Bare feet moving assuredly across the slick stones, the heavily muscled man climbs the jungle path at a steady pace. On his back is a chair and in that chair sits a woman, trying hard not to move.This unusual mode of transport has a history that dates back centuries to the time of the Spanish conquest. Eager to convey the precious stones found in the area, the conquistadors used the indigenous population as human mules. Abuse was rife, and eventually the authorities had to regulate the carriers’ trade to no more than two sacks of merchandise, for which payment was made with marked gold or silver.In his notes of his travels through South America at the turn of the 19th century, the German explorer and naturalist Alexander Von Humboldt commented on the “degrading” activity of employing these carriers. He was infuriated to hear people describing them using terms that would normally be appled to a horse or mule, such as sure-footedness and an easy gait, and denounced those who spurred the carriers on with their heels.“Shouldn’t the State impose terrible penalties against these crimes?” he wrote. “In accordance with my feelings, it was impossible for me to ride on these people.” He and his travel companion, Aimé Bonpland, elected to walk down the mountain to the town of Cartago, even though their feet were bare and bleeding.Today, ‘paseros’, or carriers, continue to operate in an isolated area of northwestern Colombia, along the Serrania del Baudo, a mountain range that cuts through the northern half of Chocó department between the Pacific Ocean from the western Andes.The roughly 1,500 inhabitants of the town of Alto Baudo, located on the eastern shore of the Baudo River at the foot of the Serrania del Baudo,rely on the paseros for anything that isn’t produced locally – that is, everything other than plantains, rice, tropical fruits, wood and maize. The carriers also act as an ad hoc ambulance service, ferrying patients who can’t be treated in the ill-equipped local hospital.The only other way of reaching the nearest city would be a prohibitively expensive trip down the River Baudo and a long bus ride.And just as the town’s inhabitants rely on the carriers, so the carriers rely on the work to feed themselves and their families. The carriers can earn up to 10,000 pesos (£2.25) a day – a handy sum in this impoverished region.Unsurprisingly, given its extreme isolation, the town has few links to civilisation. There is no clean drinking water, electricity or sewerage system, but there is a school. However, when a canoe arrives at the other side of the mountain laden with rice, cigarettes, beer,medication or a television set for the town, the classroom empties as the children head across the 400-metre-high range to offer themselves as carriers. The teacher, Carmen, knows the priorities: first food, then study. So when a note arrives from José Luis, one of the young carriers, she is philosophical. “Teacher,” it reads, “today I have to travel urgently. I apologise for not attending class.”“I take the roll call, and if they send a work excuse, I understand, because it is a question of survival,” Carmen says.

Star carrier
Work as a carrier isn’t the preserve of the young. At 47, Adelino Hinostroza is a veteran of the trade, following on from his father and his grandfather before him. “My father would take two sacks of rice, light a cigarette, take half a bottle of aguardiente [the local drink], and go barefoot across the hill,” he remembers with pride. He may look emaciated, but Hinostroza is still the star carrier in this part of the mountain, despite the pain in his knees, which has forced him to reduce the number of journeys he makes.The day begins early when Hinostroza wakes, picks up his carved chair and sets off to transport people to and from the hospital. It could be a pregnant woman in labour, a man with chest pains or a woman with a stomach infection who needs emergency treatment. Once the patient is seated in the chair, he carefully lifts it onto his back, ties a rope around his forehead, pushes himself off and begins his uphill journey.The trip can take up to eight hours, rain permitting. (And, boy, can it rain. This is one of the wettest places on the planet, with an average annual rainfall of more than nine metres.)It begins with the steep ascent through dense tropical rainforest to the mountain ridge, where the carriers rest and pray to Santa Catalina de Catrú, the path’s protector.Sweaty after the two-hour climb, they laugh with each other, and although sometimes they frown in the presence of strangers, none of them complains about the eight-kilometre trek up and the mountain, past 100-year-old trees and rocks studded with fossils.Then, there is the long, uneven descent down to the banks of the Pató River, where they unload into a small wooden boat that will then travel downriver to Quibdò, the department’s capital.The loads they carry might consist of bags of rice or boxes of beer – even a 75-kilogram refrigerator. If they feel any pain after carrying such heavy burdens, the paseros simply take an aspirin and carry on. According to the local doctor, however, many of the carriers suffer from chronic back pain, and umbilical hernias are common.Not everyone appreciates the paseros. The mayor of Alto Baudo, Emiliano Romaña, wants to see an end to their work and intends to leave as his administration’s legacy a runway for light aircraft and a 14-kilometre road that will break through the jungle and connect the area to the modern world.As well as spelling the end of the carriers’ work, the throroughfare would mean an end to the isolation that has seen religious traditions remain intact for centuries and resulted in a high level of inbreeding. Almost all of the inhabitants are related, and sexual relationships between cousins and even uncles and nieces, are commonplace.But until the modern world reaches this lost town in the jungle, the paseros will continue to shoulder their back-breaking loads and continue the tradition of the ‘human beasts of burden’.