ONGs, indios y petróleo: El caso U’wa a través de los mapas del territorio en disputa

Abstract

This paper examines the U'wa affair, a confrontation that became well know when a small indigenous group threatened to commit collective suicide in response to an oil exploitation project by two transnational companies (OXY and SHELL) associated with the state in Colombia. The story of a “tribe” willing to commit suicide in the name of what they consider to be sacred not only attracted the attention of the media all over the world, but the activism of numerous NGO's devoted to the environment and human rights. These organizations have played a key part in this confrontation which took place in the midst of the Colombian armed conflict. This article reflects on the set of images and representations which has guided the experience and the practice of the actors in dispute. At some point, all parties involved have prepared and even published maps intended to illustrate and sustain their argumentation. These maps all show the same combination of zones: those of the oil exploitation area and the indigenous lands, both the ones recognized by the state and the ancestral territories they claim as theirs. Each map shows these areas and the relation between them, but emphasizing particular features in different ways. They may thus be considered as cultural texts and constitute a corpus of information to approach and understand the conflict. Since cartography represents its objects in an allegedly objective manner, maps appear to be neutral in relation to the positions asserted by every actor. As a consequence, they offer a privileged standpoint from which to identify the hypotheses and assumptions that underlie their actions and enunciations. The paper explores, trough maps, and the “sub-text” in the arguments put forth by each of the antagonists: the notions, opinions and intentions they are not express explicitly (i.e., the “political unconscious” of the argumentation). The critical analysis of the conflict’s cartography shows how much the agenda of the environmental and human rights NGO’s resembles that of the oil boosters, and the means through which the indigenous cosmology is construed as static and essentialist, and in this way, rendered invisible and illegitimate in paradoxical ways.

Keywords

• ethnicity
• Cartography
• indigenism
• oil
• conflict resolution
• environmentalism