Luis Diaz’s indigenous community that breeds ‘toughness’

BARRANCAS (COLOMBIA) – Running around barefooted on a dust bowl of a pitch, a young indigenous Colombian began kicking a ball more than 20 years ago. Now he is on the verge of becoming champion of Europe.

In the town of Barrancas, where almost half the population is from the Wayuu indigenous community, everyone remembers how the timid “Luisfer” would never get tired.

Liverpool’s newest star Luis Diaz emerged from this desert outback in the northern La Guajira department that borders the Caribbean Sea to the northwest and Venezuela to the southeast, to become a national phenomenon.

From a young age, Diaz, whose father Luis Manuel was…