After several attempts, Mayor's Office achieved characterization of Emberá indigenous people in the National Park

The High Council for Peace, Victims and Reconciliation of Bogotá finally succeeded in carrying out the process of identifying the members of the Emberá community. The entity established that there are almost 1,600 indigenous people who are settled in the Enrique Olaya Herrera National Park, in the central east of the capital.

At 8:00 in the morning, officials of the government and the mayor's office of Bogotá began the process of characterizing the indigenous people settled in the camp installed since the end of September 2021. The identification was made in compliance with the decision of the guardianship of the Third Court based in Suba, Bogotá, to define their returns to the territories where they lived before being displaced by violence and unmet basic needs in Bogotá.

The process was coordinated by the Ministry of the Interior together with the Unit for Comprehensive Reparation for Victims and the Government Secretariat. According to the High Council for Peace, the officials who performed the characterization “ensured that the rights of families are guaranteed during the activity”, so each team had an interpreter to facilitate dialogue with the communities.

“After a long day, in which the national and district institutions joined forces to serve the population, tent by tent”, the statement issued by the High Council read. The preliminary data obtained with the activity were as follows: there are 275 Emberá, Chamí and Katío families (747 persons) and 261 families from other groups (838 people). Thus, “536 families did the characterization process for a total of 1,585 people,” the entity added.

On the other hand, it was noted that the families belonging to the organizational process known as Bakata Authorities spoke with the officials of the Mayor's Office to also be part of the characterization. The work began immediately. It is important to note that 90% of these people were not settled in the National Park, since they arrived in the late hours, between Wednesday night and early Thursday.

The District also commented that it will continue to work to comply with the guardianship ruling to ensure a safe return to their ancestral territories.

Previous attempts at characterization

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 Emberá indigenous community, to the town of La Candelaria, in the Las Cruces neighborhood sports center, but they received opposition from the inhabitants of the sector.

Residents of the neighborhoods near the National Park commented that in the area there were problems of crime and overcrowding of inhabitants in street conditions. In addition, they mentioned that Mayor Claudia López had not taken the time to listen to the demands of the community. “Its administration cannot take arbitrary unilateral decisions, which directly affect a community of more than 22,000 inhabitants without consulting us,” they said at the time.

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 Emberá indigenous people who were in the Integral Protection Unit (UPI) of La Florida Park to their ancestral territories.

KEEP READING: