Mayor's Office of Bogotá will try this Thursday a new characterization of the indigenous people in the National Park

At 8:00 in the morning, officials of the government and the mayor's office of Bogotá will seek to finish the characterization of indigenous people settled in the camp installed since the end of September 2021 in the Enrique Olaya Herrera National Park in the center east of the city.

The characterization will be accompanied by the Ministry of the Interior as coordinator of the process, together with the Unit for Comprehensive Reparation for Victims and the Secretariat of Government, who have worked together to consolidate the census of indigenous people, their conditions and their territories.

This Wednesday, the Personería de Bogotá reported that guardians of the entity accompanied a meeting between the leaders of the indigenous communities and entities of the district, in order to realize the process of characterization of the indigenous people who remain in the National Park.

“Our Regional Bogotá supported the characterization that the District Government Secretariat of Bogotá is carrying out of the Embera community in the National Park,” the Ombudsman's Office reported through social networks at the meeting prior to the completion of the process.

Indigenous authorities based in the National Park also confirmed the meeting with District officials and assured that they pledged to intervene with several officials to achieve characterization this Thursday.

Indigenous leaders confirmed to the media that they expect officials to arrive at the park and carry out the process and said they were willing to respond, but on previous occasions attempts to carry out the census have resulted in clashes.

The process is necessary for the Government and the Mayor's Office to articulate care for indigenous people, as well as define their returns to the territories where they lived before being displaced by violence and unmet basic needs to Bogotá.

This new attempt at characterization also responds to the ruling of the third municipal judge of Bogotá, on March 8, which urged the national and capital authorities to carry out the process within 15 days, in order to provide the necessary aid to the indigenous population and identify their needs basic.

On February 2, the mayor's chief of staff, Luis Ernesto Gómez, had sentenced a final attempt at characterization for the following day, but it failed. In the midst of the process, the indigenous people prevented the presence of officials and removed them, even with sticks, from the camp located in the National Park.

Likewise, since the end of February, the District proposed the possibility of moving the Embera indigenous community, to the town of La Candelaria, in the El Polideportivo in the Las Cruces neighborhood, but they received opposition from the inhabitants of the sector.

The residents of that neighborhood located in the center of the city commented that the area already has problems of crime and overcrowding of inhabitants in street conditions, and they also mentioned that Mayor Claudia López has not taken the time to listen to the demands of the community.

Such was the discontent on the part of the community of the neighborhood located in the town of La Candelaria that they published a statement addressed to Mayor Claudia López. “Your administration cannot take arbitrary unilateral decisions, which directly affect a community of more than 22 thousand inhabitants without consulting us, as ordered by different norms and jurisprudence, we demand that you reason first and measure the consequences. Corroborated with the document emanated from Inspectorate 23 of Priority Attention”, it reads.

It should be recalled that, on the night of last Tuesday, March 1 and Wednesday, March 2, the Government Secretariat, the High Council for Peace, Victims and Reconciliation of Bogotá, and the Unit for Victims, coordinated the transfer of 361 Embera indigenous people who were in the Integral Protection Unit (UPI) of La Florida Park to their ancestral territories.

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