Almost every inhabitant of the Colombian Amazon has an interesting story to tell about his home, one of the most amazing places in the world. This beautiful place of natural abundance certainly provided survival experiences, "exotic" food, “extreme” recreation and a unique livelihood to him. However, his character and future were formed in a context of poverty, harsh violence, restricted opportunities, geographical disparities and gender inequity. Almost everyone has loved and has lived under the magic of the Amazon, but has also lost loved ones directly by armed conflict or indirectly by the weakness of the State in law enforcement or in providing services to meet basic needs.
Let me share one of my stories. I was raised in one of the most wonderful places in the Amazonian region of Colombia, the Putumayo basin. When I was a teenager, my parents bought a plot of land near to an indigenous protected area in Mocoa. There, I met Arcadio, a shy indigenous boy from the Inga ethnic group. We were good friends. With him and his siblings, I played to find wild animals, slide down muddy roads and climb in the tree house in the towering rainforest canopy. We ate food obtained from hunting and cultivation of native species. One day, as a birthday gift he gave me a necklace he made with porcupine spines that still I have it. Our lives were different but shared a similar reality; the Amazon already had defined them. When we grew up we never saw again. Eight years ago Arcadio was killed. His crime has not been solved but it was presumably related to the fact that he as his community leader denounced the invasion of their territory and plunder of the natural resources there. His family lost a pillar for "life-sustaining" in the words of his co...
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...itional top-down model has not been effective. I also think that evaluation should be a very important input for policy making.
Finally, at present the government of Colombia is committed with a peace process that requires political agreements and post-conflict public policies and will have many implications on sustainability and equity. I would like to be trained to help. I want to be an independent and rigorous voice to lead a multidisciplinary research team for the Putumayo river basin to support the human sustainable development and involve the perspective of society. I chose SIPA School because the high quality multidisciplinary academic programs sharpen the student’s skills to deepen knowledge on complex issues in the local, national and international scales. I know that the PhD program in Sustainable Development will give me the tools I need for my purpose.
Miller, Theresa. "Join Academia.edu & Share Your Research with the World." Hunger, Gender, and Social Assistance in the Canela Indigenous Society of Northeast Brazil. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Apr. 2014. .
The Saga of the Tigua Indians is an amazing one. By all reasoning they should have been wiped out long ago. There quiet defiance to change, however, has carried them through. From the height of civilization to near extinction the Tigua have remained. They endure imprisonment by the Spanish, oppression and manipulation by everyone that followed. This is the story of a people thought to extinct, that are once again learning to survive.
Enrique’s Journey is a book that I would never read for fun. It is completely different from most of the books I have read, and intrigued me because the story was about a boy. Most of the books I have read in school are about a girl who goes through many hardships, and difficulties but I felt I could relate more to this one because it is about a boy who struggles. While I may not have been left thousands of miles away by mother so she could send money back, it was great to see what life was like on the other side. In this paper I will be talking about the micro and macro cultures of Enrique’s town Tegucigalpa. The situation and context of the characters decision making and how they adapted.
Napoleon Chagnon has spent about 60 months since 1964 studying the ‘foot people’ of the Amazon Basin known as the Yanomamo. In his ethnography, Yanomamo, he describes all of the events of his stay in the Venezuelan jungle. He describes the “hideous” appearance of the Yanomamo men when first meeting them, and their never-ending demands for Chagnon’s foreign goods, including his food. There are many issues that arise when considering Chagnon’s Yanomamo study. The withholding of genealogical information by the tribesmen, and how Chagnon was able to obtain his information is an interesting and significant aspect of this study. Why did Chagnon feel that this genealogical information was important? And was Chagnon’s choice to study the Yanomamo, despite their hesitancy to cooperate, a wise and ethical one?
Through the study of the Peruvian society using articles like “The “Problem of the Indian...” and the Problem of the Land” by Jose Carlos Mariátegui and the Peruvian film La Boca del Lobo directed by Francisco Lombardi, it is learned that the identity of Peru is expressed through the Spanish descendants that live in cities or urban areas of Peru. In his essay, Mariátegui expresses that the creation of modern Peru was due to the tenure system in Peru and its Indigenous population. With the analyzation of La Boca del Lobo we will describe the native identity in Peru due to the Spanish treatment of Indians, power in the tenure system of Peru, the Indian Problem expressed by Mariátegui, and the implementation of Benedict Andersons “Imagined Communities”.
