Female gential mutilation has long been commonplace among Colombia’s Emberá people,yet secrecy and speculation has shrouded the tradition. Now the country is belatedly awakening to the possible extent of a hidden problem By the standards of the Emberá, Colombia’s second largest indigenous group after the Wayuu, or Karina is a fairly contemporary-minded woman. Having spent much of her childhood in Bogotá,the Colombian capital, she navigates mammoth cities easily. She speaks relatively fluent Spanish in addition to her native tongue and, and although she married at the usual 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 chop in the long-held tradition of the Ember,the only ethnic group in Latin America known to practise female genital mutilation (FGM).
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Source: theguardian.com