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I do not want to starve
After the overflow in Hidroituango, barequeros1 from Sabanalarga, have no river.
 
Desplazados en el parque de Sabanalarga. Bibiana Ramírez – APR

Displaced in the park of Sabanalarga. Bibiana Ramírez – APR

Sabanalarga is a municipal in the north of Antioquia, it has around 8.000 inhabitants. It is the last one from upstream Hidroituango. Most of the people there, live from farming and handcraft mining in the Cauca river. Since the river overflowed, on April 28th, commerce in town is closed and more than 300 persons who lived in the river’s edge, have either home nor job. They couldn’t use the colosseum to crash the next days, so they had to took the EPM offices. Every day they receive threatens and warnings that the ESMAD [1] is going to take them off the offices and that the company is going to demand them. They have no receive any humanitarian aid.

Medical plants

Eva Lucely Higuita Olivero: “Here, a sir who used to buy gold illegally, and him to blame, we have a problem with EPM. Because there is another senior who buys it legally but buys too few. In 1999 a guy payed me 2’700.000 for the gold I gather up for him -just in summer-. The real barequeros [2] have been me and a mister that lives in my house –who is about to die- and who was the teacher/master of many people here: Remigio Moreno, he has also gone to many demonstrations.

There are some medical and edible plants which we lost after the overflow. We used to live based on that. When the girls had menstrual cramps, I used to run to the hills to get the plants, then I used to prepare the beverages and they got alleviated. There existed plants for cough, bones pain, for everything. Some people used to find it weird, because sometimes I went alone to the riverbank with salt and butter –there used to exist plants that one could eat there in the Cauca river-.

Menstrual pain, gastric diseases and even cholera, could been healed with the river plants and today we don’t have such facilities. This month that I’ve been living in the town, I’ve been sick and I’ve had to take pills… Since they started cutting down the trees, medical plants started to disappear. I can cook many kinds of soups with the river plants and they taste delicious. That tradition is gone. We also lost the fruits.

The boss

Jaime Alberto Torres: We were raised in this river and now my children get their livelihood from here. From October to December, the labourers went to the coffee farms to take profit from the harvest. But now, with the nowadays conditions, one can’t even find a day-job. We used to go to the town, buy some groceries to take to the river, or going to the river with up to 15 fishing rods, in the same way, we found plantain, and then we cooked Sancocho [3], we offered it to the neighbours, to the mates. We took fish to sell in town. We also used to go to Orobajo and there, we used to sell gold.

Down this riverbank, lot of people is out of the census, some nice elderlies I knew washing gold since forever... I am broken because they took us out from the river, which is our father, it has provided us everything... Getting out without knowing where to. I’ve been never in the national census. My two siblings were in the census, they received some money but under threaten. It happened the same to my dad. Then he had an attack because of that and the money he received, he had to spend it on the medication.

I wouldn’t leave this job. We call the river the “Blonde/Monkey Boss”. A Boss like that you can’t get it everywhere, because he welcomes you for one, two, three hours, all day long. And if you want to work at night, there he is, you can get a better product. When the river got dry, it was better for us at work. I know all that riverbank. I don’t feel I could get any benefit from this project, on the contrary: beans, corn and coffee are about to run out.

Diana Guzmán (diputy): The situation now is very sad, because anything compensates the environmental and cultural damage. In Sabanalarga, there is a cultural patrimony that is getting lost. There is people that already moved to another cities or towns around. There is sick people that doesn’t know what to do. One cannot teach a seventy years old person to learn another activity. We see no future in a project that has divided populations and communities.

Commerce has decreased. Short time ago, I went to the river with the procurator and my heart broke as soon as I saw no trees. Those that I used to know so well, where I used to build the swings, where I used to play with my siblings, those trees exist no more. If the barequeo and the coffee are over... what are we going to do? Our lives have changed our tranquility is over. There are new diseases coming, diseases we didn’t know before, such as the Leishmaniasis. I’ve just can’t see the good side in this project. We already lost the bridge that crosses Peque and Buriticá. Every day Sabanalarga is losing its history.

The land is lost

Martín: The riverbanks used to be flat, quiet, with a good amount of gold. I was really happy moving the batea [4] around, picking up water from the river, then I washed the net and there was a lot of gold on it. We were free. Since I was five years old, my mom took me to the river and taught me how to barequiar. The river used to provide me everything: fish, plantain, yucca, lemon, mango… Now everything is gone; the batea, the tools, everything. When I went to check it up, the river has taken everything. People used to tell me that we should leave, that we were going to drown, but I didn’t want to leave. I had gold in a totuma [5] and that was also gone. I had a dog named Tiger which died also there.

We are suffering here, starving, we get wet because is raining a lot. Some guys dressed in black came to take us out and shot a woman three times in her chest with rubber bullets. They kicked me once and I went to the hills so they won’t catch me again. On the other side, going back to the point, I used to catch three fishes per try, I used to share them with the people, we were all happy. There was always food. Since we came from the riverbank, I haven’t eaten fish.

Now we have to eat corn as we were chickens. I used to ask EPM to leave the river alone. The situation is hard. Past time, in the river no one used to dismiss us from there, people used to love me and we used to take care of each other. I am sad and the land is sad. I loved the river so much, I am broken of seeing the river like that, stopped, full, like there was a jail around.

Barequeras del cañón del río Cauca. Bibiana Ramírez – APR

Barequeras of the Cauca river canyon. Bibiana Ramírez - APR

[1ESMAD: Spanish anagram for Mobile Anti-Riot Squad.

[2Barequero: handcraft miner

[3Sancocho: Typical soup from all over the country. It is mainly made of chicken, meat, corn, plantain, yucca, potatoes, and vegetables and spices such as onion, garlic, coriander, pepper and cumin.

[4Batea: It is a system of gold extraction in an artisanal way and ancestral origin

[5Totuma: It is a vessel of vegetal origin, (fruit of the tree of the totumo or taparo). In Central America, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela and Panama is generally used in the native towns like kitchen implement.