Emperatriz Cahuache Casado

An indigenous woman from Colombia's Amazon, Emperatriz Cahuache is strengthening indigenous communities by identifying and training promising young leaders and engaging them in local development.

Emperatriz sees that weak leadership in Amazonian villages means that many indigenous communities falter in their efforts to manage natural resources, gain economic independence, take pride in their heritage and customs, play a role in shaping policy or allocating resources, and resist exploitation and encroachment. To advance what she calls the "peaceful revolution," Emperatriz is identifying existing and emerging leaders within indigenous communities and linking them to educational opportunities, helping them get formal leadership training to complement their natural skills. To bring these young people back after their education, rather than watch them leave their communities to seek better opportunities elsewhere, Emperatriz arranges incentives that inspire them to return to their communities and apply what they have learned in the settings they know best. She has also set up a regional committee that draws together communities to play an active role in the responsible allocation of public resources and is involving communities in addressing important issues currently neglected by the government, including housing, economic development, and environmental sustainability. While most indigenous leaders and organizations work at a very public, national level, Emperatriz works with communities directly, forming a concrete model of leadership and engagement that she plans to apply more broadly to indigenous communities in Colombia, Brazil, and Peru.

The historical legacy of their dispossession of land, riches, customs, and beliefs by the Spanish conquistadors continues to have devastating effects on the ability of indigenous communities in Colombia and throughout Latin America to develop and move forward. With few people successfully tackling the challenges facing indigenous peoples–problems ranging from deforestation and poverty to unemployment and homelessness–youth see few possibilities for the future. As a result, many young people abandon their villages, further weakening indigenous social structures and accelerating the loss of traditional customs and knowledge that could offer solutions to many of the current problems facing them; in the case of the environment, for example, the old ways of protecting and living harmoniously with it are being lost, as there is no one to carry on those customs. This outward migration of indigenous youth from Colombia's southern Amazonian region may soon be joined by an inward migration of non-indigenous people. As one of the country's few areas still untouched by violence and the drug trade, more and more people may move there as the ongoing armed conflict extends farther south, placing increased pressure on the current indigenous residents and their limited resources.
While strong leaders are necessary both to help guide indigenous communities and to spearhead solutions to these concerns, local leadership is currently lacking. Indigenous peoples still have very little political representation of their own; most political leaders in the Colombian Amazon are not even from the area. The Department of Amazonas, where Emperatriz has initiated her work, has been run by the same two families for the past 20 years, and those authorities have failed time and again to respond to the needs of the indigenous people there. Moreover, the institutions that have emerged as instruments specifically to help indigenous Colombians solve their problems have not been successful in creating real change. Leaders have emerged, but, as they have gained more power and influence, most have drifted further and further away from their communities and are no longer in touch with their true needs. While efforts of a group like the Organization of Amazonian Indigenous Peoples of Colombia (OPIAC) are important at the national level, they have yet to be combined with the kind of significant leadership building and other development efforts at the grassroots level required to have substantial impact.

Through collaboration between her own organization, CODEBA, and local indigenous groups, Emperatriz seeks to form a new kind of leadership that can fortify indigenous communities so that they can confront the challenges that face them. To do so, she is working along two fronts: training new leaders and working with them and their communities to strengthen existing local, indigenous organizations by taking the lead in tackling pressing, but not addressed, community development needs.
Seeing education, skills, and a clear understanding of community needs as the basis for indigenous leadership, Emperatriz is helping promising young people acquire this foundation. First, she is linking youth to higher education; this year, 67 young people are going to apply to the National University, a first for their communities. Because it is their communities that are offering them the opportunity for continued study, this education will provide not only some of the tools necessary to become effective leaders, but also an incentive to return home to apply their talents once their studies are complete. To address issues not covered by formal education, Emperatriz has developed a "Political and Social Leadership School" that trains new leaders and retrains existing leaders of indigenous grassroots organizations in topics chosen by the communities as those most relevant to their needs, such as indigenous legislation, how to present projects to the government, good governance, public administration, health, and women's participation. As the current students come from all walks of life, are divided roughly equally between men and women, and make a firm commitment to return to their communities to use what they have learned, the school promotes leaders that represent the full diversity of indigenous society.
Beyond training leaders, Emperatriz is finding ways for them to exercise their leadership skills in relation to their own communities' development. As a first step, Emperatriz set up a Citizen Supervisory Committee to help control the economic resources that come into the Department of Amazonas and promote a greater commitment and responsibility with regard to the management of those resources. As well, through a partnership between her organization, CODEBA, and the local indigenous group ASITAN, she is encouraging communities to begin tackling problems that are not being addressed by local governments. For example, deforestation around the Amazon River is causing erosion that is shrinking the waterway. To solve this problem, CODEBA and its partners are planting various types of trees, including medicinal, ornamental, and fruit-bearing trees, so that they can both reforest and benefit the population by providing food, medicine, and beauty. This program employs the local population in the traditional "Minga" (a structure of communal work), simultaneously addressing a second pressing issue: income generation and employment. In a separate effort, Emperatriz and her partners are working on this problem of unemployment and the related issue of homelessness with a program for housing, empowerment, and income generation for women. In addition to helping 100 single mothers who previously lived off charity start a food market and a revolving loan fund to address their financial needs, Emperatriz assisted their organization in making contact with the government's housing agency, FENABIT, to help them resolve their housing situation. In all, the program will build and improve a total of 1,000 houses along the Amazon.
Emperatriz is currently refining her model in the southern Amazonian region of Colombia, known as the "Amazonian Trapezoid," with four indigenous groups, all of whom also live in the bordering countries of Peru and Brazil: the Tikunas, the Kokamas, the Yaguas, and the Muruy. To take advantage of this area's strategic value, Emperatriz has also started a Borders Program, in order to coordinate policies and strategies jointly along the border region. Beyond this area, Emperatriz plans to spread her work first throughout Colombia's Amazon region by partnering with local indigenous groups similar to ASITAN. Having already been asked by Amazonian and Andean indigenous groups for training in her methodology, Emperatriz will use the credibility she has gained as a well-known indigenous leader to capture the interest of, and secure collaborators from, other communities.

Emperatriz was born in the Amazonian Trapezoid to a Peruvian mother and a Brazilian father, both Kokama. Her academic success, combined with her community's equal opportunities for women, earned her a scholarship to study at a high school in the city of Tolima. After graduating, she went on to study at a teacher-training college in Bogotá.
Upon completing her education, Emperatriz decided to become a nun, in part because it offered her the opportunity to work in indigenous communities. During the next 20 years, Emperatriz worked as a teacher and school administrator in many parts of the country. She improved indigenous education everywhere she went, incorporating ethno-education, training leaders, starting youth clubs, and linking the schools more closely with the communities. In her free time, she mobilized local initiatives, including work with literacy. When her aging parents became ill, however, Emperatriz made the decision to leave the church.
Two years later, Emperatriz took a job as an advisor to an indigenous senator, Gabriel Muyuy, and in 1999, she was elected president of OPIAC, a position that she held for two years. During that time, she worked with several indigenous communities to help them create their own development strategies. In 2001, when she finished her term with OPIAC, she decided to step down from the national stage and become a different kind of indigenous leader, one who works from the bottom up. To accomplish this goal, she formed CODEBA.