Artist: Guadalupe Patiachi Tayori
Name in Harakbut (pseudonym): Kolit
Title: Pensamientos Distraídos / Distracted Thoughts
Media: Paint on Canvas
Dimensions: 18” x 14”
Brief description: In recent years a vulnerable youth is observed, prone to many distractions of the outside world, such as drug use, human trafficking, prostitution, loss of cultural values, disregarding parental advice, loss of native languages… this generates divisions between community members resulting in intrigues and misunderstandings. In the Harakbut world, gold mining has not only destroyed tour forest, it is also destroying minds and thoughts, resulting in the alienation of young people. Gold and technology makes us slow and puts us at a great disadvantage. Clearly youth has a future but it is too fragile to survive in society. Our thoughts are distracted when we are oblivious to the reality of the problems that afflict our territory, when we remain silent and view our community as merchandise or business, when we stop seeing our women as wives and forgetting our children and resorting to perdition and lust…