the journal of latin american and caribbean anthropology volume 16 issue 2 2011 [doi...

8/10/2019 The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology Volume 16 Issue 2 2011 [Doi 10.1111%2Fj.1935-4940.

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Post-Multicultural Anxieties? Reparationsand the Trajectories of IndigenousCitizenship in La Guajira, Colombia

By

Pablo JaramilloU n i v er s i d a d d e l o s A n d e s

R e s u m e n

La participacion del estado en la simultanea marginalizacion, atencion y cuidado de las

poblacionesetnicas 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]

A b s t r a c t

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

Post-Multicultural Anxieties? 335


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among the actors involved. It delves into the concerns of people directly involved in

the growing articulation of human rights reparations, social policy of the poor, and

citizenship, who have seen their indigeneity increasingly associated with victimhood,

vulnerability, and claims of care. As a result, the subjects of indigenous citizenship

experience it as an object of exchange and consumption. This article is based on a13-month period of ethnographic fieldwork (20072008) in La Guajira, Colombia.

[Colombia, armed conflict, indigenous peoples]

This article seeks to analyze novel articulations of multicultural policies along-

side social programs to the poor and reparations to indigenous victims resultant

from paramilitary violence in northern Colombia. These articulations imply a new

branding of indigenous citizenship, which carries with it the capacity to elicitwhat are termed here anxious ethnic subjects. I first heard of the anxiety experienced

by people undergoing processes of social inclusion throughSe noraHelena during

many hours of conversation in her kitchen in a ranchera(traditional indigenous

hamlet) called Campamento, only a few miles from the Colombian border town

of Maicao.1 It was during the visits of her neighbors and family that Helena would

complain insistently: Nothing for Campamento! Nothing! I always regarded her

comments as unjustified in the face of the inclusion of the ranchera in several

development projects funded by international nongovernmental organizations(NGOs). Eventually I found the opportunity to share my views and suggested

the possibility of declaring Campamento aresguardo(a type of Indian reservea

juridical arrangement intended to recognize and protect indigenous territories),

which would pave the way to getting money for the population as indigenous.

Resguardo no! Senora Helena replied emphatically. Why not? I asked, clearly

confused. I dont know, I dont like it, she finally replied.

If Helena wantedinclusion, this meant something I had not suspected thus far:

to state it bluntly, she wanted subsidies related to her status as indigenous, but

subsidies that would not put her in the same bag as people positively discrimi-

nated for by the multicultural policies that marked the period after the National

Constitution of 1991. More clearly, she wanted access to Familias en Acci onInd gena

(Indigenous Families in Action), the indigenous version of a nationwide condi-

tional cash transfer program (CCT), a program that delivers subsidies to childrens

mothers to advance the formers development and to which the continuity of the

inclusion is conditioned (Latorre 2007). Familias en Accion Indgena is part of an

experiment in governance and social care in Latin America (IDB 2007), and the

fact that the initiative was being piloted in La Guajira during my fieldwork in 2007and 2008 resulted in a privileged opportunity to grasp the subtle shifts in strategies

to manage indigenous populations in a country like Colombia. By analyzing the

336 J ou r n a l o f L a t i n A m e r i c a n a n d Ca r i b b e a n A n t h r o p o l o g y


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introduction ofFamilias en Acci onin La Guajira, this article looks at the shifting

place of indigenous identities in current schemes of neoliberal governance. The

Wayuu case illustrates the contradictory nature of contemporary state inclusion in

Colombia, which inflicts terror to build upon relationships of dispossession and

dependency (Gill 2009; Sanford 2004).This article, however, is not limited to stating the obviousthat ways of in-

cluding indigenous peoples are ever-changing and Janus-faced phenomena. In-

stead, it highlights the ways in which the expertise, techniques, and objects that

define the interface between the state and indigenous people imply reckoning

indigeneity as an objectified element that can be exchanged for inclusion. This

configuration of indigeneity tends to be accompanied by ever-growing anxieties

felt by targeted populations, which are linked in turn to a sense of loss of the

selfproduced by the central element in the whole formula: a trade-off betweeninclusion and objectified notions of identity.

