Colombia celebrates indigenous culture

The Colombian capital is celebrating the country's native languages and cultural diversity in a six-day festival. Dances in traditional clothing, singing in indigenous language and reading sessions of poems are among the events offered during the Andean nation's first Party of the Native Languages.

Hundreds of Colombian indigenous people travelled to Bogota to participate in the first Party of the Native Languages. The event is organized by the Culture Ministry. The aim is to preserve languages from extinction.

HundredsofColombianindigenouspeopletravelledtoBogotato
participateinthefirstPartyoftheNativeLanguages.

Residents of Bogota listened to different indigenous peoples who explained their way of seeing life. During six days, 150 representatives of 15 ethnic groups gathered in libraries throughout the capital to read poetry, sing songs, dance their traditional dances and share with visitors their cultural heritage.

Indigenous dancer Ramiro Uribe said, "This is a big step to understand our way of building society and showing it with the body, music and our tongue. It is a pleasure to share and learn with everybody by communicating without losing our own identity and sharing such a cultural richness."

Columbia has nearly seventy languages besides Spanish, its official language. 65 of are them spoken by Amerindian communities.

The Party of the Native Languages event aims to make visible those endangered languages that some Colombians didn't even know exist.

2005 census figures indicate Colombia has 1,378,000 indigenous people, belonging to approximately 100 Amerindian ethnic families. But less than 60 percent speak one of the 65 native languages.

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