Nelsa, indigenous teacher  

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From teaching and promoting gender, Nelsa has tried to inspire and teach her community to resist and preserve their traditions, to protect themselves and stay alive.

She feels her own losses and pain left by the presence of non-state armed groups: “When something happens to us, we always cry, we remember how we have raised our kids and we feel the pain of childbirth. We also feel when something happens to our men and women leaders,” she says.

Her community has been forced by non-state armed groups to remain in their homes without being able to access food, water, education or health for days and months as a war strategy.

This indigenous community made up of wooden houses located on a plain on the shores of one of the rivers from Antioquia, on the Colombian Pacific Coast. The families live surrounded by green mountains covered with tropical forest that make it a paradise. The Embera Katío indigenous community lives here, where the ancestral culture permeates all aspects of the lives of its inhabitants.

In 2022, the community is going through situations of confinement and displacement due to the armed conflict that persists in Colombia.

Despite the peace agreement in Colombia, hundreds of thousands of people continue to be forced to stay in their homes without access to food, water, education or health for days and months as a war strategy.