Amazon: The Lost Land
Amazon: The Lost Land

Because there is hope

Colombian Amazon communities resist losing their most precious asset: the jungle. They have undertaken projects aiming to recover the hectares destroyed by deforestation, live from the forests in a sustainable manner and maintain their ancestral cultures.

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The rapid advance of deforestation, the illegal appropriation of vacant lots, cattle ranching, coca cultivation, and alluvial mining in the last six years could lead us to conclude that the Colombian Amazon is lost. In addition, the absence of the State to fight against these phenomena increases pessimism. Experts and inhabitants of the region agree that to stop the degradation of the Amazon, political will is needed, which they have not seen.

And even though some advances are tending to stop the reasons for deforestation, institutional disorder reigns when it comes to a coherent policy to protect the Amazon. A recent example of it was the unconstitutional declaration made by the Constitutional Court for the crimes of illegal appropriation and financing of vacant lots of the country, which had created Law 2111 of 2021.

As the state has not created a comprehensive and coherent policy to protect the Amazon yet, the communities of the region have begun actions to do it. Despite the difficulties, the threats from illegal armed groups, the stigmatization and the obstacles placed by local and regional administrations, they have launched projects to stop the drivers of deforestation. Food made with Amazonian fruits, ecotourism, and rescue of the ancestral traditions of Indigenous communities are some of these endeavors.

The inhabitants of the Amazon want to show the country that it is possible to coexist with the jungle, that it is possible to live in it without destroying it; in other words, that sustainable development is possible. Above all, they want to show that the recovery of the social fabric that the enemies of the Amazon have broken is the basis for its protection. For this reason, it is common for projects to be led by peasant associations, community action boards, and indigenous communities. In these social organizations lies the future of the Colombian Amazon.

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Dulfay Rodríguez Rodríguez: defender of tradition

Dulfay remembers very well the moment when his family had to flee Puerto Santander, Amazonas, in 2005. Guerrillas had told her mother that, as she did not hand over her eldest daughter to the organization, they had to leave the town in less than 24 hours. Without belongings, they arrived in Bogotá. Dulfay, the youngest of four daughters, was only 8 years old and at an early age, she had seen how mining and illegal armed groups threatened the culture and social fabric of Amazonian indigenous communities, especially her own, the Muinane Nonuya.

The cold, the feeling of estrangement, and the difficulties in practicing their customs made Dulfay and her mother feel uncomfortable. Since they could not return to Puerto Santander, they traveled to Leticia to start a new life in 2010. “We went back because of customs, here in Leticia we have the chance to eat our food, to return to our origins, to the processes of making our maloca, to be surrounded by nature… to what we have been used to since we were children,” she says.

Her mother is a maloquera, the caretaker and regent of a maloca, in the same way that his grandmother was. Dulfay was never dazzled by the white culture and, after living displaced in Bogotá and far from her customs, she decided to follow in her mother's footsteps. Now, at 25, she is studying to be a maloquera "because I really like my culture, I like to breathe the fresh air of the Amazon and I want to help young people to love culture, their roots and mother earth".

Mom and daughter also founded the association Mujeres Triunfadoras Tejiendo Vida or Mutevi (Triumphant Women Weaving Life), a training school for young people who "want to keep their language and customs and prevent them from dying out". Dulfay believes that rescuing and strengthening the traditions and ancestral knowledge of indigenous cultures contributes to preserving the Amazon.

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Las Caprichosas (The Capricious): the caprice of conserving

“Being capricious means being united, always leading the way and fighting, as a true caprice that we feel to be there in the middle of the fight. We are capricious when it comes to projects, to work, to whatever it has to be”, Martha Galeano.

“To be capricious is to continue the legacy of the founders who named this town El Capricho because it was their caprice to come here on foot from distant lands. Being capricious means having a caprice for being here, and we continue to be capricious because we keep here cultivating the land”, Yolanda Montenegro.

“Being capricious is being stubborn like a mule, as my mother used to say, because you have to try to persist and not give up. We are capricious to take care of the jungle and to leave something beautiful for future generations”, Flor Matilde Acevedo León.

Martha, Yolanda and Flor are women who live in the village of El Capricho, belonging to San José de Guaviare. They are 37, 54, and 46 years old, respectively. Despite the age difference, they all share a common story. They arrived with fathers and mothers to Guaviare when they were noticeably young, in search of land to plant and create a better future. The economic crisis and the different coca booms (periods where lots of money came into the country because of illegal exportation of drugs) led them and their families to participate in the coca business, but they soon abandoned it due to “bad experiences”.

