For 3 years, the Wayuu indigenous communities have benefited from a Diploma in Self-Government and Citizen Control, created to strengthen their capacity for autonomy and social participation. Here, the graduates of the class of 2024.
Photo: Courtesy of Julián Gutiérrez
The sky is completely starry and the constellations, reflected in the sand, evoke a time in which present, past and future overlap, as occurs in quantum theory and Wayuu cosmology. On the chinchorro the dreams expand and I have the feeling that the temporal superposition caused by the Milky Way produced, at the same time, the trip that brought us to Guajira. (We recommend: Chronicle by Paulo Ilich Bacca on the creation of the indigenous university of Pastos and Quisallingas).
“Sleeping in a hammock you experience new lives,” a Wayuu woman tells me who watches me hanging between heaven and earth. It is precisely on the chinchorro where I begin to write these lines, remembering that the word has been walking the territory all day. At one end of the Walakali II community school, near Uribia, members of the host community are gathered with families from a neighboring community. The meeting is chaired by a palabrero or putchipuü, the conflict mediator in the Wayuu jurisdiction, whom I recognize from a distance, by his distinctive hat. It is a meeting to resolve a conflict and its protocol, synthesized in norms derived from Wayuu cosmology, is experienced in the norms of everyday coexistence.
Like Wayuu time, mediation is slow and the search for agreement does not only occur between the attendees and the palabrero; Furthermore, the putchipuü must walk the talk, taking the settlement proposal to the other community. It is a coming and going in which the word flows through the territory and, in which the conflict is harmonized through the rules of its own right. When we arrived at the community, before 8 in the morning, the word was already traveling through the territory and when we finished the day, around 6 in the afternoon, the word continued to travel between the neighboring communities.
We had arrived from Uribia, the indigenous capital of Colombia, together with the team from the Caminos de Identidad Foundation (Fucai): Zulma Rodríguez, Pablo Berty and Fernando Acosta, who are also part of the teaching staff of the Diploma in Self-Government and Citizen Control. This is a program created to strengthen the communities of the Wayuu people in which, together with Julián Gutiérrez, a colleague from Dejusticia, we participate in the fair energy transition and climate change module in La Guajira.
On the road from Uribia to Walakali II, Pablo and Fernando, from Wayuu and Nasa trunks respectively, talk with two girls who will accompany the workshop. Pablo, a versatile translator between the Wayuu and Arijuna worlds, says that he accompanied as an interpreter a British team that was recording a documentary on ultra-processed products and, presciently, puts forward the thesis that will condense the conclusions of the workshop’s focus groups: it is not possible understand the energy transition without reference to the humanitarian crisis of the Wayuu people and, therefore, without reading it in the broader context of both the coal extractivism that has plagued La Guajira for decades; as through the declaration of the unconstitutional state of affairs (ECI) of the Constitutional Court in Sentence T-302.
The trip was approximately one hour and upon arriving at the community we were greeted by Maritza Pushaina, who leads the community processes, and her son, John Jairo Pushaina, a young leader who stands out for having the respect of both the rancherías and their families, of whom He is a translator, and of the new Wayuu generations, who consult him on day-to-day decisions. The approach of the diploma we are attending is intercultural and gives ample space to the biocultural knowledge of the communities. It is a pedagogical commitment that goes from the Wayuu rancherías, where this itinerant study center arrives, to the University of La Guajira, which receives, among other figures from the Alta and Baja Guajira clans, leaders of the clans that They only speak Wayuunaiki, Wayuu intellectuals, who according to Western standards, are illiterate.
These leaders, versed in the sources of Wayuu law, create an intercultural translation in which the biocultural knowledge of the clans speaks horizontally to the technical and specialized knowledge of the visiting professors. It is a silent educational commitment that reminds us that, just like Wayuu literature, today translated into Western languages, participatory action research has a long history and precedents in the most marginalized communities and excluded from the so-called centers of knowledge production. .
The diploma course is in its third year and the idea of its promoters is that in this closing cycle it moves from theory to practice. After installing capacities, first, working on the life plans of the communities and then in the analysis of the violation of the socio-environmental rights that appear in Sentence T-302, it is time to operationalize the implementation of the sentence through the citizen control that can be done to the territorial development plans of the new mayors. In this sense, it is not free that a module on energy transition has been included, since the communities have understood that the way in which wind energy projects are implemented will have a decisive impact on the rights to drinking water, food and health. of the communities.
