TITLE: Emberas: The violated land

The violence generated by different armed actors for the control of the territories of Medio Atrato, Colombia, put at risk many of the social and collective dynamics that define the worldview of the Emberá Dobidá indigenous people, who have inhabited this tropical jungle of South America for centuries.

Since this occupation by the guerrillas, paramilitary groups, drug traffickers, and the military, the Emberà population has been free to move around their lands and rivers; which affected their ability to farm and feed themselves, causing malnutrition problems; as well as their ancestral practices and their relationship with the land.

A method for the control and restriction of mobility used by the armed groups was the use of antipersonnel mines. Members of the community were victims of them, and many died, including minors. In addition to the symbolic power of mining the land that has a sacred value for the Emberà, the conflict-affected their conception of the world and community life.

In a historic abandonment by the State, the Embera people continue to resist in their territory and hope for peace.

AUTHOR: Israel Fuguemann (Mexico)

Professionally trained at the School of Journalism Carlos Septién García and at the Active School of Photography (both schools in Mexico City), Israel Fuguemann is journalist and documentary photographer. In the last years his work focused on social and environmental themes, specially documenting people and cultures in resistance, and the always more extensive reality of extractivism of raw materials (mining, oil extraction, logging and deforestation) He was co-founder and editor of the journal Spleen Journal, Cruel and Dreamy Journalism (a collective Latin American journalistic project). He got a grant to work at the Journalistic Clinic of the Mexican newspaper El Universal. He has also worked as a freelance journalist and photographer for several newspapers and magazines (Proceso, Cuartoscuro, Altäir Magazine, Vice México, Lento Magazine, among others). He won the Latin-American contest of documentary photography 2019 A handful of earth of Cuartoscuro photojournalism magazine. He was the finalist of the Alexis Grant Foundation 2020. Selected finalist in The Guardian Project 2021 for Documentary Photographers and Photojournalists by Lucie Foundation. Finalist of the 2020 Latin American Documentary Photography Contest, "Work and Days". He won an artistic residence (Me Sobra Barrio 2019) in The Image Center in Mexico City, the most important photography gallery in Mexico. In 2021 he made the still photography of the documentary "Letters at a distance" directed by Juan Carlos Rulfo. He has exhibited his photographic work collectively at the Soumaya Museum (Mexico City), The Memory Museum (in Tlaxcala, Mexico), the French Federation by UNESCO (in Paris), among others.