Colombia Dispatch 5: The Kogi Way of Life
Hidden in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a Kogi village built with government support combines modernity with ancient traditions
- By Kenneth Fletcher
- Smithsonian.com, October 29, 2008, Subscribe
Driving east along Colombia's coast past the port of Santa Marta, lush green jungle quickly envelops the two-lane highway. Glimpses of the turquoise Caribbean waters shine through the trees, while the 18,000-foot snowcapped peaks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains occasionally loom high above the forest. The Kogi tribe calls this region "the heart of the world."
The Kogi have clung to their traditional way of life in these mountains since the Spanish conquest 500 years ago. In recent decades, they have been caught in the crossfire between guerillas, paramilitaries and cocaine traffickers. As a result of this violent contact with outsiders, the Kogi call the rest of the world "little brothers"—children who are ruining the earth with their greed for its resources.
Their shamans, or "big brothers," believe they are the guardians of the earth, and make offerings at sacred sites throughout the mountains to restore a natural order ruined by our mistakes.
After I spent several days inquiring in the nearby city of Santa Marta, a Kogi chief invited me to a new Kogi village of 70 families called Dumingueka. Unlike most Kogi villages, which lie a day or two hike up the mountains, Dumingueka is connected to the modern world by a 45-minute truck ride up an often-impassable dirt road. The village is even more unusual because it was built with Colombian government support, boasts a modern health clinic and a meeting room for negotiations with outsiders. Many of the Kogi I spoke with say that throughout their history, the government has ignored them. Their complaints about the farms, ports and dams that cut through their most sacred sites have gone unheeded.
I tour Dumingueka with Arregoces Coronado, a young Kogi man and avid photographer who spends much of his time in the city. The vast majority of the Kogi speak only their indigenous tongue, but Coronado explains in fluent Spanish that the relatively accessible village is a "border town" between the Kogi and the rest of the world. Still, the village feels worlds apart the other towns and cities I’ve seen in Colombia.
Families weave in and out of round mud and thatch huts connected by dirt paths and lined by lime-green leafed coca bushes. Some of the men chew the coca bush leaves constantly, which produces a much milder sensation than cocaine, and carry around gourds, which they paint with their coca-tinged saliva.
Coronado and I chat in the smoky darkness of the village's large ceremonial hut, where tribal leaders discuss village matters and mete out proper punishment for rule breakers. The four campfires smoldering around us represent the cardinal directions.
A ten-minute walk from the traditional village, designed and built by the Kogi in the last year and a half, lays the new government-funded school and health clinic. The red-tile roofs, brick walls and connecting cobbled road would fit perfectly into any Colombian city, but seem anachronistic in the thick air of the jungle, especially among Kogi clad in traditional bright white clothes. But this clinic is critical for the Kogi, who according to the Colombian government, suffer from the highest rates of tuberculosis in Latin America. It provides a place for Kogi in far-away villages to come and receive treatment.
Coronado also leads me to a large rectangular hut full of plastic chairs, the meeting house that will be a place for "dialogue between the big brothers and the little brothers." Discussion between tribal leaders and the government is critical for the recovery of ancestral lands; much of it now colonized by farmers and cocaine processors. The Kogi believe that access to these sacred sites is crucial to restoring equilibrium in the world. "For us, the sacred sites are the most important," Coronado explains. "The shamans are very worried."
He explains that unless the shamans can make offerings at these locations, the whole world suffers from catastrophes as a result of the damage they have caused.
The plight of the Kogi has touched many of the people I meet in Santa Marta. One middle-aged foreign man told me of the work he does for the French foundation Tchendukua, which buys land and donates it to the Kogi. He acts as a liaison between landowners and the tribe, but asks me not to publish his name. In late 2004 paramilitaries accused the last person who held his job, Gentil Cruz, of sympathizing with the guerillas and kidnapped and killed him. Another man, a wealthy Colombian, buys land privately for the tribe and petitions museums and collectors to return Kogi artifacts.
