The wind of the energy transition brings disputes to the Colombian Guajira

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José Luis Iguarán, an indigenous Wayuu and member of the Taruasaru community, in the Colombian Alta Guajira, has been living with some giant neighbors for two years. Although in the distance, just over kilometer 133 of the railroad that takes the coal train to Puerto Bolivar, these giants look tiny, intermittently altering the horizon of the Caribbean coast, from their rancheria arise large, imposing. They are the wind turbines that are part of Isagen's Jouktai project, and measure between 125 and 150 meters high.

They are there, standing still, since the beginning of 2022, when the project was inaugurated. But Iguarán, now 31, had heard about them long before, when he was a child and in his community there was talk of wind energy projects. "The first visits began in 2005, for the issue of border verification and to know where the communities where the parks were going to be made," he says. In addition to theirs, in the places where the wind blows the most also live the Lanshalia and Mushalerrain communities, where the first wind project in Colombia is built. A kind of pilot that is already beginning to reveal how it paints the country's energy transition in an indigenous region where poverty also prevails. In this desert there is a lack of water and, paradoxically, also electricity.

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EL PAÍS travels through the Colombian Guajira.

Aerial view of the rancheria of José Luis Iguarán, a member of the Taruasaru community, where the La Guajira 1 project of Isagen is located.

The wind advantage also brought conflicts over land. The previous consultations that were made – a legal figure that Colombia has to guarantee the participation of ethnic communities in any project that is developed in its territory – are being questioned. Throughout La Guajira, the Wayuu denounce that these documents were not signed with the owners of the land, but with communities that inhabited it, but that it was not up to them to decide on them. Although Iguarán assures that this is not his case, and that the consultation that was made with his people was as transparent as possible, he also confesses that they were not prepared for what was coming. He had to start reading to inform himself. "Companies don't like you to be advised. Why? Because their interests are lost," he says.

What Iguarán and his family are experiencing is just an outline of what the boom in wind energy in La Guajira has meant and how the speech of President Gustavo Petro translates into the field, who promises to turn Colombia into a leader in the field. Only in this department there are already 16 wind projects and two transmission lines in process, either because they are in prior consultation, in environmental studies or under construction, according to Luis Guillermo Baquero, manager of the Andi Más La Guajira Table, a platform that articulates ten companies in the mining and energy sector that are in the region.

But in the future there would be many more. In 2019, Indepaz, an institute that has meticulously tracked the arrival of renewables in La Guajira, said that in the next decade up to 57 wind projects could be built in the department, in charge of 19 companies 13 of these multinationals. They would cover 52,000 hectares with more than 2,800 self-generators, which could produce up to 12.8 gigawatts. "In the most conservative scenario, the Mining-Energy Planning Unit (Upme) said in 2016 that these wind farms would cover 2031% of all Colombia's energy demand in 16, but reality has gone faster," explain Camilo González Posso and Joanna Barney, from Indepaz, in their book The East Wind Arrives with Revolutions. It is a speed that is wallowing the territory.

Disputes

In La Guajira, the wind hits hard: sometimes reaching maximums of 11 meters per second. In the afternoons he does it even more strongly, leaving sand in everything he touches. The tables, the food, the shoes. Jouktai, as wind is said in Wayunaiki, the language of the Wayu, also falls cemeteries. These sacred places serve here as a kind of scripture to know to whom the territory belongs ancestrally.

José Luis Iguarán, member of the Taruasaru community.Diego Cuevas

About 800 meters from the park of Isagen, known as Guajira 1, is the cemetery of Maleen, a community that has been fighting since that construction began because, according to them, despite being within the area of influence, they were never included in the prior consultation. That even led Denis Velásquez, a member of the community, to put in 2022 a tutela, a judicial remedy to request protection. "Denis has the recognition of his neighbors in this dispute," reads an Indepaz document, which also explains that the company paid 80 million pesos ($1,700) to a nephew of Velásquez as compensation to close the cemetery. A payment that she does not recognize as legal and that, according to Indepaz, "favors the rupture of the family fabric, since not all the relatives agreed with what was transacted."