Recent analyses of the fate of multicultural policies have pointed to important

changes either effected by their direct beneficiaries or that have come into reality as

part of broader transformations on behalf of the state. Postero (2007), for instance,

has recently stated that in Bolivia, state multiculturalism and neoliberal reforms

have had unexpected outcomes as they have radicalized discourses on citizenship

and civil resistance, while also displacing ethnicity as the primary defining element

of indigeneity. Indigeneity has consequently come to imply something else be-

yond being simply an expression of ancestral descent and genealogical links with

pre-Hispanic traditions (cf. de la Cadena and Starn 2007). These formations are

dubbed by Postero as post-multicultural and this article explores the possibility

of reaching a similar outcome in Colombia, in a context where the language of

rights and inclusion was produced by violent and sovereign exclusions in which

demands for rights and citizenship were nested. In a different context, French

(2009) delves into the impossibility of distinguishing between politics of recog-

nition and politics of redistribution in thede factoapplication of multicultural

policies. In the Brazilian Northeast, French asserts that quilombos [slave de-scendant communities (2009:104)] and newly recognized indian tribes suggest

the convergence of ethnoracial claims to recognition and class-based claims to

redistributive justice (109). Similarly, there are signs of a blurring in the con-

tours ofmulticulturalismin Colombia. In other words, it is increasingly difficult

to pinpoint what kinds of things do, in fact, comprise multicultural policies. This

blurring of what counts as a politics of identity and what does not has, at least,

two apparent outcomes. First, the identification of indigeneity with notions of

vulnerability has emerged as a central trope to formulate a relationship of care andprotection between indigenous people and the state. Second, the intermingling

of programs for the poor, human rights reparations, and multicultural policies

entails specific ways of experiencing indigeneity through material objects (e.g.,



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ID cards and survey forms, among other things) that stand for and authorize the

identity of the holder, and which can be exchanged for inclusion. These two axes

constitute the basis for the emergence of anxious ethnic subjects who reckon their

indigeneity assomethinginherently alienable.

Neo-, Multi-, Para-

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

globalinterconnections(GuerraCurvelo2007).Thelackofgoldanditsagricultural

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 ofmestizaje, 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 theregion 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, andparamilitaries 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 hereirruku(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



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to the establishment of a police outpost and a local bureaucracy in exchange for

advantages granted in terms of commercial routes and status.

Our close relationship dated from prior to Helenas life as a dweller and au-

thority of Campamento. During the first couple of months of my fieldwork, I had

been a regular guest at her house in Maicao I would hang my hammock in thehouses backyard. It was a huge corner house whose luxurious past was still visible,

regardless of years of carelessness. Not long after I met Helena, she and what was

left of the family decided to live in Campamento, the old finca(farm), and turn it

into a ranchera.

Her familys decision to re-inhabit a finca as a ranchera instantiates in a

powerful way the long history ofmestizajeand class in La Guajira. Fincas symbolize

the landowning regime used bymestizosin Colombia, whereas rancheras represent

traditional Indian settlements. In these terms, moving to the ranchera was seenas an ethnic step toward a more Indian identity in contravention of the historical

norms of Indians expected to become mestizos, especially under conditions of

social ascension. Being a part of the elite, Helenas family was the outcome of

alliances between governmental agents or private entrepreneurs (related to salt

exploitation, natural dyes, and smuggling) andapushis(families) at the beginning

of the 20th century. The alliances were mainly expressed through marriages of

nonindigenous men to princesses. These kinds of alliances were the single most

important factor in the growing use of the category Guajiro to denote a less

ethnically specific, more mixed population. Before the mid-20th century, Guajiro

was used exclusively to refer to the indigenous population. When this category

began to be used to refer to the nationalizedpoblaci on mestiza, the word Way uu

came to the fore to refer to indigenous people. Guajiros were lessethnically specific

but not completely so. Due to matrilineal concepts in local notions of family and

ideas of cognate descent among the men who participated in the unions, mestizaje

did not evolve as a cafe con leche, to borrow Wrights expression (cf. Wright

1990): the mixture is acknowledged but the genealogies allow individuals to claim

full membership of both families of descent.4 It is important to bear in mindthat in La Guajira, these notions of mestizaje have served the double purpose of

underpinning alliances with powerful foreign powers while also reinforcing bonds

with non-mestizo populations, as the status gained can be deployed in traditional

alliances. As will be shown below, the problematic character of Guajiro mestizaje

manifests in a fuller way with the entrance of paramilitaries.

