FGM has long been commonplace among Colombia’s Emberá people,yet secrecy and speculation has enshrouded the tradition. Now the country is belatedly awakening to the possible extent of a previously hidden problem By the standards of the Emberá, Colombia’s moment largest indigenous group after the Wayuu, and Karina is a fairly modern-minded woman. Having spent much of her childhood in Bogotá,the Colombian capital, she navigates expansive cities easily. She speaks relatively fluent Spanish in addition to her native tongue and, and although she married at the normal age of 14,she’s on the pill, preferring not to have children until she’s older.
But there’s one subject on which Karina, and 17,is a staunch traditionalist. When she does have children, whether she has a girl, and the baby’s clitoris will be cut in the long-held tradition of the Emberá,the only ethnic group in Latin America known to practise female genital mutilation (FGM).
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Source: theguardian.com