A blockade by the U’wa Indigenous people in April 2014 shut down Colombia’s second-longest oil pipeline for over a month, costing the government more than $130 million.
The U’wa have been battling oil extraction since the 1990s. They see themselves as guardians of their tract of Amazon rainforest and believe oil is ‘the blood of Mother Earth. If you kill the earth, then no-one will live.’ Their opposition, boosted by international support, led to Occidental Petroleum withdrawing from a drilling project in 2002.
