Wayuu: the people resisting between coal, wind, and the desert

On the Guajira Peninsula in Colombia, where the desert meets the sea, the Wayuu people have sustained for centuries a way of life rooted in territory, the spoken word, and memory. Today, this ancestral balance is facing unprecedented pressure: the expansion of mining, large-scale wind energy projects, armed conflict, and structural poverty are putting at risk not only their lands, but also their culture, their spirituality, and their right to decide their own future.

At the northernmost tip of South America, between Colombia and Venezuela, lies the arid Guajira Peninsula, washed by the Atlantic Ocean. It is home to the Wayuu people, who have managed to preserve their identity despite profound social, political, and economic transformations. According to the latest census, their population may number around 440,000 people, including those living in a polyresidential manner across the peninsula and those settled semi-sedentarily in Maracaibo, Venezuela.

The Wayuu seasonally alternate between rural territories and urban centers, and they remain the main sociocultural backbone of the region, as well as the largest Indigenous people in Colombia. “Historically, the Wayuu were never fully colonially subjugated and maintained a relative political and social autonomy, favored by the peninsula’s borderland character, which functioned as a genuine refuge zone,” explains Hernán Darío Correa, sociologist and researcher, author of Los wayuu, pastoreando el siglo XXI.

In a semi-desert territory, nearly 85% of the population lives in rural areas, scattered across rancherías made of mud and palm, which can house anything from a single family to more than a hundred dwellings. More than a residential space, the ranchería is the core of Wayuu social and cultural life, organized into neighborhoods sustained by cooperation networks around herding, fishing, and horticulture.

These communities are structured around kinship, historical access to resources such as water, and dispersed settlement patterns, without a centralized political authority. “Wayuu organization adapts to a semi-arid environment through dispersed settlement, localized water management, and complex forms of social reproduction such as polyresidency and polygamy,” Correa notes.

Herding is the Wayuu’s main economic activity and a symbol of social prestige, complemented by fishing, traditional horticulture, trade, the production of handicrafts and textiles, and, to a lesser extent, wage labor and the exploitation of natural resources such as salt. Their matrilineal culture defines the transmission of property, the continuity of language and traditions, and belonging to some twenty-two clans, among which the Epieyú, Uliana, Ipuana, and Pushaina stand out. This model does not constitute a matriarchy, but women are the guardians of memory and ancestral knowledge and play central roles in the economy and in community political organization. Marriage is preferably celebrated within the same clan, and a man may have several partners if he has the resources to support them and their children.

Community life is governed by an ancestral normative system based on the spoken word and mediation. The pütchipü’üi, or palabreros, act as moral authorities who resolve conflicts through restorative agreements—a model recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Sustained by the figure of the maternal uncle and compensation rituals, this mechanism restores harmony between clans and constitutes a pillar of Wayuu identity and belonging.

“The Wayuu people sustain their ethnic reproduction through a complex cultural matrix that combines herding, fishing, trade, kinship, social organization, worldview, language, their own institutions, and systems of reciprocity and social control, through which they confront processes of acculturation and selectively adopt change,” explains Correa. One of the community’s major challenges is preserving Wayuunaiki, the co-official language of La Guajira, spoken in 2018—according to the latest official statistics—by nearly 90% of the Wayuu population, around 334,939 people.

This entire Wayuu universe also resonated in the imagination of Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez. His maternal grandmother came from a Wayuu lineage, and two Wayuu women worked in the house in Aracataca where he spent his childhood. Characters from his work, such as the candid Eréndira or Colonel Aureliano Buendía, also passed through La Guajira.

Dreams shattered by coal

Dreams occupy a central place in Wayuu daily life, as they explain collective reality and are considered bearers of prophetic power. Every morning, many inhabitants of La Guajira begin by asking, “Jamaya Pira Puin?” (‘What did you dream last night?’), reaffirming dreams as warnings and links to ancestral wisdom. In recent decades, however, these dreams have been marked by territorial conflict and extractivism.

