Ebook 1b

however, thanks to their jaguar-like bravery and their anaconda-like vitality remembering the title of Friedemann and Arocha's beautiful book (1985). In Colombia 500,000 indigenous people survive today struggling to recover their land and to maintain their culture, their tradition and their languages.

A great deal can be learnt from these historic communities. Let us take for example the botanical genius of the Sibundoy Indians who speak Kamsá and live in the Sibundoy Valley, on the western spurs of the southern Andes, in the Putumayo River’s heights. In their limited land they cultivate 78 varieties of edible plants; 64 medicinal plants, 38 source of fuel, 30 animal fodder crops, 23 ornamental varieties, 10 are to provide material for constructing their living quarters and 49 are for multiple uses. (16) Or let us consider the philosophical wisdom of the Koguis who speak Arhuaco, one of about 70 languages spoken in Colombia.

Inheritors of the Tayronas from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (our “elder little brothers” as they called themselves), they compare the act of weaving (the beginning of ceramic creation) with the process of thinking. Because ceramics were an invention of spinning by the hands what which was first a woven object, a basket then turned into a vessel that would become eternal. Returning to the intimate act of creation, the mamo (the priest), compares the act of