The alliances with families regarded as more indian were important in that

those families increasingly regarded as Guajiras retained territorial control of La

Guajira peninsula and thus continued with contraband (Grahn 1997) practicesdeeply rooted in the region since at least the 18th century. The territorial control of

roads and ports was especially critical in the illegal trade of marijuana and cocaine

during the 1970s and 1980s, which increased the economic and political power of



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themestizoelites that had paradoxically emerged as part of the efforts to govern

the region.

The governmental response to its diminishing control over the territory, partly

resulting from the overt illegal empowerment of mixed elites, was twofold. First, the

central government imposed strong policies to keep contraband at bay throughthe prosecution of the people running the business. This strategy has been ex-

tensively documented by Orsini Aaron (2007) and further detail is not required

here. The second strategy corresponded to the political engagement of the Wayuu

(the population regarded as more indian) with the state through multicultural

organizations, thus undermining the mediation exerted by Guajiro families.5

Additionally, in the mid-1990s, right-wing death-squads made incursions into

the territory in a nationwide phenomenon more generally calledparamilitarismo

a scheme of private armies divided into blocks in the service of large landownersand drug traffickers, initially interested in repelling the left-wing guerrillas. The use

of paramilitaries is difficult to categorize as a strategy, but it is even more difficult

not to do so. Paramilitaries have been a constitutive part of Colombian reality

since at least the 1950s (Taussig 2005), but they formalized in an unprecedented

manner during the 1980s, when state-sponsored organizations were set up in the

Magdalena River valley (Medina Gallego 1990). When they were outlawed by the

government in the 1990s a second wave of organizations emerged (Romero 2003).

The nascent so-called blocks set up an umbrella organization, Autodefensas

Unidas de Colombia, and divided the national territory among its members. The

Northern Block penetrated La Guajira in the late 1990s through alliances with some

Guajiro families, who invited in the death-squads to tip the balance of disputes

with other local families in their favor. The disputes had emerged as part of

governmental pressure to control contraband, which created tensions in attempts

to protect families businesses. Soon afterwards, the mercenaries developed an

independent structure and took control of the region by killing whole families and

securing strategic locations for smuggling. The army helped the paramilitaries by

providing information and assisting with actual ground operations that resulted inkillings, forced displacement, and disappearances. Powerful local families joined

hands with their Wayuu allies to resist the supremacy of the paramilitaries, but

they were soon defeated. This part of the story is perhaps more difficult to interpret

as a strategy, as simultaneously unfolding sets of actions unveiled a more planned,

forward-looking approach to generating governance through illegal means. Thus,

for instance, the operation of paramilitary forces was underpinned not only by

members of the national Colombian army, but by the strategy ofcooperativismo

(cooperativism), which was jettisoned by the government in 2002. This strategyimplied the promotion of cooperatives as part of the neoliberal agenda radicalized

by President Uribe Velez, and was intended to encourage self-management and to

create jobs with minimal state intervention. In practice, cooperatives served as a



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facade for money laundering and the running of paramilitaries businesses. It was

through this system that the paramilitaries took over control of the trans-border

business of smuggling petrol from Venezuela. The war with those people, as

the paramilitaries were notably called, was crude. Of course, the dispute with the

death-squads not only involved Helenas family, but also many others living indifferent parts of La Guajira.6

Neoliberalism in trade, multiculturalism in alliances, and paramilitaries in

territorial control (neo, multi, paraa war of prefixes) were the three constituent

elements of the fall of La Guajira families, such as Helenas. The response from

the state and other germane agents (NGOs and multilateral bodies) was to solve

the crisis that this conjunction of factors had caused. As human rights emerged

as its most visible aspect, government-administered reparations for human rights

violations came to the fore. Almost overnight, a vast part of the population of LaGuajira became not only victims but indigenous victims.7 The situation also

paved the way for other kinds of palliative inclusions and the re-imagination of

what it meant to be an indigenous person, through concepts, such as rights and

inclusion.

