Indigenous Cosmovision Research Articles

From the Guest Thematic Editor: True Interdisciplinarity

From the Guest Thematic Editor: True Interdisciplinarity Peter Casarella (bio) It has been a pleasure to serve as guest thematic editor of Diálogo 16. The timing was just right. Latino Studies and Latino/a Theology have not always walked on the same path. This collaboration brings together two dynamic centers of scholarly productivity at DePaul: the Center for Latino Research, and the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology, both in the College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences. Both entities are committed to interdisciplinary research that fosters greater solidarity and understanding between North America and Latin America as well as to the themes of immigration and transnationalism. But the truly novel part of the collaboration was to engage Latino/a reality in the U.S. from dual perspectives. I sincerely hope the exchange, in these Diálogo pages, can contribute to broader methodological discussions of how these two disciplines complement each other. This issue brings together a fascinating collection of insights into Latino/a aesthetics and the history of the Mexican presence in Chicago. We invited contributions that explore the current state of Latino/a Catholicism in the U.S., and current and historical struggles to achieve transformations in Latino/a Catholicism. I myself was particularly interested in ways in which Latino/a Catholicism integrates a vision of beauty and justice and thus articulates a new and compelling view of nature, culture, art, and social change. We offer a glimpse of the history and contemporary lived experience of Latino/a Religious Communities in Chicago by focusing on the diary of a Mexican woman from the time of early migration, and an article that studies The Resurrection Project in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. The collaboration was fruitful beyond my expectations. It is easy to talk about broad and noble ideals like “interdisciplinarity,” but we actually produced an interdisciplinary issue. Now that is exciting! We chose the theme of: “Cosmic Liturgy: Latino/a Catholicism Today.” The term “cosmic liturgy” comes from a distant but interesting source. A highly regarded Swiss Catholic theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, first used it in 1941 to summarize the achievement of a groundbreaking thinker from the seventh century (Maximus the Confessor) whose synthetic understanding of life and liturgy brought together a vast expanse of the wisdom of Asia and the Christian East into a single vision.1 Under the same thematic title, a second issue of Diálogo 16 will describe the work of Alejandro García-Rivera, a Cuban American theologian (and former nuclear physicist) who died on December 13, 2010 and was indebted in some ways to von Balthasar and especially to his search for a new vision of cosmic synthesis in the world today. In context of this journal, however, the meaning of cosmic liturgy has a very broad, multivalent meaning. For Latinas and Latinos the study of faith and culture always lies at the crossroads. Alex García-Rivera talked about the Latino/a theology as a fusion of the indigenous cosmovision with the Christian view of the world as the garden of God. Alex highlighted the woundedness of the artist that comes from standing in solidarity with the marginalized. All of the symbols in religion and rituals of daily life reflect these multiple sources of identity and meaning as well as the struggle to articulate their integration in a novel way. Volume 16, Number 2 will focus on the theological aesthetics of Latino/a Catholicism. This thematic focus grows out of a conference held in the Fall of 2011 at DePaul University entitled, “Cosmic Liturgy: The Vision of Alejandro García-Rivera.” We gathered then to celebrate Alex’s legacy and mourn his passing. Alex died young, and his departure was both sad and sudden. The collection of short essays in that issue, revised from presentations given at that conference, will be a fitting memorial to the still undiscovered legacy of this remarkable man, and will be joined by complementary articles from scholars in Latin American and Latino Studies. These two issues are just the beginning; evidence of diálogo in process of discovering a new path, un camino. In his last publication before he died, Alex García...

Latin American Post-Neoliberal Development Thinking: The Bolivian ‘Turn’ Toward Suma Qamaña

One of the most innovative elements of the current Latin American post-neoliberal context is the attempt to rethink development from the point of view of indigenous cosmovisions. In the Andean region, this dynamic is exemplified by the crystallization of the Suma Qamana or Living Well paradigm. I want to focus here specifically on the case of Bolivia, taking as my frame of reference the most comprehensive and systematic statement of the Movement Toward Socialism's (MAS) vision of development, namely, the National Development Plan (PND). An important ambiguity, I want to argue in this article, undergirds the PND. The PND elucidates Suma Qamana from both alternative development and post-development perspectives. That is, the concept is developed as an alternative to liberal capitalism, on one hand, and as the more radical, postcolonial critique of modernity, on the other.

The clash of cosmographies: indigenous societies and project collaboration - three ethnographic cases (Kaingang, Sateré-Mawé, Baniwa)

Departing from three ethnographic cases the article discusses impacts and native responses to developmentalist cosmography in the presence of market-oriented projects of "sustainability" (as among the Baniwa and Sateré-Mawé) or in the absence of it (as among the Kaingang). The legitimation of anthropological discourse within construction of alterity and (des)exotization of indigenous societies and of the environment they live in is discussed as a privileged field of mediation and encounter of different actors and proposals of projects. Among the cultural pre-conditions that steer these encounters there are religious pluralism and the inherent pragmatics of indigenous conversion, which are responsible for ruptures and continuities of indigenous cosmovisions and - practices and man-nature-relations. They act upon aesthetics, social morphology, distribution of power and local economics. Although these encounters are prone to generate internal conflicts they are perceived as promoters of indigenous well-being through processes of naturalization sustained by occidental regimes of alterity that legitimate their presence.

