Two Nukak Indians have been killed after being caught in the crossfire
of Colombia's civil war. Another sixty have been forced to flee their
remote forest home.
The Nukak's land – a remote part of the Amazon basin in south-east
Colombia – has been occupied by an unholy mix of Colombian peasants
growing coca for the cocaine trade, paramilitary groups, a left-wing
guerrilla army and the Colombian military.
The Nukak's territory was secured after a long international campaign
led by Survival. In recent years, however, they have been caught up in
the quasi-civil war raging in rural Colombia, as poor Colombians
fleeing a government crackdown on coca cultivation have spread
throughout the Indians' rainforest home.
The remoteness of the Nukak's territory has made it an attractive
hiding place, but with the coca growers have come the other actors in
the long-standing violence of Colombia's drugs war.
Only 400 Nukak are now thought to survive in the Guaviare and Inírida
river basins, down from around 1,000 a decade ago. The Nukak are part
of the larger Makú family, a group of hunter-gatherer Indians who are
highly nomadic, living in the very interior of the rainforest.
