The Children of Thunder

This documentary is about the consequences drug traffiking has brought upon the Indian cultures, specifically the Paez Indians, in the Cauca Province, in south west Colombia. This Andean province, where the large majority of Colombian tribes are concentrated, was chosen by drug dealers to provide poppy seed to a native population who ignored the serious implications of illicit crops. In this way, the population, largely poor and marginal, became involved in the crop and in the process of extracting the gum from the poppy for the production of morphine and heroin. The consequences soon become evident in the cultural breakdown when the new values that drug traffic fosters affect their ancestral communal organization. At this crucial time, on June 24, 1994, an earthquake and terrible mud slide destroys their homeland, leaving 1,500 people dead. The Paez medicine men, who represent authority for the Indians, interpret the catastrophe as a call for attention from Mother Earth against her Paez children who were deforesting and contaminating with the poppy plantations. Thus, the Indians and their leaders start a process of analysis and insight about the harm this crop has brought upon their community, their ancestral organization and their land, and they therefore decide to leave the poppy trade. This film was made with the support and at the request of the Cauca Regional Indian Council (CRIC). Marta Rodriguez filmed the community during five years.