Norte de Santander, Colombia

Home region of Luisa, Alma, Abel, Representative de Salva and Jefferson, Norte de Santander is an administrative department of Northeast Columbia along the Venezuelan Border. Although the location of Cúcuta, one of Colombia's largest cities, the region's rugged terrain crisscrossed by major river systems and its mountainous remove from the nation's centrally located capital Bogotá have fostered conditions that have led to the region's neglect and underdevelopment in the modern era. The man the province is named after, Francisco Santander was appointed the first president of the independent Colombian republic in the early nineteenth century by Simon Bolivar, the godfather of the ongoing Latin American revolution.

Home to a large number of indigenous people refereed to by Klay as “indios” or specifically “Motilon," the region has always been a hotbed of political diversity and resistance to oppression from all sides. Because of its primarily...