Tairona Heritage Trust

October '98 newsletter

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From Alan Ereira

My last visit to the Sierra was in December. The purpose of the visit was to try to understand better the text which the Mamas have prepared, with the help of the Italian EEC-funded project Recherca and of the Office of Indian Affairs.

It is primarily meant for children of the three indigenous peoples of the Sierra, Kogi, Assario and Arhouaco (or Kaggaba, Ika and Wiwa as they now prefer to be known). It has been translated very literally into Spanish, and the idea is that children should be able to learn to read some Spanish using texts entirely from their own culture. But since the material is itself an education in how to understand the natural world, they are keen that it should be disseminated more widely.

The problem is that it is virtually incomprehensible as it stands unless the reader already inhabits the cultural framework of the authors; I certainly had (and am still having) great difficulty making coherent sense out of it.

My wife Sarah and I were accompanied by a translator, Victor Perera, and a photographer, Simon Chaput. Victor is a well-known writer whose celebrated work on the Lacondon Maya - The Last Lords of Palenque - indicates a profound sympathy with the ancient cultures of America, and the fact that he is a native (Spanish-speaking) Guatemalan who writes in English and teaches at Berkeley means that he would be an ideal translator. Unfortunately he has suffered a massive stroke since we returned and is unlikely to make a very full recovery. Simon (a Frenchman working in New York) is a superb photographer who has done marvellous work in Tibet and India, and who I wanted to introduce as someone who could take pictures to illuminate the text.

We were treated very generously and hospitably, and a careful teaching programme was instituted, helping us grasp at least some of what was being said. A most extraordinary moment came when I was taken off, somewhat under protest, to a quiet spot for "secret teaching" and shown a diagram which represents various aspects of the cosmic entity. When this rather Kabbalistic teaching was over, I was told that they believed that the diagram represents some real location in the world, and asked if I knew where that might be. It slowly dawned on me that I was looking at a diagrammatic representation of the whole American continent - North, South and Central America, with the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. I sketched my own version of the map, which they asked if they could keep.

I assume that the diagram at one level represents what we might call the trade-route information that existed before the conquest, and that this level of meaning had been subsequently lost. I was vividly reminded of the moment at the end of the movie Planet of the Apes when the escaping humans, who had assumed they were on a different planet, discover the top of the Statue of Liberty sticking out of a sandy beach, its significance unknown to the inhabitants.

Another shock was to discover that the Mamas are now very interested in establishing some kind of links with other American native peoples. Mama Bernardo's son Juancho (who is now the head of Gonavindua) and Adalberto's nephew Moises are in charge of this project. Juancho (or Juan Mamatacan as he is now known) is a robust traditionalist who has had the benefit of a primary-school education from the nuns (his father's idea) but who was also partly prepared as a Mama. He is now in the final stages of that traditional education. Moises, an Arhouco, is a much more westernised figure who is at university and only seems to wear traditional dress when he is not in the Sierra. He cuts a striking figure, very dashing.

Moises has been on a fact-finding trip to the United States, and has reported back on the state of native American culture there. As a result, I was told, the Mamas intended to summon two representatives from each tribe to the Sierra for a gathering to begin the process of building connections and re-establishing the ancient systems of offerings to care for the world. This would take place in December and although no non-indigenous people should come, I was required to make a film about it.

I did begin the process of setting up such a film, and the BBC initially agreed to finance it, but then the BBC cash ran dry and the Mamas decided that they would not, after all, be ready in December. They are now talking about the end of January, but I wait to learn more. The film now looks very unlikely, as it is hard to raise the £170,000 or so that it needs at very short notice. But we'll see.

One reason for the delay is that Margarita's husband Carlos, who was a major figure in supporting the work of Gonavindua in practical terms, sadly died earlier this year. It was a very premature death, leaving Margarita with two young children and a virtually intolerable burden as the lynch-pin of the Santa Marta office.

It is terrible to see so many deaths among the people that I have worked with there over the last ten years.

From Lampeter

Elizabeth Reichel-Dolmatoff, daughter of Gerardo and also an anthropologist, and Alan Ereira visited the university in December last year to give talks. Elizabeth has since been offered, and has accepted, an Honorary Fellowship at Lampeter. She contacted recently to say that these days 'the Kogi are popular in the newspapers because the new President of Colombia went to see them the day before his instalment, to get aseguranzas and blessings of sorts, and since then the Kogi are much named for their powers and such. Next week the President of Spain is coming to see them. Since the new Minister of the Environment is Juan Mayr, a Kogi fan, they are in the spotlight. Mayr mentioned something about having them as advisors in ecological management for the Ministry, so it seems there are many plans for the Kogi and the Sierra.'

