Revelations of an Event. Water Catastrophes, ‘Diffuse Co-Responsibility’ and Socio-Cosmological Variations among the Pumé, Venezuela
Abstract
The aim of this text is to study the ‘analytical work’ carried out by the Pumé indigenous communities (Llanos de Apure, Venezuela) on a great ecological catastrophe that devastated a part of the Venezuelan coast in December 1999, known as the Tragedy of Vargas. I present how, between 2000 and 2006, several ways of analysing this ‘irruptive event’ were opened up until its definitive elusion by the myth of the deluge, which became the most probable present-past-future, acquiring the value of an amplifying event of an emerging political proposal. All this work of symbolisation is based on Pumé ideas about becoming and relationships in terms of co-responsibility and operates on the basis of the creation of new spaces of symbolisation, including the emergence of female shamanism.
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