Hacia Jepira

The Wayúu people, who live in the northernmost region of South America between Colombia and Venezuela, bury their deceased twice. When someone dies, the community performs the first burial in the cemetery. Some years later, the family exhumes the body and designates a woman to clean the bones. After cleaning them, she places the bones in a clay vessel to take them to Jepira, a mountainous and desertic site in Cabo de la Vela in Colombia’s northern peninsula surrounded by the Caribbean Sea. The spirits go to Jepira to rest in the ocean. The dead travel the path towards Jepira following the milky way, which takes them to spiritual life.