Pollution is one or the biggest growing problems in modern day society. Pollution is a affecting a huge part of the world, including La Guajira, Colombia. La Guajira is a peninsula in North of Colombia. The population in this place is about 900,000 people of which 48% (440,000) are Wayuu. The Wayuu people are Indigenous people from La Guajira that have different ethnicity and religious beliefs. The Wayuus have their own type of government and govern their people, but the land that they stay in is part of the Colombian government’s and they still have to follow a lot of the rules that are implemented by the government.

For the Wayuus, culture is a very important factor of their society. They are known for being really religious and having a very unique type of culture.The Wayuus depend a lot on their farms, animals, wells, and nearby rivers or creeks. These are very important factors in this community because they all provide a good source of food and water.

Wayuus depend a lot on their water. La Guajira is a desert so it is really hot and dry. The Wayuus depend on wells they build and nearby rivers or creeks. Some Wayuu communities don’t even have wells or nearby rivers, and if they have creeks most of the time they are dried out and very dirty. In La Guajira there hasn’t been a significant rain in a lot of time. Once it didn’t rain for 5 years! This means that there is very small proportion of water. Wayuus have developed a life where they don’t need a lot of water to survive.

In La Guajira there are two major problems.  One is the scarcity of water and the inefficient use of it. First of all La Guajira is a peninsula so it has an ocean. Yet, many animals and people die because of not having water. One solution for this is that the government invests some money in water desalinators, this could help produce a lot of water for the people of La Guajira. One major contributor to La Guajira’s scarcity of water is the mine El Cerrejon. El Cerrejon is the biggest coal producer in Colombia and it uses approximately 17-30 million liters of water every day. This causes a very big problem because the citizens of La Guajira could use all of this water to survive.

Second, another big problem is pollution. When my school went to La Guajira almost everywhere you looked you could see a lot of garbage. There were holes full of garbage and trees with plastic bags stuck on them. There was a lot of garbage and the people from La Guajira threw everything on the ground. Cerrejon is also creating a lot of pollution by mining and it is destroying a lot of vegetation around it.  When El Cerrejon mines, greenhouse gases and other toxic gases go out into the atmosphere and this creates a lot of pollution.

In conclusion La Guajira is a beautiful place but it is getting destroyed by mining, water scarcity, garbage and pollution. We should start helping them so that the people of La Guajira can survive and conserve their water. Everybody should make a change and help these people so that they can keep moving on and La Guajira can stay a beautiful place and not a garbage can.

Some solutions may be creating responsible garbage companies so that they can clean up La Guajira. This means that garbage needs to go to a sanitary landfill and that recyclables need to go to recycling plants. One solution that people in La Guajira could do is put the garbage in its corresponding spot and this could help clean La Guajira.  Another solution would be to use reusable products instead of buying disposables that become garbage. Also El Cerrejon gains a lot of money, so they should continue their programs to collect clean water but be more generous in order help the people of La Guajira.