Isagen told America Futura that, according to the Secretariat of Indigenous Affairs and the Ministry of Mines, the cemetery is not located within the communities that were consulted. And that, "additionally, in a meeting between the elders of the families, according to their uses and customs, it was concluded that the Malee community has no rights over that territory." The tutela action was declared inadmissible in both first and second instance. But the case demonstrates the struggle for territory that wind energy has brought.

Within the Wayuu community, the legitimate authority is the ancestral, a position that is inherited matrilineally, just like the territory. However, the Ministry of the Interior delegates to another figure, the traditional authorities that must be certified before the State. The problem is that these two authorities do not always coincide and many times companies make agreements only with the first, which confronts families.

Sometimes, Iguarán also says, negotiations are held with the achones, members of the paternal line, who can live in a ranchería, but not be the owners of the territory, because they do not inherit. This has created a conflict that generates insecurity for both the Wayuu and the companies.

"If you go to the Secretariat of Indigenous Affairs of Uribia [in La Guajira], to look for who the traditional authority is, you can get up to five papers," says Baquero, of the ANDI, who says that the issue has become even more confusing with the return of many Wayuu, who are binational, from Venezuela. "They have returned to their communities entering into a clash for resources, rights and for the territory of the people who were there," he adds.

View of the wind farms of the La Guajira 1 project of Isagén in the area of the Taruasaru community.Diego Cuevas

Last December, a document signed by 105 Wayuu leaders from various areas of La Guajira and with several proposals to the Minister of Mines, Irene Vélez, on what should be included in the National Development Plan, requested repeating all the previous consultations developed in that territory within the framework of the energy transition. "In 2019, the Constitutional Court issued Judgment T-172, in which it ruled in favor of the ancestral authorities, requesting to follow a series of guidelines for the restitution of this form of ordering in the Wayuu territory," the petition warns. The Ministry of Mines has not responded to America Futura's request for an interview for this story.

Since August 2020, the Attorney General's Office also asked to suspend the operation of prior consultations or construction of wind projects in La Guajira that were "violating the rights of indigenous peoples," after the Indepaz investigation came into its hands.

According to Baquero, of the ANDI, what is happening in La Guajira also demonstrates the institutional weakness that exists in the issue, the lack of clear rules and the absence of the Government. "Here it is very important to legislate on prior consultation and guarantee an institutional presence in such a way that companies do not take advantage and manage to impose themselves on the communities, but that the communities do not take advantage of the companies either," says the representative of the entrepreneurs. According to him, many times communities block projects when they want to denounce a government failure. There is also a lack of a mass of officials who can keep track of what is happening in La Guajira with the rise of renewables. Corpoguajira, the environmental authority in the region that acts as guarantor of prior consultations, told America Futura that of the 113 officials at the staffing plant, "only five are involved in renewable energy issues."

Living without light and without health

The remaining health center in Wipeshi, in Flor de la Frontera, right next to Venezuela, is abandoned. Inside there is only a stretcher lying and a group of bats flying in the darkness of one of the rooms. Around three o'clock in the afternoon, the students of the school, where the bathrooms have not worked for months and the teachers are two months behind in their payments, begin to go to their rancherias.

"We even sold our jewelry so we could continue giving them food and class," says one of the teachers, and then everyone laughs. Behind their laughter is a truth: the state stopped paying attention to them a long time ago, if it ever did. At the same time and on the same road as the children, the Enel officials who are building the Windpeshi wind farm are also leaving, escorted by military patrols. The contrast is absolute. There they will build 41 wind turbines of five megawatts each, for a total power of 205 MW.

