Abstract

MUSALE/M, PEDRO. POLITICAL VIOLENCE, YAJE AND SHAMANIC STRATEGIES IN THE INDIGENOUS PUTUMAYO. Maguare [online]. 2022, vol.36, n.2, pp.205-232.  Epub Dec 23, 2022. ISSN 0120-3045.  https://doi.org/10.15446/mag.v36n2.102865.

Based on fifteen months of fieldwork in Putumayo, this article examines how the Siona experience political violence in a unique way: through an epic consciousness. This epic consciousness emerges from an oral memory that evokes the curacas' epic in articulation with concepts such as people and territory. Epic consciousness awakens when there is danger. In oral memory it refers to the risks faced by the curacas during the rubber era, while today it denotes the dangers that the Siona face due to drug trafficking and the armed conflict. Focusing on the period before the signing of the peace accords between the Colombian government and the FARC, I present two ethnographic cases that expose the place of the taitas (shamans) and Yaje sessions as indigenous strategies to navigate the conflict and survive violence.

Keywords : Colombia; indigenous movement; Putumayo; shamanism; Siona people; violence.

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