They also share a passion for restoring the region's forest so that it can be as lush as it was when they arrived and, thus, "leave an earthly paradise for future generations", says Flor.

They are the capricious ones, a group of peasant women who, in 2015, came together and founded the Asociación de Familias Productoras de El Capricho, Guaviare or Asofaprocagua (Association of Producer Families of El Capricho, Guaviare), to trade products that they grew on their farms or food that they cooked. A few years later, their love for the jungle led them to venture into community forestry. Now they have an Amazonian tree nursery and have started their micro-enterprise making food products based on Amazonian fruits such as azai. They want to show that it is possible to live sustainably in the jungle.

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Wendy Medina Ramos: changing history

San Vicente del Caguán is known for being one of the main cattle and dairy municipalities in the country, but also for being a territory where the FARC ruled. Now, seven years after the guerrillas surrendered their weapons, its inhabitants still feel stigmatized by the past that was imposed on them and for which they are not responsible. That bad reputation is what the young people of San Vicente del Caguán want to change through ecotourism.

“Yes, we have indeed been stigmatized for years, but why does the story have to continue? Today we have to break those barriers and say: 'Hey, we're going to change history, we're going to transform it,'” says Wendy Medina Ramos, a 21-year-old girl who, at her young age, is the coordinator of the Refugio del Guará Agrotourism Reserve, a 50-hectare farm belonging to their parents and that a few years ago they preferred to keep instead of cutting it down and dedicating it to cattle ranching.

Wendy is proud of her cattle heritage and wants her municipality to continue being known as a good producer of meat and milk; however, she is aware that this economy has not been kind to the Amazon jungle. She believes that ecotourism, cattle raising, and agriculture can coexist in San Vicente and that they can be done without destroying the forests.

On the farm, tourists can take tours that last until noon and camp. Wendy and her family want their 50 hectares to be a natural sanctuary where endangered species can live and procreate. "We want this territory to be the home of the guatín that is in danger of extinction, and, in fact, we have already seen it here".

She also instructs other farmers to enter the ecotourism business, not to cut down any more hectares of their farms, and to worry about conserving them. It is hard work because it is not easy "to change the mentality of people who, for decades, have dedicated themselves to cattle raising and felling trees", but she believes that she can achieve it.

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Horacio Cifuentes Olarte: guardian of the pink dolphins

In the deep jungle of Guaviare, on the left bank of the river of the same name, and after traveling by boat through a channel covered by large trees where entire families of monkeys can be seen passing through their branches, you arrive at the Damas de Nare lagoon, home to pink dolphins, a paradise that few suspect could exist 90 kilometers from San José del Guaviare.

Around the lagoon and on the banks of the stream live people who decided to stop deforesting and chose to live from ecotourism. Now, they rent the rooms of their humble houses, give food to tourists and offer them boat tours to the lagoon, which covers ninety hectares in the shape of a horseshoe, so that they can see the jungle landscape and the pink dolphins.

Horacio Cifuentes Olarte is one of them, a Quindiano who arrived in the region 12 years ago, when his shoe factory, located in the Restrepo neighborhood of Bogotá, went bankrupt because of "globalization and neoliberalism", as he says. He arrived at a farm where its former owners deforested a few hectares to plant coca, but which was fumigated four times, "one doesn't know what was worse, that they cut down to plant coca or that the state fumigated and poisoned this natural sanctuary".

In these hectares, Horacio planted bananas, a stage that he calls "beautiful because magical bunches of up to two arrobas were produced, but sad because it was never profitable to sell them". After his market failure, he joined the Damas del Nare Community Action Board at a time when its members decided to live sustainably in the forest. Now, he and his neighbors have created an ecotourism company and are conducting reforestation campaigns in some places that have been deforested to prevent the water channels from drying up and the lagoon from running out of water.

Horacio says that Guaviare is his land, that he lives in peace in it, and that he will not leave, no matter what, because he found peace and tranquility there. "This land, where the jaguar reigns, is my home and will be my home until I leave this world".

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Olmes Alonso Rodríguez: from cocalero to reforester

The life story of Olmes Alonso Rodríguez is similar to that of thousands of settlers who have come to the lands of Guaviare in search of a better future. He was born in a town in Cundinamarca called San Pedro de la Jagua. At the age of 17, he followed in the footsteps of his older brothers who had moved there a while ago. “There were very few opportunities in the small towns over there and my brothers told me: 'come here, there are very good jobs in this place'”.