Aerial view of the territory of the community of Casushi.Diego Cuevas

Euniris Catherine Ramírez, Wayuu and daughter of the authority, is more interested in talking about education than about the fact that her community is one of the 12 in which Enel's wind project will be built, which has already approved its prior consultation. There are things in the agreement that have her calm. They made the access road and an agreement was signed for a microaqueduct to be built. "Here we are kings because we drink drinking water," he says. There are also projects to improve housing, cattle and goats and enclose cemeteries.

On other things, he still has doubts. "We wanted to be part of the company and have light. But Enel tells us that it is not possible, that it is very expensive for them to put light here, so they are giving us compensation for the time they are in our territory," he says.

According to Enel, the energy produced by Windpeshi must be delivered to the National Interconnected System. However, "the communities that live in the area where the project is located are not connected to the distribution network of La Guajira," the company says. In addition, it ensures that, as agreed in the previous consultation, community clean energy access projects will be made in the areas of influence of the park. The company is also in talks with the Institute for Planning and Promotion of Energy Solutions (IPSE) to electrify these communities.

But these are not easy negotiations and many projects are paralyzed by protests and blockades by communities. According to Enel, last year "it was only possible to carry out works for 137 full days, which represents 48% of the working days of 2022".

In the background, there is a question without a clear answer: How much should be compensated for lending the territory? Does it have a value? In the case of Isagen's Jouktai, the company said communities are paid a value per megawatt installed that is updated each year with the consumer price index — among other payments — although they say they cannot give that value. They also recall, like Enel, that, as a rule, 1% of the project's gross energy sales are distributed among the communities: 60% goes directly to the three where the park is built and the other 40% goes to the municipality of Uribia, in La Guajira.

But in other cases, it might not just be about lending the territory. But to give it up, to move. After visiting the upper and middle Guajira, Soledad García Muñoz, special rapporteur on Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), explained to América Futura that they received "complaints of how the borders of extractivism and other renewable energy companies, in what should be a just transition, are affecting communities, provoking evictions, which result in community leaders being victims of threats and harassment for their human rights defense activity." Joanna Barney, a researcher at Indepaz, has also recorded nine murders and six displaced communities since 2019.

And now?

Roberto Fajardo Epiayú works as a lawyer, advising the communities where wind projects arrive, and is part of the territory of Casuchi, from where you can see the turbines of the Guajira 1 park. He believes that they should have been consulted about the project because it changes the landscape, although it is not contemplated in the standard. For him, the arrival of renewables in La Guajira has not been positive: "To say that it was good is to lie. That has generated a lot of expectations," he says.

But the Government is clear: La Guajira must be the epicenter of the energy transition. At the end of April 2023, during the sixth Renewable Energy Meeting and Fair, Petro said he intends for the country to generate eight gigawatts of clean energy, compared to the 0.8 that are barely installed. "Currently, according to science, it is La Guajira where more sun falls per year and there are fast winds, that is, only there could be generated 20 gigawatts," he said, according to the media Portafolio. That transition, for some, could turn the region into a sacrifice zone.

"Renewables are important to ensure just transitions in the context of the climate emergency; however, we cannot speak of clean energy as long as they do not respect the human rights of the communities affected by their installation and operations," says García, of the IACHR.

Chulos fly in a fishing area in Manaure.Diego Cuevas

For José Antonio Vega, of the Stockholm Environment Institute, who recently was investigating the problem in the region, it is important that there is a state intervention that understands the territory from its ancestrality. "You cannot understand each project as an island, but as a single project that has cumulative impacts. An environmental impact strategy could be made as a whole," he says. In addition, it proposes that a minimum standard of the benefits or compensations that each project must give be created. "This would serve to have a precedent of how a fair distribution of that compensation should be, which, in addition, must be designed between the community, companies and the State, establishing minimums."

Despite already having agreements with Isagen, José Luis Iguarán also feels that there is something that is not being done well. "The only thing I do want and wish is that we, as Wayuu people, do not pass over us due to ignorance of our territory," he says, pointing to one of the turbines that, for a couple of years, has been one of its neighbors.