural extinction. The Court, theoretically, holds hearings against non-compliance with the measures ordered, which is why we requested an appointment, to reiterate that the risks have not ceased and have deepened,” explains Nury Martínez, coordinator of the CCJ’s Land and Territorial Rights team.