By Eileen Buitrago Pérez

This post is a deep look at my identity, traditions, and heritage as an anthropologist woman, who debates these aspects through studying, listening, and learning about gender and queer perspectives. There are two opposing findings that are interconnected and offer a possible reinterpretation of myself, which can serve as an example for other social groups.

My contradictory learning

I grew up in a Catholic family in a large city, where coming from rural regions could be odd in the late 1980s. The traditions I learned emphasized on “being a good person” or persona de bien. Over time, I came to realize that it was rooted in discriminatory behaviours. Persona de bien was associated with stable employment, higher education, material possessions, a traditional family, or with the rejection of cultures that differed from the Western one, and the rural areas and their hard conditions, like the one my family came from. Nowadays, to be a “persona de bien” has been transformed into even more exclusionary behaviours and practices from upper classes, which I fully reject.

This learning experience has a colonial origin, connected with the concept of race. As María Lugones highlighted, building on Quijano’s proposals, race is a cultural invention, which gives (Western) colonizers the tools to create power relations and controlling behaviours. In this case, persona de bien can be connected to the Manual  de Urbanidad y Buenas Maneras, the primary document used by schools and homes to define “appropriate” behaviours since 1869. It describes how society members are expected to act based on “the main rules of civilization and etiquettes to show” (page I).  

In school, we were taught to value colonizers for supposedly introducing “advanced” and “progressive” society. They presented mestizaje as a formula, through this Western perspective of science. Additionally, we had to learn them by heart (White + Indigenous = Mestizo; Black + White = Mulato, etc). The message created was that Indigenous people were extinguished (yes!) because of the mestizaje, despite the Constitution saying otherwise.

A profession, a new perspective

As an anthropologist, I learned that Colombia is a pluriethnic and multicultural country, as formally recognised in 1991. These rights came from the resistance and struggle by the ethnic groups, despite the enduring violence and discrimination since “La Conquista”.

Nonetheless, there are different scenarios of discrimination stemming from coloniality, and these scenarios are accompanied by contradictions. An example is the Indigenous Resguardos, which were areas of land defined by the Spanish Crown as a strategy of control and isolation of Indigenous people. Nowadays, they have granted protection and recognition to specific populations. Those who hold colonial lands can be recognised more “easily” as the “ethnic population” than others. They would have more “proofs” to present if they were recognized since the colonization.

In the case of mestizaje and/or previous processes of elimination of the ethnic territories, there numerous problems arise. The Muysca[1] people face more difficulties in demanding their rights. Consequently, to be recognized as part of an ethnic group depends on power relations and has its roots in colonialism. In turn, it becomes neocolonialism, or a new way of controlling who is Indigenous or not and who can demand these rights.

No soy de aquí ni soy de allá[2]

(I am not from here nor there)

As such, I have learned about discrimination and denials of my/our cultural heritage. One root came from Indigenous tradition, which is systemically rejected and tried to be erased. Now, I find resonance in Gloria Anzaldúa’s key concept, the conciencia mestiza. As a mestiza citadina, I inhabit a space of constant dilemmas in cultures, phenotypes, and genotypes. I am in constant contradiction and ambivalence of this plural personality: we have been taught to reject rural and Indigenous traditions, even though we have them in our heritage; despite we feel them in our bodies.

The contradictory messages have been constant; some traditions originated from colonialism, the Western perspective, or capitalist and development ideologies. Nonetheless, I have heard from my grand-parents that peasant roots needed to be forgotten – because it was not “science.” In consequence, I am a city dweller (citadina), and I am proud of it. Also, I am a mestiza shaped by mestizaje.  

Despite the fact that I am not part of an Indigenous group, I consider it essential to work with them and learn from them. They are transforming and redefining their roots, as Linda Tuhiwai Smith mentioned, which allows us to view them as dialectical people. Although their constant work of reinterpretation, patriarchal structures persist. It is then necessary to critically analyse those power relations also in their collective spaces. Despite such complexities, Indigenous worldviews, sciences, economies, and other spheres offer relevant lessons and provide answers to questions of sovereignty, traditional and effective medicines, caring for the ecosystem, among others.

We can envision a fundamentally new kind of urban citizen who is evolving right now, leaving behind the perception of “city = concrete jungle,” and embracing alternative interpretations.

A couple of days ago, someone told me, “You need to define your identity clearly to understand your perspective.” Now, I am better at answering than before; I am a mestiza; I am a mixture of the past and present, coloniality and colonialism, urbanism and mountains, dilemmas, tradition and transformation. That is my identity itself.  

Cover photography: Mykyta Kravčenko

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[1] An indigenous group with a cultural revival starting in the 1980s, because of the elimination of their Resguardo three times in the XX century, which have impacted in cultural loss.

[2] The singer Facundo Cabral is part of the protest movement through “la música protesta,” a Latin American music genre in the 1960s and 1970s. This song talks about “no boundaries” as world view, and just to feel the moments avoiding the societal pressure of a citizenship, as a new way of understanding identity and existence.