Dependencyen Acci on

By the time the conflict had reached its most dramatic point, Helenas familyslivelihood 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 awkwardmelangeof 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



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smugglers. This was concretely instantiated by the exclusion of the land south

of Maicao from the constitution of a huge resguardocovering nearly half of the

peninsula (in total an area similar to that of Northern Ireland) in the mid-1980s.

The declaration of pieces of land as resguardo entails the right to receive resources

in the shape of projects for the improvement of rancheras. Such resources donot go directly to the rancheras leaders, but to the municipal government that

distributes them. To the leaders, this represents a form of auditing that the better

off do not put up with. During the last decade, the declaration of resguardos and

the expansion of existing ones halted, but this system was then replaced by the

constitution ofreservas(reserves), a territorial figure that came with multicultural

reforms (Decree 2164 of 1995). Although reservas do not entitle communities

to economic transfers, they pave the way for communities inclusion in ethnic-

oriented programs. The lands excluded from the La Guajira resguardo were notonly the most fertile in the region, but also the most strategic in terms of bor-

derland contraband. These particular circumstances around the constitution of a

resguardo help to unveil the blurry association between inclusion and state control

in Senora Helenas complaints.

Themestizaje of the victimized families became an object of intense debate. The

government initially declared that Maicaos people had been victimized because

of their involvement with smuggling and, therefore, they were not indigenous

victims. As one representative of the CNRR told me, they were victims for the

same reasons the rest of the Colombians were. However, when female leaders from

the families started to denounce the situation, they were welcomed as indigenous

by the state with no hesitation. This is partly to do with the emblematic place

Wayuu women have in Colombia, which made their claims of victimhood more

indian (de la Cadena 1995). As will be explored below, the attention to gender

and women as privileged categories in human rights reparations (Bouris 2007)

played an important role. Beyond this, the ambiguity in ethnic categories became

functional in the intermingling of multicultural policies and programs for the

poor.To cut a long story short, Helenas dilemma could be put like this: the power

and autonomy of the family had been partly guaranteed by its noninclusion in

the resguardo (and in other germane ethnic-oriented policies), but this meant

they could not access national resources as indigenousthe family did not

need such resources in any case, as they were sustained by their own business.

After the paramilitary incursion, the family lost control over the trade routes and

ports and, therefore, it started to depend upon alternative sources of income.

The familys challenge was primarily to access these resources while keeping amargin of maneuver to rebuild part of their power, now dormant in the traditional

alliances. However, the death-squads were followed by a full set of governmental

institutions to generate inclusion in a population made vulnerable by indirect and



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direct state actions. The National Institute of Rural Development (INCODER)

and the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare (ICBF) advanced a first wave of

inclusion initially through the declaration ofreservas.

The postvictimization context made the context of inclusions even more com-

plex. Women belonging to Helenas family, particularly Karmen, Helenas niece,led thedenuncias(legal and political complaints) regarding crimes perpetrated by

paramilitaries in the Justice and Peace Process, an initiative to demobilize armed

actors, which included reparations for their victims (Congreso de Colombia 2005).

The Justice and Peace Process was mainly advanced by the presidency of Colom-

bia with the support of international allies. The demobilization process adopted

the popular format of a truth and reconciliation commissiona tool-kit of de-

mocratization strategies that has become the international standard in managing

postconflict reconstruction and political transitions (Hayner 2001; Wilson 2001).Truth and reconciliation commissions often place restorative justice as the cor-

nerstone of postconflict stability, and this was the case in Colombia, but the legal

definition of reparations remained murky, and the resulting vagueness has been

strategic for passing state policies for the poor as part of reparations (more on this

issue below). The fact that the denuncias were advanced by indigenous women

clearly increased their visibility in the view of the National Commission of Repara-

tion and Reconciliation (CNRR, the body in charge of running the whole process)

and the other NGOs involved, and shows the prominence of gender as a category

of intervention in this sort of commission (Dal Secco 2008).

To understand the issues that emerged in this context, it is necessary to ask

what kind ofthingsand actionsthe potential beneficiaries reckon as reparations.

