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The center is the periphery: a circle of words at the FUCAI Foundation
Por: Paloma Cobo | June 3, 2023
Ruth Chaparro, whom they call mother, grandmother, or teacher, is the one who begins the speaking. She has a serene gaze and salt-and-pepper hair. I am with about fifteen members of the Fundación Caminos de Identidad, FUCAI, in the main room of their Bogotá headquarters. We are sitting in an imperfect circle. Ruth’s voice sounds hoarse, almost broken. She says that FUCAI, the organization for the defense of indigenous rights that she directs, walks many days between work and mourning, between laughter and tears. This is one of those days.
Jaime Manuel Redondo Uriana was Wayuu. He was born in Manaure. He was 18 years old and was serving in the military in Catatumbo. He was killed in March by the ELN, along with his companions. Jaime Manuel was also the younger brother of Luis José, who works at FUCAI as a bilingual technician.
Ruth opens another circle of speech, this time in the Amazon jungle.
Luis José later said that FUCAI was “the ‘palabrera,’ the one who carries the voice to the capital” from the distant places where they work. The voice that reaches Bogotá tonight is one that grieves. It denounces the always useless violence of the guerrilla and the cruelty of the State that left young soldiers, none of them professionals, alone, even though the attack had been announced. It points out, I feel it, the injustices and needs that persist in La Guajira. That “structure that puts pressure on indigenous peoples to disappear,” in Ruth’s words. And yet, the voice that comes tonight is also one of comfort and encouragement. An exhortation to continue. That’s what the poem we all read says. That, I think, is what we say to each other when we light the candles in the metal braziers in the name of Jaime Manuel.
The beginning of the path
The Fundación Caminos de Identidad, FUCAI, was born 32 years ago. They were a group of friends who worked with indigenous communities. Ruth tells me that they often found themselves failing to deliver and telling lies. People would ask them for help, and they, who were then public officials, had to say they couldn’t, that a procedure or a signature was missing, that the decision was not in their hands. The frustration and shame led them to create an organization to fulfill what they promised.
The FUCAI method seems simple: observe reality, understand the problems, study how they have been solved before, design solutions with the communities, implement them, and celebrate successes. Doing so is not easy. It requires, first, a permanent willingness to listen. This is one of the things they have learned from indigenous peoples. To have patience and let the word unfold, to dawn and become action.
In La Guajira, FUCAI supports women weavers in selling their textiles to get better economic income and fight malnutrition.
To listen is to understand, obey, and act. That is how they have understood that “problems contain solutions” and that “the closer we get to the ancestors, the more innovative we are.” The apparent contradiction dissolves. They have recovered traditional bioconstruction methods to make houses and schools suitable for the climate, nature, and life of the populations they work with. From the indigenous elders, they also learned zero-carbon footprint cultivation systems, which allow for a greater variety of foods on the plate. Now, in the Amazon rainforest, there are more than five thousand hectares with native species that they helped to plant.
FUCAI
Their motto itself, “the center is the periphery,” is an illusory contradiction: FUCAI’s center is the periphery. They are in La Guajira, in the Orinoquia and the Amazon, crossing borders that presidents and generals imagined, but which do not divide the jungle, the desert, or the indigenous peoples.
The objects
On the table, at the center of the circle of speech, there is a feathered crown, six small bags, staffs of office, statuettes, figurines, a Wayuu hat, some white flowers, a basket with dried corn, books.
There is also a bag of a nutritional supplement called Vita Meal. Daniela Ballesteros, a mestizo field professional, takes it and places it on her lap. She says that the bags arrive in Manaure. She, with the Wayuu technicians, helps distribute them. I read now that a bag like the one she is holding is enough to feed a child for 30 days. FUCAI delivers them to more than 850 families. That is a short-term solution for La Guajira. In the medium term, adds Camila Sanint, another field professional from the organization, they support Wayuu women in selling their textiles. In the families of the women weavers they work with, there is no longer malnutrition. But that, too, is not enough. The humanitarian crisis is deep and widespread. As the team’s journalist, Zulma Rodríguez, states, “to achieve sustainable long-term changes, FUCAI also leads the oversight of Constitutional Court Ruling T-302 of 2017, which declares the State of Unconstitutional Things. That is, the massive, structural, and disproportionate violation of the rights to water, health, and food of Wayuu children and the communities of Riohacha, Manaure, Uribia, and Maicao.” Zulma comments that after six years, the progress in complying with the Ruling has been incipient. Wayuu children continue to die from causes associated with malnutrition, largely due to the lack of coordination between entities and the failures of control and justice entities.
FUCAI
At the beginning, the specialty of FUCAI members was not food, health, or water. Its founders were specialists in bilingual intercultural education. They trained 800 teachers and directors, wrote texts and programs. But in an Assembly of indigenous authorities, they were asked to do so. So they “returned to the machete, the shovel, and the axe,” Ruth tells me. They know they have to know about soils, seeds, crops, weight and height, nutrition, and native cuisine to be able to talk about zero hunger and food sovereignty. “We go where we are called. They tell us what they want and why they want it. We establish agreements and share responsibilities. Always following the principles of the pedagogy of love and with a high technical level,” proudly points out Adán Martínez, one of the founders of FUCAI.
Later, they were asked to contribute to the strengthening of the community governance of indigenous peoples. They supported the construction of life plans and environmental management plans. They have trained more than 500 indigenous leaders, authorities, and guards and have helped to legalize territories and organizations. Sergio Martínez, project coordinator, says that “the FUCAI teams do what they don’t know how to do, with the conviction that it can be done.” What he doesn’t say is that they also do it well. They have won the Bartolomé de las Casas award given by Casa de las Américas and have been recognized by Telefónica España as one of the 10 best transparency practices. Ruth, in addition, was recognized with the Cafam Woman award in 2011.
FUCAI
The abundance
From the table, Luz Dary Mojica takes the basket. She comes from Nazareth, a Tikuna indigenous reservation on the bank of the Amazon River, an hour from Leticia. She is an environmental manager at the foundation and a bilingual technician. She works with children reforesting the burned jungle. The woven basket she holds in her hands speaks of abundance, she says. She remembers what she teaches the children she works with: “we are all rich, even if they say we are poor.”
Before we leave, they give us bags of native beans, grown in La Guajira. They were the surplus from a harvest that the foundation had promoted. I still have some at home: small, brown, with a little white dot on the tip. I am surprised to learn that they come from an arid land. Ruth, talking about the ability people have to solve their problems, said “we all have the seeds.” She also said that it is necessary to regain strength and dignity and to work with joy and pleasure so that the seeds grow.
FUCAI, through respect and loving action, has helped to show that profusion and that potential of ideas, of food, of knowledge, of plants and of solutions that are in the indigenous peoples and lands. With its generous and sensitive gaze, it has been able to recognize the abundance that always sleeps in things.
FUCAI
(*) Researcher at Dejusticia
(**) This article is part of the special #TejidoVivo, a product of a journalistic alliance between the Dejusticia study center and El Espectador.
