"Reconfiguring the Political Landscape after the Multicultural Turn: Law, Politics, and the Spatialization of Difference in Colombia, April 6, 2007
In this presentation Diana Bocarejo, PhD Candidate at the University of Chicago, addressed the two of the problematiques of her dissertation thesis which asks: how is the “political landscape” constituted and reoriented within the context and mobilization of a liberal multicultural regime. That is, how is the relationship between space and politics shaped within multiculturalism?
The first scenario she presented was the Colombian National Constitutional Court and the analysis tried to understand the articulation between the Court’s construction of indigenous typologies, as group categories that have access to Constitutional minority rights, and indigenous topologies as the spatial arrangements (reservation, ancestral territories) that are thought to be necessary for indigenous survival. More than a call on difference there exists a notion of alterity in which the construction of indigenous peoples as grantees of minority rights hinges upon the construction of a radical Other. Some of the questions addressed are: Who can actually perform such a radical alterity? How to deal with “diasporas”, with indigenous peoples who do not live within indigenous territories? How is the access of minority rights delimited? Is it done by following territorial boundaries or by making gradations of indigeneity and subsequently a gradation of rights? How does the Court deal with “non grantees”’s connections to territory, to peasant’s claims for equality? How is indigenous jurisdiction, specifically the usage of customary law for offence punishments, being granted or refused?
The second problematique analyzed the manner in which multiculturalism reshapes the political landscape in terms of its direct effects on land tenure and use, and how this is accompanied by particular representations on how indigenous peoples and peasants conceive space in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The larger picture provided then is the interplay between the different representations related to place-making and how these are mobilized by diverse authorities (the State, NGOs, indigenous peoples, peasants) to effect land tenure and land use. Currently, the environmental conservation imaginary associated with indigenous peoples is the leading rhetoric that reshapes land tenure. There is not a state plan of land tenure reform so that peasants do not know the extent of the indigenous land buying plan especially because indigenous “ancestral territory” covers the whole mountain and even the nearby cities and capital of the department. The main portions of land that are bought come from small landowners who have themselves lived all their lives at the margins of the state and have complicated stories of displacement and violence. A closer analysis of the social and political context in which the vendors are located reveals two intertwined circumstances that explain the decision: state abandonment and the constantly shifting authority and violence, mainly between guerrilla and paramilitary forces.