Nomads of the Rainforest is a film which focuses on a tribe in Ecuador called the Waorani. The purpose of this documentary is to discover how this culture has maintained their cultural identity amidst Western culture and remained an enigma. The Waorani were known as savages and likely to attack any outside influence indiscriminately. These people were a mystery due to the fact that their savagery was brushed against the landscape of an egalitarian society in which all people were equal and must contribute to their society. The message of the film is to describe the Waorani lifestyle and how the rainforest is critical to their maintaining their nomadic lifestyle that has been a part of their culture for centuries.
Larry Rohter was a journalist in Brazil for 14 years and from his experiences he offers in this book some unique insights into Brazilian history, politics, culture and more. In 10 topical chapters Rohter’s easy-to-read book provides a look at Brazilian history and the extraordinary changes the country has undergone -- and is still undergoing. Rother covers many significant issues, but several stand out more than others. Namely: the country’s history, culture, politics, and finally its economy/natural wealth.
In the favela of São Paulo, Brazil, 1958, Carolina Maria de Jesus rewrote the words of a famous poet, “In this era it is necessary to say: ‘Cry, child. Life is bitter,’” (de Jesus 27). Her sentiments reflected the cruel truth of the favelas, the location where the city’s impoverished inhabited small shacks. Because of housing developments, poor families were pushed to the outskirts of the city into shanty towns. Within the favelas, the infant mortality rate was high, there was no indoor plumbing or electricity, drug lords were governing forces, drug addiction was rampant, and people were starving to death. Child of the Dark, a diary written by Carolina Maria de Jesus from 1955 to 1960, provides a unique view from inside Brazil’s favelas, discussing the perceptions of good
Engaged in the longest civil war in the western hemisphere, with an extensive history of violence, Colombia, is the inspiration, as well as the home for Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Brittain 57). Consider A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings , although violence is not the main focus of the story, it is evident that the community in which Marquez speaks has been plagued by it. Marquez grew up with “historical trauma”. The history of violence in Colombia is deep rooted, precolonial, and evident in everyday life (Sickels 20).Once Pelayo finds the man, he calls his wife, Elisenda, “ They look at him so long and so closely… soon overcame their surprise and in the end found him familiar” ( Marquez 217). This gives the impression that Pelayo and Elisenda have been victims of violence, the fact that they find this creature, w...
Throughout the history of Latin American countries, like Peru there has been dramatic change in the overall way of life. These changes are largely due to external influences on the international level such as the Spanish conquest of Andean territories. However no matter whether the process of change was political, economic, social or cultural, they all have similarities and are interconnected. These different types of change are closely intertwined and influence one another while linking the local level of life with foreign (on an (inter)national level) events and forces. Also along with these changes, some aspects of indigenous life remain stable and continue throughout these external influences. In this essay I will discuss continuity and change with regard to some specific institutions or practice prominent in village life. Then I will explain how change and continuity are related to the widespread decline of quality of life and mestizaje in most indigenous communities.
Between the years of 1985 to 1987 Conklin spent a total of 19 months living amongst the Wari’ tribes. Her primary source of gathering information was to interview the Wari’ about their own culture and history. Performing return trips to the Amazonian society in 1991, 1999, and 2000 Conklin was able to confirm her gathered information by asking different Wari’ about their beliefs and cultural history. Amongst Conklin’s interview subjects were dozens of elderly Wari’ who could remember the life before the outside world had become a major influence. They c...
...f Colombia. It is not only to protect the environment, is the socio-economic stability of Colombia that can be changed if certain politicians continue to have a narrative that supports the 3 E’s of sustainability. Additionally, I intend to show to my audience that we need to change the concept of development in order to conserve nature. In fact we should follow the definition stated in the sustainability revolution: “Sustainable development was defined as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’” (jfsdjksdlsdk 22). I will manage to organize my research paper to critically evaluate every aspect and detail of Santurban’s case to conclude if they follow and ecological and social justice. If this is not the case what is lacking in order to achieve the main goal of sustainable mining.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California, 1992. Print.
In the Brazilian Amazon, the young men of the Xicrin tribe observe a rite of passage to prove their manhood and gain the right to be called warriors. The young females take on the nurturing role. They help prepare the feast ...
What is one of the biggest problems in Latin America today? Is it the slums that some people live in or the way poor people are treated? Both these ideas connect to Latin America’s largest problem today, the major income gap between the rich and the poor. When people think of Latin America in modern day some will think of the rich citizens who live prosperous lives, but many of them also think of the poor folk who live in slums such like the favelas of Rio. This might not seem like such a big issue to us, but for the people of Latin America this could not only affect their economy, but their politics as well.