This new Colombian President, Andrés Pastrana, succeeds Ernesto Samper whose last days were clouded by allegations of involvement with drug money. Pastrana has been negotiating with the guerrillas in a radical attempt to end the country's endemic violence. He secretly met leaders of the 15,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and signed an agreement in Germany with leaders of the 5,000-strong National Liberation Army (ELN). All three groups are agreeing to compromises in their positions for the sake of peace, and some para-military leaders are responding to this initiative by promising to disarm 'once the guerrillas do.' On 12th October '98, there is a conference to discuss a permanent ceasefire.

Much has changed, then, since the Trust first started its cooperation with Gonavindua Tairona. At that time, the final message from the Mamas was one of dismissal - 'we have said what we wanted to say, now please stay away.' Since that time, much land has come back to them and their political position has strengthened to the point where they are now influential in government. This has been achieved with no compromise on their part. It is difficult to judge just to what extent the Trust's activities have been instrumental in this realignment. In Alan's words, 'the Trust is a small cog in a large wheel', and larger forces than it is capable of mustering have been at work. I have always been impressed with Colombia's attitude towards its indigenous peoples, whilst sometimes doubting its ability to translate enlightened liberality into action at ground level. The new political manoeuvrings, however, augur well.

The Mamas have responded to the possibilities of each development in a characteristic way. When faced with new phenomena, says Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, ' it is not so much the question of what causes these phenomena which occupies the priests, but the problem of how to integrate them into the established cosmogonic scheme. What ritual or moral attitudes do they imply for the individual and for society?' ('Funerary Customs and Religious Symbolism Among the Kogi': 300). Writing this article in 1974, Reichel-Dolmatoff described the emergence of a new strata of younger priests 'who do not conform to the basis established by tradition, but who glimpse new horizons and new dimensions in which human destiny might fulfil itself.' (ibid: 301). It was this generation of Mamas which established Gonavindua Tairona in 1987 and agreed to the making of Alan's documentary in 1988.

Their policies have worked well for them, but problems and stresses remain. Tourism, and its attendant demands, is the foremost. By 1990 there were already suggestions of turning the snow peaks into a skiing resort, and the discovery of the 'Lost City' turned it into a tourist resource. In 1992, there was a plan mooted to build a donkey track to it to make access easier and quicker for tourists. (For the rich, there is already a helicopter service). In 1994, a group of German hang-gliders sent an expedition to fly from the peaks of the highest coastal mountain in the world to the coast. And in Western papers, multi-page reports are appearing in the travel sections extolling the charms of the area.

Social scientists define tourism in terms of a 'gaze' returned by the locals in a contest of cultural self-confidence. The tourist trip is a journey not only to a different geographical landscape but to a different cultural and mental one also, and it is the fragile environments which are recognised as being particularly vulnerable to the tourist impact. The cultural/ethnic venue in particular is one that the tourist industry is developing at the moment, being second in development value only to the adventure/wilderness holidays.

A common reaction for tribal peoples faced with this situation is to accept tourism by putting their culture on display. This has short term financial benefits, but in the long term the effects are deleterious as traditional skills, such as farming, are foregone in favour tourist-oriented work. It is doubtful that the Kogi will succumb so easily as some others for we have long been the object of their 'gaze' and their cultural self-confidence has been put to the test before. In the 1950's, for example, colonos farmers used gifts of whisky to befuddle, successfully, the minds of Kogi whose land they wanted. The Mámas considered the situation and issued an edict banning its use. Kogi society was cohesive enough to accept this pronouncement, and the threat passed. Today, the new village of Bonga is being prepared as a buffer between the West and themselves - it is here, but no further, that visitors can come. As in the case of the whisky, a threat has been foreseen and precautions taken.

Bonga, which was built on land partially paid for by Trust funds, is the village visited by Alan Ereira, Felicity Nock and myself in 1992. At that time, it was relatively small - maybe some twenty huts built variously in the Kogi style (i.e. round) and the Assario (i.e. square) styles. Since that time, it has been developed considerably and now incorporates features - a solar-powered electric light, a flush toilet and a shower - to meet the needs of its Western visitors who have included the previous Colombian President, Ernesto Samper, and the Queen of Spain. The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, and the Kogi in particular it seems, are increasingly being adopted as a cultural icon by the government. In itself, this is an ambiguous situation, for if the motivation behind it was laden with a hidden agenda, then the increasing attention could become a burden and an additional stress for the Kogi. It is, however, a situation that they themselves have been working for since the establishment of Gonavindua Tairona in 1988. It is also a situation which has become unavoidable considering the historical context.

