Reparations
and the Trajectories of Indigenous
Citizenship in La Guajira, Colombia
By
Pablo Jaramillo
Universidad de los Andes
Resumen
La participacion del estado en la simultanea marginalizacion, atencion y cuidado de las
poblaciones etnicas invita a re-examinar las condiciones, formas e implicaciones de las
ciudadanas indgenas contemporaneas, caracterizadas por Postero (2007), para el caso
de Bolivia, como post-multiculturales. Este artculo se centra en como la reciente
reparacion de vctimas indgenas, resultado principalmente de violencia paramilitar
en el norte de Colombia, fue el escenario de una radicalizacion del discurso sobre la
ciudadana indgena entre las personas y organizaciones implicadas. El artculo presta
atencion a las preocupaciones expresadas por personas directamente involucradas en la
creciente articulacion entre reparacion, poltica social y ciudadana, quienes han visto
su indigenidad asociada a victimizacion y vulnerabilidad. Los datos en los cuales se
basa este artculo son resultado de trece meses de trabajo de campo etnografico entre el
ano 2007 y 2008 con indgenas vctimas de los paramilitares en La Guajira colombiana.
[Colombia, conflicto armado, pueblos indgenas]
Abstract
Strategies to include indigenous populations in Colombia are often regarded as so-
lutions for historically preestablished exclusion. Yet the participation of the state in
the simultaneous marginalization, attention to, and care of ethnicized and racialized
populations invites an interrogation of current formations of indigenous citizenship,
characterized by Postero (2007) for Bolivia as post multicultural. This article is pri-
marily concerned with novel articulations of multicultural policies together with other
strategies of social inclusion and the radicalization of indigenous citizenship discourses
The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 335353. ISSN 1935-4932, online
ISSN 1935-4940.
C 2011 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1935-
4940.2011.01161.x
La Guajira peninsula constitutes the dry, arid, and northernmost tip of South
America. The location of the region has been both a factor of marginality and of
global interconnections (Guerra Curvelo 2007). The lack of gold and its agricultural
barrenness made the land only a secondary target of imperial and republican aims.
However, the smuggling of innumerable commodities in the Circum-Caribbean
area has long served as a source of power and wealth for La Guajiras indige-
nous inhabitants, the Wayuu, whose elites held governmental advances at bay
until the late 20th century. Although an essential form of governmental control
prior to the 1960s and 1970s was matrimonial and commercial alliance with these
elites, leading to forms of mestizaje, the Wayuu remained significantly empow-
ered through their own business and ritual bonds with subordinate indigenous
allies.2 The problematic characterfrom the perspective of the stateof the
Wayuu became even more critical during the second half of the 20th century,
when border tensions with Venezuela and petroleum and coal exploitation in the
region made it urgent for state powers to regain control over the territory and its
population. Senora Helenas family was part of the empowered elite that faced the
aggressive project to bring control to La Guajira, involving the neoliberal com-
mercial policies, multicultural organizations, and paramilitaries described in this
section.3
To me, Senora Helena was far more than my host in the ranchera where I
developed my fieldwork in La Guajira at the end of 2007 and the beginning of
2008. As she called me tachon, son, I felt compelled to call her macho, mother.
In her youth, Helena was what used to be called in travel literature (Bolinder
1957; Candelier 1994; Weston 1937) and in Colombia a Wayuu princess. The
expression served to underscore the similarities in class and to underplay the
different ethnicities involved in marriages between such princesses and officers
of the Colombian army. Senora Helena often boasted about the bridewealth given
for her by her grooms family nearly half a century ago55,000 Colombian pesos
(around US$60,000 at the time, in 1958), as well as the goats, cattle, necklaces, and
other gifts involved in the transaction. The amount of bridewealth speaks about
the importance of her eirruku (literally flesh, but often translated as caste or
clan). Her family not only founded Maicao but was also a key participant in
the slow positioning of the state within the region, through opening the doors
Dependency en Accion
By the time the conflict had reached its most dramatic point, Helenas familys
livelihood was considerably affected. Some of its members maintained strong
bonds with the territorial regime upon which the idea of the Guajiro family was
based: that is, the tenure of fincas in former ranchera territory whose inhabitants
would become part of a rural proletariat, thus replacing ritually mediated alliances
with wage labor. Many of the family allies continued living in rancheras, but they
were clearly subordinated in political and ritual terms (mainly when it came to
bridewealth, the distribution of goats at funerals, and war encounters where the
poorer party would take more dangerous positions). Other members of the family,
Helena included, re-populated former fincas as rancheras and have sought ways
to re-draw old alliances in a traditional fashion. However, Guajiro families face
something of a conundrum: the precarious position they had reached by the turn
of the 21st century forced them to identify as indigenous in order to gain inclusion
in an awkward melange of multiculturalism, programs for the poor, and human
rights reparations.
