The Ranchería river has run dry after three years of intense drought, decades of overuse and a lifetime of public corruption in the province of La Guajira, one of Colombia’s poorest and most forgotten regions

A surprise five-minute rain shower falls like a taunt over the scorched riverbed of the Ranchería river: fat raindrops spatter in the dust but evaporate almost immediately. Nearby, a young girl and boy scoop out a bowlful of cloudy groundwater from a makeshift well to wash a few scraps of clothes.

Taluorumana, the Colombian village dying of thirst – in pictures Read more

The Ranchería river has run dry after three years of intense drought, decades of overuse and a lifetime of public corruption in the province of La Guajira, one of Colombia’s poorest and most forgotten regions. Crops have long ago shrivelled, babies are dying of malnutrition and livestock are wasting away from thirst.

It was for times like this that the El Cercado dam was built on the river, to mitigate the effects of cyclical droughts in the region, home to the Wayuu Indians. At the entrance to the El Cercado dam, a huge billboard pronounces “From here will flow the water that will be the future to the Guajira.”

The original project foresaw the dam supplying water to the aqueducts of nine municipalities as well as providing irrigation for agriculture. But the massive pipes that should have made this possible lead nowhere. “They never connected it to anything,” said Octavio Calderón of the provincial potable water office.

The reservoir currently stands at 40% of its capacity and local authorities are controlling the flow of the river past the dam to ensure the supply. But the flow hardly makes it past the rice fields, cattle ranches and the world’s largest open-pit coalmine that tap into the river below the dam. By the time it reaches the middle Guajira, where the population is mostly Wayuu, the Ranchería is barely even a trickle.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Esteffany Epieyu, 11, and her nephew Luis Miguel wash clothes in the dry riverbed. Photograph: Stephen Ferry/The Guardian

“There is a lot of demand on the river and very little control over how it’s used,” said Calderón.

Javier Rojas, leader of an indigenous association called Wayuu Shipia, puts it more bluntly: “The Wayuu are dying of thirst and hunger because of the dam,” he said.

According to official figures, 26 children died of malnutrition in La Guajira in 2013, 48 in 2014 and 11 in the first six months of 2015.

But Rojas says the actual numbers are far higher. He says he has verified the death of at least 25 children since February, and calculates that at least 400 children have died in the past three years. “I get weekly reports of the death of at least three children,” he said.

The latest such report came from a village known as Hirtú. On 6 June, a two-month-old child, Chepe Uriana, died after receiving treatment for malnutrition at hospital and being sent home with his mother to their village just seven kilometres from the town of Manaure.

“A significant number of boys and girls, mostly Wayuu, have died in La Guajira from perfectly preventable causes,” the country’s human rights ombudsman’s office said in a 2014 report.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Paola Uriana, 17, sits with her daughter Sara Sofía Uriana, 7 months, in the Centre for Nutritional Recuperation. Photograph: Stephen Ferry/The Guardian

Thousands more are barely surviving. In the village of Nuevo Ambiente, a young girl dribbles a cup of water over the head of her brother, who sits in a plastic tub under the shade of a open-walled thatch-roof hut. David is three years old, but has not yet learned to walk or talk. Stunted by severe malnutrition, he weighs just 6.7kg and wears diapers normally worn by a five-month-old infant. It means he’s improving, according to his grandmother, Alcira Epieyú. Until a few months ago, he was wearing diapers for a newborn.

Rosa is another survivor. For the past two weeks, she and her mother Aines have been at the Centre for Nutritional Recovery in the Guajira capital, Riohacha, run by the child welfare agency. She looks like an infant of about six months but Aines says she’s a year and four months old, her growth stunted by a lack of food and clean water in their village in the upper Guajira. Aines says doctors have told her the water they pull from a well is not safe to drink. “But what can we do if there’s no other water?” she asks as she cradles Rosa in her arms.

Wayuu leaders have now taken their case for water to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, requesting precautionary measures aiming to force the local and national government to ensure their access to water.

“We asked for the commission to order the floodgates of the dam to be opened, and that the Wayuu should be given priority in the use of the water. Any surplus can then be used for economic activities,” says lawyer Carolina Sáchica, director of the legal clinic at the Tadeo Lozano University in Bogotá, who petitioned the commission on behalf of the Wayuu.

One of the largest single users of the river water is the Cerrejón coalmine, jointly owned by BHP Billiton plc, Anglo American plc and Xstrata Coal. On average, the mine uses 2,700 cubic metres per day of water, drawing both surface flow from the river and groundwaterfrom wells, said company spokesman Carlos Franco, who added that the mine is using just 16% of the river water it is authorised to use.

“The problem is not our use, the problem is they have not built the pipelines for the aqueducts,” said Franco. “The money for the aqueducts in La Guajira has been stolen over and over again.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Flamini Gómez Uriana carries water from a well to the the little settlement of Talorumana. Photograph: Stephen Ferry/The Guardian

Alejandro Ordóñez, the inspector general, whose office investigates accusations of corruption and mismanagement by public servants, said on a visit to Guajira last year that the real problem in the department is corruption.

“The main problem of the region is not the drought but corruption because royalties have been stolen for many years and the public works needed to face natural events that are foreseeable were not done,” Ordóñez said.

On 1 June President Juan Manuel Santos travelled to the region to address the water issue. He made no mention of the El Cercado dam and the aqueducts it was supposed to feed, but he promised 100 new wells for the province by 2018.

The Wayuu have heard those promises before.

For now Lilia Uriana relies on dreams to find water. From atop the windswept hill where she and her family live in a collection of mud huts and thatched-roof stalls, she can see two jagueyes – traditional reservoirs dug by Wayuu communities to catch rainwater, when it comes. But the earth of the jagueyes surrounding her village of Taluorumana is cracked dry.

It was her mother who dreamed last year of a certain spot where, if she left a necklace for the spirits, they would provide water. A 10-metre-deep well at the site has been serving as the family’s source for water ever since. The water at the bottom is brackish and slightly oily. “But it’s what we have,” said Uriana.