The Army of Peace: the Minga in Colombia

The indigenous protests that crossed half a nation to confront a president

Joshua Collins
Muros Invisibles
Published in
6 min readOct 18, 2020

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Indigenous Guard lead a community meeting at the Minga encampment in Ibagué (Photo: Joshua Collins)

Bogota, Colombia- They say there are over 3,000 people in the indigenous caravan. I have been travelling with them for three days, riding on the roof of one the overcrowded school buses they call Chivas.

This conglomeration of indigenous communities, the Minga, in the native tongue, formed in southwest Colombia and crossed half of the nation to demand a meeting with president Iván Duque over the killing of their leaders, rising numbers massacres in their homeland and a neglect by the State that goes back centuries.

“You can trace all of this directly to colonization,” says Andres Maiz. “The Spanish enslaved us when they arrived, and now their descendants exploit us.”

Fifty re-tooled school busses, hand-painted with designs and overflowing with people have been on the road for ten days when I join them- a gargantuan mobile campground, crawling northwest, policed by it’s own indigenous guard and hosted along the way by supportive towns and cities.

Each day the Minga lurch chaotically forward, each moment brings them closer to an inevitable confrontation with the federal government in the capital of Colombia, Bogotá, where no one knows what awaits. Perhaps a reunion with a president that has so far ignored them. Perhaps more likely, a policeman’s truncheon.

The people here I speak with talk of many things: neglect, violence, a brutal history with Colombian State forces, a lack of educational opportunities or infrastructure, racism and more. But they all have one demand they repeat over and over, a vida digna, a life of dignity, which so far they have been denied.

“Cauca moves the country,” says Bremmen Hinestroza, 22 from Popayán, in Cauca. “When there are protests in Bogotá, the people notice. But when the Minga marches, the people move.”

He isn’t wrong. In 2017, Indigenous-led protests throughout the region paralyzed Colombia. With support from Afro-Colombian communities along the entire Pacific coast, strikes and roadblocks paralyzed trade on highways and closed Colombia’s biggest maritime port in Buenaventura. Decades of violent conflict, State oppression…

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Joshua Collins
Muros Invisibles

A reporter on immigration and world affairs, based in Cucuta, Colombia. Bylines at Al Jazeera, Caracas Chronicles, New Humanitarian and more