The answer to this question should necessarily start by returning to the vagueness

of the definition of reparations to the victims (let alone the implications of the

indigeneity of the victims). The initial issue was that law 975 of 2005, which put

forward the reparations, did not make clear what reparation meant. As a matter

of fact, the issue was being discussed in the Colombian Parliament at the time I

was carrying out fieldwork and, although a law was passed reducing reparationsto monetary compensation, at the time of writing this article the matter is still a

subject of heated debate in the Colombian Congress. This ambiguity in the law was

amplified by the fact that actions to deliver attention to the victims of the conflict

preceded law 975 of 2005although they were not officially dubbed reparations.

The Social Solidarity Network (RSS, Red de Solidaridad Social)wasinchargeofsuch

actions, and the agency was merged with the Colombian Agency of International

Cooperation in 2005. This was part of an overhaul of social welfare to the poor

accomplished by President Alvaro Uribe Velez (20022006/20062010), whichresulted in the constitution ofAccion Social (the Colombian Agency for Social

Action and International Cooperation). This newly formed agency inherited the

responsibilities of the Social Solidarity Network, which included the operation



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of attention to victims (law 548 of 1999). The consequence of this institutional

mesh and law superimpositions was that it was difficult to pin down exactlyin

theory and in practicewhat was part of the reparations and what was not.

This created the conditions for a generalization of reparation as a model of

relationships between citizens and the state. Where is thiscoming from? was acommon question in Campamento when things are given, as the attention is

interestingly referred to. The answer to this question increasingly became Familias

en Accion Indgena, a program operated byAcci on Socialthat was locally framed

as the shape of actual reparations.

In addition, in order for an inhabitant of Campamento to get things as a

beneficiary of Familias en Accion it was crucial to be the holder of acedula de ciu-

dadan a(citizenship identity card, henceforthc edula). In practice, this meant that

the whole community should be represented by an officially recognized AutoridadTradicional (traditional authority), and belong to an Asociaci on de Autoridades

Tradicionales(Association of Traditional Authorities). People cannot go by them-

selves to claim a cedula; they tend to so through an intermediary who arranges

the registration of whole communities, and the state body in charge (the Reg-

istradur a Nacional del Estado Civil) has singled outAutoridadesand Asociaciones

as responsible for doing this. The registration as a Traditional Authority takes

place in the municipal Bureau of Indigenous Affairs of Maicao, and the registered

person should produce a list of people (supported by their signatures, fingerprints

and cedula numbers) declaring their agreement with the possession. In order to

become an Autoridad Tradicional there is no need to reside within a resguardo or

reserve, and this will not entitle a community to receive the resources destined for

the populations of indigenous territories. The advantage of becoming an Autori-

dad Tradicional rests in the fact that other resources that formerly did not flow

into La Guajira, and which are not exclusive to resguardo and reserve inhabitants,

are only delivered to communities associated through this system as anAsociaci on.

Such associations are the quintessential figures of multicultural governance and

emerged as part of the negotiations around the La Guajira salt marshes between thegovernment and Wayuu families during the early 1990s (Decree 1093 of 1993), but

today have a nationwide effect. It is noteworthy that associations are the product

of normative anthropological wisdom in the configuration of early multicultural

strategies, and what we anthropologists imagined (and some still do) it meant to

bean indigenous person. The notion of the Autoridad Tradicional cast indigeneity

as something transmitted along genealogical lines. In this regard, it is unsurprising

that those in charge of negotiations on the side of the government (anthropologists

with sustained contact with indigenous organizations in La Guajira) were stronglyinfluenced by a resilient commonplace in the literature about the Wayuu, which

projects lineage as the single most important idiom of social organization (cf.

Gutierrez de Pineda 1950, 1963; Wilbert 1976). According to these notions, the



11/19

defining character of Wayuuness is matrilineal descent. This has been referred

to in the literature repeatedly, and although the best-accomplished ethnographies

in the region have put matrilineal idioms amidst a more complex image of so-

ciality (Goulet 1978; Rivera Gutierrez 1990-1991; Saler 1988), the anthropologists

in charge of negotiations were influenced by a genealogical image of indigeneity,as shown in a text by one of these anthropologists, published at the time of the

negotiations (Correa 1993).