The impact has been devastating. The region has been transformed by large-scale energy and extractive projects. The most emblematic is El Cerrejón, the largest open-pit coal mine in the Americas south of the United States. Operated by Glencore, it occupies 69,000 hectares, employs more than 12,500 workers, and exports around 30 million tons of coal every year, mainly to Europe. The 150-kilometer railway network connecting the mine to Puerto Bolívar cuts through Wayuu territory, dividing rancherías and ancestral routes. Several trains run along its tracks daily, with convoys exceeding 140 wagons. The Wayuu know the train as Yolüja, an evil spirit symbolizing dispossession and destruction.

The social and environmental impacts have been profound: forced displacement, pollution of rivers and jagüeyes, coal dust, noise, and a chronic water crisis. While coal lights homes in Europe, many Wayuu families still lack electricity and depend on long walks to fetch water or on the arrival of water trucks. “Mining at El Cerrejón devastated the water cycle in southern La Guajira, dismantling rivers such as the Ranchería and altering ecological balances that had sustained Wayuu social reproduction for centuries. Even so, the Wayuu were able to adapt and maintain conditions of relative territorial control,” Correa explains.

Social organizations and Colombia’s Constitutional Court have denounced rights violations and the cumulative impact of mining and drought. Projects such as the ultimately abandoned diversion of the Ranchería River—a vital and cultural axis for the Wayuu—generated rejection and mistrust toward the company, which remains under judicial scrutiny. A report by UN special rapporteurs even recommended suspending mining operations due to environmental and health damage, while communities continue their struggle to defend water, territory, and cultural survival.

Wind turbines in the land of the wind

Another open front of conflict in La Guajira is the accelerated expansion of wind energy projects. Presented as part of the transition toward clean energy, many Wayuu leaders denounce that these projects have been imposed without proper prior consultation, fragment ancestral territory, and concentrate benefits in private—mostly multinational—companies. The region hosts more than sixty projects at different stages and fifty-seven planned wind farms with over 2,800 turbines, some already operational.

Communities argue that negotiations advance without genuine dialogue with traditional authorities, violating the right to prior consultation established under ILO Convention 169. The projects have sparked tension between clans: while some accept economic agreements, others reject turbine installation, viewing it as a violation of their autonomy and a spiritual and territorial harm. For the Wayuu, wind holds profound symbolic value, and commodifying it implies a rupture with their worldview. “Wind projects reproduce an enclave logic: they offer small compensations, exclude the Wayuu from real participation in energy generation, and threaten environmental impacts that have yet to be fully assessed,” Correa warns.

Paradoxically, as La Guajira becomes the epicenter of the country’s energy transition plan, many rancherías still lack electricity, drinking water, and basic services. Communities demand a model that respects territorial rights, guarantees real participation, and distributes benefits fairly. “The lack of fundamental rights leaves communities vulnerable to assistentialist models that undermine dignity and reproduce colonial relationships,” states Joana Barney, researcher at the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz), in her monitoring reports on wind projects in La Guajira.

The central dilemma lies between an imposed model of “regional development” and the continuity of Wayuu well-being, tied to the preservation of territory and culture. If these conditions are not guaranteed, even their spiritual horizon is threatened—particularly Jepira, the sacred place in Wayuu cosmology where souls arrive after completing their passage through the world of the living. Access to Jepira is mediated by rituals such as the second burial, one of the most representative ceremonial acts of Wayuu culture, ensuring that the soul completes its journey and attains harmony.

The situation is further aggravated by persistent poverty, child malnutrition, and local political corruption. Although El Cerrejón and other megaprojects have generated billions in exports and royalties, these benefits have not translated into well-being for communities. “What we see is how these externally imposed changes strain not only Indigenous economies, but also their cultural, social, and spiritual ties to the territory, and may ultimately condemn the Wayuu to social disintegration,” Correa says.

Although 70% of the Wayuu population is registered by Colombia’s National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE) as having unmet basic needs, in many rural areas of central and upper Guajira conditions related to food, health, and quality of life are relatively better, despite the near-total lack of water and the weakening of the traditional economy. Overall, 81.1% of Wayuu people have unmet basic needs, and 53.3% live in extreme poverty.

