Blog

Oil on Canvas
40” x 48” – April 2018 

In the harsh desert landscape of La Guajira, Colombia, water has always been a scarce and precious resource. In this extreme environment, the local Wayuu people have always practiced a system of water capture, storage and conservation in wayuu-made reservoirs called “jagueyes.” These jagueyes are used to sustain humans, animals and agriculture alike, in historically predictable times of dryness.

Present day La Guajira is suffering from an extreme scarcity of non-contaminated water. The Wayuu indigenous people, their crops and animals, and the endemic wildlife of the “Cerrejon Formation” region, are becoming ill, dying and being displaced at alarming rates. 

This environmental and “humanitarian crisis” results from a complex mixture of global climate change, unsustainable land use, corrupt and conflicting interests of national and local governance along with national and international governmental and non-governmental organizations, terrible water and resource management, inadaptability of traditional beliefs to present circumstances, and economic interests of multinational corporations and the global supply chains that support them. One of the world’s largest open-pit coal mines, El Cerrejon, a multinational venture that does it’s fair share in exacerbating our planet’s global problems, has helped to ensure the decimation of the once highly autonomous Wayuu in La Guajira, especially through the depletion and contamination of their jagueyes, groundwater, and the Rancheria river.

The crisis in La Guajira and with the indigenous Wayuu helps to clearly illustrate what can happen when these conflicting and often malicious interests are thrown upon a vulnerable environment and people.