Inverting Development Discourse in Colombia: Transforming Andean Hearths

Abstract

In the 1990s, 60 percent of the households in Tuquerres, a highland town in Colombia's southwestern Andes, bought their first gas range for cooking. The residents frame their purchases as a manifestation of and say- ing the ranges are more economico, rapido, and limpio—terms readily translated as economic, fast, and clean. However, the spread of gas ranges by independent initiative inverts a top-down model of development through government and corporate actors. The resi- dents' use of a development discourse does not emanate primarily from a government or corporate development apparatus but, rather, results from the incorporation of development terms into a local history of hierarchy and stigma. Because residents use these terms to counter stigma and hierarchy, the terms involve unexpected nuances: Economico concerns spending money and cash pur- chases, ra'pido refers to new forms of family and sociability, and limpio becomes a foil to the shame of dirt. Use of these terms incorpo- rating these expanded meanings reveals that Tuquerrenos embrace aspects of development, but on their own terms. (Keywords: development, modernization, households, Colombia, Andes)