Palm oil, coca and gangs close in on Colombia’s Indigenous Nukak Makú
Satellite and aerial images show the advance of extensive cattle ranching and mechanized agriculture of plantain, pineapple, yucca, oil palm and eucalyptus in the rainforests of Colombia’s Guaviare department.
Law enforcement efforts have not been enough to stop the expansion of illegal palm oil plantations that surround the Nukak Indigenous reservation.
The Indigenous tribe, which had no contact with the outside world until 32 years ago, is also losing its forest home to coca cultivation and cattle ranching.
A group of nomadic hunters who once lived deep in the Amazon is today on the brink of physical and cultural extinction. Though their tribal lands are designated as an Indigenous reservation, their forest was long the site of an armed conflict that plunged Colombia into a wave of violence for more than half a century.