The objective of the training of Wayuu leaders is for them to become active actors in citizen control that must be carried out on the territorial development plans of the new mayors.
Photo: Courtesy of Julián Gutiérrez
This is so, according to the participants in the diploma, because if the communities are not consulted nor their life plans taken into account when implementing wind projects; Then, the history of the structural effects of extractive projects that have been going on for decades in the region, such as the Cerrejón mine, will be repeated. And, furthermore, the violation of economic, social, cultural and environmental rights that led to the decree of the ECI in La Guajira will worsen.
In this sense, one of the most recurring points of discussion among the leaders who attended the diploma course is the planning of political and legal strategies that guarantee that the life plan of the communities can be reflected in the development plan of the municipalities. . Wayuu leaders are aware of the difference between their conception of life and that of the municipal authorities. This in itself constitutes an enormous translation gap, to the extent that they can end up talking about the same topic, but understanding it from radically different meanings. In this context, Fucai’s motto “our center is the periphery” aligns with the need for intergovernmental and interjurisdictional coordination demanded by Wayuu communities in the implementation of wind energy projects. Well, only in this way, they point out, can projects be executed efficiently and culturally appropriate.
In the middle of the simultaneous translation by Pablo and John Jairo, a new simile appears promoted by the attending families, to compare the water shortage and the implementation of wind energy projects. They talk about the 40 tank trucks that the Risk Management Unit bought to distribute water in the communities of the municipality of Uribia. The conclusion they reach is blunt: there are tank cars but there is no water, which shows from another angle, the distance between Bogotá, where the news is produced, and La Guajira, where the water shortage remains the same. Comparing this case with wind energy projects, the communities anticipate that this is a warning regarding the need to carry out community oversight of State investments.
“The investment must be allowed to happen but the communities must be attentive to that investment. It is good that the tank trucks arrive because that could guarantee compliance with Sentence T-302, however, the tank trucks do not reach the majority of communities, therefore, intercultural solutions are required. If it is coordinated with the communities, culturally appropriate solutions could be found to the problems of water or wind farms, otherwise, their implementation will not be achieved,” a traditional authority wisely argues, while John Jairo translates for us.
In this way, it is agreed that the State must guarantee rights, but at the same time, that their implementation must be monitored by the communities. Consequently, training is needed so that communities can oversee and understand the language of the State. “They said that leaving Duque, 70% of the communities would have water but progress is still slow.” Thus, the difficulty of coordination between the national and regional governments is enormous, even more so, considering that in Guajira the regional also means taking into account the self-determination of indigenous governments. It is a very complicated balance, even if there is good will, notes Zulma Rodríguez, whose diagnosis is that it is often better to maintain what exists (micro aqueducts, public batteries, etc.) than to do new works, including unconsultated wind farms, that do not consider the biocultural knowledge of the communities.
Just like racism, which is a practice that is structured and structuring at the same time, to the extent that it is a colonial imposition that constructs the racialized identity of certain subjects; Dispossession structures territories through projects that naturalize inequality. Wayuu leaders conclude that the lessons learned from projects such as Cerrejón should lead to better implementation of wind energy projects; however, they are also aware that the structural effects of dispossession have led to the reproduction of the logic that impoverished and left in humanitarian crisis to their communities.
For this reason, the energy transition should have the structuring potential of demonstrating that it is fair and respects the rights of indigenous peoples. For the leaders, this will only be possible by talking about the territory, just as the putchipuü did on our arrival at Walakali II. That is, consulting the communities that have ancestrally inhabited it and obtaining their consent through processes that take their biocultural knowledge and their own rights seriously.
However, the path of interculturality cannot be translated into the romanticization of indigenous peoples. For this reason, an issue as complex as the energy transition requires the promotion of critical and reflective analyzes regarding the different positions of the Wayuu clans. This last topic will surely merit a new writing.
* Paulo Ilich Bacca is a collaborator of El Espectador and deputy director of Dejusticia.
