Rastrojo: Re(in)surgent forests

Abstract

Todo esto era monte. Desde allá donde se ve hasta acá. Mire esa bola de monte. Esos son árboles naturales que están ahí desde la creación. Y lo tumbaron. y lo quemaron. y le sembraron pasto.1 Microorganismo says this was Indigenous land colonized by the church. The church colonized productive systems too. The church was a cattle system. How did they produce this system? They invented a saint. Ganaderos bow to San Isidro cattle offerings on the altar es otra brujería.2 They sow milk here in this forest with no trees. In this forest taitas tend cattle call on spirits for contras against balas in war.3 Ganaderos gather in the guerrillas’ camps past the smoke of charred trunks smoldering soils to tomar remedio.4 Están matando gente, los árboles son gente.5 Oosh ooosh ooosh. In front of a wood-planked house there is a hand-painted sign nailed to a tree it reads: “en el interior del ser humano se ha talado el bosque de su sensibilidad, por esto es preciso ¡reforestar el corazón!” 6 The paracos nailed death threats to their door that's how they found themselves here entangled in rastrojo. Entangled. with remnants of cattle grass that remain rooted in lifeless desiccated soils. Entangled with pollinators seed dispersers fungi and roots dead plants and leaf litter fermenting cacao del monte copoazú maraca. In these soils they plant seeds gathered from the forest cultivate insurgence rising with the earthy redolence of decay and decomposition. In rastrojo the dead nourish the living. Their generative relations a minga of resistance (de)composing relations of collective resurgence germinating in response to ongoing war.7 El colono no sabe como proteger a la selva no tiene rezos no toma yajé y así no tiene comunicación con los espíritus de la selva. Cuando vienen los colonos para tumbar la selva. para sembrar coca o pasto para ganado están matando gente los árboles son gente.9 They were there on the crowns of the trees la gente invisible their faces painted red to defend themselves from forest spirits.10 There, the taita invisible. a crown of plumas rezando cantando defendiendo la selva.11 It is certain that the selva continues to exist despite ongoing colonization, conflict, and forest destruction through the communication and ongoing dialogue of the taitas with the spirits of the selva. The selva the world of spirits la gente invisible I was there in Ukumari Kankhe when a person emerged igualito a mi esposo the same collares, the same cusma, all the same. “Come with me,” the person said. “Where are we going?” I asked. “We’re going pa’dentro el monte.” I told this person “you are not my husband. I am staying here” Then the person turned into a jaguar and disappeared into the forest. This is the selva.12 In 2016, the Colombian state and the country’s largest guerilla group, the Las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP) declared the end of a decades-long war. “Peace” in Colombia however is what one campesino called “otra guerra”—a “war” waged on forests and their diverse life-worlds. These poems emerged in response to this ongoing war I encountered throughout my ethnographic fieldwork in Putumayo, Colombia. These poems were written throughout my fieldwork in Putumayo, often in collaboration with the forest itself, through a practice of listening to and learning from forests and the communities who defend them. Poetry, like ethnography, is grounded in listening. These poems emerged through forest walks, working with those communities on their forest farms, and in ceremonial contexts. Poetry enabled me to go deeper into what is often considered “excess” in ethnographic research, which transformed my relationship with forests and my research itself. Listening engenders a poetic practice of writing in relation to forests—a collaborative form of co-resistance to their ongoing colonization and destruction that works to regenerate relations oriented towards resurgent futures. Listening to the forest drew me into the earthy redolence of decay and decomposition, to the germination of seeds, the comings and goings of pollinators and seed dispersers, and to the silences—the penetrating silence of cattle grass, dead soils, and desiccated crops on farms in the war on Colombia’s forests. Listening to the forest is to witness the loss of connectivities: of death nourishing life and the rupturing of the generative relations of Indigenous and other forest communities that together form the life of the forest. Listening also led me to their entangled expressions of resistance that emerge in rastrojo. Rastrojo indicates forest destruction and the possibilities for resurgence. Rastrojo is the forest growth that emerges following disturbance. It is intrinsic to the forest cultivation of Indigenous and other communities living with these forests. The cultivation of rastrojo involves “learning from the forest.” It contributes to restoring degraded soils rendered lifeless from ongoing war, generating the conditions for life’s ongoingness. Rastrojo constitutes a form of resistance to ongoing colonization and destruction grounded in a reparative relationality with the forest. This is the forest resurgence of rastrojo in which peace with the forest germinates.