Re-inhabiting Campamento meant re-fashioning alliances with more indian
allies, which, in turn, resulted in a dilemma in terms of family supremacy: being
recognized as indigenous was dangerous, as the family had enjoyed its territo-
rial autonomy precisely by staying out of the scope of governmental recognition
as indigenous, insofar as the families were regarded as mixed and as illegal
In order to consolidate the project, the Familias en Accion team gave to every
Autoridad Tradicional a form to be photocopied and filled out with the information
of every unidad domestica (household) of the ranchera. As an ethnographer, and
concerned about possible outcomes from this census, I offered to lend a hand to a
leader in the neighboring rancheras to fill out the forms.
The form requested information about the members of each household,
including the ID number of each member (registro de nacimiento for newborns,
Acknowledgments
This article was first presented at the Forum of the Centro de Investigaciones Socio-
Culturales de la Universidad de los Andes (Foro CESO). I thank the participants
in this forum for their feedback and questions, and especially Monica Espinoza
and Virginie Laurent for their challenging question, which made me reconsider
portions of the paper originally presented. I also thank Professor Peter Wade,
Professor John Gledhill, Professor Penny Harvey, and Dr Sian Lazar for their
invaluable comments at different stages during my research. I am grateful to Dr
Andrew Canessa and the two anonymous reviewers of this journal who offered me
excellent insights on how to improve this article. The research was supported by the
Programme Alan, the European Union Programme of High Level Scholarships
for Latin America, scholarship No. E06D100843CO.
Notes
resistance of indigenous peoples to colonization (e.g., the MapucheBoccara 1999) and the effects of
current efforts of State control in indigenous territories.
4 Cafe con leche is mix of coffee and milk in equal parts commonly used in Colombia and
Venezuela as a metaphor of racial and cultural mixture. The situation was less clear cut when indigenous
men married or had children with nonindigenous women, as the offspring would find it more difficult
to claim membership of the fathers family.
at large, a matter of heated dispute (Tate 2007). Indigenous leaders speak of nearly 250 killings and
disappearances, but only give full details of 135 incidents (Ramirez Boscan 2007). The Human Rights
and International Humanitarian Law Observatory of the Vice-presidency of Colombia gives a more
detailed picture of the situation in the municipalities inhabited by the Wayuu, while contesting
the indigeneity of many of the victims (Vicepresidencia de Colombia 2008). According to the Vice-
presidencys report, the main forms of victimization have been homicides, kidnappings, massacres, and
forced displacement. Between 2003 and 2008 there were 1,411 homicides in municipalities inhabited
by the Wayuu, nearly half of them in Maicao alone (8). During 2003, 2004, and 2005 the homicide
rates (homicides per 100,000 inhabitants) in La Guajira (80.48, 70.85, and 57.97, respectively) and
Maicao (106.14, 91.96, and 68.44) were significantly higher than the national homicide rate (52.83,
44.62, and 39.34) (8). The authors of the report directly link the high incidence of homicide to the
presence of armed actors and the surge of paramilitaries in La Guajira. Although the Wayuu represent
the vast majority of the population in La Guajira, the document states that only 37 Wayuu were
victims of homicide between 2003 and 2008 (15). This figure seems unconvincing since there were only
51 victims in the nine massacres reported between 2003 and 2008, many of which occurred in directly
targeted Wayuu rancheras. Forced displacement was also an important manifestation of victimization,
with 13,696 people fleeing their homes (from municipalities inhabited by the Wayuu) between 2003
and 2008. As with homicides, the report states that only 9 percent of the forcibly displaced people
were Wayuu. Finally, although nearly half of the 99 kidnappings in La Guajira between 2003 and
2005 are attributed to left-wing guerrillas (10), many of the remaining cases are presumably linked to
disappearances perpetrated by paramilitaries.
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