In the state of La Guajira, ambitious plans to transition to renewables are beset by bureaucratic delays and anger from many local Indigenous people, who see it as ‘new colonialism’
Photographs by Charlie Cordeiro
A few years ago, as age began to take its toll, Rosa Velásquez decided it was time to leave the restaurant she owned in the coastal town of Cabo de la Vela and move back home for a peaceful retirement.. However, when she returned to the tiny rural community of Jotomana, on the arid plains of Colombia’s northernmost tip, she found the place she and her ancestors had called home for generations littered with giant wind turbines.
Towering white turbines punctuate the horizon a few miles from Cabo de la Vela. The region, in the northern state of La Guajira, is home to all of Colombia’s windfarms and its largest Indigenous population, the Wayúu.