Territorial rights and Indigenous autonomy

Although the Wayuu have access to mechanisms such as Indigenous Territorial Entities to exercise a degree of autonomy within the Colombian state, these structures have shown legal and political limitations that prevent full self-government. This scenario may change thanks to two recent decrees issued by the government of Gustavo Petro, considered a historic advance in territorial rights and Indigenous autonomy.

The most significant is Decree 488, approved on May 5, 2025, which redefines the relationship between the state and Indigenous peoples by granting them a decisive role in economic development within their territories. The regulation recognizes communities as authorities with powers to participate directly in territorial planning, environmental management, and the evaluation of public or private projects, even allowing them to veto megaprojects that contradict their worldview or affect ancestral practices. It also enables the formal establishment of an “Indigenous territory” with attributes similar to those of a municipality, allowing traditional authorities to exercise environmental governance, justice, and resource administration.

In La Guajira, this advance is complemented by Decree 482 of 2025, which regulates the political and administrative functioning of the Indigenous territory of the Extreme Northern Zone of Upper Guajira. The regulation recognizes the Wayuu people’s capacity to organize their own government, manage resources, and design public policies in accordance with their life plans, establishing a transitional framework until an organic law consolidates the self-government model.

The social and environmental crisis in La Guajira cannot be understood without the armed conflict that has marked Colombia for decades. Although long considered a peripheral region, the department has been traversed by dynamics of drug trafficking, smuggling, and territorial disputes involving paramilitaries, dissident groups, smugglers, and criminal gangs. Its extensive border with Venezuela and strategic position turned it into a coveted corridor for trafficking drugs, fuel, people, and goods, profoundly reshaping social, political, and economic life.

The Wayuu community structure—based on autonomous clans scattered across the desert—has suffered threats, youth recruitment, forced displacement, and the fracture of the social fabric. Smuggling, historically part of the Wayuu border economy, became a scenario of violence when criminal organizations began controlling routes, collecting “taxes,” and regulating the flow of goods.

The most painful episode of this violence was the Bahía Portete massacre on April 18, 2004. A paramilitary group entered the Wayuu community and murdered several women who had denounced their presence, aiming to seize control of the natural port of Portete and integrate it into drug trafficking and fuel smuggling routes. The attack deliberately targeted women—central figures in Wayuu social and spiritual life—violating one of the most sacred norms of their ancestral law, which protects women, children, and the elderly. More than 600 people fled and lost everything; years later, around forty families undertook a return, rebuilding their homes amid pain and memory.

Colombia’s Truth Commission points out that La Guajira became a strategic conflict corridor due to disputes over legal and illegal economies. The bonanza marimbera—a period in the 1970s and 1980s when marijuana cultivation and smuggling in the Colombian Caribbean generated rapid and massive wealth—and later the rise of drug trafficking facilitated the creation of private armies and the capture of institutions. In Indigenous areas, guerrilla groups such as the FARC and the ELN established camps and exercised social control, while from 2006 onward paramilitary structures reconfigured armed dominance, deepening the humanitarian crisis.

In Upper Guajira, where there was no guerrilla presence, paramilitary action responded to other interests: controlling illegal routes, influencing local political networks, and capturing a share of the multimillion-dollar revenues from mining and gas. Colombia’s National Center for Historical Memory documents how these structures sought not only to dominate criminal economies, but also to embed themselves in public administration and community life to secure economic and territorial benefits. Today, new armed organizations are present in the territory, disputing control of key areas and keeping alive a conflict that continues to directly affect the Wayuu people and the department as a whole.

For the Wayuu people, eradicating armed conflict and defending water, wind, the spoken word, and the rituals that sustain their world is not an ideological slogan, but a matter of collective survival on their land.

https://www.nationalia.info/new/11736/wayuu-the-people-resisting-between-coal-wind-and-the-desert