In the celebration, men and women, young people, old people and children from the Uitoto, Bora, Okaina and Muinane peoples performed traditional dances and had the opportunity to address the authorities to claim their rights.
Descendants of the legitimate owners
The catechist Reinaldo Giagrekudo gave the welcome in the language of the Uitoto, after which everyone sang the hymns of Colombia, the Amazon and La Chorrera, a village of about 3,800 inhabitants who mostly live in the jungle.
The president of Azicatch, Ángel Eduardo Ceriyatofe, recalled that this association includes 22 councils of the four native towns that have their own government and resource management, although territorially they are within the department of Amazonas.
“We call ourselves the children of tobacco, coca and sweet cassava,” said Ceriyatofe, who asked “for further investigation because there are things that have not yet been written about what happened during the time of Casa Arana.”
In addition to ‘La vorágine’, the atrocities of the rubber industry were recounted in another novel, ‘The Celt’s Dream’, by Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, who was based on the reports made by Roger Casement, English consul in Rio de Janeiro. Janeiro, who in 1910 traveled to the area and denounced the regime of terror.