The Kogi are not completely isolated. Some have integrated somewhat into Colombian society, visiting the city regularly to trade handmade backpacks and chatting with friends on cell phones, all the while wearing their trademark white clothing. For some this raises a new concern: that the accessibility of Dumingueka could ultimately change a way of life that Kogi leaders have fought for centuries to keep unchanged.
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Comments (7)
This may be a pretty strong opinion, but if people would stop destroying nature, Kogi people would not need any hospitals. Their way of life is innocence, but they have the wisdom. Today's science brought the diseases on them (and us)and now we treat them with more chemicals from it and think that we are helping them... We need to restore nature to be healthy, not bring more chemicals. That's not healing, that's just covering the symptoms. Schools? What do we teach them? Our way of life? Isn't our way of life what got us all in this mess? Maybe e should rather listen to what they are trying to teach us...
Posted by alena on September 14,2011 | 03:14 PM
Koguis are direct descendants of the Tayrona culture, one of the greatest cultures that lived on America at Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta until the spaniards came to America causing their desapearance. After Tayrona leaders and people were killed some of their people climbed to higher lands on the mountains and kept themselves hidden there for more than 400 years, those are the actual Koguis.
The Tayrona culture built around a few hundred of urban settlements on Sierra Nevada, and one of their most relevant is Teyuna (Lost City) that has a great density of monumental terraces and contension stone walls existing in most the urban areas of Teyuna rather than terraces with stone rings used to build their homes confirms such theory...
Teyuna was one of the 300 urban settlements identified by ICAN "Colombian Institute of Antropology" builded by Tayrona civilization on the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta who were ecology masters and had great respect for nature, the Tayrona builders raised their cities with zero ecological impact on an excessive sloped terrain.
Their urban settlements rather than destabilizing the soil mede it more stable and reduced speed of water with great expertise coming from perpetual rains. Their designers build gutters around the stone rings on the terraces and the stairs were utilized not only for access to their home spaces but to evacuate the rain to a zigzaging sidewalk that reduced the speed of waters avoiding erosion.
Posted by Juan Isaza, Architect on September 14,2011 | 10:50 AM
Hello, can you please let me know how to plan a trip to see kogis and whether they allow visitors?
Posted by Farrah on May 12,2010 | 08:26 PM
The houses made by the kogis are similar in fashion to houses made in parts of India.The walls are made of mud and stones and bound with straw and cowdung mixed which acts like a binder.
Roof and eaves are made of dried palm or similar leaves arranged and tied up together which make them fairly strong and can with stand gusts of breeze and rain.
For some one who is interested ,it may be worth a while to visit India and travel to places like Visakhapatnam Andhra Pradesh where thec can find abundant houses made in similar fashion.
Kogis probably remained as descendants of the age old civillisation which was coexistant thousands of years before when the earth itself was getting formed from a single mass into many continents.
when the continenets were formed by separation of the land mass the people living were also separated and that is why there are so many similarities to the old civilisation of people from India africa and south america also North american indians.
Bob
Posted by Bob Shastry on March 30,2010 | 06:12 AM
Hello, I am trying to find out more about the structure of Kogi houses as i teach a class keen to make models of some.. If it would not be disrespecfful,I wonder if anyone could make a diagram from inside as well as out.. There are some great photos but i cannot see roof structure in detail...or supports... The children(9/10) would be very grateful with thanks in advance for your time Sarah Heald
Posted by Sara heald on May 6,2009 | 05:35 AM
hi my name is caitlin and i was wondering what the kogi tribs tridtions are and what they mack there houses out of in regards caitlin baxter
Posted by caitlin baxter on March 23,2009 | 02:01 AM
I was at the inauguration of Dumingueka in July 2008. What is more important about Dumingueka is that in return for building the school there, the government got assurances from the Koguis that they would allow their girls to attend school (first time ever). All the other indigenous groups in the Sierra allow their girls to attend school. THe Colombian employees of the firm that I work for are donating 400 meters of cloth to the Koguis so that the children can have an additional set of clothes to attend the school.
Posted by Brian Rudert on January 29,2009 | 10:19 AM