Post Sinodo Panamazzonico - Manaure Cesar Colombia _ ENG

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POST PANAMAZON SYNOD
“Amazon: new paths for the Church and for an integral ecology”
PRESENCE of the FMA alongside the
YUKPA, NUKAK, and EMBERA Ethnic peoples
Saint Mary Mazzarello Province
Medellin - Colombia
INTERCULTURAL TRAVEL - WEAVING CULTURE
The reading of the context and the agreement with the Ministry of Education has made it
possible for the Community of Manaure, from 2006 to 2016-2018, to weave culture with the
indigenous populations of Yukpa of the Department of Cesar, Nukak of the Department of
Guaviare, and Embera of the Department of Córdoba.
The encounter with indigenous peoples allowed the
community to create new paths of knowledge, of the perception
of reality, to leave the categorical and to arrive at the recognition
and acceptance of the other. Different cultures are schools of
learning. These peoples through study and the recognition of
their wisdom, have become masters of their own culture,
achieved a title, and improved their living conditions.
Being with you, says Betty Nukak to Sister
Claudia Gómez. I learn, you learn. I do the plot.
The community, through the Normal High
School Mary Immaculate, in the company of indigenous
intercultural groups, teachers, sisters, elders, and leaders
of each of the populations, have built a proposal for the
formation of Higher Normalists, which takes into account territoriality, collective memory, oral
tradition, ancestral government, and one's own language. The training modules were built,
evaluated, and applied with them. Today some are already bilingual in their language and the
Castilian language.
How is the person who is not indigenous called in your language:
Yukpa: Watiya
Nukak: Kaweni
Embera: Capunia
The Yukpas indigenes can already write in their language.
About three years of hard work took place during which ethno-educators, linguists, elderly
Yukpas, and the Ministry of Public Education worked together to obtain what at the beginning
seemed to be a “chisciottaggine” but that instead, resulted in the publication of educational
materials in the Yukpa indigenous language.

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The first step was taken by the director of the Normal High School of Manaure, César, Sister
Maritza Mantilla, who seeing the need to do something to prevent the disappearance of the Yukpa
language, contacted the Ministry of Education to promote a joint work in favor of its preservation.
The dream of a woman religious
Sr. Maritsa Mantilla, Director of the High School of
Manaure, Cesar was one of the persons who thought of
creating didactic resources for the Yukpas children. “I want
colored books, with beautiful pictures that the children would
recognize and associate with their environment. Thanks to
the Ministry of Public Education, this dream has been
fulfilled”.
According to the linguist Wilson Largo, a researcher of this language for the last 4 years, the
elders were the ones who contributed the most to the research of this educational material: “It
was the Yuwatpus who told us their stories, through which they shared with us their knowledge so
that the Yukpa language would not disappear.”
Thanks to this work, it was discovered that the Yukpa language has 6 vowels and 16
consonants, moreover it has 6 dialectal variations. “The Yukpas in the area near Manaure have a
different pronunciation than those found on the top of the Perijá mountain range, but with this work
we can already say that this language will not disappear.”
This is very important for the work because as is known,
there are only two languages of the Caribbean branch in the
Country. One is the Carijona from the Amazon region spoken by
only about twenty people, a figure that suggests that in a few
years it will disappear irretrievably. The other language of the
Caribbean branch in Colombia is that of the Yukpas, which are
about 3,000 indigenous people who live in the Perijá Hill in the
department of Cesar and in some States of Venezuela.
With the possibility of obtaining a degree
The Yukpas indigenes are semi-nomads and their sons
and daughters usually do not study because they marry very
young. With this material they can attend the entire primary
school and prepare to enter secondary school.
It has gone from oral teaching to written work that
will serve so that in the future the Yukpas children will be
able to write in their own language. “We know that these
children will receive a bilingual education and not in Spanish, and they will learn with elements
they recognize such as backpacks, bows, and not with the conventional texts of the white man
where planes and buildings unknown to them appear.”
Patume Patume
Many Yukpas children have started saying "patume patume"
in receiving the colored texts with which they will learn the language

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of their grandparents and their parents. Patume means ‘beautiful’ in their language.
Even the elderly are happy with Yukpa's work and educational material. They know that
their grandchildren will be able to talk to them and that it will never happen again that while they
speak one language, their descendants will speak another. An example of the degree of value that
the Yukpas elders give to this work was expressed by
Carmen López: “I can die tranquil, now we are eternal.”
Elder Carmen: “I can die tranquil, now we are
eternal.”
Many Yuwatpus (elders in the Yukpa language) are happy that
their grandchildren will learn their language and that it will not
disappear over time.
Collaborator Sr. Angela Lucía Quintero
November - 2019