Alberto Franco* has long lost count of how many times he has had to hide in the forest until the gunfire dies down. The southern Colombian forest where he grew up has been a battlefield for decades. Over the last few years, armed groups have robbed his people of their freedom. Franco was born in the upper part of Buenavista, in Putumayo, an Indigenous reserve that was formalized in 1983 and is referred to as the ‘ancient root.’ It is a community founded by seven families led by Arsenio Yaiguaje, a visionary taita (elder). Franco is the son of a Mestizo father and a Siona mother and found himself growing up between two worlds, though he ultimately chose his mother’s. His true schooling, however, was from his grandparents and the use of yagé (ayahuasca). In 2008, he became a governor and later went on to coordinate the Indigenous guard. The Siona have ancestrally been the guardians of their territory. They have protected the river with the boa, the earth with the tiger, and the sky with the eagle, according to their spiritual history. However, in 2014, when the Colombian oil company Amerisur attempted to enter their communities, they discovered that spiritual defense alone was insufficient. That was when they decided to formalize the Indigenous guard, the same group they had tried to organize seven or eight years prior, despite many setbacks. The Buenavista Indigenous Guard employs spiritual, political, and educational approaches that involve men, women and children. Image courtesy of…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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