Ancestral spirit: can brewing a traditional moonshine help Colombia’s youth avoid gangs?

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Southern frontlines: Latin America and the Caribbean

Ancestral spirit: can brewing a traditional moonshine help Colombia’s youth avoid gangs?

Viche, a sugar cane-based drink made by African-Colombian communities for centuries, is slowly gaining legality and respectability

by Dimitri Selibas in Triana, Colombia

Supported by

Open Society Foundations

About this content

Thu 4 Jan 2024 13.00 CET

The thick forest buzzes with life in the background as a circle of women meet in an open-air hall in Triana, a mountainside hamlet in Colombia’s verdant Pacific region. Doña Gloria walks up to each person and pours a shot of viche from a herb-infused bottle.

“For us, viche is a distillate of wisdom, ancestry and culture,” says Gloria, a master viche maker and leader of the Association of Black and Indigenous Peasant Women of Buenaventura (AMUCIB). “Viche is the blood which runs through our veins. Without blood, there is no life.”

Viche, a sugar cane-based alcoholic drink, has been artisanally produced by African-Colombian communities for about 300 years. When mixed with specific plants it can be a medicine, a midwife’s aid for childbirth, or an alternative morning pick-me-up in a country renowned for its coffee. Now, the drink has also become a way to fight the threat of armed gangs recruiting young people of the African-Colombian communities.

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Ancestral spirit: can brewing a traditional moonshine help Colombia’s youth avoid gangs?