(singing in foreign language) - [David] At the southwestern edge of the Caribbean Sea at the northern tip of Colombia, an enormous mountain nearly four miles high jets up abruptly.

The mountain and a nearby peninsula is home to people who have lived here and protected their lands for thousands of years.

(speaking in foreign language) (light music) - [Announcer] Funding for "In The Americas" with David Yetman was provided by Agnes Howry.

Funding for "In The Americas" with David Yetman was also provided by the Guildford Fund.

(light upbeat music) - I'm standing in the foothills of the great Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta on the northern coast of Colombia.

It's an enormous range.

It rises directly out of the Caribbean sea to over 19,000 feet and it's covered by glaciers and snow, hence Nevada.

It's also the home to four related indigenous groups, they claim all the cardinal directions.

The Southern part has been the ancestral home for thousands of years of the Arwako people.

They view themselves as the guardians and protectors of the forest and the mountain range, which is spiritually important for them.

A river that flows from the east of the Sierra Santa de Marta into the Guajira peninsula of northeastern Colombia is also the source of water for the Wayuu people, who have lived here for eons.

They are nomadic and they have resisted the entry of forces that seek to exploit their land for coal, natural gas and oil.

They continue to fight and produce a marvelous product.

- [Marcela] The Wayuu women make these mochilas and the Wayuu live in the area of La Wahida very close to where we are right now, Riohacha.

- [David] A travel companion joining me is anthropologist and native Colombian, Marcela Vasquez-Leon.

So a bag is not just a bag?

- A bag is not just a bag.

- It's also a symbol of 100 things, yeah.

- Of resistance and of the ability-- - Oh that's nice yeah.

- To stay, to remain despite the terrible things that have happened.

The Wayuus have been here for a long time.

They have adapted to a very arid environment but also, to many years of war.

They have suffered the war in Colombia.

Like many other indigenous groups that are now today trying to build peace and trying to pick up the pieces, but it is, these mochilas are an important part of their tradition and an important part of what they can actually sell to make a living, that is not based on being exploited by someone else.

(speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] We are on Wayuu lands, their ancestral territory.

We don't know exactly how many Wayuus there are because they are nomads, constantly moving.

Today they are here, tomorrow they are not.

But I would guess around 500,000 Wayuus live throughout Colombia.

They are fishermen and weavers by tradition.

The women weave chinchorros, or hammocks and mochilas for handbags.

While the men are occupied primarily with fishing and raising goats, which is their main livelihood.

- In front of me is the Caribbean sea, behind me is fresh water is the branch of a river between these two water sources, the Wayuu people, who live here have been able to make an excellent way of life for a long time.

Recently though, other people have found abundant natural resources under the soil and that's changing everything.

- [Interpreter] There've been massacres and there've been widespread rape of Wayuu women, the most sacred element of Wayuu culture.

There have been forced displacements, massive displacements of Wayuu and selected assassinations and all of this has occurred within the Wayuu traditional lands.

Much of this is a result of the desire of mining and other extractive interests connected to monopolistic corporations, that wished to get the Wayuu out of the way so they can exploit the underground natural resources.

- Because they moved from one place to another, people from Colombia started taking their territory, and in '92 there was a new law, lands would be returned to people, to indigenous communities and resguardos, or sort of reservations would be made.

So we're now in a Resguardo Wayuu, that was a way for them to secure their land.

However, in the 1990s what started happening is that paramilitary groups with, you know, the knowledge of the States started coming in and getting rid of the population and the way to do this is to touch the most sacred aspect of Wayuu culture, which is women.

So, some of these indigenous people in La Wahida that have been displaced are now starting to return.

(speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] Yes, yes we can.

Yes we can construct peace based on love, tolerance and respect.

You can begin to construct a new country and we women can lead and expand this effort.

- While the men are out there attending the goats, the women are here making mochilas.

- [David] In the shade of a lamada.

- In the shade, and this is a place where they gossip, where they talk about their problems, where they plan and where they dream, where they take on a lot of the difficulties that have happened to them.

- [David] So, it's a big therapy session.

- [Marcela] It is a bit like a big therapy session.

There's at the door about 14 families-- - [David] 14 what?

- [Marcela] And they have between eight, eight, nine, 10 children each, a lot more young people than there are adults.

- [David] And there are a lot more mochilas capable of being produced.

- Yes.

(speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] I started to leave at age 15 what my mother taught me, the elders taught me, was this.

Later, I learned different ways to weave.

(speaking in foreign language) These sandals are what our grandmothers made, called wahinas.

The traditional product that our elders made.

These are also sold in the markets.

These are what supported the families when I was a child and the times of my grandparents.

- What's interesting is that some of them are monolingual speakers, but some of the other ones do not speak the indigenous Wayuu language at all, so they have to ask some of the intermediaries to translate, but all of them understand the enormity of the talent and we see here to make, to take ordinary thread and turn it into these marvels of construction.

(speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] I just finished another one, here it is.

(speaking in foreign language) I like the figures, the designs.

I like to weave on Saturdays and Sundays because Monday through Friday I'm in school.