There is a tension in the current context, however: the local population is vic-

timized and subsequently provided with reparations indirectly linked to welfare

schemes for the poor, such as Familias en Accion, which are intended to bring full

citizenship to marginalized populations in a liberal guise. This access, however, not

only bears the tag indigenous, but also entails membership of regulated multi-

cultural organizations underwritten in the key of biological descent and territorialfixity. This cycle of inclusion is directly involved in the production of an anxiety

involved in identification with an indigeneity that is regarded as the only option

for inclusion, while also entailing growing control of the population. This anx-

ious ethnic subject emerges not only as somebody insecure about his or her own

indigeneity, but also about the loyalty it entails. The Gordian knot is the tension

between what Elizabeth Povinelli (2006) has called genealogic and autologic

discourses. The former refers to discourses that allude to social determination

and constriction or, more concretely, to the force of tradition in the constitution

of subjects. By autologic, Povinelli refers to discourses that emphasize the free-

dom and autonomy of the individual. The latter are, thus, a constitutive element

of concepts of liberal subjecthood. Povinelli, however, demonstrates both dis-

courses in simultaneous operation and tension in new experiments in sociality

(2006: 85).

On one hand, there is a quasi-programmatic interdependency between vulner-

ability, inclusion, and citizenship. This connection not only entails but also brings

about a subject realized through access to services, producing an image of the

indigenous citizen as a consumer of rights. On the other hand, the subject madevulnerable by agents of the state or its emissaries cannot realize as such a liberty-

bearing entity through means other than the assertion of indigenous genealogy.

Nothing for Campamento! is the subjective statement of the frustration caused

by the need to perform a sort of tradition that obliges Helena to submit herself

to auditing techniques (Asociaciones de Autoridades Tradicionales) in order to be

free.

The Means of Representation . . . and their Ends

A paradoxical outcome of the new branding of multiculturalism emerging through

new combinations of policies in Colombia is the way self-determination is



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incorporated into a formula of integration. The divide between the former (self-

determination), represented by such progressive legal instruments as the 1989

International Labour Organization (ILO) convention 169 and recent waves of

national constitutions in Latin America, and the latter (policies targeting vul-

nerable populations) is increasingly difficult to sustain. Self-determination hasbeen articulated with a second instance in the constitution of an anxious eth-

nic subjectthe demand of self-responsibility. Such an instance is both nec-

essary and a correlative to those who are ethnically fixed in order to become

free subjects: it produces subjects of policies accountable for the success of

these very policies. Indigenous peoples are responsible for participating in the

success of the policies of which they are targets, as an expression of their

autonomy, self -management, self -determination, and, in short, their autological

potential.Back in Campamento, Helena, having registered in the municipal Bureau of

Indigenous Affairs of Maicao as an Autoridad Tradicional, obtained the desired

means of accessing Familias en Accion Indgena, which was being piloted at the

time of the fieldwork (Accion Social 2009). In order to be included, the program

asked every Autoridad Tradicional to carry out a census in theircommunities. This

way of performing responsibility was intended to be reproduced at every other

level, from household economy to political decision making (i.e., the participation

in political elections as a citizen). The functionary serving as general municipal

coordinator spelledout this connection between self-responsibility and sovereignty

during an interview:

What are we looking for with this [program]? To awaken peoples responsibility

. . . for themselves; that people understand the importance of an on-time medical

check, to improve the levels of education among indigenous children . . . The other

thing, no doubt, [is] to make presencia del estado[state presence], because one can

see that in higher Guajira . . . Venezuelan currency is handled and the ind gena

knows the Venezuelan national anthem more than the Colombian one . . . There

is something, however, that should be admired: they feel Colombian in their hearts

and defend their fatherland and they identify themselves more with Colombia than

with the sister republic of Venezuela. (Interview with J. C. Parody by P. Jaramillo, 7

June, 2008)

In order to consolidate the project, the Familias en Accion team gave to every

Autoridad Tradicional a form to be photocopied and filled out withthe information

of everyunidad domestica(household) of the ranchera. As an ethnographer, and

concerned about possible outcomes from this census, I offered to lend a hand to aleader 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 nacimientofor newborns,



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tarjeta de identidadfor children under 18, and c edula de ciudadan afor adults).

Additionally, the forms asked for information about indigenous languages spo-

ken by individuals, health coverage, and educational level.

