The reparation plan will focus on the recovery of productive, cultural and community infrastructure activities affected or lost due to the armed conflict.

After characterizing the illegal armed groups crimes, the Unit for the Victims and the Choromando Reservation community agreed on the measures of an integral collective reparation plan to compensate damages caused by the armed conflict to this Dabeiba’s Embera community in Antioquia.

These actions focus on the recovery of economic activities that apply to their ancestral worldview, culture, and territory, as well as the recovery of their assets and community projects that were interrupted or lost due to violence.

During the damage characterization phase, individual and collective effects on the territory and culture were identified as bombings, murders, forced displacements, sexual violence, confinement, minors’ recruitment, and contamination with antipersonnel mines, among others.

The current leader, Berenice Domico, suffered those difficult times. Between her childhood and teenage years, “we all had to move to Dabeiba, Mutata, Uramita and Frontino because there were a lot of armed groups and, later, we returned, but everything was already destroyed; the animals and crops were missing, the houses ransacked. We lost everything.”

Former Governor Edinson Bailarin recalls: "the FARC and paramilitary groups killed indigenous leaders, recruited many young people, the antipersonnel mines killed several of our comrades and we could not walk free and cultivate."

For this reason, among the collective reparation measures, a collective compensation of more than 252 million COP stands out, which the community plans to invest in the purchase of land and agricultural projects.

"We want to expand the reservation to live better with our families and recover traditional crops that we had before the armed conflict, such as chontaduro, cocoa, bananas, pigs and other animals," says Berenice with enthusiasm.

Embera culture recovery

In addition, there will be psychosocial aid, technical support and material for productive projects, formation of the peace committee, ethno-tourism project, community booth and the school rehabilitation, rituals recovery and territory healing, self-government strengthening and women productive empowerment and leadership.

According one of the community leaders, Edinson Domico, their traditions preservation is another priority for the Choromando Reservation indigenous people. "The culture was lost because the conflict caused recruitment, displacement and we stopped using our dresses, body paint and the Embera language; we also want to rescue it with the help of the Unit for the Victims."

The Antioquia’s Territorial Director, Wilson Cordoba, highlights that “this collective reparation plan is applied with a Differential Ethnic Focus, which is very important for the reconstruction of the practices that were lost with the violence. This will improve the living conditions of more than 300 indigenous people from this community.”

The Single Victims Registry includes 522,659 indigenous people throughout the country and, among these, 453,354 participate in different aid and reparation processes from the Unit for the Victims.

In Antioquia, the entity has several collective reparation plans with indigenous communities in El Bagre, Vigia del Fuerte, Dabeiba and Segovia.

(JCM/COG/RAM)