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Tucupi, a spicy sauce to stop Amazon deforestation
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Date: None

Stopping the deforestation that is advancing over the La Asunción reservation, in the department of Guaviare, Colombia, is becoming increasingly urgent. Nancy del Pilar Padua Palacios, an Indigenous Tucano, has a solution: "It is the planting of ají (chilli), a product of our culture," says the 26-year-old leader, while she records yellow, green and red chilli peppers with her phone. These will later be dried to make tucupí, an Amazonian hot sauce that is produced in Guaviare.

The land, where Nancy and 146 other people from the Wanano, Tucano, Desano, Cubeo, Paeces and mestizo families live, has too many ‘open wounds’ from deforestation, which has been increasing for years. According to Nancy, 45% of the territory, a total of 300 hectares of the 702 hectares that make up the La Asunción reservation, have already been converted into pasture for cattle and monoculture plantations.

The reservation, 47.7 kilometers from San José del Guaviare, the capital of this department in the Amazon region, is surrounded by the Caño Grande, Caño Raya and Caño Platanales tributaries, where its inhabitants obtain water and fish.

Like other young people and children in La Asunción, Nancy knows she is inheriting a deforested territory that has been hit by many threats and pressures.

Her own relatives, who settled in the region in the 1960s, learned the cattle-ranching business, which today continues to expand rapidly in Guaviare, from foreign settlers. Cattle ranchers continually clear the jungle to expand pastures, destroying the natural habitat. There are also drug-trafficking networks, which are less discussed, but which contribute to the uncontrolled destruction of the jungle by encouraging the planting of coca crops.

According to the Deforestation Monitoring of the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (IDEAM) in 2019, 24,220 hectares were cleared in Guaviare. In Nancy’s municipality of El Retorno alone, 6,396 hectares were reported, making it the seventh most devastated municipality of forests in Colombia. These figures are in addition to the 3,119 hectares of coca plantations reported in the report of territories affected by illicit crops 2019 of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The deforestation choking the reservation has not only affected the Indigenous peoples, but also the fauna and flora. Irene Caicedo, the leader of the traditional authority of La Asunción, says that "all the little animals in the forest, such as birds and monkeys, no longer have anything to feed on and they come to the reserve, and they do us a lot of harm. You can't have a pineapple, a banana, because they eat them.” Irene adds that the game animals, birds and small mammals that the communities use to supplement their diet have decreased significantly.

But beyond the pressure on the forest, there is another environmental problem affecting their communities: the pollution of the Caño Platanales and Malagón rivers, caused by waste from cattle ranches and garbage from the inhabitants of El Retorno. "This is making water consumption dangerous for those living in the reserve," says Irene.

[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/tucupi-spicy-sauce-to-stop-amazon-deforestation/