Bolivar's Sword: The Mapoyo and the Politics of Heritage‐Making in Venezuela

Abstract

AbstractThis article analyzes the political dynamics involved in the inclusion of the Mapoyo oral tradition into UNESCO's lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage. We frame this designation as an “event” that encapsulates a contested process of negotiation between the Mapoyo Indigenous community and the Venezuelan state. Our article evaluates the intersection of two asymmetrical (but nonantagonistic) political agendas in terms of how they are enacted through heritage‐making practices: (1) the Mapoyo's demands for territorial autonomy and (2) the Bolivarian Revolution's nationalist program. We focus on the way this heritagization process was tied to discourses of patriotic indigeneity centered on a sword attributed to Simón Bolívar. We argue that even though heritage‐making practices mostly reproduce nation states’ hegemonic discourses, they can also open spaces for subaltern groups to exert relational forms of agency. Ultimately, we show the implications of the Mapoyo heritage designation in reimagining the place of Indigenous peoples in Venezuela's national history.