Having photocopied the forms, we visited the households of her rancher a,

the leader asking the questions; I filled in the forms. As a general rule, a womanreplied to our questions and managed the identification documents, which she

would take out of a folder hidden in the house. Inconveniences soon emerged.

One householder said: I am already registered with another leader. My friend

was visibly upset because, as she said, tapushsia(she is our family). In a swift

response, the leader looked for alternatives to balance her numbers and guided me

along a pathway leading to Wawatamana, another ranchera. In this way, a race for

the forms emerged in and among rancheras, and the sheets of photocopied paper

took on an inflated value for a couple of weeks.A leader from Campamento, learning about my participation in the census of

another ranchera, requested the forms from me so [she] could have a look I

assume that this was based on the premise that ethnographers never say no. After

my denial, she left, upset, to continue her low-intensity war with a leader called

Luis Angel, who was registering people from Campamento as if they were from

Uniaka. This complaint soon spread to other inhabitants: Uniaka does not even

exist; this is a recent thing; that is their invention. I asked, Whose invention?

Leaders inventions, was the answer.

This way of reckoning communal issues poses some questions: is it the leader or

the means (the censuses, workshops, and programs) that made them so? A number

of leaders were the representantes legales(legal representatives) of Asociaciones

de Autoridades Tradicionales with strong bonds with health service-providing

companies in the hands of other indigenous associations. Other leadersin factthe

majority of themhad less formal positions and had started to mediate between

the Autoridad Tradicional of their ranchera and the agencies that give things in

a rather informal way.

More fundamentally, these issues carried with them increasing feelings of inse-curityaboutkinfolkandtheimplicationsoftheindigeneityentailedinrelationships

with the state in consolidation. People in the rancheras started to experience an

increasing nervousness about the kinds of (dis)loyalty that could emanate from

such a reconfiguration of the family. An incident with one of Helenas relatives

speaks for itself. Campamento was not only under siege by leaders, such as Luis

Angel, but also by people belonging to the same family. Helenas cousin, for in-

stance, lived in a ranchera far from Campamento but had been visiting the latter

quite often in the couple of weeks before the census. She was introduced to me invery gentle terms, but when it emerged that she had the intention of registering her

household for her own census, she started to be called the unfriendly nickname of

La Rata(the rat).



14/19

One of the most remarkable outcomes of the census was the possessive language

that people started to use about their own rancheras and inhabitants: Uniaka is

Campamentos, Campamento is my ranchera, and the people of Campamento

are mine. The most visible result of the forms, as expressed in the tensions between

leaders to obtain households records, was the possibility to re-visit the rancher asas a customizable space in order to fit intervention schemes.

On a map, the rancheras would start to look less like territorial clusters re-

sulting from consanguine relationships and alliances, and more like a scattered set

of households held together by inclusion in particular social programs. The map

would express well the violence of numbers (Ferme 1998). But it is worth asking

what other forms of violent rearrangements escape such cartographic representa-

tions. A fundamental aspect here is the implicit homology between family and

household, as has been noted in a variety of contexts (Harris 1981; Harrison1998; Moore 1994), and the correlative concept of rancheras as a set of house-

holds. A ranchera, of course, entails a complex notion of affinity and consanguine

relations and is a spatial (through the location of houses and paths) and tempo-

ral (as represented in the family cemetery, the ultimate token of land ownership)

representation of alliances in peace and war. Such an idea of interconnectivity is

implicit in the idea ofapushi(family) and its irreducibility to the set of households

that integrate into it. But to take rancheras as a set of households, as the census

successfully did, have important political uses. Each unity relates in a one-to-one

relationship to agents that deliver subsidies or, as people say, give things. Each

mother (and due to space constraints I will leave gender issues unexplored in this

article) thus relates to the state, and the interconnectivity of the apushi, which

sustains notions of familial self-defense, can be diluted.

But then, who needs to defend themselves, if they are now citizens, as this is

what the state is for? Or is it not? This very question served to articulate a final and

more critical kind of anxiety, particularly experienced by the leaders, in the form of

fear of the commoditization of identity and the consumption of the self. At the final

stage of the fieldwork, I gathered with members of the indigenous organization thatemerged from these legal and political complaints. The purpose of our meeting

was to analyze the challenges of unity in the organization (a real obsession in

indigenous organizations). One of my tasks within the workshop was to share my

views on the tension between reparations, the delivery of subsidies to the ranchera,

and the multicultural organizationsessentially the same objective as this article.

