Maicao, Colombia – Standing, next to his improvised home made with scrap, wood and plastic canvas, Nelly Mengual, 47, recounts how the severe floods and winds started his roof a few months ago, leaving it at home with the water to his knees.
He lives in an informal settlement on the outskirts of Riohacha, in the arid and summary region of the north of Colombiawhere thousands of wayúu reside, natives of the La Guajira region, which covers Colombia and Venezuela.
Although many residents were born in Colombia, the Wayúu who fled from Venezuela are the ones who face the greatest difficulties. After escaping what many people describe as an economic crisis, they now live in these settlements without access to drinking water – and for many, without electricity. The Wayúu, whose traditional lands cover Colombia and Venezuela, see the border as a political construction and not as a cultural division, since their relationships and networks transcend national lines.
“All this full ranch was completely flooded. The objects on our part, how little we had. Everything was lost in the middle of the water, ”said Mengual, who earns some money recycling waste material in Maicao.
The Wayúu, the largest indigenous group in Colombia, face the double threat of droughts and floods caused by climate change. Scientists warn that the most serious and prolonged drought periods, interspersed with periods of torrential rains, are increasingly common as the world is heated. In addition to damaging people’s homes, they also exhaust water sources, destroy crops and increase health risks due to water transmitted diseases. Many Wayuu families are forced to migrate in search of essential resources, which exerts even more pressure on urban areas already overpopulated.
The serious floods put at risk the way of life of the wayúu
Ingrid González, Wayuu community leader of Maracaibo who has lived for six years in the Villa del Sol settlement near Riohacha, says that the most traditional Wayuu homes, made with sticks and clay covers, are very susceptible to the rainy season.
“When it rains … there are many, many houses that are flooded are filled with water,” said Gonzalez, 29. “A strong water river passes here and then the mud houses fall.”
“There are people who fry it and the house does not fall, but it is greatly affected. Even several sheets flew to me, ”González said in Spanish, although, like other interviewees, he feels more comfortable speaking in his mother tongue, the Wayuunaiki.
Samuel Lanao, director of Corpoguajira, the Guajira Environmental Authority said that, in 2024, Extreme winter floods caused serious losses of housing, crops and domestic animals in indigenous communities, particularly between those that come from Venezuela. “Due to climate change, diseases transmitted by vectors, such as dengue and zika. Dengue has hit a lot, a lot to communities, especially indigenous communities, ”he said.
Lanao said that Corpoguajira has created a climate change plan to reduce emissions and increase community resilience and ecosystems.
The change in climatic patterns is undeniable for Camilo Martínez, base manager of the Danish Council for refugees in La Guajira, which has a strong presence in the region. With 14 years of experience in the area, he has been an eyewitness of these changes.
“As I had been here for years, there was a mist and at certain times of the morning he felt cold. Today that has stopped feeling. As well as in the peaks where snow is seen in the nearby mountains … you don’t see so much, “Martínez told The Associated Press in the Uyatpana indigenous community, on the outskirts of Maicao.
Martínez says that the months in which the rainy season begins have changed, but also the intensity of the rain when it finally arrives.
The scientific evidence of climate change in La Guajira, backed by data from the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies of Colombia (Ideam) and different studies, includes the increase in temperatures, prolonged droughts such as the crisis from 2012 to 2016, irregular rain patterns and an increase in desertification.
Heat and drought test informal settlements
Last year’s heat was the most intense that González, the community leader, can remember.
“There are houses where there are very heat and affects a lot to those people who are hypertensive, who cannot or feel tired, colored,” he said. Heat is so strong that it even affects animals. “Those neighbors who have chickens, the chicken have died because of the heat they are doing strongly, they feel suffocated.”
An important part of the Wayúu population maintains traditional and seminated lifestylesresides in rancherías – palm roof chores made of dry cactus and mud – and shepherds cattle and goats.
In many informal settlements, residents lack access to drinking water or sanitation services. Sellers transport not treated water in barrels, using mules to distribute it among homes in exchange for a rate. While many people depend on rainwater collection, the growing unpredictability of rainfall has made this water source less reliable.
“They have been forced to have to buy water from sources not as clean, by means such as transport carts or the famous burritos that have to make long tours from some water sources to make families reach,” Martínez said. This water is not potable; “It can only be used to wash, cook maybe. But people are also forced to drink that kind of water. So it is like one of the largest effects that have left droughts and lack of rainfall in these seasons. ”
Many non -governmental organizations claim that they intervene to support these areas in La Guajira, where state assistance is minimal or completely non -existent. The Colombian Ministry of Environment did not respond to requests for comments from the AP.
The Wayuu Aníbal Mercado leader told the AP that the Wayuu migrant population suffers more due to climate change.
“You find them by collecting garbage, you find one recycling, that that had never been seen.” He states that this is the product of government abandonment. “The State has been causing neoliberal policies that go against the exercise of its traditional rights, with which Wayuu was provided to its own economy. His own diet, ”he said.
Many work to rebuild again and again
In the Uyatpana neighborhood, Laura Pushaina, 28, sits in a stool to weave a chinchorro, a traditional Wayuu hammock that is used to sleep. With five children between one and 10, he says that he will take four days to complete the intricate work.
Pushaina is one of the thousands of wayúu that cross Colombia and establish settlements. Due to the changing political and economic conditions in the region, many have left their homes in Venezuela.
Many people, like Pushaina, told the AP that they hope to return to their ranches on the Venezuelan side of the border, but believe that the political and economic situation is still too unstable to do so. Some also said that being relocated in a different place to informal settlements would help, since the earth is not suitable for living without drinking water or an adequate sanitation infrastructure.
Just a few months ago, Pushaina’s house was destroyed by floods.
“In rainy season I have lived worse moments,” he said. “On that side I was coming, as well as a river.”