Wings of a Bird

In a Land Torn by Violence, Too Many Troubling Deaths [free for 7 days; registration required]
photos: Suicides Shake Colombian Tribes
At 15, Leida Salazar had just learned to ride a bike, eagerly watched after her smaller siblings and was among the extroverts in a throng of giddy indigenous girls. But a year ago, she fashioned a noose out of a wraparound skirt, hoisted it over the wood-beam rafter of her home and hanged herself.
A note she left for her father voiced anguished fears that Colombia's drug-fueled guerrilla war would engulf her family, refugees to this poverty-stricken village along with dozens of others. But the death of the outwardly happy girl continues to confound her parents and the leaders of a once-sheltered indigenous tribe, the Embera, who never before knew suicide.
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Colombia's 40-year conflict, pitting rebels against right-wing death squads and state security forces, is an easy culprit. But it is not the only one. Encroaching modernity, from logging to settlements, threaten the Emberas, who worry that their whipsawed young are losing the indigenous identity at the root of the tribe's existence.
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Settlers have depleted the jungles of animals, like the tapir, that the Embera once hunted, forcing the once-nomadic tribe to form permanent communities. They turned to farming, which they have yet to master.
Guerrillas and paramilitaries have brought more disorder, recruiting young members of the tribe. The vast river ways that the Embera and other tribes fish have become transit zones for cocaine and arms smuggling. Hundreds of Indians have been displaced by war, and 30 Embera have been killed since 1996.
The army, to shut off supplies to guerrillas, limits the amount of food that can be moved into regions where the Embera live, leading to shortages. ...