José Celestino Trujillo is a fisherman and has lived for almost 80 years in the village of Muelle Velásquez, in Puerto Boyacá. For decades he has witnessed the transformations that the territory where he was born has undergone. One of the places where these changes are most observed, he says, is the Ciénaga de Palagua, the second most important freshwater mirror in the department of Boyacá, after the Laguna de Tota. This swampy territory is the habitat of at least 160 species and one of the places where the contamination left by the oil industry that has been operating in the area for more than five decades is reflected. In his youth, José Celestino used to fish in the Ciénaga de Palagua, which is located in the Magdalena River valley, about 36 kilometers from Puerto Boyacá. Celestino remembers that three or four fish that in the region are known as bocachicos could fit in a net, each one with an extension equivalent to that of a human forearm. Today these fish are hardly found anymore; if there are, they have shrunk to the point where they are the length of a hand. Mongabay Latam and Rutas del Conflicto visited the area. During the tour, they not only evidenced the effects that the oil industry has left in the place, they also listened to the inhabitants of the village of Muelle Velázquez. They affirm that around 200 hectares of the swamp are contaminated with hydrocarbon residues. José Celestino…This article was originally published on Mongabay
