TARDEANDO CON UNINORTE FM ESTEREO · Uninorte FM

El legado espiritual de las mujeres Embera en el Museo Mapuka

April 10, 2026·35 min·2 clips

Embera women unable to write or speak Spanish used kipara body painting to narrate displacement stories so exhibitions could explain their presence in Bogotá.

1. Uninorte FM Estéreo's Kilómetro 5 cultural program interviews three members of the Embera women's collective Daihuera Kaura at the Museo Mapuca in Barranquilla, Colombia. 2. The three guests are Claudia Patricia Keragama, a Catío community leader from Aldo Andagueda who spent six years in Bogotá before returning to territory; Claudia Patricia Machuca, a Dovida leader currently based in Bogotá; and Carolina Pinzón, a visual artist and co-founder of the collective. 3. The episode explores how indigenous women displaced by armed conflict are using traditional Embera art to process trauma, document violence, and make their voices visible to urban Colombian audiences. 4. The Embera nation comprises six distinct ethnic groups — including Catío, Dovida, and Chami — each with its own language, clothing, and customs; displacement has concentrated many of these women in Bogotá's two albergues, La Rioja and La Floría. 5. The collective formed in 2023 within a City Hall-funded project at the UPI La Floría albergue in Bogotá, where Carolina Pinzón was working as a cultural facilitator and met Embera leaders from several communities. 6. After the institutional project ended, the women chose to continue independently; they wrote and won a scholarship that gave them autonomy to design a project around gender-based violence — a topic, Pinzón notes, that public entities were reluctant to fund because it addresses sensitive internal community dynamics. 7. The resulting project uses kipara, a traditional Embera body painting technique using jagua plant dye, to create symbolic drawings on participants' bodies that narrate personal histories of displacement, conflict, and survival. 8. Because many Embera women cannot speak or write Spanish — with Catío, Chami, Dovida, and Spanish spoken simultaneously in the same circles of word — two of the three guests provided live language interpretation during collective sessions so all women could participate. 9. The circles of word, described by Pinzón as a trust-building tool where women find that their experiences are shared and not isolated, remain active today and continue to serve as the collective's organizational foundation. 10. From these sessions came a book, 'Resistencia Voz Mujeres,' designed as an object-book to be exhibited and preserved, featuring photographs of the body painting compositions alongside written fragments placed on arms and legs. 11. Claudia Keragama describes the body painting sessions as joyful and collaborative: women painted each other, helped reach backs and areas without arms, and the process became an exchange of cultural knowledge across Embera groups. 12. When the completed book was presented to community male leaders, one accused Keragama of becoming a 'millionaire' from the project, and the community's internal disciplinary structure — referred to as 'the forging' — was used to pressure her. 13. Keragama states she ignored these reactions, continuing because she believes women must represent themselves and because Catío women from Aldo Andagueda historically have the least access to formal education of any Embera group. 14. The host notes the interview falls on April 9th, Colombia's National Day of Memory and Solidarity with Victims of the Armed Conflict, connecting the collective's work directly to national commemoration of the internal armed conflict. 15. The episode opens and closes with a rap song in Embera language, composed by two Catío teenagers named Verónica and Camila after their uncle was killed during clashes between guerrilla and army forces in Aldo Andagueda. 16. The collective currently has approximately 20 active participants, rotating between women based in Bogotá and those who have returned to territory, and is preparing a new exhibition in Bogotá. 17. Pinzón notes that not all male leaders or spouses are unsupportive — some husbands actively encourage their partners' participation — and that children attending the circles of word represent a slow but valuable intergenerational pedagogy. 18. The interview tone is warm and respectful; the radio host listens carefully, offers historical context for the audience, and cedes extended space to each guest to speak through translation when needed. 19. Listeners interested in indigenous rights, Colombian armed conflict, feminist art practices, or intangible cultural heritage will find the conversation substantive and specific. 20. Listeners seeking structured narrative journalism, resolution, or a broader policy discussion of indigenous rights law will find this episode primarily testimonial rather than analytical.

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