“That’s the difference, in the joke...”: the Pijao joke as an actor in the process of recovering Ima

Abstract

This article utilizes ethnographic-collaborative and testimonial exploration of the notion of the joke [woods or virgin forest] to analyze how the Pijao people of the San Antonio de Calarma Indigenous Reserve (Tolima, Colombia) respond to the colonialist dynamics of capitalism related to territory. Historically, the municipality of San Antonio was part of the coffee colonization process in Colombia in the mid-nineteenth century, and was consequently a territory-region affected by the logic of capitalism. Within this context, the Pijao people of Tolima carry out different actions of re-existence, which in the case of the reservation materialize in the process of recovering Ima (how the Pijao refer to Mother Earth). One being present in the Pijao territory is the joke, a territorial actor with its own defining characteristics and forms of agency that is part of the Pijao’s territorial order through a relational system based on reciprocity.

Keywords
Pijao village; Joke (woods or virgin forest); Coffee colonization; Territories-life; Capitalism; Ethnic resistance