It is part of " The COCA Project ," which aims to establish and bolster the public policy debate on issues related to the aftermath of coca production with stories from rural regions.
Decades of conflict between Marxist rebels, right-wing paramilitaries, and the Colombian government meant few people made it to this canyon along Guayabero River, where dense forest protects one of the country's most significant but least-known archaeological sites.
Cryptic scenes are superimposed on the whitish slabs about four meters tall, among them depictions of tapirs, lizards, pregnant women, ladders, and ritual dances. Protecting them is a community that, for years, lived off coca plants, and that today is betting on a tourism project that currently provides a living for some 60 people.
The history of Raudal, this small town along the Guayabero River, was forever altered about two years ago. But above all it was because locals organized and decided to launch a community tourism project. There, tourists talk with community members and eat the food they've prepared for them, cross the canyon in an electric canoe, visit the paintings with a guide, and climb up to a natural overlook that has an impressive view of the whole river and the Macarena National Park.
It was a cash business. But Raudal was the center for the purchase of coca paste, which rural people from the whole region processed by hand. The bonanza went up in smoke in and never returned.
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