Quintín Lame, Raíz de Pueblos (2015)

Quintin Lame is the most important twentieth century indigenous leader in Colombia. As a child he lived among violence and injustice committed against his people. He begins a relentless peaceful struggle for restoration of the violated indigenous rights. He was jailed 108 times and studied the colonial laws to defend his cause in the courts. His movement is the beginning of the current struggle to recover the territory, culture, and indigenous autonomy.

With the arrival of the “conquest” the indigenous communities suffered a constant genocide, manifested in the dispossession of their territories, the total or partial weakening of their ancestral cultural tradition, together with the ignorance of their systems of authority and governance. Quintín stands up after this period of submission and leads an arduous fight against violence and abuses against indigenous communities, denouncing the multiple acts of aggression, their violated rights, the ignorance of indigenous peoples as different and non-inferior peoples. . His movement is the beginning of the current struggle for the recovery of indigenous territory, culture and autonomy. Hand in hand with his wife, Pioquinta, he promotes the claim of indigenous rights, first in his homeland of Cauca and then moving to Tolima where he would spend his last years, maintaining his tireless sense of struggle and rebellion against the injustice.

“My thought is that of a son of the forest, which witnessed his birth, who was raised and educated under the forest like the birds learn to sing and like chicks who learn how to fly by flapping their wings challenging the future to cross it tomorrow.”