The Bora Indigenous community, settled in the Colombian Amazon, is at risk of disappearing. These native people, who live mainly in the department of Putumayo and in border areas with Peru, face a complex combination of historical and contemporary threats that endanger both their physical survival and the continuity of their cultural identity.
Today, their situation reflects the fragility of many Amazonian Indigenous peoples who struggle to preserve their territory, language, and traditions in the face of persistent external pressures.
The Bora community is part of the dozens of Indigenous ethnic groups currently resisting the risk of disappearance in Colombia, where cultural diversity is among the richest in Latin America, but also one of the most vulnerable.
The reduction of their population and the fragmentation of their social fabric have raised alarms among researchers, Indigenous leaders, and cultural organizations who warn of the urgent need for protective action.
Bora community: people shaped by history and territorial pressure
The risk faced by the Bora people is not recent. Their hardships have deep roots dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, during the rubber boom, when entire communities were subjected to extreme exploitation, systematic violence, and forced displacement. This period left demographic and social consequences that still affect the community structure.
This historical memory is compounded by contemporary factors that further increase their vulnerability. Population dispersal has fragmented their traditional settlements, weakening the social cohesion that sustained their cultural organization for generations.
Many members have had to leave their ancestral territories for security, economic, or environmental reasons, making it difficult to pass on traditional knowledge and practices.
The armed conflict that affected large areas of the Amazon for decades also disrupted the stability of their communities, impacting their mobility, ways of life, and relationship with the natural environment. As a result, the Bora population has declined significantly, increasing the risk of losing their language, rituals, and collective memory.
Living culture in the face of the threat of disappearance
Despite these adversities, the Bora people maintain strong cultural resistance based on the intergenerational transmission of knowledge. Their native language, of Arawak origin, remains a central axis of identity and community communication.
They also preserve traditional practices such as life in the maloca — the communal house — ritual ceremonies associated with chicha (the corn-fermented drink), and dances that express their worldview.
The continuity of these practices represents not only a form of cultural resistance but also a strategy to ensure the permanence of their identity as a people. Community leaders have promoted their own educational processes and cultural teaching spaces aimed at younger generations, seeking to prevent the rupture of their ancestral legacy.
Within this context, institutional initiatives have also been implemented to support their protection. The national government has launched programs to strengthen the productive and cultural systems of the Bora people, preserve their identity, protect their traditional knowledge, and ensure the survival of this Indigenous ethnic group.
These actions seek not only to support the demographic survival of the people but also to strengthen their cultural and territorial autonomy.