Tierradentro

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

Colombia | Sunday, October 17, 2010 | 5 photos

I wanted do my journal about the region where I was born and from which few images can be viewed in the internet, despite the fact it is a UNESCO's world heritage site: this place is Tierradentro.

Tierradentro region is located in the north Andes' mountain range, in the state of Cauca,-Colombia. It’s believed that the name –in a rough translation, innermost land- was given by the first spanish settler who arrived to the zone, a name that matches the wild and rough terrain with high and green mountains landscape.

In Tierradentro there are peasant, afro-descendant and indigenous communities. The last one, known as Paeces, is the most representative community and which with the region is recognized.

Those Paeces still preserve some of their traditions, among which is worth mentioning the ceremony to invest their leaders with authority of command, held annually in one of their Reserves and which the outgoing rulers hand over the "varas de mando" (command crook) to the incoming rulers that identifies them as the authority of their community.

Currently, the Paeces and the other communities in the Paez river bank's region live with the threat of Huila snow volcano that has shown signs of activity since 2007 and have produced some avalanches that descended by the river course and destroyed some farms, homes, roads and have isolated this region from the rest of the country for several months.

Tierradentro is a remote and beautiful region, and by presenting a little part of it, I want to show the world its natural and cultural significance. Therefore, I would like to be chosen for this scholarship because I want to learn photograph techniques and then, to be able to register what my native region still has to offer