La Guajira, in northern Colombia, is one of the country’s most remote and impoverished regions. It is also home to more than 270,000 Wayuu, Colombia’s largest indigenous community. Abandoned by government officials and suffering from the effects of political corruption and environmental contamination, their survival is increasingly at risk.
Over the past two years, photojournalist Nicoló Filippo Rosso documented the Wayuu community’s struggle to adapt to life downriver from the country’s largest coal mine, where severe droughts have made any kind of meaningful farming impossible. With the region’s goat population dwindling, the Wayuu are also fast running out of their main source of food.
The Cerrejón coal mine broke ground in La Guajira in the 1980s and has since become the world’s 10th largest. Initial plans for the construction of the El Cercado dam in 2011 included provisions to service nine municipalities downriver. But the pipes that should have brought water to the region were never connected to anything. Instead water from Ranchería River — the Wayuu’s main source of water — was funneled to the mine and nearby farmers.
Today, the community’s only sources of water are rudimentary wells located several hours’ walk from where the families have settled. Years of drought mean the Wayuu must dig deep to find water, and even then it is often not potable, causing many — especially those with already-weakened immune systems such as children and sick or malnourished adults — to fall ill.
At left: Francia Epiayu, 19, during her third pregnancy. She said one of her children died from malnutrition and that she became blind while carrying a child. At right, Maricela Uriana Epiayu, 22, was a mother of two children under the age of 5. Doctors said she had severe malnutrition and diabetes and had gone blind. With the help of a Bogota-based NGO, she was taken to the hospital and received support at home with her children until her death from an infection in August 2016 | Nicoló Filippo Rosso for POLITICO
Tracking the number of Wayuu casualties is nearly impossible, as the community does not keep an official count of births or deaths. While it’s clear from Rosso’s photographs that the population suffers from malnutrition, the lack of hard data makes it difficult to judge the scale of the problem and draw international attention to the humanitarian crisis.
The Wayuu’s fate is inextricable from coal and the global demand for it, as the wider region’s economy depends almost entirely on the Cerrejón mine.
Colombia exports more coal to Europe than to any other continent — 17 percent of its total exports in 2016 went to the Netherlands alone, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity at MIT. And Colombian coal made up more of the EU’s total imports (23.2 percent) than any other country except Russia (32.5 percent), according to Eurostat.
Italy recently announced it would aim to phase out coal completely by 2025 and a number of other EU countries have established similar targets. As Europe reconciles with the environmental cost of burning coal, it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore the humanitarian cost of mining it in Colombia.
A 100-meter-deep pit at the Cerrejón coal mine allows the extraction of thousands of tons of coal every month. It takes its name from the community that has been displaced to allow the mining operations | Nicoló Filippo Rosso for POLITICO
Workers at the Cerrejón mine. When a new Colombian constitution was signed in 1991, recognizing the rights of indigenous people, the company had to hire Wayuu workers. They tend to occupy the lowest and most dangerous positions in the company, and don’t often benefit from long-term contracts | Nicoló Filippo Rosso for POLITICO
A boy waits for the train to pass. The Cerrejón train transports coal 24 hours a day, seven days a week from Albania to Puerto Bolivar | Nicoló Filippo Rosso for POLITICO
A school built by the government at the Mashalerain community has never hosted students. A result of general corruption; so-called white elephants such as schools or irrigation infrastructure have been built but never functioned | Nicoló Filippo Rosso for POLITICO
A child sits in front of a well in Manaure. The Wayuu and their advocates say scarce water has been diverted to the high-consumption mine, leaving the Wayuu with dry wells or contaminated water | Nicoló Filippo Rosso for POLITICO
A Wayuu woman walks home after collecting water from a well | Nicoló Filippo Rosso for POLITICO
A child affected by malnutrition is unable to stand and walk. His family uses a bucket to carry him | Nicoló Filippo Rosso for POLITICO
A woman sits beside her son at the Manaure Hospital. Wayuu women often walk hours through the desert to reach the nearest hospital. Once they arrive, they find explaining maladies a challenge as doctors often do not speak their language | Nicoló Filippo Rosso for POLITICO
Members of the community stand at the grave of a 2-year-old who they say died of fever. Wayuu cover their faces with veils or towels. They say their tears accompany the soul of the dead to Jepirra or the afterworld| Nicoló Filippo Rosso for POLITICO