(Re) meanings of nature in a neoliberal globalized modern world: three cases of Colombian indigenous ethnicities (Pijao, Cofan and Muisca-Chibcha)

© 2016 Dr. Judy Marcela Chaves AgudeloThis thesis analyses to what extent, and how, discourses of ‘nature’ held by three Colombian ethnicities have hybridized with those of a growing national adoption of neoliberal, globalized modern foundations. ‘Neo-liberalization’, ‘globalization’ and ‘modernization’ affect all fields of Colombian reality, and have been materialized in indigenous territories. Indigenous struggles are fighting and 'contesting’ modernity. I demonstrate that modernity and globalization, being ongoing processes, have impacted indigenous realities since the XVI century, and that the neo-liberalization of the Colombian economy during the 1990s implied a deeper penetration in indigenous localities. These political transitions, and the Colombian embrace of multiculturalism, have synergistically permeated indigenous social realities. I present examples of the ruling of neoliberal policies in Colombia across social, cultural, economic, and environmental policies, focussing on three groups: Muisca-Chibcha, Cofán and Pijao. I show that these societies have made a ‘territorial defence’, advocating for territorial and cultural autonomy. Territory constitutes something ‘defended’, in indigenous struggles. Constant incursions of the dominant global modernity challenge indigenous people’s worldviews, creating a tension that is expressed in incessant cultural hybridization of subsumed discourses, alongside social practices. This is a political reality that causes indigenous communities to reframe and re-voice what it is they are doing in order to maintain both their socio-cultural knowledge and political lifelines. Hybridization occurs when they harness the law (e.g. rights associated with multiculturalism), and therefore adopt foreign terms (e.g. ‘cabildo’, ‘territory’, ‘resguardo’) and legal mechanisms (e.g. previous consultation), as part of their advocacy. In this study, I point out that in general terms, at least four –ongoing- cycles of hybridization led by Cofán, Muisca-Chibcha and Pijao ethnicities have been crucial in contesting the neoliberal globalized modern world. The most influential is the construction of territory as a hybrid term, central in indigenous advocacy. Emergent constructions of territory (territories) encompass material and immaterial meanings of ‘nature’: material or territory itself in the sense of the physical place inhabited and immaterial or ‘Mother Nature’ in regards to the spirituality associated with their existence in that place. The other three cycles of hybridization are the hybridization in ways of organizing, and the insistence on maintaining collective practices; the hybridization of identities and the strategic moving of these in order to gain benefits; and the hybridization of legal mechanisms to protect spirituality through what I call ‘hybrid inventive advocacies’. Therefore, I propose that hybridization is also a tool of empowerment for indigenous individuals, groups, and even ethnicities in their reaction to the ‘neoliberal globalized modern world’, as it affects them