The Amazon is beyond comprehension; it's immense and full of life. It's a place where a new plant or animal is discovered every fifteen days. However, the Amazon is also a very fragile place.
Photoreporter Ana Palacios has uncovered it with her camera, doing meticulous work from the tri-border between Colombia, Peru and Brazil.
ANA PALACIOS
Photoreporter
“Fragile Amazon is a symbol. It symbolizes the challenges faced in this territory, this fragile territory, told by those who know it best and can relate in the first person. Indigenous leaders who talk to us about their challenges, fears, and strengths... in short, about their struggle.”
Beauty and denunciation in the photographs seemingly transport people to Colombia, to this place, the Internado Indígena de San Francisco de Loretoyaco. Diosjhaimer, who looks straight ahead, studies at this school.
Faces like these are the faces that could disappear if the problem is not fixed.
Not only do the terrible fires in the Amazon region endanger the life in these communities, but the institutional neglect, extractivism, drug trafficking and human trafficking networks does, too.
The journey continues along the river to Peru. In Caballococha, Santiago Yahuarcarni laments about the exploitation of the Amazon's nature and people through his paintings.
Ana's photographs and Santiago's paintings help maintain the roots of the ancestral culture.
The Amazon is life in every aspect.
It's also childhood and youth.
It's the future.
It's tradition.
Of course, it's also the Common Home.
For it to remain this, protection is necessary. For years, organizations such as CIDSE have committed to this.
CHIARA MARTINELLI
Senior Advisor, CIDSE
“We want a Church that knows how to welcome the cry of the earth and the poor with urgency, today. We want this to be taken to international levels and political processes in which CIDSE already works, so they can work together with other civil society organizations and governments to ensure concrete responses to climate change.”
In collaboration with the Pan-Amazon Ecclesial Network, CIDSE produced this exhibit, which is co-financed by the European Union.
From Rome, the heart of Europe, Ana Palacios' images cry to the world that the Amazon needs care from all of Earth's inhabitants.
Ángeles Conde
Translated: Rachel Dobrzynski
