Displaced Awa families after the August Massacre. Photo G. Valdivieso, United Nations Refugee Agency.
A criminal gang known as Los Cucarachos is the first suspect of the massacre of 12 persons of the Awa people of last August 26. It is the conclusion of the Technical Investigation unit (CTI) and published by El Espectador. Miguel Guasalusán Guanga, Danial Guasalusán Rodríguez and Fredy Cortez García are the possible assassins, according with the police department. Few days after the massacre, the Prosecutor arrested Miguel Pai in Putumayo. Pai is an Awa himself and a member of another gang: Los Rastrojos.
However the investigation is difficult, because the Awa people are living already in a real war field. The families that keep their old traditions, language and care for ecology, are caught in a territory that became the ambition of several armed groups, from ordinary gangs to guerrilla groups like Farc and Eln, to paramilitary factions and the same army.
But war is not their only problem. With a population of 20 thousand persons, the Awa people live in extreme poverty, while their territory is full of land mines let by the different factions. Problems like lack of water and electricity, schools destroyed by bombings and teachers threatened by violent groups.
If protection is the most urgent need of the Awa people in this moment, the other problems are not less important. The abandonment of the Awa people in the last decades make them easy victims of a silent war that put in danger their existence.
