Four hours with intense labor pains, without medical attention and on a cold floor of a Comfachocó clinic, Diana Maizony had to wait to be seen.
During that time, the only doctor who examined her told her in a contemptuous way that she was "one of those who give birth alone" and that "the 'Indians' are left aside."
She was only able to give birth to her first child when a nurse appeared who decided to attend to her.
After that episode of racism and obstetric violence, Diana promised herself not to return to a hospital to give birth.
She chose to have her second son alone in her house because she feared she would again be a victim of abuse for the mere fact of being an Emberá.
At the age of 30, this has been just one of countless episodes of violence that she has suffered in the different places in Chocó where she has been displaced.
The first time she moved was when she was a child.
She fled from the Miácora community, in Alto Baudó, and arrived with her family in Bojayá.
There she survived the massacre perpetrated by the extinct FARC guerrilla in 2002. After the tragedy, her family packed a few suitcases and she escaped in a small boat to Quibdó.
Since then they have lived in the capital of Choco.
According to a 2018 census carried out by DANE, 4,006 of the 68,415 people who self-identify as indigenous in Chocó live in Quibdó, making a historically Afro city the third municipality with the largest presence of the Embera ethnic group.
According to the latest report from the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 2,628 of the 6,780 victims of forced displacement in January across the country belonged to this ethnic group.
Many of the displaced, like Diana, have arrived in the capital of Chocó, but others have moved to cities like Bogotá.
The most recent case was in 2021, when approximately 2,000 indigenous people, mostly Emberás, lived badly for several months in the National Park while demanding guarantees of security, return, and a dignified stay from the National and District Government.
Diana Maizony and her son, in the Bahía neighborhood in Quibdó, Chocó.
Those who have decided to stay in the department where they were born have not been able to avoid the obstacles even to access basic services such as health.
Ana María Cerón, head of humanitarian affairs at Doctors Without Borders, an NGO that provides medical care in the department, refers to these barriers: “Hardly in health centers there are people who do the translation work.
That already represents a huge barrier and is discriminatory treatment.
Added to this are the expressions of health personnel who stigmatize the ways of indigenous people to take care of their health, ”says Cerón.
The exclusion of the Emberá has grown over the years, with the increase in their presence in large cities, and extends beyond government entities.
According to Usy, an indigenous Emberá and student of Social Communication, in the streets or commercial businesses of Quibdó, they are called "cholitos" in a pejorative way.
In some restaurants they make them sit on the floor or do not serve them.
For women, violence goes twice as they endure constant sexual harassment, "men of any age, Afro or mestizo tell us: 'how delicious a chola, I would like to experiment,'" says Usy, who remembers that a few years ago the indigenous women They intercepted them and forcibly cut their hair to sell it.
Danilo Chamorro moved at an early age from the area of the middle Baudó.
The Emberá leader, who grew up and studied in Quibdó, agrees with Maizony's testimonies.
“During my education, I heard comments such as that we 'cholitos' behaved strangely or that they stigmatize us because of the way we dress,” he says.
Diana warned that sexual harassment of indigenous women is compounded by the increase in bullying of Emberá children.
Two of her sisters are constantly told at school that their hair is "the only beautiful thing about being Indian."
On several occasions their companions have mistreated them so that they would cut it, even spraying strange liquids and sticking gum on them.
Young Embera walk through the Bahía neighborhood in Quibdó, on March 12, 2023.
A similar story was experienced by Do Eruby and Jikawa, ages 4 and 7, who stopped playing in their neighborhood playground after several Afro children threw stones at them when they were using the games.
They yelled at them that "the park was not for cholos."
Chamorro, who because of his command of Spanish works as a translator in his community, also says that he has witnessed the cruel treatment suffered by indigenous people in certain state care centers.
For him, the problem is that there is no ethnic focus when dealing with this population.
“It is necessary to teach the practice of values and have the intention of understanding the way of life of the original peoples.
If education does not advance in dealing with these issues related to territory and communities, what happens in the end we end up dividing ourselves ”, he points out.
The struggle to make the Emberá roots visible
The National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) indicated that due to the armed conflict in 2022 at least 148,703 members of the Emberá people suffered damages that have had serious impacts on their communities, leading them to abandon their reservations and with this, they have lost or become They have weakened their traditions.
Many families have been trying to return to their territories for years, but the presence of illegal armed actors has prevented it, leading them to have their children in different cities and to grow up far from their customs.
That was the case of Usy, who grew up in Quibdó with two of his sisters, his mother, a nurse, and his father, an indigenous teacher.
Although her family tried to keep the traditions present, she distanced herself from them by living in a city where they are frowned upon.
Only while she was studying undergraduate, a need to reconnect with the culture of her town awoke in her.
For this reason, she founded Nepono Werara, —which translates as “the flourishing of women”—, a group of Emberá women who, through different artistic practices, try to rescue ancestral knowledge such as dance, song or body painting.
“It is essential to preserve our ancestry because to forget history would be to become individuals without identity”, Usy maintains.
He adds that Nepono wants young women to relearn and “remember how our grandfathers and grandmothers sing and dance.
It is a space in which they can speak the Embera Bedea, acquire knowledge and strategies to share what they know”.
A young man from the Nepono Werara group holds the tonoa, the traditional instrument of his people.
Little by little, women have been added and there are already 15 young people.
Among Usy's motivations for creating Nepono was the deteriorating mental health of several nearby indigenous people.
She knew numerous cases of suicide, which led her to think about a space that could serve as a refuge for Emberá women who, in addition to racism, suffer machismo inside and outside their communities.
Diana shares that concern.
Her goal is to finish her professional administration career however she sees fit.
She had already dropped out of nursing because of the stigmatization she was subjected to by her teachers or classmates, but she explains that she refuses to submit again.
She says that training and being a professional means acquiring tools to help her people: “I have worked hard to earn a space for myself.
This time I am not going to leave myself, ”she says.
At the end of this note, Usy told EL PAÍS that another Emberá indigenous person had committed suicide in Quibdó.
Faced with painful events like this, both women intend to continue fighting, repeating that it is not a possibility to increase the suicide figures.
Both in Diana's voice and in Usy's, a deep strength is felt.
One that motivates them to continue and demonstrate that, despite the violence, they are an example of resistance and support among women.
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