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.
Though the interview was not conducted under the most ideal conditions, and the distance that separates us made it impossible to connect on other terms; overall I know that I have only come to gain a much stronger appreciation for the Peruvian culture, and the people that every day of their lives live without a desire change anything that would change their traditional ways of life. From this interview I have been given an invaluable experience that will only become more of a benefit to me as I continue to proceed from this point into an ever more increasingly inter culturally diverse world.
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.
When you hear about Brazil, what comes to your mind first? The Amazon rainforest? The Christ Redeemer statue? Soccer? Carnival? What about the 16 million Brazilians living in poverty? In Gordon Parks’ “Flavio’s Home”, the Life magazine article centers around the poverty-stricken da Silva family who reside in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He tells the story of a twelve-year-old boy, Flavio, and his misadventures as he and his family face poverty. Parks describes poverty as “savage”, it “claims victims”, and it “spreads like a cancer”. Notice what “savage”, “victims”, and “cancer” all have in common? Among these words, they arouse a feeling of pity or sadness within the reader. These words drive the reader to think about possible ways to help alleviate poverty -- this being Parks’ purpose for telling Flavio’s story. Another way Parks brought pathos into his essay is by describing the living conditions of the slums by using personification
My name is Eric Dunning and this is my proposal to go and study the Yanomamo tribe in the rain forests of Brazil. I have compiled a historical outline of the Yanomamo tribe and some of their religion and culture, ranging from marital status to the type of food they eat. I have chosen this tribe because according to many anthropologists the Yanomamo are perhaps the last culture to have come in contact with the modern world.
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.
...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.
Spreading along seventy thousand square miles in the Amazon forest, the Yanomami tribe resides and maintains their culture without intrusion. Their culture has evolved just like that of a modern society, but their way of life is very different. The tribe chooses to live in communal housing; large round dwellings called shaponos. The shaponos are made out of wood and are completely built by the tribe’s people (1). Fam...
... laws, eradicate corruption and try to strictly secure whole Amazon with strict punishments for criminals. To be capable to do this, there must be vast advertisement program, which may interest a lot of people. There are limitations in research such as real condition and a number of indigenous people, because it is estimated that about 50 indigenous tribes are totally isolated from civilization and there are limitations in research in real condition of food and raw materials in supply chain of large companies. This is because any shoe, portion of beef or timber materials that we purchase every day can be illegally exported from Brazil and there must be strict control of global organizations. In addition, there are recommendations of subsequent surveys in improving agriculture and finding more sustainable nutrients which would allow using lands for longer period.
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 ...
In the early 1970's, the Brazillian military urged people to allocate to new land in hopes of more modern society that would allieviate poverty and encourage social stability in other areas of the country by having the people move to what they thought was empty land. They ignored the already in place indigenous people that have for many centuries, as we learned in the book "Nature Across Cultures", have shaped the past and the development of the Amazonia through Indigenous knowledge. The ancestors of their ancestors are responsible for creating the vast
The forests are also inhabited by Colombia’s ingenious and much of its black population who secure their live hoods through sustainable means. They started to erode the social and economic structures of these communities.
Hughes, R. 1998. Environmental Impact Assessment and Stakeholder Involvement. International Institute for Environment And Development. Environmental Planning Issues No. 11
Sustainability development has three components: environment, society, and economy. If you consider the three to be overlapping circles of the same size, the area of overlap in the center is human well-being. As the environment, society, and economy become more aligned, the area of overlap increases, and so does human well-being. Therefore, education for sustainable development (ESD) is the use of education as a tool to achieve sustainability. Simply put, ESD is a way to make the world a safer, healthier, and more livable place for us and future generations (McKeown, 2002, pgs 7-9).