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First modification: 04/22/2026 - 21:08

After more than three decades of waiting, Colombia has begun to transform its political map. The Government of Gustavo Petro formalized the first Indigenous Territorial Entities in the Amazon, granting the indigenous peoples political, administrative and fiscal autonomy to govern their territories. A historic change that not only fulfills a debt from the 1991 Constitution, but also redefines the protection of a part of the largest jungle on the planet. This program was a collaboration with the Gaia Amazonas Foundation.

Three decades of waiting kept in the heart of the jungle. What was a promise written on paper for 34 years is now a political reality. The Lower Caquetá River, in the Amazon, is no longer just a biodiversity sanctuary. Now it is one of the first eight formalized Indigenous Territorial Entities in Colombia.

In December 2025, the Government of Gustavo Petro formalized the first eight through presidential decrees, 14 more are waiting to join this block and five are interested in starting the process. But what exactly are they? The ETIS are political-administrative divisions where the exercise of indigenous government is recognized as part of the structure of the Colombian State.

One of its consequences is that the Colombian political map changed, to add the eight territories in addition to the division of municipalities and departments. For indigenous people, this represents having the legal tools to protect their world from their own worldview.

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"We have exercised that role of caring for the environment, not only of living beings around us, but of the knowledge system that maintains this territory. What changes when we are already territorial entities? It really strengthens that exercise that we have been doing since the creation of the world," said Darío Yucuna, legal representative of the Bajo Río Caquetá Amazonas Indigenous Territorial Entity.

After the historic signing in December 2025, the Darío community did not waste time. They already held their first ordinary session. It was not just any meeting, it was the premiere of its political, administrative and fiscal autonomy. It is, in practice, the right to manage your own resources and decide your future.

Julieth Rojas Guzmán, deputy technical and political director of the Gaia Amazonas Foundation, explains that the scope is that indigenous people can now govern themselves under their own life plans, which are equivalent to national development plans.

A historic step in Colombia

And a government of indigenous peoples can contribute to the preservation of the Amazon rainforest. “For these indigenous peoples and for these governments, territorial planning does not involve these exploitation activities, not even exploration of minerals or hydrocarbons,” he explained to France 24.

Another proof that the indigenous government protects the Amazon is that, according to the MapBiomas Colombia platform, under this model of ancestral authority the forests are 99% conserved.

But legal recognition was via presidential decrees, so a government other than Petro's could overturn the decision to formalize the ETIs. Although the Gaia Amazonas Foundation is supported by the constitutional block. This organization accompanied the process of 10 of the territorial entities, including the eight formalized ones. And, from the maloca, they have a certainty that does not shake.

"We are not afraid of whoever becomes President. We are clear from our cultural principles about the predictions that our traditional people have given us that this commitment that we started many years ago and that was recorded in the 1991 Constitution is something that is truly a right of life," Yucuna added.

In effect, it was an eternal debt of the Magna Carta that Congress never wanted to legislate. According to Esneider Lugo, from the Gaia Amazonas Foundation, the final step was a matter of political will to settle a historic commitment.

“It is the fulfillment of the constitutional pact, fulfillment of what was agreed in the Constitution and this implies materializing a commitment that had been acquired by the Colombian State to guarantee that the indigenous territories govern themselves based on their knowledge systems and their cultural and traditional knowledge,” said Lugo, who is the territorial coordinator for the areas of Putumayo, Caquetá and Ríos Isana-Surubí for the formalization of the ETIS in the Gaia Amazonas Foundation.

In other words: in these jungles, the command has returned home. From now on, indigenous peoples exercise, with the law in hand, their own government.

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