“Plantas con madre”: Plants that teach and guide in the shamanic initiation process in the East-Central Peruvian Amazon

We present and discuss a particular group of plants used by a diversity of healers in the initiation process and apprenticeship of traditional medicine, as practiced by Amazonian societies in East-Central Peru. Often, these plants are locally called plantas con madre (plants with a mother), and are thought to guide initiates in the process of seeking sacred knowledge, learning about plant usage, and understanding traditional medicine practices. We illustrate the diversity of plants used in the apprenticeship and practice of traditional medicine, and nurture the discussion to better understand the terminology used by Indigenous healers to describe plant uses and their practices. The study was conducted between 2003 and 2008 with the participation of 29 curanderos (healers; 23 men, 6 women), 3 apprentices and 4 herbalists. The participants belonged to four ethnic groups: 17 Mestizos, 15 Shipibo-Konibo, 1 Ashaninka, and 1 Matsiguenga; a Spanish apprentice and an Italian herbalist were also included in the study. The field data were collected using semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and the witnessing of numerous healing sessions. Oral informed consent was obtained from each participant. We identified 55 plant species belonging to 26 botanical families, which are used in initiation processes and apprenticeships of traditional medicine. This group of plants is administered under strict conditions during training and healing sessions called dietas (shamanic diets), with the supervision of one or more maestros curanderos (master healers). We observed that during the shamanic diets, maestros curanderos administered plants depending on the teachings or tools he/she was passing on, and were based on a particular sequence during the initiation process: (I) purification and cleansing species; (II) sensitivity and intuition; (III) strengthening; and (IV) protection and defence. Traditional healers continue to be a primary source of health care for the majority of the population in the Amazon region. Our research suggests that the system of dietas and the plantas con madre are fundamental components of the everyday practice of traditional medicine, maintenance of cultural continuity and Indigenous cosmovisions in the Amazonian societies in East-Central Peru. This paper contributes to filling the gap in the understanding of the process of initiation among healers in this area of the world. The study offers evidence of the need to collaborate with Indigenous healers to improve the recognition of their medical practices, role in their societies, and the value of their tools and medicines. A respectful attitude and open exchange of ideas and information may contribute to a better understanding of the language used by traditional medical practitioners, their practice, and their worldviews.

Tribos, Cacicados ou Estados? A dualidade e centralização da chefia na organização social da América pré-colombina

Este artigo apresenta uma breve discussão bibliográfica dos pressupostos teóricos que fundamentaram as interpretações arqueológicas e etnográficas recentes sobre as formas de organização política e social na América pré-colombiana. Procura-se demonstrar que a exigüidade de argumentos pautados no aprofundamento de nossa compreensão das cosmovisões ameríndias, sobretudo no que tange suas noções de poder e chefia, pode ser um dos principias fatores limitantes ao debate acadêmico sobre a complexidade social e as relações de poder na América indígena.

Response to Theodore Binnema

I wish to express heartfelt thanks to Theodore Binnema for taking the pains to read and review my book Huron-Wendat, the Heritage of the Circle and explain his perception of it to audiences often at a loss to understand how Indians view their past and their evolution. This brief response is meant to further assist all engaged in this search for understanding the "deeper American roots." First, I wish to say that I do not "reject the standards of Western historiography and Western Civilization," as Binnema puts it. Instead, my whole argumentation, based on an intense, uninterrupted reflection with those versed in my circular Indigenous thought, has been about the senselessness of wanting to fit the Indigenous cosmovision into prefabricated Western historiographic and civilizational boxes. I have relentlessly attempted, as Binnema observes, to make both civilizations more conversant with each other. The fact, however, that is especially hard to accept for many non-Indigenous Americans (speaking continentally) is that it is neither realistic nor logical to expect Indigenous people to trade the fundamental axioms of their own civilization for others that have not functioned intellectually, socially, or spiritually in the locales they were imported from. At other levels, however, there can be all the exchanges that are normal and necessary between humans of all backgrounds, and, indeed, there can be and there is a shared pride in "Americanness." Second, I quite understand Binnema's dilemma with not wanting to utilize Western standards to review my book and still comparing it with works by Bruce Trigger and Conrad Heidenreich. To clarify, my book is not an attempt to produce another clinical (Western) history of the Huron-Wendat, even though I wholeheartedly admit that those are necessary bridges between the two worlds, which, I find, can best be built by non-Indian practitioners of the discipline. My book is my best humble attempt to define the sort of mental and spiritual disposition that is necessary in order to bring us collectively out of patterns of historical and social analysis that were once established on the colonial percept of "Might makes Right." I merely wish to increase collective [End Page 654] awareness of and pride in a truer, deeper sense of our common "Americanness" by infusing a new, badly needed capacity for admiration of the American Indian civilizations. For my people, such recognition will be the only kind that will send us a credible signal that our participation is wanted, that there is caring for our existence. Finally, I wish to state that one day, when we are not only able but willing and eager to talk together, we will "develop an Indigenous historiographic tradition, with its own approaches and standards of excellence," because an Indigenous tradition cannot be developed by Indigenous people alone. The very word circle implies that anything, to have true, lasting value, must include the vision of each and every person. Meanwhile, I personally will continue to listen intently to all and to speak for the eventual building of the definite bridge that, one day, has to unite us all. For this one opportunity to speak, I thank Theodore Binnema.