The Siona indigenous people lives on the banks of the Putumayo River and today requires the National Government to be present in its territory, since They claim to be on the verge of extermination.
They are millennial caregivers, they have their own language that has been weakened by globalization, however, their own festivities and customs persist such as chagra and yagé.
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“The Siona people have taken care of the territory for thousands of years, despite state abandonment, the presence of irregular actors and oil companies. We have resisted because without territory we would not be indigenous,” said Marío Alberto Erazo Yaiguaje, authority of the Buenavista reservation, Putumayo.
The Siona declared themselves at risk of physical and cultural extermination two years ago, but they affirm that the Duque government did not pay attention to them and they reached a critical situation.
“It is hard for us to look at history, because our grandparents tell us how they saw history and it makes us happy, but later they tell us how the invasion came with the rubber industry, the skins, the wood, the coca, the oil companies, and that is where everything becomes sadness,” said Marío Alberto Erazo Yaiguaje, authority of the Buenavista reservation, Putumayo.
They say that, through spirituality and the defense of human rights, about 2,000 people of the ethnic group survive. In addition to having the Buenavista reservation, but that number is less than half of what the Siona were.
“The first time I saw an armed entity was from the Army passing by in front of my house who were on the trail of the M19, then I saw the FARC. I grew up in an area where there has been no peace, our grandparents have already left, but we remain,” said Marío Yaiguaje.
The lack of state attention led them to fight a legal battle and have greater cultural resistance, According to reports, the war in Putumayo did not go away, to date there are two groups outside the law that exert pressure in the territory and continue with the coca planting.
“We told the JEP that the war did not go away and we have a book that we present to it where it narrates events that occurred up to 2016, serious violations to which the Siona people were subjected, but we also came to tell the National Government that the situation The current situation is unsustainable and if there is no intervention, the risk of extermination will materialize,” said Lina María Espinosa Villegas, a human rights defender.
The armed actors they take out their coexistence manuals and the ethnic group is not governed by that because they have their own legacy directed from ancestral medicine.
they know well that in Putumayo it is concentrated around 22% of the coca that the country has, but they grow it to survive.
“Coca generates war, but there is no other alternative besides planting coca,” said Lina Espinosa Villegas.
Faced with the clashes that the territory is still witnessing,he Siona community re-assembled trencheswhich are a hole that families open in their homes to take refuge from the crossfire.
“In 2019 the grandmother, with great sadness, announced to us that she had reopened her trenches and that continues to be the reality of the families,” said Lina Espinosa Villegas.
The dialogue with the Duque government stalled and that is why they reached this point. The Siona people hope to reach agreements with the new government and they will fight until the last stay so that their lineage does not disappear.
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What is the situation of the Siona people in lower Putumayo?