The Wayuu have lost a lot of their culture and most of the youth are no longer interested in weaving.

They want different kinds of work.

But I am Wayuu and I like my culture.

All of us who live here in this ranchidia have stayed, we are not leaving.

- So the hard part is to keep the balance between all the work that this requires and be able to sell them in a way that it actually makes sense for them.

Now, these bags represent, is a symbol of being able to resist what is happening to them and the fact that they are sitting around talking about their lives and whatever happens and comments and that's an important part of becoming part and continuing to be Wayuu.

So this is how traditions is passed on sitting down and doing and making a mochila.

(speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] There are not a lot of food resources here.

Some days we can't afford to buy food.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Water is also scarce, here we do have water but in many places the water is contaminated.

And I can only work weaving on the weekends because I study during the week.

I want to work and to find work, I need to study.

I will always be Wayuu, but I also want to have a professional career and bring money back to the community to help my people.

- The Wayuu make not just mochilas or the bags, they also make hammocks?

- Chinchorros, yes.

- Chinchorros, I thought that was fishing nets.

- Those are fishing nets too.

But chinchorros are hammocks and here's some of them and they take about three months to make one of these.

The elderly women usually are the only ones that make chinchorros and in the community that we were, they make chinchorros, but the women weren't there because they were at a funeral, so they go far away for the funeral.

- They're heavy.

- Aren't they beautiful?

- My goodness.

(speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] The mochila itself is like a myth.

It represents the creation of the Wayuu world, the great Wayuu nation.

It represents the place where we were born, in a place where the women construct a future and pass on to future generations our Wayuu ancestral knowledge.

Throughout the ages the mochila, out of necessity has also become an important economic base.

These handicrafts represent Wayuu spirituality, Wayuu ancestral knowledge, Wayuu future and Wayuu growth.

All manifested through the different designs.

The Wayuu monchila is derived from the sacred site, the place of our origin.

It represents the great Wayuu nation, where we reconstruct the Milky way of the Wayuu people in a spiritual way.

The myth is so powerful that when someone dies, nobody can weave during the grieving process because they will be weaving more death.

- I'm walking through the market in the city of Riohacha where there are almost thousands of these mochilas, these wonderful bags made by the Wayuu people, and then here I find some that are made by Arwakos, who are from a completely different place.

It's about 300 miles from here.

And I look at this and the design is completely different, the colors are natural and these are wool instead of cotton.

In order to find the people who make these, and I want to find them, I have to drive about, oh, 200 miles or so to the West, to the city of Valledupar and find them there.

And that's a crazy city, they have a music festival unlike any other in all of the Colombia or maybe the Americas.

(singing in foreign language) - So there are different kinds of vallenatos, or rhythms of vallenatos.

There is the song, there is the Puya, there is Merengue.

(cheerful music) (speaking in foreign language) Vallenato brings out something wonderful in Maju.

But Maju is a city that has suffered a lot of violence in the '80s and '90s however, the Festival de la Leyenda Vallenata has remained and continues every year.

It brings, I don't know, it brings a sense of hope and it brings a clear notion that people here, no matter what happens, are able to enjoy life and pass on their own traditions.

And really the Vallenato is a tradition that is a fusion of cultures, of indigenous culture with the guacharaca, the drum and the caja which is African, and then the accordion, which is European.

- [David] Ricardo has made his accordion into an indigenous accordion and I've never seen anything like that.

(cheerful accordion music) (speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] My father gave me this accordion and I always felt that it was something very foreign, a European instrument.

However, one day I told a cousin of mine who paints that I wanted my accordion to be Arwako, not German, and that I wanted it to lose the Western meaning it had.

I also spoke with my mother and asked her to weave a strap to support the accordion, a strap with stork designs, like the ones you see on the mochilas that gave birth to an Arwako accordion.

And so every time I play it, every time I touch it with my Arwako hands, I feel I'm not touching a European instrument, but I am touching the world of the Sierra Nevada Negra.

- He explains that the head dress represents the snowy peaks of the Sierra de Santa Marta.

Hearing that and the other stories makes me realize I have to go up into the mountain itself, it's a long trip.

The Santa Marta is a huge mountain range independent of the Andes.

It rises right out of the Caribbean sea up to over 19,000 feet.

It's a source of water for the river that provides that essential fluid for the Wayuu people, but it is also the home of the Arwako people and three of their close relatives, they occupy the North, South, East and West portions of that great Sierra.

This part is where the Arwako people feel that they are the caretakers of the land and, to some extent, of all mankind.

Some of their buildings are square, those are generally residences.

Some of them are round and that's where people do come to meet and where important officials hang out.

(speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] Each and every design symbolizes our ancestral knowledge.

The government should understand how we the Arawakos live and recognize our attachment to this land.

We want to protect these lands.

All these landscapes, the water, the springs, the wind, the environment should be free of mining so we can all live in peace.

- Both the Arwakos and the Wayuu have really trying to maintain their culture.

Both communities have had times of displacement which make it harder, but I think the Wayuu have been displaced for much longer time but I think the Arwakos have been able to maintain themselves more removed from cities and have really tried to isolate themselves as much as they can to be able to keep their culture.

