Given the Guaviare’s history as a place of expansion and disordered colonisation there is certain inevitability about the appearance of the Nukak Maku on the peripheries of towns and in makeshift settlements. While the image of the Nukak with their achiote red painted faces gives the impression of something out of Peter Mathiesson’s At Play in the Fields of the Lord, the reality is anything but. This is an incredibly sensitive tribe that is growing increasingly vulnerable, claims Mahecha: “even the death of a family member or a false accusation could lead to a member committing suicide.”
It is evident that the Nukak Maku are unprepared to deal with the complexities of the outside world in as much as the central government and local administrators of San Jose del Guaviare were unprepared for the arrival of this group. “The Nukak tribe have never had an organisational structure but are made up of small autonomous groups that are controlled by the seasons,” says Gustavo Garzón of the Colombian National Parks Service. “They are nomadic not because they enjoy walking but because in order to survive on their traditional diet, seeds, fruit, monkey and fish, they need to keep moving, staying only 8 to 10 days in any once place.”
Given that the Nukak move through vast forgotten territories known only to intrepid settlers, the guerrilla and the military, it is easy to view them as just another group of people displaced by an internal conflict. But there is far more at stake than just the plight of the last remaining nomadic tribe in this corner of Colombia, the Nukak Makú, numbering 600, are fast becoming a national image as the forgotten orphans of the conflict and representatives of the plight of all indigenous tribes in the country.
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When a group of 80 Nukak first entered San José del Guaviare in 2003, they became officially classified as desplazados – displaced persons- and therefore entitled to government aid. Anthropologists such as Mahecha and workers of Acción Social (the government’s emergency aid organization) were quick to recognize that there was little effective planning in place for a situation of this magnitude. The food doled out by the government, rice, beans, plantains and so on – staples in other regions of Colombia – was completely foreign to the Nukak and unaccustomed to saving the food for the duration of a week, the Nukak would eat it all at once just as they would in the jungle. Clothes handed out on clothing drives were unfamiliar to the Nukak and therefore not understanding that these items required washing, suffered a spate of skin infections.
The Nukak’s contact with civilization has been nothing short of catastrophic as their immune system is not capable of combating ordinary illnesses such as influenza or the common cold. Particularly prone to soil-transmitted diseases and contamination of water through pesticides and herbicides used in coca fumigation, many Nukak have fallen ill with severe health problems, including tuberculosis and malaria. According to Dr. Sánchez of Bienestar Familiar, the Nukak are “in a period of accelerated transition from an egalitarian society to a capitalist one.”
One non-governmental organization, Survival (www.survival-international.org) supporting tribal peoples states their position regarding the Nukak in the following manner. “The Colombian government must do everything in its power to enable the Nukak to live on their own land, respecting their rights to their territories and their rights to live how they want. It must find ways to end the violence on their land, to remove all those who have invaded or settled there, and to enable those Nukak who have fled to return.”
In 1987, the Colombian government, recognizing the importance of the Nukak and their right to protection, created a national park – Parque Nacional Natural de los Nukak – measuring 855,000 hectares. This delicate ecosystem connecting the expansive savannahs to the Amazon gained notoriety when, in July 2008, the Colombian government launched its military operation Check Mate in order to liberate high profile hostages held by the FARC, including former Presidential hopeful Ingrid Betancourt and three American contractors. According to Gustavo Garzón of the National Parks Service, “Ingrid was held in that area for the majority of her period in captivity, for this reason the park has earned another name, Parque Nacional de los Secuestrados (National Park of the Kidnapped).” This last point not only indicates the continuing presence of illegal groups in the park, but as anthropologist Mahecha says, “there is an enormous military presence in the area which makes effective social work an impossibility.”
As Duki “Esneider” Makú continues to be one of the disenfranchised, struggling for his identity as a member of an abstract citizenry, the Nukak are still largely non-entities on this country’s demographic map. Without Colombian identity cards, or cédulas, they are excluded from joining the civilization some of them now seek out. But not all is lost for the Nukak Makú. As the internal conflict begins to abate and international pressure continues for their protection, the Nukak might just have faced their biggest challenge in their centuries old quest for preservation. The future, like language, for a younger generation has yet to be learned.
Richard McColl is a freelance journalist who runs La Casa Amarilla, a guesthouse in Mompox. www.lacasaamarillamompos.com