South America remained colonised by Europe until Napoleon's invasion of Iberia gave Bolivar in the north and San Martin in the south the chance to liberate the continent whilst Spain and Portugal were weakened by the domestic situation. Bolivar was a creole born to wealth and position in Venezuela. At its height, his power spread from the Caribbean to the Argentina-Bolivian border, but his vision for South America, which was continental in nature, evaporated in the face of national identities which emerged after the wars for independence. Incapable of living up to Bolivar's vision for them, the original Spanish colonies formed themselves into ten independent republics, the boundaries of which were based on the limits of the original colonial divisions. Bolivar realised that his presence posited a threat to the nations that owed their very independence to him. Accompanied in the latter years by his lover, Manuela Sáenz, Bolivar travelled to Santa Marta intending to seek refuge in Europe. He died there, of tuberculosis, in 1830.

Colombia received its independence in 1819 and like most South American countries adopted a republican form of government with strong executive power. It emerged into the 20th century peculiar in some key aspects from the rest of South America. The Roman Catholic Church is particularly strong and Protestantism was resisted forcefully even quite recently. The period called 'La Violencia' has left residual social and political violence with the balance of power held uneasily between the government and guerrilla organisations. But Colombia is also a Latin American success story, the only country to escape the 1980's debt crisis, it has a strong economy and a stable two-party political system. In a population of 15 million, 300,000 are indigenes from more than 60 different nations.

What had been called the 'Indian Problem' in North America was called the 'mancha india' (the Indian Stain) in South America, and both continents sought to resolve it by the assimilation of indigenous groups. Earlier attempts were redefined by 1940 when the First Inter-American Indigenist Congress was held in Pátzcuaro, Mexico, to discuss the co-ordination of integrationist policies. The viewpoint of the conference, however, was more that of the creoles than that of the pure indigenes who felt that their cultures were being usurped for the political purposes of others.

Whilst other Latin American countries prevaricated, Colombia had always been in the forefront of enlightened attitudes towards indigenes. An 1890 law provided for the establishment of Indian communal reserves called 'resguardos', but this did not apply to 'uncivilized', non-Christian groups, who were given no such rights and instead were placed under the legal guardianship of the Catholic missions delegated to civilize them. By 1961, however, Law 135 allowed reserves to be formed for 'uncivilized' Indians. but it was poorly implemented and indigenous rights suffered, although a 'resguardo' for the Kogi was put in place. In 1982, the National Development Program for Indigenous Populations (PRODEIN), a government agency to protect Indians, was established.

Meanwhile, in Colombia and Ecuador in particular, lowland and highland indigenous groups were developing 'Indianism' (Indianismo), a philosophy which emphasises that indigenous peoples should lead the struggle for recognition of their own culture, needs and rights. 'Indianism' manifests in three different schools of thought: the first identifies the struggle with left-wing ideology; the second disassociates itself from both left and right-wing politics arguing instead for a return to cultural purity; the third espouses a centrist position which argues that indigenous people should recognise the multi-cultural nature of contemporary societies and organise, lobby and campaign in structures of their own but in alliance with other, non-indigenous organisations when and where appropriate.

By allowing both Alan's film and the establishment of the Tairona Heritage Trust, Gonavindua Tairona, who can successfully argue that their cultural purity is already substantially intact, seem to be following the third centrist position, the strength of which was consolidated in 1991 when the Colombian government established a new constitution which has been described as 'the most comprehensive set of rights enjoyed by indigenous peoples anywhere in the Americas.' In their present position of political favour, the Mamas seem especially able to benefit from a remarkable set of circumstances.

But Colombia is a complex country and political will does not always easily translate into action at grass-roots level. In June of this year, Ramón Gil's cousin was found murdered - whether by guerrillas or paramilitaries is not clear. The pressure of tourism, as stated, is increasing, and the rising number of visitors to 'The Lost City' is causing Gonavindua Tairona particular concern. Whilst the boundaries of their 'resguardo' are in place, this does not automatically confer legal title to all land within those boundaries - rather, it means that those who still live and farm within the 'resguardo' can sell their properties only to Gonavindua Tairona. The Trust still has an important role to play in supporting the Mamas as they attempt to achieve the very best the situation has to offer. The criteria for this optimum position can be theirs, and need not be a compromise with the interests of others.

The Tairona Heritage Studies Centre

As an extension of the Trust's activities, the Tairona Heritage Studies Centre is being established at Lampeter. The THSC can be seen as the Trust's academic wing and a web-site is being developed for it - the first few pages should be online within a week of receiving this letter. It is hoped that it will attract the attention of all who have some in-depth knowledge of the area and its peoples - anyone who would like to contribute material for it is very welcome to send articles or photographs for consideration. All other activities of the Trust will continue - its first priority is as ever to benefit Gonavindua Tairona in whatever way is suitable to their needs and desires, principally by continuing to raise money for land purchase. £9,000 was passed on to Santa Marta in the last financial year.

As I am leaving Lampeter, I would like to introduce Luci Attala, a first class honours graduate who is staying on to do an M.A., as the new administrator and whom I warmly recommend. I shall be staying in contact with the Trust and supporting it from a distance. Graham Falvey.

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