EL COLOMBIANO, October 16, 2024
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
Indigenous communities have been isolated by the river’s drought. The Governor’s Office in Amazonas Department has called the drought “the worst climate crisis the Department has ever experienced.”
With large cans of water on their shoulders, the Yagua indigenous people of Colombia walk on an arid desert that used to be covered by the waters of the Amazon, until a severe drought reduced the water volume of the greatest river in the world to 90%.
Near the City of Leticia (in the south), the most important city in the Colombian Amazon, children, teenagers, and women, along with other of the aborigines, are facing an ordeal to carry food to their community of a little less than 600 inhabitants.
Some three months ago, the river dried up and left their settlement isolated by kilometers of sandy beach.
Before the drought, the point closest to the tributary was a walk of some 15 minutes. Now the torment under the sun lasts more than two hours.
“Right now, it’s really hard,” Victor Fracelino, a Yagua indigenous man, 52 years old, tells the AFP.
“Every little thing that you bring from Leticia, we have to carry it ( . . . ) and the sand sometimes keeps us from making progress, it keeps us from walking, it delays us,” he tells us while carrying a big can with six liters of water, furnished by the government. It’s the only thing that can satisfy thirst in the greatest tropical jungle on the planet.
Recently the National Unit for Management of Disaster Risk (UNGRD) reported that the Amazon’s water volume was reduced to 90% by the alarming lack of rainfall affecting this area of the triple borders with Brazil and Peru, only accessible by water.
“For many of these communities, the river is their only means of transportation, so they are now completely incommunicado,” pointed out the Unit’s Director, Carlos Carrillo.
As It Was Before
The drought coincides with the worst wildfires in Amazonia for nearly two decades, according to the European Observatory, Copernicus.
María Soria and other members of the community are walking to sell artisanal products to tourists at a place known as Isla de los Micos (Monkey Island). The youngsters are playing football where the river with the greatest flow on earth used to be.
“The Amazonas Departments are ‘the lungs of the world’, and that’s beautiful, but right now it’s not beautiful for us because we have a long ways to walk,” complains a 55-year-old woman dressed in the typical Yagua costume.
The Governor’s Office in Amazonas Department described the drought as, “the worst climate crisis” that the jungle Department of 109,000 square kilometers has ever experienced.
Without any roads, commerce depends on the flow of the river that is born in Peru and dies 7,000 miles away on the coast of Brazil, after it crosses Colombia.
On the Peruvian side, small populations reported shortages of food. On the Brazilian side, authorities decreed a “critical situation”, especially because of the low level at a hydroelectric plant that generates 11% of the electric power for the country.
The ships that bring fuel are taking longer and the prices are shooting upward. The low water level forces fishermen to make longer trips to avoid the sand beaches.
“Looking at all of the riverside, it’s dry wherever you go,” comments Roel Pacaya, a 50-year-old fisherman.
Along with the deforestation, experts warn that Amazonia is at risk of turning into an extensive savannah.
“In just a few more years, the whole river will be dried up, and that will bring a lot more difficulty for all of us ( . . . ) (We are) asking my God to come back and for it to be as before, in the way that we used to live,” prays Soria.
“Knowing How to Live”
At another point on the hillside, Eudocia Morán (59 years old) says she feels locked in.
A few meters away from her home, in a settlement called Macedonia, the river was cut in two with potholes of sand, and it looks like a well with stagnant water.
Tourism, the principal source of income for the people around there, has dropped because of the difficult navigation, and the trips to Leticia to buy food have been reduced for fear that the boats would turn over or be stuck on the sand.
Morán, a leader of the Tikuna People, is convinced that the solution is to go back to the agricultural tradition of her ancestors.
“We have to start our work all over, get fully into farming,” she insists.
In the garden, crossed by a fissure left by the river, yuca, beans, corn, fruits and vegetables that won’t take long until they can be harvested were germinating.
If the drought continues, and gets worse in the coming years, Morán already has the recipe, based on her plantings.
“I tell a lot of people, we have to ( . . . ) know how to go with the current of the times. We have to go (with) the current because what else can we do? We have to know how to live, we have to know how to work,” she concludes.