The Urban Indigenous / English

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OUTLINE /

Gaspar Hernández grew up in a rural village in depths of the Amazon rainforest in Colombia. Four years ago he migrated with his family to a slum in the city of Leticia.

“We came here to look for jobs.” says Hernández, an unemployed carpenter. “To look for the best way that we can move forward in jobs and to provide for the children so that they can study. This is the most important.”

Most people think of the Amazon as pristine wilderness but the reality is that 70 percent of people live in urban areas. Just as in any other part of the world, people are moving to the cities and the Amazonia is no exception. Leticia is a port city of 40,000 in the heart of the rainforest, exactly at the point where Colombia, Brazil and Peru come together. Although it’s incredibly remote, Leticia is a regional capital and to people here it feels like the center of the world. But in fact, the city is totally lacking in infrastructure and economic opportunity.

Almost 65 percent of Leticia’s population lives in its unincorporated areas: flood prone sections without a sewer system, running water or electricity that authorities qualify as “high risk” and “not suited for living.” For rural people accustomed to living off the land, it’s a rude shock. With no land to farm in the city, indigenous peoples must adjust to a cash economy, says Anthropology Professor Dany Mahecha.

“If you don’t have money in the city you don’t eat,” says Marta Fernanda, Gaspar’s wife. She and her husband are struggling to support their four children and his mother. “It’s been very hard for me to afford school uniforms and notebooks. Even now I can’t get their gym uniform,” she says. The couple thought they would find better opportunities in the city. Instead they don’t have enough to eat.

“At this point I feel the pressure,” says Gaspar Hernández. “I am thinking about returning to my reservation next year because there’s no jobs and things are getting worse.” Indigenous people who leave designated Indian reservations do not receive government aid anymore. And they are watching their children lose touch with their culture.

Abel Santos, an indigenous teacher at one of Leticia’s schools, estimates about 200 hundred children arriving from indigenous communities to study every year. “There are settlers, mestizos, Cocamas, Yaguas, Ticunas, Uitotos…” says Santos. But indigenous languages are not taught and no curriculum teaches children about their heritage. He is one of many people worried that these languages are being gradually lost.

“The parents are thinking about their children’s future,” says Santos. “They believe that in Leticia there’s a better education and that if a kid finishes his studies he’ll have a better chance to find a job.” But the jobs don’t exist.

Gaspar Hernández and his family are saving money to go back to their community, up the river. They are among the many indigenous people for whom the promises of life in the city — education, jobs and health care — never came true. If they succeed in returning, they and their children will take with them the city ways they’ve learned. Inevitably, urban culture has reached one of the most remote corners of the world, making the Amazon – for better or worse — part of a global planet.