He arrived in Guaviare 27 years ago, on January 25, 1995, at a time when coca was the trendy business and he dedicated himself to being a coca leaf picker: "We were seven countrymen between the ages of 17 and 25 who went from chagra (peasant farmer) to chagra scraping coca". Four years later, he planted coca and soon after learned "chemistry, that is, getting the paste out of the leaf, because I earned more money".

The government of Álvaro Uribe arrived and "eradication entered, a moment in which the bushes ended up with nothing, without any type of exchange, just bullets". To avoid being arrested or losing his life, he abandoned his "workplace" and dedicated himself to deforesting. "I worked with a chainsaw and had some jobs removing useless plants".

Around that time, more or less 15 years ago, his stepdaughters began to study at the school in the village of El Paraíso and he became a local leader. In his work as a social leader, he understood the needs of his neighbors and how deforestation was drying up the water channels. He also interacted with people from NGOs and government entities who gave him different perspectives. "That is when I realized that a social leader must also work for the environment because if it ends, nobody survives".

With some skepticism, he included his farm in a deforestation program and he developed a love for caring for the forests. "I said to myself: 'It is time to stop felling and start planting because I am felling too much'". Now he is one of the most important leaders in community forestry. On his farm he has a nursery and works with various NGOs leading projects that seek to recover the forest in Guaviare.

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Live off the forests without destroying them

To save the Amazon, the region's inhabitants are resorting to community forestry, a strategy that aims to create economic opportunities from the sustainable use of forests.

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What is community forestry?

It is a way of managing forests to take advantage of them in a sustainable way. This practice does not only refer to the economic sphere. It also seeks to strengthen social and cultural aspects of the communities that inhabit forested regions.

Photo: Leonardo Numpaque.

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In community forestry, it is the communities themselves that develop plans (on many occasions supported by NGOs and state institutions) for forest management, according to their knowledge of them. In other words, it is not a plan or project imposed from outside but is created within the communities.

Photo: Leonardo Numpaque.

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In community forestry, timber and non-timber resources are used sustainably to market them. This strategy shows that you can live off the Amazon's biodiversity without destroying it.

Photo: Leonardo Numpaque.

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Community forestry promotes the social organization of Amazonian communities, since its members come together in associations to undertake this type of project.

Photo: Leonardo Numpaque.

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Community forestry strategies

Harvest of Amazonian fruits: Amazon trees provide a wide variety of fruits such as arazá, caimarona grape, macambo, cupoazu, cocona, aguaje, umarí, camucamu and asaí, which can be marketed or transformed into food products, cosmetics, among others.

Photo: Santiago Ramírez.

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Two ways to promote the collection of Amazonian fruits:

Photo: Santiago Ramírez.

Sustainably collect the fruits in jungle areas.

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Planting Amazonian fruit trees in reforestation areas.

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Sustainable timber harvesting: While logging is frowned upon because it is associated with deforestation, there is a way to do it sustainably. After an inventory of trees in an Amazon area and evaluating which ones can be felled, it is divided into sectors (usually thirteen or more).

Photo: Santiago Ramírez.

The idea is that, in the first year, certain trees of the first sector are felled; in the second year, those of the next sector, and so on. When the cycle ends, enough time has elapsed for the new trees in the first sector to grow. Thus, felling begins again.

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Live fences: Extensive cattle ranching is one of the drivers of deforestation in the Amazon, but there are ways to practice it to reduce environmental damage. One strategy is to make living fences, which consists of encircling farm lots with Amazonian trees and other types of trees, such as those used to develop food products.

Photo: Santiago Ramírez.

These fences, besides keeping cattle herds on a specific site, become natural corridors to connect different forested areas, increase soil fertility, improve the microclimate for farmers and their animals, and reduce felling of trees in the forests because they become sources of wood.

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Community nurseries: On their farms, inhabitants establish nurseries for tree species that meet the demands of reforestation projects or live fences.

Photo: Santiago Ramírez.

Caquetá river, limits between Caquetá and Amazonas.

It is not necessary to destroy the entire Amazon to stop balancing the planet's climate. If 30% of its jungle is deforested, all its functionality is lost and the irremediable race to become a desert begins. Scientists say that already 20% of the forests in this enormous jungle have been deforested. And even if it seems incredible, there is hope. Its inhabitants refuse to lose such a biological and cultural treasure, but they need help in this race against time.