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DISCLAIMER: This document does not meet current format guidelines Graduate School at the The University of Texas at Austin. of the It has been published for informational use only. Copyright by Ricardo Tane Ward 2014 The Dissertation Committee for Ricardo Tane Ward Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: The Inauspicious Monster Inside the Sacred Fortress: Colonial Multiculturalism and Indigenous Politics in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Committee: Shannon Speed, Supervisor Charles R. Hale Edmund T. Gordon Circe Sturm Guillermo Padilla Rubiano The Inauspicious Monster Inside the Sacred Fortress: Colonial Multiculturalism and Indigenous Politics in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta by Ricardo Tane Ward BA; MA Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May, 2014 Dedication This Dissertation is dedicated to the Umunukunu, the Iku of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, and in the spirit of the Law of Origin. "Four times it stalled before the gateway, at the very threshold; four times the arms clashed loud inside its belly. Nevertheless, heedless, blinded by frenzy, we press right on and set the inauspicious monster inside the sacred fortress." - Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 2 “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” -Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146 “Time takes its crazy toll, and how does your mirror grow? Better watch yourself when you jump into it, cause the mirror’s gonna steal your soul” -Sonic Youth, The Diamond Sea v Acknowledgements With the spirit of all of my ancestors, and especially my father Ryk and my brother Rewi, I first and foremost thank my family for supporting me over the years. I love you Mom, Maria Eugenia Ramirez, and hope to continue to make you proud. Thank you to my sisters, Kimiora Ward, and Reniera Eddie for being there since the very beginning. You are all a part of this project. This PhD is in spirit also given to my wife Rockie Gonzalez for her hard work supporting me over the years. Dr. Gonzalez, you should be proud. And I love you. I thank my daughter, Trinity Estrella Gonzalez, for keeping my priorities straight throughout my graduate career. Nizz, you are, indeed, the best thing in the world. I want to thank the Gonzalez family for being my family: Rocky, Rosie, Anita, Emmerson Nez, Chris, Eagan, Aaron, Laura, Itzi Bitzi, Zoey, Ezra and Brando. You have all been my rock over this last decade – thank you! Thank you to my extended family Andrei Lubomudrov, Jacob Hansen, Tyler Zachyr, Ariana Vigil, Neil Hariani, Bob Libal, Whichael Okeefe-Cowles, Matt Gossage, Simon Powell-Evans, Louisiana Kreutz, Sta-Bo, Teo, JG, The Camacho Brothers, Parker Dority and Tiny Dogs. Let’s have one more song for the road. Thank you to my school family. Thanks to my committee: Shannon, Charlie, Ted, Circe and especially Guillermo. Let us see that all of our daughters grow up in a better world. I am grateful to the memory of Brian Stross. Thank you to Joy, Kaushik, Simone, Joao, Mitsy, Heather, Shanya, Hallie Bonez, Alix, Eli, Ihmoud, Chang, Chelsea, Julie, David, Christina, Gwen, Nikki, Jogi, I can only hope that I helped you all in your projects as much as you helped me. vi Thank you for my ceremonial family for praying for me, and all of the spirits that heard you. Fellow fire-chiefs, Tony the Tiger, Neil, Jim Bird, thank you for carrying all of Emmerson’s stones. Thank you Wally and Cynthia Lawson and your family. Thank you to Kalpulli Ameyahueyatonal de San Antonio: Laura, Karla, Luisanna, Madelein, Huitzi and Itzli. Thank you Carlos Aceves and your family. Thank you Gary and Debbie and our ancestors of at least 4,000 years ago (we got the message). Por mis amigos en la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, que continua en la resistaencia y en el fortacelamiento de la cultura. Este proyecto ya estamos comenzando. Gracias a Julio Alberto, Dionysia, Mamo Atilio, Asdrubal, Alirio, Esther, Marta, Nora, Diana, Gisselle, Ana Ilba, Rigoberto, Maribel, Cesar, Yugi, Amigo Yesser, Sen, Rokilen, Bunqua, Daisy, Luis Alberto, Vanessa, Stephanie Gailer, Rubiel, Gelver and Moises Villafane. Gracias a los Colombianos que me ayudaba durante los años: Martin (El Tin), Sarah, Alegria, Dari, Nelson, Taita Orlando y el Fundacion Carrare, todos de la organizacion el Kamachikut del Macizo Andino, y los corredores de la Jornada de Paz y Dignidad. My teachers who also showed me how to be a teacher: Simel Bey, Antonio Velazquez, Lindsay Hale, Maxine Beach, Santiago Armengod and Eric Anguamea. Please know that I continue to spread knowledge that you have contributed to. Thank