SocialDocumentary.net | Martha Llano | Coca leaves: a natural connection

Photographer: Martha Llano

Organization: FundaciÃ³n Sentir

Title: Coca leaves: a natural connection

Location: Amazon, Colombia

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Exhibit Abstract

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Exhibit Abstract

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Exhibit Abstract

Amazon rainforest is almost half of Colombia country.

Coca leaves are a natural connection for our indigenous communities. It is a “male plant” for them, and a sacred plant which gives them what they need to survive. A spiritual and ancestral connection to nature and in between them. Full of healing properties, this plant has become for our cultures in a nightmare.

Confused as cocaine, indigenous communities have paid a high price as they have been displaced, loosing their territory, their families and their freedom, as cocaine has become a huge industry for occidental culture. Indigenous people need coca plants to be able to grow as a healthy community.

In the Amazon rainforest, the Uitoto community is trying to protect their ancestral practices to maintain their ethnic group. Without coca plants they will not be healthy and may be lost as community. Coca leaves takes out from them hunger, fears and gives them a new and unkown perspective from life, from being a human disconnect it from nature, to a one very close to other beings and other energies we are not allow to see or believe in.

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Monillamena members community

Women who sow the coca

Kids who are willing to learn how to maintain their identity

Females who maintain their knowledge

To spirit coca who has saved for many years our communities

We do have the chance to do many things for our own specie. We must. We might have learned many lessons and we need to teach many more and to learn many more new things not to make the same mistakes we have done in our past. We did evolve as a clever specie and our behavior need to be consequential with that. Many species are in our hands and our own specie is trapped in a development we will not be able to maintain, to be sustainable.

Documentary photography has the power to tell a long story for the good of our commitment to the subject. We need to show audiences what maybe they can not see for themselves. We have the power to connect people, to make a difference with so little and touch the heart of many.

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