Women who embroider and cultivate from the rural area El Mortiño

In the Páramos in Colombia approximately 150.000 people live, men and women that have managed to survive and develop productive activities in this harsh landscape. They were born there, like their parents and grandparents. They have lived together with the cold and the fog, with the frailejones (Espeletia spp.) and the dear, with a great variety of moss, plants and trees. The people that have been living in the páramos for more than one hundred years have modified and adapted the ecosystem as we know them today.

The documentary Women that weave and cultivate from the rural area El Mortiño presents the working experience with a group of women from El Mortiño, Carmen de Carupa, páramo de Guerrero. Through the lens of a camera it was documented how these women searched for economic alternatives that would allow them to improve their way of living while at the same time contributing to the conservation and sustainable use of the páramos ecosystem.

The short documentary was developed under the frame of the project Communities in the páramos implemented by Tropenbos Internacional Colombia and the Alexander von Humboldt Institute. Which is part of a regional initiative directed by IUCN (South America) and financed by Finland’s Foreign Affairs Ministry.