Anastasia Moloney
Anastasia Moloney is a British freelance journalist who's been based in the Colombian capital, Bogota, for the last five years. She is a regular contributor to the Financial Times and a contributing editor for the Washington-based website World Politics Review. She has written widely on politics, education and social affairs from the region. Her work has also appeared in the London Times, the Guardian and the Independent, among other publications. She has lectured on U.S. foreign policy in Latin America at the Javeriana University in Bogota.
Is anyone listening to Colombia's displaced Indians?
The Embera Indians standing outside a sports hall in south Bogotá look out of place. This is not their natural environment and they don't want to be here. Normally, the indigenous Embera people live in a reserve thousands of miles away amid the virgin rainforests of Chocó in northwestern Colombia. Faint rays of Andean sunshine peek through the windows of the sports hall that has become a makeshift shelter for 144 displaced Embera Indians who have been forced to flee their lands. Six large plastic tents with Red Cross insignia are now their homes. Women with babies tied to their backs hold plastic cups and plates as they queue for food served from a government-run soup kitchen set up in the sports hall. ...
School bells ring for Colombia's war-displaced
At lunchtime inside the sparse cafeteria at Maria Auxiliadora School, pupils tuck into a small plate of rice, beans and chicken. For most of these children, all who have been displaced by Colombia's violence, this is their only main meal of the day. The private school run by nuns in Soacha, a municipality on the outskirts of southeast Bogota, admits around 160 displaced children every year. The surrounding sprawling hilltop slums have become a magnet for some 3,000 displaced families escaping armed conflict that pits guerrilla groups against government armed forces and rightwing paramilitaries. ...
Politicians ignore displaced Colombians
Looking down from the bare peaks of South Bogota, the seemingly never-ending sprawl of the capital's slums stretches towards the blurred horizon. Thousands of Colombians from across the country have fled their homes to escape the country's armed conflict and settled in these impoverished suburbs seeking refuge and jobs. In Altos de Cazuca, a slum neighbourhood perched perilously on mountain slopes, roughly half the residents are displaced. Flimsy wooden shacks and small brick houses line dirt tracks dotted with puddles. Roofs are made from scraps of corrugated iron held down by stones. ...
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