Dirty Practices for Clean Energy: Indigenous Communities Gain no Benefits and Suffer Decades of Harms from the Salvajina Dam in Cauca, Colombia

Abstract

The Indigenous Community of Cerro Tijeras is part of the Nasa indigenous people located in Southwest Colombia. After years of resisting colonialism, the destruction of their land, and the erasure of their cultural practices, the Salvajina Dam has further jeopardized their way of life. The government ordered the Salvajina Dam to be built in the 1980s to control the Cauca River’s flow and improve agriculture. However, for the Cerro Tijeras indigenous community, whose land is in the surrounding area of the Salvajina Dam, its effects were detrimental. For decades, Cerro Tijeras has had to deal with the consequences of a major infrastructure project about which they were not consulted and provides virtually no positive effects for their community. The Salvajina Dam created a severe mobility issue for the ethnic groups surrounding it. The people of Cerro Tijeras, who once were able to use boats to cross the river year-round, are now at the mercy of the Salvajina Dam’s changing water levels. EPSA, the current majority owner of the Salvajina Dam, has provided only one stop for its boat (planchón) to reach the Cerro Tijeras indigenous community and its schedule is extremely limited. The restricted schedule of the planchones along with the removal of roads and bridges to cross the reservoir has made mobility in the region extremely difficult.