There is a concern about economics, a very practical concern of having enough to maintain the culture and feed the children and have them go to school and come back.

Both here and with the Wayuu are the same way.

They want their daughters to be able to continue their traditions but at the same time be self-sufficient and contribute in other ways to the communities.

They have moved to these territory because they are defending the territory from the state who wants to create a dam.

If that happened, they're gonna lose their water and they know that that is critical.

(speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] There are four ceremonial centers surrounding these mountains.

One is found on the top of the mountains, another along the desert floor, another to the East and the last one to the West.

This is how we perceive the world.

In these four corners there are four communities and the one on top has the codices, the manuscripts.

That is our way we perceive the world.

It is our job to protect these four corners of humanity.

- [Marcela] Women always wear just one mochila and they put it on their heads.

The men have three different ones.

- They have three different ones.

One is a giving, one is a receiving and then the other is to carry important things that they ingest.

- Yes, so the other thing that I found out is that the women do a lot of the work related to making the mochila.

Women shear the sheep and then they have to wash it too and let it dry.

For them it's very easy to spin.

For us it looks very difficult, but for her it's the natural thing to do.

They are all the time, they are making mochilas.

She has five kids, so she can't be making mochilas all the time, so she spends a lot of time with the children.

The men get together and they sit and talk and they chew coca leaves.

Usually the girls will get married soon after they have their first period, but I think that is also changing because they want the girls to go to school.

(cheerful music) - As we go up out of the plains, we begin to get into what's called tropical deciduous forest.

The trees get bigger, they still drop their leaves, but we can see those glorious Amapas, you can see them from miles away.

Arwako, historically have been very reluctant to admit outsiders because of their history of exploitation and repression by outsiders.

The only way that we could get in here was to agree to fly the drone and let them watch us flying the drone.

No community is really complete without its own great Ceiba tree, the monarch of all of the tropical forest in the Americas.

This one has to be hundreds of years old, they grow quickly, but not that big.

(speaking in foreign language) There's the first banana plantation I've walked through in 2018.

(speaking in foreign language) So this is the the cacao plant, the aroma cacao and this is a two-year-old shoot and what they hope, and they tell us is that they will be able to get good production here and sell it to their friends in the United States.

They don't yet know how to make the chocolate, so their plan for right now is just to raise the fruit and sell the seeds.

So here we're gonna open one and show, there are the seeds, when they are dry and toasted will turn a brown color and inside those is the little chocolate itself.

(speaking in foreign language) The Arwakos live in an area that is very productive of food if they can be allowed to do that.

Mixed in with their lands are lands that are occupied now by compacinos, by non-Arwako peasants, who have a very different attitude toward the land.

They believe that to improve the land you should cut down the forest and bring in livestock and control the land you have, rather than let nature take its toll or let nature do its thing.

(speaking in foreign language) They believe there is a natural relationship between the plants and the earth.

Colonists who came in and have continued to come in over the last four, 500 years have taken their land from them and they hope there is a way to get it back.

They know that they might have to buy it and they have no way of raising the funds to do that.

They, at the same time, they hope that they can get a fair price for the products that they have, not only their agricultural products, their coffee and their cacao and their bananas and their avocados, but also for the mochilas, these marvelous bags that are woven from wool and very fine, so they can get a fair price for that.

Not a price that deprives them of the real wealth that their women have created.

The ceremony that we see through the men going through is a use of the coca leaf, which the women gather dry and present to them as a gift from the women to the men and they then share it among themselves.

They move it from one bag to another, each making a donation to the other's bag, and they then take an amount of it and they put it in their cheek as a commemoration of this important ceremony and rubbing on their sticks here they have an alkali that when they put it in their mouths will help the coca leaf itself to release the coca leaf enzyme that then produce a very strong sense of wellbeing.

It's all part of a ritual so the view of the earth, the view of the plants, the view of the forest and the view of the coca leaf, they all view as one part of their living as Arwakos, combination of a spiritual and a practical sense of living.

(speaking in foreign language) (cheerful music) The enormous Sierra Nevada Santa Marta is one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world.

The indigenous people who have lived here for thousands of years are striving to protect it and its waters from peoples from the outside with their money who want to exploit it for natural gas, coal, oil and damnable water.

It's hard not to root for these indigenous people who have lived here and use its resources in a way that is harmonious with nature and protects the great mountains.

- I love to watch the women working their bags, especially the young women.

- Yes, I don't know how often this happens this getting together but it's a very social communications.

You see them talking on their telephones in their language, it's kind of fun.

- Yeah, it is and they do this all the time, I imagine every day, because they are making bags everyday.

(light upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for "In the Americas" with David Yetman was provided by Agnes Howry.

Funding for "In the Americas" with David Yetman was also provided by the Guildford Fund.

Copies of this and other episodes of "In the Americas" with David Yetman are available from the Southwest Center, to order call 800-937-8632, please mention the episode number and program title.

And please be sure to visit us at intheamericas.com or intheamericas.org.

(light music)