Knowledge production in recurring struggles: The U´wa victory in Colombia ten years later

• In Event: Politics of Knowledge Production in Resource Conflicts

Abstract

In the year 2002 the U´wa indigenous people of the Colombian highlands were successful in pressuring the US oil company Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) to abandon their project and leave U´wa territory. Together with lawyers, allies and advocates, they employed a range of legal, organizing and spiritual strategies. Their local struggle quickly became global and its results set an important precedent in Colombian jurisprudence and in bringing attention to the use of the Interamerican system as an effective legal mechanism of justice. The victory was also understood by the U´wa as brought about by the intervention of Sira, Mother Earth, whose blood or oil she hid from the company experts. How come in spite of this victory and the gained knowledge of resistance strategies and spiritual power used to force Oxy´s exit, they were unable to keep Ecopetrol (the new state owner) at bay in the ten years that followed? Was Sira´s intervention into the geographies of extraction and political spaces of decision making short-lived? If so why? Did the U´wa lose faith in the combination of legal and activist strategies or put too much faith in the government to uphold their rights? We suggest through ongoing qualitative research -as legal advisors and activist anthropologists collaborating with the U´wa- that confidence in Sira’s power combined with growing tensions between the U’wa and foreign allies created an opening for Ecopetrol. We wish to contribute to the literature of social movements and indigenous ontologies and explore how the U´wa navigate, use and experience the different strategies of resistance in the current struggle with Ecopetrol.

Author

• Ximena S Warnaars, University of Manchester