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"It's up to us leaders to keep quiet if we don't want to be victims of the conflict."

Bernardino Mosquera Palacios is a social leader in the department of Chocó, on the Colombian Pacific coast, who has one job: to protect the Atrato River. This is his testimony.

By Juanita Rico
"It's up to us leaders to keep quiet if we don't want to be victims of the conflict."
Bernardino Mosquera - Personal archive
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With a cock in the background, at 7:00 in the morning, I begin my talk with Bernardino, a native of Rio Quito, Chocó.

Bernardino speaks:

My job is to be the guardian of the Atrato River. And legally so, as established inRuling T-622 of 2016, which recognizes the Atrato River as a subject of rights. In the beginning, I was a councilman of my municipality for two periods, then I was president of the community council, and now I am the guardian of the river.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0