After talking for hours, Karmen, Helenas niece, said, were selling ourselves off.

Another leader, who did not belong to the organization, was cruder that that: el

paisano[a colloquial term for an indian-looking person] is too interested; he goeswherever things are being given away.

MacPherson (1962) identified a critical feature required to understand what

is going on in the production of a consumable indigeneity. The liberal subjects,



15/19

MacPherson asserts, are defined by possessive individualism. Such a feature

entails more than a rhetorical definition. Because liberalism emerges in parallel

to a notion of waged labor, persons should necessarily own, at the very least,

the energy to be sold in the market. This notion of subject is particularly visible

in taken-for-granted ways of speaking about ones own identity. In addition,as Strathern (1988) observes, we speak about identity as something analogous

to a commodity. This commodity-root metaphor is at the core of the previously

mentioned tension between genealogy and autology: a genealogic beingreceives in-

formation and genes; an autologic beingcirculates its own identity as a commodity

in order to be free. In conjunction, the notion of indigeneity entails impossible

identifications.

This section has described the ways in which the notions of self-determination

and self-responsibility, co-occurring with forms of inclusion in La Guajira, triggeranxiety about indigeneity and its capacity to guarantee loyalty. As the limits of the

communal blur, and certainties about the family fade with latent risks of betrayal,

an anxious ethnic subject emerges. This subjecthood is underwritten in idioms

of possession and commoditization that produce in the final instance the fear of

self-consumption.

Post-Multicultural Anxieties: A Final Remark

This article began by analyzing the infliction of vulnerability on a population re-

garded as problematic and marginal by the state. Violence, commercial policies,

and multiculturalism have undermined the power of local elites and triggered their

transformation in ethnic terms. This transformation not only affected the elites

but the meaning of being indigenous in the formulas of inclusion. People were

also subtly forced to enact the genealogical traits that define them as indigenous

in order to become fully free and autonomous subjects. This aspect has been re-

lated to the necessary coexistence of autological and genealogical discourses in theexperiments of sociality implicated in neoliberalization processes. Autological and

genealogical discourses set the conditions for ambiguous definitions of communi-

ties and families and, in the final instance, for the re-imagination of indigeneity as

an object that can be exchanged for citizenship. The notion of liberty implicit in

the concept of citizenship is intimately linked to that of consumption. As Bennett

notes in a comment on Foucault (cf. 2008: 63),

freedom can only exist in variable forms as specific sets of relations between gov-

ernors and governed. Viewed in this light liberalism comprises a specific way of

organising and distributing freedom. It is, first and foremost, Foucault argues, a

consumer of freedom in the sense that it requires a number of freedoms (of the



16/19

market, of property rights, of discussion and expression) as a condition for its

operation. But if it is to consume freedom, it must then also produce and organise

it. (Bennett 2009: 1)

There is an interestingthough sinistercycle in operation here. Persons

framed asind genaare not only put in the position of consuming their own free-

dom, but of consuming themselves and re-imagining their indigeneity as some-

thing negotiable and in circulation. The bottom line is that the processes described

in this article actively produce notions of being and becomingind genain Colom-

bia while, in turn, casting relationships of dependency with regard to the state. It is

this possibility of creating notions of identity that resemble commodities that is

most unsettling in the whole process, in which there is not something other than

multiculturalism, but its actual realization through technical connections between

discourses of diversity and racist governance. That is, recognition and redistri-bution have colluded to undermine self-determination, rather than to produce

greater justice.

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 Espinozaand 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

1Some names in this article have been changed.2In Latin America,mestizajedenotes racial and cultural mixture.3In this respect, the subject matter of this article can be contrasted to the processes of successful

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 andVenezuela 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.



17/19

5Further details about this strategy are given below.6One of the most remarkable and publicized examples were the paramilitary incursions and

massacre in Portete Bay, on which the National Commission of Reparation and Reconciliation (CNRR)

published a report and organized several public commemoration events (CNRR 2010)7The actual statistics regarding the victimization of the population are murky and, as in Colombia

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 todisappearances perpetrated by paramilitaries.

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