you to my community of activists that are working for social, spiritual and material change in this world. The written work for this dissertation was done primarily at Café Mundi and Cherrywood Coffeehouse in Austin, Texas. vii The Inauspicious Monster Inside the Sacred Fortress: Colonial Multiculturalism and Indigenous Politics in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Ricardo Tane Ward PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2014 Supervisor: Shannon Speed Abstract: This dissertation is about development and multiculturalism in Colombia. My ethnographic work focuses on the Iku, an indigenous pueblo in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains in Northern Colombia (SNSM), as they work to resist development projects and wrestle with political changes brought on by multiculturalism. The Iku have traditionally resisted the state, capitalism and development. The multicultural paradigm for addressing development in indigenous territory in Colombia has been adapted from international frameworks for “special indigenous rights”. Colombia has served as a model multicultural nation, because of its progressive constitution and its practice of implementing Free, Prior and Informed Consultations about development projects for indigenous people. These changes have had profound effects on the governance of indigenous peoples, and have garnered internal cultural responses from the Iku. The reaction to development and multicultural politics has been dissonant from the state at an ontological level – that is at the basic level of understanding reality. Multiculturalism is tied to liberal state governance and industrial capitalist viii economies, rooted ontologically in colonial-modernity. The Iku have a relational ontology tied to their culture-territory. This dissertation does not elaborate a discursive Iku critique of capitalism or mystify readers with a re-telling of their cultural mythology. Instead, I explore ontological politics as both colonizing, in the form of extractive industries’ disregard for the natural world, and resistant, in the Iku practices of reproducing their culture-territory. This dissertation explores this political space with an eye towards building decolonial politics that respond to the challenges faced by the Iku and the multicultural state. ix Table of Contents Ackowledgements………………………………………….………………………….v Abstract……………………………………………………………………………….vii Introduction – “We are tired of all this discourse”: Distinct Worldviews and the Procedural Act of Colonization …………………………….….1 Part 1: Meeting with Mamos Mayores in Windiwa, Kochkwa and Gunse……………………………………………………………………….…...2 Part 2: Development and Colonial Modernity……………………...………….21 Part I: Ontology and the Subject…………………………………………….…37 Interlude - How it Began (how it always begins) ……………………………………38 Chapter 2 – Spiritual Materialism: Mamo Science, Western Philosophy and the Politics of Knowledge…………………………………………65 Part 1: Mamo Science and the Dissolution of the Modern West…….…...……..65 Part 2: Spiritual Materialism……………………………………………………..……….…..79 Part3: The moon is not just a rock: layered worlds and overlapping knowledges………………………………………………………………...85 Chapter 3 – A Dependence on Difference: How an Alternate Cosmovision Complicates Identity ………………………………………………………………...101 Part 1: Race and Power in Latin America………………………………………..……103 Part 2: Violence, ontology and Subjects……………………………….……………….115 Part 3: Liberal Racism and Indigenous Difference……………….………………..123 Part II: THE TROJAN HORSE OF MULTICULTURAL RIGHTS……...…..……..143 Interlude – The Return - The Project……………………………………..…………144 Chapter 4 – Modernity is the Labyrinth: Rights, Duties and Development ...............149 x Part 1: Defense of Culture-Territory…………………………………...……...149 Part 2: Multicultural Mistranslation and the Case of Brisa………………........170 Part 3: War of Position Revisited………………………………….….……….185 Chapter 5 – Inside Iku Politics: Change, Maneuver and Sabotage…………..…….…195 Part 1: A Study in Terror and Kneeling…………………………………...….…195 Part 2: Winning Battles Losing Wars: Indigenous Cultures and subjectivity………………………………………………………….…...…..207 Part 3: Procedural Sabotage: Clogging the States Gears……...………………....213 Interlude – Shifting subjects, individual lives………………………..……….……...222 Chapter 6 – Transcending Paradoxes: Critical Decolonial Practice …………..…….236 Part 1: Bringing it all Back Home……………………………………………....236 Part 2: Contemporary Coloniality……………………………..…..…..……..…248 Conclusion – “Changing the way that people live and relate to the Earth”…….……269 List of Acronyms.......................................................................................................280 Figure 1……………………………………………………………………………...281