The Indian and the Earth. Civilization, Barbarism and Agrarian Conflict in South Tolima, 1930-1944

Abstract

In colonial times, Catholic morality and a form of property worthy of Western thought prevailed. From that moment on, the possession of the land was dominated by laws and institutions imported from Europe or created in the Indian world that led to a transformation in the mentality of the Indian and in the way he related to the land. Colombia’s 19th century, influenced by the French Revolution and private property, laid the foundations free of money changers and individualists who deepened an unprecedented agricultural conflict, and which were also knotted with discourses of scientific racism and Christian morality that sought to “civilize” the “barbarian”. However, indigenous communities that resisted colonial and republican repression and retained – albeit synchestling with mestizos and Creole – part of their pre- Hispanic worldview, waged a long struggle for the recognition of collective property. In the first half of the twentieth century, the Indigenous Committee of Ortega y Chaparral, based in the south of the Department of Tolima, took collective action for the defense of its shelter titled by the Spanish Crown in 1621. This work proposes to return to the earth as a living and relational space. There come cultural practices, symbols, social organization and indigenous worldview, their relationship with the land and their ways of defending it. Thesources used are epistolar exchanges between the Committee and the national and local government.